Wednesday, August 21, 2024, 6:00PM Mountain Daylight Time (New Mexico) online via Zoom: the GCAS August meeting features speaker Dylan Person, PhD, who will present How Stone Tool Reduction Styles Varied (or didn't vary) Between Social Units/Family Groups at the Harris, La Gila Encantada, and Elk Ridge sites. Join us on Zoom starting at roughly 5:45 to get situated and socialize before we begin at 6:00 PM sharp with a very brief business meeting after which we bridge to Dylan's presentation. A Q&A session will follow his talk. Check your email inbox for your Zoom invitation about one week before the presentation.

Dr. Dylan Person is an archaeologist who works and does research in the American Southwest and the Great Basin. He received his PhD in 2023 from the University of Nevada, Las Vegas working Dr. Barbara Roth on sites from the Mimbres culture of southwestern New Mexico. His research focused on lithic technology, types of tool-stone used, and how these things related to group interactions and social units at the Harris, La Gila Encantada, and Elk Ridge sites.

Person’s research has investigated lithic debitage, a class of lithic artifacts that were either simple stone flakes used for cutting tasks, blanks for more complex lithic tools, or just stone shatter resulting from lithic reduction. His talk to the GCAS will describe how he has used rock identification and the size and shape of debitage flakes to determine technologically-based styles present in the three Mimbres sites described above. He will also discuss how these relate to social groups both at the individual sites as well as in the greater Mimbres area overall.

Please hop onto Zoom with us to recognize how seemingly random bits of rocks help create a more significant picture of the archaeological record as a whole.

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