NEXT MEETING: Saturday, October 21, 2023, at 6:00PM: The GCAS’s general meeting IS RESCHEDULED from the usual third Wednesday of the month to the following Saturday, October 21, 2023, beginning at 6:00PM, for a special meeting and potluck dinner at 2045 Memory Lane in Silver City to welcome visiting members of the GCAS's friends and generous supporters of our MAREC project, the Albuquerque Archaeological Society. GCAS members, please bring your finest potluck dishes to share with about 15 members of AAS who would love to meet you. As we get to know one another, there will be a slideshow presentation of either the Rock House Petroglyph Site, the Dragonfly Petroglyph Site, or both. Join us on Saturday! (In order to offer our members a safe and comfortable experience the GCAS follows CDC and New Mexico Department of Health guidelines for indoor gatherings including masking, distancing, and vaccinations. We recommend all attendees follow the same.

NEXT FIELD TRIP: Sunday, October 22, 2023, at 10:00 AM: Due to lack of a selected destination for the usual field trip on the first Sunday of the month, October's field trip is rescheduled to October 22 when members of the Albuquerque Archaeological Society visit our area. Destination will be either Rock House Petroglyph Site in lower Mimbres Valley (pending permit approval) or Dragonfly Petroglyph Site in Arenas Valley. Watch this space as details develop.

MAREC Progress Report - Phase II
Online Via Zoom: Our March 17, 2021, Featured Speaker: Chris Euler

Old Pueblo Zoom Program of Special Interest

This following announcement of Old Pueblo Archaeology Center regarding one of their regularly scheduled "Third Thursday Food for Thought" programs bears special interest for the GCAS and others in our area. Consider saving the date: Thursday, March 18, 2021.

Old Pueblo describes: “Third Thursday Food for Thought” Zoom online dinnertime program featuring "Mimbres in Context: Hohokam, Chaco, Casas Grandes" presented by archaeologist Stephen H. Lekson, sponsored by Old Pueblo Archaeology Center, Tucson, 7 to 8:30 p.m. Mountain Standard Time. Free.

The ancient Mimbres people of southwestern New Mexico were interesting not only for their famous pottery, but also as “players” in the larger history of the ancient Southwest. We consider Mimbres history in context of its times: Hohokam up to about 1000 CE; Chaco from 1000 to 1150; and the run-up to Paquimé/Casas Grandes from 1150 to 1250. Mimbres began as pithouse villages making red-on-brown pottery (much like Hohokam red-on-buff) and developing Hohokam-inspired canal irrigation systems in the Chihuahua Desert. Around 1000 Hohokam waned as Chaco waxed – the “Pueblo II Expansion” of old textbooks.

Color images on some Classic Mimbres pottery bowls
in the University of Colorado Museum of Natural History,
and drawing of a Mimbres bowl from the Saige-McFarland site, courtesy of Stephen H. Lekson

Emil Haury, long ago, identified 1000 as approximately the time Mimbres was transformed into stone pueblos making black-on-white pottery; he insisted that Mimbres (a subset of the larger Mogollon region) essentially ceased being Mogollon and became much more Anasazi-like. Mimbres flourished while Chaco flourished, from 1000 to shortly before 1150. Political shifts after 1125 at Chaco were reflected at the same time by mass depopulation and social change in the Mimbres river valleys. Post-Mimbres people moved south into the desert, and formed new communities in mud-walled-pueblo villages (some of considerable size) with little or no locally produced painted pottery. Those post-Mimbres societies almost certainly contributed substantially to the base population for Paquimé, the Casas Grandes regional center from 1300 to 1450.

To register for the Zoom meeting go to https://zoom.us/webinar/register/WN_SX6CKc5dTxGpCHJEuhfc2g. For more information contact Old Pueblo at [email protected] or 520-798-1201.

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