As an Anthropology undergraduate, I was provided an extraordinary opportunity to help the Gault School in their laboratory at Texas State with research on Angostura projectile points found at the Gault archaeological site. As an intern for the Gault project, I was honored to have the opportunity to work with Dr. Collins on my research of the Angostura projectile points. The goal of the project was to record, analyze, and measure the projectile point characteristics.
After 40 years of research, very little is known of Angostura projectile point types and the culture of the people who made and used the tools. What we know is that the Angostura type has inconsistent recorded morphologies, its spatial distribution is primarily the middle of North American continent stretching from Alaska to Mexico, the functional use is assumed to be hunting related, and the time period of Angostura points seems to be between 6,700 to 9,300 B.P. or even later.
The first two to three weeks of my internship at the Gault laboratory consisted of reorganizing the binders containing the provenience data of the artifacts in order by level and then by northing and easting. Once I completed this task, I assisted with cleaning, sorting, and relabeling artifacts once they were dried. This was tedious work but a great experience to see how things are organized in the lab as opposed to just to bag and provenience the items out in the field and wonder what the people in the lab do with them.
I was also in contact with Elton Prewitt who is a mastermind when it comes to projectile point types, morphology, and measurements. In fact, he has written several books and articles on projectile point typology. Therefore I was more than thrilled to be able to set up an appointment with him to sit down and show me his system on measuring and recording the morphology of projectile points. Mr. Prewitt went through how to scan the Angostura projectile using his flatbed scanner and a black spray painted shoe box to cover the projectile points during scanning. After scanning the points he used HP Scan Pro software to adjust the color, copy, cut and place the image onto the recording form he created. The recording form is where the data of the projectile is written such as the measurements, morphology, and the lot number that identifies that particular point. He provided me with an email copy of the recording sheet for to use for the Angostura project.
I was able to slowly but surely scan, adjust, cut and paste all 27 projectile points onto their individual recording sheets. After the scanning was complete, I began measuring the scanning images of the points, which were the actual size of the stone projectile points. I took 7 measurements which included the thickness, maximum length, haft length, base depth, maximum blade width, neck width, and base width. If the point was broken off at the tip then the tip was reconstructed by drawing in what the approximate tip would have looked like and a reconstructed maximum length measurement was taken. The measurements were taken from the actual projectile point and scanned image of the projectile point for accuracy and consistency. For the morphology I assessed the overall general morphology (serrated edges of the blade, stem/base smoothing, etc.), refurbishment, shoulder type, base shape, tip breakage, and flake patterning.
Before my internship with the Gault Laboratory I had no prior knowledge on projectile point morphology, flake pattering, nor did I know how to tell if the point was refurbished for reuse or reworked into a completely different tool for a completely different use. I could not even pronounce the word Angostura. I am now more educated with these skills amongst others including knowledge of how to label, process and catalogue artifacts and maintain an organized catalogue. The skills I learned with this internship will also be applicable to other fields of anthropology. Cataloging, labeling, analyzing evidence or artifacts are relevant and useful at a burial site and maintaining remains in a forensic lab. I would highly recommend this internship program to any anthropology major regardless of their preferred field of focus.