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Travis County Archeological Society
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Welcome to the Travis County Archeological Society!
Our next meeting will be Thursday, September 9th at 7pm. Regular monthly meetings are currently held at Nuevo Leon's downtown location, 1501 East 6th Street. Meetings are held the second Thursday of each month, except June and December. They are free and open to the public. For those who wish to come early, we gather around 5:45 PM for dinner, drinks, and fellowship. We pay for our own meals and for that of the guest speaker. The short business meeting starts at 7:00 PM, followed by the guest speaker's presentation.
The September program will feature Douglas K. Boyd, Prewitt & Associates, Inc., on
The Ransom Williams Site: Public Archeology at a Nineteeth-Century African American Farmstead
In 2009, the Texas Department of Transportation sponsored data recovery excavations at an African American-owned farmstead occupied from about 1871 until 1905. Ransom and Sarah Williams, both former slaves, raised five children on their 45-acre, hardscrabble farm south of Austin. Although surrounded by white neighbors, the Williams family maintained ties with other African Americans, and probably had some relatives living in the nearby Freeman?s community called Antioch Colony. Various lines of evidence suggest that the Williams family was quite successful with their family farm at a time when economic opportunities for blacks were very limited. This project was designed to include historical archeology, extensive archival research, as well as an oral history component that reached out to descendant community members and other interested parties. As a spin-off from this research, KLRU, the Austin-based public television station, featured the public archeology at the Ransom Williams farmstead in their 2010 Juneteenth Jamboree program.
Doug Boyd, Vice-President at Prewitt & Associates, Inc. (an Austin cultural resource management consulting firm), has more than 20 years of archeology field experience, covering a wide range of project types. His extensive survey, testing, and data recovery background includes projects in the western and northern parts of Texas and in adjacent portions of New Mexico, Oklahoma, and Kansas. Doug is responsible for the planning and management of a range of projects for Prewitt & Associates, with clients in both the private and public sectors. His research interests include prehistoric, protohistoric, and historic cultures of the southern Plains; native American rock art of the Southern Plains; southwestern influence in the Great Plains; and Plains/Pueblo interaction and bison/man relationships. Doug earned an MA in Anthropology from Texas A&M University, and a BA in Anthropology from West Texas State University (now West Texas A&M University). More familiar to Texas Archeological Society (TAS) and Travis County Archeological Society members would be Doug's 10 years as archeology director for the Youth Program at TAS Field Schools
Doug Boyd (center) leads the TAS Youth excavations at Chill Hill in 2008.
Co-leader Neal Stilley is on the right.
If you are in the Austin area on one of our second-Thursday-of-the-month meeting nights, please drop in to see what's going on. More about our monthly meetings at http://travis.txarch.org/calendar.htm.
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