In the SPIRIT of the season:

Rumor has it that the Deming-Luna Museum harbors three ghosts. Keep your eyes and ears open when you visit.

/s/ webmaster [see what I did up there?]

The application period for the GCAS/Nancy Coinman Grant Awards is moving along. 

The deadline for the GCAS to receive applications for a GCAS/Nancy Coinman Grant Award is December 1, 2018, so please pass this on to your favorite graduate student as soon as possible.

For the second half of the 2018-2019 academic year, the GCAS is providing two awards in the amount of $750 each to PhD candidate(s) and/or Master’s-level student(s). All applications will be considered although the GCAS encourages applications by anthropology or archaeology students (Master’s degree students and PhD candidates) enrolled at an accredited university; upon projects related to topics unique to the Mimbres-Mogollon region or the greater Southwest region (the US Southwest and Northwest Mexico); and which indicate financial need or in-kind support.

Learn more about Nancy Ruth Coinman and our GCAS/Nancy Coinman Grant Awards, and start the application process here.

/s/ webmaster

Ancient cultures prized jewelry fashioned from the shells of the Glycymeris genus (saltwater bittersweet clams). Various sizes of clam shells were made into rings, necklaces, and especially bracelets. The Glycymeris shells that have been recovered from archaeological sites throughout the US Southwest generally originated from points along the Pacific shore of Baja California, throughout Mexico's Gulf of California, and as far south along the Mexican mainland as Acapulco. It appears some travel was involved to get the clams from their briny homes to the arid pueblos of our region.

The Texas Archeological Society has announced that registration will open on October 28, 2018, for their next Rock Art Academy to be held in El Paso, Texas, on February 16-17, 2019.

The TAS explains that the Rock Art Academy "...is a two-day Texas Archeology Academy that explores regional rock art archeological sites, Mogollon archeological sites, and how investigators use this information to interpret the human and natural histories of an area. Classroom sessions for the Academy will be held at the El Paso Museum of Archaeology with field sessions at Hueco Tanks State Park..."

The registration period for the 2019 Rock Art Academy runs from noon on October 28, 2018, through midnight on January 17, 2019. For details on this event, go to this TAS page.

/s/ webmaster [Photos by Marianne Smith]

Among the many layers of our federal government is the State Historic Preservation Office (SHPO). It functions under the 1966 National Historic Preservation Act and is a subagency of the National Park Service's National Register of Historic Places.

The National Register of Historic Places is the official list of the Nation's historic places deemed worthy of preservation. It coordinates public and private efforts to identify, evaluate, and protect America's historic and archaeological resources. SHPO performs the essential duties of surveying, evaluating, and proposing for inclusion in the National Register significant historic buildings, and historic and archaeological sites, structures, districts, and objects.

The application period for the GCAS/Nancy Coinman Grant Awards is underway. 

The deadline for the GCAS to receive applications is December 1, 2018. Please pass this announcement on to your favorite graduate student as soon as possible.

For the second half of the 2018-2019 academic year, the GCAS is providing two awards in the amount of $750 each to PhD candidate(s) and/or Master’s-level student(s). All applications will be considered although the GCAS encourages applications by anthropology or archaeology students (Master’s degree students and PhD candidates) enrolled at an accredited university; upon projects related to topics unique to the Mimbres-Mogollon region or the greater Southwest region (the US Southwest and Northwest Mexico); and which indicate financial need or in-kind support.

Nancy Ruth Coinman left a generous gift from her estate to the GCAS upon her death in 2015. Her surviving family made an equally generous donation to us in her memory. These two gifts form the basis of the Nancy Coinman Grant Awards. We offer them in furtherance of Nancy's and her family's wishes to help the GCAS recognize and support students of anthropology and archaeology in their efforts to study, preserve, and protect archaeological resources and culturally significant places. 

Learn more about our GCAS/Nancy Coinman Grant Awards and get started on the application process here.

/s/ webmaster

The Grant County Archaeological Society are the proud hosts of the 2019 Archaeological Society of New Mexico's (ASNM) annual meeting to be held in Silver City, New Mexico, during the weekend of Friday, April 26, 2019, through Sunday, April 28, 2019.

The announcement of the 2019 ASNM Annual Meeting is below. This page links to meeting details on other pages as such information becomes available.

Please carefully consider reserving your room at the Murray Hotel as soon as practicable, because the Tour of the Gila annual cycling race is scheduled for May 1-5, 2019, and lodging throughout Silver City is expected to be quickly booked. Please click here for full lodging information.

  THE ARCHAEOLOGICAL SOCIETY OF NEW MEXICO 2019 ANNUAL MEETING
HOSTED BY THE GRANT COUNTY ARCHAEOLOGICAL SOCIETY

FRIDAY, APRIL 26 - SUNDAY, APRIL 28, 2019

MURRAY HOTEL
SILVER CITY, NM

 REGISTRATION FORM

CALL FOR PAPERS SUBMISSION - Submission Deadline: MONDAY, APRIL 1, 2019

CALL FOR POSTERS SUBMISSION - Submission Deadline: MONDAY, APRIL 1, 2019

VENDOR APPLICATION - Submission Deadline: MONDAY, APRIL 1, 2019

FIELD TRIP INFORMATION

MIMBRES AND BEYOND:

ARCHAEOLOGY OF SOUTHWEST NEW MEXICO
AND CONNECTIONS TO THE WIDER REGION

Are you a writer? An aspiring writer? Have you written something about anthropology, archaeology, local history, or some such but you're not sure how to publicize it on the Web?

Do you have an archaeology-related event to announce? Are you excited to share an article or a book you've read? Have you recently visited a historic or archaeological site and have photos to share?

Lonnie Ludeman, Conference Chair for the 20th Biennial Mogollon Archaeology Conference, announced that this conference is scheduled for NMSU in Las Cruces, New Mexico, from October 11-13, 2018; and is open to GCAS members to attend. 

For years, individual archaeologists have proposed that the blue-green color of turquoise was represented by the fine lines (aka hachure) in certain styles of Mimbres bowls, presumably as an appeal for water. Later archaeological study suggested that "...Mimbres hachure was likely representative of color but not necessarily blue-green. In fact, it may have referenced yellow. Yellow and blue are often paired among the Pueblos, and [there may have been] interregional differences in the meaning...."