New Management Areas Protect Archaeology in Southwestern Colorado

New Management Areas Protect Archaeology in Southwestern Colorado
The Bureau of Land Management Tres Rios Field Office has designated three areas of critical environmental concern in Montezuma and San Miguel counties. The new amendment to the 2015 Resource Management Plan designates the Mesa Verde Escarpment (7,373 acres) and Ancestral Puebloan ACEC (792 acres) in Montezuma County, and the Gypsum Valley ACEC (6,170 acres) in San Miguel County. Areas deemed of critical environmental concern require special management attention to protect and prevent damage to important historic, cultural and scenic values; fish, wildlife resources or other natural systems or processes; or to protect human life and safety from natural hazards. The designation allows for development and recreation with potential conditions with a management focus to avoid or protect areas with significant ecological or cultural values. http://bit.ly/39QM83D – The Journal

Essay: Creosote and Connections to Place
The smell of the creosote bush has a way of connecting you to place in the deserts of the U.S.-Mexico borderlands. I have focused my doctoral research on the history of this plant called Larrea tridentata, which has both figuratively and literally rooted me to my Mexican family’s past, as well as to where I am from. I want to begin with my grandmother, Lucrecia Robles De la Vara. I remember her always busy—outside washing the porch, wringing clothes through the rollers of her washing machine, patting out tortillas for us to eat— the immense experience in her hands. This is my family’s origin story with the creosote bush, gobernadora, the fulcrum on which my research project turns, and a sort of leitmotif for my dissertation work. http://bit.ly/39IpCtu – Ligia Arguilez at Environmental History Now

Continuing Coverage: Monument Hill
The Tohono O’odham Nation says various sites at Organ Pipe carry historical significance, including one at Monument Hill, where crews over the past week began blasting the land and tearing down ancient saguaro cacti to make way for the wall. The area was once used for religious ceremonies by a distinct tribe known as the Hia-C’ed O’odham, and it is where bodies of Apache and other indigenous fighters were buried, according to the Tohono O’odham Nation’s historic records. The tribe says bone fragments have been found at Monument Hill, as well as near another site, Quitobaquito Springs, where construction crews working on the wall found remains believed to be human. “They’re disturbing sacred areas,” Norris said in an interview. https://nbcnews.to/2uWa3zF – NBC News

Arikara and Mandan Ancestors Return Home
In a storage room at the University of Tennessee’s anthropology department, the remains of almost 2,000 Arikara and Mandan people rest in boxes, alongside the sacred objects buried with them centuries ago. There, 65-year-old Pete Coffey, director of the Tribal Historic Preservation Office for the Mandan, Hidatsa and Arikara Nation, reunited with his ancestors in 2017. “The only thing I can tell you is that I felt the presence of those ancestral spirits very strongly when I walked in there,” he said. http://bit.ly/38HZu1N – Brainerd Dispatch

NAGPRA Violation at Vassar
On Wednesday, Feb. 12, President Elizabeth Bradley released an emailed statement to the faculty and student body detailing the discovery of Native American human remains and cultural artifacts in a campus building. She stated that the storage of the remains, which had been acquired in the 1980s and 1990s, was in violation of the Native American Graves Protection and Repatriation Act (NAGPRA). Bradley affirmed that Vassar is committed to complying with NAGPRA guidelines moving forward, beginning with the repatriation of these remains and cultural artifacts. She also expressed sympathy toward Vassar’s Native American community: “We are also dedicated to intentional processes of healing. Let us be present with each other and mindful of how this may affect our community.” http://bit.ly/2uWYzMm – Miscellany News (student paper of Vassar College)

Continuing Coverage: Land Removed from National Monuments Opened to Extraction
The recently released management plans for Bears Ears and Grand Staircase Escalante national monuments, already slammed by tribes and environmentalists, may also violate federal law, according to a new law review article by two University of Utah researchers. In an analysis published this month in the law journal Natural Resources & Environment, John Ruple and Heather Tanana, both researchers at the Wallace Stegner Center at the S.J. Quinney College of Law, compare the draft plans for the two controversial Southern Utah monuments to federal statute pertaining to monument management plans. Their conclusion: the Bureau of Land Management’s plans don’t go far enough to protect the resources identified in the monument proclamations. http://bit.ly/327yKVQ – KUER (NPR)

Largely unchanged from earlier drafts, the plans fail to meet even the minimum legal standard for how national monuments must be managed. Time and again, the BLM chose management options that put fossils, cultural resources, wildlife, and wildlands in peril. In several cases, the final plan for Bears Ears imposes lesser protections than if no monument had ever been designated at all. The plans allow target-shooting nearly everywhere in both monuments and green-light removal of pinyon and juniper forests, replacing them with non-native plants to increase grazing. The Bears Ears plan directs inappropriate increased visitation to cultural areas; planning for how to manage cultural resources will have to wait another two years, and planning for recreation three years, where increased visitation is doing harm now. http://bit.ly/2ueuZSc – Commentary by Tim Peterson at the Grand Canyon Trust

Continuing Coverage: BLM Relocation
KIRK SIEGLER, BYLINE: The BLM’s new headquarters is a long way from Washington, D.C. – like, 1,900 miles to the small western Colorado city of Grand Junction. Out here, it’s impossible to ignore you are surrounded by federal public land – the towering mesas, red rock canyons and the Colorado National Monument. WILLIAM PERRY PENDLEY: Well, here’s our lobby. SIEGLER: The BLM’s acting director, William Perry Pendley, caught flak after announcing the move because of the other tenants in this office building. There’s Chevron upstairs and on the main floor right next to the BLM’s glass entryway, Colorado’s lead oil and gas lobbying firm. https://n.pr/2SRZPbw – NPR

Commentary: National Park Service Needs Senate-Confirmed Director
For three years, the National Park Service has been without a Senate-confirmed director, an agency whose 20,000 employees oversee 419 of America’s most treasured places — national parks, monuments, battlefields, military parks, historical parks, historic sites, lakeshores, seashores, recreation areas, scenic rivers and trails. The director is charged with upholding the National Park Service’s mission to protect and keep unimpaired our most incredible natural, cultural and historic resources for future generations to experience and enjoy. This is no small task, considering the Park Service is second only to the Department of Defense in the amount of infrastructure it manages. http://bit.ly/37FWv8S – Theresa Pierno and Phil Francis in The Hill

…And Adequate Funding
The Trump Administration’s budget plan for 2021 proposes serious cuts to the National Park Service and other federal agencies that if enacted, would jeopardize the protection, maintenance and operation of our more than 400 national parks across the country. The administration’s budget calls for a total cut of $587 million (17 percent) to the National Park Service. (Editors’ note: this statement from the NPCA includes a list of what would be cut that is worth reviewing. In addition to steep cuts in funding for operations and maintenance, it zeroes out the National Heritage Area program.) http://bit.ly/2UYBQtY – National Parks Conservation Association

Bighorn Sheep Returned to Pyramid Lake Paiute Lands
For the first time in roughly a hundred years, the Pyramid Lake Paiute Tribe will have a flock of bighorn sheep on tribal land that was once a part of the sheep’s historic habitat. Not only will the effort help restore the species; it will also renew hunting and tanning traditions and support ceremonial uses — practices disrupted as the sheep population declined. The bighorns will be closely monitored for nearly three years to create a tailored conservation plan. http://bit.ly/2HCmrHG – High Country News

Ute Mountain Ute Tribal Historic Preservation Office Marks 10 Years
Just over 10 years ago, the Ute Mountain Ute Tribe applied to the National Park Service to become first Tribal Historic Preservation Office in Colorado. In December of 2009 this status was granted and the Ute Mountain Ute Tribe became the 88th THPO in the United States. With this designation, the THPO assumed historic preservation duties within the exterior boundaries of the Tribe’s reservation lands in Colorado, Utah and New Mexico. Mr. Terry Knight was the first appointed tribal historic preservation officer, and continues to serve in that capacity. He manages a vast landscape with a rich cultural heritage, including thousands of archaeological ruins. http://bit.ly/38F1zM7 – The Journal

Essay: Life of the Gila: Mapping Identities and Worlds over a Millennium
From Indigenous histories and from archaeology, we know a great deal about people’s lives in the southern Southwest from about 500 to 1450 CE. We know that life was rich and challenging; stable in some aspects and ever-changing in others. Archaeology Southwest’s latest holistic research project seeks to understand how groups of people living in the Gila Watershed saw themselves and their worlds over that millennium. How did groups mark belonging and separateness—how did they express their identities to insiders and to outsiders? Which aspects of identity are discernible when we closely examine the objects and structures they left behind? How did these identities both persist and change across almost 10 centuries before European contact? http://bit.ly/38vJ2Sk – Jeff Clark at the Preservation Archaeology blog

Reminder: Preservation Archaeology Field School Accepting Applications
Join us for the Archaeology Southwest/University of Arizona Preservation Archaeology Field School in southwestern New Mexico, May 25 through July 5, 2020. Offered by Archaeology Southwest and the University of Arizona, this unique six-week program provides students with an opportunity to learn excavation, survey, experimental archaeology, and laboratory methods in a beautiful, remote, and archaeologically exciting part of the U.S. Southwest. Undergraduates will receive a stipend to support their attendance through the National Science Foundation’s Research Experiences for Undergraduates program (NSF REU 1851763). Applications are due March 6, 2020. http://bit.ly/38LnlgB – Archaeology Southwest

Archaeology Café Welcomes Christa Sadler March 3
“Grand Staircase-Escalante National Monument is one of the most special places on earth. There is a precious solitude and a silence that exist in this place unlike few others in the lower 48. And there are also important and unique paleontological, archeological, and biological resources, including world-class fossils that help us understand our history—and perhaps even our future.” Join us on Tuesday, March 3, as paleontologist Christa Sadler discusses Grand Staircase-Escalante National Monument in her talk, “Seeking the Future in the Past: What the Fossils of Utah’s Grand Staircase-Escalante National Monument Can Tell Us about our Future.” We gather at The Loft Cinema (3233 E. Speedway Blvd.) around 5:30 p.m. to visit and enjoy food and beverages. Programs begin at 6 p.m. in Theatre 1. http://bit.ly/39MafAh – Archaeology Southwest

Job Opportunities, Gila National Forest NM
The Gila National Forest is hiring an archaeologist for our North Zone, located in either Reserve or Quemado NM. This is a permanent full time position, with promotion potential to a GS-11. https://www.usajobs.gov/GetJob/ViewDetails/556437500#

USFS is taking applications for Pathways/Recent Grad archaeologist positions at the Society for Range Management meeting in Denver CO and on USAJobs for positions located on the Gila National Forest. The position is located on the Silver City District in Silver City NM. The links for the applications are: https://www.usajobs.gov/GetJob/ViewDetails/559894200 and https://www.usajobs.gov/GetJob/ViewDetails/559858700

Tour Opportunity, Tucson AZ
From 9:00 to 11:00 a.m. on Saturday, March 7, archaeologist Allen Dart leads Old Pueblo Archaeology Center’s “Vista del Rio Archaeological Site” free educational tour at the Vista del Rio Cultural Resource Park, 7575 E. Desert Arbors St. (at Dos Hombres Road), Tucson. Vista del Rio was a village of the Hohokam archaeological culture inhabited between AD 650 and 1450. Reservations are required by 5:00 p.m. March 5: 520-798-1201 or info@oldpueblo.org. http://bit.ly/39MqLAa (opens as a PDF)

TODAY Lecture Opportunity, Casa Grande Ruins National Monument, Coolidge AZ
On February 19 at noon, Casa Grande Ruins will host Gregory McNamee as part of its annual speaker series. Gregory McNamee will present “The Gila: River of History.” 1100 W Ruins Drive. https://www.nps.gov/cagr

Lecture Opportunity, Santa Fe NM
Southwest Seminars Presents Dr. Carol B. Patterson, RPA, Archaeologist, Cultural Anthropologist and Principal Investigator, Urraca Archaeological Services; Research Associate, Dominguez Archaeological Group; Author, Ute Indian Petroglyphs of Western Colorado and Eastern Utah as Interpreted by Clifford Duncan; and Ute Rock Art Map; who will give a lecture “Katsinam in Rock Art” on February 24 at 6:00 p.m. at Santa Fe Woman’s Club, 1616 Old Pecos Trail, as part of Ancient Sites Ancient Stories Lecture Series. Admission is by subscription or $15 at the door. No reservations are necessary. Refreshments are served. Seating is limited. Contact Connie Eichstaedt, tel: 505 466-2775; email: southwestseminar@aol.com; website: southwestseminars.org

Lecture Opportunity, Colorado Springs CO
The City of Colorado Springs is rich in archaeology. Over the last three years, Lead Archaeologist Anna Cordova has overseen a wide variety of projects involving the City’s cultural and archaeological resources. Project sites include the Garden of the Gods Park (revealing prehistoric and historic artifacts), surveys and test excavations at Corral Bluffs Open Space, full surveys of Austin Bluffs Open Space and North Cheyenne Cañon, and more. Projects often involve public engagement, tribal consultation, field work, lab work, and collaboration with various agencies. Join us at 7:00 p.m. on March 17 to hear updates. Colorado Springs Fire Station #19 (community room), 2490 Research Parkway. https://coloradospringsarchaeology.org/

Lecture Opportunity, Tucson AZ
Archaeologist Dr. Stephanie Whittlesey presents “Subjective Color in Mimbres Black-on-white Pottery” for Old Pueblo Archaeology Center’s March 19, 6-8:30 p.m. “Third Thursday Food for Thought” dinner at Karichimaka Mexican Restaurant, 5252 S. Mission Road, Tucson. Illusions of color when many Mimbres Black-on-white geometric designs are rotated rapidly suggest some of the designs were created by shamans based on visions experienced during trances. No entry fee. Guests may purchase their own dinners. Reservations required before 5:00 p.m., March 18: 520-798-1201 or info@oldpueblo.org. http://bit.ly/39IbPDl (opens as a PDF)

We’re happy to help get the word out, but we’re not mind readers! Please submit news, book announcements, and events at this link for consideration: https://www.archaeologysouthwest.org/submit-to-sat/

Questions? sat-editor@archaeologysouthwest.org