Our Projects

We ask try to ask big questions about people’s lives in this region in the past. We respectfully protect heritage places on the land. We collaboratively advocate for the protection and community interpretation of cultural landscapes.

Working with Tribes to Re-Route SunZia

The case for protecting this landscape is clear: The San Pedro—Arizona’s last free-flowing river—and its valley embody the unique and timely story of social and ecological sustainability across more than 12,000 years of cultural and environmental change.
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Active, Advocacy, Site Protection

Desert Trails Survey across the Great Bend of the ...

(August 1, 2023)—The Great Bend of the Gila marks an important and unique segment of the river corridor that bridges the ancestral homelands of the O’odham and Piipaash. Movement was an essential dimension to ancestral lifeways along this river, yet the archaeology and history of Indigenous trai...
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Active, Research

The Great Bend of the Gila

For the very latest on the campaign to permanently protect the public lands of the Great Bend of the Gila, visit respectgreatbend.org! The Great Bend of the Gila is a fragile stretch of river valley and surrounding lands in the Sonoran Desert of southwestern Arizona. This rural landscape is nestled...
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Active, Advocacy, Site Protection

cyberSW

Big Data for Big Questions Archaeology Southwest is pleased to announce that a new joint initiative, cyberSW, has received a $1.7 million award through the National Science Foundation’s RIDIR program (Resource Implementations for Data Intensive Research in the Social Behavioral and Economic Sci...
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Active, Outreach, Research, Site Protection

Protecting the Greater Chaco Landscape: Threats fr...

Banner image courtesy of EcoFlight Archaeology Southwest is part of the Coalition to Protect Greater Chaco, a collaborative effort to find a balanced solution for protecting the Greater Chaco Landscape. Along with Archaeology Southwest, partners include the All Pueblo Council of Governors, the ...
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Active, Advocacy, Site Protection

Santa Cruz Valley National Heritage Area

Archaeology Southwest, in partnership with the Santa Cruz Valley Heritage Alliance, is pleased to support the newly designated Santa Cruz Valley National Heritage Area. This congressional designation honors, preserves, and celebrates the region’s diverse natural resources and cultural contribution...
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Active, Advocacy

Lower Gila River Ethnographic and Archaeological P...

Archaeology Southwest is pleased to announce that a team of affiliated researchers has earned a prestigious Collaborative Research Grant from the National Endowment for the Humanities (NEH). The $175,000 grant will help fund the Lower Gila River Ethnographic and Archaeological Project, an interdisci...
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Active, Research

Caring for Ancient Places: Stabilizing Casa Malpai...

Located at the edge of a shield volcano overlooking the modern town of Springerville, Arizona, the ancient village of Casa Malpais sits on a terrace made of a type of volcanic basalt called Malpais. People built the village over a number of volcanic fissures that provided easily accessible “baseme...
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Advocacy, Site Protection

Salmon Pueblo Archaeological Research Collection

In 2015, the Salmon Pueblo Archaeological Research Collection project (SPARC) was funded through at a National Endowment for the Humanities Collections and Reference grant (PW-228168-15). The goal of this project is to preserve and make accessible incomparable legacy data from the important excava...
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Active, Research

Standing with Bears Ears

Banner image by R. E. Burrillo Archaeology Southwest joins the Bears Ears Inter-Tribal Coalition and the Friends of Cedar Mesa as we #StandWithBearsEars. Why? The Bears Ears region is not only a singular natural landscape, but also a cultural one. Over millennia, people transformed the rugg...
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Active, Advocacy, Site Protection

Fluid Identities

Land, Water, and Religion during the Gila River Millennium (A.D. 450–1450) In 2017, Archaeology Southwest is beginning a new five-year investigation, which builds on the methods and themes of our Salado Impact investigation, and expands the temporal and geographic focus substantially. Social...
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Active, Outreach, Research

Hands-On Archaeology

Archaeology Southwest’s new Hands-On Archaeology program connects people of today with daily life in the distant past.
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Active, Outreach
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