Events Search and Views Navigation
July 2019
Aaron Wright – A Renewed Study of a Patayan Walk-In Well on the Ranegras Plain in Far-Western Arizona
The Patayan cultural tradition is one of the least understood archaeological constructs in the Greater Southwest. While recognized nearly 90 years ago as a distinct assemblage of material culture traits centered on the lower Colorado River, research has always been hampered by poor chronological control. Few Patayan archaeological sites have been excavated, and of those even fewer have yielded contexts amenable to absolute dating (i.e., radiocarbon, archaeomagnetic). A dearth of stratified contexts compounds the problem. Archaeologists have long heralded a…
Find out more »August 2019
Pecos Conference – No Lecture
The first Pecos Conference was inspired and organized by A.V. Kidder in 1927 at Pecos Pueblo. Many leaders in the field of archaeology were in attendance. At this first meeting, collaborations led to the first widely-accepted cultural classification system for the Southwest. This classification system and the conference have continued until today. Open to all, the Pecos Conference remains an important and superlative opportunity for students and students of prehistory to meet with professional archaeologists on a one-on-one informal basis…
Find out more »September 2019
Kirk Astroth – Profound and Persistent Beauty: Results of the Petroglyph and Pictograph Recording Project in the Powder River Basin, Wyoming
The Powder River Basin west of Kaycee, Wyoming is rich with history. The lush basin east of the Big Horn Mountains, known now as Hole in the Rock, was home to Indigenous people for centuries who left images on the red sandstone canyon walls and in alcoves. The Basin was also the site of the Chief Dull Knife Battle of 1876 (five months after the Little Bighorn Battle), which demoralized the Cheyenne tribe and in which they sustained heavy losses,…
Find out more »October 2019
Used Book Sale
Twice a year AAHS holds a book sale to support the Arizona State Museum Library. The sale this fall will be held on Friday, October 18th from 11 am until 5 pm and Saturday, October 19th from 10 am to 4 pm. The sale of donated books will be held in the ASM Lobby. While the sale includes many hard to find anthropology and archaeology books there are also other genres including art, fiction, biography, history and general non-fiction. Books…
Find out more »Patrick Lyons – The Davis Ranch Site: A Kayenta Immigrant Enclave in Southeastern Arizona
A recently published book reports the results of Rex Gerald's 1957 excavations, sponsored by the Amerind Foundation, at the Davis Ranch Site, in southeastern Arizona's San Pedro River Valley. In this presentation, I will summarize Gerald's findings as well as the results of recent studies, placing Gerald's work in the context of what is currently known regarding the late thirteenth-century Kayenta diaspora and also the relationship between Kayenta immigrants and the Salado phenomenon. Data presented by Gerald and other contributors…
Find out more »November 2019
David Purcell – Seasons in the Sun: Experimental Time-lapse Photographic Documentation of Archaeoastronomic Sites
Previous documentation of petroglyph panels with apparent archaeoastronomical associations at Horseshoe Mesa (WS834) in Wupatki National Monument, Arizona, raised questions about the recording methodologies. The solar effects had been documented only on solstices and equinoxes, using tightly cropped still photographs, “freezing” a moving event and removing the interaction from the context of the panel. This project sought to test the validity of this common approach by recording the daily sun and shadow interactions on petroglyph panels 39 and 50 at…
Find out more »December 2019
Holiday Party and Research Slam
Our annual holiday potluck and research slam will be held at Archaeology Southwest this year. There is ample parking across the Franklin Ave opposite Ash Alley. Please bring a dish to share and plenty of cash to vote on your favorite presenter in the Research Slam. The drinks are on us. This year only those actually presenting will be eligible to win the slam. However, we have a new "Golddigger Award" for the person who raises the most money before…
Find out more »January 2020
Ron Parker – “Chasing Centuries: The Search for Ancient Agave Cultivars across the Desert Southwest”
Chasing Centuries is a one-of-a-kind travel-history presentation based up a recently published book of the same name (Sunbelt Publications -- Jan 2019) that takes the reader along on an exciting and little-known adventure at the crossroads of archaeology and botany. Travel with author Ron Parker as he explores the depth and duration of human/agave coevolution across the desert southwest, and discovers unusual agaves apparently associated with archaeological sites long since abandoned by residents of extinct ancient cultures. These agaves appear…
Find out more »February 2020
Steve Lekson – “Studying Southwestern Archaeology”
For over a century, archaeology got the history of the ancient Southwest wrong. So argues Steve Lekson as he advocates for an entirely new approach – one that separates archaeological thought in the Southwest from its anthropological home and moves it to more historical ways of thinking. Focusing on the enigmatic monumental center at Chaco Canyon, the presentation provides a historical analysis of how Southwest archaeology confined itself and how it can break out of those confines and proceed into…
Find out more »