Saturday, October 24th @ 3:00 PM – 3:50 PM                                        WES & JACE TUNNELL                                                                                      Omni Westside Hotel, Houston Texas (open to the public)

“Pioneering Archaeology in the Texas Coastal Bend: The Pape-Tunnell Collection”

John W. Tunnell Jr. and Jace W. Tunnell

With a foreword by Thomas R. Hester and contributions from Harold F. Pape, John W. Tunnell Sr., and Thomas R. Hester

When Harold F. Pape moved to Gregory, Texas, in 1927, he quickly became fascinated by the wealth of Native American artifacts along the nearby shoreline of Corpus Christi Bay and what is now called Port Bay, a southern arm of the larger Copano Bay. A lifelong natural history enthusiast and collector, Pape met and married Lucile H. Tunnell, a widow with three young sons. Before long, John W. Tunnell, Lucile’s oldest son, was accompanying Pape on his field studies in surrounding areas and the wider Texas Coastal Bend.

Working in the days before much of the development that now covers the region, Pape and Tunnell studied more than two hundred sites throughout the Coastal Bend, making meticulous logs, maps, and notes of their discoveries.

John W. (Wes) Tunnell Jr. and Jace Tunnell have organized and documented their family collection and present it, along with brief biographies of the two collectors, as a survey of the state of knowledge in the late 1920s and 1930s, as well as a tribute to these two important early researchers and their body of work.

JOHN W. (WES) TUNNELL JR. is associate director and endowed chair of biodiversity and conservation science at the Harte Research Institute for Gulf of Mexico Studies and regents’ professor, Fulbright scholar, and Professor Emeritus of biology at Texas A&M University–Corpus Christi.

JACE W. TUNNELL, formerly director of research and planning at the Coastal Bend Bays and Estuaries Program, is the director of the Mission-Aransas National Estuarine Research Reserve, where he oversees research, environmental monitoring, and educational outreach.

Publisher:  Texas A&M University Press, 5/5/15, ISBN:  978-1-62349-274-8
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Saturday, October 24th @ 2:00 PM – 2:50 PM     DIANA GREENLEE   Omni Westside Hotel, Houston Texas (open to the public)

“Poverty Point: Revealing the Forgotten City”

Jenny Ellerbe and Diana M. Greenlee

The settlement of Poverty Point, occupied from about 1700 to 1100 BC and once the largest city in North America stretches across 345 acres in northeastern Louisiana. The structural remains of this ancient site—its earthen mounds, semicircular ridges, and vacant plaza—intrigue visitors as a place of inspiration as well as puzzlement. “Poverty Point: Revealing the Forgotten City” delves into this enduring piece of Louisiana’s cultural heritage through personal introspection and scientific investigation.

With stunning black-and-white photography by Jenny Ellerbe and engrossing text by archaeologist Diana M. Greenlee, this imaginative and informative book explores in full Poverty Point’s Late Archaic society and its monumental achievements. Ellerbe’s landscapes and commentary reflect the questions and mysteries fostered by her many visits to the site, and Greenlee discusses the most recent archaeological findings, explaining what past excavations have revealed about the work involved in creating the mounds and about the lives of the people who built them. The conversation between artist and archaeologist also covers what is still unknown about this place, including the city’s function in the ancient world and how its people acquired their stone materials, some of which originated over a thousand miles from Poverty Point.

The historical significance of Poverty Point, which was recognized by UNESCO as a World Heritage Site in 2014, resonates regionally, nationally, and internationally.

Jenny Ellerbe has spent most of her photographic career exploring and documenting the largely overlooked region surrounding her hometown of Monroe, Louisiana.  She is a self-taught photographer whose photographs have been published in journals such as Lenswork Magazine, The Oxford American, Science, Louisiana Life, and Louisiana Cultural Vistas.  Her work resides in the permanent collections of the Masur Museum of Art, Monroe, Louisiana, and the Museum of Fine Arts, Houston, Texas, as well as private collections in the US and Canada.

Diana M. Greenlee, Ph.D., is the Station Archaeologist at the Poverty Point World Heritage Site and an Adjunct Professor of Archaeology in the School of Sciences at the University of Louisiana at Monroe (ULM). She earned her Ph.D. in Anthropology from the University of Washington in Seattle in 2002 and has been the Poverty Point Station Archaeologist since August 2006. In recognition of her contributions to the effort to place Poverty Point on the World Heritage List, she was named the 2013 Archaeologist of the Year by the Lieutenant Governor of Louisiana.

Publisher:  LSU Press, April 2015, ISBN:   978-0807160213
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Saturday, October 24th @ 11:00 AM – 11:50 PM     HARRY SHAFER     Omni Westside Hotel, Houston Texas (open to the public)

“Painters in Prehistory:  Archaeology and Art of the Lower Pecos Canyonlands.” 

Harry J. Shafer, PhD.

 Painters in Prehistory is an updated edition of the book Ancient Texans: Rockart and Lifeways along the Lower Pecos.  It presents the results of years of research and dedication to the story of the ancient Lower Pecos canyon dwellers, told by scholars, artists, and photographers who have deepened the understanding of the rock art interpretations and life of these prehistoric people.  The work draws from leading scholar in the field and on new scientific analysis of artifacts to yield a vivid view of the lifeways of the Lower Pecos Canyonlands.

Harry J. Shafer, PhD., is the new Curator of Archaeology for the Witte Museum.  He received a PhD in anthropology from the University of Texas at Austin and has been active in archaeological research for the past 52 years. He is professor emeritus at Texas A&M University and his main research interests are Texas prehistory, the American Southwest (Mimbres and Jornada Mogollon), and Lowland Maya lithic technology.  His is a Texas Archeological Society Fellow and recipient of the society’s Lifetime Achievement Award. Shafer has written two books, Ancient Texans: Rock Art and Lifeways of the Lower Pecos and Mimbres Archaeology at the NAN Ranch Ruin. He is the editor of Painters in Prehistory, Archaeology and Art of the Lower Pecos Canyonlands, and is a co-author (with Thomas Hester and Kenneth Feder) of Field Methods in Archaeology.  He has authored or co-authored more than 300 articles in scientific journals book chapters, and monographs.

Trinity University Press, 2013. Published in association with the Witte Museum. ISBN 978-1-59534-086-3 (hardcover).
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Saturday, October 24th @ 10:00 AM – 10:50 PM     MIKE WATERS  Omni Westside Hotel, Houston Texas (open to the public)

“The Hogeye Clovis Cache”

Michael Waters and Thomas Jennings

Roughly thirteen thousand years ago, Clovis hunters cached more than fifty projectile points, preforms, and knives at the toe of a gentle slope near present-day Elgin, Bastrop County, in central Texas. Over the next millennia, deposition buried the cache several meters below the surface. The entombed artifacts lay undisturbed until 2003, when commercial sand mining uncovered this stash of ancient tools.  This is the story of the Hogeye cache and its remarkable collection of Clovis artifacts–a time capsule from the past.

Ultimately, fifty-two bifaces were recovered from the site.  This book provides a well-illustrated, thoroughly analyzed description and discussion of the Hogeye Clovis cache, the projectile points and other artifacts from later occupations, and the geological context of the site, which has yielded evidence of multiple Paleoindian, Archaic, and Late Prehistoric occupations. The cache of tools and weapons at Hogeye, when combined with other sites, allows us to envision a snapshot of life at the end of the last Ice Age.

Dr. Michael R. Waters is the Director of the Center for the Study of the First Americans and Executive Director of the North Star Archaeological Research Program. He is known for his expertise in First American studies and geoarchaeology. Waters has worked on many archaeological field projects in the United States, Mexico, Russia, Jamaica, and Yemen. His current research projects include the Debra L. Friedkin Site, Texas; Coats-Hines Mastodon site, Tennessee; Page-Ladson site, Florida; and the Hueyatlaco site, Mexico. He has authored or co-authored numerous journal articles and book chapters and is the author of Principles of Geoarchaeology: A North American Perspective. Waters received the 2003 Kirk Bryan Award and the 2004 Rip Rapp Archaeological Geology Award given by the Geological Society of America. He was elected a Fellow of the Geological Society of America in 2004.

Publisher: Texas A&M University Press, 3/02/2015,ISBN: 978-1-62349-214-4 (hard cover), 978-1-62349-232-8 (eBook)
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Saturday, October 24th @ 9:00 AM – 9:50 PM     ANDY HALL

“Civil War Blockade Running on the Texas Coast”

In the last months of the American Civil War, the upper Texas coast became a hive of blockade running. Though Texas was often considered an isolated backwater in the conflict, the Union’s pervasive and systematic seizure of Southern ports left Galveston as one of the only strongholds of foreign imports in the anemic supply chain to embattled Confederate forces. Long, fast steamships ran in and out of the city’s port almost every week, bound to and from Cuba. Hall ends this tale with an epilogue that describes the efforts of nautical archaeologists to unravel this tale of daring, desperation and profit.

Andy Hall has volunteered with the office of the State Marine Archaeologist at the Texas Historical Commission to help document historic shipwrecks in Texas waters since 1990. He has worked on numerous marine archaeology projects in Texas, notably from 1995 to 2004 on the Denbigh Project, the most extensive excavation and research program on a Civil War blockade runner in the Gulf of Mexico. In 2001 Hall was part of the inaugural group of volunteer marine archaeological stewards appointed by the Texas Historical Commission, the first group of its kind in the nation. Hall writes and speaks frequently on the subjects of Texas’ maritime history and its military conflicts in the 19th century. In 2012 Hall published his first book, The Galveston-Houston Packet: Steamboats on Buffalo Bayou, with the History Press of Charleston, South Carolina. His second book with the History Press, Civil War Blockade Running on the Texas Coast, was released in 2014. Hall was recently appointed an Honorary Texas Navy Admiral in recognition of his work in bringing Texas’ maritime history to a wider audience.

Publisher: The History Press, June 2014, ISBN:  978-1626195004
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Friday, October 23rd @ 4:00 PM – 4:50 PM     MARILYN JOHNSON

“ Lives in Ruins: Archaeologists and the Seductive Lure of Human Rubble”

Lives in Ruins has been praised for demystifying the profession and reporting on it with clarity and humor. The Dallas Morning News wrote: “As archaeologists collect potsherds and spearpoints, Marilyn Johnson became a collector of archaeologists, tracking them to Machu Picchu and to Fishkill, N.Y., to a Caribbean slave plantation and a Philadelphia beer tasting. In Lives in Ruins, she sifts and sorts them, unearthing a treasury of rare characters.” Sarah Parcak, K. Kris Hirst, World Archaeology, Discover, and American Archaeologist have recommended it, and Nature called it a “gem of hands-on reportage.”

Marilyn Johnson is not an archaeologist. Besides Lives in Ruins, she has written two other books for HarperCollins about people in cultural memory professions: The Dead Beat, about obituary writers, and This Book Is Overdue! about librarians and archivists. She wrote Smithsonian magazine’s story about the chancel burials in Jamestown this summer. She lives near New York City. After this conference, she will speak at the Houston Museum of Natural Science October 26th at 2:30 pm.

Publisher:  Harper, 2014, ISBN: 978-0062127181
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Friday, October 23rd @ 2:00 PM – 2:50 PM                                    WILSON “DUB” CROOK

 “The Late Prehistoric of the East Fork:  A Redefinition of Cultural Concepts along the East Fork of the Trinity River, North Central Texas”

Wilson W. “Dub” Crook, III and Mark D. Hughston

Over the last 42 years, the authors have studied in detail the sites and archeological remains ascribed to the Late Prehistoric period of the East Fork of the Trinity River and its tributaries. This includes 20 major sites and a larger number of smaller campsites that occur within a 75 km by 15 km north-south corridor from Collin County in the north to northwestern Kaufman County in the south. As part of this study, we have accessed and examined all known collections from previous investigations with a combined artifact assemblage of nearly 32,000 specimens. In addition, we obtained access to the unpublished field notes and maps from many previous researchers and combined them with our own field and laboratory observations. The results of this study confirm the conclusion of previous researchers that the “Wylie Focus”, as originally proposed), is an outdated concept. A new chronological sequence consisting of a Woodland period followed by two Late Prehistoric period phases is proposed. In detailing the proposed new sequences, extensive information on each major site, site features such as the distinctive rim-and-pit structures, burials, hearths and caches, and the diagnostic artifacts that characterize each cultural phase are provided. We also detail how the Late Prehistoric of the East Fork is a unique culture, similar but yet distinctly different from all its surrounding neighbors.

Wilson W. “Dub” Crook, III recently retired after a 35 year distinguished career as a Senior Executive with the Exxon Mobil Corporation. Dub has traveled extensively throughout the world, starting his archeological adventures as a child with his father, Wilson W. “Bill” Crook, Jr. who was past President and Fellow of the TAS. A native of Dallas, Dub attended Southern Methodist University where he majored in Geology (Mineralogy). He is the author of over 150 papers in such varied fields as geology, mineralogy, archeology, natural science and the Soviet manned space program. Dub is a Life Member of the Dallas Archeological Society, a Fellow of the Houston Archeological Society, a long-time member of the TAS, the Center for the Study of First Americans, a Life Member of the Gault School of Archeological Research, a Research Fellow at the Texas Archeological Research Laboratory in Austin, and a Fellow of the Leakey Foundation.

Mark D. Hughston is currently a senior partner and part owner of Brazos Gas, a successful independent oil and gas exploration company in Dallas. A native of North Dallas, Mark attended Southern Methodist University where he majored in Geology and Anthropology. After turning to Petroleum geology in graduate school, Mark has continued his dream of establishing both a successful private business as well as maintaining his research interests in archeology and vertebrate paleontology. He is the author of a number of scientific papers, many with his colleague Dub Crook. Mark is a member of the Dallas, Houston, and Texas Archeological Societies.

Publisher: CreateSpace, a DBA on On-Demand Publishing, LLC (an Amazon Company), Charleston, South Carolina, May 30, 2015, 
ISBN:  978-1508686521
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