Resilient Farmers of the Phoenix Basin

Resilient Farmers of the Phoenix Basin
From approximately A.D. 450-1400, a Native American group known today as the Hohokam overcame a harsh desert environment along with periodic droughts and floods to settle and farm much of modern Arizona. They managed this feat by collectively maintaining an extensive infrastructure of canals with collaborative labor. New archaeological excavations by Desert Archaeology, Inc., carried out in advance of land development north of Phoenix’s Sky Harbor airport, resulted in a detailed new look at the repair and maintenance of two Hohokam canals fed by the neighboring Salt River. http://bit.ly/2SZgisY – Forbes

Consultation Must Precede Sales of Native American Heritage
The Association on American Indian Affairs demands that all auction houses greatly improve how they perform their due diligence when looking to sell Native American “artifacts” or “antiquities,” particularly adding tribal consultation as standard practice before agreeing to auction such items. The possession of American Indian cultural and sacred heritage outside of the communities of origin is the result of looting and improper taking from American Indian nations. http://bit.ly/2SWhixT – Native News Online

Near-Record Auction of Utah Oil and Gas Leases
The Trump administration’s “energy dominance” agenda reasserted itself in Utah on Tuesday with yet another near-record oil and gas lease auction that offered 154,000 acres to the highest bidder, drawing jeers from environmentalists who contend the Bureau of Land Management is sacrificing the state’s natural heritage. “This enormous sell-off of public lands has opened the door to destructive oil and gas development on and near some of Utah’s most remarkable public lands, including Canyonlands National Park, Bears Ears, Hovenweep and Dinosaur national monuments, culturally rich areas such as Alkali Ridge, the Molen Reef region of the San Rafael Swell, Nine Mile Canyon,” Landon Newell, a staff attorney with the Southern Utah Wilderness Alliance, told activists gathered inside the Utah Capitol. http://bit.ly/2Cm9OPl – Salt Lake Tribune

Interior Secretary Zinke Steps Down
Zinke, a former Montana congressman and Navy SEAL, oversaw much of the Trump administration’s energy dominance agenda, including the ramp up of public lands oil and gas leasing and the rollback of environmental protections. The Interior Department includes the Bureau of Land Management and the National Park Service, which together manage 330 million acres of public lands, mostly in the West. Under Zinke, the Interior Department opened up large swaths of the West to oil and gas drilling, rolled back a suite of climate change policies, and abandoned a number of collaborative land management agreements spearheaded by the department under former President Barack Obama. http://bit.ly/2Cl3SWT – High Country News

“Ryan Zinke came to the Interior Department with an ambitious vision for overseeing the nation’s great natural resources, but he ultimately broke his contract with the Americans people. His actions — such as undermining the federal Antiquities Act, diminishing good faith collaborative successes in sage grouse management, and pushing resource exploitation at the expense of conservation — eroded public goodwill.” Land Tawney, Backcountry Hunters & Anglers president and CEO. http://bit.ly/2CmCesw – Salt Lake Tribune

Advocacy Group Urges Better Ethics Training for NPS Employees
The Coalition to Protect America’s National Parks (CPANP), the nonprofit organization that consists of over 1,600 members drawn from the ranks of former and current National Park Service (NPS) employees, has weighed in on the ethics issues that are currently front and center for that agency. Specifically, the Coalition has called for the NPS to undertake far-reaching and detailed reforms to the system it uses to educate its own employees on how to work with donor and partner organizations to raise badly needed support for the nation’s national parks. http://bit.ly/2CmA4ZW – The Coalition to Protect America’s Parks via Living Landscape Observer

Podcast: Museums, Representation, and Intersectionality
On today’s podcast we have Brandon Castle, a Senior in Fort Lewis College’s Anthropology Department, who has also worked at the Totem Heritage Center in Alaska, the Center of Southwest Studies in Colorado, the Field Museum of Natural History in Illinois, and the American Museum of Natural History in New York. He also discusses his work for Fort Lewis College’s Gender and Sexuality Resource Center. Brandon shares ideas on improving representation, intersectionality, collaboration, and the creation of safe spaces in anthropology and museums. We additionally talk about stereotyping and appropriation, including totems and two-spirit identities. Finally we take on how you experience identity differently in different settings and the balance between cultural relativism and pushing for culture change. http://bit.ly/2SVep0f – Heritage Voices

Archaeology Cafe (Phoenix) Welcomes Bernard Siquieros and Melissa Kruse-Peeples
On January 8, 2019, beginning at 6:00 p.m. at Changing Hands Bookstore, Dr. Melissa Kruse-Peeples and Bernard Siquieros will explore Sonoran Desert Food and Lifeways, Past and Present. The Sonoran Desert is definitely not a food desert, and has dozens of edible wild plants and ancient arid-adapted agricultural food crops. In this talk, Kruse-Peeples and Siquieros will provide an overview of the food history of the Sonoran Desert and ways you can enjoy many of the flavors of the desert today. More information is at http://bit.ly/2SWwQ4y.

Video: New Discoveries about the Cliff Dwellers of Central Arizona
In this Archaeology Café, Dr. Todd Bostwick presented New Discoveries about the Cliff Dwellers of Central Arizona: A Window into Pueblo Life 800 Years Ago in the Verde Valley. Recent analysis of more than 25,000 artifacts collected from a little-known cliff dwelling located north of Montezuma Castle National Monument has provided a wealth of new information about the Sinagua culture of central Arizona. https://youtu.be/FdviV58yZOY – Archaeology Southwest (opens at YouTube)

Paid Internship Opportunity, Museum of Indian Arts & Culture, Santa Fe NM
The Museum of Indian Arts & Culture has a paid student internship available to assist with the move of our whole and reconstructed archaeological ceramic vessel collection from the main museum location to our off site repository. This phase of the move is supported by an IMLS grant. The internship requires 150 hours of service and provides a stipend of $2,250 for the semester. The collection of objects being moved includes funerary objects, and the intern may need to handle these items as well as work in close proximity to them. The overall learning objectives for the internship include developing familiarity with best practices for managing and tracking objects during a move; object handling and packing; reviewing condition assessments and implementing recommendations prepared by conservators; object documentation through photography, collections research and consultation with subject specialists; recording object catalog information and updating records in the collections database. To apply, please email your resume or curriculum vitae (including references), unofficial transcripts, cover letter explaining your interest in the internship, and one letter of recommendation to julia.clifton@state.nm.us by January 10, 2019. We anticipate conducting interviews during the week of January 14. If you have any questions regarding this posting, please send inquiries to Julia Clifton, Curator of Archaeological Research Collections, julia.clifton@state.nm.us or Kieffer Nail, Archaeological Research Collections Manager, at CL.Kieffer-Nail@state.nm.us.

Annual Julian D. Hayden Student Paper Competition
The Arizona Archaeological and Historical Society and Arizona Archaeological Council sponsor the annual Julian D. Hayden Student Paper Competition, named in honor of long-time southwestern scholar Julian Dodge Hayden. The winning entry will receive a cash prize of $750 and publication of the paper in Kiva, The Journal of Southwestern Anthropology and History. The competition is open to any bona fide undergraduate and graduate students at any recognized college or university. Co-authored papers will be accepted if all authors are students. Subject matter may include the anthropology, archaeology, history, linguistics, and/or ethnology of the United States Southwest and northern Mexico, or any other topic appropriate for publication in Kiva. Papers should be no more than 9,000 words (approximately 25 double-spaced, typewritten pages) including figures, tables, and references, and should conform to Kiva format. Deadline for receipt of submissions is January 11, 2019. Please review the instructions for authors at http://www.tandfonline.com/action/authorSubmission?journalCode=ykiv20&page=instructions

Editors’ note: We’ve been informed that a celebration of linguistic anthropologist Jane Hill’s life will be held at Tucson Marriott University Park on Saturday, April 27, 2019, from 3:00 p.m. to 6:00 p.m. Other details as we learn them.

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

Questions? sat-editor@archaeologysouthwest.org