Monument Defense Lawsuits to Be Heard in Washington DC

Monument Defense Lawsuits to Be Heard in Washington DC
A federal judge has denied the government’s effort to move the lawsuits against President Donald Trump’s shrinking of the Bears Ears and the Grand Staircase-Escalante national monuments to Salt Lake City and will keep them here. Judge Tanya S. Chutkan ruled Monday that the suits, filed by environmental groups and tribes that say Trump didn’t have the authority to diminish the monuments’ footprint, should be heard in federal court in Washington. Chutkan also ordered the government to notify the plaintiffs in the case if there are any proposals for hard-rock mining or other surface-disturbing projects proposed within the boundaries of the original monuments, which Trump slashed by about 2 million acres in December. http://bit.ly/2Dq1Nvp — Salt Lake Tribune

“We now have the green light to move forward with litigation,” said John Ruple with the conservation group Friends of Cedar Mesa, a plaintiff in one of the lawsuits. “We’re dealing with fairly clean issues of law here: whether the Antiquities Act impliedly grants the president the power to shrink and diminish the monuments.” http://bit.ly/2O5M4FZ — KUER

“We’re pleased with today’s decision by Judge Chutkan to deny the Government’s Motion to Transfer the case to Utah, and keep the Bears Ears and Grand Staircase-Escalante National Monuments legal cases in the nation’s capital. This decision respects tribal sovereignty and the fact that public lands are managed on behalf of all Americans.” http://bit.ly/2pyeydn — Conservation Lands Foundation

[Editor’s note: Archaeology Southwest is a co-plaintiff with Conservation Lands Foundation and other partners on one of the lawsuits in this decision.]

Grand Opening of Bears Ears Education Center
Though some aspects of the center have not reached completion, board member Tamara Desrosiers said an entry point for monument information is critical to its preservation. “We just felt like we were filling a void in that education opportunity,” Desrosiers said. She joined KSJD’s Daniel Rayzel to break down the necessity of the monument having a central point of reference. http://bit.ly/2Of0SSz — KSJD (audio interview linked on that page)

Commentary: Zinke, Be More Teddy
Those who visit, enjoy, and work so hard to protect our national parks and public lands hoped Zinke would lead using these values held by President Theodore Roosevelt, who believed in protecting our nation’s treasures. This hasn’t been the case. In fact, he has actively worked for the last 18 months to repeatedly roll back protections for our public lands, conceding to industry interests and working to dismantle our country’s strong conservation legacy. http://bit.ly/2Id3bjA — The Hill

Podcast: Rewriting the Human History of the Americas
As new discoveries shake up the timeline of when people first came to the Americas, how do we decide what’s true? SAPIENS co-hosts Chip Colwell and Jen Shannon talk to Steven and Kathleen Holen, archaeologists and co-authors of a controversial discovery. And they further evaluate the claims with the help of anthropologist Todd Braje. http://bit.ly/2IgLKyz — SAPIENS

New Paper: What Makes a Dog?
In this study, we use bone collagen and apatite carbon (δ13Ccol/ap) and nitrogen (δ15N) stable isotopes to investigate the role(s) of seven canids from Arroyo Hondo Pueblo (LA 12), a 14th century site in the northern Rio Grande, New Mexico. Results indicate that in some cases, coyotes seem to have been treated like dogs; in others, dogs seem to have been treated like their wild relatives. In all cases, canids were treated differently than domestic turkeys. We conclude that ethnographic, genetic, geochemical and site-specific contextual data are required to understand the roles of dogs and wild canids in Ancestral Puebloan contexts. http://bit.ly/2IezjDr — Open Quaternary (open access)

Pueblo Leaders Go to DC to Defend Greater Chaco
A delegation of Pueblo Tribal Leaders will travel to Washington, D.C. next week to urge the Trump administration and Congress to protect the Greater Chaco Landscape in northern New Mexico. While in D.C., the representatives will meet with agency and congressional staff and are available for media interviews. The timing for the Washington trip comes at a critical time for the Chaco region. More than 90 percent of public lands in the area are already leased for oil and gas drilling. While parts of the historic Chaco landscape are already protected as a park, the Greater Chaco landscape around the park – home to thousands of artifacts, ancient houses and roads – is at risk of being damaged by new drill pads, pipelines, and a web of industrial access roads. http://bit.ly/2py8gdV — Native News Online

Putting People at the Heart of Preservation
A people-centered preservation movement hears, understands and honors the full diversity of the ever-evolving American story. A preservation movement more firmly rooted in people can be more inclusive in the identification, understanding and protection of historic places. http://bit.ly/2DwrLgA — Forbes

Archaeology Café’s 11^th Season in Tucson Begins October 2
Archaeology Café returns to The Loft Cinema for another season of programs exploring the deep and diverse history of southern Arizona. Join us after 5:30 p.m. on Tuesday, October 2, 2018, for Blood Flowed Like Water: Violence among the Sonoran Desert’s Earliest Irrigation Communities, a fascinating exploration of violence among early farming communities over two thousand years ago from Dr. James T. Watson. http://bit.ly/2xaK70u — Archaeology Southwest

Mesa Prieta Petroglyph Project, a Hidden Gem
The landscape on the side of this big mesa is spectacular, the loose pattern of juniper, saltbush, cholla, and prickly pear interrupted by thousands of black basalt boulders. On an abundance of them are distinctive shapes pecked into the surface by people, some done thousands of years ago and some as recently as the present decade. The density of this assemblage of petroglyphs is far greater than at any other site in New Mexico. http://bit.ly/2pyYEiR — Santa Fe New Mexican

New/Traditional Housing at Acoma
The ideas for the development started as a drawing on a napkin during an informal staff meeting. “We put our ideas down and what we wanted it to be. We want to continue to be here. We want our culture to survive and exist,” says Floyd Tortalita, executive director of PAHA [Pueblo of Acoma Housing Authority]. “There are things we have incorporated into this community to reflect that.” PAHA teamed with Travois, a firm focused exclusively on promoting housing and economic development for American Indian, Alaska Native, and Native Hawaiian communities, and Travois Design and Construction, to create a development that fit in culturally and reflected the pueblo’s history. http://bit.ly/2OhRaiw — Architect Magazine

Job — University of Colorado at Boulder
The University of Colorado Museum of Natural History and the Department of Anthropology invite applications for a tenure-track, joint position as Curator of Archaeology and Assistant Professor. Applicants should have a PhD with specialization in Archaeology, and museum experience. The position includes research, curating collections, and teaching archaeology and museum studies courses. The museum houses outstanding Southwest and Plains archaeological collections. Our strengths are in Southwestern material culture research and publication, NAGPRA implementation, collaborative research with Native North American communities, and advances in contemporary archaeological and museological theory. More information and how to apply here: https://jobs.colorado.edu/jobs/JobDetail/?jobId=13320

Meeting — Texas Archaeological Society
TAS meets in San Antonio Oct.26–28: Texas Archeological Society (TAS) will hold its two-day meeting at the historic Menger Hotel. Papers will be presented on Sat. with a banquet featuring Dr. John Worth and Dr. Greg Cook about the Spanish Colonial Tristan de Luna (1559) and Emanuel Point Shipwrecks associated with the expedition. Networking and training sessions are held on Friday with an evening program by Dr. Jim Bruseth, “La Belle: The Archeology of a Seventeenth Century Ship.” Online registration is active for the 2018 TAS Annual Meeting! Go to the TAS Annual Meeting Page on the TAS website, https://txarch.org

Book Announcement — The Archaic Southwest
The Archaic Southwest: Foragers in an Arid Land. Edited by Bradley J. Vierra. http://bit.ly/2IjmHLy — University of Utah Press

Event — Canyons of the Ancients, Artist-in-Residence
BLM Canyons of the Ancients National Monument (CANM) and Southwest Colorado Canyons Alliance (SCCA) are pleased to present 2018 Artist-in-Residence (AiR) Lanny Wagner at 7:00 p.m. on Friday, October 5, at Canyons of the Ancients Visitor Center and Museum (CAVM, formerly Anasazi Heritage Center), 27501 Hwy 184 in Dolores. Join Lanny for this free presentation as he guides you through the night on the Monument, sharing the Ancestral landscape under the blanket of stars and his methods of capturing the perfect photo. http://www.swcocanyons.org/

Event — 22^nd Annual Cocopah Celebration
Enjoy cultural performances, bird singing and dancing, arts & crafts booths, informational booths, children’s fun area, face painting, free raffles and much more! Admission is free; open to the public. Saturday, October 20, 10:00 a.m. to 4:00 p.m., at the Cocopah Museum, 14515 S Veterans Dr, Somerton, Arizona 85350. http://bit.ly/2IedZhj — Cocopah Museum

Lecture, Santa Fe NM
Southwest Seminars Presents Dr. Chip Colwell, Archaeologist and Senior Curator, Denver Museum of Nature and Science; Editor in Chief, Sapiens; Recipient, National Council on Public History Book Award; Author, Living Histories: Native Americans and Southwestern Archaeology; Plundered Skulls and Stolen Spirits: Inside the Fight to Reclaim Native America’s Culture, who will give a lecture October 1 at 6:00 p.m. at Hotel Santa Fe as part of the Native Culture Matters Lecture Series. Admission is by subscription or $15 at the door. No reservations are necessary. Refreshments are served. Seating is limited. Contact Connie Eichstaedt: tel. 505 466-2775; email: southwest seminar@aol.com; website: southwestseminars.org

Lecture, Scottsdale AZ
Wednesday, October 3, 6:00 to 7:30 p.m., at the Civic Center Library: In the course of constructing Taliesin West atop the rim of Paradise Valley, Frank Lloyd Wright and his apprentices discovered nearly 100 petroglyphs at the base of the adjacent McDowell Mountains. The ancient carvings were on boulders near where Wright quarried the stones for his winter home. Inspired by the enigmatic glyphs, Wright integrated several of the glyph-adorned boulders into the organic layer of Taliesin West. Following a review of Wright’s use and placement of boulders, this presentation by Dr. Aaron Wright (no relation) explores the archeological context of petroglyphs at Taliesin West in order to understand when they were made, by whom, and for what purpose. http://bit.ly/2IgtrcS — Scottsdale Public Library

Lecture Opportunity, Tucson AZ
The Arizona Archaeological and Historical Society (AAHS) is pleased to present J. Homer Thiel on Monday, October 15, at 7:30 pm in the University Medical Center’s Duval Auditorium (1501 N Campbell Ave, Tucson 85724), who will discuss, A Drear, Bleak, Desolate Place: The Archaeology of the Court Street Cemetery. Meetings are free and open to the public. For more information, please visit the AAHS website: http://www.az-arch-and-hist.org/, or contact John D. Hall at john.hall@terracon.com with questions about this or any other AAHS program.

Thanks to Brian Kreimendahl for his contributions to this issue.

Please submit news, book announcements, and events at this link for consideration: https://www.archaeologysouthwest.org/submit-to-sat/

Questions? sat-editor@archaeologysouthwest.org