Sep 26-Oct 2
Crow Canyon Trip: Backcountry Archaeology: Ancient World of the Grand Gulch Region. Jonathan Till and Ben Bellorado, together with Winston Hurst and Joe Pachak, lead this Crow Canyon Archaeological Center week of day hikes. For information, see Crow Canyon's trip description.

 

Abajo Archaeologists Jonathan Till, Mark Bond, and Ben Bellorado presented a paper that summarized the White Mesa Cell 4B Project excavations. The Pecos Conference is an annual event attended by students of Southwestern archaeology.

May 9
Talk by Ben Bellorado: "Experimenting with Prehistoric Agricultural Technologies"
1 pm, Anasazi Heritage Center, Dolores, CO. Part of the Four Corners Lecture Series. 

Apr 14-18
Society for American Archaeology annual meeting, St. Louis, Missouri: 

White Mesa Project assistant field director Ben Bellorado, with Kurt F. Anschuetz and Rory P. Gauthier, presents "Plant Seeds and Village Needs: Modeling Village Agriculture in the Central Mesa Verde and Northern Rio Grande Across the Dimensions of Time and Space": There is no singular way to grow corn, beans, squash, and other economically important crops, such as cotton, in the northern Southwest. Ancestral Pueblo populations in the Central Mesa Verde (CMV) region and the Northern Rio Grande (NRG) developed diverse farming techniques to sustain their communities in the face of ever-changing natural environmental and demographic circumstances. Research undertaken as part of the Village Ecodynamics Project-II is examining the similarities and differences between the agricultural systems upon which the pre-Columbian CMV and NRG Pueblo populations relied. This presentation reviews these farming systems and outlines methods for evaluating their agricultural productivity. 

Field archaeologist Natalie Fast presents a poster, part of a symposium celebrating 10 years of the National Landscape Conservation System, which was established the same day as Canyons of the Ancients National Monument (CANM) in southwest Colorado. CANM has implemented an ambitious program of large block intensive inventories in order to provide information upon which to base and facilitate landscape scale management. These inventories have examined nearly 14,000 acres and documented over 1,200 sites, bringing the total area inventoried on the monument to 26 percent. The new information from these inventories has broadened our understanding of settlement and utilization of this cultural landscape. This poster focuses on three of these inventories, and synthesizes and presents the highlights of the findings. 

More info: SAA's annual meeting.

Mar 16
Talk by Jonathan Till: "The Deep History of White Mesa: Archaeological Investigations at Denison Mines' White Mesa Mill, 2009-2010"
12 noon, Rotary Club, Blanding, Utah
Archaeologist Jonathan Till summarizes recent archaeological research conducted at Denison Mines' White Mesa Mill. This research considers the history of archaeological investigations on the north end of White Mesa, the results of archaeological survey on mill property, and a few of the highlights of current excavations at the mill.

Feb 26
Talk by Ben Bellorado: Rock Art
7 pm, Recapture Lodge, Bluff, Utah. Presented by Design Build Bluff.

Jan 15
Talk by Jonathan Till: "The Landscape and Cosmology of the Bluff Great House: The Sculpting of an Ancient Pueblo Community"
7 pm, Recapture Lodge, Bluff, Utah. Presented by Design Build Bluff.