Archaeologist Elisa Villalpando vs. the Narcotraficantes

Archaeologist Elisa Villalpando vs. the Narcotraficantes
During the holiday season, my family always hosted the many archaeology graduate students from Binghamton University in upstate New York, where my father, Randall McGuire, was and still is a professor. After the dinner of turkey with all the trimmings was cleared, my father would go to the liquor cabinet and produce a bottle of fine tequila. Then he and his students would share stories from the field long into the night. This particular evening, in 1997, they were enthusiastically recounting the story of my father’s Mexican colleague Elisa Villalpando’s confrontation with a drug lord from the Sinaloan cartel, Mexico’s largest organized crime operation. http://www.archaeology.org/1207/letter/mexico_cerro_de_trincheras_paqume_casas_grandes.html

Arizona State Museum Continues Popular Adult Archaeological Summer Camp
Summer camp – it’s not just for kids anymore. Just ask one of the young-at-heart grown-ups participating in the Archaeology Summer Camp for Adults at the Arizona State Museum this week. “This is wonderful,” said 68-year-old camper Philip Davis, while sorting a tray of pottery sherds at a table with his fellow campers. Davis is one of just 14 adults participating in the week-long day camp for adults, which is in its 13th year at the University of Arizona. The camp, which began Monday and runs through Friday, teaches community members about archaeology through hands-on experience that also helps the museum manage its collections. http://uanews.org/story/arizona-state-museum-hosts-archaeology-camp-adults

The Armchair Marcaeologist – Dean Cummings and Kinishba
One of my first tours to venture out of the general Tucson Basin area was to Kinishba. The name means “brown house” in Apache (Inde′). It is one of the more important sites in the history of archaeological study at the University of Arizona. When Byron Cummings was lured from Utah to Arizona he immediately began to upgrade the museum collections and archaeological program at his new school. One of his first acts was to begin a program of field training in archaeology for university students.  http://tucsoncitizen.com/armchair-marcaeologist/2012/07/23/dean-cummings-and-kinishba-the-sorrow-of-the-owl/

Phoenix-area Residents Offered Preview of New Mesa Grande Museum
Mesa is holding a public meeting July 31 to share plans for a visitors center that will open this fall at the Mesa Grande ruins. City staff will outline plans and renderings for the project and parking at the site, which is west of the intersection of Country Club Drive and Brown Road. The meeting is scheduled from 6:30 p.m. to 7:30 p.m. at the West Mesa Community Development Corporation, 567 W. 10th St.  http://www.eastvalleytribune.com/local/article_7703d876-d6e5-11e1-84fc-0019bb2963f4.html and http://www.azcentral.com/community/mesa/articles/2012/07/19/20120719construction-mesa-grande-visitor-center-begin-september.html

Museum News – Can Flash Photography Actually Damage Collections?
You’ve seen the signs. No Flash Photography. But why do they exist? Imaging Resource’s Steve Meltzer did some digging about the continued existence of this law of the art world.  http://gizmodo.com/5928378/does-flash-photography-really-damage-art-the-persistence-of-a-myth

Lecture Opportunity – Cortez
The Hisatsinom Chapter of the Colorado Archaeological Society is pleased to present Paul Reed on Tuesday, August 7 at 6:30 PM at the Cortez Cultural Center, 25 North Market Street, Cortez, CO, to discuss Chaos or Order: Salmon and Aztec in the post-Chacoan Pueblo III Period.  In his presentation, Paul will discuss how these two successors of the Chaco cultural traditions developed on different tracks: a continuation of the Chaco tradition at the Aztec community whereas Salmon forged ahead as a non-Chacoan, local community. Paul Reed is a Preservation Archaeologist with Archaeology Southwest. For the past eleven years he has been the Chaco Scholar at Salmon Ruins.  Paul has edited and authored numerous works on the Middle San Juan including the seminal works Chaco’s Northern Prodigies: Salmon, Aztec, and the Ascendancy of the Middle San Juan Region After AD 1100 andThirty-five Years of Archaeological Research at Salmon Ruins, New Mexico. With a group of research partners, Paul recently investigated several research questions critical to the Chacoan presence in the Middle San Juan.  Their findings were published in a dedicated issue of Kiva (Winter 2011).  Paul’s current research involves questions related to the complicated post-Chacoan, Pueblo III period in the Middle San Juan and exploring the origins of the Acoma PueblO.

Lecture Opportunity – Winslow
The Arizona Archaeological Society’s Homolovi Chapter and the Arizona Humanities Council are sponsoring “Southwestern Rock Calendars and Ancient Time Pieces,” a free presentation by Tucson archaeologist Allen Dart, RPA, at the Winslow, Arizona, Chamber of Commerce (Old Hubbell Building), 523 W. Second St., at 7 p.m. Thursday August 16, 2012. Mr. Dart will discuss and illustrate solstice, equinox, and cardinal-direction alignments and
possible calendrical reckoning features at such places as Arizona’s Casa Grande Ruins and Picture Rocks petroglyphs sites, New Mexico’s Chaco Canyon archaeological district, the Hovenweep area of Utah, and the Mesa Verde and Chimney Rock regions of Colorado, and will offer interpretation of how these discoveries may relate to ancient Native American ritual. No reservations are needed. For meeting details contact Darlene Brinkerhoff in Winslow at 928-524-6569 or artederoca@cableone.net; for information about the presentation subject matter contact Allen Dart at 520-798-1201 or adart@oldpueblo.org.

News from the Archaeology Channel
The latest installment of the Video News from TAC features the following stories:  Excavations in 2005 in “The Avenue of the Saints” corridor within the Mississippi River valley in Missouri revealed numerous buried features and artifacts and copious environmental data from over two dozen sites spanning 10,000 years.  Next, in a video interview at TAC Festival 2011, Dr. Tom King brings us up to date on the continuing search for aviatrix Amelia Earhart on and around the remote Pacific island of Nikumaroro. See these stories in the July 2012 edition of this monthly half-hour show, available now on our nonprofit streaming-media Web site, The Archaeology Channel (http://www.archaeologychannel.org) as well as on cable TV in cities across the US.