2008 Speaker Schedule

Every meeting of The Houston Archeological Society features a prominent figure in archeology.

December 12, 2008

GREGG J. DIMMICK is a pediatrician with the South Texas Medical Clinics in Wharton, Texas presents "General Vicente Filisola's Analysis of Jose Urrea's Military Diary". He did his undergraduate work at Texas A&M University and received his M.D. in 1977 from the University of Nebraska Medical School. He was born and raised in Wyoming. He has worked closely with the Houston Archeological Society in the research for the book, Sea of Mud, and has coauthored two previous monographs, published by the Society, on the Mexican Army's retreat in the 1836 campaign.

In 1838 Urrea published a book he entitled The Military Diary of General Jose Urrea. Filisola published his ultracritical analysis of Urrea's diary that same year. Totally focusing on the actions of the Mexican army, and especially Urrea's division, Filisola critiques Urrea's every move, from his advance into Texas until the disastrous and humiliating trip back to Matamoros in May and June 1836. The true jewels of this work are the multiple details that Filisola gives in making his verbose case against General Urrea from descriptions of Goliad, Victoria, and Madam Powell's to interesting comments on the Deleons, Phillip Dimmitt, and Jose Maria Carbajal. After reading this fascinating account of the Mexican army in Texas the reader may well need to reevaluate his opinions of the Mexican army's generals. In spite of the fact that the work is extremely biased and at times blatantly unfair, Filisola does make valid points that at least make one wonder if Urrea deserves the high respect that has been generally accorded him by Texan scholars.

November 14, 2008

Mary LeBlanc leads a presentation on the mounds discovered in southern Louisiana and southeast Texas.

Along coastal southeast Texas and into southern Louisiana there are huge mounds of shell. These are man made structures about which very little is known. Not much archeology has been done on these structures. There are smaller ones which may be midden heaps but the larger ones were built by humans for the purpose of habitation. Some of these mounds are several hundred feet in length and a hundred or so feet wide and of varying heights which can be as much as 20 ft above the surrounding land. It is thought that these were platforms upon which people built a long house structure in which a tribal group lived. One mound includes a cemetery at one end of the mound. Another had a pond dug into the top of the mound so the residents could have a fresh water supply instead of having to drink the brackish water of the surrounding marsh. They were drinking rain water which they collected in this pond. Surface examination of some of these large structures offers tantalizing bits of information about the peoples who once lived there. Yet virtually no excavations have been done in southeast Texas and very little work has been done in southern Louisiana. We need to advocate more examination of these structures before time and development destroy them. Right now there are far more questions than there are answers. Who built the big mounds? Obviously there are different cultures and different time periods involved. How old are the mounds? Radiocarbon dating on one mound in Louisiana gave a date at the lowest level of 6,000 years. We have no comparison information so who knows if that is an accurate time frame. We know that different cultures inhabited the area during different periods of prehistory but we don have the information to say who was here when. Based on work done in Louisiana we can start to see some cultures emerge but we don’t know if that is truth for Texas or regional phenomenon limited to Louisiana. Who were these people who built the big mounds? We have far more questions than we have answers but we can take a look at some of what is known.

October 10, 2008

Frank Griffin provides a three part archeological seminar.

August 8, 2008

Tarrant County Archeological Society member Victoria Scism presents "TRACKING THE TRACE - FROM MAPS TO THE GROUND, A survey of the Texas Chihuahua Road in Presidio County"

The Chihuahua Trail, or Road as it is often called, was so named, because of the commerce that was conducted across the route from the Texas coastal ports to Chihuahua City, Chihuahua, Mexico.

Freighters and merchants carried foreign and domestic trade goods from ports; Galveston, Port Lavaca, and the Military Supply Port of Entry, Indianola, to trade for the silver bouillon of the mines of Chihuahua. This flurry of commerce occurred between 1849-1883, the heaviest activity during the 1850's. It flourished once more after the Civil War until the railway was completed across Texas.

A route forged by Dr. Henry Connelly and Mexican merchants (1839-1840), was the first route traveled for this trade. They traveled from Chihuahua City, crossed the Rio Grande at Presidio del Norte; traveled up the Alamito Creek valley; forded across the Pecos and found their way to Fort Towson on the Red River. After reaching Arkansas, the silver was taken to the mint in New Orleans and supplies and trade goods were purchased for the return trip. Tariffs were so costly when Connelly’s train arrived back in Mexico that the venture was not repeated. A decade later, beginning at ports on the Texas coast and San Antonio, hundreds of trade wagons rolled across the "Upper Road" (Immigrant Trail), sharing the route with mail and stage lines and military supply wagons. The freighters' destination was El Paso and Chihuahua, Mexico.

The "Lower Road"; however, became a more favored freight route. While it was known as the Military Road and the San Antonio El Paso/ San Diego Road, it was used by a number of stage lines. Numerous stage stands and springs nourished the animals and men along the route that headed southwest from San Antonio toward Fort Clark and the Rio Grande. Winding northwest the road crossed the Devils River nineteen times and the Pecos once before reaching Comanche Springs (Fort Stockton). The freight trains either traveled to Fort Davis and then south or visited the springs at present day Alpine; working through the Paisano Pass, then down the Alamito Creek Valley to the Rio Grande, bypassing the El Paso Road.

Since the year 2000 a small crew has been researching various aspects of the Texas- Chihuahua trade and has been tracing the trail across twenty-eight ranches in Presidio County, Texas.

July 11, 2008

HAS members discuss their experiences at the 2008 TAS Field School.

May 9, 2008

Douglas K. Boyd, Vice President, Prewitt and Associates, Inc. presents "History and Archeology of the First Capitol of the Republic of Texas."

In conjunction with the proposed development of a historical park by a local nonprofit group, archeological and historical investigations were conducted on the site of the first capitol of the Republic of Texas in West Columbia, Texas. The work focused on Lot 4, Block 2 of the old Columbia townsite because it once contained a wooden structure used by the House of Representatives during the First Congress from October to December 1836. Archeologists from Prewitt and Associates, Inc. and the Brazosport Archaeological Society completed a week of field investigations at the site in December 2007. Mechanical and hand excavations exposed a brick-lined cistern filled with twentieth-century debris, several pit features containing nineteenth-century artifacts, numerous postholes, and scattered nineteenth- and twentieth-century artifacts. Following the field investigations, archival research was undertaken to define the legal history of this property and identify its historic uses. This work is revealing part of the story behind one of Texas' most important historical places - the First Capitol of the Republic of Texas.

April 11, 2008

Bob Shelby, member and past president of HAS, has also served as a regional director of the Texas Archeological Society. He was awarded the Southeast Texas Archaeological Research Award in 2007 for his work on the 41FB269, the Powell Site.

Beginning in 1999 and for the next few years, the Houston Archeological Society conducted archaeological investigations at the Powell site to find the exact location of the historic Powell house and develop more information about the people who lived there. In the course of the research, many half-truths and misconceptions were encountered about the people and events connected with this spot of land. The focus of the presentation is to correct some of these myths and amplify the recent HAS report published about the site.

March 14, 2008

Steve Hoyt is the State Marine Archeologist with the Texas Historical Commission, a position he has held since 1998. He has over 25 years of experience in the study of historic shipwrecks, performing much of his early work in the islands of the Caribbean and in Bermuda, including several years with the Institute of Maritime History and Archaeology at the Bermuda Maritime Museum. The topic of the March, 2008 meeting is "Indianola: Rediscovering the Ruins of a Lost Port City."

February 8, 2008

Leslie Bush is an Austin-based archeobotanist who analyzes plant remains from archeological sites though her small business, Macrobotanical Analysis. She presents "Assessing Seasonality Through Archeological Plant Remains."

January 11, 2008

HAS Member Fred Kelly showed two interesting and entertaining films of recent excavations in England. The first film involves excavating a Roman site near London, England. And, the second film concerns exploring a Medieval village in Devonshire, England.