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The QUEST Archaeological Research Program was established by Joseph and Ruth Cramer with a generous endowment to Southern Methodist University in January of 1996. Under the direction of Dr. David J. Meltzer, Henderson-Morrison Professor in SMU's Department of Anthropology, the goal of the program is to conduct long-term archaeological field and laboratory research on the environment, adaptations, and (perhaps) the origins of Paleoindian groups who inhabited the southern Great Plains of North America in late Pleistocene through early Holocene times.

The first field season was in 1997, and since then QUEST research teams have worked annually at a number of sites in that region including the Folsom type site (New Mexico), Lucy (New Mexico), Nall (Oklahoma), Hot Tubb (Texas), Slim Arrow and 5GN149 (Colorado). The locations of these and select other Paleoindian sites on the Plains are shown below - those highlighted have been investigated by QUEST researchers. Archaeological fieldwork in the summer of 2005 focused on sites in far west Texas (Bonfire Shelter, for which we have just-published paper in American Antiquity), and in the Gunnison Basin of Colorado (we finished up work at the Mountaineer site, where we are working in cooperation with Mark Stiger of Western State College, and tested a couple of other Folsom-age localities). Geological and paleoenvironmental fieldwork was conducted by Dan Mann in the area around the Folsom site (New Mexico).

(This page created and maintained by D. Meltzer; last modified, August 2005)