Southwest Archaeology Today for June 4, 2007

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

– Rock Art Vandalism in Utah: Federal authorities are investigating the vandalism of a series of petroglyphs believed to be thousands of years old. The petroglyph vandalism was discovered earlier this week by a group of contractors taking inventory of archaeological sites in the area. The rock art is believed to be thousands of years old and had been untouched until May 2007, the BLM said.
http://deseretnews.com/dn/view/0,1249,660226133,00.html

– Climatic Change and the Origins of Agriculture in Mexico: New charcoal and plant microfossil evidence from Mexico’s Central Balsas valley links a pivotal cultural shift, crop domestication in the New World, to local and regional environmental history. Agriculture in the Balsas valley originated and diversified during the warm, wet, postglacial period following the much cooler and drier climate in the final phases of the last ice age. A significant dry period appears to have occurred at the same time as the major dry episode associated with the collapse of Mayan civilization, Smithsonian researchers and colleagues report in the Proceedings of the National Academy of Sciences online.
http://www.sciencedaily.com/releases/2007/06/070601173931.htm

– Set in Stone Workshop on Petroglyph Management Scheduled for September: The National Park Service’s Petroglyph National Monument, which protects, preserves, and interprets one of the largest concentrations of petroglyphs in the world, is the primary organizer of this event along with its partners the University of New Mexico and the Instituto Nacional de Antropolog