Bell County Museum curator Stephanie Turnham helped the U.S. Army Operational Test Command mark Native American Heritage Month Tuesday with a presentation on the Gault Site, an archaeological dig located between Florence and Salado.

Promising her talk would not be the typical — or stereotypical — Native American observance, Turnham instead took the audience on a brief journey through Paleo-Indian culture as evidenced by findings at the Gault Site, discovered in 1929.

Named for the owners of the farm, Henry and Jodie Gault, the site was almost destroyed over the 60 years after its discovery by pot hunters, or pay-to-dig artifact collectors, Turnham said.

"Dr. James Pearce, the first professional archaeologist in Texas, conducted the preliminary excavation," Turnham said, "and uncovered evidence that would turn the Clovis archaeological findings on its ear."

The site is a flint/chert quarry approximately 80 by 200 meters, according to Turnham, located in the Balcones Ecotone, which is the boundary zone of the Edwards Plateau, Blackland Prairie and Coastal Ecotone.

"For the early people of this area," she said, "the site was a Silicon Valley because flint and chert were used to make both tools and weapons."

In 1991 some avocational archaeologists found a mammoth jawbone with an arrowhead buried in it, Turnham said.

Some 2 million objects have been unearthed. News stories have appeared in Newsweek, Smithsonian and National Geographic magazines.

Tours of the Gault Site can be arranged by contacting the Bell County Museum at (254) 933-5243 or museum@co.bell.tx.us.