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Prior to joining the full-time faculty in 2001, Dr. Thoms
spent 25 years directing archaeological projects in the Pacific
Northwest, Plains, Southwest, and Southeast. This included
serving five years as associate director and six years as
director of the Center
for Ecological Archaeology (CEA) at TAMU, which was replaced
by the Center for the Study of the First Americans.
Since 2000, he, his colleagues, and graduate students have
have completed seven acrhaeological projects and reports undertaken
by CEA prior to its closure. In 2000, he completed an award-winning
field study at Camp Ford, a Confederate POW encampment in
east Texas. His 2001 NAGPRA study at Mission San Juan Capistrano
(San Antonio, Texas) was judged to be exemplary by National
Park Service reviews. His monograph on the
Yegua Creek archaeological project (east-central, Texas) was
published in 2004 as CEA's report Investigation No.5. In 2006, the final monograph (CEA Reports of Investigation No. 8) was published covering more than a decade of studies at the deeply
buried and well stratified Richard
Beene Site in South-Central Texas. The Richard Beene project is featured on Texas Beyond History, as is the Camp Ford project.
His fieldwork in Texas spans more than 30 years, during which
time he has worked closely with avocational archeologists,
Native American groups, Civil War enthusiasts, and local historical
organizations. Thoms is a sixth-generation Texan whose archeological
interests date to his grade-school days in the Texas Panhandle
when his father taught him how to find Indian campsites around
playa lakes and along draws.
Currently, he and his students are investigating long-term
changes in hunter-gatherer land-use patterns in the Northern
Rocky Mountains and on the Gulf Coastal Plain. This research
focuses on the roles of wild root foods and cook-stone
technology in land-use intensification, as well as on natural
site-formation processes that disarticulate archaeological
features. He now conducts his research through his Archaeological-Ecology
Laboratory.
His research has been published in:
- Archaeology of Prehistoric North America: An Encyclopedia
- British Archaeological Reports, International Series (in press)
- Bulletin of the Texas Archaeological Society
- Center for Ecological Archaeology, Reports of Investigations, TAMU
- Current Research in the Pleistocene
- Discovering Archaeology-Scientific American
- Historical Archaeology
- Lithic Technology
- Prehistory Series, Editions Monique Mergoil, France.
- Texas Forum on Civil Liberties and Civil Rights
He teaches:
- Introduction to Archaeology, Anth 202
- Indians of North America , Anth 301
- Archaeological Field Methods, Anth 330 and 660
- Prehistory of Texas , Anth, 620 (under development for Spring 2006)
- Cultural Resources Management, Anth 645
- Special topics, Human Ecology of Northwest North America, Anth 689
- Special topics, Ecological Perspectives in Heritage Resources Management, Anth 689
- Special topics, Hunter-Gatherer Archaeology, Anth 689
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