Hinojosa Site

This exhibit was written by Steve Black, who directed the major investigations at Hinojosa, took most of the site photographs, and drafted all of the report graphics that appear in this exhibit. TBH editorial assistant Heather Smith designed the exhibit and did the web programming.

Work on the Hinojosa exhibit was supported by grants from the National Endowment for the Humanities and the Texas Preservation Trust Fund (Texas Historical Commission). Additional funding was provided by E. Tom Miller and the Southern Texas Archaeological Association, a TBH partner organization. In 1978, the Hinojosa site was officially listed on the National Register of Historic Places, the only locale listed in Jim Wells County.

Steve Black is co-editor of Texas Beyond History and has been a working archeologist since the mid-1970s. The 1981 excavations at the Hinojosa site occurred midway through Black’s 8-year career at the University of Texas at San Antonio (UTSA) where he worked at the Center for Archaeological Research (CAR) and earned a Master’s degree. At the time, Dr. Thomas R. Hester was the CAR Director and Professor of Anthropology and it was he who served as the Principal Investigator and oversaw the Hinojosa work. The 1981 investigations at Hinojosa were done for $50,000, a sum that wouldn’t begin to cover the cost of carrying out a similar project today. And, if truth be told, it did not really cover the cost of the Hinojosa work.

As the fieldwork and initial lab work progressed, we realized that the site had even more research potential than we had anticipated. We stretched the funds as far as they would go and then some. The outside consultants, especially those from Texas A&M, accomplished far more than covered by the modest fees they were paid. Black worked on some aspect of the site as part of many of the graduate courses he took at UTSA, and the draft site report was accepted as his Master’s thesis. Hester managed to cover some additional costs through creative administrative choices. Hester was also able to persuade the project sponsor (National Park Service, Interagency Archeological Services-Denver) to grant us several extensions of time. And, beginning in 1984, Black continued to work on the report during “spare time” in his first few years of further graduate work at Harvard. When the report was finally finished, Hester was so relieved that, against his better judgment, he allowed Black to choose the bright red report cover stock.

TBH partner, the Center for Archaeological Research at UTSA, provided access to the Hinjosa records, photographs, and artifacts, all of which are permanently curated there. The CAR-UTSA also approved of the presentation of a substantial portion of the Hinojosa report as linked PDF documents.

The 1981 fieldwork was done mostly by a core crew including assistant field director Al McGraw, Tom Miller, Courtenay Jones, Cecil Peel, and Mike Woerner. All were experienced field archeologists who worked hard and did careful and thoughtful work over and beyond the call of duty. Over the fall of 1981 and early winter in 1982 we made Alice, Texas our weekday home and were consistently treated well by its citizens, despite our scruffy appearance and eyebrow-raising business in Jim Wells County.

Many others who collaborated in the original Hinojosa work are listed in the report's acknowledgments section.

Print Sources

Black, Stephen L.
1986   The Clemente and Herminia Hinojosa Site, 41JW8: A Toyah Campsite in Southern Texas. Center for Archaeological Research, University of Texas at San Antonio, Special Report 18.

Carpenter, Stephen M.
2017   The Toyah Complex of South and Central TexasL Long-Range Mobility and the Emergency of Dual Economies. Plains Anthropologist 62:133-156.

Highley, Cheryl Lynn
1986   Archaeological Investigations at 41LK201, Choke Canyon Reservoir, Southern Texas. Center for Archaeological Research, University of Texas at San Antonio, Choke Canyon Series 11.

Kenmotsu, Nancy A. and Douglas K. Boyd, editors
2012   The Toyah Phase of Central Texas: Late Prehistoric and Social Processes. Texas A&M University Press, College Station.