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.

Wednesday, September 18, 2024, 6:00PM: the GCAS in-person monthly meeting begins with the last potluck of the summer at the Roundup Lodge in San Lorenzo (Mimbres Valley). As usual bring your own plates & utensils, and a dish for yourself or to share. A brief business meeting follows at about 6:45PM, after which we will welcome our Featured Speaker, Allen Denoyer, preservation archaeologist at Archaeology Southwest in Tucson, Arizona. Allen will use examples from his years of experimental archaeology projects to introduce us to the wonderful world of MUD, ranging from how mud is utilized in pithouse construction, to excavations of mud-built agricultural fields, to the amazing impressions that archaeologists can find in prehistoric mud. Join us!

Wednesday, April 17, 2024, 6:00PM (New Mexico - Mountain Daylight Time) online via Zoom: The GCAS monthly meeting begins with the usual brief-to-nonexistent business meeting, immediately followed by our Featured Speaker, Kristin Corl, who will introduce us to Investigating Plant and Animal Resources at the Harris Site: An Exercise in Ecosystem Engineering. Kristin explains,

We at the GCAS thank our members and all our new friends who attended our March 20, 2024 special charity event on behalf of the WNMU Museum. Total online and in-person participants numbered almost 50 and folks mentioned how much they enjoyed Carolyn O'Bagy Davis's presentation on the culture surrounding Hopi quilts. Because of everyone's generosity we helped the Museum get closer to their project goals. Cheers to you all!

/s/ webmaster

Our friends to the east at the Jornada Research Institute have sent us an update on their archaeological activities and invite interested folks to join in the fun. JRI president Dave Greenwald reports that their work continues at Creekside Village including in the great kiva area. During March into April, volunteers will help complete one 2 m by 5 m area within the great kiva. Dave describes JRI’s further investigations:

Wednesday, March 20, 2024, 5:00PM (Mountain Daylight Saving Time, 4:00PM Arizona Time): the GCAS transforms our regular monthly meeting into a special hybrid in-person and online Zoom event to be held at the Western New Mexico University Museum at Fleming Hall in support of their curation of the Museum's historic documents and photo archives.

Our Featured Speaker is historian, award-winning author, and GCAS member Carolyn O’Bagy Davis. Carolyn, a fourth-generation descendant of Utah pioneers, has written 16 books on topics ranging from the history of archaeology to Southwestern history to quilting. Her book Hopi Summer was selected as OneBookArizona for 2011, and Desert Trader: The Life and Quilts of Goldie Tracy Richmond, was named one of the Best Books of the Southwest 2012. Carolyn is an inducted member of the Arizona Quilters Hall of Fame and the Society of Women Geographers; she was the founding president of the Tucson Quilters Guild and Old Pueblo Archaeology Center. An accomplished public speaker, she has appeared on HGTV, PBS, and Lifetime programs, and has curated many traveling museum exhibits including the current show: Willard Page: Artist on the Southwest Road, at the Fred Harvey Museum in Belen, New Mexico. Please join us as Carolyn introduces us to Hopi Quilts and Textiles as Cultural Artforms:

David Greenwald of the Jornada Research Institute announces a recent publication of interest to the GCAS and describes the circumstances of its development:

Beginning in the Spring of 2020 (during early Covid), myself and John Groh (JRI Research Associate) were invited to participate in a symposium on communal and ritual locations in the Mogollon region of the Southwest. The impact of Covid on the symposium resulted in delays in submitting and presenting our contribution to the professional community, eventually presenting our contribution as a Zoom talk in the Fall of 2021. John and I prepared a paper on the function of the first documented great kiva in the Tularosa Basin that dates to approximate AD 650 to 725. The discovery of this great kiva is highly significant in itself, but our research also showed that the great kiva served functions beyond that of a community ritual structure, that being as an observatory from which celestial events were monitored (both solar and lunar positions and possibly Venus and bright stars).

Wednesday, September 20, 2023: Join us at our regular monthly meeting as we return to the Roundup Lodge in San Lorenzo (Mimbres Valley) near the junction of Highways 152 and 35 for the last time this year. Potluck starts at 5PM with your own plates/utensils/beverage & a dish for yourself or to share. Brief general meeting will begin at 5:40PM, then at 6PM sharp we welcome our Featured Speaker, GCAS member Jeff Banfield, who will present Hunting for Anasazi (Ancestral Puebloan) Sites in Canyon of the Ancients National Monument. Jeff arrived in the Canyon of the Ancients in an unconventional way: after retiring from the Math Department at Montana State University in 2012, Jeff and Lisa Banfield moved to Santo Domingo (Dominican Republic) where Lisa taught at an international school. Since returning to the US they have lived in Tucson, Cortez, and now Silver City. Jeff tells us:

In Santo Domingo I learned to never buy bananas from the street vendors because they always give you your change in bananas. In Tucson I volunteered as a naturalist in Sabino Canyon where I got to see a tarantula and a tarantula hawk battle it out (the wasp won). In Cortez I volunteered at the Anasazi Heritage Center and was able to spend four years wandering through Canyons of the Ancients National Monument looking for Anasazi (Ancestral Puebloan) sites. Now that we live in Silver City, I volunteer at City of Rocks State Park on Mondays and I spend the rest of the week trying to persuade something besides goatheads to grow in the caliche that makes up most of our yard.

We'll see you at the Roundup for a fine meal and to learn from Jeff about Ancestral Puebloan sites in Colorado!

/s/ webmaster

Everyone is welcome to attend the GCAS's monthly in-person meeting on Wednesday, June 21, 2023, at the Mimbres Valley's Roundup Lodge, 91 Acklin Hill Road in San Lorenzo, New Mexico, when we welcome our Featured Speaker, the GCAS's own archaeologist Marilyn Markel. Doors open at 5PM for a potluck dinner so bring a dish for yourself or to share. Brief GCAS business meeting begins at 5:45 PM followed immediately by Marilyn's presentation, Ridge Ruin: an Extraordinary Sinagua Site and a Story of Repatriation.

In order to offer our members a safe and comfortable experience at our in-person meetings 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.

Read on to learn more about Marilyn and the work she loves:

Thursdays, 10:00 AM to 3:30 PM, from March 23, 2023, and continuing each following Thursday at WNMU's Museum in Fleming Hall: the public is invited to see the Archaeologist in Action in the museum's second floor exhibit room, currently featuring the Elk Ridge Open House. Visit WNMU Museum director Danni Romero and a group of the museum's volunteer explainers as they process and prepare a new museum collection for future exhibit. Repeat visitors welcome!

/s/ webmaster