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:

Wednesday, August 17, 2022, 7:00 PM online via Zoom: The GCAS welcomes West-Mexican archaeologist Manuel Dueñas Garcia as our Featured Speaker for our monthly general meeting. As usual for our Zoom meetings we invite everyone to hop online about 6:45 PM to get settled while we have a brief-to-nonexistent business meeting. Manuel will begin his presentation at 7PM sharp to share his perspectives on Aguascalientes Archaeology and the Northern Border of Mesoamerica during the Epiclassic (600-900 CE).

Manuel is a graduate student at the University of California at Merced where he focuses his research on the northern frontier of Mesoamerica including long distant trade, world systems theory, and 3D records for archaeological materials. See below for two examples of his 3D model reconstructions:

Saturday, July 23, 2022, 11:00AM at downtown Silver City's Silco Theater, 311 Bullard Street - free to the public: it's The Meaning of Things, this month's installment of the Community Conversation program cosponsored by the Silver City Museum and the Western Institute for Lifelong Learning. Featured speaker Dani Romero, Director of the WNMU Museum, will describe the history of Mimbreño pottery and its cultural connotations to Southwest New Mexico. Afterwards audience members are invited to join a Community Conversation on how objects can be expressions of cultural identity. Attendees are encouraged to bring objects from home that have personal relevance to them and to share their stories in “The Meaning of Things.”

Born and raised in Southern California, Danielle spent the last 11 years in Nevada managing archaeological collections and working for the State Historic Preservation Office. A PhD candidate at the University of Nevada at Las Vegas focusing on Mimbres pottery and how it informs prehistoric interaction, Dani spent most of her summers for the past 9 years in the Mimbres Valley/Silver City working on various field projects before accepting the directorship of Silver City's WNMU Museum. The WNMU Museum is home to the NAN Ranch Collection: the largest and most complete collection of Mimbres materials in existence from a single prehistoric Mimbres site, and the largest and most comprehensive permanent interpretative exhibition of Mimbres pottery and artifacts in the world.

Wednesday, July 20, 2022, 7:00PM: The GCAS monthly in-person general meeting congregates at the Roundup Lodge in San Lorenzo (Mimbres Valley). Start at 6PM with your own plates/utensils/beverage & a dish for yourself or to share. Brief general meeting at 6:45 PM. At 7:00 PM sharp we welcome the GCAS's friend Dr. Bob Stokes, chair of ENMU's Archaeology Department, who will present his team's Preliminary Results from ENMU's 2021 Summer Field School at the Mares Rockshelter, a Jornada Mogollon Site along the Lower Rio Grande near Radium Springs.