Southwest Archaeology Today for November 29, 2007

Southwestern Archaeology Making the News – A Service of the Center for Desert Archaeology

– Agnese Haury Provides U of A Tree Ring Laboratory with a Nine Million Dollar Gift: A climate record of the world over thousands of years is written in the 2 million tree specimens collected by the UA’s tree-ring laboratory, an archive now boxed away and stacked floor to ceiling in the cramped bowels of Arizona Stadium. With a $9 million donation the Laboratory of Tree-Ring Research will formally announce Friday, the collection is on the verge of moving from its ignoble home to a new climate-controlled facility that will expand its accessibility to researchers and the public.
http://www.azstarnet.com/allheadlines/213893.php

– University of Arizona Examining Preservation at the Home of A. E. Douglas: The Douglass House, a turn-of-the-century home once owned by the UA’s first academic superstar, has long attracted the attention of preservationists on campus and is now an administration priority for restoration. “There is very significant and sincere interest in restoring the building,” said Albert Tarcola, director of facilities management. “It’s on my list as No. 1 to be restored.”
http://www.azstarnet.com/allheadlines/213878.php

– Is the West losing its Wild? The search for fossil fuels across the American west is turning some of the nation’s last open spaces into industrial zones and putting protected areas and wildlife risk. Jim Robbins reports on how the U.S. government is allowing energy companies to carve up treasured landscapes-one well at a time
http://www.cdarc.org/page/hvze – Conde Nast Traveller

– (Related Story) Study of Threats to National Parks Finds Southwestern Archaeological Parks in Danger: Though protected from development, these ten parks are in harm’s way.
http://www.cdarc.org/page/efdp – Conde Nast Traveller

– The Viking Age in Iceland is the Topic of the Newest Feature on the Archaeology Channel: The Viking Age in Iceland, heretofore known to us primarily through the oral tradition as expressed in the Icelandic Sagas, now is yielding up its secrets through the methods of archaeology. The cultural and environmental dynamics of the Conversion Period, when Christianity became established, is the subject of A Viking Landscape: The Mosfell Archaeological Project, the latest video feature on our nonprofit streaming-media Web site, The Archaeology Channel.
http://www.archaeologychannel.org