Feb 24R. J. Sliva, Desert Archaeology's senior flaked stone analyst, shows how revisiting curated collections can answer new questions. One of the first questions people usually ask archaeologists—after “What’s the coolest thing you’ve ever found?”—is “Where does all the stuff go?” The short answer is “to the museum,” which is our…
Feb 10Homer Thiel reports this week on recognition for the Guevavi field school. The Gender and Minority Affairs Committee was established to foster diversity and equity within the Society for Historical Archaeology and promote consideration of issues relevant to under-represented groups. The field school competition awards programs that increase participant diversity and/or…
Feb 3This week's blog is by Mike Brack, Desert Archaeology's mapping director and licensed UAV airman. I am fascinated with the technological change I have witnessed over a 25-year career of archaeology, cartography, and land surveying. From plane table and alidade to transit to electronic total station to the modern standard…
Jan 27R. J. Sliva takes you on a tour of the Desert Archaeology authors bookshelf. Do you remember being a kid and getting so engrossed in what you were doing—reading a book, building a Lego tower, setting up elaborate dioramas with plastic dinosaurs—that you completely lost track of time and looked…
Jan 20Incoming president Sarah Herr writes this week's blog. The featured image (top) is a reconstruction of the native settlement near the Spanish mission and mission garden at the base of A-Mountain in Tucson, by our own Rob Ciaccio. On Tuesday, I became majority owner and president of Desert Archaeology, Inc.…
Jan 13This week's blog is written by Homer Thiel, Desert Archaeology's historical archaeology expert. Hidden beneath the streets, sidewalks, homes, and businesses of an eight-block area located across the street from downtown campus of the Pima Community College in Tucson is the historic Court Street Cemetery. It opened in 1875, after…
Jan 6R. J. Sliva, who has done the compulsory lithics graduate student curing-hides-with-brains experiment, recounts the more informative experimental archaeology conducted by Desert staff. Some men simply want to watch the world burn... particularly when it advances archaeological knowledge. Traditional technologies expert and long-time Desert associate Allen Denoyer led the team…
Dec 30R.J. Sliva mulls the end of 2016 and what historical preservation means to a community. Legacy. What is a legacy? It’s planting seeds in a garden you never get to see. I wrote some notes at the beginning of a song someone will sing for me. -- “The World Was…
Dec 20R. J. Sliva considers how history and cuisine have intertwined to make Tucson a singular place. This week, as people celebrate a variety of winter holiday traditions with special foods, we turn our attention to an important question. Why does CRM (cultural resources management) archaeology matter? Your answer may run…
Dec 16The La Villa site was one of the largest pre-Classic Hohokam settlements in the Phoenix Basin, covering more than 80 acres between its founding (A.D. 500-650) and abandonment (A.D. 1000-1100). The people who lived here supported themselves through farming, and the site itself was situated within a major network of…