Overview:

Under an on-call general services contract with the Texas Department of Transportation (TxDOT), SWCA was retained to conduct data recovery excavations at the Siren site (41WM1126) near the City of Georgetown in Williamson County, Texas.

Services Provided:

• Data recovery
• Mitigation
• Large-scale hand excavations
• Geomorphological analysis

 Results:

SWCA worked within a very narrow window of time to cater to TxDOT’s accelerated construction schedule. The large-scale (over 100 cubic meters) hand excavations revealed well-preserved, stratified prehistoric occupations overlooking the nearby San Gabriel River.  SWCA documented a suite of intact human activity areas across the site centered around impressive rock ovens dating to 2500–1000 years ago. SWCA successfully met all field schedules, allowing TxDOT's project to proceed on-schedule.

Subsequently, TxDOT contracted SWCA to process the artifacts, submit radiocarbon samples, prepare an interim report, assemble an annotated bibliography and write a detailed research design for the analysis of the materials from the Siren site.