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San Tan (Queen Creek) | Phoenix

2022-2023 MEETING SCHEDULE

Sept. 13

Linda Gregonis, Research Archaeologist

Birds, Lizards, and Bighorns: The Hohokam and their Animal Icons

Oct. 11

Dick Ryan

Ice Age Arizona: Plants, Animals & People

Nov. 8

Ryan Arp, MA, RPA

The Archaeology of Oversized Structures in the Phoenix Basin

Jan. 10

Chris Loendorf, Sr. Project Manager, GGRIC

Middle Gila Platform Mounds

Feb. 14

NOVA DVD on "Nazca Desert Mystery"

Discoveries of long-hidden lines and figures etched into the Peruvian desert that offer new clues to the origins and purpose behind the Nazca Lines

Mar 14

Christopher Caseldine, PhD, ASU

Longevity and Social Change among Ancient Farmers along the Lower Salt River

Apr 11

Todd Bostwick, Director Emeritus of Archaeology, VVAC

The Great Murals of Baja California: A Glimpse into the Spirit World of Ancient Hunter-Gatherers

May 9

Chris Loendorf, Sr. Project Manager, GGRIC

Eastern Pueblo Immigrants on the Middle Gila River

Click here to download Phoenix Chapter Membership Form

March 2023 Chapter News:

Our speaker will be Chris Caseldine, Ph.D., ASU, who will present Longevity and Social Change among Ancient Farmers along the Lower Salt River. Ancient farmers in the lower Salt River Valley, Phoenix Basin, central Arizona, identified as the Hohokam by archaeologists, practiced large-scale irrigation for nearly a millennium. Despite operating the largest network of canals in the Americas north of Peru, a lack of clear political hierarchy has confounded archaeologists for almost a century. He will approach this supposed anomaly by analyzing their canals. Beginning with the largest-scale detailed reconstruction of lower Salt River Valley Hohokam irrigation, he will provide an updated narrative of ancient irrigation which includes a previously underappreciated extremely large flood ca. A.D. 900 and a highly connected network of canals. This refined narrative shows that their irrigation system was well attuned to both environmental and social changes and difficulties for generations, and thus challenges prevalent Hohokam collapse models. He will then turn to one of the major irrigation systems within the valley, Canal System 2, to challenge the assumption that political hierarchy is required to manage large-scale irrigation systems.

Chris Caseldine is the Curator of Collections and an Assistant Research Professor in the School of Human Evolution and Social Change at Arizona State University. In addition to the study of the social organization of ancient irrigation systems, his academic and research interests include the archaeology of central Arizona, travel in the past, Indigenous inclusion in collections management practices, and repatriation.

Our Feb. 14^th Chapter Meeting was supposed to feature a talk by Matt Peeples, Ph.D., ASU School of Human Evolution and Social Change, on Mapping and Counter Mapping the Zuni World. It was cancelled at the last minute out of an abundance of caution due to a comment from a Zuni tribal member that may have been misinterpreted. In its place we viewed a 2022 PBS NOVA program on “Nazca Desert Mystery” about the recent “discovery of hundreds of long-hidden lines and figures as well as evidence of ancient rituals” that provided clues to the “origins and motivations behind the giant desert symbols.” It was a very interesting program that went far beyond the exploration of the long-known Nazca Lines.

Feb. 4^th Field Trip (from Lee Chandler): After a long delay, 16 members of the chapter met at the Deer Valley Petroglyph Center in Phoenix to view some of the 1500 Hohokam, Patayan and Archaic petroglyphs that can be seen on some 500 basalt boulders. The Center also has an excellent shop/bookstore and a museum. Current exhibits on display include: The Rock Art and Archaeology of Deer Valley; A Research Display of the Roosevelt Platform Mound Study; Southwest Ceramics, Manos, Metate and the Agave; and The Art and Archaeology of Perry Mesa.

Upcoming Chapter Meetings:

April 11: Todd Bostwick, VVAC, The Great Murals of Baja California: A Glimpse into the Spirit World of Ancient Hunter-Gatherers

May 9: Adrianne Rankin, Archaeologist, Prehistoric and Historical Period Agricultural Strategies in the Western Papagueria: Archaeological and O’odham.

Upcoming April 16^th Field Trip (already full): Members of the Phoenix and San Tan chapters of AAS will be visiting the recently renamed Las Mujeras Pueblo on Perry Mesa. A 4wd high clearance vehicle is required for this trip; the drive in can be a bit challenging. The parking area is about 6.5 miles in from the Bloody Basin Road. The last stretch of road to the ruins gets a little bumpy, so we will most likely park at a location about 6 miles from the actual site and glyphs. In the event of rain within a week of the trip, it will most likely be canceled or rescheduled. Group size will be capped at 15 people or 5 vehicles.

--Ellie Large

February 2023 Phoenix Chapter News

Feb. 14th Meeting: Due to unforeseen problems, the presentation by Dr. Matt Peeples scheduled for our Fen. 14th Phoenix Chapter Meeting had to be cancelled. In its stead, we will view a presentation via DVD from NOVA on the Nazca Desert Mystery regarding discoveries of long-hidden lines and figures etched into the Peruvian desert that offer new clues to the origins and purpose behind the Nazca Lines.

Jan. 10^th Meeting: Chris Loendorf, Sr. Project Manager, Gila River Indian Community Cultural Resource Management Program, explained that current research shows that there were substantial shifts in settlement patterns over time alternating between the Gila River and Salt River valleys. The rise and fall of platform mound communities in these two valleys were likely in response to changes in precipitation and water flow in the rivers whose headwaters are in slightly different areas upstream.

Feb. 4^th Field Trip (from Lee Chandler): After a long delay, the Phoenix Chapter is ready to get out again for a field trip. We will meet at 10 am at the Deer Valley Petroglyph Center in Phoenix. It is located on a 47-acre nature preserve and features over 1,500 Hohokam, Patayan and Archaic petroglyphs that can be viewed on some 500 basalt boulders. It also boasts an excellent shop/bookstore and a museum. Current exhibits on display at the museum include: The Rock Art and Archaeology of Deer Valley, A Research Display of the Roosevelt Platform Mound Study and an exhibit on Southwest Ceramics, Manos, Metates and the Agave. And for the Perry Mesa enthusiast among us, there is currently an exhibit titled The Art and Archaeology of Perry Mesa.

Upon arrival, we will receive a 15–20-minute presentation on the Center and museum from an employee with a background in anthropology/archeology. After the presentation members may take a self-guided tour of the petroglyph trail, museum, and bookstore. Comfortable walking shoes, water and perhaps a little spending cash are the only packing suggestions for this trip. The petroglyph trail is a flat pathway that is approximately a quarter mile long. For more info, go to https://deervalley.asu.edu/

This trip is intended to be a more casual, local outing that is accessible to everyone. It will be a great time to meet new members or reconnect with old members. For newer chapter members, the preserve provides an excellent introduction to Rock Art and for our veteran members the preserve provides an opportunity to brush up on prior knowledge and support a local archeological resource.

--Ellie Large

Dec. 13^th Meeting: The December meeting is our Holiday Potluck. We will need to start setting up the room around 5:30 pm so that we can start by about 6 pm, followed by a short business meeting and annual election about 7 pm. If joining us for the potluck, please bring a side dish or dessert to share; meats, rolls and beverages will be provided by the chapter. Everyone who attends the potluck will receive a raffle ticket, and after the presentation we will draw tickets for the table decorations.

The slate for next year's board is:

President: Ellie Large Dir/Newsletter: Nancy Unferth

Exec VP: Mary Grant Dir/Field Trips: Lee Chandler

Treasurer: Gail Williams Dir/Membership: Phyllis Smith

Secretary: Katja Lehmann Archivist/Cert Rep Marie Britton

The presentation, which will begin about 7:15 pm, will be on Rock Imagery of Southern Arizona by Aaron Wright. Indigenous petroglyphs of southern Arizona have been the subject of Euro-American confusion and curiosity for more than 300 years. And while subjected to professional study and scrutiny for nearly a century, anthropologists still know little about them. This presentation reviews the history and current status of rock imagery research across southern Arizona, with particular attention given to the delineation of regional and cultural styles, behavioral significance, and avenues of future investigation.

Aaron joined Archaeology Southwest as a Preservation Archaeologist in 2015 after receiving his PhD at Washington State University. His dissertation was based on research conducted with the City of Phoenix and ASU on the South Mountain Rock Art Project published in the book Religion on the Rocks: Hohokam Rock Art, Ritual Practice, and Social Transformation. He is currently focused on the Hohokam and Patayan traditions across southwestern Arizona and specifically interested in the cultural landscape of the lower Gila River, renowned for a unique mixture of Patayan and Hohokam settlements, dense galleries of world-class rock art, and numerous enigmatic geoglyphs. Aaron is the lead researcher on Archaeology Southwest’s long-term goal of establishing a Great Bend of the Gila National Monument. In that effort, Aaron has collaborated on a cultural resource study of the area’s significance, as well as a cultural affiliation study outlining the ethnohistory and contemporary tribal connections to this remarkable landscape.

Nov. 8th Meeting: Ryan Arp from the Environmental Planning Group (EPG) in Tempe reviewed larger than normal pithouses found in several Hohokam sites in the West Valley of the Phoenix Basin over the past five years including at the Cashion site and at Villa Buena. He explained their excavation approach and the documentation of each structure, discussed commonalities in form, assemblages and ranges of activities in and around these structures, and how this contributes to our understanding of the pre-Classic Hohokam. Previously large pithouses had been found at Snaketown but few elsewhere, perhaps due to different testing schemes.

--Ellie Large

**For chapter news from earlier this year, go to the bottom of this page.

Phoenix Chapter Officers

Office	Office Holder	Telephone	Email
President	Ellie Large	480-461-0563	elarge@cox.net
Exec VP/Field Trips	Eric Feldman	480-296-5217	feldbrain@gmail.com
Treasurer/Membership	Gail Williams	480-855-7735	glwilliamsaz@yahoo.com
Secretary/Education	Ellen Martin	480-820-1474	e13martin@hotmail.com
1-Year Director	Vacant
2-Year Director	Phyllis Smith	623-694-8245	76desert@gmail.com
3-Year Director	Nancy Unferth	602-371-1165	nferth@aol.com
Archivist/Cert Rep	Marie Britton	480-827-8070	mbrit@cox.net
Advisor	Laurene Montero	602-495-0901	laurene.montero@phoenix.gov

PGM STABILIZATION - PHOENIX CHAPTER

Pueblo Grande is a Classic Period Hohokam site located in downtown Phoenix at Pueblo Grande Museum and Archaeological Park. This archaeological site has been designated a National Historic Landmark. For the past thirteen years the Arizona Archaeology Society, Phoenix Chapter volunteers along with the Southwest Archaeology Team have participated in doing stabilization, reconstruction, and general maintenance on the platform mound and adjacent room structures.

After the Hohokam abandoned this site, it fell into a state of self-stabilization where walls become protected by the material that eroded from above. Early excavations, especially in the 1930's, exposed many of these walls again. These adobe walls have been subjected to constant erosion from wind and rain as well as other agents of deterioration. Consequently, new adobe mud must be applied periodically to keep these structures from melting away. Stone faced walls require repointing to keep the stones from falling from the wall. Exposed room walls are protected by applying a thin layer of mud to the wall surface. Monitoring these architectural features for erosion damage is an on-going task.

A dedicated group of volunteers, known as the PGM Mudslingers meet one Saturday a month except in July and August. The Mudslingers work is coordinated by Laurene Montero (Phoenix City Archaeologist). All work is documented by detailed field notes and photos.

This partnership between the Mudslingers and the City Archaeologist is a great benefit to Pueblo Grande Museum and is very much appreciated by the Museum Director and the Parks and Recreation Department staff.

LOCAL MUSEUMS

Museum	Location	Website
Pueblo Grande Museum and Archaeological Park	4619 E. Washington Street, Phoenix AZ 85034 (602) 495-0901	Pueblo Grande Museum
Huhugam Heritage Center	21359 S Maricopa Rd, Chandler, AZ 85226	grichhc.org
Huhugam Ki Museum	10005 E. Osborn Road, Scottsdale, Arizona 85256 (480) 850-8190	Huhugam Ki Museum
Arizona Museum of Natural History	53 N. Macdonald St., Mesa, AZ 85201 (480) 664-2230	Arizona Museum of Natural History
Cave Creek Museum	6140 East Skyline Drive, Cave Creek, AZ 85331 (480) 488-2764	Cave Creek Museum
San Tan Historical Society Museum	20425 S Old Ellsworth Rd., Queen Creek, Az (480) 987-9380	San Tan Historical Society Museum
Scottsdale's Museum of the West	3830 N. Marshall Way, Scottsdale, AZ 85251 (480) 686-9539	Scottsdale's Museum of the West

February 2023 Phoenix Chapter News

--Ellie Large

The slate for next year's board is:

President: Ellie Large Dir/Newsletter: Nancy Unferth

Exec VP: Mary Grant Dir/Field Trips: Lee Chandler

Treasurer: Gail Williams Dir/Membership: Phyllis Smith

Secretary: Katja Lehmann Archivist/Cert Rep Marie Britton

--Ellie Large

APRIL 2022 CHAPTER NEWS

April Meeting: Our April 12th Zoom Meeting will feature Aaron Wright, PhD, who will present Hohokam, Patayan, or ? - Unmixing the Archaeology of the Lower Gila River. With its varied topography and stark contrast between riverine and desert environs, western Arizona witnessed the flourishing of multiple cultural traditions that followed related yet unique historic trajectories. Archaeologists learned long ago that, in places, the material remains of these distinct traditions overlap on the landscape. This scenario is quite evident along the lower Gila River, where elements of Patayan and Hohokam material culture are often found together or in close proximity. How to explain the “mixing”? Aaron reviews the preliminary findings of a four-year survey and documentation of over 150 archaeological sites in the Dendora Valley and surrounding area that show what the archaeological record looks like when worlds collide.

Aaron is a Preservation Anthropologist with Archaeology Southwest, a Tucson-based non-profit organization dedicated to studying, protecting, and respecting the Southwest’s rich archaeological landscape. He is author of Religion on the Rocks: Hohokam Rock Art, Ritual Practice, and Social Transformation (University of Utah Press, 2014) and editor of the forthcoming Sacred Southwestern Landscapes: Archaeologies of Religious Ecology.

March meeting: The speaker for our March 8th Zoom meeting was Christopher Schwartz, Ph.D., ASU, who talked about Long-Distance Trade Relations and Interaction Between the US Southwest, Northwest Mexico, and Mesoamerica: While today people rapidly exchange goods and information over great distances, in the past, long-distance exchange required the mobilization of vast networks of interaction. Vibrantly colored scarlet macaws, native to the Gulf Coast of Mexico and Central America, were the most engaging and challenging items that were transported through these networks over hundreds of miles. He explained what we now know about the long-distance acquisition, circulation, and use of scarlet macaws in the pre-hispanic U.S. Southwest and Mexican Northwest, including the reasons for procuring these multifaceted animals, their significance in place-making and widespread social transformations, and their continued importance to descendant communities in this region.

Field Trips: Although the Phoenix Chapter has not organized any field trips since the pandemic began, the Rim Country and San Tan chapters have been quite active and several of our chapter members have joined them on their field trips.

Upcoming Meetings: We will continue to use Zoom for our remaining meeting in May and plan to resume in-person meetings at the Pueblo Grande Museum on Sept. 13th. I will send out the info on the May meeting as soon as possible.

--Ellie Large

JANUARY 2022 CHAPTER NEWS

January Meeting: The speaker for our Jan. 11th Zoom meeting will be Christopher R. Caseldine, Ph.D, ASU, who will talk about Tonto Basin: An Outpost, Boundary, Cultural Crossroads, or Something Else in Central Arizona. The waiting room will open at 7:15 for those who want to enter early. There will be time for Q&A after the talk. The link has already been sent out to all Phoenix Chapter members as well as those who have Phoenix listed as their second or third chapter. If you didn’t receive it, please contact me at elarge@ox.net.

The Tonto Basin in central Arizona was central to the archaeological development of the Hohokam as well as in the debates that raged around the Salado concept. Research sponsored by the Bureau of Reclamation and the Arizona Department of Transportation in the 1980s and 1990s pushed the study of Tonto Basin archaeology lightyears ahead, but what came before and after Salado remains understudied. In this talk, I will present a summary of archaeological research in the Tonto Basin and then discuss avenues of research for moving forward.

Christopher (Chris) Caseldine is the Interim Curator of Collections in the Center for Archaeology and Society Repository, School of Human Evolution and Social Change at Arizona State University. His research has focused on reconstructing ancient irrigation systems in the lower Salt River Valley (the Phoenix Basin) to provide insight into the relationship between water availability and sociopolitical change among the Hohokam. Chris also studies the Tonto Basin and neighboring areas below the Mogollon Rim, and is interested in Hohokam identity and the transition period between Hohokam and Salado.

December Meeting: Our Dec. 14th Zoom meeting, which was to feature Pearce Paul Creasman, Ph.D., Director, American Center of Research, Amman, Jordan, talking on Introduction to the Archaeology of Jordan, from Jordan, was cancelled the day before it was scheduled due to a family medical emergency. We will reschedule it as soon as possible.

February Meeting: As of now live in-person meetings in the Pueblo Grande Museum’s Community Room are currently scheduled to resume in February with a limit of 30 attendees. To help out the museum, we will start earlier – at 6:30 pm - so that we can close no later than 8:30 pm. Details on how to get on the list to attend the meeting will be send out with the meeting announcement.

--Ellie Large

DECEMBER CHAPTER NEWS

December Meeting: Our Dec. 14th Zoom meeting, which will start at 8 pm, will feature Pearce Paul Creasman, Ph.D., Director, American Center of Research, Amman, Jordan who will talk on Introduction to the Archaeology of Jordan, from Jordan. The last time that Dr. Creasman spoke to our chapter he drove up to Phoenix from Tucson and told us about the challenges of re covering data from a submerged pyramic in the Sudan. In January 2020, he was apponted as the new Director of the American Center of Oriental Research in Amman, Jordan, so he will be talking to us via Zoom.

Dr. Creasman had been a professor at the University of Arizona since 2009, where he was an Associate Professor and Curator in the Laboratory of Tree-Ring Research with joint/affiliate appointments in the School of Anthropology, Department of Classics, Department of Religious Studies, and Arid Lands Resource Sciences, Since 2012 he had also served as Director of the University of Arizona’s Egyptian Expedition, focusing on the heritage, archaeology, and environment of the Middle East and North Africa. Having worked in several countries in the region, his most recent archaeological project was directing excavations at the pyramids and royal necropolis of Nuri, Sudan, a UNESCO World Heritage Site.

He received his B.A. in Anthropology and Philosophy from the University of Maine in 2003, his M.A. in Anthropology from Texas A&M University in 2005, and his Ph.D. in Anthropology & Nautical Archaeology from Texas A&M University in 2010. He is the author or co-author of more than fifty scholarly articles and six edited volumes, including Pharaoh’s Land and Beyond: Ancient Egypt and Its Neighbors (Oxford University Press). He is actively involved in several initiatives to apply scientific methods to long-standing problems in Egyptology, using new data to improve the resolution of our collective knowledge in areas such as ancient climate change and chronology.

November Meeting: Our Nov. 9th Zoom meeting featured Steven R. James, Ph. D., who talked about Zooarchaeology at Pueblo Grande: Late 1930s WPA Excavations and Recent Studies of Hohokam Hunting and Fishing Patterns. Among other interesting facts about the earlier excavations, he reexamined the artifacts recovered in the early excavations at PGM and found that the “bison” bone was actually from a cow, and that a bone originally identified as a macaw bone was actually a domestic chicken bone.

Dr. James is an anthropological archaeologist with over 45 years of research and experience primarily in California, the Great Basin, and the American Southwest, but also in Hawaii. His research interests are diverse and include zooarchaeology, human impacts on the environment, pueblo architecture and use of space, and the history of anthropology and archaeology, including 1930s New Deal archaeology in California and the American Southwest.

He has authored many peer-reviewed journal articles and book chapters. His publications include a co-edited book titled The Archaeology of Global Change: The Impact of Humans on Their Environment published by the Smithsonian Institution Press as well as a book chapter on prehistoric hunting and fishing patterns in the American Southwest in an edited volume as a Smithsonian Contribution to Knowledge. His recent research involves archaeological investigations in the Flagstaff and Sedona areas of the Colorado Plateau and Verde Valley, in the San Bernardino Mountains of the Mojave Desert, and excavations at a Millingstone Horizon site in Southern California with field classes from Cal State Fullerton.

Upcomoing Meetings (via Zoom):

Jan. 11: Christopher R. Caseldine, Ph.D., Tonto Basin: An Outpost, Boundary, Cultural Crossroads, or Something Else in Central Arizona

--Ellie Large

NOVEMBER 2021 CHAPTER NEWS

November Meeting: Our Nov. 9th Zoom meeting will feature Steven R. James, Ph. D., who will talk about Zooarchaeology at Pueblo Grande: Late 1930s WPA Excavations and Recent Studies of Hohokam Hunting and Fishing Patterns. Dr. James is an anthropological archaeologist with over 45 years of research and experience primarily in California, the Great Basin, and the American Southwest, but also in Hawaii. His research interests are diverse and include zooarchaeology, human impacts on the environment, pueblo architecture and use of space, and the history of anthropology and archaeology, including 1930s New Deal archaeology in California and the American Southwest.

October Meeting: Our Oct. 12th Zoom meeting featured Christopher Schwartz, Ph.D., who gave us a great talk about Transporting and Raising Scarlet Macaws in the Pre-Hispanic U. S. Southwest and Mexican Northwest. Archaeologists have long known that pre-contact groups in the U. S. Southwest and Mexican Northwest procured, raised, and even bred scarlet macaws (Ara macao). Their bones have been found at numerous archaeological sites and they are also depicted in murals and petroglyphs. He covered topics such as where they came from (probably the Gulf Coast of Mexico), who brought them to the southwest (traders or ritual specialists?), what they ate (maize) and how they may have been transported (they are loud and have very strong beaks, would have been easiest to move when young (or possibly sedated?).

Upcomoing Meetings (via Zoom):

Dec. 14: Pearce Paul Creasman, Ph.D., Introduction to the Archaeology of Jordan, from Jordan.

Jan. 11: Christopher R. Caseldine, Ph.D., What is Hohokam?: Thoughts from the Tonto Basin and Below the Mogollon Rim

--Ellie Large

OCTOBER 2021 CHAPTER NEWS

October Meeting: Our next Zoom meeting on Tuesday, Oct. 12th at 7:30 pm, will feature Christopher Schwartz, Ph.D., who will talk about Transporting and Raising Scarlet Macaws in the Pre-Hispanic U. S. Southwest and Mexican Northwest. A Zoom invite will be sent out to all chapter members several days before it. Archaeologists have long known that people in the pre-Hispanic U. S. Southwest and Mexican Northwest procured, raised, and even bred scarlet macaws (Ara macao) far from their endemic habitat in eastern and southern Mexico. Even so, researchers still reduce macaws to “exotic items” on trait lists when discussing exchange, effectively removing the human experience of procuring and raising these animals and the details that can be learned from considering these activities. He will draw on ethno-historical accounts, archaeological understandings of exchange, and macaw biology to offer a fresh perspective on the human experience of transporting and raising scarlet macaws in the past.

Christopher Schwartz is a Lecturer in the Department of Anthropology at NAU. He received an M.A. from ASU in 1975 and a Ph.D. from ASU in 2020. His dissertation research combined his interests in long-distance exchange and isotope biogeochemistry to explore the acquisition, treatment, and deposition of scarlet macaws at three regional centers (Pueblo Bonito in northwest New Mexico, Wupatki in northern Arizona, and Paquimé in northwestern Chihuahua) located in the US southwest and Mexican northwest between 900 and 1450 CE. His research demonstrated that past people interpreted rare and non-local scarlet macaws in different ways, which corresponded to region-specific patterns of acquisition and deposition in larger processes of place-making over time and across space in the US Southwest and Mexican Northwest. He is the author of A Contextual Analysis of Ritual Fauna and Socially Integrative Architecture in the Tonto Basin, Arizona (Kiva 84:3:317–341) and co-author of Investigating Pre-Hispanic Scarlet Macaw Origins through Radiogenic Stron-tium Isotope Analysis at Paquimé in Chihuahua, Mexico (Journal of Anthropological Archaeology 61:101256).

September Meeting: Our last meeting, on Tuesday, Sept. 14th, featured Kyle Woodson, Director of the Gila River Indian Community’s Cultural Resource Management Program who discussed The Impact of Flooding on Hohokam Irrigation Agriculture, focusing on the large riverine floodplain of the middle Gila River in south-central Arizona. He examined our assumptions about what we know about floods, their effects on floodplains and canal irrigation agriculture, and the human responses to flood impacts. He explained why some of our current models are not directly applicable to the Gila River basin, explained why we need to know more about flooding and the impact of floods on prehistoric irrigators, and suggested ways to know more about these topics.

Fall Meeting Schedule (via Zoom):

Nov. 9: Steven R. James, Ph. D., Zooarchaeology at Pueblo Grande: Late 1930s WPA Excavations and Recent Studies of Hohokam Hunting and Fishing Patterns.

Dec. 14: Pearce Paul Creasman, Ph.D., Introduction to the Archaeology of Jordan, from Jordan

--Ellie Large

SEPTEMBER 2021 CHAPTER NEWS

September Meeting: Our next Zoom meeting, on Tuesday, Sept. 14th at 7:30 pm, will feature Kyle Woodson, Director of the Gila River Indian Community’s Cultural Resource Management Program. He will discuss The Impact of Flooding on Hohokam Irrigation Agriculture, with a focus on the large riverine floodplain of the middle Gila River in south-central Arizona. He will examine our assumptions about what we know about floods, their effects on floodplains and canal irrigation agriculture, and the human responses to flood impacts. He will also explore why we need to know more about flooding and the impact of floods on prehistoric irrigators, and will makes suggestions about how we can know more about these topics.

Kyle has served the past nine years as the Director of the Gila River Indian Community’s Cultural Resource Management Program in Sacaton, Arizona. He has studied the archaeology and history of southern Arizona for 30 years with experience in tribal, academic, and CRM archaeology. He received B.A. and M.A. degrees in Anthropology in 1992 and 1995 from the University of Texas at Austin; and his Ph.D. in Anthropology from Arizona State University in 2010. His doctoral dissertation was published in 2016 as a book entitled The Social Organization of Hohokam Irrigation in the Middle Gila River Valley, Arizona.

His research focuses on southern Arizona and includes Hohokam canal irrigation agriculture, community organization, and ceramic production and technology, as well as Ancestral Puebloan migrations. He has written extensively on these subjects, and has authored or co-authored numerous publications in various books and journals. His recent publications have appeared in the journals American Antiquity, Kiva, Journal of Arizona Archaeology, Geoarchaeology: An International Journal, Archaeometry, and Archaeology Southwest Magazine, as well as book chapter titled “Preclassic Hohokam” (with Douglas Craig [deceased]) in The Oxford Handbook of Southwest Archaeology.

I will send out a Zoom Invitation to all Phoenix chapter members the week before the meeting. The waiting room will open at 7 pm for those who want to enter early. There will be time for Q&A after the talk.

Fall Meeting Schedule (via Zoom):

Oct. 14: Christopher Schwartz, Ph.D., Transporting and Raising Scarlet Macaws in the Pre-Hispanic US Southwest and Mexican Northwest.

Nov. 9: Steven R. James, Ph. D., Zooarchaeology at Pueblo Grande: Late 1930s WPA Excavations and Recent Studies of Hohokam Hunting and Fishing Patterns.

Dec. 14: Pearce Paul Creasman, Ph.D., Introduction to the Archaeology of Jordan, from Jordan.

Hikes and Field Trips: If you have any suggestions, please contact Eric at feldbrain@hotmail.com.

--Ellie Large

Click here to download September flyer

MARCH 2021 CHAPTER NEWS

March Meeting: Our next Zoom meeting, on Tuesday, March 9th at 7:30 pm, will feature Todd Bostwick, Megalithic Tombs and Temples of Ireland: Sacred Architecture and Art on the Emerald Isle, circa 4000-2000BC by Todd W. Bostwick, PhD. About 6,000 years ago, the Neolithic inhabitants of Ireland began successfully farming wheat and barley while also raising cattle and sheep. They also built large stone structures, some truly megalithic in size, that apparently served various social and ritual purposes. Some of the megalithic structures are covered, both inside and out, with elaborate geometric petroglyphs as shown in the photo below. The petroglyphs have been interpreted as astronomical markers related to lunar cycles, trance imagery, or other meanings. Some structures are part of large-scale site complexes, such as New Grange, and are scattered across sacred landscapes. In this talk Dr. Bostwick will summarize the development of megalithic structures in Ireland, including passage tombs, court tombs, portal tombs, wedge tombs, and stone circles. Although originally identified as tombs, many of the megalithic structures are now thought to be better understood as temples where only a few individuals were buried.

Dr. Bostwick has been a professional archaeologist for more than 40 years. He has an MA in Anthropology and a PhD in History from Arizona State University (ASU). He was the Phoenix City Archaeologist for 21 years at Pueblo Grande Museum and the Director of Archaeology at the Verde Valley Archaeology Center in Camp Verde for 9 years. He also taught classes for seven years at both ASU and Northern Arizona University. Dr. Bostwick has published numerous books and articles on archaeology and history and has received awards from the National Park Service, the Arizona Governor’s Office, the State Historic Preservation Office, the Arizona Archaeological Society, and the City of Phoenix.

February Meeting: The speaker for our Feb. 9th Zoom meeting was Ron Parker, an outdoorsman, xeric plant enthusiast, and amateur botanist who has been studying agave populations in Arizona for many years. He presented Ancient Agaves of Arizona in which he explained how archaeologists discovered that the curious rockpiles which covered many shallow slopes near Hohokam sites had been used to grow agaves for both fiber and food. Some very special types of agave continued to grow in these areas long after they were abandoned. These agaves appear to be anthropogenic cultivars - living archaeological relics developed and planted by indigenous Native Americans - and many appear to be growing exactly where they were planted hundreds of years ago. Ron maintains a well-known xeric plant discussion forum, Agaveville.org, an online repository for information on agaves and other succulent plants. For more information, his book, Chasing Centuries: The Search for Ancient Agave Cultivars Across the Desert Southwest, published in 2018, is available for purchase from Sunbelt Publications, Inc. (htttps/sunbeltpublications.com/authors/ron-parker/).

Upcoming Meetings:

Apr 13 Don Liponi, La Rumorosa: Rock Art Along the Border, Volume 2

May 11: TBD

Hikes and Field Trips: Our coordinators are working on finding hikes and field trips that can be attended safely given Covid-19 safety protocols. Details will be forthcoming. If you have any suggestions, please contact Phyllis at 76desert@gmail.com or Eric at feldbrain@hotmail.com.

--Ellie Large

Click here to download March flyer

FEBRUARY 2021 CHAPTER NEWS

February Meeting: Our next Zoom meeting, on Tuesday, Feb. 9th at 7:30 pm, will feature Ron Parker, author of Chasing Centuries: The Search for Ancient Agave Cultivars Across the Desert Southwest, who will present Ancient Agaves of Arizona. His talk will cover the duration of human and agave coevolution across the desert southwest, and the unusual agaves apparently associated with archaeological sites that were abandoned long ago. These agaves appear to be anthropogenic cultivars - living archaeological relics developed and planted by indigenous Native Americans - and many appear to be growing exactly where they were planted hundreds of years ago.

Ron Parker is an outdoorsman, xeric plant enthusiast, and amateur botanist who spends half his time gardening, and the other half exploring natural habitats across Arizona and neighboring states. He has been studying agave populations in Arizona for many years, and has been out in the field with renowned botanists and regional archaeologists. When not under the open sky, he maintains a well-known xeric plant discussion forum, Agaveville.org, an impressive online repository for information on agaves and other succulent plants. His book, Chasing Centuries: The Search for Ancient Agave Cultivars Across the Desert Southwest, published in 2018, is available for purchase from Sunbelt Publications, Inc. (htttps/sunbeltpublications.com/authors/ron-parker/)

January Meeting: Our Jan. 12th Zoom meeting featured Pat Gilman, Ph. D., who presented Ancient Macaws in Mimbres, Chaco and the Hohokam. She introduced us to several large and colorful birds – parrots, military macaws and scarlet macaws. Thick-billed parrots were once native to Arizona but the macaws are natives of Mexico and scarlet macaws are native to tropical regions of Mexico and Central America. The scarlet macaw was the most spectacular item in the ancient southwest that was obtained from Mexico. They were present and contemporary at Mimbres Classic and Chacoan sites from about A.D. 1000 to 1130 and even earlier in the Hohokam region. Dr. Gilman argues that people there was little commonality between Mimbres and Chaco in terms of how scarlet macaws were used and probably therefore their role within the social and religious systems. Despite this, the Mimbres and Chaco macaws belong to the same rare genetic group, suggesting they had the same breeding source. These patterns show the complexity of studying exotic items within their varying social contexts.

Upcoming Meetings:

Mar 9 Todd Bostwick, Megalithic Tombs and Temples of Ireland

Apr 13 Don Liponi, La Rumorosa: Rock Art Along the Border, Volume 2

--Ellie Large

JANUARY 2021 CHAPTER NEWS

December Meeting: The speaker for our first Zoom meeting on Dec. 8th was Patrick Lyons, Ph.D., Director, Arizona State Museum, who gave us an excellent presentation on the archaeology behind the book “The Davis Ranch Site: A Kayenta Immigrant Enclave in Southeastern Arizona” recently published by the Amerind Foundation. The book reports the results of Rex Gerald’s 1957 excavations for the Amerind Foundation at the Davis Ranch Site in southeastern Arizona’s San Pedro River Valley. Lyons summarized Gerald’s findings and placed his work in the context of what is now known regarding the late thirteenth-century Kayenta diaspora and also the relationship between Kayenta immigrants and the Salado phenomenon.

Gerald and others identified the site as having been inhabited by people from the Kayenta area of northeastern Arizona and southeastern Utah. The results of Gerald’s excavations, coupled with information from Archaeology Southwest’s San Pedro Preservation Project (1990-2001), indicate that the people of the Davis Ranch Site were part of a network of dispersed immigrant enclaves responsible for the origin and the spread of Roosevelt Red Ware pottery, also known as Salado Red Ware and Salado Polychrome. Evidence from the Davis Ranch Site also lends support to Patricia Crown’s Roosevelt Red Ware stylistic seriation and more recently proposed changes to Roosevelt Red Ware typology and chronology.

January Meeting: Our next Zoom meeting, on Tuesday, Jan. 12, at 7:30 pm*, will feature Pat Gilman, Ph. D., who will present Ancient Macaws in Mimbres, Chaco and the Hohokam. Scarlet macaws were the most spectacular item in the ancient southwestern United States obtained from farther south in Mexico. They were present and contemporary at Mimbres Classic and Chacoan sites from about A.D. 1000 to 1130. They were present even earlier in the Hohokam region. Does the presence of macaws in these three regions indicate a similar use and meaning? Does it suggest social relationships between people in the various regions? Dr. Gilman argues that people used macaws and parrots differently in the three regions. For example, about 30 scarlet macaws were concentrated at Pueblo Bonito, although one or two were present in each of three other Chaco Canyon sites. In contrast, perhaps as many as 15 scarlet macaws were spread among at least 8 Mimbres Classic sites, some of them within the Mimbres Valley core and some not. Mimbres macaws were buried with a person or buried by themselves beneath a room floor, in Great Kiva fill, or in a midden, while most of the Chaco macaws were on floors or in room fill. These differences support the idea that there was little commonality between Mimbres and Chaco in terms of how scarlet macaws were used and probably therefore their role within the social and religious systems. However, the Mimbres and Chaco macaws all belong to the same rare genetic group, suggesting they had the same breeding source. These patterns show the complexity of studying exotic items within their varying social contexts.

Pat received her Ph. D.in Anthropology from the University of New Mexico in 1983 and is now Professor Emerita from the Dept. of Anthropology at the University of Oklahoma. She has done archaeological fieldwork and research in the Mimbres region of southwestern New Mexico and southeastern Arizona for more than 40 years. Her initial interests were architecture and the transition that ancient people made from living in pit-houses to inhabiting pueblos. Recently Dr. Gilman and her colleagues have been investigating the presence of scarlet macaws in Mimbres sites, their dates and DNA, and how they might have been brought to the southwestern United States from the tropical forest of southern Mexico.

*I will send out the Zoom meeting invitation to our chapter members several days before the meeting. (If others want to be attend the talk, please email me at elarge@cox.com.) The waiting room for the Zoom meeting will open at 7 pm for those who want to enter early and say hi to friends before the meeting starts. There will be time for Q&A after the talk.

Upcoming Meetings:

Feb. 9 Ron Parker, Ancient Agaves of Arizona

Mar 9 Todd Bostwick, Megalithic Tombs and Temples of Ireland

Apr 13 Don Liponi, La Rumorosa: Rock Art Along the Border, Volume 2

2019-2020 Speaker Schedule

Date	Speaker	Topic
Nov. 12	John Langan, Aztec Eng., Phoenix	Recent Excavations in the Eastern Papaguería
Dec. 10	Todd Bostwick, VVAC, Verde Valley	Ankgor and the Khmer Empire of Cambodia
Jan. 14	Janine Hernbrode, ASW, Tucson	Patterns in Petroglyphs: Hints of the Hohokam Cosmology on the Landscape
Feb. 11	Gregory McNamee, Az Humanities	The Gila: River of History
Mar 10	Allen Dart, Az Humanities	The Antiquity of Irrigation in the Southwest
Apr 14	Ron Parker - Cancelled due to Pandemic	Chasing Centuries: The Search for Ancient Agave Cultivars Across the Desert Southwest Canceled due to pandemic; to be rescheduled
May 12	Don Liponi - Cancelled due to Pandemic	La Rumorosa: Rock Art Along the Border, Vol. 2; To be rescheduled

Phoenix December 2020 Chapter News

Last Meeting before the Lockdown: At our March 10th meeting Allen Dart gave a very well-organized and interesting talk on The Antiquity of Irrigation in the Southwest, tracing the development of irrigation systems in Arizona to at least 3,500 years ago. He gave us an overview of ancient irrigation systems in the southern Southwest and discussed irrigation’s implications for social complexity. The presentation was made possible by the AZ Speaks program, the longest-running and most popular program of the Arizona Humanities, a statewide 501(c)3 non-profit organization and the Arizona affiliate of the National Endowment for the Humanities.

We were also holding a book sale and a raffle. Both were to continue at the next meeting. We had several tables of books for sale and stored the remainder at PGM to sell at our next meeting. We were also selling raffle tickets for an Acoma pot. These activities will be continued whenever we have another in-person meeting. We had to cancel our April and May meetings and hope to reschedule the speakers as soon as possible either for a Zoom Meeting or when in-person meetings are allowed to resume, perhaps in September.

December Meeting: In the meantime we will be holding Zoom meetings beginning with our Dec. 8th meeting which will feature a talk on The Davis Ranch Site: A Kayenta Immigrant Enclave in Southeastern Arizona by Patrick Lyons, Ph.D., Director, Arizona State Museum. Dr. Lyons will discuss the recently published book that reports the results of Rex Gerald’s 1957 excavations, sponsored by the Amerind Foundation, at the Davis Ranch Site in southeastern Arizona’s San Pedro River Valley. He will summarize Gerald’s findings as well as the results of recent studies, placing Gerald’s work in the context of what is now known regarding the late thirteenth-century Kayenta diaspora and also the relationship between Kayenta immigrants and the Salado phenomenon.

Data presented by Gerald and others identify the site as having been inhabited by people from the Kayenta area of northeastern Arizona and southeastern Utah. The results of Gerald’s excavations, coupled with information from Archaeology Southwest’s San Pedro Preservation Project (1990-2001), indicate that the people of the Davis Ranch Site were part of a network of dispersed immigrant enclaves responsible for the origin and the spread of Roosevelt Red Ware pottery, the key material marker of the Salado phenomenon. Evidence from the Davis Ranch Site also lends support to Patricia Crown’s Roosevelt Red Ware stylistic seriation and more recently proposed changes to Roosevelt Red Ware typology and chronology.

Dr. Lyons is the director of the Arizona State and an Assistant Professor of Anthropology at the University of Arizona. After receiving his B.A. and M.A. degrees in Anthropology from the University of Illinois-Chicago, he earned his Ph.D. in Anthropology at the University of Arizona. His dissertation research, conducted while a staff member of the Arizona State Museum’s Homol’ovi Research Program, focused on the origins of the people of the Homol’ovi site cluster and the relationship between Kayenta immigrants and the development and spread of the Salado phenomenon. Before joining the faculty of the University of Arizona, he spent six years as a Preservation Archaeologist at Archaeology Southwest. His research interests include the late prehispanic and protohistoric archaeology of the American Southwest and northwestern Mexico; Hopi ethnography, history, and ethnohistory; ceramic decorative and technological style; ceramic compositional analysis; migration, diaspora, and identity; and the use of tribal oral tradition in archaeological research.

Field Trips: Our field trip coordinator is working on finding field trips that can be attended safely given Covid-19 safety protocols. Details will be forthcoming.

--Ellie Large

MARCH 2020 CHAPTER NEWS

March 10th Meeting: Allen Dart will present The Antiquity of Irrigation in the Southwest. Before AD 1500, Native American cultures took advantage of southern Arizona’s long growing season and tackled its challenge of limited precipitation by developing the earliest and most extensive irrigation works in all of North America. Agriculture was introduced to Arizona more than 4,000 years before present, and irrigation systems were developed in our state at least 3,500 years ago. This presentation provides an overview of ancient irrigation systems in the southern Southwest and discusses irrigation’s implications for understanding social complexity. This presentation is made possible by the AZ Speaks program, the longest-running and most popular program of Arizona Humanities, a statewide 501(c)3 non-profit organization and the Arizona affiliate of the National Endowment for the Humanities.

Allen Dart is a Registered Professional Archaeologist, has worked in Arizona and New Mexico since 1975, and has been an Arizona Humanities speaker since 1997. He is the former executive director of Tucson’s nonprofit Old Pueblo Archaeology Center, which he founded in 1993 to provide educational and scientific programs in archaeology, history, and cultures. He has received the Arizona Governor’s Archaeology Advisory Commission Award in Public Archaeology, the Arizona Archaeological Society’s Professional Archaeologist of the Year Award, and the Arizona Archaeological and Historical Society’s Victor R. Stoner Award for his efforts to bring archaeology and history to the public.

Book Sale: Please collect any books, posters, maps, etc., that you want to donate and bring them with you - along with cash or checks to buy more books! We will set up the room in the afternoon and we should be able to get into it soon after 6:30 pm.. We have already received a generous donation of about 40 archaeology books and pamphlets from Don Schuldes in memory of his wife, Marilyn Schuldes, who was a long-time member of the Phoenix Chapter. We will donate the proceeds to PGM.

Raffle: We will also be selling raffle tickets for the Acoma pot - you can buy tickets for the raffle before and after the evening's presentation. The winning ticket will be drawn at the April 14th meeting.

Reminder: only AAS members can go on field trips! Renew today if you haven't already. Download the Phoenix Chapter membership page from https://azarchsoc.wildapricot.org/Phoenix and mail the form and your check to the address shown, or you can renew and pay online using AffiniPay or a debit or credit card on the AAS website. Logon to www.AzArchSoc.org,click on Membership under About Us, and follow the instructions.

Upcoming Events:

March 9: 2020 Sonoran Symposium at the Sonoran Desert Inn and Conference Center in Ajo. Go to

https://www.sonoransymposium.com for more information.

March 10: Book Sale, both fiction and non-fiction, archaeology-related preferred.

March 14: 1:30 pm. AAS/SWAT Study Group at Tempe History Museum. Call Ellen Martin at 480-820-1474

for more information or if you would like to be added to her email list.

TBD The Baby Canyon Field Trip had to be cancelled due to the weather. It will be rescheduled and

those who signed up will all be on the list.

April 14: Ron Parker, author of Chasing Centuries: The Search for Ancient Agave Cultivars Across the Desert Southwest;

with books available for purchase.

April 18 Loy Butte Area Pictographs Hike led by Wayne Swart; near Honanki, outsider Sedona. Meet at the Sedona Library

at 8 am. Moderate hike of about 4 miles round trip on mostly level ground, half of which is off trail. There is a less than

100 ft. ascent to the pictographs at the destination. Limited to 15 people. For more information email Eric Feldman at

feldbrain@gmail.com.

May 12: Don Liponi, photographer and editor of La Rumorosa: Rock Art Along the Border, Volume 2, with books available

for purchase.

Upcoming Events at Pueblo Grande:

March 14: 9 am-3 pm. 20th Annual Ancient Technology Day on at PGM. Try your hand at throwing an atlatl, weaving cloth,

and sample roasted agave. Artists will demonstrate how people used various technologies. Free arts and crafts

activities are available for the kids. Enjoy various cultural, historic, and technology demonstrations and artifact

show-and-tell stations throughout the day.

March 19: 10-10:45 am, Behind the Scenes Tour with Curator. Join collections staff for a “behind the scenes” tour of the

museums’ collections.

March 21: 8-11 am, Mudslinging on the platform mound. Call 602- 495-0901 to volunteer.

March 27: 10-11 am. Guided Tour of the Park of the Four Waters takes you through the remnants of two very impressive

prehistoric canals. Sign up on the day of the tour.

March 21: 8 am-5 pm, PGM, Arizona Project Archaeology Master Teachers will hold Arizona's first all-day Teacher Workshop

for 3rd to 5th grade history teachers. There is no cost to participants. Our generous sponsors will provide space,

food and program materials. Go to https://www.asspfoundation.org/arizona-project-archaeology to download and fill

out the application and submit to by the registration deadline of March 7. The class is limited to 20 participants.

Phoenix Chapter Meetings are held at 7 pm on the 2nd Tuesday of each month in the Community Room at the Pueblo Grande Museum, 4619 E. Washington St., Phoenix. We take the speaker to dinner at 5:30 pm at the Ruby Tuesday Restaurant on 44th Street and Washington just northwest of the museum. If you are interested in having dinner with the speaker, please call or email Marie (480-390-3491 or mbrit@cox.net) so that she can reserve a large enough table.

--Ellie Large

FEBRUARY 2020 CHAPTER NEWS

Feb. 11th Meeting: Gregory McNamee will present The Gila: River of History. Six hundred miles long from its source in the mountains of southwestern New Mexico to its confluence with the Colorado River above Yuma, the Gila has been an important avenue for the movement of birds, animals, plants, and peoples across the desert for millennia. Many cultures have sprung up on its banks, and millions of people depend on the river today - whether they know it or not. Gregory McNamee, author of the prizewinning book Gila: The Life and Death of an American River, presents a biography of this vital resource, drawing on Native American stories, pioneer memoirs, the writings of modern naturalists such as Aldo Leopold and Edward Abbey, and many other sources. Think of it as 70 million years of history packed into an entertaining, informative hour. To download a flyer for the February meeting, go to the Phoenix Chapter page on the AAS website.

Gregory McNamee is a writer, editor, photographer, and publisher. He is the author of 40 books and more than 6,000 articles and other publications. He is a contributing editor to the Encyclopædia Britannica, a research fellow at the Southwest Center of the University of Arizona, and a lecturer in the Eller School of Management at the University of Arizona. This presentation is made possible by the AZ Speaks program, the longest-running and most popular program of Arizona Humanities, a statewide 501(c)3 non-profit organization and the Arizona affiliate of the National Endowment for the Humanities.

Feb. 11th Silent Auction: Please collect any items you wish to donate for the silent auction and bring them with you. We will set up the room in the afternoon and we should be able to get into it soon after 6:30 pm. We will have our standard AAS donation sheets available for you to fill out. (If you want to fill them out beforehand and bring them with you, email me at elarge@cox.com and I will email them to you.) We will also be selling raffle tickets for an Acoma pot - you can buy tickets for the raffle before and after the evening's presentation. The winning ticket will be drawn at the April 14th meeting.

Jan. 14th Meeting: Janine Hernbrode presented Patterns in Petroglyphs: Hints of the Hohokam Cosmology on the Landscape. After 15 years of recording and analysis of more than 16,000 glyphs located in landscapes with similar characteristics, she and her research partner, Dr. Peter Boyle, have concluded that these images record the belief systems of its creators. The images are interwoven into lines and circles and more complex images carefully placed in very particular locations on the landscape. By applying the scientific method to the patterns observed, by working with ethnographic accounts and linguistic analysis by others, and by consulting with indigenous people, they have gained some understanding of, and identified threads of continuity between, Native American belief systems and rock art motifs. She carefully led us through the reasoning behind their conclusions. It was a really good and thought-provoking presentation.

Reminder: only AAS members can go on field trips! Renew today if you haven't already. You can renew by downloading the Phoenix Chapter membership page from https://azarchsoc.wildapricot.org/Phoenix and mailing the form and your check to the address shown, or you can renew and pay online using AffiniPay or a debit or credit card on the AAS website. Logon to www.AzArchSoc.org,click on Membership under About Us, and follow the instructions.

Upcoming Field Trips:

Feb. 22 Baby Canyon on the Agua Fria National Monument with Mike Hoogendyk. Ruins, petroglyphs. Bad road, easy hike. Needs

a high-clearance, 4 x 4 truck or jeep. [OR we can ask Mike to take us to an easy access ruin. He has dedicated his life

to exploring AFNM, and is very knowledgeable about the history and prehistory of the area. If the weather's bad, the

river is high, or the mud is deep, we'll do an easy access hike to another site in the AFNM or in the Phoenix area. Email

Phyllis at 76desert@gmail.com and let her know what you want to do.

TBD Loy Butte Area Pictographs Hike led by Wayne Swart; near Honanki, outsider Sedona. About 2 miles one way, a little bit

of bush-whacking. If there is any interest we can visit a ruin site about one mile further down the same path.

Upcoming Meetings:

March 10 Allen Dart, Az Humanities, The Antiquity of Irrigation in the Southwest

April 14: Ron Parker, author of Chasing Centuries: The Search for Ancient Agave Cultivars Across the Desert Southwest;

with books available for purchase

May 12: Don Liponi, La Rumorosa: Rock Art Along the Border, Volume 2, with books available for purchase

Upcoming Events:

Feb. 7 12-1 pm, PGM. Free lecture on Hohokam Marine Shell Jewelry Acquisition, Production, and Use at Pueblo Grande

by Andrea Gregory, ACS.

Feb. 14 12-1 pm, PGM. Free lecture on Akimel O’odham and Pee Posh Bow and Arrow Technology: Modern Experimental

Testing of Ancient Designs by Chris Loendorf, GRIC.

Feb. 15 1:30 pm. AAS/SWAT Study Group at Tempe History Museum. Call Ellen Martin at 480-820-1474 for more information or

if you would like to be added to her email list.

Feb. 21 12-1 pm, PGM. Free lecture on The Ghost Canals of Phoenix: Using aerial photography and mapping data to

identify the persistent patterns of early Phoenix irrigation by Dan Garcia, SRP

Feb. 22 11 am-3 pm. Mata Ortiz pottery and Zapotec weaving show and sale. Dr. John Bezy will be available for questions

about the Mata Ortiz ceramic tradition and the archaeological area of Paquimé (Casas Grandes, Chihuahua). Master

artist Oralia López will answer your questions about the intricate process of painting these pots. Internationally

renowned Zapotec weavers from Teotitlan del Valle, Oaxaca, Mexico will answer questions on the textiles.

March 9: 2020 Sonoran Symposium at the Sonoran Desert Inn and Conference Center in Ajo. Go to

https://www.sonoransymposium.com for more information.

Upcoming Fundraiser: We will have a Book Sale at our March meeting. Please collect any books, posters, maps, etc., that you want to donate and bring them to the meeting on March 10th. We have already received a generous donation of about 40 archaeology books and pamphlets from Don Schuldes in memory of his wife, Marilyn Schuldes, who was a long-time member of the Phoenix Chapter. We will donate the proceeds to PGM.

The Phoenix Chapter meets at 7 pm on the 2nd Tuesday of each month in the Community Room at the Pueblo Grande Museum, 4619 E. Washington St., Phoenix. We take the speaker to dinner at 5:30 pm at the Ruby Tuesday Restaurant on 44th Street and Washington just northwest of the museum. If you are interested in having dinner with the speaker, please call or email Marie (480-390-3491 or mbrit@cox.net) so that she can reserve a large enough table.

--Ellie Large

January 2020 Chapter News

Jan. 14th Meeting: Janine Hernbrode will talk about Patterns in Petroglyphs: Hints of the Hohokam Cosmology on the Landscape. Fifteen years of rock art recording on four major petroglyph sites in Southern Arizona has enabled the assembly of motif details, drawings and photographs of more than 16,000 glyphs located in landscapes with similar characteristics. This vast collection of images records the belief systems of its creators. There were no scenes of everyday life, of grinding corn, or plans for constructing pit houses. The images recording their belief system are interwoven into lines and circles and more complex images carefully placed on the landscape. By applying the scientific method to the patterns observed, by working with ethnographic accounts and linguistic analysis by others, and by consulting with indigenous people, we have gained some understanding of, and identified threads of continuity between, Native American belief systems and rock art motifs. To download a flyer for the January meeting, go to the Phoenix Chapter page on the AAS website.

Janine Hernbrode is an independent rock art recorder and researcher based in Tucson and is on the board of Archaeology Southwest. Wary of becoming relentless quantifiers through rock art recording, she and her research partner, Dr. Peter Boyle, worked together to collect and analyze data obtained from their recordings of Tumamoc Hill, the Sutherland Wash Rock Art District, and the Cocoraque Butte and Cocoraque Ranch. Hernbrode and Boyle demonstrate that ethnographic and linguistic information can suggest links to both sacred landscapes and some motifs found in rock art. Janine and Peter received the 2019 Crabtree Award from the Society for American Archaeology, which is presented annually to an outstanding avocational archaeologist in remembrance of the singular contributions of Don Crabtree. Janine is also the Leader of the Rock Band, a group of volunteer rock art recorders whose work was honored by the State Historic Preservation Office. She and the Rock Band currently are working to inventory and record the rock art in the Tucson Mountain District of Saguaro National Park, as part of an effort to understand the variety of sites in a portion of the Avra Valley.

Dec. 10th Meeting: At the December meeting we held the election for 2020's board officers. They are:

President: Ellie Large                   1-Year Dir/Newsletter:     Nancy Unferth

Exec VP:   Eric Feldman               2-Year Dir/Field Trips:      Phyllis Smith

Treasurer: Gail Williams              3-Year Dir/Membership:   Vicki Caltabiano

Secretary: Ellen Martin                Archivist/Cert Rep            Marie Britton

The presentation was on Angkor Wat and the Khmer Empire of Cambodia by Todd W. Bostwick, Ph.D. Todd gave a very interesting presentation on his recent trip to Cambodia to view the remains of a remarkable group of ancient stone temples built in the tropical forests of Cambodia and Thailand between the 8th and 13th centuries AD. The temples are not only impressive in size but are elaborately decorated with beautifully carved sculptures of Hindu gods, sacred dancing girls, and Buddha faces on lintels, walls, and free-standing stelae before and within the temples. The urban complex of the World Heritage site of Angkor Wat in modern day Siem Reap, Cambodia, is at least 200 square kilometers in area. He included some of the latest research at this World Heritage site as well as giving us some interesting sidelights on the trip itself.

Upcoming Field Trips:

Jan 18 Cocoraque Ranch Petroglyph Site tour with Janine Hernbrode. $20 fee. Sign up at the Jan. 14 meeting or email Eric

at feldbrain@hotmail.com

TBD Feb. or March, depending on the weather. Phyllis contacted Mike Hoogendyk and we have a tentative field trip to

Baby Canyon or another site in Agua Fria National Monument. Bad road, easy hike.

TBD Loy Butte Area Pictographs Hike led by Wayne Swart. About 2 miles one way, a little bit of bush-whacking. If there

is any interest we can visit a ruin site about one mile further down the same path.

Upcoming Conference:

Jan. 30-Feb. 1: The 2020 Southwest Symposium will be held on the ASU Tempe campus in the Ventana Ballroom of the Memorial

Union. The theme is Thinking Big: New Approaches to Synthesis and Partnership in the Southwest-

Northwest. Go to https://www.southwestsymposium.org for more information.

March 9-12: 2020 Sonoran Symposium at the Sonoran Desert Inn and Conference Center in Ajo. Go to

https://www.sonoransymposium.com for more information.

--Ellie Large

2020-2021 Meeting Schedule

The chapter usually meets at Pueblo Grande Museum at 7:00 pm on the second Tuesday of each month (except during June, July & August). However, due to the pandemic, we are now holding Zoom meetings on the same schedule and hope to resume in-person meetings in September.

Date	Speaker	Topic
Dec. 8	Patrick Lyons, Ph.D., Director, Arizona State Museum	The Davis Ranch Site: A Kayenta Immigrant Enclave in Southeastern Arizona
Jan. 12	Pat Gilman, Ph.D.	Ancient Macaws in Mimbres, Chaco and the Hohokam
Feb. 9	Ron Parker	Ancient Agaves of Arizona
March 9	Todd Bostwick, Ph.D.	Megalithic Tombs and Temples of Ireland
April 13	Don Liponi	La Rumorosa: Rock Art Along the Border, Volume 2.
May 11	TBA

December 2019 Chapter News

Dec. 10th Meeting: The December meeting is our Holiday Potluck, which will begin at 6 pm, followed by a short business meeting and annual election about 7 pm. If joining us for the potluck, please bring a side dish or dessert to share; meats, rolls and beverages are provided by the chapter. Everyone who attends the potluck will receive a raffle ticket, and after the presentation we will draw tickets for the table decorations.

At the December meeting we will hold the election for next year's board officers. The slate is:

President:   Ellie Large                 1-Year Dir/Newsletter:     Nancy Unferth

Exec VP:     Eric Feldman            2-Year Dir/Field Trips:      Phyllis Smith

Treasurer: Gail Williams             3-Year Dir/Membership: Vicki Caltabiano

Secretary: Ellen Martin                Archivist/Cert Rep           Marie Britton

Temple at Angkor Wat and Detail View of Carved Wall

The presentation, which will begin about 7:30 pm, is on Angkor Wat and the Khmer Empire of Cambodia by Todd W. Bostwick, Ph.D. Angkor Wat is one of a remarkable group of ancient stone temples that were built in the tropical forests of Cambodia and Thailand between the 8th and 13th centuries AD. The urban complex in modern day Siem Reap, Cambodia is at least 200 square kilometers in area. Their temples are not only impressive in size but are elaborately decorated with beautifully carved sculptures of Hindu gods, sacred dancing girls, and Buddha faces on lintels, walls, and free-standing stelae before and within the temples. This talk will focus on a number of those temples, including Angkor Wat, and will include some of the latest research at this World Heritage site.

Dr. Bostwick has been conducting archaeological research in the Southwest for 40 years. He was the Phoenix City Archaeologist for 21 years at the Pueblo Grande Museum and is now the Director of Archaeology at the Verde Valley Archaeology Center in Camp Verde. He has an M.A. in Anthropology and a Ph.D. in History from Arizona State University, and taught classes at both ASU and Northern Arizona University for seven years. He has published numerous books and articles on Southwest archaeology and history, and his projects have received awards from the National Park Service, the Arizona Governor’s Archaeology Advisory Commission, and the Arizona Archaeological Society.

Nov. 12th Meeting: John Langan, Archaeological Project Director for Aztec Eng., Phoenix, explained what was learned from the excavation of 25 sites in advance of highway widening along State Route 86, which stretches from Why, Az., to Interstate 19 just south of Tucson. Prior archaeological interpretations were based on work at only four sites in the eastern Papaguería (Ventana Cave, Jackrabbit Ruin, Valshni Village, and Gu Achi) which were thought to be rare sedentary or semi-sedentary outposts in a sparsely populated region. Other than Ventana Cave, which was almost continuously occupied from the Archaic through the historic periods, no evidence for occupation between ca. AD 150 and 750 had been found. The SR86 projects provided evidence for more settled populations continuously occupying the Baboquivari Valley and the foothills of the Quinlan Mountains from the Late Archaic-Early Agricultural period through at least the protohistoric period. Formalized pithouses, maize agriculture, and a complex and distinctive mortuary pattern indicate a greater degree of permanence than previously recognized. These populations may have practiced a somewhat mobile subsistence strategy, similar to the “two-village” approach common to historic Tohono O’odham groups. Nearly all sites from which reliable dates were obtained included more than one temporal component, suggesting repeated occupations.

Jan. 14th Meeting: Janine Hernbrode, Archaeology Southwest, will talk about Patterns in Petroglyphs: Hints of the Hohokam Cosmology on the Landscape

Jan 18th Field Trip: Cocoraque Ranch Petroglyph Site tour with Janine Hernbrode. $20 fee. More information later. (See https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Cocoraque_Butte_Archaeological_District for more info on the site.)

Upcoming Conference:

Jan. 30-Feb. 1: The 2020 Southwest Symposium Biennial Archaeological Conference will be held on the ASU Tempe campus in the Ventana Ballroom of the Memorial Union. The theme is Thinking Big: New Approaches to Synthesis and Partnership in the Southwest-Northwest. Go to https://www.southwestsymposium.org for more info.

--Ellie Large

November 2019 Chapter News

Nov. 12th Meeting: John Langan, Archaeological Project Director for Aztec Eng., Phoenix, will explain what was learned from Recent Excavations in the Eastern Papaguería. Excavation of 25 sites in advance of highway widening along State Route 86 since 2010 has yielded some of the only data pertaining to small sites in the area between the Tucson Basin and the western Papaguería. (SR86 stretches from Why, Az., to Interstate 19 just south of Tucson). Prior archaeological interpretations were based on work at only four sites in the eastern Papaguería (Ventana Cave, Jackrabbit Ruin, Valshni Village, and Gu Achi) which were thought to be rare sedentary or semi-sedentary outposts in a sparsely populated region. Other than Ventana Cave, which was almost continuously occupied from the Archaic through the historic periods, no evidence for occupation between ca. AD 150 and 750 had been found. The SR86 projects provide evidence for more settled populations continuously occupying the Baboquivari Valley and the foothills of the Quinlan Mountains from the Late Archaic-Early Agricultural period through at least the protohistoric period. Formalized pithouses, maize agriculture, and a complex and distinctive mortuary pattern indicate a greater degree of permanence than previously recognized. These populations may have practiced a somewhat mobile subsistence strategy, similar to the “two-village” approach common to historic Tohono O’odham groups. Nearly all sites from which reliable dates were obtained included more than one temporal component, suggesting repeated occupations.

John Langan has a B.A. in Anthropology from the University of Arizona and has worked in Cultural Resources Management since 2001, when he began working for the National Park Service. He joined AZTEC’s cultural resources program in 2007 and has since participated in hundreds of archaeological and environmental projects in support of transportation and infrastructure development. He has become particularly interested in the archaeology of the Papaguería from working on the SR 86 projects. He is keenly interested in mobilizing the information gathered by CRM projects to further public and academic understanding of prehistory and history

Oct. 8th Meeting: The speakers for our October meeting were Drs. Suzanne and Paul Fish, ASM, Tucson, who talked about Two Early Villages on Tumamoc Hill. Before excavations began on Tumamoc Hill in 1985, this trincheras site located just west of downtown Tucson was thought to be a late Classic Period Hohokam site that contained only sleeping circles. Excavations revealed that it had been occupied much earlier and contained the remains of two sequential villages. The preceramic Cienega phase village dates between 500 and 200 BC, toward the end of the Early Agricultural period, and the residents had constructed some, if not all, of the 1.9 km of massive summit walls and terraces on the hill. A central community room was reused in the later Tortolita phase village which had plain and red-slipped ceramics dating to about AD 500. Well-preserved foundations of just over 150 Tortolita phase houses revealed occupational groupings that foreshadow later Hohokam courtyards.

Upcoming Meetings:

Dec. 10: Todd Bostwick, VVAC, Ankgor and the Khmer Empire of Cambodia

Jan. 14: Janine Hernbrode, ASW, Patterns in Petroglyphs: Hints of the Hohokam Cosmology on the Landscape

Upcoming Field Trips:

(TBD): Field trip to a site on the Barry M. Goldwater Range East. Details later.

Jan 18: Cocoraque Ranch tour with Janine Hernbrode. $25 fee. More information later.

Upcoming Conferences:

Nov. 8: All day. The 2019 Arizona Archaeological Council Conference will be held at PGM. This year's theme is Current Research in Arizona Archaeology. For more information, go to http://www.arizonaarchaeologicalcouncil.org/.

Jan. 30-Feb. 1: The 2020 Southwest Symposium Biennial Archaeological Conference will be held on the ASU Tempe campus. The theme is Thinking Big: New Approaches to Synthesis and Partnership in the Southwest-Northwest. Go to https://www.southwestsymposium.org for more info.

--Ellie Large

October 2019 Chapter News

Oct. 8th Meeting: The speakers for our October meeting will be Drs. Suzanne and Paul Fish, ASM, Tucson, who will talk about Two Early Villages on Tumamoc Hill. Tumamoc Hill is a trincheras site located just west of downtown Tucson. Before the appearance of red-painted pottery, early farmers of the Tucson Basin occupied two sequential villages on Tumamoc Hill. The preceramic Cienega phase village dates between 500 and 200 BC, toward the end of the Early Agricultural period. The residents constructed some, if not all, of the 1.9 km of massive summit walls and terraces on the h ill. A central community room was reused in the later Tortolita phase village which had plain and red-slipped ceramics dating to about AD 500. Well-preserved foundations of just over 150 Tortolita phase houses reveal occupational groupings that foreshadow later Hohokam courtyard groups.

Suzanne Fish received her Ph.D. from the UA in Arid Lands Resource Sciences. Paul Fish received his Ph.D. from ASU in Anthropology. Both are Curators Emeriti of Archaeology at the Arizona State Museum, and Professors Emeriti in the School of Anthropology, University of Arizona. Suzanne specializes in Hohokam archaeology, organization of non-state agrarian societies, regional settlement patterns, archaeological palynology, and Sonoran Desert ethnobotany and traditional agriculture, including prehispanic agave cultivation. She has published extensively on the archaeology and ethnobotany of the Southwest U.S., the archaeology of central and northwest Mexico, and on the shell mounds of coastal Brazil. Paul has studied the Hohokam tradition for over 40 years and has authored numerous publications on the prehispanic archaeology and traditional agriculture of the region. He has also conducted fieldwork and research in northwest Mexico, southern coastal Brazil, the U. S. Southeast, and the eastern Mediterranean.

Sept. 10th Meeting: We had a full house to hear our September speaker, Chris Loendorf, Senior Project Manager for the Gila River Indian Community Cultural Resource Management Program. His talk was titled The Hohokam to Akimel O’Odham Continuum: The Transition from Prehistory to History in the Phoenix Basin of Southern Arizona. When Spanish missionaries first visited the Phoenix Basin in the 18th century, the middle Gila River was one of the few places in southern Arizona where sedentary irrigation farmers still lived. Yet since that time the relationship between the prehistoric population (the Hohokam) and the historic occupants (the Akimel O’odham or Pima) has been debated. Most research has focused on traditions that changed over time, a typical archaeological approach, while those that didn’t change have been largely ignored. In fact, extensive archaeological research provides compelling evidence for continuity in cultural practices over time, such as paddle-and-anvil pottery production, agricultural practices, projectile points, and house construction. The archaeological data also suggests that the population moved back and forth between the Salt River Valley and the Gila River Valley as changes in precipitation in the headwaters of the Gila and Salt rivers changed the amount of water available for irrigation. In addition the stories also suggest that the population grew and declined several times, possibly in response to those changes.

Upcoming Meetings:

Nov. 12: John Langan, Aztec Eng., Phoenix, Recent Excavations in the Eastern Papaguería

Dec. 10: Todd Bostwick, VVAC, Ankgor and the Khmer Empire of Cambodia

Jan. 14: Janine Hernbrode, ASW, Patterns in Petroglyphs: Hints of the Hohokam Cosmology on

the Landscape

Upcoming Field Trips:

Oct. (TBD): Field trip to a site on the Barry M. Goldwater Range East. Details later.

Oct. 12: The San Tan Chapter is sponsoring a field trip with their advisor, Chris Loendorf, to the Tonto

National Monument and Cline Terrace Mound in the Roosevelt Basin. Contact Marie Britton

(480-390-3491 or mbrit@cox.net) for more details and to be added to the list.

Jan 18 Cocoraque Ranch tour with Janine Hernbrode. $25 fee. More information later.

Upcoming Events:

Oct. 25-27 AAS State Meeting in Sedona. For details read the September Petroglyph or go to the AAS

Website and select Annual Meeting under the About Us tab. (www.AzArchSoc.wildapricot.org)

Upcoming Conferences:

Oct. 4-6 The Southwest Kiln Conference, Globe. Times TBA; free. For more info go to

https://www.swkiln.com/.

Oct. 11-13 21st Biennial Jornada Mogollon Archaeology Conference, El Paso Museum of Archaeology,

El Paso. For more info, contact Jeff Romney at 915-755-4332 or RomneyJK@elpasotexas.gov.

Times. Registration fees TBA.

Nov. 8 All day. The 2019 Arizona Archaeological Council Conference will be held at PGM. This

year's theme is Current Research in Arizona Archaeology. Go to

http://www.arizonaarchaeologicalcouncil.org/ for more information

Jan. 30- The 2020 Southwest Symposium Biennial Archaeological Conference will be held on the

Feb. 1: ASU Tempe campus. The conference website is: https://www.southwestsymposium.org.

--Ellie Large

September 2019 Chapter News

September 10th Meeting: Our speaker will be Chris Loendorf, Senior Project Manager for the Gila River Indian Community Cultural Resource Management Program. His topic is The Hohokam to Akimel O’Odham Continuum: The Transition from Prehistory to History in the Phoenix Basin of Southern Arizona. When Spanish missionaries first visited the Phoenix Basin in the 18th century, the middle Gila River was one of the few places in southern Arizona where sedentary irrigation farmers still lived. Since that time the relationship between the prehistoric populations (Hohokam) and the Historic people (Akimel O’odham or Pima) has been debated. However, most research has focused on traditions that changed over time, while those that didn’t change have been largely ignored. In fact, extensive archaeological research provides compelling evidence for continuity in cultural practices over time. Furthermore, Akimel O’odham cultural knowledge regarding their past has been largely ignored or misunderstood, although this information provides considerable insight into the past. While many changes occurred between prehistory and history in southern Arizona, this is part of a much longer cycle of episodic variation in cultural traditions that is documented in the Akimel O’odham stories.

Chris Loendorf has been employed by the Gila River Indian Community Cultural Resource Management Program for the last 20 years. He earned his B.A. at the University of Montana and his M.A. and Ph.D. at ASU, and has worked on a wide variety of archaeological projects from the Southwest to the Northern Plains since 1981. He has studied Hohokam archaeology since coming to Arizona in 1989 to work on the Roosevelt Platform Mound Study. His research expertise includes projectile point design, rock art analysis, mortuary studies, and x-ray florescence analysis of archaeological remains.

Upcoming Meetings:

Oct. 8: Paul & Suzy Fish, ASM, Tucson, Two Early Villages of Tumamoc Hill

Nov. 12: John Langan, Aztec Eng., Phoenix, Recent Excavations in the Eastern Papaguería

Dec. 10: Todd Bostwick, VVAC, Ankgor and the Khmer Empire of Cambodia

Upcoming Events:

Oct. 25-27 AAS State Meeting in Sedona; For more information or to download the registration form, go to the Annual Meeting tab

under About Us on the AAS website, https://azarchsoc.wildapricot.org/

Upcoming Conferences:

Oct. 4-6 The Southwest Kiln Conference, Globe. Times TBA; free. For more info go to https://www.swkiln.com/.

Oct. 11-13 21st Biennial Jornada Mogollon Archaeology Conference, El Paso Museum of Archaeology, El Paso. For more info,

contact Jeff Romney at 915-755-4332 or RomneyJK@elpasotexas.gov. Times and registration fees TBA.

Jan. 30-Feb. 1: The 2020 Southwest Symposium Biennial Archaeological Conference will be held at the ASU Tempe campus. The

theme is Thinking Big: New Approaches to Synthesis and Partnership in the Southwest-Northwest. The conference

website is: https://www.southwestsymposium.org.

The Phoenix Chapter meets at 7 pm on the 2nd Tuesday of each month in the Community Room at the Pueblo Grande Museum, 4619 E. Washington St., Phoenix. We take the speaker to dinner at 5:30 pm at the Ruby Tuesday Restaurant on 44th Street and Washington just northwest of the museum. If you are interested in having dinner with the speaker, please call or email Marie (480-827-8070 or mbrit@cox.net) so that she can reserve a large enough table.

--Ellie Large

To download the May flyer, click on the link below:

May Flyer

May 2019 Chapter News

May 14th Meeting: How a River, a Terrace, and a Butte Influenced the Spatial Development of a Hohokam Village by Erik Steinbach, Sr. Assoc. Archaeologist, Logan Simpson, Tempe. The Hohokam site of La Plaza is an extensive multi-component site that lies at the base of Tempe Butte and continues east along the edge of the Lehi terrace of the Salt River underneath the City of Tempe and the ASU Tempe campus. Early settlement of Tempe covered major portions of the site before its spatial extent could be documented. Due to the limited size and fragmentation of the projects that have been done, it has been difficult to put together a large-scale study of the entire village. Erik will review published data from over three dozen CRM projects undertaken in the last 40 years to trace the development of La Plaza through time and tie its spatial layout to the geographic benefits and restraints of the the Salt River, the Mesa Terrace, and Tempe Butte.

Erik Steinbach is a Sr. Associate Archaeologist with Logan Simpson, Tempe. He has been involved in archaeology for over 20 years, and has been employed in Arizona, mostly in the Phoenix area, for the past 15 years. He began his career as a volunteer at the Iron Age site of Tel Rehov in the Jordan Valley in Israel, and returned for 9 field seasons as a field supervisor and cartographer. In 2000 he received a scholarship to study at the W. F. Albright Institute for Archaeological Research in Jerusalem. He graduated with a BA in Anthropology from ASU in 2003. He has directed field crews on archaeological surveys and excavations throughout Arizona and has authored or coauthored over 100 technical reports.

April 9th Meeting: Andrea Gregory, Director of Cultural Resources for Archaeological Consulting Services, talked about Subsistence, Ceramic Production, and Exchange at Farmstead Sites on the Queen Creek Bajada. Evidence recovered from two farmstead sites during a recent project showed that outlying areas along the Queen Creek delta and bajada were occupied from the Pioneer well into the Classic Period, with peak use during the Sedentary Period. Although small, these sites maintained contact with middle Gila River communities throughout the Sedentary and show increased local ceramic production from the Sedentary through the early Classic, a trend that has been identified at other Hohokam sites during that era.

April 7th Tour of the Museum of the West: DFC members Jim and Jan Patton led us on a tour of selected exhibits including a wonderful exhibit of 65 pieces of Hopi yellow ware that includes works that are 500 years old, and 18 original Nampeyo works.

Upcoming Events:

May 7, 5:30 pm, Archaeology Cafe, Talk: The Greater Gila River: Public Lands, Tribal Lands, and Our Connections to These Places by William H. Doelle. At Changing Hands Bookstore, 300 W Camelback Rd, Phx.

Upcoming Conferences:

June 12, 8 am-5 pm, Archaeology Workshop at the 2019 Arizona Historic Preservation Conference, Prescott. For more information or to register, go to https://azpreservation.com/

The Phoenix Chapter meets at 7 pm on the 2nd Tuesday of each month in the Community Room at the Pueblo Grande Museum, 4619 E. Washington St., Phoenix. We take the speaker to dinner at 5:30 pm at the Ruby Tuesday Restaurant on 44th Street and Washington just northwest of the museum. If you are interested in having dinner with the speaker, please call or email Marie (480-827-8070 or mbrit@cox.net) so that she can reserve a large enough table.

--Ellie Large

April 2019 Chapter News

April 9th Meeting: Andrea Gregory, Director of Cultural Resources for Archaeological Consulting Services, will talk about Subsistence, Ceramic Production, and Exchange at Farmstead Sites on the Queen Creek Bajada. Evidence recovered from two farmstead sites during a recent project shows that outlying areas along the Queen Creek delta and bajada were occupied from the Pioneer well into the Classic Period, with peak use during the Sedentary Period. Although small, these sites maintained contact with middle Gila River communities throughout the Sedentary and also show increased local ceramic production from the Sedentary through the early Classic, a trend that has been identified at other Hohokam sites during that era.

March 9th Ancient Technology Day: Marie & Jim Britton along with Sylvia Lesko (out for a visit from San Francisco) showed more than 100 children how to make miniature adobe bricks. PGM had all the equipment we needed, as well as table, chairs and a shade canopy. They graciously supplied a large tarp, brick forms, foil-covered cardboard disks, trowels, a mixing bin, shovel, hoe and a broom for clean-up, as well as 6 large buckets full of dirt and all the water we needed to make the mud for the bricks. We set up a hand-washing station with towels they provided. We demonstrated how to fill the form with mud, smooth it out and then punch the brick out of the form. PGM staff mentioned they had a good day and attendance was over 400 people. Marie says that 75% of them were the children who flocked to this activity as evidenced by all the bricks drying in the sun.

March 12th Meeting: Garry Cantley, Regional Archaeologist, BIA Western Region, explained the 1979 Archaeological Resources Protection Act (ARPA), one of the federal government’s tools against looting of archaeological resources on federal and Indian land. In addition to giving us an overview of the law, he gave us several examples drawn from previous ARPA investigations. It was a good talk followed by a good Q&A session.

March 17th Field Trip to Cline Creek: Larry Morehouse from the Desert Foothills Chapter led 8 of us on a field trip to the Cline Creek area north of New River in the Tonto National Forest. It was a beautiful spring day and there were a lot of wildflowers in bloom. We drove in around 2 miles and parked and then hiked roughly a mile to a Hohokam site that was inhabited from about 900 to 1150 AD. There is a hilltop ruin (Room with a View) about 500 ft. above the site at the peak of the adjacent mountain. After exploring the area for a while we hiked back for part 2, a small but very unusual petroglyph site on a hilltop about 120 ft. above the main trail. This is an interesting area worthy of more exploration. A big Thank You to Larry.

Upcoming Tour: April 7th, 1 pm, Museum Tour to the Museum of the West, 3830 N Marshall Way, Scottsdale. Desert Foothills Chapter members Jim and Jan Patton, who are also docents at the Museum, will lead us on a tour of select exhibits. There is a wonderful exhibit of 65 pieces of Hopi yellow ware that includes works that are 500 years old, and 18 original Nampeyo works. Jim also suggests that we tour the 2nd floor exhibit, Courage and Crossroads, that includes a number of 19th century original artworks (e.g., Catlin, Bodmer, Arthur Jacob Miller) and some very interesting Plains Indian ethnographic pieces. Those two exhibits should occupy us for 60-90 minutes. There is free, time unlimited public parking behind the museum in the underground site via the east/west alley on the north side of the museum. If 15 of us show up, we get a small group discount. Admission: Adults: $15; Seniors (65+) and Active Military: $13; Students (Full-time with ID): $8. Email Phyllis at 76desert@gmail.com to sign up. You must sign up in advance and your name must be on her list. DO NOT JUST SHOW UP AT THE MUSEUM. Phoenix Chapter members have priority, and your dues must have been paid for 2019. Limited to 30 people.

The Phoenix Chapter meets at 7 pm on the 2nd Tuesday of each month in the Community Room at the Pueblo Grande Museum, 4619 E. Washington St., Phoenix. We take the speaker to dinner at 5:30 pm at the Ruby Tuesday Restaurant on 44th Street and Washington just northwest of the museum. If you are interested in having dinner with the speaker, please call or email Marie (480-827-8070 or mbrit@cox.net) so that she can reserve a large enough table.

--Ellie Large

March 2019 Chapter News

March 12th Meeting: Garry Cantley, Regional Archaeologist, BIA Western Region, will discuss the 1979 Archaeological Resources Protection Act (ARPA), one of the federal government’s tools against looting of archaeological resources on federal and Indian land. Besides giving an overview of the law, he will intersperse his presentation with examples drawn from previous ARPA investigations. Garry has over 40 years’ experience in archeology throughout many parts of North America. He received his undergraduate degree from the Universidad de las Americas in Cholula, Puebla, Mexico and an M.A. from Arizona State University. He has been with the Bureau of Indian Affairs in Phoenix since 1992 and has received numerous awards for superior performance as Regional Archeologist for the Western Region. He received the Arizona Governor’s Archaeology Advisory Commission’s Award in Public Archaeology (Professional Archeologist) in 2013.

March 17th Field Trip (rescheduled from Feb. 24): Larry Morehouse from the Desert Foothills Chapter will take us to Cline Creek. There are both Hohokam and a couple of Apache petroglyphs and a habitation site. The petroglyphs are up the hill (of course), about a 10-minute climb. The village is up the wash about a mile. It is a moderate hike with some bushwhacking thru vegetation (including catclaw). There is no trail. Starting time will be between 7 and 9 am depending on how hot it is. This will be a 3 to 4 hour outing, plus your travel time to the New River area. Bring the usual: boots, hat, sun screen, long sleeves and pants, hiking stick, water, food, more water. High clearance only; no passenger cars, but we can carpool from the meeting place. 20 people maximum; Phoenix Chapter members have priority. Email Phyllis: 76desert@gmail.com to sign up

February 12th Meeting: Matt Peeples, Ph.D., ASU, Archaeological Fakes and Frauds in Arizona and Beyond. Matt described several fantastic claims, such as the "Cardiff Giant," the "prehistoric" Acámbaro dinosaur figurines from Guanajuato, Mexico, and the Spanish treasure "found" near Tucson In addition to debunking these claims, he discussed how and why pseudoscientific claims take hold, what we can do about it, and why they have the potential to do real damage to archaeological resources and the scientific process. For more info, go to http://www.badarchaeology.com/out-of-place-artefacts/mysterious-objects/the-acambaro-figurines.

Upcoming Meetings:

April 9 Andrea Gregory, ACS, Subsistence, Ceramic Production, and Exchange at Farmstead Sites on the Queen Creek Bajada

May 14 Erik Steinbach, Logan Simpson, How a River, a Terrace, and a Butte Influenced the Spatial Development of a Hohokam Village

The Phoenix Chapter meets at 7 pm on the 2nd Tuesday of each month in the Community Room at the Pueblo Grande Museum, 4619 E. Washington St., Phoenix. We will take the speaker to dinner at 5:30 pm at the Ruby Tuesday Restaurant on 44th Street and Washington just northwest of the museum. If you are interested in having dinner with the speaker, please call or email Marie (480-827-8070 or mbrit@cox.net) so that she can reserve a large enough table.

--Ellie Large

February 2019 Chapter News

February 12th Meeting: Matt Peeples, Ph.D., ASU, Archaeological Fakes and Frauds in Arizona and Beyond. Depictions of archaeology in popular culture are full of dubious tales of ancient extraterrestrials, lost civilizations, giants, and widespread scientific conspiracy. In this talk, Matt will explore such fantastic claims, focusing on a few popular claims here in our own backyard in Arizona. His goal is not to simply “debunk” these claims, though he will do that too, but to further explore how and why pseudoscientific claims take hold in the popular imagination and what we can do about it. Are such claims just silly fun, or do they do have the potential to do real damage to archaeological resources and the scientific process?

Matt is an assistant professor and archaeologist in the School of Human Evolution & Social Change at Arizona State University and co-director of the ASU Center for Archaeology and Society. He conducts field and lab research focused on the greater Cibola region in New Mexico and Arizona and also collaborates on a number of large projects focused on synthesizing settlement data from across the U.S. Southwest and Mexican Northwest. One of his major collaborative projects involves the use of social network analysis to explore how pre-Hispanic indigenous farmers survived and thrived in this unpredictable arid environment and what lessons their successes and failures can offer those of us living here today.

January 8th Meeting: The speaker at our January meeting was E. Charles Adams, Ph.D., who talked about 13,000 years of Migration in the Homol'ovi area. Six years of research on Rock Art Ranch near Winslow by Arizona State Museum archaeologists has documented human use going back to Clovis times. The ranch was a focus of intensive hunting, gathering, and small-scale agriculture during the Basketmaker II period from 1000 BCE to 500 CE. During the 1200s, Mogollon groups from the south built numerous small pueblos throughout the region and later joined Pueblo groups from the north to build and occupy the large Homol’ovi pueblos along the Little Colorado River. Evidence of this lengthy use is shown by the petroglyphs etched in the walls of Chevelon Canyon as well as by the different styles of projectile points made from both local and foreign stone sources and the change of these through time.

Upcoming Meetings:

March 12 Garry Cantley, BIA, Archaeological Resources and Crime Prevention and the Site Stewards

April 9 Andrea Gregory, ACS, Subsistence, Ceramic Production, and Exchange at Farmstead Sites on the Queen Creek Bajada

May 14 Erik Steinbach, Logan Simpson, How a River, a Terrace, and a Butte Influenced the Spatial Development of a Hohokam Village

February Field Trip:

Feb. 24: Larry Morehouse from the Desert Foothills Chapter will take us to Cline Creek. There are both Hohokam and a couple of Apache petroglyphs and a habitation site. The petroglyphs are up the hill (of course), about a 10-minute climb. The village is up the wash about a mile. It is a moderate hike with some bushwhacking thru vegetation (including catclaw). There is no trail. Starting time will be between 7 and 9 am depending on how hot it is. This will be a 3 to 4 hour outing, plus your travel time to the New River area. Bring the usual: boots, hat, sun screen, long sleeves and pants, hiking stick, water, food, more water. High clearance only; no passenger cars, but we can carpool from the meeting place. 20 people maximum; Phoenix Chapter members have priority. Email Phyllis: 76desert@gmail.com to sign up

January Field Trip: Jan. 21: Deer Flat Field Trip led by Scott Wood. The trip went well with 16 people showing up (including Scott). We had enough vehicles, no one fell or drove off the mesa. The road was really bad, I would never drive it. It was cold and windy.

Teotihuacan Exhibit Tour: Jan. 13: Docent-led tour of Teotihuacan: City of Water, City of Fire exhibit at the Phoenix Art Museum. The tour was great, with 14 AAS members managing to find parking spaces and get into the museum for the tour. It was very crowded because it was a free Sunday, but the docent was very knowledgeable and made the best of the situation. Several people tagged along that weren't in our group, which we knew might happen. Most of the group remained after the hour-long tour and took the time to see the wonderful treasures on display (as well as the gift shop).

--Ellie Large

January 2019 Chapter News

January 8th Meeting: The speaker at our January meeting will be E. Charles Adams, Ph.D., who will talk about 13,000 years of Migration in the Homol'ovi area. Six years of research on Rock Art Ranch near Winslow by Arizona State Museum archaeologists has documented human use going back to Clovis times. The ranch was also a focus of intensive hunting, gathering, and small-scale agriculture during the Basketmaker II period from 1000 BCE to 500 CE. During the 1200s, Mogollon groups from the south built numerous small pueblos throughout the region and later joined Pueblo groups from the north to build and occupy the large Homol’ovi pueblos along the Little Colorado River. Evidence of this lengthy use is etched in the walls of Chevelon Canyon. This talk traces the fascinating history of population movement that truly made the area a cultural crossroads.

Since 1985, Dr. Adams has been Curator of Archaeology at the Arizona State Museum and a Professor in the School of Anthropology, University of Arizona, a position from which he retired at the end of 2017. From his arrival, he directed the Homol’ovi Research Program, which involved extensive survey and excavation of numerous pueblos in Homolovi State Park from 1985 to 2006. From 2011 to 2016, he directed survey and excavations on and near Rock Art Ranch, 25 miles southeast of Winslow. He received his Ph.D. from the University of Colorado, Boulder, in 1975. Prior to 1985 he was Senior Archaeologist at the Museum of Northern Arizona and the Director of Research at Crow Canyon Archaeological Center. He has published nearly 100 articles and book chapters and authored or edited ten books or monographs, the most recent being Chevelon: Pueblo at Blue Running Water, volume 211 in the ASM Archaeological Series published in 2016.

December 11th Meeting: Our Holiday Potluck was well attended, with a total of 40 arriving by the time the talk began. Many members showed up early to help set up the room, which was made easier by the work that the PGM staff had done before we arrived. Several also stayed afterward to help with cleanup. All of their help is greatly appreciated. Before the talk began we held the annual election for the Phoenix Board. The following officers were elected: President/Programs: Ellie Large; Exec. VP: Eric Feldman; Treasurer: Bob Unferth; Secretary: Ellen Martin; Archivist: Marie Britton; 1 yr. Dir: Vicki Caltabiano; 2 yr. Dir.: Nancy Unferth; 3 yr. Dir: Phyllis Smith; Archaeology Advisor - Laurene Montero.

Our speaker was Will G. Russell (Ph.D., ASU), a Historic Preservation Specialist with the Az Dept. of Transportation He gave an interesting talk on Ritual Racing and the Bringing of Rain to North-Central Arizona, explaining how linear ground features called racetracks are defined and discussed their distribution and their similarities and variations between sites. Between 2007 and 2014, Arizona State University’s Racetrack Project located, recorded, and studied these tracks in order to better understand the role of ritual in the region's thirteenth and fourteenth century social changes. Between A.D. 1250 and 1450, a large number of ceremonial racetracks were built at and between villages in north-central Arizona. Originally the racetracks were relatively dispersed, stretching from the Sedona area down to Cave Creek and from the eastern base of the Bradshaw Mountains to the Mazatzal Wilderness. Over time, the racetrack network grew in intensity but became spatially focused atop Perry Mesa, along the middle Agua Fria River.

Because no other forms of communal architecture (such as ballcourts or great kivas) had been identified on Perry Mesa, Dr. Katherine Spielmann and Russell discussed the possibility that these clearings may have filled such a role and developed a research strategy. Russel looked for additional tracks in central Arizona and compared them to similar features elsewhere in an attempt to determine their prehispanic distribution and purpose. Although ceremonial racing has been documented in every Native American group studied in the historic Southwest, ethnographic research showed that the linear features of Perry Mesa were most similar to permanent ceremonial racetracks in the Eastern Pueblo (northern Rio Grande) region. Ritual racing was a form of prayer, most often for rain, and can be seen as a form of self-sacrifice; runners demonstrated their commitment to the community through performance and suffering. Racing also helped to integrate communities: clans, moieties, kiva groups, and other societies periodically congregated for ritual races. This reminded individuals that despite various group memberships, they were all part of the same larger community. (For more info, see Keeping Track: Ceremonial Racetracks, Integration, and Change in Central Arizona by Will G. Russell. In Alliance and Landscape on Perry Mesa in the Fourteenth Century, edited by David R. Abbott and Katherine Spielmann, pp. 161-185, University of Utah Press, Salt Lake City.

Upcoming Meetings:

Feb. 12 Matt Peeples, Ph.D., ASU, Archaeological Fakes and Frauds in Arizona and Beyond

March 12 Garry Cantley, BIA, Archaeological Resources and Crime Prevention and the Site Stewards

Field Trips:

Jan. 13: Docent-led tour of Teotihuacan: City of Water, City of Fire exhibit at the Phoenix Art Museum. Tour limited to 15. This tour is an AAS field trip. Anyone who goes on it must be an AAS member for 2019. If you did not sign up at the December meeting, you must sign up in advance by emailing Phyllis at 76desert@gmail.com. If you have not signed up in advance, you won't be allowed to join the tour. (You will also have to sign the AAS release/waiver form before going on this tour.)

Jan. 21: MLK Day - Scott Wood is taking us to Deer Flat on the worst road we've ever seen. Open to all AAS members, with Phoenix chapter members having priority.

--Ellie Large

December 2018 Chapter News

December 11th Meeting: Our Holiday Potluck begins at 6 pm with meats, rolls and beverages provided by the chapter. If joining us for the potluck, please bring a side dish or dessert to share. After dinner there will be a short business meeting including elections for the 2019 Chapter Board.

We could use some help setting up for the dinner after 5 pm (moving tables and chairs - bring your gloves). We could also use some help putting on the tablecloths and decorating - the people who came early last year were a big help!

The presentation will begin about 7:30 pm. Our speaker will be Will G. Russell, Ph. D, a Historic Preservation Specialist with the Az Dept. of Transportation; his topic is: Ritual Racing and the Bringing of Rain to North-Central Arizona. Between A.D. 1250 and 1450, a large number of ceremonial racetracks were built at and between villages in north-central Arizona. Originally the racetracks were relatively dispersed, stretching from the Sedona area down to Cave Creek and from the Bradshaw Mountains to the Mazatzal Wilderness. Over time, the racetrack network grew in intensity but became spatially focused atop Perry Mesa, along the middle Agua Fria River. Between 2007 and 2014, Arizona State University’s Racetrack Project located, recorded, and studied these tracks in order to better understand the role of ritual in the region's thirteenth and fourteenth century social changes.

Dr. Russell has worked in Southwestern archaeology for over a decade. His research focused on the Mimbres region of southwestern New Mexico and the Perry Mesa region of north-central Arizona. His research examined the early development of social inequality through the lens of ritual practice. Will is a Historic Preservation Specialist for the Arizona Department of Transportation. He is also an Adjunct Professor with Arizona State University and a Research Associate with the Center for Archaeology and Diversity.

November Meeting: The speaker for our Nov. 13th meeting was Pearce Paul Creasman, PhD, UA, who talked about Ancient Egypt's 25th Dynasty and The Pyramid Field/Royal Cemetery at Nuri, Sudan. After ancient Egypt’s New Kingdom collapsed, kings from Nubia unified the lands and led the empire out of the doldrums to its last flourish of pharaonic greatness. The Nubian kings seem to have originated from the little-known site of Napata in modern Sudan, today a UNESCO World Heritage Site. With some 20 existing pyramids, Nuri is the largest royal Napatan cemetery; it served as the resting place for at least 60 kings and queens. The first royal buried was the biblical pharaoh Taharqa, savior of Jerusalem (2 Kings 19:9), and his descendants used the site for four more centuries. Although Nuri was partly excavated in the 1910s, it remains poorly published and largely unexplored. As a result of climate change and the construction of dams along the Nile, rising groundwater has submerged many of its tombs, likely including all of the subterranean pyramid chambers of the kings. At least four kings’ burial chambers remain unexcavated, albeit underwater. His lecture told the tale of the pharaohs of ancient Egypt’s 25th Dynasty, and the current effort by the University of Arizona to better understand them via underwater archaeological excavations in the pyramid field of Nuri.

January Meeting: Jan. 8, Charles Adams, Ph.D., ASM, 13,000 years of Migration in the Homol'ovi area.

Field Trips:

Dec. 2 Field trip to Oatman Point led by Phyllis Smith.

Jan. 21 (MLK Day) Scott Wood is taking us to Deer Flat on the worst road we've ever seen. Phoenix Chapter members have priority, but they should sign up as soon as possible.

Upcoming Conference at PGM: The first Southern Southwest Archaeological Conference will be held on Jan. 11 & 12. Dr. Randall McGuire, SUNY Binghamton, will give the keynote talk at 6 pm on Jan. 11. For the schedule of talks and to register, go to their website, sswac.org .

--Ellie Large

Phoenix November Chapter News

November Meeting: The speaker for our Nov. 13th meeting will be Paul Creasman, PhD, UA, who will talk about Ancient Egypt's 25th Dynasty and The Pyramid Field/Royal Cemetery at Nuri, Sudan. After ancient Egypt’s New Kingdom collapsed, kings from Nubia unified the lands and led the empire out of the doldrums to its last flourish of pharaonic greatness. The Nubian kings seem to have originated from the little-known site of Napata in modern Sudan, today a UNESCO World Heritage Site. With some 20 existing pyramids, Nuri is the largest royal Napatan cemetery; it served as the resting place for at least 60 kings and queens. The first royal buried was the biblical pharaoh Taharqa, savior of Jerusalem (2 Kings 19:9), and his descendants used the site for four more centuries. Although Nuri was partly excavated in the 1910s, it remains poorly published and largely unexplored. As a result of climate change and the construction of dams along the Nile, rising groundwater has submerged many of its tombs, likely including all of the subterranean pyramid chambers of the kings. At least four kings’ burial chambers remain unexcavated. This lecture tells the tale of the pharaohs of ancient Egypt’s 25th Dynasty, and the current effort by the University of Arizona to better understand them via underwater archaeological excavations in the pyramid field of Nuri.

Dr. Creasman is an Associate Professor of Egyptian Archaeology and Dendrochronology at the University of Arizona as well as the Curator of the Laboratory of Tree-Ring Research and the Director of the University of Arizona Egyptian Expedition. His research interests include the study human and environment interactions, maritime archaeology, dendroarchaeology, and Egyptian archaeology. He received his B.A. in Anthropology and Philosophy from the University of Maine in 2003, his M.A. in Anthropology from Texas A&M University in 2005 and his Ph.D. in Anthropology & Nautical Archaeology from Texas A&M University in 2010.

October 9th Meeting: Michael E. Smith, Ph.D., ASU, gave us a short history of Teotihuacan, including the results of several tunnels that archaeologists have recently dug under the pyramids. The talk was intended to provide background for the current exhibit at the Phoenix Art Museum, Teotihuacan: City of Water, City of Fire, a major traveling exhibition which will be on display in the Steele Gallery from Oct. 6 to Jan. 27, 2019. The audience enjoyed the talk and asked numerous questions afterwards.

--Ellie Large

October Phoenix Chapter News

October 9th Meeting: Michael E. Smith, Ph.D., ASU, presents Teotihuacan: A World City in Ancient Mexico. "World city” indicates a city in touch with the world, operating on a world level; for ancient Mexico, the “world” was Mesoamerica. This talk will explore the art and archaeology of this ancient “world city” and will focus on recent archaeological research that is transforming our views of the city. This talk is intended to provide background for the current exhibit at the Phoenix Art Museum, Teotihuacan: City of Water, City of Fire, a major traveling exhibition which will be on display in the Steele Gallery from Oct. 6 to Jan. 27, 2019.

Teotihuacan stood out in Classic-period Mesoamerica for its size, complexity, and influence in distant areas; Teotihuacan traded and interacted with all corners of Mesoamerica, and the city held great prestige for the distant Maya kings. Teotihuacan was the first, largest, and most influential metropolis on the American continent. In its heyday between 100 BCE and 650 CE, the city encompassed an area of 15 square kilometers with a population of around 140,000. Who inhabited Teotihuacan, its original name, and why it was abandoned are still unknowns. When the Aztecs came into the Valley of Mexico from the north in the first half of the 14th century, they discovered its ruins, named it Teotihuacan, the place where the gods were born, and used it as the setting for their own creation myth.

Michael E. Smith, Ph.D., has been a Professor in the ASU School of Human Evolution & Social Change since 2005 and became Director of the ASU Teotihuacan Research Laboratory in 2015. He has directed numerous fieldwork projects at Aztec sites in central Mexico, pioneering the excavation of houses and the study of daily life. He has published six books and numerous scholarly articles on the Aztecs, including The Aztecs (3rd ed., 2012), Aztec City-State Capitals (2008), At Home with the Aztecs (2016), and Rethinking the Aztec Economy (co-edited by Nichols, Berdan & Smith, 2017).

Upcoming Field Trip: Eric Feldman is setting up a group tour to see the Teotihuacan: City of Water, City of Fire exhibit at the Phoenix Art Museum sometime between Oct. 6, 2018 and Jan. 27, 2019.

September 11th Meeting: Retired National Park Service Superintendent Charles R. “Butch” Farabee presented El Camino del Diablo, The Devil's Highway (also called The Road of the Dead). Having driven this remote, four-wheel drive road six times, he presented a good overall view of this fascinating but humbling area and the life-sustaining granite rock tank pools, called tinajas, hidden at the base of nondescript mountains along the trail. The most important of these life-sustaining pools was the Tinajas Altas, where hundreds of bedrock mortars, as well as numerous petroglyphs, pictographs and related evidence testify to the use of this area, probably from even long before Father Kino, De Anza and then, Spanish miners, passed nearby. Hundreds of graves were once scattered along El Camino but are now mostly gone, obliterated by time, wind, sand, and often, man. In Arizona, The Devil’s Highway is now used mainly by the U.S. Border Patrol. It traverses Organ Pipe Cactus National Monument, the Cabeza Prieta National Wildlife Refuge, and the Barry M. Goldwater Bombing Range, with little sections of land owned by the State of Arizona and the U. S. Bureau of Land Management, thrown in.

Fall Meeting Schedule:

Nov. 13 Paul Creasman, PhD, UA, Ancient Egypt's 25th Dynasty and The Pyramid Field/Royal Cemetery at Nuri, Sudan.

Dec. 11 Holiday Potluck and 2019 Elections. Speaker TBD.

Upcoming Events:

Oct. 3: 6:30 pm, PGM, Phoenix, Talk: City of Phoenix Archaeology: Why we do what we do, by. Laurene Montero, Phoenix City Archaeologist.

Oct. 19: 2018 Annual Arizona Archaeological Council Fall Conference, Arizona History Museum, Tucson

Oct. 20: AAS Fall State Meeting, Mazatzal Hotel & Casino, Payson, Az

--Ellie Large

September Phoenix Chapter News

Retired National Park Service Superintendent Charles R. “Butch” Farabee presents El Camino del Diablo, The Devil's Highway. Also called The Road of the Dead, The Devil's Highway is a brutal, 200-mile long, prehistoric and historic route from northern Sonora to Yuma and then on to the mission areas of California. Used for at least a millennium by Native Americans, conquistadores, Father Kino, miners, undocumented aliens, and modern-day adventurers, the highway crosses three large federal areas in the extreme desert of southern Arizona. Approx. 400 to 2,000 lives have been lost traveling along our very own, isolated and wild part of the Arizona-Mexico border, most from heat, exposure, and a desperate lack of water. Join Butch Farabee, who has driven this remote, four-wheel drive road six times, for a part history, part travelogue, and part informational overview of this fascinating but humbling area.

Early travelers on El Camino - on foot, horseback and wagon until the first automobile in 1915 - often began in Caborca, Sonora, 40 miles south of the border. Leaving this then frontier village and its permanent little river, they encountered only one more certain source of water between there and the Colorado River. If lucky, they could find water further on, standing in a handful of granite rock tanks, hidden at the base of nondescript mountains along the next 125 miles. The most important of these life-sustaining pools was the Tinajas Altas. Hundreds of bedrock mortars, as well as numerous petroglyphs, pictographs and related evidence, testify to the use of this area, probably even long before Father Kino, De Anza and then, Spanish miners, passed nearby. Graves, possibly numbering in the hundreds, were once scattered along El Camino but are now mostly gone, obliterated by time, wind, sand, and often, man. In Arizona, The Devil’s Highway, now used mainly by the U.S. Border Patrol, traverses Organ Pipe Cactus National Monument, the Cabeza Prieta National Wildlife Refuge, and the Barry M. Goldwater Bombing Range, with little sections of land owned by the State of Arizona and the U. S. Bureau of Land Management, thrown in.

Charles R. “Butch” Farabee grew up in Tucson, was very active in Scouting and the out-of-doors; he graduated from Tucson High School in 1960 and then the University of Arizona. He has a Bachelor of Science in Zoology and a Master of Arts in Public Administration and is a graduate of the FBI Academy. He spent 35 years with the National Park Service as a field ranger and then superintendent in 10 different park areas including Sequoia, Grand Canyon, Glen Canyon, Lake Mead, Death Valley, Yosemite, Glacier and Washington, DC. He has had four books published but is mostly just the very proud father of two sons and their families. He has driven this remote, four-wheel drive road six times, and will give us a part-history, part-travelogue, and part-informational overview of this fascinating but humbling area.

Fall Meeting Schedule:

Oct. 9: Michael E. Smith, Ph.D., ASU, Teotihuacan: A World City in Ancient Mexico. "World city” indicates a city in touch with the world, operating on a world level; for ancient Mexico, the “world” was Mesoamerica. The exhibit Teotihuacan: City of Water, City of Fire is coming to the Phoenix Art Museum, Oct. 6, 2018 - Jan. 27, 2019. We are setting up a group tour.

Nov. 13: Paul Creasman, PhD, UA, Ancient Egypt's 25th Dynasty and The Pyramid Field/Royal Cemetery at Nuri, Sudan.

Dec. 11: Holiday Potluck and 2019 Elections. Speaker TBD.

--Ellie Large

March Phoenix Chapter News

March Meeting: The speaker for our March 13th meeting will be Todd Bostwick, Ph.D.; his topic is 15,000 Years of Archaeology on Sicily: Cultural Crossroads of the Mediterranean. The island of Sicily has a rich archaeological heritage dating back to the Upper Pleistocene, when Sicily was connected to the mainland, allowing humans and animals to migrate to the region, and numerous caves contain their cave art. Later Neolithic farmers made beautiful incised pottery and participated in extensive trade networks, including obsidian from two nearby islands. During the Bronze Age, thousands of tombs were cut into the limestone cliffs, providing insight into ancient concepts of the afterlife. Around 700 BC, substantial Phoenician and Greek colonies were established; their ruins contain some the best preserved Greek temples in existence today. Roman ruins are also well represented, including the famous villa of Piazza Armerina, where hundreds of remarkable mosaic floors were preserved, depicting the daily life of Roman royalty.

Dr. Bostwick has been conducting archaeological research in the Southwest for 37 years and was the Phoenix City Archaeologist for 21 years. He is now the Director of Archaeology at the Verde Valley Archaeology Center. He has an MA in Anthropology and a PhD in History from ASU, and taught classes at both ASU and NAU for several years. He has published numerous books and articles on Southwest archaeology and history, and his projects have received awards from the National Park Service, the Arizona Governor’s Archaeology Advisory Commission, and the Arizona Archaeological Society. More importantly, he visits archaeological sites around the world and always documents his travels with photographs and research so that he can provide us with an entertaining and educational experience.

February Meeting: Aaron Wright, Ph.D., presented The Western Range of the Red-on-Buff Culture, Redux. He explained the history of archaeological research on the western boundary of the Hohokam area between the prehistoric Colorado River peoples and the Hohokam who lived along the Gila and Salt Rivers. Both groups produced paddle-and-anvil buffwares, and in some time periods groups from the Colorado River lived alongside the Hohokam in the same villages, probably intermarrying. In more recent historic times the Pee-Posh (Opa or Cocomaricopa) took refuge with the Akimel O'otam (Pima) on the Gila River and are co-resident with them on the Gila River Indian Reservation and on the Salt River Pima-Maricopa Indian Reservation.

April Book Sale: Each year we conduct several fund-raising events to benefit the Pueblo Grande Museum. We will have a book sale at our April 10th meeting to help members dispose of the numerous books, journals and magazines they have acquired through the years or to pick up the volumes missing from their collection. So bring all your unwanted bounty of books to the April meeting!

Hikes & Field Trips:

April 22nd Field trip to Tumamoc Hill. The trip costs $300 and is limited to 20 people, so the cost would be $15 a person if we have 20 people. We have to pay in advance so checks should be made out to the chapter prior to April 22. AAS members only. Details will be forthcoming. To sign up send Phyllis an email at 76desert@gmail.com.

Feb. 10th Field Trip to Hummingbird Point. The trip to Hummingbird Point was led by Jolanta Sokol and Michael Clinton. Nine people went including Jolanta and Michael.

Upcoming Events:

March 1, 7 pm, SWAT Meeting, AzMNH, Mesa: Talk by Chris Caseldine on The analysis of a possible Polvoron phase pithouse on top of the Mesa Grande platform mound.

March 5-8, 5th Tri-National Symposium: Celebrating the Sonoran Desert, Ajo

March 6, 5:30 pm, Archaeology Café: The Salt River and Irrigation: 1,000 Years of Bringing the Valley to Life by geoarchaeologist Gary Huckleberry, Ph.D.

March 10, All day: Archaeology Expo at Arizona Museum of Natural History, Mesa.

Spring Meeting Schedule:

Apr. 10 Ethan Ortega, Archaeologist, Coronado Historic Site, Bernalillo, NM. False Truths, Restored Ruins, and New Artifacts: Looking Beyond the Oxymoronic Past of Coronado Historic Site through Field Work

May 8 Dan Liponi, Kumeyaay/Patayan pictographs w/book signing. See ww.larumorosarockart.com.

--Ellie Large

February Phoenix Chapter News

February Meeting: Aaron Wright, Ph.D., will present The Western Range of the Red-on-Buff Culture, Redux. Prehistoric Southwestern Arizona is the interface between Patayan and Hohokam material culture and settlement patterns and, presumably, the ways-of-life that are tied to each of those traditions. Still, the western frontier of the Hohokam World remains little studied and is therefore poorly defined. This presentation reviews the history of research on this topic, revisiting the development and eventual demise of primary Hohokam villages along the lower Gila River. In contemporary perspective, this historical trajectory raises important questions about ethnic diversity, co-residence, and conflict.

Aaron is a Preservation Archaeologist at Archaeology Southwest, Tucson. He earned an MA in 2006 and a PhD in 2011, both from Washington State University. His research is currently focused on the Hohokam and Patayan traditions in southwestern Arizona. He is specifically interested in the cultural landscape of the lower Gila River, which is renowned for a unique mixture of Patayan and Hohokam settlements, dense galleries of world-class rock art, and numerous enigmatic geoglyphs. Aaron is the lead researcher on Archaeology Southwest’s long-term goal of establishing a Great Bend of the Gila National Monument. He is a co-editor of Leaving Mesa Verde: Peril and Change in the Thirteenth-Century Southwest (University of Arizona Press, 2010) and author of Religion on the Rocks: Hohokam Rock Art, Ritual Practice, and Social Transformation (University of Utah Press, 2014), which won the 2012 Don D. and Catherine S. Fowler Book Prize. His most recent co-authored work is the The Great Bend of the Gila: Contemporary Native American Connections to an Ancestral Landscape (Archaeology Southwest, 2016).

January Meeting: Chris Garraty, Assistant Director of Cultural Resources for Logan Simpson, gave a very interesting talk explaining how recent archaeological and historical investigations at the Hohokam site of La Plaza revealed evidence that a Sedentary period platform mound once stood in the north part of ASU’s Tempe campus near Wells Fargo Arena. He showed us a sequence of maps from the late 1800s and early 1900s that documented three Hohokam platform mounds within La Plaza. These mounds had been leveled by the early to mid-1900s, and archaeologists could only approximate their locations based on old maps of dubious accuracy. An earlier investigation showed tentative evidence for a platform mound in the north campus location, and a more recent investigation corroborated and refined that information. Multiple lines of evidence were used to determine the location of the platform mound: examination of historical photographs, a reconstruction of the ancient surface grade, and a comparison of ancillary features from known platform mound contexts. The analysis of ancillary features beneath and adjacent to the inferred mound footprint provided new insights into the organization of public space in La Plaza and, more broadly, the mobilization of labor for communal construction projects in Hohokam society.

Spring Meeting Schedule:

Mar. 13 Todd Bostwick, VVAC, 5,000 Years of Archaeology in Sicily: Crossroads of the Mediterranean

Apr. 10 Ethan Ortega, NPS Ranger, Coronado Historic Site, Bernalillo, NM. False Truths, Restored Ruins, and New Artifacts: Looking Beyond the Oxymoronic Past of Coronado Historic Site through Field Work

May 8 Dan Liponi, Kumeyaay/Patayan pictographs w/book signing. See ww.larumorosarockart.com.

--Ellie Large

January Chapter News

January Meeting: Chris Garraty, Ph.D., Assistant Director of Cultural Resources, Logan Simpson, will present Relocating the Platform Mound at La Plaza: Recent Archaeological Investigations on ASU’s Tempe Campus. Recent archaeological and historical investigations at the Hohokam site of La Plaza revealed evidence that a Classic period platform mound once stood in the north part of ASU’s Tempe campus near Wells Fargo Arena. Maps from the late 1800s and early 1900s documented three Hohokam platform mounds within La Plaza. These mounds were leveled by the early to mid-1900s, and archaeologists can only approximate their locations based on old maps of dubious accuracy. An earlier investigation showed tentative evidence for a platform mound in the north campus location, and a more recent investigation corroborates and refines that finding. Multiple lines of evidence were used to determine the location of the platform mound: examination of historical photographs, a reconstruction of the ancient surface grade, and a comparison of ancillary features from known platform mound contexts. Analysis of ancillary features beneath and adjacent to the inferred mound footprint provides new insights into the organization of public space in La Plaza and, more broadly, the mobilization of labor for communal construction projects in Hohokam society.

Chris received his PhD in Anthropology from ASU in 2006 and his BA in Anthropology from Temple University in 1994 and is currently an adjunct faculty member at ASU. While at ASU he worked on the Teotihuacan Mapping Project with Dr. George Cowgill and on the Mixtequilla Archaeological Project in Veracruz with Dr. Barbara Stark. After receiving his PhD he worked as a Project Director at Statistical Research in Tucson for several years and as a Project Manager for the Gila River Indian Community Cultural Resource Management Program for several more years before joining Logan Simpson. He has authored and co-authored numerous journal articles on his work in Arizona and Mexico, and co-edited with Dr. Stark the book Archaeological Approaches to Market Exchange in Ancient Societies published by the University Press of Colorado in May 2010.

December Meeting: Our Holiday Potluck featured ham, delicious shredded beef, tasty meatballs, and a variety of great side dishes and desserts. It was well attended and the meal was followed by an excellent presentation on Montezuma Castle: New Discoveries and Native American Traditional Knowledge at Montezuma Castle National Monument by Matt Guebard, an NPS Ranger stationed at Tuzigoot. Matt explained how he combined archaeological information with Native American oral histories to interpret the abandonment of Castle A and Montezuma Castle, two large pueblo sites located near Camp Verde. Archaeological data and traditional knowledge suggest that both sites were abandoned following a large and destructive fire at Castle A. Archaeological evidence suggests this event occurred in the late 14th century and included arson and physical violence, both of which were corroborated by Native American histories.

A drawing was held at the end of the night for a special door prize as well as the table decorations. Laurene Montero, our Chapter Advisor, conducted the election of officers for next year's board. Our board for 2018 is President/Programs - Ellie Large; Exec. VP/Cert. Rep. - Marie Britton; Treasurer - Bob Unferth; Secretary - Ellen Martin; 1 yr. Dir/Membership - Nancy Unferth; 2 yr. Dir./Girl Scouts - Vicki Erhart; 3 yr. Dir/Field Trips - Phyllis Smith. If anyone would like to join the board or to attend a board meeting, please call or email one of our current board members. Contact information is on the Phoenix Chapter page of the AAS website, azarchsoc.org/Phoenix.

December Hike: On Dec. 16th several members joined the Rim Country Chapter to hike to the Zulu petroglyph site near Rye as well as the Oxbow Ruin. The hike was led by J. J. Golio.

Obituaries: We found out recently via an Arizona Republic obituary that long-time member Don Ketchum passed away on Sept. 29, 2017, and that his wife, Jeanne, also a long-time member, had passed away on Nov. 15, 2014. They were very active members and always helped out at the Chili Booth and the Park of the Four Waters cleanup.

Spring Meeting Schedule:

Feb. 13 Aaron Wright, ASW, The Western Range of the Red-on-Buff Culture, Redux

Mar. 13 Todd Bostwick, VVAC, 5,000 Years of Archaeology in Sicily: Crossroads of the Mediterranean

May 8 Dan Liponi, Kumeyaay/Patayan pictographs w/book signing. See www.larumorosarockart.com.

--Ellie Large