April 13, 2021

Protecting Greater Chaco: Where We Stand in 2021

  by Paul F. Reed

                                        

Paul Reed has been a Preservation Archaeologist with Archaeology Southwest since 2001. He is based in Taos, New Mexico and still works as the occasional Chaco Scholar at Salmon Ruins, New. Reed’s most recent writing is an edited book (with Gary M. Brown as co-editor) entitled Aztec, Salmon, and the Pueblo Heartland of the Middle San Juan, published in SAR Press’ Popular Series in 2018. He also served as editor (and author of several chapters) on Chaco's Northern Prodigies: Salmon, Aztec, and the Ascendancy of the Middle San Juan Region After AD 1100, published by the University of Utah Press (2008). Reed was also editor (and author of several chapters) of the three-volume, comprehensive report entitled Thirty-Five Years of Archaeological Research at Salmon Ruins, New Mexico published in 2006. His other books – The Puebloan Society of Chaco Canyon (2004) and Foundations of Anasazi Culture (published in 2000; as editor and author) have explored the origins of Puebloan culture and Chaco Canyon.

During the last six years, Reed has been working to protect the Greater Chaco Landscape from the effects of expanded oil-gas development associated with fracking in the Mancos Shale formation. Through a series of meetings and forums with public officials, Tribal leaders, various US Government agencies, and New Mexico’s Congressional delegation, Archaeology Southwest and its partners have focused on expanding protections to sites, traditional cultural places, and fragile landscapes in the greater San Juan Basin. The most recent effort on this front is to partner with the Pueblo of Acoma to complete a focused ethnographic study of Acoma’s connections to the Greater Chaco Landscape.

Among his other interests, Reed leads tours to Salmon and Aztec Ruins, Chaco Canyon, the Chuska Valley, and the Navajo Country, and gives public presentations on different topics in southwestern archaeology and history. Reed has conducted fieldwork and research in the Southwest for more than 30 years. From 1993 to 2001, Reed directed a roads archaeology research program for the Navajo Nation Archaeology Department, Farmington, New Mexico. Reed completed his Bachelor of Arts (1986) and Master of Arts (1989 in anthropology and archaeology) degree at New Mexico State University.

Click here - Part 1

Click here - Part 2

                                              

 March 9th, 2021 

Ongoing Investigations at the BaahKu Archaeological Site

      by Dr. Catrina Banks Whitley

Join us as Dr. Whitley discusses recent excavations of the Baaku site, here in Taos County!

Occupation of the Taos Valley was one of the latest areas inhabited by Ancestral Puebloans and is interpreted as a frontier area. Recent excavations at the BaahKu archaeological site provide an example of an architectural construction unique to the Taos Valley along with unusual abandonment processes. This research presents a comparison between two pit houses in close proximity to each other, to highlight the differences present in the Valley providing evidence for the frontier hypothesis. We will also present a greater geographic architectural analysis for the Taos Valley through time.

Click Here to watch

              

 February 9, 2021

Unraveling the Long Road to the Maize Diet in the Neotropics of Mesoamerica

                                           by Dr. Keith Prufer

                                                                 

Pollen and starch grain evidence indicates that domesticated maize (Zea mays subspecies mays) first appears in the Balsas region of Mexico by ~9,000 years ago, but few data exist on when corn became an integral part of the human diet in Mesoamerica.  In this talk I present new data for a transect spanning 9,500-1,200 years ago of stable isotopes of carbon showing the adoption of maize was gradual, later than might be expected, and resulted in a maize dependent diet in the neotropics by 4000 B.P.

Dr. Keith M Prufer is a Professor of Anthropology and director of the Environmental Archaeology Laboratory at the University of New Mexico.  For 25 years he has conducted excavations in the Maya Lowlands focusing on human-environmental relationships.  His newest project is investigating the Paleoindian and Archaic origins of humans in the neotropics through studies of diet, technology, and genomics.

Click Here 

  January 12, 2021

Mimbres and Paquimé

by Dr. Steve Lekson

Two Part Presentation

   Part 1   

Part 2