Southwest Archaeology Today for March 31, 2006

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

– The Center For Desert Archaeology Preservation Fellow Program Seeks Qualified Applicant: Funding has been secured for a special Center for Desert Archaeology South Mountain Petroglyphs Fellow to implement a four-year program of research, public involvement, and preservation planning in partnership with the City of Phoenix and Arizona State University’s School of Human Evolution and Social Change. The South Mountain Petroglyphs Fellowship is intended to support an advanced graduate student in archaeology for four years. It involves a strict timetable that must result in a completed doctoral dissertation at the end of the program. The fellow is provided a monthly stipend of $2,000 plus health insurance for four years.
http://www.cdarc.org/pages/fellows.php

– NAGPRA, Preservation and the Ethics of Backfilling: IN April 1998, the Army Corps of Engineers dumped 600 tons of boulders and dirt over an area near the Columbia River in Washington where, two years earlier, the oldest known skeleton in North America – dubbed Kennewick Man – had been found. If there were other 9,200-year-old bones under the rubble, if there were any other artifacts that might have given clues about events in North America millenniums before written history could provide an account, now they would be safely interred. That was just what five Indian tribes in the area preferred. Though the skeleton was found on federal land, the tribes claimed it as ancestral, rejecting assertions that it had no connection to them and refusing to allow scientists to conduct an examination. They insisted the bones be turned over for immediate burial, invoking the 1990 Native American Graves Protection and Repatriation Act. The United States government agreed with alacrity.
http://tinyurl.com/znho2

– Historic Preservation (El Paso), Albert Bacon Fall House Threatened with Demolition: The Fall House on Arizona Street is a house connected with history. “Scandal, intrigue…a very prominent family,” says Terry Hammond of the El Paso Preservation Alliance. Albert Bacon Fall, the scandal-plagued Interior Secretary from the Harding Administration owned the home in the 1930s. Fall was a powerful lawyer in New Mexico and became one of the state’s first senators before joining the cabinet. You might remember him from the Teapot Dome Scandal from grade school history. He sold government oil fields to private companies It was the Watergate of its time and it reached all the way to the White House.
http://www.ktsm.com/story_news.sstg?c=1803

– Recap of Mesa Verde Celebration at Fort Lewis College: Friday night’s reception for the Fort Lewis College exhibit celebrating the centennial of Mesa Verde National Park was part class reunion and part shock and awe at the sheer mass of information and range of topics presented in the exhibit. For many of those attending the reception, it was an opportunity to see old friends, both in person and pictured in the exhibit. The premier “dirt archaeologist” of the Southwest, Al Lancaster, is pictured in several places in the exhibit, and several members of the Lancaster family were present Friday night. Retired archaeologist and Fort Lewis professor Jim Judge, looking at a picture of Al Lancaster visiting the FLC excavation of Puzzle House when he was 98 years old, recalled that Lancaster explained an irregular kiva by saying it was “squoze” into the space available.
http://tinyurl.com/khy3b – New York Times

– New Video On the Archaeology Channel, Peter Brown and Homo Florensiensis: This video interview, conducted on February 8, 2006, by Dr. Steven Shankman of the University of Oregon Humanities Center, covers a truly remarkable story. In 1998, paleoanthropologists led by Dr. Brown explored the Indonesian island of Flores, located east of Bali between Asia and Australia. They were looking for evidence of the first modern humans that populated Australia, but what they found in 2004 was a complete shock to the world of anthropology. Initially, researchers thought the first tiny female skeleton they found was a child. How did they get to Flores Island? How did they survive there so long? Did they encounter modern humans?
http://www.archaeologychannel.org/

– Public Lecture Sponsored by the Arizona State Museum: Friday, April 7, 2006
Masked Marvels-Las Super Luchas 7 p.m. Free. Author Xavier Garza will present a talk on Lucha Libre, Mexico’s masked wrestling. Learn of its humble beginnings and why it has come to be regarded as “poor man’s theater”-an art form that embodies contemporary social, cultural and political issues. Garza will read from his book “Lucha Libre: The Man in the Silver Mask.” Join us for a post-lecture booksigning and a viewing of Garza’s own paintings of luchadores. The paintings will be on exhibit at the museum through August 2006. This lecture takes place at the Center for English as a Second Language auditorium. The reception, booksigning, and exhibition viewing will take place at ASM.

– Dr Schiffer’s Ceramic Sale to Fund Student Scholarships at the University of Arizona Department of Anthropology. The sale starts at 9 a.m. today runs through Saturday in Room 125 of UA’s Emil W. Haury Anthropology Building, 1009 E. South Campus Drive.

– Old Pueblo Archaeology Tours in April: Thursday April 13-Saturday April 15, 2006: “Canyon de Chelly, Puerco Ruins-Petrified Forest, and Hubbell Trading Post” with Marc Severson. Saturday April 15, 2006: “Fort Bowie, the Amerind Foundation Museum, and the Historic Cochise Hotel” with Dr. Stephen H. Buck. Saturday April 22, 2006: “Tombstone: A Historian-Guided Walking Tour” with Dr. Stephen H. Buck. April 27 through May 1, 2006: “Chaco Canyon, Pueblo Pintado, Aztec, & Salmon Ruins” with Jim Trimbell. Saturday April 29, 2006: “San Xavier, Tumacacori, and Tubac History” with Dr. Stephen H. Buck.
Contact Old Pueblo at info@oldpueblo.org or 520-798-120