Description

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The Gault archaeological complex, located in Central Texas, is one of the most important and extensive sites for the study of Clovis culture in North America, commonly dated between 11,000 and 13,500 years ago. Indeed, according to author Mary S. Black, recent discoveries at the site by veteran archaeologist Michael Collins may suggest that Texas has been a good place for people to live for as much as 20,000 years.

Secrets in the Dirt examines this important site and highlights the significant archaeological research that has been carried out there since its discovery in 1929. In 2007, Collins, who has been working at the Gault site since 1998, and his colleagues discovered an unusual stone tool assemblage that predated Clovis, suggesting the possibility that they were made by some of the earliest inhabitants in the Americas. Black provides a reader-friendly account of how these and many other artifacts were uncovered and what they may represent. She also offers absorbing vignettes, extrapolated from the painstaking research of Collins and others, that portray some of the ways these early Americans may have adapted to the location, its resources, and to one another, thousands of years before Europeans arrived.

This generously illustrated, engaging book introduces readers to the Gault site, its fascinating prehistory, and the important research that continues to uncover even more secrets in the dirt.

About the Author

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A longtime member of the Texas Archeological Society, MARY S. BLACK is also an active blogger, a former instructor in public schools and professor at the University of Texas at Austin, and the author of From the Frio to Del Rio: Travel Guide to the Western Hill Country and the Lower Pecos Canyonlands. She lives in Austin.

Praise For…

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"Walk with Mary Black as she takes you through the lives of flintknappers present and long past as they manufacture stone spearpoints and myriad other useful tools employing skills and practices—technology—shared across thousands of years. Flakes of flint, obsidian, jasper, quartzite and other hard, brittle stones preserve tell-tale traces of past stone working technologies. These are often found in profusion at archeological sites around the world.  Mary’s trek begins in Central Texas at the Gault site, occupied by stone toolmakers for over 16,000 years, with its hundreds of thousands of flakes, as she shows how modern flintknappers’ experiments inform us on ancient skills and techniques.  Her easy, folksy style offers a pleasant, informative read." —Michael B. Collins
— Michael B. Collins

"For the past 70 years, we thought we knew what Clovis was all about. Not only were the makers of Clovis fluted projectile points the First Americans, they were also rapidly moving, big-game hunters who spread quickly across an empty New World landscape. That was B.G. (Before Gault). Now, because of excavations at Gault and several New World localities, we know that what we thought we knew about Clovis was all wrong. They were not the First Americans, nor did they spread across an empty landscape. What we now know about Clovis has benefited enormously from the Gault excavations in many ways eloquently and accurately told by Mary Black in this engaging volume. Put simply, Black tells the reader what we now understand about Clovis through, and with the benefit of, the Gault prism. She recounts with enthusiasm what Mike Collins and his associates learned from these seminal investigations." —J. M. Adovasio
 
— J. M. Adovasio