Archaeology abounds Saturday

By Glynis Crawford Smith

The Highlander

Archaeology buffs and curiosity seekers have two of the best opportunities in the Highland Lakes to delve into the ancient past of their home ground on Saturday, Oct. 22.

Falls on the Colorado Museum (FOCM) in Marble Falls will bring experts and demonstrations to an event from 10 a.m.-4 p.m. Saturday, Oct. 22, to the old granite schoolhouse at 2001 Broadway Street.

From 1-5 p.m., the Llano Uplift Archaeological Society (LUAS) will hold its annual Archaeology Fair at the Lower Colorado River Authority (LCRA) Nightengale Archaeological Center near Kingsland.

Visitors can bring their own finds of arrowheads and points or pottery for identification to both events or just sit in on information that can be brought to light about them and that is one of the most important features of the Texas Archaeology Month events.

“We are hoping to get the attention of people who either pick up artifacts or dig for them and establish some sort of communication or collaboration,” said Thomas R. Hester, PhD.

He said that is a formula he and arrowhead expert David Calame Sr. have been using for more than a decade to build archeological data in South Texas. They will be joined by LUAS member Charles “Chuck” Hixson for identification of artifacts.

Hester will present an illustrated talk at 1:30 p.m. Saturday and he has has a broad scope of expertise to bring to the table.

A former University of Texas professor of anthropology, both in Austin and San Antonio, he was executive director of the renowned Texas Archeological Research Laboratory (TARL) in Austin.

He grew up around Carizo Springs, taking walks with his grandmother down South Texas irrigation ditches to pick up arrowheads.

“My late, great uncle Bub Hale lived over here in Pleasant Valley,” said Hester. “He and my grandfather were great friends. He had a pretty good size collection of arrowheads and points. He left it to me when he died in 1955. I was nine years old.

“I tell people that committed me to my life of crime. I had to live up to Uncle Bub.”

Part of Uncle Bub's collection is on exhibit at the FCOM today, but Hester ranged far from the Marble Falls Community to which he has returned for retirement. Earning his doctorate at the University of California Berkley led him to Egypt and the Western United States. UT San Antonio launched his 15 years of study of a large Mayan site in Belize.

For all that, Hester respects clues to past cultures that remain in this area, as modern residents have chosen to develop as homesites.

“Half the time frontier cabins built here in the 1840s and 50s were built on Indian mounds,” he said. “They are sites near water, but out of the floodplain.

“In the 1930s and 40s, before the dams were built some archaeological studies were done. We had huge collections from the Colorado River basin in our lab in Austin. It is important for dissertation research today.”

Flint points are the most survivable evidence of ancient inhabitants and both events will have demonstrations of flint knapping going on to explain the art and science of their creation.

Nightengale Archaeological Center

Hixson will be dividing his time between Marble Falls and Kingsland.

While most of the FOCM permanent collection pertains to residents of the area in the last couple of hundred years, the Nightengale Center is a Texas Archeological Landmark, documenting human habitation back 10,000.

Inside the center are artifact exhibits, but outside trails lead through a recreation of life on the banks of the Colorado River. Visitors will see how fires were built and how food and fibers were processed. Visitors can learn to launch a spear with an atlatl, one of man's earliest tools of technology.

The center is located 9.3 miles west of Marble Falls at 1010 Circle Drive, off Burnet County Road 126, that travels east from at Ranch to Market Road 1431. Signs will mark the way to the fair.

To learn more about the center, its year-round activities and the local archeological meetings and events of LUAS, visit www.texasluas.org.