Saturday, October 19, 2024, 10:00AM to 3:00PM, at the Mimbres Culture Heritage Site in Mimbres, NM: the MCHS celebrates National Archaeology Day with guided site tours, tales of local legends, and activities for the whole family. Immediately following, from 4:00PM to 5:00PM at the Roundup Lodge, Marilyn Markel will present Apaches on the Mimbres and the Story of the Captive Boy, Santiago McKinn. Santiago McKinn's later residence has recently been located at a Mimbres Valley historic/archaeological site so this is a talk you won't want to miss. Telephone Marilyn directly at 575-536-9337 with any questions.

For even more online and in-person action, always check out the long list of upcoming activities happening all over the place, on the GCAS Events page on this very website.

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The next several weeks are chock-full of archaeologically flavored events and activities, and one of them offers an opportunity for you (yes, you!) to help introduce local schoolchildren to experience hands-on education in ancient pottery techniques:

Friday, September 27, 2024, 9:30AM to 12:00PM Noon at the WNMU Museum in Silver City: the San Lorenzo Elementary School's 4th and 5th grade classes, guided by the GCAS's own Marilyn Markel, visit the WNMU Museum for a morning or education and activities, immediately followed by a pizza lunch for the kids and all other participants in a nearby outdoor area. Marilyn Markel is seeking two volunteers to help at the Museum and to enjoy a slice of pizza afterwards. Please telephone Marilyn directly at 575-536-9337 to help out and for extra details.

The next several weeks are chock-full of archaeologically flavored events and activities on two different days offer an opportunity for you (yes, you!) to help introduce local schoolchildren to experience hands-on education in ancient pottery techniques:

Wednesday, September 25, 2024, 2 sessions at 12:15PM and again at 2:00PM, at San Lorenzo Elementary School in San Lorenzo: Marilyn Markel is seeking volunteers to help San Lo's 3d through 5th grade classes in a fun and educational pottery program. Please telephone Marilyn directly at 575-536-9337 with the time you can help the school and for program details.

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:

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...

Sunday, August 4, 2024, 10:00 AM: This month's field trip takes the GCAS to Treasure Hill, located 4 miles east of Silver City in the Arenas Valley and about 1 mile south of Highway 180. Treasure Hill is a heavily looted 15-acre site with a total of about 100 pueblo rooms, ranging from the Late Pithouse to the Classic Mimbres era (about 550 CE - 1130 CE). We will meet at the gate to the site at 10:00 AM sharp but this site is in a sensitive location so please contact trip leader Marianne Smith ([email protected] or phone/text 772-529-2627) for specific directions.

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:

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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The GCAS is happy to congratulate our two 2024 summer interns, Trinton Palomarez (first-year intern) and Gloria White (second-year intern), who headquarter at the Mimbres Culture Heritage Site as they train in educational and scientific activities under the supervision of the GCAS's own Marilyn Markel. This is the second year the GCAS has supported each of two high school level students with a summer internship including $250 stipends.

GCAS members and non-members alike are welcome to attend our next monthly meeting on June 19, 2024, at the Roundup Lodge in San Lorenzo (Mimbres Valley). Doors open at 6PM with our monthly summertime potluck so bring your own plates & utensils, and a dish for yourself or to share with the group. At about 6:30PM (or a bit later) we will have a brief business meeting. Immediately thereafter GCAS president, Marianne Smith, will discuss Images in Mimbres Pottery - Plainware to Classic. Join us to explore some common assumptions people make in interpreting Mimbres images, and to consider similarities in ancient and modern ways of seeing.

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