NEXT MEETING: Wednesday, April 19, 2023: the GCAS meets at 2045 Memory Lane in Silver City, New Mexico. Light refreshments provided; OK to bring your own light snacks or handy meal (burrito, etc.) & beverage if desired. Doors open at 5 PM for socializing. Meeting starts at 5:30 PM sharp with a short business meeting followed at 5:45 PM by featured speaker and GCAS member Carolyn O’Bagy Davis, who will discuss Bert and Hattie Cosgrove, avocational archaeologists who were instrumental in documenting and preserving a number of local sites including Arenas Valley's Treasure Hill. Meeting to adjourn about 7:00 PM. In order to offer our members a safe and comfortable experience the GCAS follows CDC and New Mexico Department of Health guidelines for indoor gatherings including masking, distancing, and vaccinations. We recommend all attendees follow the same.

NEXT FIELD TRIP: Sunday, April 2, 2023, beginning 9:00 AM: Regular GCAS field trip to City of Rocks State Park - view remnants of Apache shelters along the Cienega Trail, plus features in other easy-access locations like a rock shelter, Apache petroglyph, kiva, and multiple mortar holes. City of Rocks is about a 1-hour drive one-way from Silver City. At 9:00 AM meet at the Cienega Trail trailhead parking (a few hundred yards from the Highway 61 turnoff to the City of Rocks - look on the left side of the road for a parking area with a Port-o-Let). Walk the 1-mile easy Cienega Trail loop to inspect some off-trail features. About 11:00 AM, non-hikers can join the rest of the group to learn about the kiva site a few yards from the Visitor Center. About 11:15 AM, drive round the park’s perimeter road to the north side to view the rock shelter, Apache petroglyph, and mortar holes (short but moderately steep walk uphill from area near campsite #35). Picnic lunch follows at any convenient unoccupied campsite.

Mimbres-Mogollon

Reposting: Special March Event with AAHS

Pat Gilman describes her excavationCurrent GCAS member and supporter, and past member of the Mimbres Foundation, archaeologist Pat Gilman announces that the Arizona Archaeological and Historical Society is in the preliminary stages of planning a field trip to the Mimbres Valley from Friday, March 10, through Sunday, March 12, 2023. They've booked a room at the Little Toad Creek Brewery for Friday dinner (March 10), hoping that they can also use the room for a brief Powerpoint overview of Mimbres archaeology presented by Pat Gilman herself.

AAHS is inviting GCAS members to join them for the March 10 dinner - dutch treat - and then join them for any or all parts of the weekend tour they have in mind. Pat reminds us that the AAHS is still in the early planning stages for this field trip, but she asks GCAS members to “Please let me know if you can join us for dinner and the show*.  The Little Toad Creek Brewery would like to know about how many people will be at dinner.  I don’t need to know if you will join us for any parts of the field trip itself, but I hope you can.  I want to show off what you all have done, and I’d like you to talk about it. And I’d like our members to be able to chat with you all who know so much about the local archaeology and the valley.”

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Mark Your Calendars - Join the AAHS and Us for a Special March Event

Pony Hills panel 1Current GCAS member and supporter, and past member of the Mimbres Foundation, archaeologist Pat Gilman announces that the Arizona Archaeological and Historical Society is in the preliminary stages of planning a field trip to the Mimbres Valley from Friday, March 10, through Sunday, March 12, 2023. They've booked a room at the Little Toad Creek Brewery for Friday dinner (March 10), hoping that they can also use the room for a brief Powerpoint overview of Mimbres archaeology presented by Pat Gilman herself.

AAHS is inviting GCAS members to join them for the March 10 dinner - dutch treat - and then join them for any or all parts of the weekend tour they have in mind. Pat reminds us that the AAHS is still in the early planning stages for this field trip, but she asks GCAS members to “Please let me know if you can join us for dinner and the show*.  The Little Toad Creek Brewery would like to know about how many people will be at dinner.  I don’t need to know if you will join us for any parts of the field trip itself, but I hope you can.  I want to show off what you all have done, and I’d like you to talk about it. And I’d like our members to be able to chat with you all who know so much about the local archaeology and the valley.”

This is an excellent opportunity to get acquainted with our neighbors in Arizona's AAHS so the GCAS is welcoming our members to this weekend event as both our monthly field trip AND our monthly meeting for March!

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Chris adamsWednesday, February 15, 2023: the GCAS meets again at 2045 Memory Lane in Silver City, New Mexico. Light refreshments provided and OK to bring your own light snacks or handy meal (burrito, etc.) and beverage. Meeting starts at 5:30PM sharp with a brief to nonexistent business meeting followed at 5:45PM by our featured speaker, the redoubtable archaeologist Chris Adams. Chris will showcase for us the Feather Imagery Depicted on Mimbres Pottery. Expect meeting to adjourn about 7:00PM. As ever, in order to offer our members a safe and comfortable experience the GCAS follows CDC and New Mexico Department of Health guidelines for indoor gatherings including masking, distancing, and vaccinations. We recommend all attendees follow the same. Learn more about Chris's significant career in protection and preservation:

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Plan Now for a Special Event in Early March!

2019-04-28 MM ASNM at MCHS 2Current GCAS member and supporter, and past member of the Mimbres Foundation, archaeologist Pat Gilman announces that the Arizona Archaeological and Historical Society is in the preliminary stages of planning a field trip to the Mimbres Valley from Friday, March 10, through Sunday, March 12, 2023. They've booked a room at the Little Toad Creek Brewery for Friday dinner (March 10), hoping that they can also use the room for a brief Powerpoint overview of Mimbres archaeology presented by Pat Gilman herself.

This is an excellent opportunity for GCAS members to get acquainted with our neighbors in Arizona's AAHS, so the GCAS has scheduled this weekend event as our March field trip - please join us!

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Register Now for Next Week's Special Presentation by Danni Romero

WNMU Museum Danelle Romero and San Lo StudentsWednesday 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.

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Congratulations to Coinman Recipient Jonah Jankovik!

Screenshot 2022-12-17 at 16-20-33 ENMU Anthropology Newsletter Spring 2022.pdfJonah 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!

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ICYMI: Jeff Cooper's SWKC Presentation is on YouTube

MA4548 - Mattocks womanOn 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 Hummingbird Festival Is This Weekend!

1 MA8499_2Set aside time this weekend to visit the annual Hummingbird Festival hosted by the Mimbres Culture Heritage Site. The event is free and open to the public from 8:00 AM to 3:00 PM on both Saturday, July 30 and Sunday, July 31. Get there early to watch how - and why - ornithologists band the wee hummingbirds; or mosey in at any other time to browse the vendors, and dine on all kinds of goodies. Directions, contact info and other details are here on the MCHS website.

Bonus: the GCAS will have a variety of gently-used archaeology- and anthropology-related books and periodicals for sale in the GCAS library in the ground floor of the historic Wood House. All proceeds go toward replacing books that have been damaged or gone missing from the GCAS library in past years. Please come and help improve our research library while you enjoy the rest of the Festival!

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Spend This Coming Saturday at the Silco!

Dir photo DRomeroSaturday, 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.

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GCAS Monthly Meeting In Person With Featured Speaker: ENMU's Dr. Robert J. Stokes

Photo 11 by Marianne Smith; © 2019 ENMU - All Rights Reserved Stokes-robert-enmuWednesday, July 20, 2022, 7:00PM: The GCAS monthly in-person general meeting congregates at the Roundup Lodge in San Lorenzo (Mimbres Valley). Start at 6PM with your own plates/utensils/beverage & a dish for yourself or to share. Brief general meeting at 6:45 PM. At 7:00 PM sharp we welcome the GCAS's friend Dr. Bob Stokes, chair of ENMU's Archaeology Department, who will present his team's Preliminary Results from ENMU's 2021 Summer Field School at the Mares Rockshelter, a Jornada Mogollon Site along the Lower Rio Grande near Radium Springs.

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