Santa Fe Archaeological Society

Annual Trip - The Best of Guatemala
2025-05-03 - 2025-05-15 | Annual Trip, Guatemala
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The Debate over Tewa Migrations - Eric Blinman (Adjunct Professor, University of New Mexico)
2025-09-16 19:00 - 20:00 (America/Denver) | Pecos Trail Cafe, 2239 Old Pecos Trail, Santa Fe, New Mexico, 87505
The question of over the origins of the prehistoric people who settled the
lower Rio Chama Valley, considered as the ancestral Tewa.
Eric Blinman began studying archaeology in 1967, eventually getting degrees in anthropology from UC Berkeley and Washington State University. He joined the Museum of New Mexico’s archaeology program in 1988 as a laboratory supervisor for projects in the Four Corners region of New Mexico. In 1992-1993, Eric was introduced to Galisteo Basin archaeology by Tim Maxwell and John Ware as a field conservation specialist, working to document perishable ceremonial artifacts that had been encountered by Forrest Fenn’s excavations at Pueblo San Lazaro. Those were also the years that the Office of Archaeological Studies (OAS) edited and published Christina Singleton Mednick’s “San Cristobal: Voices and Visions of the Galisteo Basin.” Tim’s relationship with the Singleton family resulted in more than three decades of access to Galisteo Basin archaeology by OAS archaeologists, including Eric. He has brought his knowledge of Four Corners pottery, ceramic technology, paleoenvironments, and cultural affiliation studies to the problems and potentials of the complex history of the Galisteo Basin.
$10.00 Donation requested at the door for non-members

Gender Violence in the American Southwest - Debra Martin (University of Nevada – Las Vegas)
2025-10-21 18:30 - 19:30 | Pecos Trail Cafe, 2239 Old Pecos Trail, Santa Fe, New Mexico, 87505
Using Ancestral pueblo data as a case study on how to engage with why
gender violence is so universal and pervasive across time and space.
Biography

Debra L. Martin is an expert in human osteology and bioarchaeology, which involves the analysis of skeletonized human remains from archaeological as well as historic and contemporary settings. She conducts research in the areas of nonlethal violence and inequality, gender differences and paleopathology, and the bioarchaeology of human experience with a focus on groups living in risky and challenging desert environments. She is on the editorial board of the journal Landscapes of Violence and is also the editor for Bioarchaeology and Social Theory series, Springer. She is co-editor of the International Journal of Osteoarchaeology and an associate editor for the Yearbook of Physical Anthropology. Her recent publications include co-editing Bioarchaeology of Violence (UPF) and Bioarchaeological and Forensic Perspectives on Violence (Cambridge) as well as co-authoring Bioarchaeology of Climate Change and Violence (Springer).

Education
Ph.D. : University of Massachusetts, 1983

$10.00 fee requested at the door for non-members

Cahokia versus Chaco: Indigenous Urbanism as Viewed from the Mississippi Valley - Dr. Timothy Pauketat (School for Advanced Research)
2025-11-18 18:30 - 19:30 | Pecos Trail Cafe, 2239 Old Pecos Trail, Santa Fe, New Mexico, 87505
Understanding Cahokia—an indigenous city opposite modern-day St.
Louis—is assisted by comparing it to Chaco. Both developed at about the
same time, with major cultural and political shifts at both dated to ~1040 CE.
Cahokia, however, appears more similar in layout to civic-ceremonial centers
to the south in the Mississippi valley and Mexico, with great mounds,
spacious plazas, and palatial pole-and-thatch buildings. Both appear to have
begun with prominent lineages or clans already in place, and the human
populations of both migrated out during the 12th century’s droughts.
Biography
Dr. Pauketat is an archaeologist interested in the broad relationships between history and humanity, materiality and agency, affect and ontology, and religion and urbanism. His focus is on North America, and his concerns range from local historical ones, particularly in the central Mississippi valley, to Pan-American and big-historical ones, especially as they involve Mesoamerican-Southwestern-Mississippi valley connections. He has conducted most of his field research at and around the American Indian city of Cahokia or related complexes, having held posts at the University of Oklahoma, the State University of New York (Buffalo) and the University of Illinois.
His general research interests are materiality, affect and agency; religion and ontologies; cities and landscapes; global medievalism; climate change; North American archaeology; Woodland and Mississippian cultures; indigenous Prairie-Plains history; pottery.
A $10.00 fee at the door is requested for non-members

10,000 years of Oaxaca Cuisines from Mesquite Pods to Mezcal - Dr. Shanti Morrell-Hart (Brown University)
2026-01-20 18:30 - 19:30 | Pecos Trail Cafe, 2239 Old Pecos Trail, Santa Fe, New Mexico, 87505
Contemporary Oaxacan cuisine holds iconic status, in a nation already
known—and even celebrated in UNESCO’s List of Intangible Heritage—for
gastronomy. Countless festivals each year are devoted to individual
ingredients and special preparations, including chapulines, enchilados,
mezcal, quesillo, tejate, and at least seven moles. Though the origins of
specific recipes may be disputed, archaeological investigations have managed
to reveal a suite of culinary elements and activities through various methods
and proxies. From early domesticates in the Archaic period, to seed banks in
the Postclassic period, we see how food ingredients were hunted, cultivated,
tithed, and hidden away for protection. They were also inherited, treasured,
remembered—and sometimes forgotten.
Biography
Shanti Morell-Hart is an anthropological archaeologist and paleo ethnobotanist with a focus on ancient societies in Mesoamerica. Her published research tracks the origins and impacts of agriculture in the development of societies, contributions of plants to ritualized activity and healthcare, the range and diversity of quotidian botanical practices, and transformations in human-environment relationships, especially as related to narratives of collapse and resilience. Her teaching and supervisory interests include: foodways, ethnoecology, paleoethnobotanical analysis, spatial analysis, Mesoamerican societies, ancient history, and gastronomic heritage. She currently serves as Director of the Integrated Laboratory for Archaeological Sciences (ILAS) and the Paleoethnobotany Laboratory at Brown (PEBLAB).
There is no entry fee for this Lecture

Linda Cordell and Her Many Contributions to Southwest Archaeology - Dr. Maxine McBrinn and Dr. Judith Habicht Mauche
2026-02-17 18:30 - 19:30 | Pecos Trail Cafe, 2239 Old Pecos Trail, Santa Fe, New Mexico, 87505
Linda Cordell was extraordinarily active in southwestern archaeology during
her entire career. She augmented her own robust research by also investing
her resources in the work of others. Because of this, her influence extended
well beyond her own students to those of many of her colleagues. One of her
last personal endeavors was working with the Tijeras Pueblo Ceramics
Project. Examples of her prodigious influence on archaeological research will
be presented.
Biography
Judith A. Habicht-Mauche is Professor of Anthropology at the University of California, Santa Cruz, where she has been a member of the faculty since 1990. Prof. Habicht-Mauche’s research interests include the study of the technology, organization of production and exchange of ancient pottery from the American Southwest and Southern Plains. She is an expert in the archaeological application of mineralogical, chemical, and isotopic techniques for sourcing artifacts and reconstructing ancient trade routes and patterns of cross-cultural interaction. She earned her Ph.D. in Anthropology from Harvard University in 1988. Her doctoral research on interaction between Pueblo farmers of the Southwest and bison-hunting nomads of the Southern Plains won the Plains Anthropological Society Student Paper Competition and was awarded the Society for American Archaeology Dissertation Prize.
Maxine McBrinn is the former Curator of Archaeology at the Museum of Indian Arts and Culture in Santa Fe, NM and an independent researcher. She is a Research Associate of the Office of Archaeological Studies, also in Santa Fe. Dr. McBrinn earned her M.A. and Ph.D. in Anthropology at the University of Colorado, Boulder and also has a B.S. and a M.A. in Physics from the University of Texas at Austin. She has worked in a curatorial role at a number of museums, including the Field Museum in Chicago and the Denver Museum of Nature and Science (DMNS). Much of her DMNS research, conducted with Dr. E. James Dixon, focused on the Lamb Spring site. In addition, Maxine has conducted field research in Wyoming, Colorado, Texas, and New Mexico. Her research focus is on hunters and gatherers, social identity, and the transition to early agriculture. A technical specialty is archaeological textiles and basketry.
A 10.00 fee is requested at the door for non-members.

The Problem of Distinguishing the Coronado Expedition's Multiple Routes Across Southeastern Arizona - Richard and Shirley Flint
2026-03-17 18:30 - 19:30 | Pecos Trail Cafe, 2239 Old Pecos Trail, Santa Fe, New Mexico, 87505
There has been recent reporting of the discovery of what appear to be traces of sixteenth-century European presence in extreme south-central and southeastern Arizona. As a result, assertions have been made that those traces are indications of an outpost of the Coronado Expedition, called Suya in the surviving documentary record and San Gerónimo III by many modern scholars. Re-examination of sixteenth-century written records, however, shows that identification of that particular archaeological site as Suya is far from the only possibility. There are a total of at least eighteen known expeditionary episodes dating from the sixteenth century that could have left behind part or all of the material traces that have to date been identified in southern Arizona. The small, short-term occupation of Suya was dwarfed by the passage of the whole expeditionary force. Yet the current investigation claims to have located multiple sites associated with the minor Suya event and none linked to the vastly larger full expedition or any of its other sub-units. The evidence for Suya is thin, mostly conjectural, and not distinguishable from other events of the expedition.
Biography
The Flints are a collaborative team of Independent Scholars with major focus on archival research and publication on the early to middle sixteenth century in the U.S. Southwest and Northwest Mexico. Their special interest for 40+ years has been on the Coronado entrada of 1539-1542 and related activities both before and after. They are widely considered to be the foremost authorities on that subject. They have published nine books and dozens of journal article dealing with the sixteenth-century collision between Indigenous Americans and Europeans. In collaboration with the UNM Libraries, the Flints have produced an extensive online data base of information about participants, organizers, and supporters of that entrada: coronado.unm.edu.
A 10,00 fee is requested at the door for non-members

The Coronado Expedition: The New Evidence - Deni Seymour
2026-04-21 06:30 - 19:30 | To Be Determined
Dr. Deni Seymour will talk about her work over the last few years during which she and her team discovered 17 sites left behind in southern Arizona by the Coronado Expedition of 1539-1542. The discovery of a Spanish townsite, overnight camps, and travel routes have revolutionized our understanding of the expedition – where they went, how they were organized, weapons they carried and what they did. Equally important are the insights gained into the Native Nations that lived in the area and interacted with the Spanish.

Biography
Deni Seymour, Ph.D. is an archaeologist and ethnohistorian whose 45-years of research have focused on the Spanish colonial period in the American Southwest, emphasizing Native peoples at first contact (O’odham, Apache, Jacome, and Manso), presidios, missions/vistas, and trails (Coronado, Camino Real, Anza, etc.). She has focused intensively on the 1539-1542 Coronado expedition, identifying more Coronado expedition sites in Arizona than all others known throughout the Southwest, extending the trail from Nogales to the Gila River. She has published nine peer-reviewed articles on her expedition-related discoveries, and a documentary film that is available on PBS entitled, Coronado: The New Evidence.
A $10.00 fee is requested at the door for non-members,

Cities of Gold: A Journey Across the American Southwest - Douglas Preston
2026-05-19 06:30 - 19:30 | To Be Determined
Doug Preston and Walter Nelson rode cross country, not following modern
roads or trails, sleeping ‘in the saddle’ and enduring some of the harshest
deserts and roughest mountain terrain in the United States. Forced to battle
extremes of heat and cold, impenetrable mesquite thickets, bad water,
rattlesnakes, flash floods and paralyzing drought, they nonetheless found the
country awesome in its scale and beauty, with much of it so untouched that It was still recognizable from descriptions in Coronado’s reports. Their
exploration led to useful information regarding the route used by Coronado to find the Seven Cities of Gold.
Douglas Preston

Douglas Preston is a prolific American author born in 1956, best known for co-authoring the Pendergast series with Lincoln Child and for his solo works of both fiction and nonfiction. A graduate of Pomona College, he worked at the American Museum of Natural History and taught at Princeton University before becoming a full-time writer. He contributes to publications like The New Yorker and National Geographic, and is the author of numerous bestselling books, including The Lost City of the Monkey God.

The is a $10.00 entry fee for non-members charged at the door.
