Migrations Old and New

Migrations Old and New
Major human migrations are a fact of history. Perhaps none has stirred the imagination more than the sudden, seemingly mysterious “disappearance” of the people of the Four Corners area. Centuries ago, an estimated 25,000 people farmed, hunted and raised turkeys around Colorado’s present-day Mesa Verde National Park. Then, over a few decades in the 1200s, they left. Where they went, and what happened to them, has long been the subject of intense scientific inquiry. http://bit.ly/2xrVhf9 – High Country News

Indigenous Knowledge Illuminates the Story of Mesa Verde|
In the mid-1200s, an estimated 25,000 people lived in an 1,800-square-mile area surrounding what’s now southwest Colorado’s Mesa Verde National Park. Over the 700 years they lived in this area — known as the central Mesa Verde region — the people built huge villages of stone and adobe. They traded for turquoise and obsidian from across the Southwest and for shells from the Pacific Coast. They raised turkeys for feathers that were used in blankets and ceremonies, and mastered the art of growing corn, beans and squash in a landscape that receives around a foot of rain a year. And then they left. By the 1280s, there’s no evidence that anyone remained in the region. http://bit.ly/2xrwBUj – High Country News

Myth-Buster Roxanne Dunbar-Ortiz
When it comes to Native American history, Roxanne Dunbar-Ortiz is out to squash every superstition, lie, and rumor. As the title of her most recent book suggests — “All The Real Indians Died Off”: And 20 Other Myths About Native Americans (Beacon Press, 2016) — she believes many of the pernicious myths surrounding Indians (that they are casino-rich, welfare-dependent, backward savages with a weakness for alcohol) have their origins in a colonial-settler mentality that sought to erase Native Americans and take their land. http://bit.ly/2y93kBg – Santa Fe New Mexican

Travelogue: Puye Cliff Dwellings
We silenced our phones as we stood among remnants of an ancient Native American village, trying to imagine the daily activity 1,000 years ago on this remote mesa. As gusts of wind whistled, we closed our eyes and pictured men hunting with bows and arrows, women shaping clay pottery and children racing to and fro. Barbara, my wife, and I were drawn to the site to learn more about the history and culture of New Mexico’s Native Americans, whose settlements are known as pueblos. http://lat.ms/2xs2ZWA – Los Angeles Times

Piecing Together the Clovis Phenomenon
The Americas were one of the last areas of the world to be settled by modern humans, and we know that one of the first migrant groups, known as the Clovis people, lived here around 13,000 years ago. Beyond that, however, many details about these early Americans are still hazy. “We know very little about their habitation structure or social structure,” says Frédéric Sellet, an associate professor at the University of Kansas. “What we know is, we know what they ate. We know that they hunted mammoth, among other things, but also smaller animals. We know that they made beautiful stone tools.” http://bit.ly/2xs2M62 – Public Radio International

Oil Rigs At Hovenweep
New drilling rigs and oil and gas infrastructure could sprout within sight of Hovenweep National Monument, according to a proposed March lease sale issued by a Utah office of the Bureau of Land Management. An environmental analysis released Sept. 22 proposes to lease 51,400 acres of federal minerals in southeastern Utah for possible oil and gas development. The proposal includes 43 parcels in Grand and San Juan counties. They include parcels 50 and 51, totaling 2,665 acres, on the eastern Utah border, north and west of Hovenweep National Monument archaeological sites in Colorado and Utah. http://bit.ly/2xrKd1C – Durango Herald

2018 Arizona Archaeology Expo Planning Meeting Scheduled for Tuesday, October 17
The 2018 Arizona Archaeology Expo will be held on Saturday, March 10, 2018 at the Arizona Museum of Natural History (AzMNH). For this month’s meeting, we will gather at SHPO on Tuesday, October 17, 2017 at 10 am. SHPO uses the Forestry’s conference room next door in the ADEQ building, since the SHPO conference room is too small. All are invited to attend. Teleconferencing is available for those who are not able to join us in person. For more information, please feel free to contact Kris Powell at kpowell@azstateparks.gov or 602-542-7141.

New Mexico Archaeology Day at Taos
New Mexico Archaeology Day is coming to Taos on Saturday Oct 14, at the Millicent Rogers Museum from 10 amt0 4 pm. Free to all, this annual event brings the public and a group of archaeologists together in an informal hands on experience. There are activities and learning experiences for all ages. Children are especially welcome with age appropriate activites. This day is organized  by the Historic Preservation Division of the Dept of Cultural Affairs and is in conjunction with Nationwide Archaeology Day. Millicent Rogers Museum and Taos Archaeology Society are sponsoring this event. For more information, call CJ Johnson, Past President, Archaeological Society of New Mexico (575) 758-2462.

Lecture Opportunity – Durango
The San Juan Basin Archaeological Society will meet at 7 p.m. Wednesday, Oct. 11, at the Center of Southwest Studies at Fort Lewis College, 1000 Rim Drive. Andrew Gulliford will present The Woolly West: Colorado’s Hidden History of Sheepscapes. The presentation will include historical archaeology and sites related to sheep movements, sheep camps, cairns, aspen-tree carvings, sheepherder lifestyles in the Colorado high country, sheep wars and Gulliford’s research about ongoing conflicts between guardian dogs and hikers, and between domestic and bighorn sheep on national forest land. A social time will start before the meeting at 6:30 p.m. For more information, visit www.sjbas.org. (Via the Durango Herald)

Lecture Opportunity – Phoenix
On Tuesday, October 10, 2017, at 7:00 pm, the Phoenix Chapter of the Arizona Archaeological Society invites you to join us in the Pueblo Grande Museum Community Room for a lecture by Dr. Aaron Wright, a Preservation Archaeologist at Archaeology Southwest in Tucson, on The Bouse Walk-In Well. In 1929, a young Frank Midvale, working for the Gila Pueblo Foundation, recorded a “hollow mound” near the village of Bouse as the westernmost Hohokam village. Visited shortly thereafter by Malcolm Rogers and partially excavated in 1952 by Michael Harner, this hollow mound was discovered to be a massive, prehispanic walk-in well dug entirely into bedrock. Rather than being a Hohokam site, the well and surrounding habitation area can be attributed to the Patayan tradition, and dates to the AD 700 to 1250 period. Aaron will review the history of the Bouse Site and outline his ongoing research, including a paleohydrological investigation of the well’s operation and a refinement of the Patayan ceramic chronology based on the well’s stratified deposits. The Pueblo Grande Museum is located at 4619 E. Washington Street, Phoenix. Attendance is free and the public is welcome.

Lecture Opportunity – Santa Fe
Southwest Seminars Presents John Haworth (Cherokee), Senior Executive Emeritus, Smithsonian National Museum of the American Indian-New York; Featured Presenter, Native American and Indigenous Studies Association, UNESCO (Paris) and RMIT University, Melbourne, Australia; Past Chairman, Museum Association of New York; Member, Native Arts and Cultures Foundation National Leadership Council who will give a presentation Native Language Preservation and Ofelia Zepeda (Tohono O’Odham) on October 16 at 6pm at Hotel Santa Fe as part of the Native Culture Matters Lecture Series held to acknowledge the work of Dr. Suzan Shown Harjo, founding trustee of the National Museum of the American Indian. Admission is by subscription or $15 at the door. No reservations are necessary; Refreshments are served; Seating is limited. Contact Connie Eichstaedt tel. 505 466-2775; email: southwestseminar@aol.com; website: http://southwestseminars.org

Tour Opportunity – Tucson
From 8 a.m. to 1 p.m. Saturday, October 28, Yoeme traditional culture specialist Felipe Molina leads Old Pueblo Archaeology Center’s “Tucson and Marana Yoeme (Yaqui Indian) Communities” educational tour starting in Tucson’s Santa Cruz River Park near Irvington Road and ending in Marana, Arizona. Many Yoeme migrated from Mexico into Arizona between 1890 and 1930 to escape the Mexi­can government’s effort to assimilate them. They established villages in the Tucson, Marana, Eloy, Somerton, Phoenix, and Scottsdale areas. $25 ($20 for Old Pueblo Archaeology Center and Pueblo Grande Museum Auxiliary members); reservations and prepayment required by October 25: info@oldpueblo.org or 520-798-1201.

Lecture Opportunity – Tucson
On Thursday, October 12, at 5:30 p.m., the Arizona Chapter of the American Research Center in Egypt will welcome Hannah M. Herrick for Fantastic Trees and Where to Find Them: Sourcing Fuel on the Nubian Landscape. Though the ancient Nubians borrowed many aspects of culture from their northern Egyptian neighbors, their prolific tradition of iron smelting is inherently their own. From 800 BC-400 BC, over 49,000 kg of iron was smelted at Meroe, the Nubian capital. How did these ancient smelters find sufficient wood charcoal fuel on their desert landscape? This lecture explores pathways to locate sources of wood from archaeological charcoal to unravel the relationship between ancient Nubians, their technologies, and their environment. Location: 110 Bannister Bldg., University of Arizona, 1215 E. Lowell St, Tucson AZ. http://arce.arizona.edu/