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NEXT MEETING: Wednesday, June 16, 2021, 6:30 PM: It's the GCAS's first post-pandemic in-person general meeting! Meet at the Roundup Lodge at 91 Acklin Hill Road in Mimbres, New Mexico.  The Roundup's ongoing renovations preclude our traditional potluck dinner; instead bring FINGER FOOD SNACKS ONLY for yourself or to share. Beverages must be in recyclable containers. Cleanup is unavailable except for what you can take home yourself or put in the trash. Weather permitting, we gather outdoors between 6:30 PM and 7:00 PM to get reacquainted with one another after so long apart. President Kyle Meredith emphasizes: "While those who have received vaccinations have little fear of contracting or transmitting the disease, the state mandate—as I understand it as of this writing—still requires everyone to wear a mask at “mass gatherings” of no more than 150 persons.  It is especially important among those who have not been vaccinated. Any risk is entirely the choice of the individual." We move indoors at 7PM for the general meeting. The GCAS's own Marilyn Markel & Marianne Smith will follow the general meeting with a PowerPoint slideshow, "MAREC: How It Started/How It's Going," featuring historical and present-day photos of the Wood House and the progress of our Mimbres Archaeological Research and Education Center project. Come see what we've been doing!

NEXT FIELD TRIP = WATCH THIS SPACE FOR UPDATES AS TO WHEN FIELD TRIPS WILL RESUME.

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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