About the Gault School of
ArchaeologicaL Research

Inspired by our founder, Dr. Michael B. Collins, the GSAR is a non-profit 501(c)3 center that conducts innovative, interdisciplinary research and education focusing on the earliest peoples in the Western Hemisphere.

About the Gault Site

Starting in 1991, research at the Gault Site helped shape how scientists understand Clovis and earlier-than-Clovis occupations in the human history of North America. Work here directed by our founder, Dr. Michael Collins has established a benchmark for how we recognize and make sense of the Clovis period, which lasted from around 13,400 to 12,800 years ago. Leading up to these investigations, scholars differed in their opinions about whether Clovis peoples were the first inhabitants of the Americas, or whether there was archaeological evidence for pre-Clovis occupations. Investigations at Gault have helped establish that people were in the Americas perhaps as early as about 20,000 years ago, far longer than many archaeologists had believed. Working with a team of scientists representing different disciplines, Dr. Collins’ work has helped establish the antiquity of human presence in Central Texas specifically, and in the Americas generally. While this advance in the archaeological understanding of the past is significant, GSAR recognizes that one of the real contributions that the Gault Site can make is in helping students follow a similar learning journey every day.

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