Upper Gila River valley

Contact

Kate Sarther
Communications Director
Email | (520) 882-6946, ext. 16

 

2019
14
Mar

The Importance of Dead Bunnies in Mimbres and Salado Archaeology in Southwest New Mexico

How might farmers maintain local access to wild animals for food and other uses for over a thousand years? How might people from different cultural traditions come together to form lasting multiethnic communities? How can the archaeology of southwestern New Mexico from AD 500 to 1450 help us underst...
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2012
30
Apr

Mule Creek in Memphis

  By Katherine A. Dungan, Research Assistant The Society for American Archaeology held its 77th Annual Meeting last week, and several of Archaeology Southwest’s staff, research associates, and friends traveled to Memphis to talk about archaeology, see old friends, and enjoy some barbequ...
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2012
06
Apr

Salado polychrome pottery, part 2

  By Deborah L. Huntley, Preservation Archaeologist A major part of our research at Mule Creek—and in the Upper Gila region in general—is to identify compositional and stylistic variability in Salado polychrome pottery (also known as Roosevelt Red Ware) through time and across space. ...
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2012
03
Feb

The Sherds of Gamalstad: Ceramic Chronology in Mule Creek

By Katherine A. Dungan, Research Assistant In a post back in October, I discussed the Late Pithouse period at Gamalstad, one of the sites we investigated during the 2009 field season. As I wrote then, we have evidence of a substantial pithouse occupation (c. A.D. 550–1000), underneath s...
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2011
23
Nov

Talking Turkey: Unexpected Encounters with New World Domesticates

By Katherine A. Dungan, Research Assistant With Thanksgiving nearly upon us, we thought that it would be fun to share with our readers our own memorable turkey experience, as captured on film when we were recording Archaeology Southwest’s Mule Creek videos. But first, a bit of...
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2011
18
Nov

Learning from Pottery, Part 1: Dating

By Deborah L. Huntley, Preservation Archaeologist When an archaeologist says that a site was inhabited, say, during the late 1200s A.D., how does he or she know that? There are many methods used to date archaeological sites. Some, like radiocarbon dating of materials like burned wood or ...
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2011
12
Oct

What does a nuclear reactor have to do with prehistoric pottery?

By Deborah L. Huntley, Preservation Archaeologist Every once in a while, my research requires me to do something a little out of the ordinary. For example, this spring I spent several days at the University of Missouri Research Reactor (MURR) in Columbia. I was there to analyze ceramic com...
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2011
23
Sep

Tracking Kayenta, Understanding Salado

By Jeff Clark, Preservation Archaeologist Our work in Mule Creek and the Upper Gila is part of Archaeology Southwest’s long-term research project to assess the scale and impact of Kayenta migrations in the southern Arizona during the late 13th and 14th centuries A.D. The Kayenta were a r...
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2011
14
Sep

Preservation Archaeology in Action

By Deborah L. Huntley, Preservation Archaeologist What can be learned about an archaeological site without digging? Quite a lot, it turns out, especially if that site has been kept in pristine condition. I recently visited such a site that is managed by the National Park Service (NPS). Al...
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2011
08
Sep

Mapping the Past

By Katherine A. Dungan, Research Assistant In our posts during the field season, we mentioned various aspects of Fornholt’s site layout—that it has northern and southern room blocks, two-story sections, a large depression in the southern room block—but we never posted a map of the ...
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2011
31
Aug

Follow the Center's Upper Gila Research

Team members Jeff Clark, Deb Huntley, Rob Jones, and Katherine Dungan share their Upper Gila research as it unfolds. New posts appear each Thursday.
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2011
31
Aug

Mule Creek, Writ Large

By Rob Jones, Preservation Fellow  
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