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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.

Our Logo

We derived our logo from an image appearing on a Mimbres black-on-white Style III ceramic bowl that an unknown artisan created about 1000 years ago at some time between 1000 C.E. and 1150 C.E. Avocational archaeologists Harriet and Burton Cosgrove excavated the bowl from the Swarts Ruin in Grant County, New Mexico, during the 1920s shortly before the time the Grant County Archaeological Society was first formed. GCAS logo
According to archaeologist Steven A. LeBlanc in his book "Painted by a Distant Hand" (Harvard Press, 2004), the image on this bowl is of "...a rabbit...shown together with a distinctive carved stick that looks superficially like a sword but was probably used by Mimbres men ceremonially or as a badge of office. Judging from archaeological finds of such swordlike carved sticks, the rabbit and stick are correctly proportioned relative to each other...."

Previously, in 1982 Fred Kabotie (a celebrated and multitalented Hopi painter, potter, author, and curator) opined the image may have represented a rabbit clan, with the ceremonial stick or knife symbolizing that group's role as guardians.

Still other archaeologists and ethnologists observe that images of rabbits are associated with phases of the moon in Mesoamerica's Precolumbian cultures including the Maya; and some researchers have opined that the Mimbreño culture appears to have done the same.

The Peabody Museum of Archaeology and Ethnology at Harvard University in Cambridge, Massachusetts possesses the original bowl.

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