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.

If you have news, announcements, or events, let us know.

The Digital Archaeological Record (tDAR) Welcomes New Director

The Digital Archaeological Record (tDAR) Welcomes New Director Greetings! My name is Chris Nicholson and this month (October 1st) I was hired to be the new Executive Director at the Center for Digital Antiquity and tDAR. I come to Digital Antiquity from the University of Wyoming, where I served as ...

Coming Home: Mesa Verde Repatriation

Coming Home: Mesa Verde Repatriation The remains of 20 Native people and 28 funerary objects will be returned to the tribes with relations to Mesa Verde, the White House announced on Wednesday. The announcement comes after a repatriation agreement was reached between the United States and Finland. ...

Federal Judge Rules that Bears Ears, Grand Staircase-Escalante Suits May Move Forward

Federal Judge Rules that Bears Ears, Grand Staircase-Escalante Suit May Move Forward A federal judge has turned down an attempt by the Trump administration to dismiss legal challenges to its 2017 decision to cut the size of Bear Ears National Monument in southern Utah. In a three-page ruling issued...

September 28 Is National Public Lands Day

September 28 Is National Public Lands Day: Connecting to Nature through Service National Public Lands Day is the largest single-day volunteer effort for America’s public lands. Each year, hundreds of thousands of volunteers come together on the fourth Saturday in September to assist with various ...

Border Construction Imperils Archaeological Sites in Organ Pipe Cactus National Monument

Border Construction Imperils Archaeological Sites in Organ Pipe Cactus National Monument Environmental groups have fought unsuccessfully to halt construction in protected areas, arguing that more-imposing barriers could disrupt wildlife migration and threaten the survival of imperiled species. But ...

September Oil and Gas Lease Sale of Traditional Landscapes Criticized by Tribes

September Oil and Gas Lease Sale of Traditional Landscapes Criticized by Tribes For the third time since last year, the Bureau of Land Management is auctioning oil and gas leases on archaeologically rich canyons and mesas in San Juan County, but this time in the face of opposition from local electe...

Understanding When and How the Americas Were Populated

Understanding When and How the Americas Were Populated Most archaeologists would now agree that there were widely scattered, small but culturally diverse groups of people living in the Americas at least one or two millennia before the emergence of Clovis spear points. That estimate, then, placing p...

Before Highway Realignment, Investigations Reveal an Important Archaeological Site

Before Highway Realignment, Investigations Reveal an Important Archaeological Site A large, extensive network of Native American ruins was recently discovered just outside Durango on top of Florida Mesa, and it’s kind of blowing archaeologists’ minds. “As an archaeologist with 30-plus years�...

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...

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