Wednesday, September 20, 2023: Join us at our regular monthly meeting as we return to the Roundup Lodge in San Lorenzo (Mimbres Valley) near the junction of Highways 152 and 35 for the last time this year. Potluck starts at 5PM with your own plates/utensils/beverage & a dish for yourself or to share. Brief general meeting will begin at 5:40PM, then at 6PM sharp we welcome our Featured Speaker, GCAS member Jeff Banfield, who will present Hunting for Anasazi (Ancestral Puebloan) Sites in Canyon of the Ancients National Monument. Jeff arrived in the Canyon of the Ancients in an unconventional way: after retiring from the Math Department at Montana State University in 2012, Jeff and Lisa Banfield moved to Santo Domingo (Dominican Republic) where Lisa taught at an international school. Since returning to the US they have lived in Tucson, Cortez, and now Silver City. Jeff tells us:

In Santo Domingo I learned to never buy bananas from the street vendors because they always give you your change in bananas. In Tucson I volunteered as a naturalist in Sabino Canyon where I got to see a tarantula and a tarantula hawk battle it out (the wasp won). In Cortez I volunteered at the Anasazi Heritage Center and was able to spend four years wandering through Canyons of the Ancients National Monument looking for Anasazi (Ancestral Puebloan) sites. Now that we live in Silver City, I volunteer at City of Rocks State Park on Mondays and I spend the rest of the week trying to persuade something besides goatheads to grow in the caliche that makes up most of our yard.

We'll see you at the Roundup for a fine meal and to learn from Jeff about Ancestral Puebloan sites in Colorado!

/s/ webmaster

Wednesday, August 16, 2023, VIA ZOOM: The GCAS will begin at 5:30PM Mountain Daylight (New Mexico) Time/4:30PM Mountain Standard (Arizona) Time with a very short business meeting. At or shortly before 5:45PM New Mexico/4:45PM Arizona time, we will welcome our Featured Speaker, archaeologist Allen Dart of Old Pueblo Archaeology Center, who will describe The Antiquity of Irrigation in the Southwest:

Join our monthly GCAS meeting at the Mimbres Valley's Roundup Lodge, 91 Acklin Hill Road in San Lorenzo, New Mexico, near the junction of Highways 152 and 35, when we welcome our Featured Speaker, Katie Baustian - Assistant Professor of Anthropology at Skidmore College in Saratoga Springs, New York.

Doors open at 5:00 PM for a potluck dinner so bring a dish for yourself or to share. Brief GCAS business meeting begins at 5:30 PM followed immediately by Katie's presentation that will guide us to: Understanding the Mimbres Through Bioarchaeology.

Using bioarchaeological and archaeological methods, Katie Baustian's work explores the use of violence, adaptations to stress, and social relationships among the Mimbres and Mogollon of the prehistoric American Southwest. She excavated for seven seasons at the Harris and Elk Ridge sites in the Mimbres Valley but has more recently been conducting research at museum repositories to understand how teeth can show evidence of relatedness and kinship in the region.

In order to offer our members a safe and comfortable experience at our in-person meetings 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.

/s/ webmaster

Wednesday, February 15, 2023: the GCAS meets again at 2045 Memory Lane in Silver City, New Mexico. Light refreshments provided and OK to bring your own light snacks or handy meal (burrito, etc.) and beverage. Meeting starts at 5:30PM sharp with a brief to nonexistent business meeting followed at 5:45PM by our featured speaker, the redoubtable archaeologist Chris Adams. Chris will showcase for us the Feather Imagery Depicted on Mimbres Pottery. Expect meeting to adjourn about 7:00PM. As ever, 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. Learn more about Chris's significant career in protection and preservation:

Wednesday January 11, 2023, 4:00PM MST in-person in Silver City, New Mexico; and online via Zoom: sponsored by Silver City's Southwest Word Fiesta, it's a FREE presentation by WNMU's Director of the Fleming Museum, archaeologist Danni Romero, who will discuss the Hidden Word of the Mimbres: Glimpses of Daily Life through Pottery.

The GCAS is thrilled to have received a donation from archaeologist, Harvard professor, and founder of the Mimbres Foundation, Steven LeBlanc PhD. Dr. LeBlanc wanted the GCAS's educational experiential workshops - coordinated by Marilyn Markel - to offer local students the opportunity to handle tools like spear points and scrapers without any risk to the ancient artifacts themselves. Thus Dr. LeBlanc donated to the GCAS a seven-piece replica Clovis Tool Kit, flintknapped by archaeologist Bruce Bradley PhD*. To help students better examine Dr. Bradley's first-rate flintknapping, Dr.LeBlanc added a cherry on top: he included two multi-lens loupes with his donation. Thank you for your generous gift to the GCAS, Dr. LeBlanc. Our local schools will certainly benefit from your generosity. Please visit us soon!

Jonah Jankovik, a graduate student in Anthropology at Eastern New Mexico University, was one of two recipients of the GCAS's Nancy Coinman Grant Awards in 2021. We awarded Jonah $1000 to offset her transportation and lodging expenses while collecting sand samples throughout the Sapillo Valley drainage, in order to study the sources' relationships to ancient pottery production and pottery exchange among the Lake Roberts Vista and other Sapillo Valley sites. (To those of us who may have earned our university degrees some time during the past century? Please be advised: costs for transport, lodging, food, and tuition have all increased dramatically for kids these days. The GCAS can and should support their research. Contact your faithful webmaster to ask how you can help make it happen for students like Jonah!)

The Covid pandemic caused significant problems to ongoing archaeological research throughout our region, but Jonah overcame those delays to complete her research and successfully defend her master's thesis this past summer. Congratulations, Jonah!

This morning we received unfortunate news from William Little, of one of our sister organizations, the Doña Ana Archaeological Society:

Excerpt from the next DAAS Newsletter.

Membership notes.

This meeting will mark the end of the Society’s active existence. After over seventy years, it is time to fold our tents, put away our trowels and screens, and leave the field to the young. For the time being, we will maintain our Facebook page and the DAAS mailing list. No dues of any sort will be collected. Any funds remaining at the end of the year will be forwarded to the ASNM Scholarship Fund.

We urge all of you to continue your support of avocational archaeology. Two organizations are highly recommended: The Archaeological Society of New Mexico (ASNM), https://archaeologicalsocietynm.org, and the Grant County Archaeological Society (GCAS), https://www.gcasnm.org/. GCAS holds monthly meetings in the Silver City area, has active projects, and publishes a dandy newsletter – well worth our participation.

William Little

Wednesday, November 16, 2022, 7:00PM via Zoom: Let's get together online for our monthly meeting. As usual we'll start with a brief-if-any business meeting to be immediately followed by our Featured Speaker and longtime GCAS friend and supporter, Margaret "Peggy" Nelson PhD. Peggy will share with us NEWS FROM THE EAST: Contributions to Understanding Mimbres Lives and Landscapes.

Join us on Zoom starting at 6:45 to get situated before Peggy begins her presentation at 7:00 PM sharp. A Q&A session will follow her talk. Check your email inbox for your Zoom invitation about one week beforehand, and join us to hear about Peggy's insights. Meanwhile, learn more about her and her archaeological career:

The El Paso Museum of Archaeology on Transmountain Road has announced a new exhibit in their North Gallery that features casts of the animal and human fossil tracks found in White Sands National Park and the surrounding White Sands Missile Range, that have recently been dated to be about 23,000 to 21,000 years old. The findings have caused anthropologists and archaeologists to reconsider their assumptions of early human occupation of the Western Hemisphere.

The El Paso Museum of Archaeology's exhibit is planned to continue only through February 8, 2023, so plan your visit soon. The Museum describes their temporary display, titled White Sands Fossil Tracks, as showcasing: