Gault Site findings undermine Clovis First theory
FLORENCE, Texas — In a big white tent pitched near Buttermilk Creek, archaeologists and volunteers are on their knees, scraping away sticky black clay a few tablespoons at a time. They wash the dirt and screen it for stone shards, spearpoints and flakes from some 13,000 years ago.
Little by little, those bits of stone are chipping away at long-held pictures of the earliest Americans, wiping away images that are still depicted in high school textbooks and museum dioramas.
The Gault Site is about 70 acres in a valley between Florence and Salado, about an hour from Waco. It remains unknown to many Central Texans, though it’s now open for tours and is the subject of a daylong event Thursday at McLennan Community College.
But it’s renowned among archaeologists worldwide as the continent’s biggest trove of knowledge about the Clovis people, nomadic hunters who overran the Americas some 13,500 years ago.
“It’s such a well-kept secret,” said Linda Pelon, an MCC anthropology instructor who is helping organize the Thursday event and whose students have volunteered at the site. “This is an internationally significant site that may help rewrite the story of the peopling of the Americas.”
Read entire article at Waco Tribune-Herald
Little by little, those bits of stone are chipping away at long-held pictures of the earliest Americans, wiping away images that are still depicted in high school textbooks and museum dioramas.
The Gault Site is about 70 acres in a valley between Florence and Salado, about an hour from Waco. It remains unknown to many Central Texans, though it’s now open for tours and is the subject of a daylong event Thursday at McLennan Community College.
But it’s renowned among archaeologists worldwide as the continent’s biggest trove of knowledge about the Clovis people, nomadic hunters who overran the Americas some 13,500 years ago.
“It’s such a well-kept secret,” said Linda Pelon, an MCC anthropology instructor who is helping organize the Thursday event and whose students have volunteered at the site. “This is an internationally significant site that may help rewrite the story of the peopling of the Americas.”