A Quantitative Study of the Booker Site and Other Burned Rock Midden Sites of the Lake Travis Basin, Central Texas PDF Download

Author: Margaret Ann Howard
Publisher:
ISBN:
Category : Booker Site (Tex.)
Languages : en
Pages : 0

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Book Description
This thesis presents four models of burned rock midden construction: vertical superposition, overlapping strata, horizontal accretion and intersecting hearths. The distribution of time-diagnostic proectile points within a deposit serves to indicate whether one of the four models is present. These models are tested at the Booker Site, 41TV627, Travis County, Texas. Statistical techniques used to test the models are Kendall's tau, trend surface analysis, and discriminant analysis. A low degree of correspondence between the first three models and the distribution of projectile points at the Booker Site indicates that those models are not supported. The fourth model, interesecting hearths, proposes that projectile points are distributed randomly to time, due to extensive post-depositional human disturbance. Discriminant analysis supports the presence of this model in the Booker Site burned rock midden. Several alternative explanations may also be proposed for the random distribution of time-diagnostic projectile points found in this midden, however. Post-depositional disturbance of nature origin could disrupt cultural patterning that existed in the deposit, and present a random distribution. Faulty recording of the original data -- collected during WPA work in the 1930s -- could also cause a patterned distribution to appear random. These possibilities cannot be eliminated. Supplementary data on the situation and artifact content of burned rock middens in the Lake Travis basin, Travis and Burnet counties, are also presented in a quantitative format. These data suggest that other burned rock middens in the basin may reflect a structure similar to that found at the Booker Site.