The GCAS operated their customary educational booth in Gough Park for Earth Day, April 22, 2023, thanks to members Marty Eberhart, Marilyn Markel, Kathryn McCarroll, and Marianne Smith. The typically breezy April day attracted 67 vendors to Gough Park - 15 more than had attended in 2022! The visiting crowds, estimated by a local newspaper at about 4000, included local residents, out of town visitors, and a healthy number of through-hikers on the Continental Divide Trail. The GCAS earned a prime spot in the park where our volunteers worked three separate tables with hands-on educational activities for all ages, as well as offering plenty of literature for the more intellectually inclined. Our booth displayed wrapped rocks as an eye-catcher and even sold a few to support our GCAS library and general fund. Many more passers-by grabbed our brochures so if you see new faces at future meetings, please make them all feel welcome!

/s/ webmaster [Photos by M.Smith]

Thursdays, 10:00 AM to 3:30 PM, from March 23, 2023, and continuing each following Thursday at WNMU's Museum in Fleming Hall: the public is invited to see the Archaeologist in Action in the museum's second floor exhibit room, currently featuring the Elk Ridge Open House. Visit WNMU Museum director Danni Romero and a group of the museum's volunteer explainers as they process and prepare a new museum collection for future exhibit. Repeat visitors welcome!

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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.

On December 4, 2022, nineteen GCAS members and their guests- including our youngest visitor (age six months old!) - visited the Fleming Museum at WNMU. In addition to a guided tour of the Museum's main exhibits, museum director Danni Romero treated our group to the first-ever public showing of their most recent acquisition of Mimbres artifacts, the Clint and Dee (Delk) Johnson Collection.

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!

Set aside time on Sunday, December 4, 2022, at 10:00AM - when the GCAS meets for this month's field trip at WNMU's Museum at Fleming Hall for a guided tour by museum director Danielle Romero. Come to view the new and innovative exhibits that Danni and her staff have already put on display, and hear about the museum's work in curating their vast collections. Ask about the museum's plans for future exhibits and how you can become involved in the process!

(For those unfamiliar, the entrance to the museum is across a small parking lot adjacent to the Aldo Leopold Charter School. From downtown Silver City, drive westbound along W 10th Street until it curves uphill and becomes N Louisiana Street right where the school and the museum are located, on the north side of the street. For more details, visit the museum's web page.) We'll see you there!

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On October 7, 2022, the Southwest Kiln Conference's own Jeff Cooper kicked off their event at WNMU in Silver City with a presentation titled Mysteries of Mimbres Mineral Painted Pottery. Jeff described his own research and experiments in replicating Mimbres painted pottery, and he shared his insights with a very attentive audience. Whether you are a ceramicist yourself or simply curious about how the ancient Mimbres pottery was made, you may find the YouTube video of Jeff's presentation just right for you. Please enjoy: https://youtu.be/70CPfsCI7ho

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The 2022 Southwest Kiln Conference is coming to town from Thursday, Oct. 6 thru Sunday, Oct. 9 at Silver City's own Western New Mexico University. Everyone is welcome and the conference is free. Expect to meet potters who work in a variety of ceramic traditions, making replicas of Anasazi, Hohokam and Mogollon pottery, offering glimpses of the entire process from collecting raw clay to forming and firing pots.

WNMU and museum director Danni Romero are hosting a conference room in the museum for lectures, and WNMU is providing an open space for the firing of the kilns. WNMU will also provide overnight parking for conference attendees who intend to boondock; contact Southwest Kiln for parking location and other details.

The 2022 Southwest Kiln Conference is coming to town from Friday, Oct. 7 thru Sunday, Oct. 9 at Silver City's own Western New Mexico University. The WNMU Museum and director Danni Romero are hosting a conference room in the museum for lectures, and WNMU is providing an open space for the firing of the kilns. However, here's what SW Kiln needs from pottery-oriented folks right now:

"We are looking for folks who would like to present subjects on prehistoric pottery making on Friday and would welcome interested parties to send a note back on a subject you may want to present on."

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.