Archaeological monitoring of a sidewalk construction project in Landa Park, New Braunfels, Comal County, Texas

In February 1996, the Center for Archaeological Research of The University of Texas at San Antonio conducted monitoring for the construction of a handicap ramp in Landa Park, New Braunfels, Comal County, Texas. The work-required by the Texas Historic Commission-was performed under contract with the city of New Braunfels Parks and Recreation Department. The excavation of the footings for the handicap ramp covered an area roughly 2 x 5 m and was less than 70 cm in depth. Over 2,600 prehistoric artifacts were uncovered including bone, fire-cracked rock, mussel shell, numerous platform and nonplatform flakes, cores, unifaces, several bifaces, and diagnostic projectile points. The diagnostic artifacts included Gower, Uvalde, Frio, Ellis, and Marcos projectile points as well as a Clear Fork biface and two Guadalupe bifaces. These diagnostics indicate at least three temporal assignments ranging from the Early Archaic to the Late Transitional Archaic periods. The artifacts were found in good archaeological and geological contexts despite the fact that the project area was in the midst of a heavily developed recreation area. The site has been assigned trinomial 41CM221.