2017
20
Jun
Experimental Archaeology: Basketmaker Atlatl
Stephen Uzzle, Cochise College
June 20, 2017—One of the best ways to understand how ancient peoples lived is to study experimental archaeology. Experimental archaeology is reconstructing tools made by ancient peoples using the same means they used to create them. The atlatl was a game-changing ad...
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2017
19
Jun
Watching the Landscape Change
Dylan Fick, New College of Florida
(June 19, 2017)—Scarcely before we had finished digging our initial trench it was time for me to head out with two other students and a staff member to survey possible new sites for preservation and perhaps later investigation. This let me see a lot more of the ...
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2017
15
Jun
Mother Bear's Ears
RE Burrillo, University of Utah
(June 17, 2017)—In the summer of 2004, two friends and I traveled from our seasonal home at the Grand Canyon down to Flagstaff to see Ani DiFranco in concert. Ani and I are both from upstate New York, and although I have been a fan of hers since my late teens, I h...
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2017
09
May
Boats to Trenches
Adam Sezate, University of Arizona and 2016 Preservation Archaeology Field School alumnus
(May 9, 2017)—What does a person with a B.S. in History from the United States Naval Academy do after eight years in the U.S. fleet? During the two years before I turned in my uniform, I asked myself this ...
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2017
03
Mar
Protecting Native Rock Art: Be a Good Guest!
Kirk Astroth, Archaeology Southwest Member and Volunteer
(March 3, 2017)—For the past 7 weeks, a team of us (Jaye Smith, Carl Evertsbusch, Fran Maiuri, Lance Trask, and I) have been working under the guidance of Aaron Wright to document the 594 boulders at the Painted Rock Petroglyph Site. I have...
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2017
17
Feb
Shade, Cultures, and Foxes
Carl Evertsbusch, Archaeology Southwest member and volunteer
(February 17, 2017)—Gripping a pole lashed to one end of an 8x10 piece of dark plastic, I drift off into scenes of kneeling in dirt making earthshaking archaeological discoveries. With no warning a breeze hits our homemade contraption...
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2017
16
Feb
Volunteerism
Jaye Smith, Archaeology Southwest member and volunteer
(February 16, 2016)—Volunteerism—I have thought about this word and its true meaning many times over the past 4 years, and when I originally decided to devote my remaining time on this magnificent planet to volunteer full time in the arch...
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2017
14
Feb
Documenting Painted Rock Petroglyph Site
Fran Maiuri, Archaeology Southwest member and volunteer
(February 14, 2017)—We’re in the middle of over 500 boulders with petroglyphs on them and we’re wearing bright orange vests that say ARCHAEOLOGIST. Five of us—Kirk Astroth, Carl Evertsbusch, Jaye Smith, and Lance Trask—are voluntee...
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2016
20
Dec
Celebrating a Mammoth Dust-Up in Bluff
R. E. Burrillo, University of Utah
San Juan County is no stranger to controversy. A divisive and tragic bust of archaeological looters took place in Blanding between 2007 and 2009. In 2014, a group of fed-up locals followed a county commissioner on an illegal “protest ride” through a popul...
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2016
03
Nov
Learning the Secrets
Andy Ward, Potter and New Media Consultant
(October 27, 2016)—Yesterday afternoon I drove out onto the Willcox Playa, where I dug down about a foot deep and found a rich layer of greenish clay, and now that clay is soaking in a bucket on my back porch. Over the last couple of weeks I have sampl...
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2016
24
Oct
Notes from a Field Season at Aztec North
Michelle Turner, PhD Student, Binghamton University Department of Anthropology
(October 24, 2016)—The first time I heard about Aztec North was in the summer of 2013. I was a field intern at Crow Canyon, having just finished my first year of graduate school. One day, Shanna Diederichs took us al...
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2016
18
Oct
Recapping Stewardship Day 2016 in Utah’s Nine Mile Canyon
R. E. Burrillo and Jamie Clark Stott, Project Discovery
(October 18, 2016)—Imagine a hunting party on the prehistoric Great Plains. Imagine tense muscles, clenched jaws, fierce and determined eyes. Imagine hearts pounding. A signal is given, arms swing, voices rise in an undulating chorus of ...
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