The Role of Diversity and Inclusion in Arizona Archaeology

Dear Friends,

It’s hard to find inspiring words tonight as it becomes clear that relief from this never-ending election year remains elusive. So, breathe deeply and stay healthy.

Vigorous advocacy and creative pursuit of healing continue to be our core priorities.

Be well. We appreciate your interest and support.

Sincerely,

Bill Doelle
President & CEO, Archaeology Southwest 

Upcoming Webinar Will Examine the Role of Diversity and Inclusion in Arizona Archaeology
This Arizona Preservation in Place webinar confronts the issues of bias, cultural justice, objectivity, race, and racism in Arizona archaeology today. The session will feature an introduction by William White on archaeology’s whiteness problem followed by a question-focused discussion with a diverse sample of Arizona’s professional Native, Black, Hispanic, and White archaeologists. November 18, 1:00 p.m. MST. https://bit.ly/32at1Qw – Arizona Preservation Foundation

Continuing Coverage: Trackway at White Sands National Park
Every parent knows the feeling. Your child is crying and wants to go home, you pick them up to comfort them and move faster, your arms tired with a long walk ahead—but you cannot stop now. Now, add to this a slick mud surface and a range of hungry predators around you. That is the story the longest trackway of fossil footprints in the world tells us. Our new discovery, published in Quaternary Science Reviews, comes from White Sands National Park in New Mexico and was made by an international team working in collaboration with staff from the National Park Service. https://bit.ly/2JA8Hld – Sapiens (via The Conversation)

Haynie Site Soon Protected by Conservation Easement
The Haynie site appears to be one of the most northern reaches of the greater Chaco society, which spanned an estimated 250-mile radius from the Ancestral Puebloan settlement located about 60 miles south of Farmington, which is now part of Chaco Culture National Historical Park. …Patrick Barker, executive director of La Plata Open Space Conservancy, said the Haynie site will soon be placed in a conservation easement. https://bit.ly/387y7AM – Durango Herald

Interview: Dinah Bear on the National Environmental Policy Act
Since its creation, NEPA has given voice to communities both human and natural that face possible harm through industry actions. It has successfully rerouted highways that would have destroyed wildlife habitat and displaced residents from their homes, halted pipelines, protected important cultural sites from mining and provided a platform for people disproportionately impacted by environmental injustices. To understand what changes to NEPA might mean for the West and how a new administration might respond, High Country News spoke with Dinah Bear, an environmental lawyer and consultant based in Tucson, Arizona, who spent more than two decades—spanning from the Reagan administration through the George W. Bush years—working at The Council on Environment Quality, the federal agency charged with implementing NEPA. https://bit.ly/35Ue7Pe – High Country News

Commentary: Another Historic Injustice
Where there should be outrage, the Tohono O’odham Nation has only found silence. Our sacred sites and burial grounds—which hold the deepest significance to our people—have been run over and blown up with a seemingly proud indifference by federal contractors… As these cultural sites have been desecrated, federal officials have hidden behind false motivations and political games. But we are not fooled, and we are not without a voice. https://bit.ly/365DFt7 – Tohono O’odham Chairman Ned Norris Jr. in High Country News

Commentary: A “Year of Devastation” in Arizona’s Borderlands
The damage the border wall has inflicted in just the past year is incalculable. Much of it will last forever. No amount of money could repay the O’odham and all Indigenous people of the borderlands for the sacred sites, cultural history and natural heritage that’s been destroyed. https://nyti.ms/2I00TIQ – Laiken Jordahl in the New York Times

Crow Canyon Archaeological Center Announces Basketmaker Communities Project Report
From 2011–2017, the Basketmaker Communities Project focused on a pivotal, yet under-investigated, time in history—the Basketmaker III period (A.D. 500–750). Focusing on early Pueblo growth, this multi-year project addressed research questions pertaining to community organization, migration, environmental change, settlement and land-use patterns, and population shifts through time. The first farmers in the central Mesa Verde region established not only vast farmsteads, but cultural frameworks that became the hallmarks of Pueblo society. Report (opens as a PDF): https://bit.ly/32czY3D. Database: https://bit.ly/3mOuqEb. – Crow Canyon Archaeological Center

Publication Announcement: Becoming Hopi
Becoming Hopi: A History, edited by Wesley Bernardini, Stewart B. Koyiyumptewa, Gregson Schachner, and Leigh J. Kuwanwisiwma. University of Arizona Press, 2021. https://bit.ly/2HYFjo2

Publication Announcement: With Grit and Determination
With Grit and Determination: A Century of Change for Women in Great Basin and American Archaeology, edited by Suzanne Eskenazi and Nicole M. Herzog. University of Utah Press, 2020. https://bit.ly/365sEru

Join editors Suzanne Eskenazi and Nicole Herzog with guests Melinda Leach, Linda Scott-Cummings, Shannon Tushingham, Heidi Roberts, Kay Fowler, Barbara Frank, and Laurel Glidden, as they discuss the book on November 11 at 12:00 p.m. MST. More information and Zoom registration: https://bit.ly/328ZFlF

Online Resources, Events, and Opportunities to Help
Please keep sharing these with us, and we will keep helping to get the word out. Our inbox is sat-editor@archaeologysouthwest.org.

From Crow Canyon Archaeological Center and Pueblo Archaeological & Historical Society: On November 5 at 4:00 p.m. MST, Lawrence Loendorf will present “The Archaeology of Rock Art.” More information and Zoom registration: https://bit.ly/3kUt1LK

From the San Juan Basin Archaeological Society: On November 11 at 7:00 p.m. MST, after a brief business meeting, Rand Greubel will present “Early Pueblo I Occupation of Florida Mesa site.” The site is in the area locally known as the Bridge to Nowhere. This talk might not be recorded, so participants will need to log in on November 11 at 7:00 p.m. More information and Zoom registration: http://www.sjbas.org/.

Reminder from Archaeology Café: On November 10 at 6:00 p.m. MST, Christopher Caseldine will discuss “The Flow of Water and Time: Irrigation Longevity and Social Change among the Lower Salt River Hohokam.” More information and Zoom registration:  https://bit.ly/3iiJR4P

We’re happy to help get the word out. Please submit news, publication announcements, and other resources to this link for consideration: https://www.archaeologysouthwest.org/submit-to-sat/

Questions? sat-editor@archaeologysouthwest.org