The field school's research efforts were concentrated in two areas:

• the Keechi Creek Wildlife Management area in Leon County, and
• the Birch Creek Unit and Yegua Creek Fishing-Access Area at Lake Somerville State Park in Burleson County.

Field school objectives were to learn to locate, record, and excavate archaeological sites, and to use ethnographic, ethnohistoric, archaeological, and ecological data to better understand Native American land use in the Post Oak Savannah during the last 12,000 years.

Investigations in Leon County were designed to reassess site boundaries for three previously recorded archaeological sites along Upper Keechi Creek about 5 miles from the Trinity River. In addition, two new sites and three isolated finds were located.

At Lake Somerville, 13 prehistoric lithic scatters were recorded along the northern shoreline of the Birch Creek Unit. Buried fire-cracked rock features were exposed in cutbanks at most of the sites, and chipped-stone artifacts and fire-cracked rock were recovered from all sites. Historic artifacts were also recovered from four of the Lake Somerville sites.

Results of these investigations have yielded important data related to human land use along the inner Gulf Coastal Plain during the past, and provide a well-documented foundation upon which to develop and refine models of human adaptation and land-use systems in prehistory.

Thoms and Ahr (1996)

Archaeological Studies at Birch Creek Unit and Yegua Creek Fishing Access Area, Lake Somerville State Park, Burleson County, Texas: Interim Report, September 1996. Submitted to Texas Parks and Wildlife Department. Center for Environmental Archaeology, Texas A&M University. In review.

 

Thoms and Ahr (1996)

Archaeological Studies at the Keechi Creek Wildlife Management Area, Leon County, Texas: Interim Report, September 1996. Submitted to Texas Parks and Wildlife Department. Center for Environmental Archaeology, Texas A&M University. In review.