Gault Researchers

Dr. Michael Collins

Dr. Michael B. Collins is a Research Associate of the Texas Archeological Research Laboratory at the University of Texas at Austin. He has specialized in the study of lithic technology and worked with prehistoric collections from North, Central, and South America, as well as the Near East and southwestern Europe. He is currently active in research on the earliest part of the American archaeological record. Dr. Collins received his Ph.D. from the University of Arizona. Recently he collaborated on the lithics research for the site of Monte Verde, Chile and published Clovis Blade Technology (UT Press).

Dr. Jon C. Lohse

Jon Lohse is currently an Assistant Research Professor at the Center for Archaeological Studies of Texas State University-San Marcos. Dr. Lohse directs archaeological research in the Central Texas region as well as adjacent areas. In addition to his collaboration on the Gault Project, Additionally, Dr. Lohse is conducting research into Archaic and Paleoindian adaptations in tropical Central America, and is actively investigating questions of Maya settlement, subsistence, and social organization. He is currently organizing a project that will investigate a Pleistocene bone bed site in western Guatemala from which a fluted point and perhaps other artifacts have been recovered.

Dr. Thomas R. Hester

Dr. Hester is Professor of Anthropology at UT-Austin, and Research Associate at The Texas Archeological Research Laboratory, where he served as Director from 1987 until retirement in 2000. He has done extensive fieldwork with many resulting publications in Texas, the Maya area, and the western United States. Interests include lithic technology; he received the 2000 Award for Excellence in Lithic Studies from the Society for American Archaeology. He and Dr. Collins worked together at the Gault site in 1991 and are co-principal investigators on an Advanced Research Program grant obtained for the site in 1999. He is co-author of Stone Artifacts of Texas Indians, now in its 2nd edition and with multiple printings (Taylor Wilson Publishing, Ltd., Houston).

Elton R. Prewitt

Elton Prewitt has studied the prehistoric cultures of Texas and adjacent areas for more than 40 years. In 1979 he founded one of Texas’ preeminent CRM firms, Prewitt & Associates, serving as president until he retired in 2002. Among his many honors, Elton has served as President of both the Council of Texas Archeologists and the Texas Archeological Society and is currently President of the highly-regarded Shumla School. He has authored or coauthored more than 70 reports and articles on Texas archeology.

Dr. Harry J. Shafer

Dr. Shafer joined the faculty at Texas A&M in 1972 and was the anthropology department's first archaeologist. He brings 37 years of research expertise in such areas as Texas prehistory, North American archeology, Southwestern archeology, Maya archeology, and prehistoric stone technology. Combined he has over 100 published articles, papers, chapters, and monographs reporting on various aspects of his research. In addition, he has written one book Ancient Texans: Rock Art and Lifeways Along the Lower Pecos (Gulf Publishing Co.) and has co-authored Maya Stone Tools (Prehistory Press) and, with Hester and Kenneth Feder, a textbook, Field Methods in Archaeology (Mayfield Publishing Co.). Besides the Gault site, he is currently conducting research and analysis of archaeological data from the Maya lowlands of Belize, the Mimbres area of New Mexico, and the Chihuahuan Desert near El Paso.

John Taylor-Montoya

John Taylor-Montoya’s research interests include the Paleoindian period in North and South America, particularly the peopling process and the late Pleistocene to early Holocene transition. His research focuses on the organization of lithic technology during the Paleoindian period as it pertains to broad scale questions regarding adaptation and cultural transmission processes. He received a MA in anthropology from the University of Oklahoma in 2003, and is currently a PhD candidate at Southern Methodist University. John joined the Gault Project in 2004, and is currently analyzing and describing the late Paleoindian assemblage recovered during excavations at the site.

Dr. Michael R. Waters

Dr. Waters specializes in geoarcheology (the application of the geosciences to archaeological research), Late Quaternary geology, and Paleoindian archeology. Primary regional interests include the western United States and the American Southwest. Dr. Waters holds a joint appointment with the Departments of Anthropology and Geography at Texas A&M University. Dr. Waters has published numerous articles and is the author of the book, Principles of Geoarchaeology (University of Arizona Press).

Dr. Richard Boisvert

Dr. Boisvert is the State Archaeologist for New Hampshire and has led volunteer groups from the State Conservation and Rescue Archaeology Program (SCRAP) to work at Gault. His primary research interests are in lithic technology and Paleoindian studies. Gault is not his first foray into Texas archeology. His Master's Thesis ("A Technological Analysis of Lithic Assemblages from Guadalupe Mountains National Park, Texas") was completed under the direction of M. B. Collins and published in the Bulletin of the Texas Archeological Society. He is engaged in ongoing research on several Paleoindian sites in New Hampshire. This research incorporates lithic sourcing, lithic technology, paleoenvironmental reconstruction and the training of avocational archaeologists.

Dr. Bruce Bradley

Prof. Bruce Bradley is Associate Professor in the Department of Archaeology at the University of Exeter, UK. He received his BA from the University of Arizona and PhD from the University of Cambridge. He currently holds appointments of Reasearch Associate at the Smithsonian Institution, the Carnegie Museum of Natural History, The University of Texas at Austin, TARL and Augustana College. Bruce’s research interests and work includes late prehistoric societies in the American Southwest, Paleoamerican of North America, Peopling of the New World, Eurasian Upper Paleolithic, and Horse Domestication in Central Asia. He is well known as a master flintknapper who has studied with Francois Bordes and Don Crabtree. Dr. Bradley has also published widely.

Dr. Larry Conyers

Dr. Larry Conyers is an archaeological geophysicist that specializes in the use of ground-penetrating radar (GPR) mapping of buried archaeological sites. He has developed three-dimensional mapping techniques that can take large amounts of digital radar reflection data and process them into maps that simulate excavation levels in standard archaeological sites. He has published a book on the subject of GPR mapping titled Ground-penetrating Radar: An Introduction for Archaeologists, co-authored with Dean Goodman and published by Altamira Press, 1997. His research on GPR mapping has taken him to Japan, South America, Europe and many sites in the United States and Central America.

Dr. John A. Hildebrand

Dr. Hildebrand is a Professor of Geophysics at the Scripps Institution of Oceanography, University of California at San Diego. He has been developing new means for geophysical imaging in the shallow soil using seismic, radar, magnetic and electrical conductivity techniques. In addition to the Gault Site, his recent projects have been in Peru, New Mexico, California, Arizona and Illinois. At the Gault site, he applied a new technique for rapid collection of seismic reflection imaging data. Conventional oil exploration seismic sensors were modified so that they could be dragged along the ground surface in a sand-filled bag. Three profiles of shallow seismic reflection data were collected and processed to show the structure of the channel fill deposits at depths of several meters.

Dr. Joel Janetski

Dr. Janetski is professor in the Department of Anthropology at Brigham Young University and currently serves as Chair. His research has focused primarily on the archeology of hunting and gathering and small scale farming societies of the Great Basin and American Southwest and has published widely on the pre-European history of these areas. He recently expanded his archaeological interests to the Near East where he has initiated a research project on Natufian hunters and gatherers. His work at the Gault Site evolved from participation in workshops on Folsom and is an extension of interest in Paleoindian hunter-gatherers of North America generally. Teaching responsibilities include the archaeological field school and various upper division and graduate classes in archeological method and theory and New World archeology.

Gault Staff

Sam Gardner

Sam Gardner joined the Gault Project in June 2000. Until the end of fieldwork in May 2002, he participated in both field excavation and the analysis and curation of artifacts. Since then he has been archiving photographs taken during fieldwork, photographing artifacts for analysis and publication, and developing maps and graphic images for use in analysis, presentations and publications.

Dr. Andy Hemmings

Andy Hemmings has a continental scale interest in the Paleoindian period of North American prehistory. His early archaeological fieldwork focused on the Hohokam, Anasazi, and historic Spanish settlements in Arizona and New Mexico while pursuing a bachelors degree in Anthropology at the University of Arizona. His Early Paleoindian research has centered on investigation of prehistoric inundated sites in the Gulf Coastal Plain of Florida. The superior preservation of organic materials has led to numerous articles and book chapters touting the bone and ivory tool industry of Early Paleoindians, as well as the large suite of associated faunal remains from these underwater sites. Prior to joining the Gault project in 2004, Dr. Hemmings received his PhD from the University of Florida.

Marilyn Shoberg

Marilyn Shoberg does microscopic use-wear analysis, primarily on stone tools from the Gault site. She has previously worked on a number of pueblo sites in the American southwest and Mission Espiritu Santo in Texas. Her MA from the University of Texas at Austin involved Mogollon settlement systems in southern New Mexico.

Cinda Timperley

Cinda is the staff paleontologist for the Gault Project. While completing a BS in geology at the University of Nebraska, she worked primarily on late tertiary terrestrial vertebrate sites in Nebraska, Including Ashfall Fossil Beds State Historical Park (http://ashfall.unl.edu). She also excavated late Pleistocene mammoths and archaeological sites in eastern and south central Nebraska. Ms. Timperley holds an MS in geology from Fort Hays State University, where she researched a new species of long-tailed water shrew from the mid-Pleistocene of Nebraska. Her current research interests include North American Pleistocene Equus taxonomy and distribution, Pleistocene paleoecology of the Great Plains, and the roles of various vertebrate species in Paleoindian subsistence regimes.

D. Clark Wernecke

Clark Wernecke is the Project Director for the Gault Project. Dr. Wernecke brings a unique blend of scholarship and experience to the project with degrees in history, business and anthropology. He has considerable experience in business and has specialized in the management of large archaeological projects. Dr. Wernecke has worked in the Middle East, Mesoamerica, the American Southeast and Southwest, and Texas. In addition to his work on Gault, he is currently working on archaeological data from the Mexican War and early Texas architecture.