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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Keep It Grand!

Dear Friends, Tuesday morning Paul Reed sent me a brief email. He wrote that he had packed up the last few things from the office he has had at Salmon Pueblo Museum for the last 23 years. I feel like there needs to be a much grander celebration of the amazing partnership that Archaeology South...

Creating a Living Land Acknowledgment

Dear Friends, Skylar Begay first worked for Archaeology Southwest in February 2019 as a field crew member on Aaron Wright’s Lower Gila Ethnographic and Archaeological Project (LGREAP). Although Skylar—who is Diné (Navajo), Mandan and Hidatsa—had worked on maintenance tasks at archaeologica...

New Mexico Delegation Reintroduces Chaco Cultural Heritage Protection Act

Dear Friends, My COVID has been dispatched! I’m back at work. Thanks to the many who sent kind words of support. Friday is the day that the cyberSW team and the Tribal Working Group await with anticipation. Applications for the Native American Fellow are due. Although there is still a bit of...

All My Relations: A Model for Tribal Collaboration

Dear Friends, I’m going to mention three colors and share a couple thoughts about each. Black. That is the color of my mood as I continue to deal with COVID. The Paxlovid Rebound is a real thing, and it found me. Green. That’s what chlorophyll does to both the bark and the tiny leaves o...

Continuing Coverage: Tucson’s Birthplace Returned to Tohono O’odham Nation

Dear Friends, More than three years into the pandemic, one of the current COVID variants finally cornered me. Last Friday, I tested positive. This morning, a few hours before this note landed in your inbox, I finished the Day-5 doses of Paxlovid. Yesterday, I spent over an hour reading a lo...

BREAKING: City of Tucson to Begin Process of Returning Ancestral Lands to Tohono O’odham Nation

Dear Friends, Weekend celebrations are always especially enjoyable, and last weekend I got to participate in two! On Saturday, Allen Denoyer and I spent the afternoon demonstrating ancient technologies and meeting new friends at Tubac Presidio State Park, where the Santa Cruz Valley Heritage A...

BREAKING: Grand Canyon Tribes Urge President to Designate New National Monument

Dear Friends, cyberSW is an expanding online database that Archaeology Southwest has worked to develop with multiple university partners. For the past year, our National Science Foundation grant has supported monthly meetings with a Tribal Working Group of seven members from a cross-section of So...

Vatican Rescinds “Doctrine of Discovery”

Dear Friends, Late last week, the Vatican repudiated the “Doctrine of Discovery,” which derives from 15th-century papal proclamations and served as a legal underpinning for laying claim to “discovered lands” that were not inhabited by Christians. It was a critical engine driving European ...

Pueblo Grande Becomes S'eḏav Va'aki Museum

Dear Friends, Last Thursday I put a lot of miles on my Prius as a “water tourist” along an extended area of the proposed Great Bend of the Gila National Conservation Area. What I saw really worried me, and it might worry you, too, however nonsensical that seems for a desert in a drought. I’...

Designated! Avi Kwa Ame and Castner Range National Monuments

Dear Friends, When Archaeology Southwest takes on a conservation easement, we commit to caring for it “in perpetuity.” That’s clearly a very long time. Regularly thinking about the distant future is part of why I keep coming back to my deep concern over the climate crisis. I just finishe...

Threats to Utah’s Nine Mile Canyon

Dear Friends, If you spend a lot of time trekking across the landscape of the lower Gila River, chances are you’ll meet some interesting people. Archaeology Southwest Preservation Anthropologist Aaron Wright has trekked the lower Gila a lot in recent years. That’s why many of us now know D...

Rep. Grijalva Introduces Bill to Protect Oak Flat

Dear Friends, I have been “enjoying” learning from someone a mere 27 percent of my age—Greta Thunberg—the 20-year-old Swedish climate activist. It’s necessary to use those quotes, because one does not really enjoy most of what is delivered in The Climate Book. The book is a compen...

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