Gault School of Archaeological Research

• The Gault Archaeological Site in Florence, Texas – roughly an hour from Austin – is one of the most groundbreaking archaeological sites in the United States. Research and excavations conducted here over the last 35 years have transformed our understanding of human history by helping to establish that people were in the Americas far longer than many archaeologists previously believed. With evidence of at least twenty-two archaeological cultures indicating a history of occupation as early as 20,000 years ago, the site has an unusually rich record of human occupation and material culture. 

  After cataloging just 3 percent of the site, yielding 2.6 million artifacts, archaeologists filled in their excavations to save the remainder for future generations with better technologies with which to conduct their science. To the untrained eye, the Gault site today presents itself as an unremarkable (albeit beautiful) Central Texas landscape.

For our part, we assisted the Gault School of Archaeological Research (GSAR), the non-profit organization manages the site and sponsors interdisciplinary research and education focusing on the earliest peoples in the Western Hemisphere. The GSAR board  outlined an ambitious vision for the site as a hub for research, education, and community engagement. 

We worked with GSAR first to program their campus and subsequently designed a number of interventions:  An unstaffed wayside park and a larger facility comprising exhibit space and repositories, lab  and research facilities, library, lecture spaces, offices and administration facilities, along with a trail network to accommodate  outdoor experimental archaeology.

• The journey begins with a wayside pavilion to alert passersby that Gault, an unassuming but bucolic piece of property, even exists. For reasons that are unclear to me at this writing, we apparently thought it unseasonably rainy when we designed the structure.

• We envisioned the program elements somewhat like the debitage scattered about the site from the tools and points made by its centuries of inhabitants.

• The purpose of our work, at least for now, was to help the GSAR in its fundraising for its future development and we hope to remain a part of their plans, We wish them the very best of luck.