SAU Research Station - Arkansas Archeological Survey

• General Information
• What Do We Do?
• Station Staff
• Station Location
• Station History
• Press & Media
• Classes

• Current Projects
• Grandview Prairie
• Gateway Texarkana
• Crenshaw Isotopes
• Sulfur Fork Factory
• Van Winkle's Mill

• Important Past Projects
• Crenshaw Mounds
• Cedar Grove
• Old Washington
• Shallow Lake
• Ferguson

• Other AAS Stations

SAU Station History


	Dr. Frank Schambach (right), AAS-SAU Station Archeologist from 1968 until 2006, and Dr. Jamie Brandon (left), AAS-SAU Station Archeologist from 2006 until the present.

The Southern Arkansas University Research Station of the Arkansas Archeological Survey (AAS-SAU) is one of the original eight stations founded in 1967-68 (when SAU was still Southern State College). Among the AAS facilities, the SAU Research Station has had a remarkable stability. Unlike many of the other stations, AAS-SAU's physical territory has not changed significantly. Moreover, Dr. Frank Schambach, the original SAU Research Station Archeologist appointed in 1968 , served for 38 years--the longest run of any AAS archaeologist.


	A young Frank Schambach takes notes during the excavations at Crenshaw Mounds (3MI6) in 1969.Click to enlarge.

The Arkansas Archeological Survey was created while Schambach was working on his dissertation --Pre-Caddoan Cultures in the Trans-Mississippi South--and Frank was hired as one of the Survey's founding archeologists. Dr. Schambach received his Ph.D. in 1970 from Harvard University. During his tenure as station archeologist his research emphasized prehistoric Caddoan and pre-Caddoan cultures of the Trans-Mississippi South, including questions of Caddo relationships with the complex mound-building cultures of the Mississippi Valley. His research made him a well-recognized expert on ceramic typology and on trade networks linking the Southeast, Southern Plains and Southwest culture areas.

In 1982 he was promoted to Full Professor in the University of Arkansas Department of Anthropology. He was a popular teacher at SAU, where his anthropology classes consistently met (or exceeded) their capacity enrollment. Frank has also been fortunate in having a dedicated cadre of skilled amateur volunteers who have devoted thousands of hours to SAU station research projects in the field and lab over the years.

Schambach's professional life has centered around Caddo area archeology. He is the author of numerous articles and book chapters and several monographs, and has presented scores of papers at professional meetings, as well as many invited lectures to various groups. His work at the Crenshaw site stands out, for it was here that finds of unusual treatments of deer antlers and human skull burials started him on the long road to reconstruct the story of the development of Caddo culture and ceremonial life--a project that he hopes to address in retirement. Other important sites and topics he has been involved with (to name a few) are the Ferguson site, Battle Mound, Shallow Lake, Bangs Slough, the Sanders site in east Texas, Spiro, the DeSoto route, trade and warfare in the Mississippian world, and most recently the Tom Jones Caddo mound group on Grandview Prairie.

Dr. Schambach examines Caddoan ceramics in the new Bruce Center facility shortly before his retirement. Photo by Jen Brady of the Magnolia Banner-News.

Schambach has also been a dedicated professor of archeology and archeological knowledge to the public, presenting over 500 talks to public school audiences, service clubs, the Kadohadacho Chapter of the Arkansas Archeological Society and other local groups in southwestern Arkansas during his career. He is the author of several annoted slide sets for public talks and has been on the Board of Directors for Pictures of Record, Inc. since 1989.

One of Frank's great strengths is his skill as a writer. His prose is lively and entertaining without sacrificing precision--a rare gift. In an interview granted to the South Arkansas Sunday News, Schambach likened the process of piecing together archeological information to solving a puzzle. Archeology tells a story, one that cannot be adequately told in lists and tables. Frank Schambach's colleagues and friends at the Arkansas Archeological Survey and beyond wish him well in retirement, and look forward with excitement to whatever part of the story of Caddo archeology he may gift us with over the next few years.

• Check out a PDF of a great article on Dr. Schambach's retirement from the South Arkansas Sunday News.

SAU Station Archeologists

Jamie C. Brandon (2006-present)
Frank F. Schambach (1968-2006)
Gloria Young (Spring 1980, teaching only during a sabbatical for Schambach)
Charles Thomas (Spring 1989, teaching only during a sabbatical for Schambach)

SAU Station Research Associates & Assistants

David Jeane (1997-present)
John Miller (1980-1982)
David Kelley (1978-1979)
Beverly Watkins (1977-1978)
Al Weslowski, site survey (1972)
Jeff Flenniken, site survey (1971-1974)

This snippet is from The History of the Arkansas Archeological Survey by Charles R. McGimsey III and Hester A. Davis (1992), page 44… It chronicles the founding of the Arkansas Archeological Survey's research station at Southern Arkansas University.

1968 Meanwhile, Bob was recruiting four other archaeologists and negotiating the contracts and space on the four additional campuses (Arkansas A&M, now the University of Arkansas at Monticello; Southern State College, now Southern Arkansas University; Arkansas State Teachers College, now the University of Central Arkansas, and Arkansas Polytechnic College, now the Arkansas Tech University…Frank Schambach had been in Arkansas in 1966 for a short time because his dissertation was on material excavated by the WPA and Phil Phillips in the central Ouachita River Valley. Correspondence had been initiated with him, and when he came to the Caddo Conference in Arkadelphia in April, he was taken to Magnolia for his final interview with the college officials and accepted the Station Archeologist’s position there. So, by the spring of 1968, there was a commitment for cooperative agreements with all of the state-supported institutions of higher education, just as had been envisioned in the enabling legislation.

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