On June 8, 2022, the Silver City Watershed Keepers organized a field trip to the Mimbres Culture Heritage Site for local youth as part of their Nature Discovery Summer Camp program. GCAS members led a tour of the Mattocks site and offered the group hands-on experiences in archaeological techniques. The students visited the nearby Nature Conservancy’s Mimbres River Preserve where they learned about native fish and macroinvertebrates from USFS ranger Emily Pollam. Silver Consolidated Schools provided lunches and the Silver City Co-Op supplied fresh apples for all.

GCAS members, please help out staffing our booth - half an hour, or more if you're so inclined! No experience necessary! Contact Marianne at gcasnm.org@gmail.com or telephone her at 772-529-2627 to volunteer!

Saturday, April 23,2022, 10:00AM - 2:00PM: Visit Gough Park in Silver City for Gila Earth Day, brought to us by a joint effort of the Gila Resources Information Project (GRIP) and the Continental Divide Trail Days. This year's theme is, ..."Invest in Our Planet” and will focus on working together to solve the climate crisis, choosing both a prosperous and sustainable future, restoring nature, and building a healthy planet for posterity. The GCAS plans to have our booth on hand to showcase how the scientific study of archaeology and ancient climate change is essential to understanding the effects of our own era's climate change and determining ow to mitigate it. For event details, click here. To learn more about GRIP, visit their Home page. Big fun for all ages!

/s/ webmaster

Saturday, April 23,2022, 10:00AM - 2:00PM: Plan to visit Gough Park in Silver City for Gila Earth Day, brought to us by a joint effort of the Gila Resources Information Project (GRIP) and the Continental Divide Trail Days. GRIP announces that this year's theme is, ..."Invest in Our Planet” and will focus on working together to solve the climate crisis, and choose BOTH a prosperous and sustainable future, restore nature and build a healthy planet for our children and their children." The GCAS plans to have our booth on hand to showcase how the scientific study of archaeology and ancient climate change is essential to understanding the effects of our own era's climate change and determining ow to mitigate it. To learn more details, click here for the Gila Resources Information Project's full announcement. To learn more about GRIP, visit their Home page. Big fun for all ages!

GCAS members, please help out staffing our booth - half an hour, or more if you're so inclined, is all it takes. No experience necessary! Contact Marianne at gcasnm.org@gmail.com or telephone her at 772-529-2627 to volunteer!

/s/ webmaster

Ron Barber, creator of the Stone Calendar Project, has been studying rock art sites throughout the Southwest and Northern Mexico identifying glyphs that mark specific times of the year using unique light and shadow interactions.  He has some survey predictions for glyphs along the Gila Narrows and other southern sites and is looking for volunteers to help in further research.

Anyone who is interested in spending time in the field recording/filming calendar sun light interactions in the region, please contact Ron directly at barbers6@aol.com . Here's more of Ron's background:

We members of the GCAS are a very lucky bunch indeed. Our two allotted rooms in the Mimbres Culture Heritage Site's historic Wood House are complete. We're ready to get to work on our educational programs and research collections that will form the backbone of the new Mimbres Archaeological Research and Education Center. Meet the dozens of generous folks who have given the GCAS their time, skills, hard-earned money, and valued library materials to our project. It is because of their unwavering support that we are able to start 2022 in just the right way. Thank you all for standing by us!

Rehab work continues in IFWEF's two upstairs rooms; the walls have been painted and the floors refinished, with final touches underway. Downstairs, the GCAS library's built-in bookshelves are in place and awaiting their final finish coats. (See volunteer Steve Collie at work in the first two photos over there on the left.)

Meanwhile, our GCAS volunteers spent an exciting morning assembling the furniture for the MAREC lab in the adjacent room. Our lab's two-station work bench sports a tabletop ledge shelf and an electrical power strip for small power tools. Two rolling trolleys stowed underneath this work station offer additional storage opportunities for all participants. A freestanding locking cabinet will keep researchers' work product secure. Our refinished hutch provides an extra work surface as well as space for educational materials.

(Scroll down for more photos!)

The joint GCAS-IFWEF rehabilitation project continues. The plumbing for the lab’s utility sink is connected and fully functional, bringing water into a building that has not enjoyed any indoor plumbing in decades. IFWEF and GCAS volunteers have hung, re-trimmed, and painted a total of six interior and exterior doors. The exterior doors have new overhangs to help divert rain water and snow melt. We all agree that the doors' fresh coats of bright paint really help the Wood House come alive.

Marilyn Markel’s special storage closet under the lab’s stairway – christened by one of our GCAS members as the Education Bunker – is fully enclosed, illuminated, and secured, with raised mats on which to store materials for Marilyn’s archaeological educational programs. The Bunker’s door received its final coat of paint and is ready for service. (See green-and-white door below, on the right.)

The ceiling lights and fans are up and running in both library and lab. Ceilings and walls have their final coats of paint and IFWEF’s contractor has installed laminate flooring throughout the two rooms except where work is pending on two exterior doors and their wood jambs and transom lights. Baseboards are cut to size, painted, and in place. The rooms’ four interior doors await only their final coats of paint.

We are thrilled to announce that the following friends have contributed a combined total of $8,022.12 in support of our MAREC rehabilitation project. Thanks to them the GCAS's two rooms in the historic Wood House have fresh coats of paint in cheerful colors, bright lights and ceiling fans, a utility sink/workbench assembly that can't be beat, and much more. Thank you, one and all, for making the MAREC dream come true:

This latest installment of our MAREC project finds our volunteers (that's some of them over there on the right) completing smaller, more compartmentalized jobs in between visits by IFWEF’s contractor. He and his crew carried out our request to coat the flat, smooth sheetrock on the lab and library’s ceilings, fireplace encapsulation, and electrical panel with an orange-peel texture so that those surfaces would harmonize with the walls' coarser stucco. We were not disappointed. The results are superb.