The Stones Are Speaking tells the story of archaeologist Michael Collins, pictured here with artifacts from the site, and his decades-long campaign to save the Gault Site. Photo credit: Kenneth Garrett
The Stones Are Speaking is a feature-length documentary about the Gault Archaeological Site, a Conservancy-owned preserve in Central Texas. It is the most prolific Clovis site in North American archaeology and helped push back the earliest date of human occupation in the Americas thousands of years earlier than previously thought. The film tells the story of archaeologist Michael Collins and “his determination and personal sacrifice to save this long-looted site that others had written off from years of plundering as a pay-to-dig site,” according to the film’s producer and director, Olive Talley. Collins’ team has unearthed more than 2.6 million artifacts at the Gault site and scientific evidence of human life dating to 18,000 B.C.
Talley is a lifelong Texan and award-winning journalist and she hopes the story will inspire others to protect important cultural sites. With funding from several major foundations and more than 200 individuals, as well as support from the Williamson Museum in Georgetown, Texas, Talley is concluding four years of work on the film. She hopes it will reach the public in fall 2024 via film festivals, PBS, and other distribution outlets. View a trailer and learn more about the film, including an interactive timeline about the Gault Site, at gaultfilm.com.
