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:

March 16, 2022, 6:45PM via Zoom: This month's GCAS general meeting features archaeologist and PhD candidate Scott Nicolay. Specific topic TBD so watch this space for updates. (Teaser: a discussion of the ritual use of caves in the prehistoric Northwest Mexico/Southwest US region may be involved.)

Scott works with Dr. Holley Moyes out of the University of California at Merced in examining the ritual use of caves in prehistory. Scott's research interrogates the archaeological record of ceremonial caves from the prehistoric U.S. Southwest and Northwest Mexico in order to interpret major social, political and religious reorganizations that repeatedly swept the region prior to European contact, and how these shifts mesh both with prehistoric climactic change and contemporaneous events in the Mesoamerica core and periphery.

The GCAS's own Thatcher Rogers has shared with us a link to his recently published article in the Journal of Anthropological Archaeology that describes the latest stage of his ongoing archaeological research into the connections between the Mimbres and Casas Grandes cultures. Thatcher wrote that the GCAS's Nancy Coinman Grant Award that he received in 2019 helped him collect some of the data and images he used in this article. We are thrilled that our group could contribute to research like Thatcher's.

Thatcher continues,

My paper is titled: Ancestral relations and late prehispanic dynamics between the Mimbres and Casas Grandes cultures of the American Southwest/Mexican Northwest region

GCAS member Thatcher Rogers is currently a PhD student at UNM, a ceramics analyst/archaeologist for the Office of Contract Archeology and Aspen CRM Solutions, and one of the recipients of our Nancy Coinman Grant Awards. He has kindly allowed us to include on our website his recently-published paper, "Mimbreños y Paquiméños: Historicism and the Ancestry of the Casas Grandes Ceramic Tradition."

Wednesday, September 16, 2020, 7:00 PM: GCAS general meeting via Zoom. No business meeting this time, so we will begin by welcoming our Featured Speaker, University of New Mexico PhD candidate and 2018/2019 GCAS Coinman Grant Awardee Thatcher A. Rogers. Thatcher will describe the findings of his current research regarding "Following the Green Stone Road: Exploring the Upper Gila Connection to Paquimé (Casas Grandes)."

Meet Dr. Paul Minnis. He earned his PhD at the University of Michigan in 1981 and holds the title of Professor Emeritus of Anthropology at the University of Oklahoma in Norman. During his career he has authored, co-authored, or edited at least 12 books in addition to having written numerous journal articles and book chapters. Now retired and living in Tucson, Arizona, he speaks at professional conferences and in more informal presentations to the general public on topics such as prehispanic trade and cultural networks; and how ancient farming practices can enhance our modern world's food supply.

To read the full narrative of the great GCAS field trip of May 2-4, 2018, see Part I, Part II, Part III, Part IV, and Part V.

I have been remiss in not disclosing that our group dined - and well - while in Mexico. No photos were taken of the excellent seafood restaurant our guide Luis introduced us to in Janos; but we had a more traditional lunch experience in a small hotel in Mata Ortiz that had little trouble in providing our group of 16 gabachos with a classic lunch of chiles rellenos, tacos, and much, much more.  (h/t Marcia Corl for the dining photo up there on the left; webmaster focused instead on the chile ristras along the garden portal.)

Day 3: May 4, 2018. We arrived in Paquimé. The site's thick adobe walls may be slowly dissolving back into the earth, but it remains an awe-inspiring sight to look out over Paquimé's grand plaza, its ceremonial structures, and its residential areas comprising some 1700 rooms.

To read the complete narrative of the GCAS field trip of May 2-4, 2018, see Part I, Part II, Part III, and Part IV.

The second half of Day 2, May 3, 2018, comprised a tour of the area's historic structures, including a charming 1930s-era church in Juan Mata Ortiz.

In stark contrast to the small, well-tended church and grounds in Mata Ortiz, were the ruins of Hacienda San Diego, one of the mansions belonging to the early 20th-Century cattle baron Luis Terrazas. During the First Gilded Age, Luis Terrazas amassed a combined total of 7 million acres of ranch land, over 500,000 head of cattle, and a few hundred thousand head of horses, mules, and sheep. He was reputed at the time to be the largest individual land owner in the Americas. During the Mexican Revolution of 1916, Pancho Villa used his position as provisional governor to confiscate Terrazas's land and slaughter all the livestock to feed the revolutionary army.

(This is an avocational archaeological website, so I will not personally comment upon the politics of the Terrazas-Villa era. I will leave it up to discerning websurfers to determine for themselves whether or not certain remarks are factually attributable to Luis Terrazas, such as, "Chihuahua comprises the largest part of my ranch," and "I am not from Chihuahua. Chihuahua is mine.")

Marcia Corl, an archaeology enthusiast from Las Cruces, joined us on our international field trip to Paquimé. In today's post please enjoy some of her portraits of the people living and working in the ceramics center of Juan Mata Ortiz. All photos you see in this post are Marcia Corl's, EXCEPT this large one over here on the right. Marcia says that this particular one is a photo she took of another photo that she saw hanging in one of the Mata Ortiz galleries we visited. Marcia says that this is a portrait of Juan Quezada himself, shown firing Mata Ortiz ceramics the Old Skool way - using a flaming pile of wood and cow pies. However, an image of Juan Quezada seems to be an apt introduction to the rest of Marcia's own photos of the artisans and residents of his home town. (As always, hover on a photo for a caption; and click on any photo to enlarge.)

Marcia writes:

"​I had no idea what to expect when I learned I was able to go with this bright and energetic group to Mata Ortiz and Paquimé.  I had told myself that I was not going to spend any money on pots (which I had very little room for in my house), but the trip was going to be a learning experience anyway.  Never had seen Paquimé either. We  saved the second day of the trip for the Mata Ortiz visit. I expected to drive up to some sort of Plaza where we would find everyone with their wares, but our first stop was at a little adobe house, where I thought Luis (our guide) maybe had some personal business, until we were all escorted into the private house of a potter.  The whole bus was going in!  She had 3 walls of the small front room lined in shelves of pottery, all hand thrown, and some hand painted with a single-hair brush. The prices were on tape written in dollars below the beautiful objects, ranging from 5 dollars to 200 dollars.  The table she was to demonstrate the fine painting was on the 4th wall.  We all watched with bated breath while she marked the finely decorated white clay pot with a repeat pattern of burnt orange paint between the tiny black design already there. 

To read the complete narrative of the GCAS field trip of May 2-4, 2018, see Part I here, and Part II here.

Day 2: May 3, 2018. Shopping day in the artisans' town of Mata Ortiz. Because the Grant County Archaeological Society embraces art and culture in all its forms. (h/t Marcia Corl for close-up photo of fine ceramics detailing.)

Juan Mata Ortiz is a town of about 1200 people located several miles south- southwest of Nuevo Casas Grandes, Chihuahua, Mexico. It was established in the late 19th Century  as "Pearson," but after the 1916 Mexican Revolution it renamed itself "Juan Mata Ortiz" in memory of an army colonel and local hero who had fought against the Apache. The town's economy had been based exclusively on agriculture, but beginning in the late 1970s/early 1980s a ceramics tradition began to develop that now provides the town and its inhabitants with a more stable and diverse economy than agriculture alone had afforded.