Gault School of Archaeological Research

31/08/2026

🔎TEACHERS, PARENTS, SCOUT LEADERS & EDUCATORS — LET’S DIG INTO ARCHAEOLOGY! 🔎

Bring archaeology to your students with a 'Dig into Gault' Field Trip! We offer TWO educational program options that will connect students to the past through hands-on, STEAM based learning.

🎒 **GAULT TO GO!**
We come to you!

🚐 Traveling Trunks packed with hands-on activities
🏺 Explore archaeology through artifacts, tools, and interactive lessons
⏰ Flexible scheduling to fit your classroom or group

🥾 **THE GAULT SITE STORY**
Your class comes to the Gault Site in Florence, TX!

🌳 Explore the site on a ½-mile, approximately 45-minute hike
🏹 See an atlatl demonstration and learn about ancient hunting technology
🔎 Participate in hands-on archaeology activities

Bring your students beyond the textbook and let them experience archaeology!

📩 Interested in booking a program? Go to www.gaultschool.org/education to learn more and schedule your visit!

05/08/2026

The Gault Site...it's just a field, right? That’s what some people think when they visit the Gault Site.

But look closer and you’ll see ancient hearths hidden in the soil, springs that have flowed for thousands of years, and millions of stone tools left by the earliest people in North America.

This quiet Texas field has produced over 2.5 million artifacts, including the largest concentration of Clovis tools ever found. It’s the oldest archaeological site in Texas and one of the most important sites on the continent.

The Gault School of Archaeological Research is the nonprofit preserving this extraordinary place and teaching thousands every year why it matters.

So, yeah. We have a field and a dream: forever conservation, groundbreaking research, and monumental education.

If you believe history should be protected, studied, and shared,
become a member today.
Your membership keeps this ancient story alive.

Go to: https://www.gaultschool.org/
and click "membership" https://tinyurl.com/GaultMember
or "donate" https://tinyurl.com/GaultDonate

01/08/2026

Check out this beauty found in Gault's Area 12. Note the identification on the specimen tag was changed from "projectile point" to "Clovis preform". Work doesn't end when artifacts come out of the field and go to the lab. In fact, far more work is performed in the lab on archaeological collections.

So here, it appears that additional study in the lab determined that this artifact was unfinished.

A Clovis preform is a partially shaped stone tool blank that Paleoamerican knappers were preparing to turn into a finished, fluted Clovis projectile point. In other words, it’s the stage before the flute is struck and before final edge thinning and sharpening.

What makes a Clovis preform identifiable?
- Bifacial shaping: Both faces have been flaked to create a symmetrical outline.
- General lanceolate shape: The outline resembles a Clovis point but is thicker and less refined.
- No flute yet: The distinctive channel flake removed from the base is absent.
- Heavier, thicker cross‑section: Preforms are bulkier because thinning and pressure flaking come later.
- Preparation for fluting: The base may show grinding or early platform preparation.

Archaeologists often find preforms in manufacturing areas at Clovis sites like Gault, alongside debitage (flake debris), showing the step‑by‑step production sequence.

Why do preforms matter? Clovis preforms help archaeologists understand:
- Manufacturing techniques — including how knappers prepared a piece before attempting the risky flute removal.
- Raw material choices — Clovis knappers selected high‑quality cryptocrystalline stone like the chert common throughout the Gault Site.
- Skill level and failure rates — fluting often breaks points; preforms show the stages before that critical step.
- Technological comparisons — unfinished Clovis and Folsom preforms highlight differences between the two traditions and help narrow down age.

photo from the Gault collections at the Texas Archeological Research Laboratory

29/07/2026

How can a sacred place lose protections?
Here is another opportunity to be included in the legislative processes that are meant to protect our cultural heritage.
Public comment is an important part of the process as we learn.
The proposal to lift some protections at Chaco is alarming.
What is proposed?
to lift the 10‑mile buffer and reopen the area to leasing.
And the reversal of a 20‑year mineral withdrawal.
As this video indicates though, puebloan tribes were left out of the highest levels of decision making and are asking to increase awareness of the public comment window. Here is their shared information...

Today is the LAST DAY to submit public comments on a new Bureau of Land Management (BLM) proposal to scrap protections surrounding Chaco Canyon, a sacred site for many Southwestern tribes.
"To destroy a living, breathing landscape, it's unbelievable.” says Joey Sanchez, Chairman of the All Pueblo Council of Governors.
Sanchez traveled to D.C. to advocate for Chaco Canyon and urge federal administrators to maintain current protections for Chaco Canyon.
You can speak up - 📲 How to take action:
1. Visit https://eplanning.blm.gov/Project-Home/?id=D949F582-402D-F111-8341-001DD804183B&fbclid=IwY2xjawTXJ9FleHRuA2FlbQIxMABicmlkETFnWmV0VTQ1bmpQNGpPMmNDc3J0YwZhcHBfaWQQMjIyMDM5MTc4ODIwMDg5MgABHhHVR-ElUbXRI7dXnePnLsTaKT9vB3noOEb13ncd2OsEMh-6i626thpup5xC_aem_fBfH3_-mPMEur66qYFK4jQ to submit your public comment before July 29
2. Share this reel to help spread the word

24/07/2026

Worth another share...Go see this amazing Gault Film!

⛏️🪨🏺🦣 Do you live in Virginia? Do you know an archaeology enthusiast, history buff, or documentary lover in the area? ⛏️🪨🏺🦣

Here's your chance to experience 'The Stones Are Speaking' on the big screen! Stay afterward for a Q&A with Director Olive Talley and Still Photo Director Kenneth Garrett. Ticket proceeds from this special screening will benefit the Gault School of Archaeological Research and the Archaeological Society of Virginia, helping support archaeology education and research.

We are incredibly grateful to Olive, Kenneth, and the entire production team for bringing the story of the Gault Site to audiences around the world.

If you're in the area, we hope you'll attend - don't forget to share this with friends, family, and fellow archaeology enthusiasts!

Benefitting VA Archaeological Society & Gault School of Archaeological Research

15/07/2026

We stand with Shumla Archaeological Research & Education Center and ask you to learn about legislative actions that weaken archaeological and environmental protections for our shared historical and cultural assets.
Stay vigilant! Sign petitions and contact your elected officials when these safeguards are threatened.
History needs you....sign in the link below.

13/07/2026

Have you watched the Gault Site episode of 'The Daytripper'?

Whether you missed it the first time or it's been a while since your last watch, now's the perfect time to revisit one of Texas' most incredible archaeological sites.

Join The Daytripper's Chet Garner as he explores the Gault Site with GSAR Board Member Tim Brown, uncovering a story that stretches back thousands of years. From remarkable discoveries to the ongoing quest to understand the earliest people in the Americas, this episode highlights why Gault is such a special place.

There is still a world of history waiting to be discovered beneath our feet.

Have you seen the episode? Tell us your favorite part in the comments! 👇 Ours is the atlatl throwing! 😂

The Daytripper travels to Florence, Texas, to uncover one of the mo...

13/07/2026

A small sample of stone tools found at the Gault Site...but why do we care? We have an innate curiosity about our shared past...so who were the earliest people in the Americas? Gault provides answers:

from Archaeology Magazine - new discoveries "from the Gault site, in central Texas, offer robust evidence not only for a much earlier peopling of the Americas, but also of a previously unknown tool tradition that is older and more varied than scholars ever expected.
Archaeologists have found stone tools including projectile points, blades, and flake tools at the Gault site, the oldest of which date to between 20,000 and 16,000 years ago, thousands of years older than any of the fluted stone spear points for which the Clovis are known. “What we’re seeing is a well-developed toolkit,” says Tom Williams of Texas State University. “These were clearly people adapted to surviving in their environment.”

See the issue here https://archaeology.org/issues/january-february-2019/collection/texas-gault-site-stone-tools/top-10-discoveries-of-2018/

illustration credit: Nancy Velchoff Williams, GSAR
www.gaultschool.org

09/07/2026

The largest of the faunal remains found at Gault, this Columbian mammoth mandible shows off a lovely set of molars about the size of the bottom of your shoe.

DYK, mammoths (and elephants) only have 4 teeth at a time, but they replace those molars 5 times for a total of 6 sets of molars throughout their lives.

Each set of molars is progressively larger as the animal ages...and each set erupts BEHIND the current set! You can see very eroded 5th molars behind these pretty bottom-of-your-shoe 4th molars And guess what? During a mammoth's life, each new set of molars slowly moves forward and pushes out the old worn down molar.

"Marching molars" is an amazing adaptation seen in elephants and their relatives (including manatees!) because they are heavy grazers whose food wears down their teeth.

Need to eat but you wore out your teeth? Get a new set...FIVE times! If a mammoth dies of old age, we would see a very worn 6th set of molars.

The Gault mammoth did not die of old age. This mandible was found in context (or still in the ground) in a deep stratum (or layer of the earth) that also contained Clovis stone tools.

What clues would you hope to find about the life and death of the Gault mammoth?

Columbian mammoth mandible excavated at the Gault Site
photo by Kenneth Garrett
www.gaultschool.org