Wednesday, April 16, 2025, 6:00 PM at 2045 Memory Lane in Silver City, New Mexico. The GCAS's next monthly IN-PERSON ONLY meeting features speaker geoarchaeologist Dave Rachal PhD of Tierra Vieja Consulting in Las Cruces NM. Dave has been involved in some YouTube interviews that discuss various aspects of geoarchaeology, site formation processes related to the formation of ancient footprints and megafauna tracks, and the peopling of the New World. This evening Dave will describe to us the issues surrounding the specific data sets that scientists are applying to the ancient human footprints recently found at White Sands National Park. Doors open at 6:00 PM with light refreshments on offer. Socializing and a brief-to-nonexistent business meeting will immediately precede Dave's presentation of: How Did The Seeds Get There? Ruppia cirrhosa Ecology, Depositional Context and Accurate Radiocarbon Dating at White Sands:

The GCAS's next in-person meeting will be Wednesday, February 19, 2025, 6:00 PM at 2045 Memory Lane in Silver City, New Mexico. On this occasion we feature the GCAS's own Lee Brown, retired mining engineer, who will discuss evidence of Prehistoric Mining in North America with highlights from our own region. Doors open at 6:00 PM with light refreshments provided with a brief socialization period and business meeting, to be immediately followed by Lee's presentation.

GCAS member (and former GCAS treasurer) Lee Brown - formerly known as Gary Brown - was born and raised in New Mexico and has lived in towns as far-flung as Aztec, Mountainair, Socorro, Gallup, Rio Rancho, and now Silver City. He earned his B.S. in Mining Engineering from New Mexico School of Mines in Socorro and completed a 40 year career in the Mining and Steel Industry, mostly in the field of extractive metallurgy under "all sorts of funky engineer titles," as Lee puts it. He worked from bottom to top: laborer, operator, supervisor, underground miner, and operations superintendent. He retired as Chief Engineer for the Concentrator at the Chino Mine right here in Grant County. Lee has continued his lifelong interest in mineral collecting and mining history, enjoying collecting adventures in New Mexico, Arizona, Colorado, Utah, Nevada, Michigan, Montana, Alaska, Wyoming, South Dakota and Georgia, in addition to his archaeological adventures throughout the southwest US, Peru, Yucatan, and Spain.

See you there!

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Saturday, October 19, 2024 beginning at 4:00PM: the GCAS shifts the regular day, time, and location of our usual October Wednesday meeting to 4:00PM on SATURDAY, OCTOBER 19, 2024, to accommodate our featured speaker and National Archaeology Day. For those wishing to spend all day Saturday in the Mimbres Valley, the fun begins at the Mimbres Culture Heritage Site where folks will celebrate National Archaeology Day from 10:00AM to 3:00PM with assorted activities. Immediately following, from 4:00PM to 5:00PM, the GCAS general membership is welcome to join the general public at the Roundup Lodge where Marilyn Markel will present Apaches on the Mimbres and the Story of the Captive Boy, Santiago McKinn. Promptly after Marilyn's talk concludes at about 5PM, the GCAS will have our typical brief business meeting and we expect to adjourn by about 5:30PM. Given the earliness of the hour, no potluck or refreshments will be provided so that GCAS members can all be safely back home in time for dinner. See you on Saturday the 19th!

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On a very warm and sunny Sunday, August 4, 2024, twenty one members of the Grant County Archaeological Society (GCAS), coming from as far away as El Paso, Texas, gathered together to explore the Archaeological Conservancy’s Treasure Hill site located in our very own Arenas Valley. Archaeologists consider this Late Pithouse-to-Mimbres Classic site (roughly 550 CE – 1130 CE), comprising a total of 100 rooms in 6 room blocks plus an additional 24 outlying sites, to have been the largest Mimbres community in the middle Rio de Arenas/Whiskey Creek watershed. Unfortunately Treasure Hill, like so many other Mimbres sites, has suffered heavy looting from the late 19^th Century to the present. A major road and residential development surround it and it has accumulated windblown trash as well as garbage carried in by unauthorized visitors.Consequently...

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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Wednesday, July 17, 2024, 6:00PM: the GCAS monthly meeting at the Roundup Lodge in San Lorenzo (Mimbres Valley) begins with our usual summertime potluck - bring your own plates & utensils, and a dish for yourself or to share with what we expect to be a larger than usual number of guests, including the starving students of the 2024 Preservation Archaeology Museum Curation and Survey Field School, jointly directed by Archaeology Southwest/ASU's Karen Schollmeyer PhD and WNMU Museum's director Danni Romero PhD. Let's feed these folks well, people, they've earned it!

At about 6:30PM we will have a brief business meeting after which we will welcome our featured speaker, Karen Schollmeyer herself, who will share updates on her and her field school team's current work at the WNMU Museum which includes curating the artifacts comprising the NAN Ranch collection.

Wednesday, June 26, 2024, at 6:30 PM in the WNMU Museum - FREE and open to the public: Dr. Jeffrey Ferguson, University of Missouri Assistant Professor of Anthropology/Research Associate Professor, presents: The Next Stage of Archaeometry in Southwestern Archaeology: New Ways to Explore Old Data. Dr. Ferguson explains, "the application of analytical chemistry and other scientific techniques to Southwestern Archaeology can reveal detailed information about ancient behavior from trade and exchange to large-scale social interaction. I will present three main analytical techniques employed at the Archaeometry Laboratory at the University of Missouri Research Reactor Center (MURR) with a focus on what we can learn about people in the past. These techniques have been in use for decades and we are looking at ways to synthesize the accumulated data at much larger scales. I will also present some new research on site identification using drone-based LiDAR in west-central New Mexico." Join Dr. Ferguson in the WNMU Museum's air-conditioned splendor for an informative discussion surrounded by Mimbres artifacts. Although this lecture is free, please consider making a cash donation in any amount to the WNMU Museum at the door to support their ongoing curation efforts.

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Wednesday, May 15, 2024, 6:00PM: the GCAS monthly meeting shifts to the Roundup Lodge in San Lorenzo (Mimbres Valley) for the summer months. Doors open at 6PM for a potluck dinner so bring your own plates, utensils, and a dish for yourself or to share with the group. Brief GCAS business meeting begins at 6:30 PM followed immediately by our evening's Featured Speaker, Preservation Anthropologist Aaron Wright PhD, who will present Indigenous Rock Imagery of the Sonoran Desert. He explains,

Wednesday, April 17, 2024, 6:00PM (New Mexico - Mountain Daylight Time) online via Zoom: The GCAS monthly meeting begins with the usual brief-to-nonexistent business meeting, immediately followed by our Featured Speaker, Kristin Corl, who will introduce us to Investigating Plant and Animal Resources at the Harris Site: An Exercise in Ecosystem Engineering. Kristin explains,

Thursday, October 3 through Saturday, October 5, 2024, Silver City NM: It's the 22d annual Mogollon Conference, hosted by WNMU and the Museum at Fleming Hall.

The Museum will host a complimentary reception for attendees on the evening of October 3 before the two-day conference gets underway on Friday and Saturday at the Bessie Forward GRC on the WNMU Campus. Registration for the conference sessions is $45/person until September 19; thereafter $55/person. BUT: special offer to GCAS members! The Museum needs 3-4 volunteers to help with registration at the conference and would waive the registration fee for those folks! Contact Museum Director Danni Romero to volunteer; check the Mogollon Conference website for all other developing info including fees for the October 4 banquet and the Sunday, October 6 Mimbres Foundation reunion: