Talk:C. Britt Bousman
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This is not a resume publication service, it's an encyclopedia, and this professor does not look like he requires anonymous people to be editing his resume for him. Here's the rest of the article, please rewrite it like an encyclopedia and source it, thanks, --Blechnic (talk) 02:22, 25 April 2008 (UTC):
r. Bousman has worked on numerous archaeological projects since 1972 in varied places like Texas, Oklahoma, New Mexico, Idaho, England, the Isle of Jersey, Zambia, Lesotho and South Africa. His research interests include Paleoindian archaeology, geoarchaeology, technological organization, foraging theory, African and Old World Paleolithic archaeology, and modern hunter-gatherers. During his career he has written over 100 journal and magazine articles, CRM reports and book chapters and reviews. He has served as PI or co-PI on over 100 archaeological projects. He has also organized and co-organized over 10 symposia and workshops, and presented over 40 papers at professional meetings.
His published research has focused on the integration of foraging theory, technological organization and settlement/mobility patterns among modern and prehistoric hunter-gatherers, geoarchaeology and paleoenvironmental analysis, and the development and spread of domestication in Africa. Dr. Bousman has stated that “the foregoing brief discussion of Foraging Theory suggests that technology can play a critical role in determining the economic choices of hunter-gatherers, and that foraging theorists cannot fully understand hunter-gatherer foraging without integrating the costs and benefits of technology” (Bousman 1993 Lithic Technology). Currently he is directing excavations at Antelope Creek villages in the Texas Panhandle and Middle and Later Stone Age sites in the Free State High Veld in South Africa. These projects focus on the nature of trade and exchange in small-scale farming communities and the behavioral evolution that marks the transition from archaic to modern humans.
Recent Excavations
Wilson-Leonard Site, Williamson County
This deeply stratified site in the Brushy Creek valley of southwestern Williamson County contains evidence from every prehistoric time period in Texas. It is the most complete single-site record of its kind for the southern border of the Great Plains. The Wilson-Leonard site (41WM235) has evidence of a series of ancient peoples, from early Paleoindian Clovis cultures to Late Prehistoric Toyah folk. They practiced a hunting and gathering way of life throughout almost 13,500 years. For the last 9,000 years during that period, campers at the site also used earth-oven cooking technology to cook bulbs from tuberous plants as well as a wide other foods. The site was excavated in the early 1980s by the Texas Department of Transportation in advance of construction of Ranch-to-Market Road 1431. Ten years later Michael B. Collins and Britt Bousman, archaeologists at the Texas Archeological Research Laboratory, returned to the site to undertake further excavations. They led a large multidisciplinary team that used a host of new techniques and research methods. The team learned significant new information on archaeological chronology, prehistoric adaptations, human ecology, and paleoenvironmental changes in Central Texas. A number of significant discoveries were made at the site. For example, evidence was recovered from a “Bone Bed” component that suggested affiliations with Folsom and Plainview intervals. The lithic technology appears similar to Folsom (eg., ultra-thin bifaces) and the projectile point typology has strong similarities with Plainview, but this occupation is contemporary with Clovis occupations in North America and is dated to older than 11,200 BC at Wilson-Leonard. Additionally, between 9500-8750 BC hunter-gatherers at the site manufactured some of the earliest stemmed projectile points, exploited a wide range of animals and plants, and buried their dead in one of the oldest Archaic occupations documented in North America. This occupation is replaced by well documented Late Paleoindian groups that include groups defined for the first time as St. Mary’s Hall. Stratified above these remains are those of Early Archaic hunter-gatherers who constructed the oldest earth ovens in the south central US using hot-rock heating technology and cooking wild hyacinth bulbs at 7000 BC. (most through e-mail communication)
Cross Bar Ranch, Potter County
During the summers of 2004, 2005, 2007 and 2008 Britt Bousman taught a field school at the Cross Bar Ranch in the Canadian Breaks region north of Amarillo, Texas. Two Antelope Creek Phase farmsteads, 41PT109 and 41PT283, were excavated. The Plains village Antelope Creek Phase is made up of sites placed along the Canadian River valley in Oklahoma and Texas. The Antelope Creek peoples built semi-subterranean houses in order to adapt to the climatic conditions in the panhandle. They used upright dolomite slabs to construct villages that ranged from multi-room compounds to single-family homesteads and practiced a mixed economy. The presence of arrow points, bison scapula hoes, end scrapers, bison tibia digging sticks, manos and metates as well as bison, antelope, deer and maize remains indicate that they subsisted off of a combination of small scale horticulture, hunting, and gathering of wild plants. The Antelope Creek phase is also defined by the almost exclusive use of the brilliantly color-banded chert from the nearby Alibates quarry to create weapons and tools that had both functional and aesthetic value. Currently trade and exchange is being analyzed by looking at the production of ceramics and stone procurement strategies. Chemical analysis of ceramics shows that pottery production was local with little traded from nearby villages, but select larger villages were mining Alibates flint and stockpiling it for long distance trade.
