NEXT MEETING: Wednesday, November 20, 2024, 6:00 PM: Please join the GCAS as we move to our wintertime location - the clubhouse at 2045 Memory Lane in Silver City, New Mexico. Our November meeting is our GCAS annual meeting so bring your questions, opinions, and votes (!) as we elect two new members to our board of directors. No potluck during the winter months but some light refreshments will be on offer. We will follow our typically brief business meeting with our Featured Speaker, NMSU graduate student in Anthropology, Tuesday Critz, who will discuss her ongoing research at Cottonwood Spring Pueblo (LA 175): Ceramic Exchange in a Multiethnic Community during the El Paso Phase (AD 1275/1300 – 1450). Tuesday indicates her research is in its early stages so the GCAS is being treated to a sneak preview. Please join us for our annual meeting and to learn more about Tuesday and her work.

NEXT FIELD TRIP: November 3, 2024: Marilyn Markel will lead GCAS members and their guests on this month's field trip to two sites - a Mimbres site and the nearby Terry Canyon Village pithouse site. Meet at 10:00 am sharp at the Mimbres Ranger Station on Hwy 35 at about mile marker 11. The large Georgetown phase pithouse site is a steep/rough hike but worth it. Those who don't hike to the top of the hill can wait below at the pleasant pine forest by the Mimbres site where we will eat lunch. Please be aware November 3 is the start of Daylight Saving Time when clocks are turned back an hour. As always, in order to protect sensitive archaeological sites we limit our field trips to GCAS members and their guests who can ride in the member's car. See you there and, mind the time!

Site Watch

Upcoming Dates for SiteWatch New Mexico

Now's the chance for anyone interested in becoming a SiteWatch volunteer to step up!

SiteWatch coordinator Jessica Badner would like to come to our area on Feb. 4-5 for site steward training. If you know someone that wants to be a site steward please have them call Marilyn Markel as soon as possible at 575-536-9337. Marilyn advises that we need  about 12 people to sign up to have the training. If those dates do not work SiteWatch may schedule the training for mid February or try to do a ZOOM training.

Marilyn Markel advises us that the annual SiteWatch conference is to be held on March 2, 2024, at the Los Luceros Historic Site near Santa Fe. Watch the GCAS website for details as they develop, or check with the web page for SiteWatch New Mexico.

/s/ webmaster


Now's the Chance to Help Our Junior Site Stewards!

IMG_0299People, here's an opportunity to help our local grade school students do something important. Marilyn Markel needs GCAS volunteers to help at the Mimbres Culture Heritage Site on Wednesday, 9/13/2023, as 16 students from San Lorenzo’s third grade class train to be Junior Site Stewards. No experience necessary; Marilyn will show you the ropes. Contact Marilyn directly at 575-536-9337 to represent the GCAS in the Junior Site Steward program. The third graders will appreciate your help!

/s/ webmaster [photo is of past Junior Site Stewards - good kids, all of them]


Interactive Fun with the Mesa Prieta Petroglyph Project

Kwells and friendThe Mesa Prieta Petroglyph Project in Velarde, New Mexico, has produced a virtual tour of their extensive site that anyone can enjoy. You may have to navigate through one or two screens on this link, or perhaps this link, but it is worth a few minutes of your time to see glimpses of this very unique and important site. If you have never visited the site you will enjoy this brief introduction to it. If you have already visited in person you will be thrilled to see some of its highlights again.

Please also consider sending a donation to the MPPP to support their preservation efforts. Once it becomes feasible for public health you may consider visiting the site yourself. Plan a few days, as there are 6 different trails among the petroglyphs to sign up with a docent to see!

/s/ webmaster


Site Steward Opportunity Up North - Plan Now!

The Santa Fe National Forest is looking for Archaeological Site Stewards for their area. Their training day is Saturday, March 21, 2020, so if the date and location fit your schedule, get busy now and sign up. They explain in their press release:

Continue reading "Site Steward Opportunity Up North - Plan Now!" »


GCAS August Field Trip Part II - the C-Bar Ranch Site

GCAS examines the wall outlines Are these sherds Style I or Style IIThe second phase of our August 4, 2019, GCAS field trip found us traveling from the Microwave Site to examine the site at C-Bar Ranch. Like the Microwave Site, the C-Bar Ranch Site comprises some Late Period pithouses and the ruins of more recent pueblo rooms. And like Microwave, C-Bar is well known and convenient to locals and so continues to be heavily looted to this day.

Still life with prickly pear and lichen covered bouldersThe approach to the C-Bar site criss-crosses arroyos and passes rock outcrops hosting venerable prickly pear colonies. Abundant lichens on the rocks testify to the clean air which makes for a good, healthy walk (right photo).

Big photo on left up there shows all that that remains of the site's pueblo walls. Scattered by looters and people who either didn't know any better or didn't care.

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GCAS August Field Trip Part I - the Microwave Site

Microwave vista NW Microwave vista to Cooke's Peak Microwave vista ENEThe Microwave Site has no microwave tower. Not that there's anything wrong with that. It once had one.

This site in southwestern New Mexico is very well known to locals who have been camping here - and gathering potsherds and stones from pueblo walls - for many decades.

Continue reading "GCAS August Field Trip Part I - the Microwave Site" »


ENMU Excavation at City of Rocks State Park

Photo by Marianne Smith; © 2019 ENMU - All Rights ReservedIn July, 2019, professor Robert J. Stokes PhD of Eastern New Mexico University in Portales was Directing Archaeologist on an excavation of a small ruined structure located within the boundaries of City of Rocks State Park. The project's goals were to identify its walls, floors, and the overall nature of its construction to help determine its age and the purpose for which it had originally been built. Additionally Dr. Stokes sought to assess the context of the site within the surrounding landscape.

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Meet Another Member of the Aldo Leopold Archaeology Crew

ALCS Archaeolgy Crew students and Hurley 5th gradersThis here website has already introduced everyone to two up and coming members of the Aldo Leopold Charter School Youth Conservation Corps Archaeology Crew. These high school students learn eco-monitoring of sensitive sites as part of New Mexico's Junior SiteWatch program, work on trail crews, build gardens of heritage vegetables, and more. Some, like Serena Floyd and Isaiah Padilla, do all of that plus regularly teach groups of younger students about aspects of archaeology that range from hands-on experimental activities to the proper way to monitor an archaeological site. Here are Serena (far left) and Isaiah (purple shirt, center) in April, 2019, comfortably guiding a group of fifth grade students from Hurley Elementary School through a day's curriculum at the Mimbres Culture Heritage Site. Mentor Marilyn Markel (white shirt, center) can relax with these two in control.

We may not yet know what career path(s) Serena or Isaiah will take, but like their classmates they already demonstrate a commitment to public service and have acquired a number of skills that will be valuable to them in anything they put their minds to. Thanks, Serena and Isaiah!

/s/ webmaster


Meet Two Members of the Aldo Leopold Archaeology Crew

ASNM MM - ALCS Will Scott and Serena FloydOn April 26, 2019, Aldo Leopold Charter School Youth Conservation Corps Archaeology Crew Students presented a poster and gave a presentation at the Archaeological Society of New Mexico’s annual state meeting hosted by the Grant County Archaeological Society (GCAS). Over a hundred archaeologists and members of archaeological societies around New Mexico attended the meeting held in downtown Silver City, at the Murray Hotel. ALCS students, Will Scott (on the far right in the photo) and Serena Floyd (on the far left), along with their mentor, Marilyn Markel, spoke to the attendees about the importance of preserving and protecting archaeological sites like the Dragonfly Petroglyph Site on the Fort Bayard Game Refuge, Gila National Forest.

Continue reading "Meet Two Members of the Aldo Leopold Archaeology Crew" »