Southwest Archaeology Today for April 20, 2010

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

Archaeologists Suggest that Ancient Adaptations to Younger Dryas Climate Change Posed no Particular Hardship to Clovis Peoples
Paleoindian groups occupied North America throughout the Younger Dryas interval, which saw a rapid return to glacial conditions approximately 11,000 years ago. Until now, it has been assumed that cooling temperatures and their impact on communities posed significant adaptive challenges to those groups. David Meltzer from the Southern Methodist University in Dallas, USA, and Vance Holliday from the University of Arizona in Tucson, USA, suggest otherwise in their review of climatic and environmental records from this time period in continental North America, published in Springer’s Journal of World Prehistory.
http://tinyurl.com/y2epfj3 – Springer Media

Essay Takes an Dim View of the Closure of Homol’ovi Ruins State Park
One of the easiest targets in any governmental budget crisis is state parks. No individual park has much of a constituency, and lots of them are sparsely visited and collect admission fees on the honor system. Arizona decided to close five of its 30 state parks, a lot of them rural. The jewel of that crown is Homolovi Ruins State Park, which lies just south of the Hopi Nation and contains a lot of pottery (probably a lot undiscovered) and burial grounds and sundry amulets, tools and whatnot.
http://www.sfgate.com/cgi-bin/article.cgi?f=/c/a/2010/04/15/DD681CUT7B.DTL

Phoenix Preservationists Seek to Preserve Fitch Farmhouse
An adobe farmhouse built in 1934, the Fitch Farmhouse has been proposed for historic landmark overlay zoning. The adobe bricks were made with mud excavated for the basement. Historic preservation would commemorate the legacy of the Fitch family. W. Larkin Fitch, who raised corn on a large farm, donated the land for Fitch Park where the Chicago Cubs train each spring.
http://tinyurl.com/y5t7lvy – Arizona Republic

Archaeological Forgeries Complicate Mexican Repatriation Case
Within the framework of actions that the Mexican Ministry of Foreign Affairs (SRE), the Attorney General’s Office of Mexico (PGR) and the Mexico’s National Institute of Anthropology and History (INAH) have coordinately adopted regarding the recovery of cultural property illegally taken from Mexican Territory… After performing a detailed analysis by direct inspection in the city of Munich, Germany, where the above mentioned seized pieces are being kept in custody, INAH experts found that 252 objects out of a total of 1029 are false, i.e., they are copies recently manufactured and thus do not belong to Mexico’s archaeological heritage.
http://www.artdaily.com/index.asp?int_sec=2&int_new=37492

Photographers Focus upon Archaeological Preservation
Gustavsen-Stapleton Studios opened in 2005 when its owners received an assignment to capture the Southwest’s prehistoric ruins. Anthem resident Cheryl Stapleton, 50, and New River’s Gil Gustavsen, 56, teamed up when True West Magazine asked them to find and photograph vandalized ruins. The inquiry focused their New River-based business on photographing dwellings built by prehistoric people called the Hohokam and the Anasazi in Arizona, Colorado, New Mexico and Utah.
http://tinyurl.com/y2adef8 – Arizona Republic

Lecture Opportunity (Cortez)
Florence Lister and Gwinn Vivian to Share “Personal Reminiscences of Old Chaco”
On April 22, distinguished Southwestern archaeologists Florence Lister and Gwinn Vivian will talk about their experiences at Chaco Canyon in a presentation entitled “Personal Reminiscences of Old Chaco.” The talk is a Four Corners Lecture Series presentation and will be held at the Crow Canyon Archaeological Center, 23390 Road K, Cortez, at 7:00 p.m. The event is free and open to the public.

Lecture Opportunity (Glendale)
The Agua Fria Chapter of the Arizona Archaeology Society is offering a free lecture
on Petroglyphs of Perry Mesa, on Tuesday, May 11, 2010 at 7:00 PM at the Glendale Public Library Auditorium, 5959 West Brown (south of Peoria Ave). Membership is not required. The speaker, George DeLange, has been a mortician, science and math teacher, school administrator, Sheriff’s Deputy and judge. His main interest is archaeology and he has explored many archaeological sites in Arizona as well as over a hundred sites in Mexico, Central America and Peru. At the meeting, Mr. DeLange will discuss archaeoastronomy petroglyphs of Perry Mesa, including one which he believes to represent the supernova of 1054 AD.

Lecture Opportunity (Tubac)
Tubac Presidio “Past and Present” is Topic of Santa Cruz Valley AAS Program May 13th. Local historian and president of the Tubac Historical Society Shaw Kinsley will give a presentation to the Santa Cruz Valley Chapter of the Arizona Archaeological Society on May 13, 2010, 7 PM, at the North County Facility at 50 Bridge Road in Tubac. His topic will be the Presidio San Ignacio de Tubac, from its founding in 1752 to today’s effort to maintain the Tubac Presidio State Historic Park in the face of the state’s elimination of funding. The presentation is free and open to the public.

Eastern Woodland Quarry Site is the Latest Feature on the Archaeology Channel
Pre-contact peoples in southeastern Ontario, Canada, were part of the Eastern Woodlands cultural sphere. This week we feature a spectacular example of this cultural connection in Legacy of Stone, the latest video feature on our nonprofit streaming-media Web site, The Archaeology Channel.
http://www.archaeologychannel.org

Thanks to Terry Colvin for contributing to today’s newsletter.