The archaeological action is fast and furious during October. Set aside the following dates, volunteer to help out with activities, and check back to our Events page and to this here blog for details as they develop:

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

Wednesday, August 16, 2023, VIA ZOOM: The GCAS will begin at 5:30PM Mountain Daylight (New Mexico) Time/4:30PM Mountain Standard (Arizona) Time with a very short business meeting. At or shortly before 5:45PM New Mexico/4:45PM Arizona time, we will welcome our Featured Speaker, archaeologist Allen Dart of Old Pueblo Archaeology Center, who will describe The Antiquity of Irrigation in the Southwest:

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:

Friday through Sunday, May 5 through 7, 2023: The Archaeological Society of New Mexico (ASNM)'s annual meeting is scheduled for the Ruidoso Convention Center. ASNM affiliate organization, planned and organized this year by the Jornada Research Institute. Tentative theme for this meeting is “By Leaps and Bounds: Recent Advances in Archaeological Inquiry across Southeastern New Mexico,” which explores a number of contributing discoveries that have expanded archaeological interpretations across this vast region of the State. The 2023 meeting launches on the afternoon of May 5 with ASNM's board meeting, a rock art meeting, and certification meeting followed by a “meet and greet” cash bar, buffet dinner, and presentation on The Archaeology of Tularosa Canyon. The day of May 6 will consist of the presentation of papers by various speakers, an evening social hour, dinner, and awards. Myles Miller will present the evening's Bandelier Lecture, summarizing the advances that have been made and interpretations generated through archaeological survey, excavations, rock art studies, ethnohistory, and archaeoastronomy; and describing the increasingly greater precision of various remote sensing techniques, artifact analyses, and chronometric dates. Expect a variety of tours (still TBD) to local sites on May 7.

Save the dates and watch JRI's announcement page for registration information and updates as they develop. We'll see you there!

/s/ webmaster

People, please forward this opportunity IMMEDIATELY to your favorite archaeologist. Bat Conservation International, a 501(c)(3) nonprofit organization dedicated to ending bat extinctions worldwide and boasting a 4-star rating from Charity Navigator, is seeking an archaeologist to fill a full-time position as a Cultural Resource Specialist to join BCI’s Conservation Department. This individual will work as part of BCI's Restoration Team in their Habitat Protection & Restoration Program (HP&R) at a yearly salary of $55,000- $58,000. Interested archaeologists must apply ASAP for this position because the application deadline is February 17, 2023. Interviews will begin on February 20, 2023, with an ideal start date in mid-March 2023. Autumn Cool, RPA and BCI's Cultural Resource Field Lead, adds:

Register now! The 21st Biennial Mogollon Conference is happening early next month on Friday, November 4, 2022, thru Saturday, November 5, 2022, in the Student Union building on the University of Arizona campus in Tucson, Arizona. A reception, free of charge to all attendees, hosted by Archaeology Southwest on the evening of Thursday, November 3, 2022, kicks off the weekend and offers an excellent opportunity for students to mix with faculty and the rest of the professional community. Click here for registration info and more details, and revisit the Conference website for any updates. We'll see you in Tucson!

/s/ webmaster [photo by M.Smith]

September 21, 2022, 7:00PM - This month's GCAS meeting is in person 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 our Featured Speaker, Silver City archaeologist Neal Ackerly, who will speak about the mines of Lake Valley including the Bridal Chamber Mine which contained one of the richest silver veins ever discovered. Join us as Neal explains:

The El Paso Museum of Archaeology on Transmountain Road has announced a new exhibit in their North Gallery that features casts of the animal and human fossil tracks found in White Sands National Park and the surrounding White Sands Missile Range, that have recently been dated to be about 23,000 to 21,000 years old. The findings have caused anthropologists and archaeologists to reconsider their assumptions of early human occupation of the Western Hemisphere.

The El Paso Museum of Archaeology's exhibit is planned to continue only through February 8, 2023, so plan your visit soon. The Museum describes their temporary display, titled White Sands Fossil Tracks, as showcasing:

This report and all photos come to us courtesy of GCAS member and trustee, Kathryn McCarroll.

The forecasts of heavy monsoon rains and bad road access were greatly exaggerated for the GCAS's August 7, 2022, field trip to Pitchfork Ranch in the Burro Mountains. The weather that Sunday turned out to be splendid. A ranch employee guided a group of about 20 GCAS members and friends to a couple of small sites located within ranch property.

The sites our group visited included a small historic stone-and-adobe structure, while at other nearby areas, the group found clusters of groundstone and broken metates that may have been washed down from their former locations by years of past flooding (photo over there on the right)....

...And of course, the group photographed potsherds with varied designs and styles before returning them to where they'd been found. (That's a bit of malachite the group found among the potsherds, adding to the adventure.)

Thank you for sharing those photos and news of the field trip, Kathryn!

/s/ webmaster