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Jason Perez, field technician, screens for artifacts. |
Just across from the Toyota plant in south San Antonio is a stretch of ranchland pockmarked with blue tarps from UTSA’s Center for Archaeological Research (CAR). Underneath the tarps lie clues about the property, once an original Spanish land grant obtained by Lt. Col. Ignacio Perez, who occupied the land from about 1793 to the 1850s.
What seems on the surface like an arcane bit of San Antonio history is actually a critical step in the construction of a new hike and bike trail along the banks of the Medina River that will eventually connect Medina River Park to Mitchell Lake.
City, state and federal laws require cultural resource management research entities like CAR to investigate public properties that will be impacted by construction before groundbreaking can even begin. The regulations exist to protect historical resources—from buried archaeological sites to standing structures—that might otherwise be lost.
The Perez Ranch project is on the site of “one of the last remaining visual vestiges of the homestead,” says Kay Hindes, staff archaeologist for the City of San Antonio. “We have to preserve the resource for the greater good of the public as a whole.”
The law
The National Historic Preservation Act requires that any new federally funded development or construction on federal land first undergo a survey to establish if there are historic properties that could be impacted by the project.
The State of Texas enacted its own law in the early 1970s. The Antiquities Code of Texas mandates that prior to any construction on state-owned land, the project area be thoroughly surveyed. If historical sites are found, it is then determined whether there is research potential and whether the site warrants nomination to the National Register of Historic Places.
To protect local property, the City of San Antonio included in its Unified Development Code (UDC) stringent regulations about preserving historical resources. It is now considered one of the strongest preservation codes in the nation.
According to the code, before a building permit can be issued by the city, historic preservation officers research whether the proposed development is in an area of a known archaeological site. If such sites exist or are thought to exist, the city can require archaeological investigations before the project can begin.
“The city’s history goes back to the 1700s, so the people that helped put the code together made sure they took care to preserve any archaeological deposits that might be able to contribute to the story of the city of San Antonio and Bexar County in the future,” says Steve Tomka, director of CAR. “The city, through its UDC … wants to preserve as much about its history as possible.”
Dual roles
CAR was established in 1974 and has carried out a mix of academic and cultural resource management research since its early days. It is now one of only a handful of nonprofit cultural resource management centers in Texas. It competes with for-profit firms to bid for research contracts with agencies like the Texas Department of Transportation and the City of San Antonio, who typically have staff archaeologists of their own to oversee the numerous projects. At any given time, the center could be working on as many as 40 projects throughout the region.
Money received through research contracts goes toward the salaries of CAR’s 31 staff members, consisting of archaeologists and field and laboratory technicians, many who are current students or UTSA alumni. CAR receives between $800,000 and $1.2 million a year in outside funding. That is the largest portion of outside funding received by any department in the College of Liberal and Fine Arts.
The entire process of bidding for contracts, seeking grants, conducting research, carrying out excavations and sorting the thousands of artifacts retrieved for analysis and curation is beneficial for students, Tomka says. “The beauty of it is that you get hands-on experience with large-scale excavations, lab work, analysis, reports and client interactions. This range of experience is invaluable for active students and those who will soon join the job market.”
Like a medical student studying to become a doctor, archaeologists-in-training must practice before they can enter the workforce, he says. “Part of our mission here is to provide experience to our students so when they leave, they do have those skill sets, they are more employable or they are stronger Ph.D. or master’s students. The center complements the training students receive in the Department of Anthropology, and in the process, everybody wins.”
The Perez Ranch is the definition of hands-on training, says Kristi Ulrich, a project archaeologist and 10-year CAR veteran who recently led the team’s efforts to excavate the site. “You can take the courses and be book smart, but you’ve got to get your hands dirty to really learn it,” she says.
Digging for history
CAR plays a valuable role in the development of a city like San
Antonio, which is not only growing fast but also has years of history underfoot. Because CAR’s archaeologists seek and retrieve thousands of artifacts, as well as piece together and preserve the stories that accompany them, they help keep the city growing without
losing its heritage and its connection to the past, Tomka says.
CAR’s work begins long before excavation sites are dug. First, the archaeologists spend hours exploring libraries and archives for information on the location of a proposed development. They search through old fire insurance maps, historic photographs and city maps to reconstruct the locations of houses and outbuildings and the routes of streets and roads. They also talk with longtime
residents to gather family histories. Next, they devise a detailed plan with questions they hope the excavation will answer and a timeline for how long they expect the project to take.
Once on site, archaeologists conduct a survey of the proposed project locale. They conduct shovel tests and examine surface and subsurface areas for signs of archaeological deposits. Around San Antonio, artifacts can date back 500 to 5,000 years, Tomka says.
Prehistoric findings, which are usually underground, require shovel testing and sometimes backhoe trenching. Archaeologists document their findings through photographs, drawings and detailed field notes.
“In some cases, we can make recommendations if sites have research potential or not immediately after the conclusion of the surveys,” Tomka says. If a site is found to be eligible for the National Register of Historic Places or has research potential, and the proposed development cannot be redesigned to avoid impacting the site, large-scale excavations are necessary.
“We won’t be able to recover 100 percent of the site, but the Antiquities Code requires that archaeological investigations are conducted to mitigate the impact of the development and recover as much as necessary to address the research questions posed prior to the inception of the excavations,” Tomka says.
Once an excavation is completed, a report is submitted to the Texas Historical Commission, which monitors the compliance of each project with the law. CAR staff members catalog, analyze and prepare artifacts for storage. Since almost all of their excavations generate objects, that translates to extensive lab work. “For every one week we spend in the field, we spend another three weeks in the lab,” says Tomka.
As a state-certified curation facility, CAR has amassed 9 to 12 million items from throughout Texas, 75 percent of which are held-in-trust collections for the state and are to be preserved in perpetuity.
The Perez Ranch
Walking along a dirt road leading to what was once the Perez home in south San Antonio, Ulrich prods a piece of blue and white pottery with her boot. It’s one of many small pieces littering the property,
she says. Though tiny and only a few decades old, it gives her a hint about the history of the land and the family that once occupied it.
Further up the road, members of her archaeology team skim
the dry earth with their tools. Another worker stands a few feet away, carefully sifting excavated dirt to recover pieces of spackleware, porcelain and glass. It is a tedious process, but it yields
telling results.
When the investigations began on the Perez Ranch, the patch of pasture seemed to consist of nothing but piles of rock. But after weeks of excavation, dodging rainstorms and the curious cattle that roam the property, the archaeologists uncovered the foundations of an 1840s ranch house. They also discovered a fire hearth that may have been used to prepare the evening meals and evidence of the very first occupation of the ranch by the Perez family dating back to the late 1700s or early 1800s.
Few people know of the history of this spot across from the Toyota plant. But someday, visitors will travel down the hike and bike trail along the Medina River and see the old tenant shack that still stands on the property and signs with information about the family.
“It’s rewarding to know our work pays off,” Tomka says. “If we don’t find and document it, it may be lost forever.” |
