Preservation Archaeology Today

Preservation Archaeology Today (PAT) is a free, weekly e-mail news digest. In addition to sharing regional archaeology news, events, opportunities, and publications, PAT connects readers with news and commentary on U.S. public lands policy, global heritage protection and preservation, and the peopling of the North and South American continents. Review our submission guidelines here.

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Banner image: Paul Vanderveen

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Four Corners Potato Is the Fourth Sister

Dear Friends, I write to you this week while heading west at 34,000 ft., somewhere over Ohio. I’m on the way back to Tucson after several days at Bureau of Indian Affairs (BIA) headquarters in Washington D.C. with a crack team of archaeologists from Archaeology Southwest. Our task? To examine t...

Interview with Preservation Archaeology Field School Alumni

Dear Friends, Several weeks ago, Preservation Archaeologists Karen Schollmeyer and Allen Denoyer returned to Tucson after an exhilarating AND exhausting six weeks in Silver City, New Mexico. There, they led the inaugural season of Archaeology Southwest’s new Preservation Archaeology Museum Cura...

Sandals and Power in the Ancient Southwest

Dear Friends, I hope you had a great Labor Day Weekend! I spent the holiday weekend laboring (as it were) on archaeological research! I don’t get to do that often, so it didn’t really feel like work. It was a pleasure. An honor. A responsibility. And a privilege. I’ll share details of th...

Archaeology Journal Goes Open Access

Dear Friends, CNN recently published a story about a 4-year-old boy who accidently broke a 3,500-year-old Bronze Age jar at the Hecht Museum in Haifa. The jar was on open display because the museum’s founder wants to keep artifacts more accessible to the public, even if they are not supposed to...

Why Great Bend of the Gila Should Be a National Monument

Dear Friends, I am thrilled to announce our lineup for the 2024–2025 Archaeology Café series, focused on dogs in North American archaeology, has now been set! Tuesday, October 1, 2024: R.E. Burrillo, Bureau of Land Management Tuesday, November 12, 2024: Laurie Webster, Independent Schola...

NPS Awards Funds to Aid NAGPRA Compliance

Dear Friends, This week, I’d like to highlight some of the work of our cyberSW team, led by Vice-President of Research Jeff Clark and cyberSW manager Josh Watts. Before diving into specifics of their work, I’d like to ask you to consider our digital world from a 30,000-foot perspective. Ri...

Grijalva Introduces Legislation to Create Great Bend of the Gila National Monument

Dear Friends, Archaeology Southwest practices preservation archaeology in all its manifestations—from minimally invasive and nondestructive scientific research to landscape and site preservation, from Tribal collaboration and co-management to advocacy for site and landscape protections. At any ...

The Return of Zuni Waffle Gardening

Dear Friends, Last week I had the good fortune of taking an epic road trip around the American Southwest with two of our newest employees—Vice-President of Development Ethan Cox and Development & Marketing Manager Elysia Hansel. Neither had ever been to Mesa Verde National Park, Chaco Canyo...

Urge Congress to Fund Public Lands

Dear Friends, It’s summer vacation season! Kate Sarther, our wonderful Vice President of Communications & Outreach (and editor of this newsletter) is headed back to Chicago—her birthplace—to see family and friends, so we won’t send another edition of this newsletter for two weeks. ...

National Monuments: The Heart of the West

Dear Friends, I’ve spent the past week driving across upstate New York—a land that is very unfamiliar territory for me. My wife and I drove from the Big Apple to Buffalo, across the Adirondacks and the Catskills, through historic towns and tourist traps, along the Hudson River, past the Finge...

Great Bend of the Gila Featured in Arizona Highways

Dear Friends, I write from beautiful Prescott, Arizona, where I’ve spent the last couple of days attending the 2024 Arizona Historic Preservation Conference. Prescott is an amazing city for a number of reasons, not least of which is its long tradition, dating back to the 1970s, of activist hist...

Encerrita Fire Started from Lightning Strike at El Malpais National Monument

Dear Friends, As I mentioned last week, change is afoot here at Archaeology Southwest, but we are being deliberate, tactical, strategic, and careful in the changes we make. I am thrilled to announce a recent and fantastic change around here—the arrival of our new director of philanthropy Ethan ...

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