Gault (archaeological site)

For nearly half a century the large majority of working archaeologists adhered to the notion that people making and using the distinctive Clovis "point" and its associated lithic technology were the first to arrive about 13,500 calendar years ago and to have spread quickly throughout the Americas.

However, there was always a small archaeological minority who contended that the first Americans (in the broadest, two-continent, sense) had been here long before Clovis times on both the east and west margins of both continents.

In the last several decades, with the location, investigation, and reporting of a growing number of sites with reliable dating, more and more American archaeologists now believe the western hemisphere was occupied at least several thousand years prior to the appearance of diagnostic Clovis materials.

[4][5] Most of these sites are widely spaced geographically and do not contain an extensive array of associated lithic materials that would show a diagnostic pattern of tool production and use.

[6] A reason for this intensive and almost continuous occupation appears to be the site's location adjacent to two different but resource-rich ecosystems (the uplands of the Edwards Plateau[7] and the lower Blackland Prairie) where water from Buttermilk Creek was available even in drought years, and where a wide variety of local food resources was concentrated.

Additionally, faunal material from the Gault site includes an array of large, medium-sized and small game such as mammoth, bison, horse, deer, rabbit, birds, and turtles, suggesting a generalized diet.

[11] Fortunately, the looters and collectors apparently rarely dug into the earlier deposits below the Archaic midden due to the lower density of collectible or marketable artifacts.

Excavations in 2007–2014 in Area 15 of the Gault Site specifically targeted an occupation predating Clovis, evidence of which had been seen in two test units dug in 2002 and 2007.

The findings from this part of the excavation are described more fully in "Evidence of an early projectile point technology in North America at the Gault Site, Texas, USA.

More than 100 incised stones and one engraved bone have been recovered and the oldest, dating from the Clovis period, may represent the earliest portable art from a secure context in North America.