Hello again, HAS members,

The October meeting of the Houston Archeological Society will be held on Thursday, October 15th at 6 pm at the Trini Mendenhall Community Center in the Spring Branch area of Houston. We will also broadcast the meeting on Zoom for those unable to join us in person. A link for the Zoom meeting will be sent to members a week before the meeting.

Our speaker at the October meeting is HAS member Geoffrey Mills. Geoff was born in Chester, UK, and grew up in a small village in North Wales. He was always interested in archeology while growing up and cycled down to the nearby beach at Dinas Dinlle to swim. The large hill he climbed there turned out to be the site of an Iron Age hillfort, which was excavated in 2022.

Geoff completed his studies in 1966, graduating with a BSc in Physics and Mathematics from Liverpool University.  He then joined an international Seismic company, and shortly thereafter was sent to Libya to do seismic processing and interpretation. In Libya, he visited several archeological sites, including Sabratha, Leptis Magna, and Apollonia. While working there, he applied to Stanford University in the United States, graduating with an MSc in Geophysics, after which he rejoined the seismic company in Dallas and then Houston.

Geoff has volunteered on the Tall Ship Elissa and was involved with sail training and ship maintenance for 22 years. In 2016, Geoff joined HAS, as he had always been interested in archeology. While a member of HAS, he has attended nearly every field school from 2017 (Cotton Field) to the present (Rockdale). He has been on other digs, including Cotton Field, Frost Town, Lone Oak, Goloby, Walnut Tree Hill, Crying Women Ranch in Kerrville, and McNeill Ranch in Victoria. He has attended several TAS academies in lithics, ceramics, zooarcheology, and geoarchaeology.

Geoff will be discussing the ‘cache’ of Angostura-type lanceolate spear points excavated by HAS members at the Lone Oak site in Frelsburg, TX. This is not a cache in that we found them all at once, just in a narrow area at a depth of roughly 30 to 60 centimeters that we have been excavating over the past two years.

Angostura points are slender, lanceolate (leaf-shaped) stone artifacts dating from the Transitional Paleoindian to Early Archaic periods, from about 8500 BP +/- 500 years ago. They feature oblique flaking, concave or straight bases, and are frequently recovered throughout Texas and are also found in the Northern Great Plains into Canada, and from California to the Great Lakes.

For more information about this program or about the Houston Archeological Society, please contact Bob Sewell at president@txhas.org.

HAS JOURNAL 144 NOW AVAILABLE

HAS Journal No. 144 is now available. The Journal Number 144 The articles will focus on the San Felipe de Austin Dig by John Lohse, Horseshoes in Texas, a Thimble from the 18th or 19th century from France found in Frosttown, and another article about Camp Kirby in Dickenson, TX, a civil war camp by Charly Gordy, ceramics from Cottonfield by Tim Perttula, and information from Mike Woods about a Butted Knife Found in Comal County. Complimentary copies may be obtained by HAS members at the monthly meetings. Non-HAS members may purchase copies through Amazon.com. Go to the HAS Journals Section for a link to the publication on the Amazon.com website. Alternatively, copies may be purchased at the HAS Monthly Meetings.

To learn more about the history behind our archeological society contact president@txhas.org.