Mar 31
Michael Diehl, Desert Archaeology’s resident paleoethnobotanist, brings us the first installment of an occasional series about the world of flotation samples. Buy a five-pound bag of flour. Dump out the flour. Grab a spade, head out into your yard, and shovel in enough dirt to fill the bag. Fill your…
Mar 24
Sarah Herr details what Desert Archaeology will be up to at the SAA meeting this year. Springtime means the SAAs are coming up again. An essential component of our mission is communicating the results of our research to our colleagues working in the Southwest and beyond, so every year we…
Mar 17
This week’s blog is by Sarah Herr, owner and president of Desert Archaeology. What do you imagine when you think of archaeology sites in the Southwest? Cliff Palace and other dwellings at Mesa Verde, silently keeping watch over the canyon? The towering architecture of Pueblo Bonito, oriented with cosmographic phenomena?…
Mar 9
Homer Thiel explores pithouse architecture and how the most common prehistoric dwellings in southern Arizona changed over time. The illustration at the top is by Robert Ciaccio. For several thousand years people have been constructing pithouses in the Sonoran Desert. Desert Archaeology employees are frequently asked "What is a pithouse?"…
Mar 2
Homer Thiel is Desert Archaeology's historical archaeology expert. He writes this week about our work uncovering the history of Block 91, now the eastern gateway to downtown Tucson, and how the everyday items we found illuminate the lives of the ordinary people who lived and worked there at the turn…
Feb 24
R. 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 10
Homer 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 3
This 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 27
R. 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 20
Incoming 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.…