Southwest Archaeology Today

Southwest Archaeology Today (SAT) is a free e-mail news digest providing subscribers with information about current news and events in Southwest archaeology. Published weekly, SAT is maintained as a community networking tool for professional and avocational archaeologists in the American Southwest and Mexican Northwest. Review our submission guidelines here.

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Celebrating Tucson (S-cuk Son)

Celebrating Tucson (S-cuk Son) The region is part of the traditional territory of the O’odham people, who have been here since time immemorial. The Spanish place name Tucson is in fact derived from the O’odham S-cuk Son, “at the base of the black hill,” also known today as Sentinel Peak—T...

Santa Clara Youth Crews Win New Mexico Heritage Preservation Award

Santa Clara Youth Crews Continue to Restore Ancestral Place, Win New Mexico Heritage Preservation Award Atop the mesa above the Puye Cliff Dwellings, ancient volcanic rock-wall ruins have been painstakingly rebuilt. Native mud made much the way it was a millennium ago is hand-plastered onto the wal...

Interview with Matthew Liebmann

Interview with Archaeologist Matthew Liebmann: “My work with the tribe…strives to work for tribal interests, instead of just my own academic interests” Archaeology Professor Matthew Liebmann has been collaborating with the Pueblo of Jemez in New Mexico for two decades, having served as tribal...

Bears Ears Monument Management Plan Roundly Denounced

Bears Ears Monument Management Plan Roundly Denounced Nearly two years after dramatically shrinking the Bears Ears National Monument in Utah, the Trump administration finalized a management plan Friday that would allow trees to be plowed down using heavy chains, as well as utility lines and more ra...

2019 Bears Ears Summer Gathering—Calls for Unity at Largest Meeting Yet

2019 Bears Ears Summer Gathering—Calls for Unity at Largest Meeting Yet Homecoming was the theme of this weekend’s fifth annual Bears Ears Summer Gathering, which is organized by the grassroots nonprofit Utah Diné Bikéyah (UDB). This year the gathering gave a special welcome to Pueblo relativ...

Ceremonial Shield Will Return to Acoma Pueblo

Ceremonial Shield Will Return to Acoma Pueblo A sacred ceremonial shield will be returned to the Pueblo of Acoma following a settlement agreement filed Friday afternoon in U.S. District Court. The settlement orders the EVE Auction House in Paris, France, to release the shield into U.S. custody at t...

ICOMOS Releases Report on Cultural Heritage and Climate Change

ICOMOS Releases Report on Cultural Heritage and Climate Change The “Future of Our Pasts: Engaging Cultural Heritage in Climate Action” report was released by ICOMOS [International Council on Monuments and Sites] on Wednesday 3 July 2019 in Baku, Republic of Azerbaijan at an event held during th...

Fighting the Downsizing of Bears Ears National Monument

Commentary: Fighting the Downsizing of Bears Ears National Monument The value of a landscape scale is that it is the best tool to capture the diverse human stories represented in the archaeological record of an area. These maps and images make it clear that the Trump-downsized monument fails to enc...

One-Year Moratorium on Chaco-Area Drilling Passes House

One-Year Moratorium on Chaco-Area Drilling Passes House Today, U.S. House Assistant Speaker Ben Ray Luján’s initiative to secure a one-year moratorium on oil and gas drilling near the Chaco Culture National Historical Park was passed by the U.S. House of Representatives. Assistant Speaker Luján...

Carleton Bowekaty and the Bears Ears Inter-Tribal Coalition

Profile: Carleton Bowekaty and the Bears Ears Inter-Tribal Coalition The fight to protect Bears Ears has been going on for over 80 years, since the 1930s. Despite the current setback, [Bowekaty’s] motivations to protect Bears Ears remain strong: Bowekaty wishes to reconnect his people to the land...

BLM Changes Position on Leasing within Chaco Buffer Zone

BLM Changes Position on Leasing within Chaco Buffer Zone The Bureau of Land Management no longer opposes an effort by members of the New Mexico congressional delegation that would ban oil, gas and other mineral leasing within a 10-mile buffer zone around Chaco Culture National Historical Park. BLM ...

Fingerprints Show Chaco Potters Were Male and Female

New Research: Fingerprints Show Chaco Potters Were Male and Female In the Pueblo communities of New Mexico and Arizona, pottery is a skill that is traditionally passed down from grandmothers and mothers to younger women of the community. This custom was thought to have ancient origins, and archaeol...

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