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

Amerind Free Online Lecture – New Insights into the Old Period in Casas Grandes: 10 Years of Viejo Period Research in Northern Mexico

Amerind Free Online Lecture

New Insights into the Old Period in Casas Grandes: 10 Years of Viejo Period Research in Northern Mexico

Saturday, April 29, 2023, 11:00 am Arizona Time

The Roots of Casas Grandes Project (RCG) began in 2013 with the goal of understanding more about the Viejo period people who lived in the well-watered valleys of the eastern edge of the Chihuahuan Desert in northwestern Chihuahua, Mexico, for over 500 years. This is also a time period that preceded the better known Medio period when the large city of Paquime was built and the Casas Grandes region underwent significant cultural transformations. The combination of surveys, excavations, archival research, and various analyses of Viejo period materials has brought to light many new discoveries regarding the Casas Grandes people who populated the same river valleys that gave way to a thirteenth-century cultural revolution and the construction of one of the largest city centers ever built in the U.S. Southwest/Northwest Mexico in precolonial times.

Michael Searcy is an associate professor of anthropology and archaeology in the Department of Anthropology at Brigham Young University. He is currently serving as the department chair and director of the New World Archaeological Foundation. For over fifteen years, he has worked in northern Mexico researching Casas Grandes cultural traditions with a focus on the Viejo Period (A.D. 700-1200). Michael recently co-authored the book Hinterlands to Cities: The Archaeology of Northwest Mexico with Matthew Pailes, and his recent research includes an ancient DNA study as well as a reanalysis of chronology in the Casas Grandes region.

This online program is free, but space is limited. To register, visit: https://bit.ly/Amerindonline04292023Searcy

Amerind Free Online Lecture – Contextualizing “Old” Museum Collections: The Case of Obsidian “Mirrors” at the Smithsonian’s National Museum of the American Indian

obsidian tablet being examined

Contextualizing “Old” Museum Collections: The Case of Obsidian “Mirrors” at the Smithsonian’s National Museum of the American Indian with Maria M. Martinez, PhD and Michael Brandl, PhD

Amerind Free Online Lecture

Contextualizing “Old” Museum Collections: The Case of Obsidian “Mirrors” at the Smithsonian’s National Museum of the American Indian with Maria M. Martinez, PhD and Michael Brandl, PhD

Saturday, August 6, 2022, 11:00 am – Arizona Time

Sponsored by Desert Diamond Casinos

Anthropological museum collections are an important resource for academic and community-centered research. However, many museum collections have minimal or even lack contextual information. This study exhibits some of the protocols for consulting Indigenous heritage in museum settings and overcomes the challenges related to collections-based research. Recent studies of rectangular polished obsidian items found within museum collections have indicated that these objects were made by Mexican Indigenous artisans during the colonial period for European consumption. Nev­ertheless, much of this research was not well-grounded within the discipline of anthro­pology and therefore did not fully address the potential cultures or communities that manufactured these items and the Indigenous and colonial intersections under which they were produced and consumed. We interweave archaeological analytical techniques, provenance and techno-morphological analysis, including experimental archaeology with pre-Columbian archaeological studies, Mesoamerican art and iconogra­phy, and historical sources to identify the culture(s) that manufactured rectangular obsidian tablets in the context of Indigenous and colonial entanglements in Mexico. This study in collections-based research contributes to the restoration of ancestral intel­lectual knowledge and labor to Indigenous peoples that were erased through the process of coloniality, including museum practices of the nineteenth and twentieth centuries.

Maria M. Martinez is associate curator of collections and exhibits at the Amerind Foundation, Inc. She served as a program special­ist for research and collections access at the Smithsonian Institu­tion, National Museum of the American Indian, for five years. She received her Ph.D. in anthropology from the University of Texas at Austin in 2013. She continues her research in Maya archae­ology as a research fellow at the University of Texas at Austin and with lithic provenance studies at the Austrian Archaeologi­cal Institute, Austrian Academy of Sciences. Her research interests are collections-based community-centered research, Indigenous stewardship of museum collections, Mesoamerican archaeology, lithic raw material provenance studies (chert and obsidian), eco­nomic archaeology (mechanisms of exchange, distribution, and consumption), household archaeology, craft production, and con­temporary and ancient Maya ritual practices.

Michael Brandl is researcher and coordinator of Archaeological Sciences at the Austrian Archaeological Institute (OeAI) at the Austrian Academy of Sciences and lecturer at the University of Vienna, Austria. He received his PhD at the Institute of Prehistoric and Historical Archaeology of the University of Vienna. He developed the “Multi-Layered Chert Sourcing Approach” for lithic provenance studies combining petrographic analyses and geochemistry. His main research interests are lithic raw material and economic analyses.

This online program is free, but space is limited. To register, visit: https://bit.ly/AmerindOnline080622

Amerind Free Online Lecture – Casas Grandes Clothing and Identity with Christine VanPool, PhD

Christine S. VanPool

Casas Grandes Clothing and Identity with Christine VanPool, PhD

Amerind Free Online Lecture

Casas Grandes Clothing and Identity with Christine VanPool, PhD

Saturday, July 9, 2022, 11:00 am – Arizona Time

Sponsored by Desert Diamond Casinos

Medio Period Casas Grandes human effigies portray males and females in different stances and types of clothing. These variances reflect aspects of Casas Grandes gender roles, identity, and ritual. Join Dr. Christine S. VanPool (University of Missouri) as she examines these differences and provides insight into Casas Grandes culture. VanPool has written extensively on Casas Grandes and Southwestern archaeology, iconography, religion, and archaeological method and theory.

Christine S. VanPool grew up in Ruidoso, New Mexico. She earned her B.S. in anthropology at Eastern New Mexico University and her M.A. and Ph.D. at the University of New Mexico.  In 2006 she joined the anthropology faculty at the University of Missouri, Columbia. Over the last 20 years, her main research focus has been on archaeological method and theory as it pertains to religion and pottery symbolism in the Casas Grandes world.  Since 2007 she has been co-directing museum and field projects with Todd L. VanPool in Northern Mexico and southern Arizona and New Mexico.  She is the author or editor of five books and numerous articles.

This online program is free, but space is limited. To register, visit: https://bit.ly/AmerindOnline070922

Amerind Free Online Lecture – Prehistoric Moche Politics and Food Along Peru’s North Coast with George “Wolf” Gumerman, PhD

George “Wolf” Gumerman

Amerind Free Online Lecture

Prehistoric Moche Politics and Food Along Peru’s North Coast with George “Wolf” Gumerman, PhD

Saturday, July 23, 2022, 11:00 am – Arizona Time

Sponsored by Desert Diamond Casinos

Join Dr. George “Wolf” Gumerman, PhD as he examines one of the most socially and economically important components of Peru’s Moche culture–the food system. Because food is incredibly social, it reflects sociopolitical organization. Food related data from Moche sites indicate the relative independence and self-sufficiency of Moche households and communities, suggesting a decentralized sociopolitical organization rather than a centralized authority with control over production, distribution, and consumption.

Dr. George “Wolf” Gumerman was the Founding Dean of the Honors College and Professor Emeritus of Anthropology at Northern Arizona University. Wolf has a strong interest in food and culture stemming from his 20 years of research on the north coast of Peru and from his interest in sustainable food systems. Wolf often applies his archaeological research to broader societal concerns, including collaborating with the Hopi Cultural Preservation Office to promote cultural preservation. Using archaeology and elder knowledge he worked to connect Hopi youth with their past. The collaboration produced four films and a museum exhibit that present the youth’s perspective on Hopi culture and history.  He is Co-founder and past Co-editor for the Journal Heritage Management and publishes primarily on topics related to prehistoric foodways. Wolf has taught a range of interactive courses on composition and literature, archaeology, theory, human evolution and food and culture. He is a Board Member for Friends of the Flagstaff Area National Monuments and also for the Arizona Chapter of Backcountry Hunters and Anglers.

To register, visit: https://bit.ly/AmerindOnline072322

Free Online Lecture: Macaws and Parrots in the Ancient Southwestern United States and Northwestern Mexico with Pat Gilman, PhD, Steve Plog, PhD, and Christopher W. Schwartz, PhD

Macaws and Parrots in the Ancient Southwestern United States and Northwestern Mexico

Amerind Free Online Lecture

Macaws and Parrots in the Ancient Southwestern United States and Northwestern Mexico with Pat Gilman, PhD, Steve Plog, PhD, and Christopher W. Schwartz, PhD

Saturday, May 21, 2022, 11:00 am – Arizona Time

Sponsored by Desert Diamond Casinos

The multiple, vivid colors of scarlet macaws and their ability to mimic human speech are key reasons macaws were and are significant to the Native peoples of the U.S. Southwest and Mexican Northwest. Scarlet macaws are native to tropical forests ranging from the Gulf Coast and southern regions of Mexico to Bolivia. Surprisingly, they are present at numerous archaeological sites in the U.S. Southwest and Mexican Northwest (SW/NW), but yet they are absent at the vast majority. Although these birds have been noted and marveled at through the decades, new syntheses of early excavations, new analytical methods, and new approaches to understanding the past now allow us to explore the significance and distribution of scarlet macaws to a degree that was previously impossible.  Three leading experts explore what we currently know about the scarlet macaws from archaeological sites in the SW/NW.

Pat Gilman has done archaeological field work and research in the Mimbres region of southwestern New Mexico and southeastern Arizona for more than 45 years.  Her initial interest was architecture and the transition from people living in pithouses to inhabiting pueblos.  Recently, Dr. Gilman and her colleagues have investigated the presence of scarlet macaws in Mimbres sites, their DNA and dates, and how and why they might have been brought to the southwestern United States ultimately from the tropical forest of southern Mexico.  With Christopher Schwartz and Stephen Plog, she has co-edited a book, Birds of the Sun: Macaws and People in the U.S. Southwest and Mexican Northwest,” that has recently been published.

Steve Plog is Professor Emeritus at the University of Virginia. His recent work has focused on Chaco Canyon beginning with a decade-long project to build a digital archive, the Chaco Research Archive (www.chacoarchive.org), to digitize and integrate information on the early excavations (1896-1927) in the Chaco, information that was scattered among many museums and repositories. More recently Steve has collaborated with several colleagues to study the 42 scarlet macaws recovered during excavations in Chaco, primarily at Pueblo Bonito. He is a co-editor of Birds of the Sun: Macaws and People in the U.S. Southwest and Mexican Northwest.

Christopher W. Schwartz is a Lecturer in the Department of Anthropology at Northern Arizona University and lead editor of Birds of the Sun: Macaws and People in the U.S. Southwest and Mexican Northwest. He is an anthropological archaeologist who works on field- and collections-based projects in the U.S. Southwest and Mexico. His research draws on various lines of evidence, including faunal skeletal material, isotopic analyses, material culture, Indigenous perspectives, and spatial analyses, to understand how interregional interaction and human-animal relationships effected large-scale social transformations in the past.

This online program is free, but space is limited. To register, visit: https://bit.ly/AmerindOnline052122

This program is sponsored by Desert Diamond Casinos.