Anytime is a terrific time to join the GCAS! Membership runs from January through December of the current year. Our individual membership is $20 and our family membership is $30. Click Here to join online via our PayPal link; or if you’re Old Skool, you can download, print, fill out our Membership form, and send it with a check by mail to: Grant County Archaeological Society, PO Box 1713, Silver City, NM 88062. Thank you for joining us!
Fill your calendar by scrolling down through all these upcoming events. Plan ahead but be mindful that any of the following events may be postponed or cancelled on very short notice for any number of weather-related or other reasons.
Watch this Events Page for details on our GCAS general meetings, held in-person or alternatively online via Zoom.
Mimbres Archaeological Research and Education Center (MAREC)
Please visit the GCAS at the Mimbres Archaeological Research and Education Center (MAREC) located in the historic Wood House at the Mimbres Culture Heritage Site. The GCAS is working in our library and lab/workroom in the Wood House’s ground floor. We welcome donations and volunteers so that we may continue expanding and improving the GCAS’s resource materials and educational programs. If you’d like to volunteer email us for ideas of the projects and events where we need you the most. [Photo: Mattocks Site/Mimbres Culture Heritage Site. Wood House, center. © Mitchell Clinton, Mitchell Clinton Photography. All Rights Reserved.]
Now thru December 18, 2026: “Rooms of the NAN Ranch” Exhibit at WNMU Museum
The 2026 summer interns trained by Archaeology Southwest and the WNMU Museum prepared an exhibit of never-before-seen artifacts and photographs from four civic-ceremonial rooms at the NAN Ranch archaeological site.
Next GCAS Field Trip: Sunday, November 8, 2026
Torie Grass and Eduardo Arguello will lead a field trip to Beehive Cave near Virden, NM. Meet at the Murray Ryan Visitor Center at 9:00am to carpool. Its a rocky road but an interesting formation with rock shelters, pictographs and rock mortars and possible ancient terracing. The Visitor Center is located at 201 N Hudson St. in Silver City.
November 10-18, 2026: Jornada Region Tour
For information, contact David Greenwald at dgreenwald@tularosa.net
Wednesday, November 18, 2026, Noon – 1:00 PM: Talking to the Rain: Rock Art and the Rio Grande Tradition in the Lower Chihuahuan Desert
A WILL “Lunch & Learn” presentation. Polly Schaafsma, Santa Fe archaeologist, and leading authority on pre-Hispanic Indian rock imagery and kiva murals, speaks about her latest book, Talking to the Rain: Paintings and Carvings on Stone in Chihuahuan Desert Landscapes. This presentation will address petroglyphs and rock paintings in the Lower Chihuahuan Desert made by desert farmers between ca. 900-1400+ CE. Comprising a distinctive complex in regard to both style and content and in general referred to as the “Jornada Style,” it consists of masks or faces, a goggle-eyed rain deity, ritual scenes or performances, a rich selection of rain symbols and metaphors, a wide variety of local fauna, as well as representations of the Horned and Feathered Serpent. Pictorial Mimbres pottery designs are a sub-set of this art complex. The Jornada Style ideology was later adopted by the Ancestral Pueblos to the north largely following the collapse of Pueblo communities in the late 1200s. The Jornada Style shaped what is often regarded today as Pueblo art and cosmology featuring kachinas as well as pottery, cotton metaphors and landscape symbolism that is characteristic of contemporary Pueblo ceremonialism and rain rituals.
FREE and Open to the Public! At the ABC Room of the WNMU Besse-Forward Global Resource Center (corner of 12th and Kentucky, Silver City NM). Zoom link available throught he WILL website: https://will.community/lunchlearn
Next GCAS Meeting: Wednesday, November 18, 2026, 6:00 PM (ZOOM ONLY – link below):
A short business meeting will be followed by a presentation by Michael Searcy on “Research on the Frontiers of the Greater Southwest.”
Over the past 20 years, Mike Searcy has been conducting research on the peripheries of what is known as the Greater Southwest. In Utah, Idaho, and Nevada, he has focused on the Fremont archaeological tradition. He’s also excavated several sites in Chihuahua, Mexico, associated with the ancient Casas Grandes people. Like the Ancestral Puebloans, Hohokam, and Mimbres, the Fremont and Casas Grandes people lived in foreboding desert environments, eventually converted to maize agriculture, lived in pithouses, and painted beautiful designs on their pottery, including symbolic motifs used elsewhere in the Southwest. This presentation will discuss how his research on the frontiers aligns with the better-known cultures of the Greater Southwest.
Michael T. Searcy is a professor of anthropology and chair of the Department of Anthropology at Brigham Young University. He was formerly the director of the New World Archaeological Foundation. Mike has worked in the U.S. Southwest/Northwest Mexico and Guatemala for more than twenty years, with research focused on the Fremont and Casas Grandes archaeological cultures and the modern Maya. He is author of The Life-Giving Stone: Ethnoarchaeology of Maya Metates (2011) and Archaeological Structuration (2025). He also co-authored Hinterlands to Cities: The Archaeology of Northwest Mexico and Its Vecinos (2022) with Matthew C. Pailes. His forthcoming book is the fourth edition of Archaeology of the Greater Southwest (2026) with Maxine MicBrinn and Linda Cordell.
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Wednesdays, January 20-May 19, 2027, 6:30-8:30 pm AZ/MST (Online): “Archaeology of the Southwest” 18-session online adult education class
“Archaeology of the Southwest” is an introductory course that provides a basic overview of the US Southwest’s ancestral cultures. Expanding this year from 14 to 18 evening class sessions, it will cover cultural sequences, dating systems, subsistence strategies, development of urbanization, depopulation of different areas at different times, and the general characteristics of major cultural groups that have lived in the Southwest over the past 13,000-plus years. Besides offering an up-to-date synthesis of Southwest cultures for anyone interested in the archaeology of the Southwest, the class can be taken for certification in the Arizona Archaeological Society (AAS) Certification/Education Program. (It is a prerequisite for certification in all of the AAS’s other courses offered.) Instructor Allen Dart is a registered professional archaeologist and executive director of Old Pueblo Archaeology Center. $145 donation ($115 for Old Pueblo Archaeology Center, Arizona Archaeological Society [AAS], and Arizona Site Stewards members). Donation does not include cost of the recommended text. Donations are due 10 days after reservation request or by 5 pm Monday January 18, whichever is earlier. To register or for more information contact Old Pueblo at info@oldpueblo.org or 520-798-1201.
There are even more online and in-person events happening all over the place. Make it a regular habit to check out what the following organizations offer the avocational archaeologist:
American Rock Art Research Association (ARARA)
The Archaeological Conservancy posts recorded lectures on YouTube and on their website’s event page after the event occurs. Visit them for this and lots more information, and follow them on their Facebook page.
Archaeological Society of New Mexico
Archaeology Southwest: Things To Do, and More Things To Do
The Arizona Archaeological and Historical Society produced a virtual field trip of the Mattocks Site and Mimbres Culture Heritage Site on February 5, 2022, which is now available via the AAHS’s YouTube channel. Click here and enjoy as Marilyn Markel and Professor Emerita Pat Gilman, the supervising archaeologist for the 1970s Mattocks Site excavation, lead you through the site while discussing the future opportunities it offers for local educational programs and archaeological research.
Borderlandia offers specialized tours of the Arizona-Mexico borderland including Tubac & Tumacácori; and greater Mexico including locations such as Paquimé & Mexico City
As a member of the Council of Allied Societies, the GCAS and our members receive access to the CoAS monthly newsletter. The most recent CoAS newsletters are available by scrolling down to the bottom link entitled “Council of Allied Societies Newsletter Archives” on this page. For further CoAS doings, visit their Facebook page. GCAS members may also attend one free and one discounted online seminar; contact onlineseminars@saa.org to verify your GCAS membership and for all other details.
Crow Canyon Archaeological Center: Programs, Research, and Education
The Gila Cliff Dwellings National Monument hosts a free series of presentations at their Visitors Center where folks can meet a number of speakers giving short presentations on a variety of archaeological and cultural topics. Follow them on Facebook too!
The Jornada Research Institute – Look for JRI’s latest quarterly newsletters here. Join a JRI archaeological tour such as their upcoming 11-day tour to Egypt’s Archaeological Wonders, Museums, and Old Cairo’s Historic Area from October 24, 2026, to November 4, 2026 (waitlisted); their 2027 11-day tour to Sicily: Crossroads of the Mediterranean; and their 2028 11-day tour to the Culture and Powers of the Iberian Peninsula. Weather and schedules permitting, JRI also offers hands-on excavation activities at either the Cornelius Locus archaeological site in Ruidoso NM, or Creekside Village near Tularosa NM. Work at either site is an excellent opportunity for GCAS members to join an excavation crew to better understand archaeological excavation and preservation methods. For details, contact Dave Greenwald directly at dgreenwald@tularosa.net, visit JRI’s website, and follow the Jornada Research Institute on Facebook and Instagram for other, additional announcements and tour information.
OF SPECIAL INTEREST TO GCAS MEMBERS:
Identify your favorite 501(c)(3) charity in your JRI tour registration, and JRI will make a $125 cash donation to that charity. Coincidentally, the GCAS is a 501(c)(3) public charity. You can support two nonprofits at once! None of JRI’s Overseas Journeys is ever repeated, and tend to fill up quickly so if you are considering any of JRI’s tours, contact JRI’s Dave Greenwald ASAP for flyers, itineraries, and all other info.
Mesa Prieta Petroglyph Project: Events, Mesa Talks Lecture Series, and Tours
Mimbres Culture Heritage Site: Considering a visit to the Mimbres Culture Heritage Site? Check for events; to confirm tours and museum access telephone the MCHS directly at 575.536.3092 or 307.640.3012.
Old Pueblo Archaeology Center: at times throughout the year Old Pueblo offers multi-session online classes on a variety of topics. Click on these links for more information from Old Pueblo on these and other programs and events. Because the GCAS maintains an organizational membership with Old Pueblo, Old Pueblo offers discounts to individual GCAS members on many of their programs and events, so when signing up for an event, make a point of telling them you’re a GCAS member. Old Pueblo has also posted recordings of many of their Third Thursday Food for Thought and Indigenous Interests webinar presentations on their Youtube channel. GCAS says check them out: https://www.youtube.com/channel/UCDgPTetfOL9FHuAW49TrSig/videos.
The Pueblo Archaeological and Historical Society of Pueblo, Colorado, has regular in-person and online presentations as well as their online-accessible newsletter and YouTube channel. Check them out for these options and much more.
The Society for American Archaeology (SAA) and their affiliate, the Council of Allied Societies (CoAS) work to build meaningful relationships between professional and avocational archaeologists. They act as clearinghouses for events, programs, and volunteer opportunities to suit all tastes and abilities. Go here to access SAA’s digital versions of a variety of their regular publications. Enjoy!
Ron Barber, creator of the Stone Calendar Project, has been studying rock art sites throughout the Southwest and Northern Mexico identifying glyphs that mark specific times of the year using unique light and shadow interactions. He has some survey predictions for glyphs along the Gila Narrows and other southern sites and is looking for volunteers to help in further research. Anyone who is interested in spending time in the field recording/filming calendar sun light interactions in the region, please contact Ron directly at barbers6@aol.com.
The Texas Archaeological Society is based in San Marcos, Texas, and offers a wide variety of events and research/educational opportunities for the avocational and professional communities. Visit their website to learn how they provide support for research grants, scholarships, and more.