Southwest Archaeology Today for June 29, 2005

Archaeology making the news — a service of the Center for Desert Archaeology.

– Field School Opportunity (Arizona): Walnut Creek Center for Education and Research (WCCER) and the Yavapai Chapter Arizona Archaeological Society’s (YCAAS) Survey Technology 1 certification field school will be held from 19 – 30 September 2005 in the beautiful walnut creek area of the Prescott National Forest40 miles north of Prescott, Arizona. Basic archaeological site survey techniques will be taught, as the four person crews conduct a hands on archaeological reconnaissance of randomly selected quadrants within a 280 acre area of the Prescott National Forest. For class structure see your AAS Certification Manual. Walnut Creek Archaeology Field School, a adjunct of a consortium composed of Northern Arizona University, Prescott College, Sharlot Hall Museum and Yavapai College, competed its first year of operation in 2004. The curriculum includes basic as well as advanced techniques used in present day archaeological research. Classroom instruction will complement daily fieldwork with guest speakers and instructors.

For Information: Contact Susan Jones 46 Woodside Dr. Prescott AZ 86305 or Paul Long pvlong@attglobal.net

– Travelogue, San Juan River: The trip offers something for nearly everyone – rock art, ancient Indian ruins, canyonland scenery and hikes, including a trail that zigzags to the top of the canyon 1,200 feet above the river.
http://www.newsobserver.com/24hour/travel/story/2514968p-10883011c.html

– Employment, Archaeological Field Crew Members, Colorado:
http://www.swanet.org/zarchives/jobs/jobs2005/flc062805.pdf

Archaeology of the Presidio of San Francisco: “We are not sure how old it is,” said Eric Blind, an archaeologist with the Presidio Trust. He thinks some of the walls might date back to 1791, when the Presidio was new and the tiny fort near the Golden Gate was the northern frontier of the Spanish colonial empire, the edge of the European world in North America.
http://sfgate.com/cgi-bin/article.cgi?f=/c/a/2005/06/27/BAGTQDF9DO1.DTL

Prehistory of the Grackle: It seems this bird may have had a prior history in the American southwest. Archeologists excavating the ruins of the Hohokam people in central Arizona, whose irrigation-based civilization had collapsed by the fifteenth century, made an intriguing find: the remains of a single great-tailed grackle. It could have been a stray, but historical records hint that it may have come from Mexico as part of a preColumbian trade in exotic birds.
http://www.berkeleydaily.org/text/article.cfm?issue=06-28-05&storyID=21737