May 2012 Ancient Southwest Lectures in NM

NM Lectures only, excerpted from notice via ASNM-L@LIST.UNM.EDU

May 7, 6:00 PM: Santa Fe Lecture Series: "And the Kitchen Sink, Too! The (Almost) Complete Excavation of a Pueblo II (c. 1050 AD) Household on White Mesa in San Juan County, Utah" by Jonathan Till, Archaeologist, Abajo Archaeology, Bluff, Utah at the Santa Fe Hotel, Albuquerque. 

May 8, 6:30 PM: Friends of Tijeras Pueblo Lecture (scroll down page): "A Brief History of Chocolate in the American Southwest" by Patricia L. Crown, Distinguished Professor of Anthropology at UNM, at Sandia Ranger Station (map). [Background reading: history of chocolate]

The recent discovery of chocolate residues in ceramics from Chaco Canyon raises questions about when southwestern populations first obtained chocolate, how they prepared it, and why they consumed this exotic food. This talk examines the use of chocolate in the American Southwest through comparisons with Maya and Aztec chocolate use, and shows how chocolate continued to be an important food into the historic period.

Dr. Crown has conducted field investigations in the Ancestral Pueblo, Mogollon, and Hohokam areas of the American Southwest; she recently directed the analysis of artifacts from the trash mounds at Pueblo Bonito, Chaco Canyon. One result of this research was the recent identification of the first prehispanic cacao (chocolate) north of the Mexican border in ceramics from Chaco Canyon.

May 8, 7:00 PM: Taos Archaeological Society Lecture: "Big Picture Culture History in the Northern Southwest: Language, Culture, Community and Climate" by Dr. Eric Blinman at The El Taoseno Room at the Civic Center on Civic Plaza Drive, Taos, New Mexico. 

May 15, 7:30 PM: Albuquerque Archaeological Society Lecture: "Skeletons of War: Investigating the Patterns of Violence in the Gallina Highlands of northern New Mexico" by Lewis Borck, at Albuquerque Museum of Art and History, 2000 Mountain Road NW, Albuquerque, New Mexico

Prior research into the Gallina culture has focused on the area's seemingly extreme amount of violence and material disconnect from adjacent groups. While the Gallina certainly embody a unique, near enigmatic, cultural development within the northern Southwest, it is only by understanding them in relation to their neighbors that archaeologists can begin to recognize how the Gallina peoples affected, and were affected by, larger regional occurrences. Specifically, the patterns of violence in the Gallina district indicate a movement of people through the landscape of northern New Mexico, likely into the Rio Grande and Rio Chama areas. The Gallina exemplify why archaeologists need to understand peripheral groups in the American Southwest to more fully explain the past.

Lewis Borck has been working in the Southwest for the past six years and has excavated from Chaco Canyon to the Tucson Basin. His work has taken him as far afield as Peru and Honduras, although he always ends up back in the Sonoran/Chihuahuan dust.

Mike Ruggeri's Ancient America Museum Exhibitions, Conferences and Lectures