Southwest Archaeology Today for Oct. 29, 2009

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

– Archaeologists Discount Possibility of Clovis-Era Comet Impact: A comet impact didn’t set off a 1,300-year cold snap that wiped out most life in North America about 12,900 years ago, scientists say. Though no one disputes the occurrence of the frigid period, known as the Younger Dryas, more and more researchers have been unable to confirm a 2007 finding that says a collision triggered the change. Nicholas Pinter, a geologist at Southern Illinois University, argued that black mats described as charcoal in the 2007 research weren’t actually charcoal. Instead they were from ancient, dark soil formed in a long-ago wetland, Pinter said.
http://tinyurl.com/yzk7zk4 – National Geographic

– University of Vermont Studies at Fourmile Ruin: If you thought digging in the dirt stopped being a suitable summer activity in sixth grade, think again. For four weeks this July, seven UVM undergrads and two teaching assistants joined Scott Van Keuren, assistant professor of anthropology, on an excavation at Fourmile Ruin, the largest Ancestral Pueblo, or Anasazi village, in Eastern Arizona.
http://www.uvm.edu/~uvmpr/?Page=News&storyID=15310

– Arizona Book Sale Offering Some Very Special Items to Benefit the Arizona State Museum Anthropology Library: “You can’t read this book without thinking of people” wrote one reviewer of Anna Sherpard’s “Ceramics for the Archaeologist.” A first edition of that book, once owned by Emil Haury, sold this past weekend at the Arizona Archaeological and Historical Society’s used book sale. The sale continues! We have books once owned by Emil Haury and other Southwest legends for sale and silent auction. Here’s a small sample: Reeve Ruin, Kiva Murals, Medallion Papers, Old Orabi, Swartz Ruin, Amerind Series, Pendleton Ruin, Excavation of Hawikuh, Red-on-buff Culture of the Gila Basin, Roosevelt:9:6, and many, many more. Missing an issue of Kiva or American Antiquity? We have some. The sale also includes other individually priced items with an emphasis on the archaeology and anthropology of the Southwest, Mexico, and South America. Sale will be held Saturday, Oct 31 at the Arizona State Museum, 9am – 12 pm.

– Anza Days Riders in Nogales Honor Historic Spanish Expedition to Found San Francisco: Horses clopped down Morley Avenue on Saturday, carrying riders dressed to recall the journey of Juan Bautista de Anza and his soldiers and settlers from Sonora to San Francisco in 1775-1776. It was the first Anza Day parade in Nogales and the number of riders fell short of what organizers had anticipated. But they traveled a paved stretch of the national historic trail that was dedicated only a year ago on Oct. 11, 2008.
http://tinyurl.com/yjnruvy – Nogales International