Announcing our current slate of GCAS officers! You will see a couple of open positions this year, so please consider stepping up to maintain the strong bullpen we've had!

• President:                            OPEN
• Vice President:                     Marilyn Gendron
  
• Treasurer:                            Lee Brown
  
• Secretary:                            William Hudson
• Program Chair:                     Marilyn Gendron
• Field Trip Coordinator:         OPEN
• Newsletter:                           Bill Dixon (editor), Kyle Meredith (distribution)
• Membership:                         Lee Brown, Kyle Meredith

Our current Board of Trustees:

The Grant County Archaeological Society wishes everyone a Happy and Most Auspicious New Year - and what better way to start 2022 right, than by renewing your GCAS membership?

Membership runs from January through December of the current year. Our individual membership is $20 and our family membership is $30. Click through to this page to either renew online via our PayPal link, or to download, print, fill out our Membership form, and send it with a check by mail to: Grant County Archaeological Society, PO Box 1713, Silver City, NM 88062.

Thank you for joining us in 2022!

/s/ webmaster

Ron Barber, creator of the Stone Calendar Project, has been studying rock art sites throughout the Southwest and Northern Mexico identifying glyphs that mark specific times of the year using unique light and shadow interactions.  He has some survey predictions for glyphs along the Gila Narrows and other southern sites and is looking for volunteers to help in further research.

Anyone who is interested in spending time in the field recording/filming calendar sun light interactions in the region, please contact Ron directly at barbers6@aol.com . Here's more of Ron's background:

We members of the GCAS are a very lucky bunch indeed. Our two allotted rooms in the Mimbres Culture Heritage Site's historic Wood House are complete. We're ready to get to work on our educational programs and research collections that will form the backbone of the new Mimbres Archaeological Research and Education Center. Meet the dozens of generous folks who have given the GCAS their time, skills, hard-earned money, and valued library materials to our project. It is because of their unwavering support that we are able to start 2022 in just the right way. Thank you all for standing by us!

Rehab work continues in IFWEF's two upstairs rooms; the walls have been painted and the floors refinished, with final touches underway. Downstairs, the GCAS library's built-in bookshelves are in place and awaiting their final finish coats. (See volunteer Steve Collie at work in the first two photos over there on the left.)

Meanwhile, our GCAS volunteers spent an exciting morning assembling the furniture for the MAREC lab in the adjacent room. Our lab's two-station work bench sports a tabletop ledge shelf and an electrical power strip for small power tools. Two rolling trolleys stowed underneath this work station offer additional storage opportunities for all participants. A freestanding locking cabinet will keep researchers' work product secure. Our refinished hutch provides an extra work surface as well as space for educational materials.

(Scroll down for more photos!)

Our GCAS library and archives are fully inventoried and as cross-referenced as can be, so now we have a good idea where certain gaps appear in our collections. We aim to fill those gaps and that's where our GCAS members come in. Don't wait! Act now!

Our faithful GCAS librarian, Marianne The Librarianne, would be happy to accept any past GCAS newsletters that come her way from anyone in a decluttering mood. A full and complete set of newsletters is especially important to the GCAS for tracking the history of where our group has gone each month on field trips. Marianne is open to taking any GCAS materials off your hands at any time, but for this project she says she is especially interested in receiving newsletters for any one of the dates in the following list. If you have a little something on this list, or for any other reason at all, you are welcome to contact her via email at webmaster@gcasnm.org, or by telephone at 772-529-2627 to see how smooth and easy letting go of old newsletters can be:

The joint GCAS-IFWEF rehabilitation project continues. The plumbing for the lab’s utility sink is connected and fully functional, bringing water into a building that has not enjoyed any indoor plumbing in decades. IFWEF and GCAS volunteers have hung, re-trimmed, and painted a total of six interior and exterior doors. The exterior doors have new overhangs to help divert rain water and snow melt. We all agree that the doors' fresh coats of bright paint really help the Wood House come alive.

Marilyn Markel’s special storage closet under the lab’s stairway – christened by one of our GCAS members as the Education Bunker – is fully enclosed, illuminated, and secured, with raised mats on which to store materials for Marilyn’s archaeological educational programs. The Bunker’s door received its final coat of paint and is ready for service. (See green-and-white door below, on the right.)

The ceiling lights and fans are up and running in both library and lab. Ceilings and walls have their final coats of paint and IFWEF’s contractor has installed laminate flooring throughout the two rooms except where work is pending on two exterior doors and their wood jambs and transom lights. Baseboards are cut to size, painted, and in place. The rooms’ four interior doors await only their final coats of paint.

We are thrilled to announce that the following friends have contributed a combined total of $8,022.12 in support of our MAREC rehabilitation project. Thanks to them the GCAS's two rooms in the historic Wood House have fresh coats of paint in cheerful colors, bright lights and ceiling fans, a utility sink/workbench assembly that can't be beat, and much more. Thank you, one and all, for making the MAREC dream come true:

We of the GCAS cannot say "thank you" often enough to all the supporters of our MAREC rehabilitation project. Please join these wonderful people as we move into the final stretch of construction - and if you have contributed but do not see your name on the list below, please contact us so we can correct our error and thank you properly!