Society Activities

Annual Meeting

Annual Meeting 2008

Welcome to Lubbock for the
79th Texas Archeological Society Annual Meeting

Lubbock Lake Landmark

Courtesy of Lubbock Lake Landmark

Lubbock Lake Landmark will host two private tours for the TAS conference.  The first tour will be on Friday afternoon at 1:30 p.m., and the second will start an hour later at 2:30 p.m.  The tours are free.  You can sign up for either tour on your registration form, but space is limited to 20 people per tour.  You will be responsible for your own transportation to the Landmark.  Be sure to register early!  On the day of the tour, you should stop by the Holiday Inn Park Plaza to register for the TAS conference first.  You’ll find your ticket to the tour in your registration packet.

A unit of the Museum of Texas Tech University, the Lubbock Lake Landmark is an archaeological and natural history preserve at the northern edge of the city of Lubbock, Texas.  The Landmark contains evidence of almost 12,000 years of occupation by ancient peoples on the Southern High Plains.  Lubbock Lake is located in a meander of an ancient valley, Yellowhouse Draw, near ancient springs.  For thousands of years, people on the Southern High Plains used the water resources in the draw until those resources went dry in the early 1930s.  Years of sediment covered the traces of human activity from the surface until 1936 when the city of Lubbock dredged the meander in an effort to revitalize the underground springs.

The first explorations of the site were conducted in 1939 by the West Texas Museum (now the Museum of Texas Tech University).  By the late 1940s, several Folsom Period (10,800-10,300 years ago) bison kills were discovered.  In a location of an ancient bison kill from a then unidentified Paleoindian group, charred bison bones produced the first ever radiocarbon date (currently the most accurate form of dating) for Paleoindian material (9,800 years old).  The Landmark currently serves as a field laboratory for geology, soils, and radiocarbon dating studies, as well as being an active archaeological and natural history preserve.

Excavations today are conducted on an annual basis.  The Museum of Texas Tech University has been involved with the discovery, preservation, research of, and education about the Lubbock Lake Landmark for over 65 years.

Getting there: Lubbock Lake Landmark is located moments by car from Texas Tech University at North Loop 289 and the Clovis Hwy (US 84) on Landmark Drive.  It is just north of Clovis Hwy and west of the Burl Huffman Athletic Complex.  Free public parking is available.

From the Holiday Inn Park Plaza, take Loop 289 to the west and follow it to the Clovis Hwy exit. Watch for signs.

From the south on US 84, follow Avenue Q (US 84) to the Clovis Hwy (US 84) split with N. Avenue Q (Hwy 326), and follow to north edge of city. Watch for signs on the right.

From Interstate 27 take the North Loop 289 (travel west), watch for signs on right.

From the northwest on Clovis Hwy (US 84), watch for signs on left as you enter the city limits.

From the southwest on US 62 (Brownfield Hwy), take North Loop 289 to Clovis Hwy exit. Watch for signs.

Here is a map link to help, the top marker is the Lubbock lake Landmark.