Aug 16Dr. Mary Ownby, Desert’s resident ceramic petrographer, discusses her recent ceramic characterization study in northeastern Colorado, which was published this summer in the Plains Anthropologist journal. When we think of ancient pottery making, we often picture a person sitting quietly, enjoying their craft near their house in a small village.…
Aug 9Homer Thiel talks about the Hardy Site and what the structures and artifacts recorded there teach us about Hohokam lifeways in the eastern Tucson Basin. The word Hohokam refers to the archaeological culture that existed in the Sonoran Desert from about AD 500 to 1450. The Hohokam are well known…
Jul 27Homer Thiel takes a long view of Downtown, detailing the traces of people who lived in the area thousands of years before Europeans arrived in what is now southern Arizona. Hidden beneath the streets, sidewalks, parking lots, and buildings of downtown Tucson are traces of our community's Ancestral Native American…
Jul 19Homer Thiel discusses a long-celebrated late summer festival in Tucson, and how the tradition of the San Agustín Festival helped us make sense of a dense archaeological deposit near the Historic Pima County Courthouse in downtown Tucson. During the Territorial Period (1856-1912), residents of Tucson celebrated three festivals. The San…
Jun 29Historical archaeologist Homer Thiel comes to the rescue with tales of cold, sweet historical relief from the heat. Tucson and much of the rest of the Southwestern United States are undergoing record-breaking heat. In was hot in the past too, especially in early Territorial period (1856-1912) Tucson. One way to…
Jan 26Homer Thiel recounts some of the upheavals that affected life in Tucson at the time of Mexican independence. This year, 2021, marks the 200th anniversary of Mexican Independence from Spain, which took place in September 1821. Tucson was on the northern Mexican frontier at the time, with three small communities…
Oct 22During the Presidio (1775-1856) and early Territorial (1856-early 1900s) periods, family members and friends cared for the bodies of deceased people in Tucson. Local carpenters nailed together coffins, sometimes decorating them with paint and fabric. Religious leaders or friends conducted the funeral, and then the bodies were buried in the…
Aug 12The upcoming opening of a new building prompts Desert Archaeology project director Mike Diehl to revisit an early Tucson architect, his brickyard, and the workers who made the bricks that built city landmarks. In Autumn 2020, the Monier Building, a mixed-use 122 unit residential and 13,000 square foot commercial space,…
Aug 3Desert Archaeology project director Erina Gruner’s recent doctoral dissertation explored the exchange of ritual paraphernalia and exotic trade goods during the Chacoan and post-Chacoan periods (AD 875–1300) in the San Juan Basin, Here, she discusses the exchange of abalone shell by groups living in Arizona and New Mexico a thousand years…
Jun 3Desert Archaeology crew chief Caleb E. Ferbrache explains how electrons trapped in rock can be used to date archaeological deposits--and why, unlike the more familiar carbon dating, OSL allows dating in the absence of preserved organic material. Most people know that archaeologists regularly use carbon-14 (also called radiocarbon) to date…