Amerind Free Online Talk-One Sherd at a Time: Seriating Ceramics from Paloparado, an Important Precolonial Site Near the Arizona/Sonora Border with Hunter Claypatch, PhD

Amerind Free Online Talk

Saturday, September 27, 2025

11:00 am (AZ time)

To register, visit: https://bit.ly/Amerindonline09272025Claypatch

Join us on Saturday, September 27, 2025 at 11:00 am (AZ time) for an online talk One Sherd at a Time: Seriating Ceramics from Paloparado, an Important Precolonial Site Near the Arizona-Sonora Border with Scholar Hunter Claypatch, PhD

The archaeological site of Paloparado is located within present-day Santa Cruz County, Arizona. It was excavated in the 1950s by Charles Di Peso and the Amerind Foundation. Although fundamental for reconstructing the occupational history of the Arizona-Sonora borderlands, the excavation was conducted with little prior knowledge of regional ceramics and many of Di Peso’s original interpretations have long been refuted. Through Amerind’s Emerging Scholar Residency, Claypatch applied ceramic insights that were unknown in the 1950s to conducted a systematic reanalysis of Paloparado’s pottery. Coupled with previously unpublished site data, this research reconstructs the occupational history of Paloparado and demonstrates the presence of largely unmixed Pre-Classic (pre-1150 CE) house deposits.

Hunter M. Claypatch received his Ph.D. from Binghamton University in 2022. He is a ceramicist who has worked extensively with precolonial pottery on both sides of the U.S. and Mexico international border. He specializes in Trincheras tradition of northern Sonora and the precolonial inhabitants of present-day Santa Cruz County, Arizona. His research applies traditional seriations, practice theory, and models for cultural connectivity to reconstruct Indigenous lifeways. He currently serves as president-elect for the Arizona Archaeological Council and as a professor at Pima Community College, in Tucson, Arizona.

We hope you will join us!

Amerind Free Online Talk- Human Governing and Well-being: a global investigation with the coalition for Archaeological Synthesis with Dr. Gary Feinman

Amerind Free Online Talk

Saturday, August 23, 2025

11:00 am (AZ time)

Join us on Saturday, August 23, 2025 at 11:00 am (AZ time) for an online talk, “Human Governing and Well-being: a global investigation with the coalition for Archaeological Synthesis” with Dr. Gary Feinman (Field Museum of Natural History).

How can we learn from our ancestors to make a better world for tomorrow? Dr. Gary Feinman and an international team of social scientists with the Coalition of Archaeological Synthesis are examining dozens of ancient societies on several continents. Their goal is to better understand how the governing systems humans create affect the practices and well-being of their people. From these insights, they hope to draw lessons that can help create governing systems that allow people to thrive. Amerind’s community has helped support their convenings.

Dr. Feinman is the MacArthur Curator of Mesoamerican, Central American, and East Asian Anthropology at the Field Museum of Natural History. Feinman presently co-directs two international archaeological field projects in Mesoamerica and China. Earlier in his career, Feinman had leadership roles in the Valley of Oaxaca and the Ejutla Valley Settlement Pattern Projects and supervised residential excavations at four sites in the region. For 30 field seasons, he has been co-directing fieldwork in China’s eastern Shandong Province.

To register, visit: https://bit.ly/Amerindonline08232025Feinman

Not sure you can watch live, register with an email and you will be sent the recording of the talk to watch at your leisure after the talk.

 

Social Science Research with Amerind Scholar Alumni, Dr. Gary Feinman

Social Science Research with Archaeologist Dr. Gary Feinman (Field Museum of Natural History)

Wednesday, March 5, 2025

7:00 pm Public Talk

FREE event

Tucson Museum of Art- 140 N. Main Ave. Tucson, AZ.

Join us in Tucson for a public talk with Senior researcher Dr. Gary Feinman of the Field Museum of Natural History, and a global team of researchers are engaged in a remarkable project to learn how human well-being is affected by the kinds of governments we create. How can we learn from our ancestors to make a better world for tomorrow? Dr. Feinman and his team of social scientists are examining dozens of ancient societies on several continents. Their goal is to better understand how the governing systems humans create affect the health and well-being of their people. From these insights, they hope to learn how we can create governing systems that help people thrive. Amerind’s community has helped support these convenings.

Dr. Feinman is the MacArthur Curator of Mesoamerican, Central American, and East Asian Anthropology at the Field Museum of Natural History.  Feinman presently co-directs two international archaeological field projects in Mesoamerica and China. Early in his career, Feinman had leadership roles in the Valley of Oaxaca and Ejutla Valley Archaeological Projects. For 19 field seasons, he has been leading fieldwork in China’s eastern Shandong Province.

We hope you will join us on March 5th.

Thank you to our sponsor:

 

Book-Signing and Talk with Authors Henry Haven, Dale Nations, PhD and, Max Goldtooth, Sr.

Saturday, November 23, 2024

11 am – 12 pm

Join us for a book signing with authors Heny Haven and Dale Nations, PhD & Max Goldtooth, Sr., who will be signing their book “Navajo Traditional Stories and the Science of Geology” by Dale Nations, Henry Haven & Max Goldsmith, Sr.

Geologist Henry Haven (Dine’) will also give a talk.

The three authors of this book vary greatly in backgrounds and experience but share in the love of the land and a desire to impart their knowledge of it. Comparisons are made of the rock record of geologic events known to geologists, to the legends in stories known to traditional Navajos. Ages and environments of deposition of stratigraphic units progress from the two billion-year-old rocks that are exposed in the Inner Gorge of the Grand Canyon to succeeding rock units known to exist on and under the lands of Dine ‘Bikeyah across the Colorado Plateau that were formed a few million years ago or less. Geologists use observed fossil records and other geologic events to establish a Universal Geologic Time Scale that consists of four Eras of geologic time: the Precambrian, Paleozoic, Mesozoic, and Cenozoic eras. Navajo medicine men tell stories of their vision of the First Dark World, the Second Blue World, the Yellow Third World, and the Fourth White World. The stories show a major cycle of life beginning and extinction of variety of different species in the four worlds as does the geologic history in the four geologic eras.

*This event is included with Museum admission

Amerind Free Online Talk: “Rio Abajo Cultural Traditions during the Late Prehistoric-Early Colonial Periods: A View from Goat Spring Pueblo (LA285), New Mexico” with Suzanne Eckert, PhD

Amerind Free Online Talk

“Rio Abajo Cultural Traditions during the Late Prehistoric-Early Colonial Periods: A View from Goat Spring Pueblo (LA285), New Mexico” with Suzanne Eckert, PhD

Saturday, October 26, 2024, 11:00 am – Arizona time

“Rio Abajo Cultural Traditions during the Late Prehistoric-Early Colonial Periods: A View from Goat Spring Pueblo (LA285), New Mexico”

Located at a little over 6,000 feet in elevation along the eastern edge the Cibola National Forest, Goat Spring Pueblo overlooks the Plano San Lorenzo of the Rio Abajo floodplain. It has been suggested that Rio Abajo villages played a major role in late Ancestral Pueblo Period (A.D. 1300-1680) social dynamics. For example, a major trail between the Western Pueblo and Rio Grande regions passed near Goat Spring Pueblo before ending near modern day Socorro. Given this known trail, the Rio Abajo may have been a gateway for the movement of people, cosmological ideas and ritual practices, as well as goods between the Rio Grande and Western Pueblo regions. This lecture considers recent excavations at Goat Spring Pueblo that have contributed to a much better understanding of cultural change and continuity in this region during this time.

Suzanne L. Eckert is the Head of Collections at the Arizona State Museum.  She earned her doctorate in 2003 from the Department of Anthropology, Arizona State University.  Dr. Eckert’s research focuses on how late Ancestral Pueblo cultures organized ceramic technology. She is especially interested in how this technology integrated with other aspects of society, including migration, political and social organization, religious practice and ideology, and gender and ethnic relations.

Register here: https://bit.ly/Amerindonline10262024Eckert

Amerind Free Online Talk: Capturing Water in Chaco Canyon and the Legacy of R. Gwinn Vivian, with Samantha Fladd, PhD

Amerind Free Online Lecture

Capturing Water in Chaco Canyon and the Legacy of R. Gwinn Vivian

with Samantha Fladd, PhD

Saturday, April 6, 2024, 11:00 am – Arizona Time

 

Capturing Water in Chaco Canyon and the Legacy of R. Gwinn Vivian

While Chaco Canyon is renowned for massive great houses and concentrations of nonlocal materials, the ability of residents to productively farm the arid landscape has remained contentious within archaeology. These debates have ranged from questions over soil quality to the existence and use of water management features. Throughout his career, Dr. R. Gwinn Vivian worked tirelessly to locate and document evidence of water management, particularly canal systems, from within and around the Canyon. In this talk, I will provide an overview of this evidence and discuss the importance of Dr. Vivian’s legacy on the field of Southwest archaeology.

Samantha Fladd is an assistant professor in the Department of Anthropology and Director of the Museum of Anthropology at Washington State University. She received her PhD from the University of Arizona in 2018 and has been doing archaeological research in the Four Corners region of the US Southwest for about 15 years. She is the second author on an upcoming book with Dr. R. Gwinn Vivian on Capturing Water (University of Utah Press), which presents his lifetime of research on water management and agricultural potential in and around Chaco Canyon.

To register for this free online event, visit: https://bit.ly/Amerindonline04062024Fladd

Book Signing with Award Winning Author Charmayne Samuelson

Please join us as we welcome Charmayne Samuelson on Friday and Saturday, November 24 & 25, 2023, 11am-3pm for a book signing  of her Best Seller biography SPENCER MacCALLUM Memories-Mystique-Mata Ortiz. a biography of the anthropologist who jump-started the Mata Ortiz pottery movement after meeting potter, farmer, and cowboy Juan Quezada.
Was it all destiny? Read this fascinating tale of the American Princeton-educated anthropologist who discovered the work of Juan Quezada.  When he purchased 3 pots at a Deming, NM, junk store, he became obsessed with finding the artisan who made them.  Deep in Chihuahua, Mexico, he met Juan Quezada a farmer and cowboy making pottery for the tourist trade.  Juan Quezada went on to produce world-class art in the form of exquisite pottery. And so did the hundreds of potters that followed in the years to come.

Ron Bridgeman, author of The Magnetism of Mata Ortiz, writes: “This is a wonderfully written and truly entertaining book! It is full of many interesting nuggets about Spencer never before published…Congratulations to author Charmayne Samuelson on a great job.”

This event is included with regular Museum admission.

 

Amerind Free Online Talk: The Distribution of Cultural Lac Scale Use (Tachardiella spp.) in the Arid Southwest

Amerind Free Online Lecture

The Distribution of Cultural Lac Scale Use (Tachardiella spp.) in the Arid Southwest

with Marilen Pool, PhD

Saturday, August 12, 2023, 11:00 am – Arizona Time

This talk will discuss the examination of the lac scale insect in the arid Southwest and the distribution of its cultural use. Three species, Tachardiella fulgens, Tachardiella larreae and Tachardiella pustulata are those most known to have been utilized by the indigenous peoples of the region from as early as the Archaic period to the modern era as an adhesive, mastic, and coating for the fabrication of tools, weapons, musical instruments, kicking balls, ornaments, and amulets. It was also used for hermetic sealing of containers to protect foods and seeds from pests and as a repair material for mending pottery.

Marilen Pool, PhD, is a Senior Project Conservator at the Arizona State Museum and Objects Conservator and owner of Sonoran Art Conservation Services in Tucson. She recently earned her doctorate degree in Arid Lands Resource Sciences at the University of Arizona. She has a graduate degree in Museum Studies from Oregon State University and is a graduate of the Sir Sanford Fleming Art Conservation Program in Ontario, Canada.

To register for this free online event, visit: https://bit.ly/AmerindOnline08122023

Amerind Free Online Lecture: Origins of Maya Civilization Examined at Aguada Fénix, Mexico with Takeshi Inomata, PhD

Amerind Free Online Lecture

Origins of Maya Civilization Examined at Aguada Fénix, Mexico

with Takeshi Inomata, PhD, University of Arizona

Saturday, June 3, 2023, 11:00 am – Arizona Time

 

The talk will discuss recent findings from the site of Aguada Fénix, Mexico, which was discovered in 2018.

Its central platform, which measures 1400 x 400 m horizontally and 10-15 m in height and was built around 1000 BC, is the largest and oldest monumental building in the Maya area.

The results of investigations at this site are changing our understanding of how the Maya civilization and surrounding societies developed.

 

Takeshi Inomata, PhD, is a professor at the School of Anthropology, University of Arizona.

He has been investigating social changes in the Maya area through field projects at Aguateca and Ceibal in Guatemala and in the Middle Usumacinta region of Mexico.

 

To register visit: https://bit.ly/Amerindonline06032023Inomata

 

 

Amerind Free Online Lecture: Prehispanic Jewelry from the Sea with Elisa Villalpando, PhD

Amerind Free Online Lecture

Prehispanic Jewelry from the Sea with Elisa Villalpando, PhD

Saturday, May 13, 2023, 11:00 am – Arizona Time

Since very ancient times, people have transformed all sort of objects into personal ornaments to denote differences in rank, gender, age, or simply to embellish themselves. These objects are not only carried in life, but often accompany individuals after death, or are offered by the mourners when performing funerary rituals.

Among the pre-Hispanic societies of Northwestern Mexico/Southwestern United States, most of these ornamental objects were made from pelecypods and gastropods collected from the Gulf of California and the Pacific Ocean.

In this talk I will focus on the ornamental use of shell among the Early Agriculture Period communities of the Sonoran Desert (800 BC-50 AD) and how same species could be transformed over time to become more sophisticated ornaments, highlighting the differences in manufacturing techniques and styles that allow archaeologist to associate shell jewelry with different archaeological traditions. I will emphasize with some examples of shell jewelry from the Trincheras tradition of northwest Sonora, collected at its regional center in the middle Magdalena Valley: Cerro de Trincheras, in the Late Pre-hispanic Period (AD 1200-1450).

Elisa Villalpando was born in Baja California Sur, graduated as an archaeologist from the Escuela Nacional de Antropología e Historia (ENAH) in 1984, and the Centro de Estudios Históricos de El Colegio de México (COLMEX) in 1992.

Has participated and directed archaeological projects for Instituto Nacional de Antroplogía e Historia (INAH) in Sonora since 1979, initially on hunter-gatherers and fishermen at San Esteban and Tiburón islands in the Gulf of California and the Sonoran coast, and later leading binational projects on Early Agriculture Period communities and trincheras´prehistoric settlements of the Sonoran Desert.

Is the author of numerous articles and some books on these topics, and has organized several symposiums and exhibits across the Arizona-Sonora border. She directed Cerro de Trincheras’ opening as a site for public visit in 2011, working with local community in public archaeology. She has produced museum scripts and curatorship for Cerro de Trincheras’ visitor’s center and for INAH’s Regional Museum of Sonora. As a result of the the experience of collaborating in the design of exhibits and the interpretive trail in the archaeological zone, she is interested in the accessibility and inclusion of all people to cultural heritage.

She is currently a member of Society for American Archaeology, Arizona Archaeological Historical Society, Amerind Museum Board of Directors, Sociedad Mexicana de Antropología, and recently, Consejo de Museos y Exposiciones INAH. Has been awarded international recognition for her work in the diffusion of archaeological knowledge of northwestern Mexico on both sides of the border.

To register for this free online event, visit: https://bit.ly/Amerindonline04292023Villalpando