Monthly Meetings

NTAS Monthly Meetings are held on the 2nd Thursday of the month, at 7:00pm except in June and December. The monthly meetings are located at UNT Health Fort Worth (formerly UNT Health Science Center) in the Research & Education Building, Room 114. The NTAS meetings are hybrid meetings held in-person and offered via Zoom.

NTAS meetings are a staple of our membership. In these meetings, we discuss NTAS Announcements, which include upcoming volunteer opportunities, upcoming NTAS events, upcoming Texas Archeology Society (TAS) events, and each month we feature a guest speaker. Our guest speakers deliver programs on various archeological topics. Past topics include geoarcheology, bioarcheology, regional archeological sites and topics, and more. NTAS meetings are open to the general public.

Guests are welcome to join all NTAS monthly meetings in-person or via Zoom. To receive the Zoom link for our programs, please email info@ntxas.org .

November 13, 2025 Monthly Meeting

Earth Ovens on the Red River

Guest Speaker: Laura Short

Abstract: Earth ovens are well documented across the entire United States and through much of the world. In Texas, they are largely associated with the western and central portion of the state, where they are ubiquitous. This presentation looks outside that area, presenting a preliminary analysis of earth ovens in north-central Texas and south-central Oklahoma. In addition to examining the distribution of earth ovens across the landscape and their utilization by the people of the Southern Plains, a meta-analysis of our understanding of earth ovens will also be addressed. While the presence of piles of burned rock have been well known since early studies of Texas archaeology, these features only really began to be understood in the 1970s.

Laura Short is an archaeologist with a background in earth ovens and residue analysis. She currently works at HDR, an architecture, engineering, environmental and construction services firm. There she is helping to develop the artifact analysis workspace in the Dallas office and training with Leslie Bush in macrobotanical analysis. When she’s not trying to convince people of the validity of fire cracked rock as a subject of study, she is hanging out with her two cats. She got her PhD at Texas A&M and undergraduate at Indiana University of Pennsylvania.

Monthly meetings

November 13, 2025 Monthly Meeting

Earth Ovens on the Red River