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What happens when new evidence challenges what we thought we knew about the deep human history of the Americas?Date: Oct 14, 2026
Time: 6:00 p.m.
Venue: New Mexico Military Museum - 1050 Old Pecos Trail, Santa Fe, NM 87505
Co-presented with the Gault School of Archaeological Research
Join us for a screening of The Stones Are Speaking, an award-winning documentary about archaeologist Mike Collins and a decades-long effort to study the Gault Archaeological Site in Central Texas. Once heavily looted, the site ultimately yielded evidence of human presence dating back some 20,000 years, adding to a growing body of research challenging long-held archaeological timelines for the peopling of the Americas.
Part biography, part archaeological mystery, the film follows Collins and the community of volunteers and professionals who worked to safeguard the site and understand what it could reveal. But the story also raises questions that extend well beyond one archaeological discovery: Who gets to interpret the deep past? How should archaeological knowledge evolve as new evidence emerges?
Following the screening, stay for a conversation with one of the film’s main experts, Tom Dillehay, and others, that places the film in a broader context and invites us to think critically about archaeology, cultural heritage, and the ways we continue to reconsider our past.
The Stones Are Speaking premiered at the Austin Film Festival, where it received the Audience Award for Texas Independent Feature, and made its broadcast debut on PBS in 2025.
Bios
Richard Boisvert is the retired New Hampshire State Archaeologist/ Deputy State Historic Preservation Officer and is also an Affiliate with the Gault School of Archaeological Research. He obtained a Bachelor's degree in Anthropology from Beloit College. His graduate studies were at the University of Kentucky where he earned his Master’s degree under Mike Collins and PhD under Tom Dillehay. Lithic technology has always been a focus of his research along with Paleoindian investigations, principally on sites in New England and Quebec. Public archaeology has been a consistent thread throughout his career and he has directed over 60 citizen archaeology projects over four decades. Texas has long been a part of his research including West Texas as an undergrad and later when he led nine volunteer crews to assist at the Gault Site. More recently has led several similar groups to volunteer at a Chacoan Great House under Bruce Bradley.
Jon Lohse is a principal and the National Manager for Cultural Resources Services at Terracon Consultants, Inc., an employee-owned consulting firm with 8500 employees nationwide. For nearly 15 years, he has served as a Board member for the Gault School of Archaeological Research, a 501(c)3 non-profit in Florence, Texas focusing on expanding educational and learning opportunities through the power of archaeological inquiry, and is currently the President of that organization. He is also an Affiliated Researcher at Rice University. Jon has participated in and led multi-disciplinary research into Archaic and Early Paleoindian societies in Mexico, Guatemala, and Belize, where his current project at August Pine Ridge is helping to rewrite Central America's role as a cultural land bridge between South and North America as far back as the Terminal Pleistocene. As of September, 2026, he is a founding member of the Commission on the Peopling of the Americas with the International Union of Prehistoric and Protohistoric Societies. Jon has published numerous books and articles on the ancient Maya and the ancestral preceramic populations who inhabited those regions of Central America. Jon received his undergraduate degree from Trinity University in San Antonio, and completed his graduate studies at The University of Texas at Austin. He currently lives with his family in Houston.
Bruce Bradley is Emeritus Professor at the University of Exeter, UK and Visiting Professor at Jilin University, China. He has extensive experience with Stone Age technologies and experimental archaeology, received a BA in anthropology at the University of Arizona and PhD in archaeology at Cambridge University, UK. His early research was focused on the North American Southwest and Great Plains Paleoindian. Since then, his research has included the Upper Palaeolithic of Russia and France, horse domestication in Central Asia, the Mesolithic of Polar Siberia, Early Bronze Age in Wales, and the Lower Palaeolithic of India and South Africa, etc. His current areas of research deal with prehistoric Pueblo archaeology of the American Southwest and the early peopling of the Americas. He was co-PI of the Gault Project and is co-PI on the Powars 2 Project in Wyoming. Bruce is contributing to projects in Argentina, Brazil, India, South Africa and Uruguay. He lives near Cortez, Colorado.
Olive Talley is an award-winning journalist with a career that spans independent filmmaking, network television producing, and news reporting for newspapers, an international wire service and radio news work. She is a three-time Emmy nominee, a Pulitzer Prize finalist for investigative reporting, and a winner of multiple state and national awards, such as the George Polk, several Headliner Awards, and a Du-Pont Columbia Award for team coverage of Hurricane Katrina, among others. As a producer in New York for Dateline NBC and ABC’s Prime Time Live news magazine shows, she worked with notable on-air reporters including Diane Sawyer, Hoda Kotb, Stone Phillips, and others. Earlier this year, the Texas Historical Commission honored Olive with its Excellence in Media award for the positive impact of her documentary, The Stones Are Speaking, that has raised public awareness about the Gault site and the importance of protecting cultural heritage sites. A graduate of the University of Texas at Austin, Olivealso attended Harvard University on a Nieman Fellowship. She splits her time between Texas and Virginia.
Tom D. Dillehay is the Rebecca Webb Wilson University Distinguished Professor of Anthropology, Religion, and Culture and Distinguished Professor of Anthropology and Latin American Studies in the Department of Anthropology at Vanderbilt University, Professor Extraordinaire and Honorary Doctorate at the Universidad Austral de Chile, International Professor in the Programa de Estudios Andinos in the Pontificia Universidad Catolica de Peru, Lima, and adjunct faculty at the Universidad Catolica de Temuco, Universidad de Tarapaca, Universidad San Sebastian in Chile and the Universidad Nacional de Trujillo in Peru. Professor Dillehay has carried out numerous archaeological and anthropological projects in Peru, Chile, Argentina and other South American countries and in the United States. His main interests are migration, the long-term transformative processes leading to political and economic change, and the interdisciplinary and historical methodologies designed to study those processes. He has been a visiting professor at several universities around the world, including the Universidad de Chile, Universidad Nacional Mayor de San Marcos, Lima, Universidade de Sao Paulo, Universidad Nacional Autonoma de Mexico, Cambridge University, University of Tokyo, University of Chicago, among others. Professor Dillehay has published twenty-four books and more than three hundred refereed journal articles and book chapters. He currently directs several interdisciplinary projects focused on long-term human and environmental interaction on the north coast of Peru and on the political and cultural identity of the Mapuche people in Chile. Professor Dillehay has received numerous international and national awards for his research, books and teaching. Professor Dillehay is a member of the American Academy of Arts and Sciences.
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Event venue
1050 Old Pecos Trl, Santa Fe, NM 87505-0397, United States
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