Oct 13Ground stone expert Jenny Adams has more to share about the analysis of disk beads. My previous blog about distinguishing stone from fired-clay disk beads using low-power magnification techniques was just a teaser. There is much more to learn about disk beads—I didn’t even mention the identification of shell disk…
Oct 6Desert Archaeology's ground stone expert, Jenny Adams, explores a different sort of artifact this week--one that poses vexing problems, raises interesting questions, and may or may not even be made of stone. How can something be whole and part of a whole at the same time? The tiny disk bead…
Sep 15This week's blog is written by James Heidke, Desert Archaeology’s senior ceramic analyst. Archaeologists have been studying Hohokam pottery for about 100 years. One might think that we would know everything there is to know about the subject by now, but new discoveries are being made in both museum collections…
Aug 11Desert Archaeology’s historical archaeologist, Homer Thiel, is back this week with a look at adult beverages in the Old Pueblo's past. Wandering through downtown Tucson, you may come across the Independent Distillery at 30 S. Arizona Avenue, located in a historic building across the alley from the under-construction AC Marriot…
Aug 4Desert Archaeology ground stone expert Jenny Adams returns to the blog with a story of a summer road trip that showed her not only the half of the country east of the Mississippi, but several intriguing ancient axe heads as well. This summer, during a tour of states east of…
Jun 16R. J. Sliva, Desert’s senior flaked stone analyst, has thoughts about an often-maligned set of stone artifacts. Think about the last time you used a metal tool. Maybe you sliced up a peach to make your yogurt palatable or fired up a Dremel to carve some stone beads for your…
Jun 2Desert Archaeology’s ceramic analyst Jim Heidke writes this week’s blog. In 1958, four graduate students (Bernard Fontana, William Robinson, Charles Cormack, and Ernest Leavitt, Jr.) took a seminar from Dr. Emil Haury at the University of Arizona. They chose to study historic period Native American pottery, specifically, Papago ceramics. At…
Apr 7Dr. Mary Ownby discusses ceramic petrography. As the resident petrographer for Desert Archaeology, Inc., I am occasionally invited to give guest lectures at field schools, classrooms, and other public venues. I delight in these experiences, but it also reminds me that what I do is largely unknown outside my little world.…
Mar 31Michael 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…
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…