Southwest Archaeology Today for June 6, 2008

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

– Mimbres Pottery Recovered from Possible Looters: Taos, Chama and Silver City homes were searched last month in an ongoing probe into illegal excavation of Mimbres pottery. The investigation began in late April when someone witnessed what they believed was an illegal dig in the Gila National Forest and called the Catron County sheriff. “They responded, and they found items in the car, interviewed the individuals and then forwarded it on to the Forest Service for additional investigation,” said Kathy DeLucas of the Carson National Forest in Taos.
http://www.cdarc.org/page/jpjj – Santa Fe New Mexican

– Crow Canyon Studying Ancient Agricultural Techniques: Corn may seem like an impossible dryland crop for the Four Corners region. With an annual rainfall of 13 inches and soils full of clay, it’s certainly not Iowa. Yet the early Ancestral Puebloans successfully grew enough corn, beans and squash without irrigation in a short growing season to support populations that equaled today’s population in Montezuma County. How did they do it? That’s the answer being sought by a Pueblo Farming Project at Crow Canyon Archaeological Center northwest of Cortez.
http://www.cdarc.org/page/i4w5 – Cortez Journal

– Grand Canyon Archaeology Topic of Special Program at the Museum of Northern Arizona: Learn about the process of conducting archaeology in the Grand Canyon. Flagstaff adventure photographer Dawn Kish and archaeologists from the National Park Service and Museum of Northern Arizona will discuss images of recent archaeological research done by MNA in partnership with Grand Canyon National Park. Saturday, June 7 from 5:00 p.m.-6:30 p.m.
http://www.musnaz.org/exhibits/grandarch.html

– Preserve Petroglyphs: They look a little like ancient graffiti – the doodlings of an ancient hunter who was better with a chisel than a bow. And maybe that is why prehistoric petroglyphs don’t garner the care or respect they deserve. People look at them and don’t see the value. But the value is there.
http://deseretnews.com/dn/view/0,5143,700231226,00.html

– The Southwest as a Tri-Cultural Region: From my roof I can look west and see Mount Taylor, which looms above Grants, a small New Mexico city built on the dreams of unmeterably cheap electricity, thanks to the existence there of vast seams of uranium ore. Mount Taylor is one of the four sacred mountains of the Navajo, and you can’t see Mount Taylor without also thinking about San Francisco Peaks, a mountain whose three peaks rise above Flagstaff, Arizona, 400 miles west of here. It’s another mountain sacred to the Navajo and is also the winter home of the Hopi rain spirits, the kachinas. When you see clouds building up over San Francisco Peaks, the Hopi say, it is the kachinas rehearsing the business of bringing rain to Hopi cornfields.
http://www.cdarc.org/page/jyph – Mother Earth News

– Rafting though Ancient Places: Our first stop was Butler Wash, where a series of petroglyphs 100 yards from the river’s northern bank stretched so far along an overhanging hunk of sandstone they resembled an elaborate frieze. About 10 feet off the ground, bighorn sheep, ducks, spirals, zigzags and human figures scratched in white and dating from 5000 B.C. covered the terra-cotta-colored rock.
http://www.cdarc.org/page/l19c – New York Times, Site may require user regsistration.

– University of Arizona Archaeology Student Wins American Anthropology Association Dissertation Fellowship: Kerry F. Thompson received the award for the dissertation ” A?k’ida;a; ‘da hooghan