Southwest Archaeology Today for Dec. 19, 2005

Archaeology Making the News – A Service of Desert Archaeology

– Groundbreaking Begins on Tucson Presidio Reconstruction: A key part of the Rio Nuevo downtown re-development project is moving from concept to construction. The city has broken ground on El Presidio De Tucson. Archeologists have already been digging. They’re uncovering artifacts, before they lay the new foundation around the old. “We’ve marked it out with blue flagging tape where the walls of the tower were,” explains Homer Thiel of Desert Archeology. “The new tower is going to be offset about 30 feet to the east, and it’ll preserve the original foundations in place, so that in the future, archeologists can come back and look at it again if they want.”
http://www.kold.com/Global/story.asp?S=4251679&nav=14RT

– UNLV Sees its Anthropology Department as a Means to Improve Reputation: UNLV archaeologist Alan Simmons has spent decades researching what many scholars believe was the beginning of civilization as we know it. Focusing on a period 10,000 years ago, when mankind began to give up nomadic hunting and gathering for farming and village life, Simmons’ excavation work in Jordan and Cyprus has shown that the world’s first farmers were far more sophisticated than scholars previously thought. His work, UNLV officials hope, could help the university itself to soon be seen as far more sophisticated than previously thought.
http://tinyurl.com/cvpbe – Las Vegas Sun

– Travelogue, Grand Canyon : As a way to open this intricate world to visitors of all ages, the nonprofit Grand Canyon Association formed the Grand Canyon Field Institute, which includes a team of the finest and friendliest specialists available. These experts teach classes in photography, art, and the canyon’s natural and cultural history. About three-fourths of the courses involve overnight backpacking. However, the Learning and Lodging program-more family-oriented and less strenuous-allows participants to stay at the Xanterra South Rim lodges. The institute’s archaeological survey trips provide the National Park Service with data to preserve ancient sites. In January 2002 one such survey in the extreme western Grand Canyon found a living-room-size roasting pit left by ancestral Pueblo people, often referred to as the Anasazi. This thousand-year-old site-as well as others-proved instrumental in establishing the known western boundary of this ancient culture.
http://tinyurl.com/dyo4j – National Geographic

– Old Pueblo Archaeology offers tour of Hohokam Villages (Tucson): Archaeologist Allen Dart leads van tour to Hohokam village sites (one with a “ballcourt” and bedrock mortars), petroglyphs, and agricultural features, and to historic Mexican-American ranch ruins. Bring a lunch and water. “Tucson-Marana Hohokam Villages and Rock Art” Pima Community College study tour ST149, CRN 60797B, via passenger van departing from Pima Community College, 401 N. Bonita Ave., Tucson 8 a.m. to 2:30 p.m. $69 Advance reservations required: 520-206-6468 (Pima Community College, Tucson)