Southwest Archaeology Today for Dec. 6, 2005

Archaeology Making the News – A Service of the Center for Desert Archaeology

– Mesa Verde Centennial: Mesa Verde National Park’s annual Holiday Open House happens Thursday, and with it officials will launch a birthday gala for the destination poised to reach a century as a federally-recognized park. “We have been planning this event for the last nine months, and I can say that this will be an event to remember for the next 100 years,” said park Superintendent Larry T. Wiese. “We invite everyone to join in the festivities and help us kick off the year-long 2006 centennial celebration.”
http://tinyurl.com/9cord – The Cortez Journal
http://tinyurl.com/7gonf – The Cortez Journal

– Photography Workshop part of Mesa Verde Celebration: A photography workshop will be sponsored by the Mesa Verde Museum Association from 1 to 8:30 p.m. Thursday, Dec. 8, along with its annual Holiday Open House and Centennial Opening Ceremony. Professor Gene Balzer will present sessions on methods for successful nighttime photography before photographing the park’s illuminated cliff dwellings and luminaria.
http://tinyurl.com/dcobp – The Cortez Journal

– Archaeological Looting Near Flagstaff: Looters are suspected of digging up part of an ancient pit house in Picture Canyon east of Flagstaff. The state says an investigation is under way.
http://kvoa.com/Global/story.asp?S=4195686&nav=HMO6

– Travelogue – Homol’ovi and Walnut Canyon: Frankly, there is something not quite right about a world in which 13 million people pour through the gates of California’s Disneyland every year, while a mere 17,000 bother to stop off at the Homolovi Ruins National Park outside the town of Winslow in neighboring Arizona.
http://news.scotsman.com/features.cfm?id=2329412005

Travelogue – Montezuma Castle: Larry Davis, who spent most of his career as the manager of remote Anasazi State Park in southern Utah, used to joke about the strange complaints he received from travelers. One woman, for example, asked him why ancient people had to build their homes so far — about 88 miles — from U.S. 89. She thought making the drive to Boulder and the park was too inconvenient. Visitors to Montezuma Castle National Monument in Arizona will not have that complaint. Just off Interstate 17 about 52 miles south of Flagstaff, this misnamed cliff dwelling may be the easiest ruin to see in the United States.
http://www.sltrib.com/travel/ci_3276187

– Travelogue – Pueblos of the Rio Grande: The beauty of northern New Mexico’s high deserts and mountains enchanted artist Georgia O’Keeffe when she first visited Santa Fe and Taos, and she made this majestic landscape her home-and the subject of many of her paintings-for almost the last four decades of her life. Ah, Georgia, I thought repeatedly as I recently toured what fans like me now call “O’Keeffe Country,”
http://tinyurl.com/cgpww – Budget Travel Online