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xix Though the Texas A&M University fieldwork at the Gault site took less than a year, the analyses of the materials from Excavation Area 8 took much longer. Supervised by Harry Shafer, David Carlson, Robson Bonnichsen, and Michael Waters, these analyses resulted in several theses and dissertations completed from 2002 to 2009. Shafer chaired several M.A. and Ph.D. committees until his retirement in 2002. Carlson conducted investigations at Excavation Area 8 in 2001 and served on most of the committees. Bonnichsen also helped with analyses until his untimely death in 2004. Waters supervised many of the theses and dissertations and shepherded the project to completion. Damon Burden, William Dickens, and Charlotte Pevny were graduate supervisors during the 2000 field season. During this entire effort, Pevny ran the Gault laboratory, interacted with students, and was responsible for integrating the research data. She also photographed much of the lithic assemblage. Heidi Luchsinger completed the first thesis in 2002. Her research detailed the micromorphological aspects of the sediments and soils representing the entire stratigraphic profile at Excavation Area 8. In 2004, James Wiederhold completed a usewear analysis of the Clovis endscrapers for his master’s degree. As part of his research, Jim conducted a microscopic wear study of the scrapers and logged many hours experimentally butchering bison and scraping hides to understand how the endscrapers recovered from Excavation Area 8 were used by Clovis inhabitants at Gault. Jim continued to help other students with their usewear analyses and the development of their experimental programs. William Dickens’s dissertation, finished in 2005, entailed a thorough study of the blade and biface technologies. He analyzed all the projectile points, bifaces, blade cores, and blades, as well as a sample of the associated production debris related to both of these reduction strategies. Bill, an accomplished flintknapper, went on to make Clovis points and blades for other students to use in their experimental studies. A year later, Ashley Smallwood finished her thesis, which examined the usewear on the Clovis bifaces from Excavation Area 8. Her experimental program was designed to examine various types of use associated with bifacial tools, particularly hafting, cutting, and impact wear observed on Clovis projectile points. Scott Minchak completed a similar usewear study of the blade assemblage in 2007. Scott not only microscopically examined 250 Clovis blades but carried out numerous cutting and scraping experiments with replicate blades to determine how the blades from Excavation Area 8 were used. Preface xx PREFACE His photographic skills were essential in documenting the blade assemblage. Dawn Alexander finished her thesis in 2008 on the site formation processes at Excavation Area 8. She spent numerous hours in the lab looking for refits and analyzing the orientation data of over five thousand piece-plotted artifacts collected during excavation. Then, in 2009, the final dissertation was completed by Charlotte Pevny, who examined the extensive debitage assemblage and expedient tools from the site. Like her colleagues, Charlotte conducted experimental studies and wear analyses to determine how flakes were used expediently by Clovis hunter-gatherers. Mary Barnes preliminarily examined the piece-plotted faunal material during coursework at Texas A&M University. Students at the time, Eric Bartelink and Jason Wiersema undertook the final analysis of the faunal material as an independent study from 2005 to 2007. Tom Jennings became involved late in the project and has offered many helpful insights concerning hunter-gatherer subsistence and settlement. Though individual theses and dissertations provided insights on many aspects of the lithic assemblage presented in this book, this volume represents a comprehensive and integrated discussion of Excavation Area 8. Much of the information presented here was garnered from the graduate studies listed above; however, a thorough reanalysis and reorganization of that information, incorporating new data, are introduced in the following chapters. To acknowledge the contributions of the students who wrote their theses and dissertations on the site formation processes and artifact assemblages at Excavation Area 8, we have included them as authors on the entire integrated volume. This manuscript was written over a year and a half through the combined efforts of the three primary authors. Over this period, Pevny dedicated her full attention to this volume as a postdoctorate fellow of the Center for the Study of the First Americans . Waters devoted a complete year to the book during his sabbatical in the fall of 2008 and the spring of 2009. Since the project’s inception in 2000, Carlson readily contributed his statistical expertise and shared his knowledge of hunter-gatherer behavior. We hope...

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