Beginning in May of 2010, the center of Archaeological Studies (CAS) at Texas State University San Marcos conducted a cultural resource assessment for the Spring Lake Section 206 Aquatic Ecosystem Restoration Project (SLAERP). The purpose of the SLAERP is to restore the natural habitats of Spring Lake and riparian (river bank) corridor/grassland adjacent to the lake. The project will include the removal of all foreign plant species in the area as well as the removal of various structures, both terrestrial and aquatic, that used to serve the area when it was a theme park. In order to mitigate the potential impacts of the SLAERP will have on the cultural resources within the area of potential effect (APE), CAS performed both terrestrial and underwater cultural resource assessments.
Some of the most crucial information comes from sorting, although it is the most tedious part of archaeological lab work. This process is what has been taking up the majority of my time in the lab. After materials are screened or floated, they are put onto newspaper, which are laid on screens and set on a rack in the lab to dry. One of the most important things in this process is not to mix the ¼”, 1/8”, and floated materials. Should this happen, the materials are deemed disturbed and useless as context artifacts. The materials are also labeled by which unit, lot number, and level in cm they came from. The materials are left to dry on the racks for 1-2 days. After they have dried, lab workers look through the material using tweezers. All like material are placed together in separate piles to be bagged, labeled, and stored in the lab or sent to other labs to be dated.
Categories of sorted materials included organic, lithic, metal, glass, and other (being a material that was unidentifiable). Organics were broken down to faunal remains, plant, wood, rootlets (individual root strands, yes we had to pull out every single one), nutshell, snail shell, insect exoskeleton, and C14 (charcoal). These categories were also broken down into more specific types, for example: sticks and bark were two different categories of wood; vertebra and bone fragments were different categories of faunal remains. Lithics were organized into categories such as lithic debitage, meaning tiny flakes of chert (the main mineral used to make stone tools), burned clay, which was red in color as well as had a distinct bumpy exterior, FCR (fire-cracked rock) which included a lot of limestone, petrified wood, and the sorted material which was mainly composed of soils not broken down in the floating and water screening processes. Veronica, one of CAS’s previous interns and now lab technician and excavator, found a small projectile point smaller than a pinky fingernail. This gave immense cultural context to the unit and layer it was found in and was hailed as an intrinsic find. There was one artifact from XU03 that was particularly beautiful. It was a perfectly shaped projectile point, about the size of an adult thumb, made of petrified wood. You can see the wood grain lines running throughout the entire artifact, a truly outstanding combination of natural phenomena and human technology. I had also found three small, white, spongy materials in XU03 at level 12, which was one of the deepest levels. After consulting with Carole Leezer, Associate Director at CAS and head of the SLAERP excavation, the material was wrapped in foil, marked is as other, and labeled as a possible fungus. Wrapping foil around some materials is a good way to keep them from fragmenting, especially when you have a very small amount. C14 is the main artifact we wrap with foil because even a small amount can be used to date the site from which it came from.
Another tedious and steady handed job CAS lab attendants participated in was the labeling process of the lithic and ceramic artifacts. Each artifact had to be labeled with the site name (SLAERP) and lot number. A mixture of acetone and plastic in the shape of small spheres was made to create a sticky plastic that was lightly spread on a small, non-diagnostic portion of the artifacts. The mixture made a clear, plastic coating on the artifact where the provenience information was written. Black calligraphy pens were used on light colored artifacts and white or silver gel pens were used on darker colored artifacts. As a rule of thumb, labs are generally not required to label anything smaller than a quarter. Only the bags containing certain important artifacts, such was ceramic fragments, projectile points, other large to medium sized chert flakes, glass, brick, and FCR, were required to have labels.