Good afternoon,

My husband and I own 56 acres in SE Williamson County, about 8 miles south of the town of Thrall proper. Over the past year and a half we have found many arrowhead's, mostly partial, on our property.

We would like to learn more about our finds and see if there is more to be found but we have no idea where to turn to or who to contact and I am hoping someone at this site can help us out.

We are begining to think that we may have had a campsite of some sort on our property as we find a large abundance of flint chips congregated in one general area of our property. We would love to invite an archeological group to come out and dig about our place and see what they can find.

Any information and resources that you can provide would be greatly appreciated.

Thank you in advance for your help.

Regards,

John and Christi Snell

Only amateur archeologist on this site. If you want a professional acheologist to come to you property, you will have to contact UT or some other university.

That is cool. you are fortunate to have this on your property! I am sure I will get slammed for this. But there is no way I would have Archiologists come in, If it were mine I would find a few experienced diggers, invite them in, look for the sweet spot. and if I decided I did not want a lot of people digging on my property, I would keep it private and enjoy the digging by myself for years!

It sounds like your property is close to the Brushy creek, so it is highly likely you have campsite, as you have found flint flakes,points etc. The next step is doing a few test holes to see if it was heavily occupied or just a hunting camp. This is where it get's interesting, as you will be able to identify the points and put a time period on the occupation at the site.

We would all like to see some of your finds!
Good Luck!!

I agree. The less you get them involved the better off you are. They do not like collectors like us.

I agree. The less you get them involved the better off you are. They do not like collectors like us.

Even more important than if there IS a camp on the property is who you eventually invite out...

In the long run doing your own research of what to look for will give you a better understanding of ancient Texas. TEXASBEYONDHISTORY.NET is an excellent start.

AND >>>> here's a rare oppurtuniy ....In 10 days there will be a get together (digfest)
held on Chrisners ranch. Look at some of the other postings on this site that refer to "digfest". It's not very far from SE Wil.
The ranch has 9 proven camp sites and is still producing. We'll be digging one camp that has all the standard features of a "camp". You can see what exactly to look for and get the input from many "diggers"

I'll give you a free pass just to observe.. (you want to dig, pls pay your $) Saturday or Sunday ( Sunday best )....One of the top flint people in Texas will be there ( Dwain Rogers )

Thank you all for the info. We may try to go to the Dig Fest on Sunday to have a look around. We would love to know who/what came and went through our area and share the history with our son as he grows.

Oddly enough our son has led to some of my better finds. Little does the 18 month old know that his wanderings in our pasture have led to many great arrowhead discoveries.

If we do decide to invite anyone out to our property to further explore what we have what would you all recommend we do to insure that we do not open ourselves to a person(s) who may have other intentions while digging our place?

I will get some pictures of what we have found thus far and posts them, if I can figure out how to do that.

SH, if you could please send me info on obtaining a few free passes to the Dig Fest we would greatly appreciate it.

Thanks again for all the info all!

I'll tell Richard & Mary that you are just visiting.
Stop at the garage and sign the waiver form ( mandatory for anyone on the property, digger or not ) Be sure to look at the pictures on the walls, thats about 15 years worth of history of the ranch. Assuming you will not be there at the crack of dawn.....everyone will be at the dig site so you may not see anyone at all around the garage..
From the garage go straight ahead and right turn on the "main road"..there will be a few orange arrows along the way. It's at the far north end of the property so you will see the asphalt road as you make that last left turn down the hill to the site.

Once there ask around for me or Richard.

Also, another option is to call the Texas Archaeology Society or TSA and let them know your intentions of wanting someone to look your property over. They will not come in and take over as many people assume. You retain all your own rights as any land owner in Texas. If they locate a camp,They will not destroy the integrity of your site. They will also return all points and artifacts to the land owner. They just want to document where they came from and how these ancients lived. These are very scrupulous people in general. These people will help you understand what you really have and will also help properly date your site. If you let them do this, they will not dig up all your camp. They wont even dig the sweet spot out of it. Then once you know what you have, you can make an intelligent decision on how you want to proceed. If you wanna proceed, google them or let me know and I can get you in touch with them. There are alot of good hearted arrowhead diggers out there, but be careful who you share your treasure with.

C, I told Richard of your visit, all clear, come visit...I gave him a card with your name, just verify on arrival with driver license, SS#, valid bank account & credit card