Jun 7Homer Thiel explores how people living in the ancient Tucson Basin stored their food and goods before the advent of closets and SnapWare. The featured image above is from Rob Ciaccio’s reconstruction of lifeways at Honey Bee Village (see the link at end of this post). Recently a movement has…
Feb 8Desert Archaeology's ground stone analysts, Dr. Jenny Adams and Tessa Branyan, discuss a rare Early Agricultural period artifact type. What do the Las Capas, Los Pozos, Santa Cruz Bend, and Clearwater sites have in common, besides the fact that people lived in these settlements along the Santa Cruz River during…
Aug 10Desert Archaeology shell specialist Chris Lange provides an expanded version of a poster she presented at the 91st annual Pecos Conference (August 9-11, 2018) in Flagstaff, Arizona. Recent excavations at Early Agricultural period sites in the Tucson Basin have produced a number of marine shell ornaments. Sites dating to the…
May 7Dr. Mary Ownby, Desert Archaeology’s ceramic petrographer, discusses the ways petrographic analytical techniques can be applied to samples from very different times and places around the globe. It may seem that pottery in the Southwest and from Egypt would have very little in common beyond the fact that both areas…
Mar 15R. J. Sliva, Homer Thiel, and Jenny Adams discuss a unique collection of artifacts encountered at Los Pozos... and a matching piece found during a later excavation. The Cienega phase of the Early Agricultural period in southern Arizona and northern Sonora lasted from about 800 BC to AD 50. A…
Mar 12Homer Thiel and R. J. Sliva discuss Historic-era arrow points, with photos from recent research in Tucson. Native Americans in Arizona have used projectile points for at least 12,000 years for hunting and warfare. Large, heavy points that tipped darts (long, compound spears) were utilized for much of this time.…
Feb 9Desert Archaeology zooarchaeologist Jenny Waters teams with Homer Thiel this week to explore the go-to protein source for ancient inhabitants of the Sonoran Desert. Content advisory: this post contains a historic photograph of the aftermath of a jackrabbit hunt. Ten years ago Desert Archaeology conducted excavations at a portion of…
Nov 30Dr. Jenny Adams follows up her mano/metate identification blog with a discussion of use-wear analysis on ground stone tools. One of the tools I have in my analysis toolbox is use-wear analysis. Use-wear analysis relies on both macroscopic and microscopic observations to recognize how tools were used. "Wear" is generally…
Nov 16Dr. Jenny Adams is Desert Archaeology's ground stone analyst, and is recognized both nationally and internationally as the authority in the field of ground stone technology. This week she talks about the basic tools of food grinding. When I first learned about manos and metates used in the U.S. Southwest…
Nov 3Desert Archaeology paleoethnobotanist Dr. Michael Diehl joins up with historical archaeologist Homer Thiel to discuss Nicotiana sp. and its use through time in southern Arizona. In January 1964, Smoking and Health: Report of the Advisory Committee to the Surgeon General of the United States shocked American citizens by documenting the…