The Annual Meeting of the Archaeological Society of New Mexico (ASNM) is set for Friday, April 26 through Sunday, April 28, 2019, right here in Silver City and hosted by our very selves, the GCAS. That's less than 2 weeks away, GCAS members. If you're this far into our blog you've passed the announcement of the ASNM Meeting and all the linky goodness it contains for attendees and other interested people. [Image via Mimbres Design, Black Range Station, San Lorenzo NM.]

But wait! That's not all! Extra, exclusive opportunities await GCAS members who have not already volunteered: We need everyone pitch in and make this event a success. You have lots of activities to choose from! Just look at the selections below:

Sunday, April 7, 2019, provided fine and sunny weather for a field trip. At least 14 members joined trip leader Greg Conlin on a two-pronged visit to the Old Town archaeological site and later, to the petroglyphs on the Bureau of Land Management's site at Fluorite Ridge. [Tip o' the hat to the GCAS's own Chris Overlock, for sharing the photos in this post!]

Researchers at Washington State University have (re)discovered the oldest tattooing tool in all of western North America. [Photo of tool on right, via Newsweek.] This 3-1/2 inch long, dual-needle tattooing instrument made out of two prickly pear cactus spines bound to a skunkbush sumac stem/handle with yucca fiber, had been excavated in 1972 from a midden at the Turkey Pen archaeological site in southeastern Utah. Based on the tool itself and human coprolites and maize cobs found in the same midden, the find was dated to 79-130 CE, about 2000 years ago during the Basketmaker II period. Similar tattooing tools retrieved from sites throughout the US Southwest were much more recent, having been dated to about 1100-1280CE. In other words, the Turkey Pen artifact now suggests that tattooing in our region had been practiced for at least 1000 years longer than previously believed.

h/t to the GCAS's own Chris Overlock for hipping us to today's news in the Chicago Tribune.

The Art Institute of Chicago has indefinitely postponed the exhibition they had planned for May, 2019, of a private individual's collection of some 70 pieces of Mimbres pottery. The article indicates the Art Institute came to realize that grave goods comprise the majority of this private collection. Such items are inappropriate for public display.

“It’s not art,” said Patty Loew, director of Northwestern University’s Center for Native American and Indigenous Research, who...has followed the controversy within the community of Native American scholars. “If someone dug up your great-grandmother’s grave and pulled out a wedding ring or something that had been buried with her, would you feel comfortable having that item on display?”

We've posted this before and we're posting it again: the Annual Meeting of the Archaeological Society of New Mexico (ASNM) is set for Friday, April 26 through Sunday, April 28, 2019, right here in Silver City and hosted by ourselves, the GCAS. If you've scrolled down this far into our blog you will have already passed the announcement of the ASNM Meeting and all the linky goodness it contains for registrants and other interested parties.

But GCAS members are afforded exclusive opportunities: We need everyone in our group to help in various areas to make this event a success and you have lots to choose from! If you have not already hopped on the bandwagon yet, please do so now:

Answer: We may never know. But there are some intriguing clues, thanks to archaeological linguists and forensic anthropologists. From an article dated March 15, 2019, in Archaeology Magazine:

"...the spread of agriculture and consumption of easier-to-chew foods may have led to changes in human jaws and their arrangement of teeth, which in turn allowed people to make new sounds and create new words....chewing tough, gritty food would have put force on hunter-gatherers’ lower jaws, making the bone grow larger so that the upper and lower teeth aligned in an “edge-to-edge” bite. Such a bite would have made it hard to push the upper jaw forward to make the sounds “f” and “v”...

The GCAS prefers to restrict our blog posts to the US Southwest/Northwestern Mexico region on this here website, but we always make an exception for advances in DNA technology. From a Washington Post article dated March 15, 2019:

"One day about 200 years ago, a woman enslaved on a tobacco plantation near Annapolis tossed aside the broken stem of the clay pipe she was smoking in the slave quarters where she lived....the stem bore marks where she had clenched it in her teeth as she worked. But the stem bore something else she could never have imagined: her DNA.

One of the fun aspects of studying petroglyphs is that regardless of how you interpret the images, nobody is wrong and everybody is right. Following, then, are pics of some of the petroglyphs our GCAS group saw on our March 3, 2019, field trip to Indian Wells.

Author Alex Patterson identifies this circle-with-a-dot over there on the left as a symbol for the moon. Others describe it as a symbol for the sun. Either interpretation seems reasonable but it gets complicated when considering this next image here on the right. Two moons? Two suns? One of each, perhaps?

The Annual Meeting of the Archaeological Society of New Mexico (ASNM) is set for Friday, April 26 through Sunday, April 28, 2019, right here in Silver City and hosted by ourselves, the GCAS. If you've scrolled down this far into our blog you will have already passed the announcement of the ASNM Meeting and all the linky goodness it contains for registrants and other interested parties. [Bat image via Mimbres Design, Black Range Station, San Lorenzo NM.]

But GCAS members have extra opportunities offered exclusively to them: We need everyone in our group to help in various areas to make this event a success and you have lots to choose from! Consider:

The March 3, 2019, GCAS field trip to Indian Wells was enlightening on several levels. Chris Overlock's photos gave a good overview of the general terrain and vegetation, and showcased the classic GCAS looking-for-potsherds stoop that we all know and love. Here in Part II, is a second view of the overall terrain of Indian Wells, followed by a brief illustration of what a bulldozed archaeological site looks like for those who may not have ever seen one before.