Preservation Archaeology

September 28th, 2016

Hands-On Archaeology: How to Find Good Tool Stone

Allen Denoyer, Preservation Archaeologist and Ancient Technologies Expert (September 28, 2016)—I often have people ask me how to find good stone to flintknap. It’s not easy. I enjoy working rock I have gathered myself from places I have visited or from areas near sites where I have worked. Looking at artifacts people made in the […]

September 27th, 2016

Bears Ears and the Issue of Ownership

This post was originally published on September 23, 2016, on the Binghamton University MAPA blog, http://mapabing.org/2016/09/23/bears-ears-and-the-issue-with-ownership/. Re-posted courtesy of the author and with the original blog’s permissions. Kellam Throgmorton, PhD Candidate, SUNY Binghamton University (September 23, 2016)—Howdy! This week I return to our “regularly scheduled programming” and discuss the issue of ownership in relation to archaeology and public […]

September 23rd, 2016

Hands-On Archaeology: How to Heat-Treat Rock

Allen Denoyer, Preservation Archaeologist and Ancient Technologies Expert (September 23, 2016)—In this post, I show the process I use to heat-treat rocks. I learned this technique years ago and have been using it ever since. Why heat-treat rock? In short, because it makes tough or grainy rock easier to flake. The best rock for flintknapping […]

September 22nd, 2016

Archaeology Café Returns

Kate Sarther Gann, Communications Coordinator (September 22, 2016)—Autumn has always been my favorite season. Transplanted to Tucson from Chicago 25 years ago, I’ve come to appreciate the more subtle signs of the season here—raking light, denser traffic, Halloween costume ideas that don’t incorporate a coat… And, for the past eight years, autumn also means Archaeology […]

September 12th, 2016

Piecing History Back Together: A Lesson from the Past about the Future of the Bears Ears

Ben Bellorado, Archaeologist (September 13, 2016)—Cultural affiliation studies are particularly important tools that Native peoples, anthropologists, and archaeologists use to demonstrate tangible links between people of the ancient past and contemporary societies. These studies are especially significant in the politically charged events presently surrounding the push to designate a national monument around the Bears Ears […]

September 7th, 2016

Hands-On Archaeology: How to Haft a Point into a Foreshaft

Allen Denoyer, Preservation Archaeologist and Ancient Technologies Expert (September 7, 2016)—Hunters probably used foreshafts for multiple purposes, including as knives. In this example I will show how to use real sinew with pitch to haft a point. This makes a very strong haft. Putting a little bit of pitch over the sinew makes it waterproof […]

September 2nd, 2016

Hands-On Archaeology: How to Haft a Stone Knife, Dart Point, or Arrow Point

Allen Denoyer, Preservation Archaeologist and Ancient Technologies Expert (September 2, 2016)—During the field school for the past two years we have used hafted stone knives to carve the hooks in our atlatls. These knives also work incredibly well for a variety of tasks, from carving wood to cutting willows. They can be used like a […]

September 1st, 2016

Hands-On Archaeology: How to Make Pitch Sticks

Allen Denoyer, Preservation Archaeologist and Ancient Technologies Expert (September 1, 2016)—All projectile points are but one component of a hunter’s equipment—each point would have been hafted to a foreshaft or handle. There are several materials that may be used to accomplish this task. In this post, I will show how I make a pine-pitch resin […]

August 31st, 2016

50-Dollar Words, 1-Dollar Ideas, and Priceless People

Lewis Borck, Preservation Archaeologist (August 30, 2016)—Archaeologists are really good at making up words, or at least turning nouns into verbs in really awkward ways. Many site reports in the English-speaking world are littered with the word “recordation,” as in, “this site underwent recordation” instead of “we recorded the site.” Part of this has to […]

Looking north along Chaco's Great North Road toward the site of Pierre's.

August 23rd, 2016

Update on Protecting the Greater Chaco Landscape

Paul F. Reed, Preservation Archaeologist (August 23, 2016)—I’m overdue for an update on Archaeology Southwest’s efforts—with our partners—to protect the Greater Chaco Landscape. First, good news: we have produced a brochure highlighting the issues we face. This highly readable brochure explains why protecting the Greater Chaco Landscape is so important and describes how interested people […]

August 22nd, 2016

Where Most Research Happens

Katherine Dungan, Preservation Archaeologist (August 19, 2016)—Odds are good that when you think of archaeology, you’re thinking of an outdoor activity, whether that’s a bunch of dust-covered researchers poking around in square holes or just you, experiencing a place on the landscape with a deep human history. Protecting those kinds of places is absolutely at […]

August 15th, 2016

Nine Mile Canyon Stewardship Day 2016

Jamie Clark Stott, Program Archaeologist, Project Discovery, Utah (August 15, 2016)—On Saturday, September 17, 2016, Project Discovery will host its third annual Stewardship Day (opens as a PDF) in Nine Mile Canyon, Utah. Project Discovery is a nonprofit education program birthed by education specialist Margie Nash. The program operates on a series of grants and […]

July 25th, 2016

Bears Ears Listening Session: Voices Not Heard

Bill Doelle, President & CEO (July 25, 2016)—Some walked a few blocks. Others drove an hour or less. I drove seven hours. Not everyone wanted to speak. Some 500 of us (or more) who did want to speak entered a lottery. My guess is that roughly 75 got to speak because their lottery ticket was […]

July 18th, 2016

2016 Field School Wrap-Up

Leslie Aragon, University of Arizona, and Field Director, Preservation Archaeology Field School (July 18, 2016)—Now that the field season has drawn to a close, I’ve had a little bit of time to reflect back on all we accomplished at the Gila Farm site in the short 5 ½ weeks that we were together for the […]

July 14th, 2016

Angel’s Rest and a World of Unknowns in Southeast Utah

Guest post by R. E. Burrillo, Archaeologist: Manti-La Sal National Forest, Moab-Monticello District, UT (July 14, 2016)—This Saturday, July 16, Interior Secretary Sally Jewell and an accompanying cabal of Washington D.C. glitterati will be in Bluff, Utah, to hear public comments about the proposed Bears Ears National Monument. They are expecting—and more or less ready […]

July 14th, 2016

SPARC Progress Report

Paul F. Reed, Preservation Archaeologist (July 14, 2016)—Last month, I was in Lincoln, Nebraska, for a multi-day meeting with most of our Salmon Pueblo Archaeological Research Collection (SPARC) team. Carrie Heitman of University of Nebraska-Lincoln (UNL) hosted the meeting. Worthy Martin of the University of Virginia-IATH was in attendance, bringing all his expertise from working […]

July 13th, 2016

It’s Complex

Daniel Agudelo, University of Michigan (Posted July 13, 2016)—On Saturday June 18 and Sunday June 19 we had the awesome pleasure of visiting Chaco Canyon and learning about Chacoan culture. Getting to Chaco was a trip in itself—over 10 miles of unpaved, hilly, and bumpy roads! I am so glad that this location as well […]

July 13th, 2016

The Durability of an Ancient Technology

Alyssa Kyper, Eastern New Mexico University (Posted on July 13, 2016)—Today was an excellent day on survey with Evan, Karen, and Jon. We spent the cool, crisp morning showing Karen an array of check dams and terraces on a bench above the Gila River we had surveyed earlier in the season, double-checking the area to […]

July 12th, 2016

A Room Revealed

Stacy L. Ryan, Teaching Assistant, Preservation Archaeology Field School (July 12, 2016)—Field school provides an opportunity to spend weeks getting to the bottom of a feature, and interpretations of what we encounter along the way can shift during the process. We proceed with patience and the desire to learn more about how people lived at […]

July 12th, 2016

Chasing the Past

Lindsay Romo, Cochise College (June 11, 2016)—Advancing knowledge of past people’s lives, beliefs, and practices for future research is one of Preservation Archaeology’s main goals. Leaving parts of the past for future excavations ameliorates the process of understanding what really took place within a site. We only have so much knowledge at this present time, […]

July 11th, 2016

Antelope Creek Obsidian

Kaitlyn Cometa, University of Delaware (July 12, 2016)—What is the first thing you think of when you hear someone refer to the obsidian at a specific source as “bomb” obsidian? Probably that you don’t want to be near it when it blows up. I however, was drawn to the idea of the “bomb” obsidian and […]

July 7th, 2016

The Nature of Archaeology

Lara Fields, Bryn Mawr College (July 7, 2016)—Since flying into Tucson, the Southwestern landscape has kept me in awe. From the dark orange expanse of the Sonoran desert to the tumbling grasslands of the Gila valley, I continue to be enthralled by a seemingly endless expanse of wilderness. Looking more closely, however, I begin to […]

July 5th, 2016

Investigating Kill Holes

Carolyn Barton, University of South Florida (July 4, 2016)—Nearly every budding archaeologist looks for a research area that captivates them; some immediately know what they want to specialize in. For me, that was far from the reality when I came to this field school. Every aspect of archaeology seemed to fascinate me, making me want […]

July 3rd, 2016

Community Outreach in Archaeology

Peter Babala, Santa Rosa Junior College (July 3, 2016)—A huge part of what initially attracted me to the field of archaeology was the sense of connection I get when I learn little more about the places I have lived and where the roots of my ancestries lie. It is a gift to have been given […]

July 1st, 2016

On Origins and Homecomings

Katelyn (Katie) Jacobson, University of California at Santa Cruz (July 1, 2016)—Listening to an origin story is a commitment. Migrations, war, a fall, an exodus, generations, exile, and a homecoming; crawling out of the sludge took 3.2 million years and if you want to stand out in the desert and tell someone how it went, […]

June 30th, 2016

The Importance of Floors: A Case Study of Feature 300

Jonathan Alperstein, Vassar College (June 29, 2016)—Whether you are working in a pit house or a pueblo room block, one of the most exciting parts of an excavation unit to work on is the floor fill. This year, while excavating the pueblo room we labeled Feature 300, we removed a grueling number of buckets of […]

June 28th, 2016

Understanding the Landscape They Lived in

Evan Giomi, Survey Director, University of Arizona (June 27, 2016)—Archaeological survey is the activity of locating, identifying, and recording archaeological sites to build a record that can be later used by archaeologists looking to put shovels in the ground or monitor any damage to the sites by vandalism or natural processes, like erosion. Although it […]

June 27th, 2016

Adobe Walls

Conner Awayda, SUNY–Buffalo (June 27, 2016)—Protecting from wind and rain, allowing cool temperatures in the summer, and heating in the winter, adobe makes up the walls of past homes. A mixture of sand and clay, adobe is made from earth and water. By mixing in water until the soil is the right consistency to be […]

June 18th, 2016

A Bee-Avoiding Field Trip

Emily Marturano, University of Pittsburgh (June 17, 2016)—What do you do when bees decide to take over your excavation site and force an impromptu day off while the hive is removed? Drive to the middle of the desert to look at rock art, of course. In the name of bee avoidance, we headed to the […]

June 17th, 2016

The Archaeology of Looting

Elissa McDavid, Hendrix College (June 16, 2016)—Before arriving at field school, I had imagined well-preserved sites disturbed by nothing more than a few animal burrows, adobe walls and floors that behaved nicely, and no looting. (Blame National Geographic glamour and the fact that no one really wants to publish the holes—literal or figurative—in our sites […]

June 14th, 2016

Leave-No-Trace Archaeology

Lexie Bennicas, University of Hawaii (June 14, 2016)—When my turn at archaeological survey came, Evan led us past rattlesnakes and through thick brush into the valley of the Gila to a hill on the outskirts of the floodplain. Within minutes of approaching the hill we found artifacts ranging from ancient ceramic sherds to historic glass […]

June 11th, 2016

In Appreciation

Patrick Depret-Guillaume, University of Virginia (June 11, 2016)—Attending field school has given me a renewed appreciation for the skill and ingenuity of humanity’s common ancestors. For millions of years, stone technology underpinned our survival. For centuries considered crude and primitive, anthropologists have now demonstrated these tools to be a sophisticated, living cultural idiom. This summer, […]

June 10th, 2016

A Memorable Success in Preservation Archaeology on Elk Ridge

Guest post by R. E. Burrillo, Archaeologist: Manti-La Sal National Forest, Moab-Monticello District, UT (June 9, 2016)—During the week of May 23, something wholly unremarkable and yet almost never talked about in the media took place in southeast Utah: a group of volunteers did important work and had a ton of fun doing it. For […]

June 8th, 2016

Survey Says…

Adam Sezate, Graduate of United States Naval Academy (June 8, 2016)–Under our survey supervisor, Evan Giomi, my partners and I had the opportunity to help the Nature Conservancy survey their land along the Gila River. My team and I were in search of any clues of past human settlement in an area several miles upriver […]

June 7th, 2016

Kickoff of Our 2016 Field School Blog Series

Karen Gust Schollmeyer, Preservation Archaeologist (June 7, 2016)—The 2016 field season brings several exciting changes for the Preservation Archaeology Field School. One of the biggest changes for us is a new excavation site. We finished our fieldwork at the Cliff phase (A.D. 1300–1450+) Dinwiddie site last summer, and have moved a few miles northeast to […]

April 28th, 2016

The Students Are Coming!

Karen Gust Schollmeyer, Preservation Archaeologist (April 28, 2016)—Our 2016 Preservation Archaeology Field School is only a month away! For me, late April brings a list of quirky archaeological tasks, such as ordering thousands of very specific plastic bags for artifact curation and researching portable toilet companies. Jeff Clark and I recently took a brief break […]

April 25th, 2016

New Mexico Park Visitation Rises

Paul F. Reed, Preservation Archaeologist (April 25, 2016)—The latest statistics show a dramatic increase in visitation to National Park Service (NPS) parks and monuments in New Mexico, for March 2016. Several factors may be responsible for the uptick, including a promotional push by the Park Service in conjunction with its 100-year anniversary. Given the threats […]

April 6th, 2016

Gorod Durakov, or What’s In a Name?

Jeff Clark, Preservation Archaeologist (April 5, 2016)—I spent a wonderful and exhausting six days in late March as a guide for a weeklong members’ tour of Salado and Classic Hohokam archaeological sites in the valleys of southern Arizona. Bill Doelle, Lyle Balenquah, and Alan Osbourne were my co-guides. Up shortly after dawn (yes, even me, […]

March 31st, 2016

Archaeology and Digital Technology, Plus an Update on the SPARC Project

Paul F. Reed, Preservation Archaeologist (March 31, 2016)—Scott Michlin welcomed me back to his San Juan College KSJE Morning Show in February. We discussed the role of digital technology in archaeology. You can listen to our conversation here. The primary topic for my radio chat with Scott was Archaeology Southwest’s SPARC (Salmon Pueblo Archaeological Research […]

March 30th, 2016

Bunny Innominates

Karen Gust Schollmeyer, Preservation Archaeologist (March 30, 2016)—I recently finished analyzing animal bone from the Black Mountain site outside Deming, New Mexico, where Dr. Katy Putsavage (Eastern New Mexico University) led excavations from 2010–2012. One of the last bags I analyzed contained an interesting item: a jackrabbit hip-bone (or innominate) with the very end cut […]

March 8th, 2016

A Fine Day at Himdag Ki

Allen Denoyer, Preservation Archaeologist and Ancient Technologies Expert (March 8, 2016)—On February 26, a group of us gathered under an expansive mesquite ramada at Himdag Ki, the Tohono O’odham Cultural Center and Museum in Topawa, Arizona. I had been invited to show the group how to make atlatls using only stone tools. I had planned […]

March 2nd, 2016

Where Are They Now? Part 2

Karen Gust Schollmeyer, Preservation Archaeologist (March 1, 2016)—This is the second of two posts checking in with a few of our recent field school alumni to see what they’re up to now. Although we’ve been focusing on anthropological career paths in this series, I’ve also enjoyed watching many former students go on to apply their […]

February 25th, 2016

Rewarding Award

Karen Gust Schollmeyer, Preservation Archaeologist (February 25, 2016)—Jeff Clark and I recently received the happy news that our Upper Gila Preservation Archaeology Field School has received three years of student funding from the National Science Foundation’s (NSF) Research Experiences for Undergraduates (REU) program (Award 1560465). REU programs are a little different from many NSF grants […]

February 18th, 2016

Where Are They Now? Part 1

Karen Gust Schollmeyer, Preservation Archaeologist (February 18, 2016)—This summer’s field school in the Upper Gila area of southwest New Mexico will mark the fifth year of our successful partnership with the University of Arizona (UA) to offer archaeological field training as a college-level course through the UA School of Anthropology. As applications from this year’s […]

February 8th, 2016

Like a Live Wire

Andy Laurenzi, Southwest Field Representative (February 8, 2016)—Chaco Canyon, Mesa Verde, Catalina State Park’s Romero Ruin, Pueblo Grande Museum, Flagstaff’s Picture Canyon, Tubac Presidio State Historic Park—here in the American Southwest, there are ample opportunities to connect with the past. Like most people, when I’m at one of these special places, I can’t help but […]

January 26th, 2016

Engaging Posters

Karen Gust Schollmeyer, Preservation Archaeologist (January 26, 2016)—Two weeks ago, many of us here in Tucson enjoyed attending the 15th Biennial Southwest Symposium. It’s primarily a research conference for professionals, somewhat like the Society for American Archaeology (SAA) meetings I wrote about back in April. Unlike the SAA meetings, however, this conference is focused specifically […]

January 21st, 2016

An Adobe Pompeii

Doug Gann, Preservation Archaeologist and Digital Media Specialist (January 21, 2016)—When reading book reviews or other arguments in archaeology, one of the more common put-downs is the dreaded “Pompeii premise.” An archaeologist accused of this, so it goes, has been naive in assuming that the objects found in a given place reflect the actual last use […]

Aerial Photograph of the Early Agricultural Period Site of Las Capas. Image Copyright Henry Wallace 2011

January 12th, 2016

You’re Invited: Making Archaeology Public

Sarah Herr, Senior Project Director, Desert Archaeology, Inc. (January 12, 2016)—This Thursday night in Tucson, the 15th biennial Southwest Symposium opens. The Southwest Symposium has always been one of my favorite archaeological conferences, as archaeologists working in the Southwest United States and Northwest Mexico gather to discuss new research, new theories, and new ways of […]

December 31st, 2015

Archaeology Southwest’s Most Memorable Moments of 2015

Kate Sarther Gann, Communications Coordinator (December 31, 2015)—Inspired by a clever post from our friends at the Friends of Cedar Mesa, we decided to compile our own list. So, with a hat-tip to Amanda Nichols and Josh Ewing at FCM, we give you, in no particular order, Archaeology Southwest’s Most Memorable Moments of 2015 […]

December 29th, 2015

Protecting the Greater Chaco Landscape: December 2015 Update

Paul F. Reed, Preservation Archaeologist (December 29, 2015)—The last two months have been very busy and productive as we continue our efforts to protect the fragile and irreplaceable Greater Chaco Landscape. We convened two Southwest regional public forums. The first was held at Crow Canyon Archaeological Center, outside Cortez, Colorado, on November 21. Our panel […]

December 17th, 2015

My Flintknapping Problem

Allen Denoyer, Preservation Archaeologist and Ancient Technologies Expert (December 17, 2015)—I was reading an old book (1927) about artifact collecting recently, and I came across a funny line. The author, Virgil Y. Russell, offered this advice on how to make “Indian arrowheads”: Don’t. Never even try. It is just as foolish as it would be […]

November 19th, 2015

A Refugee Story, A.D. 1275

Karen Gust Schollmeyer, Preservation Archaeologist (November 19, 2015)—I’m going to tell a story—as close to a true story as I can, but a story nonetheless. Seven hundred and forty years ago, groups of people fled their homes, seeking escape from political turmoil and economic hardships. A drought had stirred unrest in the already-troubled region. Old […]

November 13th, 2015

Public Forum to Promote Preservation of the Greater Chaco and Mesa Verde Landscapes

Paul F. Reed, Preservation Archaeologist (November 13, 2015)—Today, I want to send a fairly short message via blog to our supporters and members. Archaeology Southwest and Crow Canyon are pleased to announce a public forum to promote protection of the Greater Chaco and Mesa Verde Landscapes. The event will be held on Saturday, November 21, […]

November 6th, 2015

Let the Mystery Vanish

Kate Sarther Gann, Communications Coordinator mystery — noun mys·tery \ˈmis-t(ə-)rē\ 2 a: something not understood or beyond understanding: enigma vanish — verb van·ish \ˈva-nish\ 1 a: to pass quickly from sight: disappear; b: to pass completely from existence “The greatest vanishing act in prehistoric America,” Nature, 11/3/15. Excellent article, erroneous headline. Toward the end of […]

October 28th, 2015

Invest in Ourselves, in Our Sense of Place

Bill Doelle, President & CEO (October 28, 2015)—Archaeology Southwest is an enthusiastic supporter of the seven Pima County bond proposals that are on the November 3 ballot. Our mission—to explore and protect the places of our past—is at the core of many of the bond projects. In previous bond elections, Pima County voters overwhelmingly approved […]

October 22nd, 2015

Carrying Gila Bend to Washington and Making “National Significance” Personal

Bill Doelle, President & CEO (October 22, 2015)—As the month of September drew to a close, a group of 13 set out early on a gray Washington, D.C. morning to fulfill an educational mission. We assembled at 7:00 a.m. at the offices of the National Trust for Historic Preservation. Our team members included two from […]

October 17th, 2015

Happy International Archaeology Day!

(October 17, 2015)—So, by now you have read our stories. (If you haven’t, check out the links below). What ties all this to International Archaeology Day? There are a few common themes to consider: A sense of something bigger than this time and place An innate interest in and respect for humanity An interest in […]

October 17th, 2015

Fortuities

Andy Laurenzi, Southwest Field Representative (October 17, 2015)—I’m not an archaeologist, so the question I’ll answer is, how is it that I’m working for Archaeology Southwest? Logically, one would expect an archaeologist to work for an outfit that does archaeology. So here is a bit about my path to archaeology, and though it may not […]

October 16th, 2015

How a Sense of Place Made Sense of the Past

Between now and October 17, 2015, Archaeology Southwest is participating in the Archaeological Institute of America’s celebration of International Archaeology Day (10/17/15) by sharing blog posts about why—or how—we became archaeologists. Today we feature Kathleen Bader, who designs the beautiful magazines and other printed material that you receive from Archaeology Southwest. And she runs our […]

October 16th, 2015

I Found Nothing

Between now and October 17, 2015, Archaeology Southwest is participating in the Archaeological Institute of America’s celebration of International Archaeology Day (10/17/15) by sharing blog posts about why—or how—we became archaeologists. Today we feature Preservation Archaeologist and 3D wizard Doug Gann, who has been creating digital representations of the past for almost 30 years. Previous […]

October 15th, 2015

The Perfect Field

Between now and October 17, 2015, Archaeology Southwest is participating in the Archaeological Institute of America’s celebration of International Archaeology Day (10/17/15) by sharing blog posts about why—or how—we became archaeologists. Today we feature Linda Pierce, Deputy Director. Previous posts in the series are here. Linda Pierce, Deputy Director (October 15, 2015)—Why did I become […]

October 15th, 2015

Deep Roots and Archaeological Obsession

Between now and October 17, 2015, Archaeology Southwest is participating in the Archaeological Institute of America’s celebration of International Archaeology Day (10/17/15) by sharing blog posts about why—or how—we became archaeologists. Today we feature Paul Reed, Preservation Archaeologist and leader of Archaeology Southwest’s efforts to address oil and gas exploration in the Greater Chacoan Landscape. […]

October 14th, 2015

From Arrowhead Hunter to Archaeologist

Between now and October 17, 2015, Archaeology Southwest is participating in the Archaeological Institute of America’s celebration of International Archaeology Day (10/17/15) by sharing blog posts about why—or how—we became archaeologists. Today we feature Allen Denoyer, who leads our Hands-On Archaeology program. Previous posts in the series are here. Allen Denoyer, Preservation Archaeologist and Ancient […]

October 14th, 2015

Fateful Bananas

Between now and October 17, 2015, Archaeology Southwest is participating in the Archaeological Institute of America’s celebration of International Archaeology Day (10/17/15) by sharing blog posts about why—or how—we became archaeologists. Today we feature Jeffery Clark, Preservation Archaeologist at Archaeology Southwest and Adjunct Associate Professor, University of Arizona. Previous posts in the series are here. […]

October 13th, 2015

The People

Between now and October 17, 2015, Archaeology Southwest is participating in the Archaeological Institute of America’s celebration of International Archaeology Day (10/17/15) by sharing blog posts about why—or how—we became archaeologists. Tonight we feature Communications Coordinator and Archaeology Southwest Magazine Content Editor Kate Gann. Previous posts in the series are here. Kate Sarther Gann, Communications […]

October 13th, 2015

A Long and Winding Road

Between now and October 17, 2015, Archaeology Southwest is participating in the Archaeological Institute of America’s celebration of International Archaeology Day (10/17/15) by sharing blog posts about why—or how—we became archaeologists. Today we feature Leslie Aragon, frequent collaborator, Ph.D. student at the University of Arizona School of Anthropology, and Field Director of the Preservation Archaeology […]

October 12th, 2015

How Bad Poetry Can Lead to a Career in Archaeology

Between now and October 17, 2015, Archaeology Southwest is participating in the Archaeological Institute of America’s celebration of International Archaeology Day (10/17/15) by sharing blog posts about why—or how—we became archaeologists. We hope you enjoy this very personal look at our staff members and the experiences that changed their lives. Today we feature Preservation Fellow […]

October 11th, 2015

Other Archaeologists

Between now and October 17, 2015, Archaeology Southwest is participating in the Archaeological Institute of America’s celebration of International Archaeology Day (10/17/15) by sharing blog posts about why—or how—we became archaeologists. We hope you enjoy this very personal look at our staff members and the experiences that changed their lives. Today we feature Preservation Archaeologist […]

October 10th, 2015

The Making of a Preservation Archaeologist

Between now and October 17, 2015, Archaeology Southwest is participating in the Archaeological Institute of America’s celebration of International Archaeology Day (10/17/15) by sharing blog posts about why—or how—we became archaeologists. We hope you enjoy this very personal look at our staff members and the experiences that changed their lives forever. Today we feature Aaron […]

October 9th, 2015

The Reluctant Archaeologist and Archaeology as a Gateway

Between now and October 17, 2015, Archaeology Southwest is participating in the Archaeological Institute of America’s celebration of International Archaeology Day (10/17/15) by sharing blog posts about why—or how—we became archaeologists. We hope you enjoy this very personal look at our staff members and the experiences that changed their lives forever. We begin with our […]

October 8th, 2015

Indiana O’Brien and the Raiders of the Maze

Lewis Borck, Preservation Archaeology Fellow (October 8, 2015)—Over the last couple of days I’ve been attempting to fulfill a long-standing personal goal. This means that I’ve been frantically, frenetically, and furiously working on the last two parts of my dissertation with not much else on my mind other than my children. Dissertations, much like children, […]

October 6th, 2015

Ancient Engineering: “Hanging” Canals

Archaeology Southwest is honored to feature “The Prehistoric Bajada ‘Hanging’ Canals of the Safford Basin: Small Corporate Group Engineering in Southeastern Arizona,” written by James A. Neely, Professor Emeritus, University of Texas, and co-researcher Don Lancaster of Thatcher, Arizona, especially for our Preservation Archaeology blog. This update follows on Dr. Neely’s post from April 2014. […]

Not an archaeologist. (Photo by National Photo Company [Public domain], via Wikimedia Commons)

October 3rd, 2015

Top Ten Myths and Misconceptions about Archaeology

By Paul F. Reed, Preservation Archaeologist (October 3, 2015)—This past June, I joined Scott Michlin on the Morning Show (San Juan College KSJE) and offered my list of the Top Ten Myths and Misconceptions in Archaeology (link goes to podcast). I treated this as a fairly light-hearted exercise—certainly nothing to get too worked up over! […]

October 2nd, 2015

Gopher Jaws and the Past

Karen Gust Schollmeyer, Preservation Archaeologist (October 2, 2015)—I spent this week in beautiful southwestern Colorado working on the first phase of a new research project using animal bone chemistry to examine how people’s access to food animals changed over time in the Mesa Verde area. I wrote about this project on our blog a few […]

September 29th, 2015

Making Atlatls

Allen Denoyer, Preservation Archaeologist and Ancient Technologies Expert (September 30, 2015)—We carved atlatls again at this past summer’s Preservation Archaeology Field School, but this year the students had to use stone tools for the carving work. Previously, we used modern hand tools like wood rasps and files. I had experimented a lot with carving wood […]

September 17th, 2015

Four Words

By Kate Sarther Gann, Communications Coordinator (September 17, 2015)—Earlier this afternoon, Kathleen took a call from a mom in California who was helping her sixth grader with a homework assignment. They couldn’t find the answers on our website, so they reached out to us by phone. Kathleen put the questions to us via email, and […]

August 31st, 2015

Wish Granted

Karen Gust Schollmeyer, Preservation Archaeologist My colleague Mike Diehl and I recently heard the good news that we’ve received a National Science Foundation grant (BCS-1524079). When I told my family about it at dinner that night, my youngest daughter asked what a “grant” was. I told her that when scientists want to study something we […]

August 24th, 2015

Woodrow Ruin Revealed

Jakob Sedig, University of Colorado, Boulder (August 24, 2015)—For the past four years, I have been conducting research at Woodrow Ruin, a large, multicomponent site on the upper Gila River. (“Multicomponent” means that the site bears evidence of people being there in more than one distinct cultural period.) Although archaeologists have been interested in Woodrow […]

August 19th, 2015

August 2015 Update on Preserving the Greater Chaco Landscape

By Paul F. Reed, Preservation Archaeologist (August 19, 2015)—Earlier this week, U.S. District Judge James Browning rejected an effort by environmental groups to stop oil and gas development in northwestern New Mexico. This ruling was a disappointment, because a break in the action would have allowed the Bureau of Land Management (BLM) to complete work […]

August 7th, 2015

Raising the Roof

Allen Denoyer, Preservation Archaeologist and Ancient Technologies Expert (August 7, 2015)—The process began before the students arrived. After obtaining a Forest Service permit, I cut a couple of loads of juniper poles for the roof. I cut the poles when they were green, so they were heavy! I had the students use stone axes to […]

July 24th, 2015

People’s Stuff

By Kate Sarther Gann, Communications Coordinator (July 24, 2015)—Archaeologists examine people’s stuff. As a former assistant museum curator, I can tell you that people’s stuff—at least, once that stuff is “vintage”—is pretty nifty. One of my favorite artifacts in the collections of the Arizona State Museum is a Tucson dog tag (license) from the […]

July 23rd, 2015

2015 Field School Wrap-Up

Karen Gust Schollmeyer, Field School Co-Director and Preservation Archaeologist (July 23, 2015)—The end of the Upper Gila Preservation Archaeology Field School is always a bittersweet time, as students and staff members say goodbye to the teammates we’ve worked and lived with for six very intense weeks. For our students, it’s time to move on to […]

July 17th, 2015

Using a Multidisciplinary Approach to Interpret Artifacts

Lindsay Shepard, Arizona State University As an archaeology student, a question I’m frequently asked is, “How do you know that (insert artifact name here) was really used in that way?” Because the objects I study are not accompanied by textual evidence, some of my non-archaeologist friends are skeptical as to whether or not we can […]

July 16th, 2015

Flakes, Points, and Little Obsidian Discs

Stacy Ryan, Lithics Lab Director, Preservation Archaeology Field School Now that excavations at the Dinwiddie site are complete, the students are focused on writing detailed summaries about what we’ve learned these past five weeks. Our days here have been incredibly full with fieldwork, ceramics and lithics labs, and evening lectures. These last few days at […]

July 15th, 2015

In the kaigim of our ancestors who once inhabited this land

Marcy Pablo, Tohono O’odham College kaigim [guy-gym]—animal hide sandals (Tohono O’odham word for sandals) My journey started out at our local Himdag Ki: cultural center and museum on the Tohono O’odham Nation. While taking a couple of archaeology classes at Pima Community College, I became interested in archaeology, and now I am attending my first […]

July 14th, 2015

The Sirens

Dushyant Naresh, Vassar College Eyelids slowly wilt as the soothing hum of the car engine lulls me to sleep. The rising sun casts a golden glow across the endless landscape, with subtle magentas, yellows, and blues fusing together the feathery clouds. Desert grasses and prickly pear cacti blanket the soil, stretching into the distance as […]

July 13th, 2015

Learning the Landscape

Barry Price Steinbrecher, Survey Director, Preservation Archaeology Field School The 2015 survey component of the field school primarily focused on surveying land on the Pitchfork Ranch in the Burro Mountains south of Silver City. The ranch owners generously hosted us as we hiked our way through the rolling hills of their ranch, scaling the terraces […]

July 10th, 2015

Connecting the Past to the Present

Anna Porter, State University of New York at Buffalo The first thing that comes to mind when you think about archaeology is not usually involvement in modern society. Archaeologists study things that happened thousands of years ago—how could this be relevant to today? What I learned at this field school, however, is that community is […]

July 8th, 2015

Career Directions

Victoria Bowler, University of New Mexico Since graduating with an Anthropology degree three years ago, I have been putting off graduate school and roaming to and from National Park Service sites in the Southwest. My seasonal nomadic employment has supplied me with so many friends and networks and a glimpse into a possible lifetime career […]

July 8th, 2015

Necessary

Alisha Stalley, Northern Arizona University In early February, I began the relatively short quest of finding a field school to attend. After receiving my acceptance letter from Karen Schollmeyer on behalf of Archaeology Southwest, I excitedly told my close friends and family, some of whom asked why it was so important and if it was […]

July 7th, 2015

My Brief Break from Quantitative Analysis

Lindsay Shepard, Arizona State University When it comes to archaeological research, I tend to stick to the technical side of things. I especially enjoy using technologies such as laser scanning and 3-D modeling to analyze artifacts and features to gather quantitative data. Because of my preference for these types of analyses, I typically consider questions […]

July 2nd, 2015

Meeting with Senator Tom Udall at Chaco Canyon

By Paul F. Reed, Preservation Archaeologist June 30, 2015—As many of you know, I’ve been actively engaged in protecting the Greater Chaco Landscape for much of the last year. Impacts to this amazing landscape from the development of oil-gas facilities in association with the Mancos Shale play could be severe. I think that our efforts, […]

June 25th, 2015

Contrasts

Connor Walsh, University of Notre Dame Several months ago, when I was considering my options for an archaeological field school, I hoped to choose a school which would broaden my experience; all of my previous work was in Ireland, and I knew that my base of knowledge was therefore limited to the idiosyncrasies of archaeology […]

June 25th, 2015

Welcome to the Grand Ballroom

By Will Russell, Ceramics Lab Director, Preservation Archaeology Field School From what I gather, blog posts are supposed to be insightful, so I’ll apologize up front. This isn’t going to solve any of life’s riddles. Rather, it’s more an expression of interpretive frustration. You see, we started finding these little clay balls in the pueblo […]

June 23rd, 2015

Survey equals fun; sort of.

Diana Trevizo, Eastern New Mexico University The first time I heard that we were going to have the opportunity to participate in archaeological survey in addition to excavation, I was ecstatic! Before attending this field school, I had participated in mock excavations at Eastern New Mexico University and thus had a general idea of what […]

June 22nd, 2015

New Normal

Alexandra Norwood, Arizona State University To me, field school has been all about new experiences. New isn’t always better and adjustment has been, in large part, learning to love some part of any situation. There have been struggles: frustration when the excavators in other units find artifacts and I only find centipedes, moths getting into […]

June 21st, 2015

Ideologies of Inclusion

Alexander Ballesteros, Northern Arizona University The Southwest United States has a long history of cultural coalescence, and as a fourth-generation Arizonan, I have a firsthand glimpse at the history of group aggregations in the region. Some historic instances of cultural coalescence in Arizona include the Spanish conquest of indigenous populations and various migrations into the […]

June 19th, 2015

The Spark

Monica Veale, University of Texas at Arlington As a child, my first experience with archaeology was a long road trip to Portland, Oregon, for a family reunion. The trip involved stops in Mesa Verde National Park, Bandelier National Monument, and Gila Cliff Dwellings. I was only eight years old at the time, but I can […]

June 18th, 2015

What We’re Doing at the 2015 Field School

Karen Gust Schollmeyer, Preservation Archaeologist As you can tell if you’re following Archaeology Southwest on Facebook, our 2015 field season is off and running! This year, as in the past, students are rotating through experiences in excavation, archaeological survey, field laboratory analysis, and experimental archaeology. Our twelve undergraduates and two graduate students have come together […]

June 17th, 2015

Preservation and Purpose at the PZ Ranch

By Andy Laurenzi, Southwest Field Representative All buildings—whether agricultural, residential, industrial, or commercial—are built with a purpose and function in mind. The owners spend money to construct and maintain the structure to fulfill that purpose and function. There is an economic calculus at play that balances the financial costs against the value of the purpose […]

June 16th, 2015

New Skills

Joe Hall, Cochise College Part of our field school experimental archaeology work includes a hike to the San Francisco River to work on flinknapping and atlatl carving. On our recent hike with instructor Allen Denoyer, fellow student Lindsay Shepard and I were lucky to be accompanied by visiting guest and archaeobotanist Dr. Karen Adams. As […]

June 10th, 2015

Construction of Ancient Weapons

Devinne Fackelman, Grand Valley State University A few days ago, I was given the opportunity to construct two common and well-used ancient weapons: a dart point (kind of like an arrowhead, but not used with an arrow) and an atlatl. I had flintknapped and thrown an atlatl dart in the past, but not to the […]

June 9th, 2015

Cave Creek Midden Site: A Collaborative Site Protection Story, Part 2

By Linda Pierce, Deputy Director On this blog, Andy Laurenzi recently described the collaborative process that led to Archaeology Southwest’s acceptance of a conservation easement on a 51-acre parcel in southeastern Arizona. The purpose of this easement is to protect, in perpetuity, the significant archaeological resources located on the property, making them available for future […]

June 9th, 2015

Tent Life

Alexandra Flores, Beloit College Growing up in a big city has its pros and cons, one of the latter being that I have not had a lot of outdoor camping experience. I have slept in a tent a couple times in the past, but not for 5 weeks straight. Before this field school I had […]

June 2nd, 2015

Pottery Workshop with Andy Ward

Allen Denoyer, Preservation Archaeologist and Ancient Technologies Expert The field school students and some of the staff took part in a pottery workshop on the afternoon of the 31st. Potter Andy Ward presented the workshop. He brought out two buckets of prepared clay for the students and staff to try their hands at making […]

June 1st, 2015

Preparations

Leslie Aragon, Excavation Director and University of Arizona Doctoral Program The beginning of the summer field school season is always an exciting time of year. Every year, the staff of the Upper Gila Preservation Archaeology (UGPA) field school (a partnership between Archaeology Southwest and the University of Arizona School of Anthropology) heads out a week […]

May 28th, 2015

A Family Affair

By Andy Laurenzi, Southwest Field Representative May 28, 2015—In fall 2011, I arranged to visit Spier 142, a large pueblo site in the El Morro valley. We hold a conservation easement on 160 acres, most of which protects the site. Because driving to El Morro is a long trip, I made a few calls—as I […]

May 21st, 2015

Tucson: Ancient, Historic, and Modern

Doug Gann, Preservation Archaeologist and Digital Media Specialist May 20, 2015—Last Friday morning, as I left for the office, my daughter asked what I wanted for dinner that evening. (She’s learning to write, and wanted to make out a shopping list.) I told her it would depend—on whether or not we had something to celebrate. That […]

May 20th, 2015

Touring the Majestic Chaco Landscape

By Paul F. Reed, Preservation Archaeologist May 21, 2015—Over the past few months, I have continued to advocate for protection of the Greater Chaco Landscape. This has included attending a number of meetings with Bureau of Land Management (BLM) and other officials, conducting a tour of the Chaco Landscape with several Pueblo leaders, and engaging […]

May 19th, 2015

Protection for Los Gigantes

Matt Peeples, Preservation Archaeologist May 19, 2015—Archaeology Southwest is very pleased to announce that we’ve recently purchased the Los Gigantes archaeological site from the ranching family in the El Morro Valley of west-central New Mexico who has protected it for generations. This ancestral Zuni site is one of the most important precontact (before the arrival […]

May 15th, 2015

Cave Creek Midden Site: A Collaborative Site Protection Story

By Andy Laurenzi, Southwest Field Representative May 15, 2015—Long-term preservation of archaeological sites is a core element of Preservation Archaeology. Ensuring that important places are available to inform scientific inquiry well into the future is essential to understanding and sharing the past, in order to revisit older ideas and take advantage of new advances in […]

May 12th, 2015

What Is Public Archaeology?

By Paul F. Reed, Preservation Archaeologist May 12, 2015—Scott Michlin welcomed me back to his morning radio program in March (listen here). We discussed the realm of public archaeology. “Public,” in this case, refers to the funding stream and to the nature of the work completed. The initiation of publicly funded archaeology on a large […]

April 28th, 2015

How Far Did They Carry Those Deer? And Where Did All Those Turkeys Come from?

Karen Gust Schollmeyer, Preservation Archaeologist April 28, 2015—I recently received the good news that a new project we’re starting here at Archaeology Southwest has been funded by the National Science Foundation (BCS-1460385). I’ll be working with Jeffrey Ferguson, an archaeological chemistry expert from the Archaeometry Laboratory at the University of Missouri Research Reactor, who has […]

April 27th, 2015

Reporting Archaeology: Lost and Found (UPDATE)

Dr. Christopher Fisher, one of the researchers involved with the project Mr. Castillo discussed in his guest post of March 17, 2015, contacted us with comments. First, we share Dr. Fisher’s comments, followed by Mr. Castillo’s response. Mr. Castillo’s original post follows these updates. Christopher Fisher’s comments (April 17, 2015): As one of the archaeologists […]

April 22nd, 2015

Are You an Entomologist or a Pest Control Expert? We Have Questions…

Allen Denoyer, Preservation Archaeologist and Ancient Technologies Expert One of the interesting things I have noticed out at the replica pithouse at Steam Pump Ranch in Oro Valley, Arizona, is the amount of termite damage to the ramada we built next to the pithouse. We built the ramada of mesquite. The four main support poles […]

April 15th, 2015

What Most of Us Are Doing This Week: Ridiculously Long Titles Edition

Karen Gust Schollmeyer, Preservation Archaeologist Many of us here at Archaeology Southwest will be spending part of this week in San Francisco, California, at the Society for American Archaeology Annual Meeting. Every year, thousands of archaeologists flock to a different North American city to overwhelm local hotels, convention centers, ethnic restaurants, and cheap bars, where […]

April 14th, 2015

My Week in Paradise (of a sort)

Allen Denoyer, Preservation Archaeologist and Ancient Technologies Expert From February 15–21, I attended an outdoor primitive technology encampment called Winter Count located near Phoenix. Experts in a wide variety of ancient technology skills gather twice a year to share their knowledge with students and each other. Winter Count is a great way to improve one’s […]

March 27th, 2015

A Glorious Morning

By Kate Sarther Gann, Content Editor, Archaeology Southwest Magazine My daughter proved herself apt at hunting (fake) small mammals with a throwing stick. My neighbor’s son, who attended with his archaeologically famous grandparents, mastered atlatl throwing. My mother and I shaped, drilled, and strung a stone pendant. My husband, Preservation Archaeologist Doug Gann, enthusiastically […]

March 25th, 2015

Grant Award News: NEH Fuels SPARC

By Paul F. Reed, Preservation Archaeologist On March 23, we were thrilled to learn that the Salmon Pueblo Archaeological Research Collection (SPARC) project would be funded by the National Endowment for the Humanities (NEH). The total project funding is $300,000. The project will preserve and make accessible incomparable legacy data from the important excavations […]

March 11th, 2015

Cedar Mesa and Preservation Archaeology

Bill Doelle, President & CEO My number of waking hours in Bluff, Utah, was just slightly more than the 16-hour round-trip drive from Tucson to attend the annual Celebrate Cedar Mesa Weekend. It was well worth the effort. As the program rolled out to some 300 attendees, I was thrilled to see that it […]

March 4th, 2015

Shoot, Grind, Chop, and Burn!

By Karen Schollmeyer and Allen Denoyer One of the most exciting components of Archaeology Southwest’s growing Hands-On Archaeology program is the inclusion of public activities specifically geared toward residents of southwest New Mexico’s Upper Gila area. This area is the focus of our Preservation Archaeology Field School, and some of our research and preservation projects […]

February 24th, 2015

Learning from Broken Bunny Bones

Karen Gust Schollmeyer, Preservation Archaeologist A few years ago, when I was a graduate student, a bright young undergraduate came into the lab to ask about volunteering to help with animal bone analysis, or zooarchaeology. I will never forget the look of horror on his face when I poured a bag of broken animal bones […]

February 23rd, 2015

George McJunkin and the Discovery That Changed American Archaeology

Matt Peeples, Preservation Archaeologist On August 27, 1908, the small town of Folsom (population ~250) in northern New Mexico was hit by a cloudburst and drenched with a rapid and heavy rain. This storm caused some of the worst flooding ever recorded in the area. First-hand accounts in newspapers describe a harrowing night: water violently […]

February 9th, 2015

What Does Protection Really Mean?

Josh Ewing, Executive Director, Friends of Cedar Mesa Cedar Mesa and the landscape surrounding it are full of sacred places. Around almost every bend is another site where even the most detached type-A personality, like me, can connect with people and events far in the past. It’s places like this that provide opportunity for contemplation […]

February 6th, 2015

What I’m Doing This Week: Doug Gann

Doug Gann, Preservation Archaeologist and Digital Media Specialist This week’s tasks involve all my favorite things: ancient architecture, 3D modeling, Autocad, LIDAR scans and photogrammetry. Through the Colorado Plateau Cooperative Ecosystem Study Unit (CESU), I’ve been tasked with digitally documenting three backcountry cliff dwellings near Flagstaff at Walnut Canyon National Monument. I’ve done plenty of […]

February 6th, 2015

What I’m Doing This Week: Allen Denoyer

Allen Denoyer, Preservation Archaeologist and Ancient Technologies Expert Yesterday and today, I’ve been repairing our pilot pithouse at Steam Pump Ranch in Oro Valley, Arizona. In these pictures, volunteer Katie Bubnekovich is soaking the roof and I am floating it with a hand stone.

February 5th, 2015

AZ Residents: Call to Action!

Demion Clinco, Former Representative LD2, Arizona House of Representatives, and Archaeology Southwest Board Member ARIZONA HISTORIC PRESERVATION TAX CREDIT BEING CONSIDERED BY STATE LEGISLATURE Arizona State Representative Karen Fann of Prescott has introduced “HB2337: Historic Preservation Tax Credit.” HB2337 would create both an individual and corporate income tax credit for up to 25% of […]

February 5th, 2015

What I’m Doing This Week: Andy Laurenzi

By Andy Laurenzi, Southwest Field Representative This week I am wrapping up our work on the historic townsite of Feldman, Arizona, on the lower San Pedro River. Using funding by ASARCO, LLC, we are working in partnership with the University of Arizona Drachman Institute to provide an architectural documentation of the historic ranch house and […]

February 3rd, 2015

What I’m Doing This Week: Lewis Borck

By Lewis Borck, Preservation Archaeology Fellow This week, I’m doing data entry and synthesis for the Edge of Salado project, guest-editing the forthcoming Archaeology Southwest Magazine issue on the Gallina Branch, writing a research grant, writing a book review, and participating on the University of Arizona School of Anthropology’s Southwest Archaeology professor search committee. I’m […]

February 3rd, 2015

What I’m Doing This Week: Karen Schollmeyer

Karen Schollmeyer, Preservation Archaeologist This week, I am finishing up faunal analysis (animal remains) from Jakob Sedig’s excavations at Woodrow Ruin in the Upper Gila area. He had a field project there in 2012–2013 for his dissertation work. It’s interesting because it’s just a few miles from our field school at Dinwiddie, but from […]

February 2nd, 2015

What I’m Doing This Week: Paul Reed

By Paul F. Reed, Preservation Archaeologist This week, I’m continuing to advocate for protection of the Greater Chaco Landscape. We’re pleased to announce the completion of a short film by EcoFlight, in cooperation with the Partnership for Responsible Business and Archaeology Southwest. The film chronicles several recent flights over the Greater Chaco Landscape and […]

January 8th, 2015

From the Editor’s Desk

By Kate Sarther Gann, Content Editor, Archaeology Southwest Magazine Thoughts on Archaeology Southwest Magazine 28(3 & 4), “Tortuous and Fantastic: Cultural and Natural Wonders of Greater Cedar Mesa”: No doubt about it, this issue is a whopper. The biggest we’ve ever done, in terms of length, scope, and visual impact. Issue editor Bill Lipe, […]

January 2nd, 2015

Preserving the Greater Chaco Landscape

By Paul F. Reed, Preservation Archaeologist Together with the Partnership for Responsible Business and EcoFlight, I was fortunate to be involved in two flights over the San Juan Basin and the Chacoan landscape. In October and again in November, I flew with Bruce Gordon (EcoFlight) and a number of other folks. The flights were […]

Tumamoc Hill. Aerial photograph by Henry Wallace

December 21st, 2014

Help Create a New Preservation Partnership for Tumamoc Hill

A 2,000-Year-Old Hilltop Village next to Downtown Tucson Most people living in Tucson have no idea of the cultural history embedded at Tumamoc, the large mesa behind Sentinel Peak (aka “A” Mountain). Some 2,000 years ago, the ancient desert farmers of the Early Agricultural period built a huge trincheras settlement on the top of this hill. Traces of their homes […]

December 4th, 2014

Putting the People Back in Camp Naco

By Bill Doelle, President & CEO Camp Naco saw more than 500 visitors in the two days after Thanksgiving as part of the annual Bisbee Home Tour. That’s more people than were ever stationed there at one time! The association of Archaeology Southwest with Camp Naco started a decade ago when Becky Orozco, now of […]

December 3rd, 2014

Return to the Ojo Caliente Valley

By Paul F. Reed, Preservation Archaeologist This past week I was fortunate to go along on a SiteWatch visit with folks from the Ojo Caliente vicinity in New Mexico. We visited several sites up and down the Ojo Caliente Valley. To orient readers, the area lies north of Española, New Mexico, along the route […]

November 17th, 2014

Draw, Scan, Make, and Model: Complementary Approaches to Understanding Stone Tools

Lance K. Trask, Scientific Illustrator and Archaeology Southwest Member There has been a shift from publishing scientific illustrations of artifacts to publishing photographs. Although there are a number of reasons for this, the primary one is that technical illustrations are a unique art form, and there are increasingly fewer people trained in or practicing that […]

November 2nd, 2014

A Unique Preservation Opportunity

Doug Gann, Preservation Archaeologist and Digital Media Specialist We have a chance to preserve an intact ancient place, as well as a pristine stretch of Sonoran Desert. Some 700 years ago, a dynamic agricultural society flourished in the lowlands of the desert southwest, with large villages settled in places where permanent sources of water could […]

November 1st, 2014

Creepytings versus Rock Art and Banksy, Part 2

By Lewis Borck, Preservation Archaeology Fellow Read this first part of this post here. View examples of Creepytings’s graffiti at www.modernhiker.com. The second argument that bloggers and commentators have rolled out to defend Creepytings’s actions is that we shouldn’t view her work any differently from the rock art that is speckled across much of […]

November 1st, 2014

Creepytings versus Rock Art and Banksy

By Lewis Borck, Preservation Archaeology Fellow One of the things I like best about studying human behavior is exactly how confusing human behavior can be. What we do as archaeologists, anthropologists, sociologists, human geographers, and/or historians is much less like the frequently used jig-saw puzzle analogy and far more like a drunken game of […]

October 27th, 2014

Exegesis of a Southwestern Archaeologist, Part 2

By Steve Nash, Anthropology Department Chair, Denver Museum of Nature & Science Read Part 1 here. Neanderthals and Tree-Rings Sometime in mid-August 1988, I flew to Tucson on a direct flight from Chicago. I picked up my personal belongings—everything packed into a backpack and an old travel trunk—at the baggage carousel, and went to the […]

October 15th, 2014

Enough with that word!

By Kate Sarther Gann, Communications Coordinator I’m on a mission. My colleagues at Archaeology Southwest have heard this one before. They seem to appreciate my stance, so I’ve decided to continue evangelizing through this post. There is a word—so common in professional and academic archaeological writing—that I systematically eradicate from every piece of archaeological […]

October 8th, 2014

Of Poop, Toilet Paper, and Worms…

By Paul F. Reed, Preservation Archaeologist I visited Scott Michlin at KSJE for my regular monthly show last month. You can listen to our conversation here. The agenda this time—ancient poop! Quite literally, we discussed the importance of ancient feces—coprolites, as they are known—for archaeological studies. We discussed a recent analysis of ancient excrement […]

September 26th, 2014

Rooms of Our Own

Karen Schollmeyer, Preservation Archaeologist As one of the newest Archaeology Southwest staff members, I still marvel at how peaceful, inviting, and singular our workplace is. I’ve been spending a lot of time in the Archaeology Southwest library lately, researching older excavations in the Upper Gila area. Before starting this project, I hadn’t realized the […]

September 12th, 2014

Meltdown!

By Allen Denoyer, Preservation Archaeologist and Ancient Technologies Expert On September 8, 2014, southern Arizona received heavy rains from a hurricane (Norbert) moving up along the Baja California of Mexico. Previous rains had caused some damage to our pilot pithouse experiment, but Monday’s storm dropped around 4 inches of rain in Oro Valley, melting […]

September 11th, 2014

Flooding Down in Arizona

By Matt Peeples, Preservation Archaeologist For those of us living in central and southern Arizona, Monday was a record-breaking day of rain. Many parts of the Phoenix metro area received more than 3 to 5 inches within a 24-hour period. To put that in perspective, the Phoenix area typically gets about 9 to 10 […]

August 21st, 2014

Food and Fertility

By Paul F. Reed, Preservation Archaeologist and Chaco Scholar at Salmon Ruins I was on Scott Michlin’s radio show for my monthly visit in July. You can listen to our conversation here. The topic was a recent study that discussed an ancient baby boom among the Pueblo people of the Southwest. Tim Kohler and […]

July 24th, 2014

The Science of Playing in the Mud

Jacqueline Fox, Preservation Archaeology Field School Student For many, the lure of archaeology is its interdisciplinary nature. Incorporating hard science into social theory has provided us with a continually growing understanding of past lives and ancient places. Although the Preservation Archaeology Field School exposed us to many of the processes that make this discipline the […]

July 11th, 2014

All Us and No Them

Will Russell, Field Supervisor In less than a week, we’ll all be home. Our other homes. The ones before we made this one. We finished backfilling yesterday and were blessed with cloud cover, making the heat and dust bearable. In the distance, over the Black Range, we could see rays of sunlight piercing the grey […]

July 10th, 2014

Learning Lithics at Mule Creek

By Stacy Ryan For me, the words “Mule Creek” have always brought to mind the obsidian from this area, which people in the past used to make stone tools, and which was widely distributed. For this reason, Mule Creek is an especially interesting place to teach students about flaked stone technology. During the field school […]

July 9th, 2014

Connections and Reflections

Erin Verbeck, Preservation Archaeology Field School Student I am a junior at Vanderbilt University (Nashville, TN) studying anthropology and political science. This is my first time in the Southwest, and I am continually surprised by how vibrant and beautiful the landscape is—not to mention how hot it is! As a native of Minnesota, where we […]

July 8th, 2014

Building Blocks for Understanding the Past

Andrew Finn, Preservation Archaeology Field School Student Throughout my time here at the Preservation Archaeology Field School, I have vastly expanded my knowledge of preservation archaeology and archaeology as a whole. I have always been very interested in the technology used by the ancient groups that we are learning about, and through the experimental archaeology […]

July 7th, 2014

The Interpretive Process: A Student’s Perspective

Aaron Trumbo, Preservation Archaeology Field School Student At this year’s Preservation Archaeology Field School, we are fortunate to have the opportunity to excavate within a pueblo room block that is currently threatened by a road cut. The road has already destroyed much of this pueblo, but we are digging within two never-before-excavated rooms that are […]

July 2nd, 2014

Attributes of the Successful Archaeologist: A Field Study

Izzy Starr, Preservation Archaeology Field School Student In every field of study, it seems as though there are certain sets of traits that tend to fare better than others. At the Preservation Archaeology Field School, I have had the opportunity to observe archaeologists at work, and now I have some speculations as to the characteristics […]

July 1st, 2014

A Community of Learners

Christopher Davis, Preservation Archaeology Field School Student Over the course of three weeks, I have learned a great deal about Southwestern archaeology and the close-knit community of people who study it. But I have also learned more about myself, as an aspiring archaeologist. Upon arrival, I plunged into an endless realm of new knowledge branching […]

June 30th, 2014

A Lesson Quickly Learned

Maxwell Forton, Preservation Archaeology Field School Student A lesson quickly learned: not every excavation is going to unearth the find of the century. All too often, a unit is going to fail to meet your hopes and expectations. My group’s excavations atop the hill overlooking the Dinwiddie site failed to yield the preserved architecture that […]

June 28th, 2014

Seeing is Believing: The Importance of Field Trips

Danielle Gilbert, Preservation Archaeology Field School Student Preservation, excavation, and education are just a few of the goals of the Preservation Archaeology Field School, and after only three weeks in the field, I feel that I have a new appreciation and understanding of these concepts. I have seen and learned many things through working at […]

June 27th, 2014

Field School Proverbs

Selena Soto, Preservation Archaeology Field School Student Hi all! This is my third week here at the Preservation Archaeology Field School in New Mexico, and it has been an exhilarating experience so far! I have never been on an archaeological dig before, so I have been soaking in all of the knowledge and all of […]

June 26th, 2014

Archaeology in the Southwestern and Eastern United States

Alex Covert, Preservation Archaeology Field School Student I participated in a field school in Virginia last summer, and that experience was quite different from the one I’m having in New Mexico this summer. Through these two experiences, I have realized that archaeology varies greatly depending on where one is working. In Virginia, the program took […]

June 25th, 2014

A Dilemma Solved

Madisen Dancer, Preservation Archaeology Field School Student When I was accepted into the Archaeology Southwest/University of Arizona field school this past March, I was delighted. I was also ready to tackle a problem I had been considering since deciding to change my major to geography: how might archaeology and geography complement each other? Before coming […]

June 24th, 2014

Archaeology and You

Kaelyn Olson, Preservation Archaeology Field School Student One of the strangest things about my first time in the Southwest is being surrounded by experienced graduate students and archaeological professionals. Initially, I felt as if I was completely out of my league. They spoke in code, using terms like, “sherds,” “lithics,” and “screens,” and the only […]

June 19th, 2014

Even the Smallest Piece

Will Russell, Field Supervisor One of the highlights of teaching is the look of discovery and excitement on a student’s face. Recently, I was wiping sweat from my eyes and filling out paperwork amidst a cloud of dust shaken from the screens when I heard Andrew say, “Hey, Will, take a look at this!” […]

June 13th, 2014

Rusty American Dream

By Lewis Borck, Preservation Archaeology Fellow Ahhhhhhh, the scent of green chiles, sage, piñon, dust, ponderosa…and a vehicle full of sweaty, tired folk who have lost all sense of societal norms. It must be field school season again. This year, my job is to lead the survey portion of the Preservation Archaeology Field School. […]

June 12th, 2014

Slow and Steady, the Ancient Way

Riley Duke, Preservation Archaeology Field School Student Hello, Archaeology Southwest blog readers! So far, my time at the Preservation Archaeology Field School has been nothing less than fantastic. I have spent the majority of my time either in the field excavating or with staff members working in experimental archaeology. My excavation group and I are […]

June 11th, 2014

From the Book to the Field

Hannah Zanotto, Preservation Archaeology Field School Student After a week in the field, I am finally gaining the experience I have been searching for since my first archaeology lecture on my first day of college. Three weeks ago, I graduated from Arizona State University with a B.A. in Anthropology. As an undergraduate, I spent countless […]

June 10th, 2014

Celebrating World Atlatl Day

Allen Denoyer and Karen Schollmeyer, Preservation Archaeologists The end of our students’ first full week in camp coincided with World Atlatl Day (June 7). This summer, field school students are rotating through experiences in experimental archaeology, as well as the more traditional excavation and survey course components. They have been working hard making their own […]

June 9th, 2014

Prelude to Fieldwork

Leslie Aragon, Field Supervisor Last week, we kicked off the 2014 Preservation Archaeology Field School. Students arrived in Tucson from all over the country, from Hawaii to Massachusetts, and spent a few days learning about Preservation Archaeology and Salado culture. At the Himdag Ki museum in Topawa, Arizona, students met members of the Tohono O’odham […]

June 3rd, 2014

Teaching and Research at the 2014 Preservation Archaeology Field School

Karen Schollmeyer, Preservation Archaeologist Our 2014 Preservation Archaeology Field School in the Upper Gila area has just begun, and we are off to a great start. Over the coming weeks, our students and staff will be writing blog posts summarizing some of our research and their learning experiences here in Mule Creek, New Mexico. […]

May 27th, 2014

Engaging the Complexities of the Borderlands

By Bill Doelle, President & CEO Last Friday, some fresh eyes came to Camp Naco, and they helped me to see some things in new ways. Since 2006, I have worked with Becky Orozco, instructor of Anthropology and History at Cochise College, to preserve the historic adobe buildings at Camp Naco. I know the […]

May 21st, 2014

Turquoise Trade among Ancestral Pueblo Groups

By Paul F. Reed, Preservation Archaeologist and Chaco Scholar at Salmon Ruins Scott Michlin welcomed me back to his radio show last month, and I came bearing tales of turquoise (click here to listen to our discussion). Sharon Hull (University of Manitoba, Department of Geological Sciences) and her colleagues recently finished a study of turquoise […]

May 6th, 2014

Posts from the Edge

By Lewis Borck, Preservation Archaeology Fellow I thought I’d bring those of you who are not on Facebook, Instagram, and Twitter up to date on posts I made from the field. I’ll share a wrap-up blog post soon with details about the final two weeks and a summary of what we learned over the […]

May 5th, 2014

Atari Archaeology and Other Garbage

By Matt Peeples, Preservation Archaeologist If you’ve been following the news over the last couple of weeks, you may have seen a story or two about a documentary film crew and a team of archaeologists heading to the New Mexico desert near Alamogordo to excavate the remains of the legendary Atari graveyard within the […]

May 2nd, 2014

Exegesis of a Southwestern Archaeologist, Part 1

By Steve Nash, Anthropology Department Chair, Denver Museum of Nature & Science Kiathuthlanna Black-on-White, Yoruba Ibeji, and Me On July 7, 1967, the Chicago Sun-Times ran a photograph under the caption “Chicago Twins Meet Yoruba Twins” to honor the opening of a new temporary exhibit on Yoruba twin statues, or ibeji, at the Field Museum […]

April 14th, 2014

Archaeological Documentation on a Slippery Slope, Part 1

By Paul F. Reed, Preservation Archaeologist and Chaco Scholar at Salmon Ruins Recently, I was fortunate to assist my colleague Doug Gann with a project at Walnut Canyon National Monument, near Flagstaff, Arizona. The work took place at two small cliff dwellings about halfway down a very steep ravine above Walnut Creek. The project […]

April 10th, 2014

A View from the Edge…of Salado

By Kathryn Turney, Project Intern I have had the pleasure of being an intern for the Edge of Salado project since February of this year. It has been fun, challenging at times, and very rewarding. It has been a good learning experience, in terms of how to meet the project’s research goals while still providing […]

April 7th, 2014

The Quest to the O. W. Randall Rock

By Randy Craig Randall When I was in college, I became interested in our family history. I vividly recall one conversation with my paternal grandfather, whom we called “Daddy Jack.” One evening at their home in the piney woods around Nacogdoches, Texas, I asked him to tell me what he knew about the Randall […]

April 3rd, 2014

Tracking Canals in the Safford Basin: A Tale of Fate 34 & 54 Years in the Making

By James A. Neely, Professor Emeritus, University of Texas at Austin This story begins in the summer of 1994, when I accompanied Kyle Woodson—one of my graduate students at the University of Texas at Austin—into the field to get him started on excavations for his master’s thesis project at the now well-known site of Goat […]

March 19th, 2014

Exploring the Edge, March 8–9, 15–16

By Lewis Borck, Preservation Archaeology Fellow We have been working in the Coyote Mountains for three weeks now as part of our Edge of Salado investigation. I can say, without any doubt, that it has been one of my favorite settings to work in. Each site is nestled within a box canyon eroded from […]

March 12th, 2014

Not Exactly a Vacant Lot!

By Stephen Darling, Archaeology Southwest Member since 2013 This past Saturday morning, March 8, my wife Anne-Marie, my friend Steve Cox, and I attended Archaeology Southwest’s 2014 Annual Members’ Gathering, which featured a walking tour of the Valencia site. Owned by Pima Community College and Pima County, the Valencia site is protected from any future […]

March 6th, 2014

Heighten Your Awareness on March 29

By Matt Peeples, Preservation Archaeologist March is Archaeology and Heritage Awareness Month for the State of Arizona. Setting aside a month to celebrate archaeology highlights the importance of our shared past, as well as the social and economic impacts of archaeology in the state. Of course, there are tours, events, and lectures on archaeology […]

March 4th, 2014

Exploring the Edge, March 1–2

By Lewis Borck, Preservation Archaeology Fellow Preparations for Edge of Salado research (click on that link to learn more) have been underway for the past month: Excavations began two weekends ago in the Sulphur Springs Valley: And we often had company! We continued this past weekend in the Coyote Mountains at a platform […]

February 20th, 2014

A Visit to the Steam Pump Ranch Pithouse

Today’s guest author is Nanette Weaver, Arizona Site Steward Regional Coordinator for the Lower and Middle San Pedro River valley. Have you ever stood looking at the vague outline of a Hohokam pithouse and tried to visualize what the whole house looked like? I know that I, for one, as a Site Steward, have wished […]

February 11th, 2014

Footprints

By Matt Peeples, Preservation Archaeologist There have been some interesting archaeological news stories in the last couple of months revolving around the discovery of incredibly preserved human footprints. These stories, coming one right after the other, really got me thinking more about other known instances of footprints in the archaeological record, what those footprints […]

February 6th, 2014

Something There is That Doesn’t Love a (Painted) Wall

By Andy Laurenzi, Southwest Field Representative (With a nod to poet Robert Frost!) It’s always fun introducing new site stewards to a site, especially on field trips with experienced site stewards. Nanette Weaver and Bob Sherman, the new regional site steward coordinators for the lower and middle San Pedro River area, have been promoting tours […]

February 3rd, 2014

The Marginal Middle or the Path to Chaco?

By Paul F. Reed, Preservation Archaeologist and Chaco Scholar at Salmon Ruins On January 20, Scott Michlin welcomed me back to his morning radio show on KSJE, the San Juan College radio station in Farmington, New Mexico. Continuing my chronological foray into ancient Pueblo history, I discussed the Pueblo I period (A.D. 750–900) in […]

Volcanic Hill with Terraces under Rainbow

January 30th, 2014

From Above: Images of a Storied Land

By Adriel Heisey, Photographer I grew up in a land cloaked in verdure, where time and the elements have long since softened every bold edge, so the desert’s nakedness will always turn my head. Even now, after living here a quarter century, when I fly through this land laid bare by climate and natural […]

January 21st, 2014

From Durango to Durango and from Las Vegas to Las Vegas, Part 2

By Matt Peeples, Preservation Archaeologist In my previous post on the 14th biennial Southwest Symposium, I shared what I learned about the Fremont area. A number of other papers at the conference focused on the Virgin River area, which is the subject of today’s post. Sometimes considered a branch of the larger Ancestral Pueblo […]

January 20th, 2014

From Durango to Durango and Las Vegas to Las Vegas, Part 1

By Matt Peeples, Preservation Archaeologist Several of Archaeology Southwest’s staff members attended the 14th biennial Southwest Symposium at the University of Nevada, Las Vegas, held from January 9 to 11. Because it focuses on current research in the Southwest, this conference is one of my favorites. This year’s theme was “Social Networks in the […]

January 7th, 2014

Tanque Verde Brown and the Temper of Sand

By Lewis Borck, Preservation Fellow In the not-so-distant past, I organized a meeting of the minds to discuss problems and interesting phenomena associated with precontact southern Arizona pottery (“precontact” meaning “before the arrival of Europeans”). As I prepared for “Edge of Salado,” Archaeology Southwest’s upcoming investigations into why some people engaged with the Salado […]

December 31st, 2013

Flight of the Phantom

By Doug Gann, Preservation Archaeologist and Digital Media Specialist As I mentioned in my last post, I wanted to wrap up 2013 with a little cautionary tale about the use of unmanned flying cameras, commonly called “drones” in the media. In the Pretty Rock blog post, I illustrated how a revolution in generating three-dimensional data […]

December 16th, 2013

Going Back to the Past: The Basketmaker Roots of the Pueblos

By Paul F. Reed, Preservation Archaeologist and Chaco Scholar at Salmon Ruins Scott Michlin welcomed me back to his morning show morning radio show on KSJE, the San Juan College radio station in Farmington, New Mexico, this past Monday. For December, I spoke about the Basketmaker era in the northern Southwest. I framed it […]

December 12th, 2013

A Dream Comes True

Deb Huntley, Preservation Archaeologist When I was a kid growing up in the Denver area, I loved going to the Denver Museum of Nature and Science (DMNS). There, I could see fantastic nature dioramas, rooms full of dinosaur skeletons, and Egyptian mummies. Now that I’m back in Colorado, my son and I frequent the […]

December 2nd, 2013

Stout’s Hotel: A Place of the Past with a Future?

By Andy Laurenzi, Southwest Field Representative Over the past several years, I’ve traveled to the Town of Gila Bend on numerous occasions to meet with town officials, promote the Great Bend of Gila National Monument, tour Gatlin National Historic Landmark, rendezvous with others on the way to the Sentinel Plain and lower Gila River […]

November 28th, 2013

Back to Basics, Part 3: Broad Research Themes

By Matt Peeples, Preservation Archaeologist The archaeological culture areas I described on Wednesday are really just a means of conceptualizing similarities and differences among people living in different parts of the Southwest. These constructs do not represent cultures in the way we define them today, and regional designations were not static. Other, very important […]

November 27th, 2013

Back to Basics, Part 2: Archaeological Cultures in the Southwest

By Matt Peeples, Preservation Archaeologist On Monday, I wrote about how archaeologists define culture areas, which represent geographic zones in which people were living in generally similar ways and across which people were connected through shared history and practices. Before we look at the three main culture areas of the Southwest, I should say […]

Map of Southwest Archaeological Cultures

November 25th, 2013

Back to Basics, Part 1

By Matt Peeples, Preservation Archaeologist As I reviewed recent posts, I thought we should take a moment to break it down for those who are interested in learning what Southwest archaeology is about, at the most basic level. This week, in three successive posts, I’ll try to summarize a bit about what we know […]

November 21st, 2013

News from the North: A Burial from Salmon Pueblo and Some Thoughts on the Great Drought

By Paul F. Reed, Preservation Archaeologist and Chaco Scholar at Salmon Ruins Host Scott Michlin recently welcomed me back to his morning radio show on KSJE, the San Juan College radio station in Farmington, New Mexico. I’m on with Scott every month to discuss interesting topics in local or national archaeology. For November, I […]

November 4th, 2013

This Post Is Not about the Borg or Peanut-Butter Cups—Or Is It?

By Kate Sarther Gann, Communications Coordinator, with Jeff Clark, Preservation Archaeologist One of the most rewarding aspects of serving as the content editor of Archaeology Southwest Magazine is the continual opportunity to learn new things directly from the finest scholars. I have been fortunate to have Tobi Taylor, the previous content editor, and Emilee […]

October 30th, 2013

Faces of Salado?

By Katherine Dungan, Preservation Archaeologist In 1972, a cache of truly remarkable items—a large, wooden human figure and a slightly smaller stone human figure accompanied by animal effigies, textiles, and wooden objects—was recovered from a cave in the Cliff Valley, along the Upper Gila River in New Mexico. The objects are described in a 1978 […]

October 23rd, 2013

The Archaeologist’s Gaze

By Lewis Borck, Preservation Archaeology Fellow Dating techniques are one of first things students learn about in archaeology courses in the United States. Archaeologists—and people more generally—have two primary ways of marking time: absolute (chronometric), or a computed numerical age, and relative, or a sequence of events. One relative dating method is seriation, which […]

October 22nd, 2013

An Archaeologist’s View of “Digger” Shows

By Paul F. Reed, Preservation Archaeologist and Chaco Scholar at Salmon Ruins Host Scott Michlin recently welcomed me to his morning radio show on KSJE, the San Juan College radio station in Farmington, New Mexico. I’ll be on the air with an archaeology update each month. For the month of October, I spoke about […]

October 8th, 2013

Student Research at the Dinwiddie Site: Raw Material Sources

Deb Huntley, Preservation Archaeologist Students attending the 2013 Archaeology Southwest/University of Arizona Preservation Archaeology Field School completed several interesting and valuable research projects covering a wide range of topics, from experimental ceramics and flaked stone studies to magnetometer surveys. A course requirement, these projects contribute to our long-term research in the Upper Gila region […]

October 1st, 2013

Pretty Rock: Creating Virtual Interactive Models of Places of the Past

By Doug Gann, Preservation Archaeologist and Digital Media Specialist Things have been quiet on the Virtual Southwest project as we fine-tune our models and programming, so I thought I’d take a moment to share a bit about some new tools for documenting and sharing archaeological landscapes that we are utilizing in an upcoming exhibit […]

September 26th, 2013

Routes to the New World

By Paul F. Reed, Preservation Archaeologist and Chaco Scholar at Salmon Ruins Recently, I was a guest on the Scott Michlin Morning Program at KSJE, the San Juan College radio station in Farmington, New Mexico, where I discussed recent findings regarding migrations to the New World. (Listen to the broadcast here.) The researchers used […]

September 12th, 2013

Back to the 70s—Enjoying an Archaeological Preserve

By Bill Doelle, President & CEO Back to the 70s—I am talking temperatures, desert temperatures. Last weekend, daytime temperatures around Tucson kept to the high 70s for much of the day. For me, that means that hiking in the desert is once again possible. My time is always limited, so I don’t even need […]

September 5th, 2013

Paradise by the Antiquities Act

By Bill Doelle, President & CEO Paradise is defined many ways. For me, spending last week away from a cell phone and the rest of the electronic world was paradise. My personal paradise was at the bottom of the Grand Canyon. It can’t get much better than that! Grand Canyon National Park is the […]

September 3rd, 2013

Red or green?

By Matt Peeples, Preservation Archaeologist Red or green? It’s the state question of New Mexico—referring, of course, to the color of the chile sauce you want on your dinner. Synonymous with New Mexican cuisine, chile peppers are part of New Mexican identity. Even the road signs welcoming you to New Mexico are marked with […]

August 22nd, 2013

Journeys and Crossroads

By Matt Peeples, Preservation Archaeologist Earlier this week, I drove up to Springerville, Arizona, to give a talk at the Casa Malpais Museum hosted by the Little Colorado Chapter of the Arizona Archaeological Society. My presentation focused on migration and cultural diversity in the Upper Little Colorado region in the centuries before the Spaniards […]

August 21st, 2013

Movement Is Life

By Andy Laurenzi, Southwest Field Representative “Movement is life. Movement is seen everywhere… Movement was characteristic of our ancestors, who moved across the landscape like the clouds across the sky.” —Tessy Naranjo, Santa Clara Pueblo, quoted on the Bandelier National Monument website Last week, I experienced mind-numbing deep preservation at the New Mexico Archaeological […]

August 20th, 2013

Open Pueblo

Deb Huntley, Preservation Archaeologist On Saturday, August 10, around 100 visitors—including journalists, archaeologists, and local community members—took advantage of relatively cool temperatures and toured excavations in progress at Goat Spring Pueblo. Located in the mountains near Magdalena, New Mexico, on the Cibola National Forest, this ancestral Piro village (also known as Bear Mountain Pueblo) […]

Camp Naco Officer's Quarters building C2

August 11th, 2013

No New Ruins — A Plea from a Stubborn Optimist

By Bill Doelle, President & CEO Sometimes, archaeologists can prevent ruins. Yes, I said prevent, not preserve. Camp Naco is teaching me life lessons about just how hard it can be to prevent ruins. After working with a devoted team of ruin preventers for the past eight years, it is time to start counting successes. Camp […]

August 7th, 2013

Of Drones and Men

By Lewis Borck, Preservation Fellow August 20, 2013 Earlier this spring, I had the pleasure of getting out into Sulphur Spring Valley’s sere landscape with Michael Brack, a cartographer from Desert Archaeology, Inc. We were there to map a number of Classic period archaeological sites that will be important for my dissertation and for […]

July 30th, 2013

Zing! Bow-and-Arrow Technology in the Ancient Pueblo Southwest

By Paul F. Reed, Preservation Archaeologist and Chaco Scholar at Salmon Ruins The development and spread of bow technology across North America has sparked considerable archaeological debate for more than 100 years. Experts have proposed various ideas about how and why bow technology spread out of Asia between 4,000 and 2,000 years ago, including […]

July 25th, 2013

The Casa Grande Community—In More Ways than One!

By Bill Doelle, President & CEO Community. Just when cynicism seems at its most pervasive, I am glad to see that community spirit can still shine through. It certainly infuses the new legislation for the expansion of Casa Grande Ruins National Monument. A bipartisan group of Arizona Representatives—Paul Gosar (R-4), Ann Kirkpatrick (D-1), Raúl […]

July 22nd, 2013

An Arizona Icelandic Saga

By Matt Peeples, Preservation Archaeologist A little more than a week ago, I was lucky enough to travel with ten other Southwestern archaeologists to the city of Akureyri in northern Iceland. We went there to take part in a collaborative research meeting with a group of climate scientists and archaeologists working in the circumpolar […]

July 21st, 2013

Tribal Consultation in the Kaibab National Forest and Vermilion Cliffs National Monument

Today’s guest author is Connie Reid, an Archaeologist with the Kaibab National Forest: “Sometimes you get homesick, but here you don’t. It feels normal and like you were back to where you were before. You have a sense of being. Everything is there and you can feel it. You don’t have any feelings of being out […]

July 18th, 2013

Of Ancient Networks and Bacon Numbers

By Matt Peeples, Preservation Archaeologist Yesterday afternoon, many of us at Archaeology Southwest gathered around the first box off the truck, grinning over the new issue of Archaeology Southwest Magazine. It’s on its way to our members’ mailboxes now (if you’re not yet a member, join now). This issue is special to me because […]

July 16th, 2013

Life with New Mexico’s Weather

By Trevor McLam, field school student from Washington State University As one might expect of a place that has been called the Great American Desert, the first thing one notices upon arrival is that it is hot. But it truly is a dry heat, which helps immensely. When we arrived in Mule Creek, it was […]

July 9th, 2013

Visiting Chaco Canyon

By Thatcher Rogers, University of Wisconsin, La Crosse The weekend field trip to Chaco Canyon began splendidly with an informative visit to Zuni. Due to purchasing a large number of zoomorphic figures associated with water, we were unfortunately deterred by rains from accomplishing our original goal of staying overnight at Chaco. After spending the night […]

July 8th, 2013

Archaeology Students on the Loose!

By Jay Stephens, University of Arizona After a long and hard five weeks of excavation and lab work, we were turned loose on a three day trip to Chaco Canyon and the pueblos of Acoma and Zuni. It is difficult to summarize all of the amazing landscapes and sites that we saw over the long […]

June 28th, 2013

Experimental Archaeology at Mule Creek

By David Loome, field school student from Northern Arizona University/Coconino Community College As students at the Preservation Archaeology Field School at Mule Creek, we are exposed almost every day to the tools and technology used by people in the past. By analyzing and studying artifacts like stone tools and pottery, we can gain important insights […]

June 27th, 2013

Summer Solstice Sites in Southwestern Arizona

Introduction by Andy Laurenzi, Southwest Field Representative Of the several rewarding elements of my job, meeting and traveling with site stewards is certainly one of the most enjoyable. As our first line of defense in our collective efforts to safeguard ancient sites, site stewards have been monitoring sites for many years and, apart from some […]

June 25th, 2013

Sharing Archaeology with the Community, Part I

By Dorothy Kilgore, field school student from the College of Western Idaho On June 15, 2013, Archaeology Southwest field students and staff performed a community outreach day at the Gila Community Center in New Mexico. Stations included an artifact show-and-tell, a pottery-making station, an artifact-digging station, a stone tool-making station, and a video crew to […]

June 21st, 2013

Gila Cliff Dwellings

By Heather Seltzer, field school student from SUNY Binghamton On Sunday, we took a break from excavating and lab work and headed to the Gila Cliff Dwellings National Monument. After being decently shook up on the long bumpy road, we piled out of the van. Before we went to tour the Mimbres-Mogollon site or see […]

June 12th, 2013

Meet Our Cook

By Emily Reed, field school student from the University of Connecticut Excavating the Dinwiddie site has been exhausting. With the sun beating down on us constantly while we pick-axe and shovel into the hard ground, we are all drained by the end of the day. Our thirty-minute ride from Dinwiddie back to Mule Creek usually […]

June 11th, 2013

Field School Expectations

By Danny Beard, field school student from University of Colorado Boulder When you are itching with cabin fever in the middle of a snowy, cold Colorado winter’s day, the sunshine of the New Mexican summer starts to sound pretty enticing. I always try to avoid building up too many expectations, as sometimes they can be […]

June 10th, 2013

An Archaeology Road Show in Arizona’s Mogollon Highlands

By Doug Gann, Preservation Archaeologist and Digital Media Specialist In a community such as Springerville, like almost every place in the Southwest with nearby water, archaeological evidence of ancient peoples is fairly common. The objects linking the past of these places to the present are usually encountered in the things left behind, most often […]

June 8th, 2013

Archaeological Eyes

By Ely Rareshide, field school student from Rice University Before we put trowel to dirt at the Dinwiddie site, we first visited the Valencia site at Pima Community College, Desert Vista Campus, to train our “archaeological eyes.” Bill Doelle led us through the site and explained how to interpret the landscape and find surface artifacts. […]

June 7th, 2013

First Week in Mule Creek

By Linda Pierce, Deputy Director I spent most of last week at our Preservation Archaeology Field School headquarters in Mule Creek, New Mexico, helping out with (and documenting) the start of the 2013 field season. It was a busy week, and by the time I left late Friday morning, it seemed everyone was getting […]

Camp Naco - Noncommissioned officer’s quarters

June 6th, 2013

Raise the Roof! (Preservation Archaeology-style)

By Bill Doelle, President & CEO Finally, it is happening. The hard-luck adobe camp that was part of a “human fence along the border” right after World War I is getting some of the preservation treatments it has needed for two decades. A grant from the Environmental Protection Agency (EPA) is ridding Camp Naco […]

June 3rd, 2013

Settling into Camp

By Kathryn Turney, field school student from Pima Community College There is much more to Upper Gila Archaeological Preservation Field School than learning the basics of Preservation Archaeology. There are fun and informative field trips and lecture opportunities and a lot of hands on learning. Additionally, archaeology may mean living in the field, literally in […]

May 30th, 2013

Not Just for Sherd Nerds

By Matt Peeples, Preservation Archaeologist Although a holiday, this past Monday definitely was not a quiet day at Archaeology Southwest. The first full day of the Preservation Archaeology Field School kicked off with some introductory lectures and tours. I was fortunate to tag along for a behind-the-scenes look at the Arizona State Museum’s (ASM) […]

May 29th, 2013

Art and Preservation Archaeology at Casa Malpais

By Doug Gann, Preservation Archaeologist For the past twelve years, I’ve been helping a community in eastern Arizona’s Mogollon Highlands preserve, protect, and interpret a unique ancient place now known as Casa Malpais. Because they are located at cooler elevations in and around the White Mountains, the towns of these highlands have long been […]

May 17th, 2013

The Story of San Lucy Village

By Andy Laurenzi, Southwest Field Representative This week we attended a meeting of the Four Southern Tribes Cultural Resources Working Group, hosted by the San Lucy District of the Tohono O’odham Nation and held at the San Lucy Feast House. At the committee’s invitation, we provided a brief overview of the legislation introduced by […]

May 10th, 2013

Celebrating Catalina State Park (and Getting Some Sherds Washed)

By Linda Pierce, Deputy Director Last Saturday, a number of us at Archaeology Southwest were happy to take part in the 30th anniversary celebration for Catalina State Park. Encompassing 5,500 acres on the north side of Tucson, the park is a haven for Sonoran Desert plants and wildlife, and also protects a number of […]

May 7th, 2013

Recent Field Visits for the Salado Preservation Initiative

By Andy Laurenzi, Southwest Field Representative The next phase of the Salado Preservation Initiative began last month, when Bill Doelle, Jeff Clark, myself, and our new Preservation Fellow, Lewis Borck, headed to the field to visit several sites in the Sulphur Springs Valley, on the west side of the Chiricahua Mountains, and some sites […]

May 6th, 2013

The Brigadoon Effect

By Bruce Hilpert, Archaeology Southwest Member and Volunteer Springtime for southern Arizona archaeology means… the Brigadoon Effect! Now you see it, now you don’t. As many of you probably know, vegetation can be an archaeologist’s friend or foe. Trees and creosotes can hide site features—or they can reveal them as if by magic. Archaeologists call […]

March 15th, 2013

An Archaeology Road Show

By Matt Peeples, Preservation Archaeologist A few Saturdays ago, on March 2, 2013, Doug Gann and I traveled up to the Casa Malpais Archaeological Park and Museum in Springerville, Arizona, for a regional Archaeology Road Show. Supported by the Arizona Humanities Council, this event represented our take on the popular PBS program Antiques Roadshow. We invited […]

February 21st, 2013

From Above: Online, on Exhibit, and Now on Your Phone

I dread flying. I become so focused on the destination that the journey feels like a chore. There are absolute hassles, of course: rushing all morning to wait all afternoon, walking barefoot and beltless through security checkpoints, anxiously checking – and rechecking – IDs, tickets, flight times, gates…

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