Fort Hood Archaeology

I am having a pretty good time, even though it is hot and humid, working on west Fort Hood. Fort Hood is one of the largest army bases in the U.S. They are doing a terrific job taking care of their cultural resources--aka archaeology (considering tanks are plowing through the terrain carving ruts everywhere). We are excavating three sites, evaluating the anomalies identified by ground penetrating radar. About half the anomalies turned out to be something archaeological. We are currently exposing a burned rock midden which is a large pile of rocks that have been fractured by fire while in use as an oven or hearth or from use boiling water. These are common features in central and west Texas.

This photo shows the dirt on top of the midden


This is the top of the burned rock midden . . .we are currently removing the dirt from around this unit to expose more of the feature.

These sites are sitting on Paluxy Sandstone formation which was once the coast of the Gulf of Mexico something like 80 million years ago. I am standing on this bedrock in the photo shown below . . .