Probably the major issue troubling American archaeology over the last several decades has been establishing when the first humans arrived in the western hemisphere. For nearly half a century the large majority of working archaeologists adhered to the notion that people making and using the distinctive
Clovis "point" and its associated
lithic technology were the first to arrive about 13,500 calendar years ago and to have spread quickly throughout the Americas. However, there was always a small archaeological minority who contended that the first Americans (in the broadest, two-continent, sense) had been here long before Clovis times on both the east and west margins of both continents. In the last several decades, with the location, investigation, and reporting of a growing number of sites with reliable dating, more and more American archaeologists now believe the western hemisphere was occupied at least several thousand years prior to the appearance of
diagnostic Clovis materials. Most of these sites are widely spaced geographically and do not contain an extensive array of associated
lithic materials that would show a diagnostic pattern of tool production and use. An attempt to define the characteristics of these older technologies can best be accomplished by investigating sites which are both well-
stratified, containing both the older and Clovis materials—in order to compare technologies in use in the same location under similar conditions—and show evidence of extended periods of occupation where a wide range of activities took place employing the whole array of
lithic tools. The Gault site contains strata which date to prior to the appearance of Clovis (more than 13,500 years
B.P.) and to
Clovis (13,500 to 13,000 years B.P.), as well as the entire subsequent occupational sequence of the Central Texas region, from late
Paleoindian (13,000 to 9,000 years ago) to
Archaic (9,000 to 1200 years B.P.), and finally to Late Prehistoric (1200 to 500 years B.P.). A reason for this intensive and almost continuous occupation appears to be the site's location adjacent to two different but resource-rich
ecosystems (the uplands of the
Edwards Plateau and the lower
Blackland Prairie) where water from Buttermilk Creek was available even in drought years, and where a wide variety of local food resources was concentrated. Another is that Gault was also a quarry site, where good quality Edwards
chert toolstone (the Edwards Plateau is geologically one of the largest chert bearing formations in North America) was readily available, weathering out of the banks of both modern and ancient watercourses; chert from the Edwards Plateau has been identified as being used for toolmaking as far away as the
Lindenmeier site in Colorado. Additionally, the Clovis presence at the Gault site occurs in unprecedented abundance. A preliminary count of Clovis artifacts at the site numbers around 650,000 (including
flakes,
cores and formal tools), suggesting that a large number of people aggregated at the site and/or people resided at the site for an extended period of time. This evidence calls into question the traditional view of Clovis groups as highly mobile, dedicated big game hunters. Additionally, faunal material from the Gault site includes an array of large, medium-sized and small game such as mammoth, bison, horse, deer, rabbit, birds, and turtles, suggesting a generalized diet. One of the most significant finds at the Gault site is that it is one of only twenty mammoth kill sites in the United States. The national significance of the Gault site was recognized on May 29, 2018, by its official listing in the
National Register of Historic Places. The site is also registered as a
Texas State Antiquities Landmark. ==History==