The 2023 American Rock Art Research Association (ARARA) annual conference will be in Tucson, March 10-13.

Submission deadline is January 15th.

Student research grant applications are due by January 20th

• Undergraduate: $500
• Masters: $1500
• PhD: $2500

The Arizona Archaeological Council is holding its next board meeting on December 7th, 2022 at noon. The meeting agenda can be accessed by AAC members and can be found here: 

2022 December AAC Meeting Agenda.pdf

The 2023 Southwest Symposium Archaeological Conference will be held in person at the historic La Fonda on the Plaza Hotel in Santa Fe, NM. Conference presentations will highlight alternate approaches to interpreting the archaeological record of the American Southwest and Northern Mexico at multiple scales. We will follow the traditional format of the Southwest Symposium, with four non-concurrent sessions held over two days:

Attributes to Networks: Multi-scalar Perspectives on Understanding the Past in the Southwest US and Northwest Mexico
 
Session 1: On Common Ground: Collaborative and Integrative Approaches to Archaeology and Ethnography in the American Southwest (Organizers: Mark R. Agostini and Robert W. Preucel)
Session 2: Multi-scalar Perspectives on the Early Agricultural Period (Organizers: Michelle Carpenter and Robert Hard)
Session 3: Emergent Material Networks in the US Southwest and Mexican Northwest and Beyond (Organizers: Andrea Torvinen, Robert Bischoff, and Christopher Schwartz)
Session 4: First Person Archaeology: Interpreting and Understanding the Past on a Human Scale (Organizers: Ann L.W. Stodder and Mollie Toll)
 
In addition, we will have a poster session with cash bar on Friday evening with around 20 individual poster presentations.
 
For more information on the conference theme and details about the preliminary program go to: https://southwestsymposium.org/program/

Registration is now open online: https://southwestsymposium.org/registration/
Reduced rates for early registration are available until December 15, 2020:

$150 for regular attendees

$75 for students of accredited institutions, participants from outside of the US, and members of tribal organizations.

We have negotiated a very favorable conference room rate at the La Fonda Hotel: $149 per night single or double occupancy for a traditional room. Discounts are also available for upgraded rooms by contacting the hotel directly.

To Contact Hotel directly:
Reservations:  800-523-5002, Option #1 or 505-982-5511, Option #1
Group Code: 1038155 or Event: SW Symposium
Please call between the hours of 8 am – 5 pm (Mountain Time), 7 days a week. 
Direct Reservation Link: https://be.synxis.com/?Hotel=207&Chain=56&arrive=1/5/2023&depart=1/8/2023&adult=1&child=0&group=1038155

The AAC is currently accepting nominations for next-year’s AAC Board Members. The following positions are open for 2023:

• President-Elect (three-year term: one year as President-Elect, one year as President, one year as Immediate Past President)
• Information Officer (two-year term)
• Secretary (two-year term)
• Member-at-Large (two-year term; two positions available)

Additional information about each position can be found in our Bylaws Page and in this document: AAC OFFICERS DUTIES 12-21-20.pdf. If you are interested, please send a brief candidate statement to Shannon Plummer (splummer@arizona.edu) by September 16, 2022. 

The Arizona Archaeological Council is holding its next board meeting on June 29th, 2022 at noon. The meeting agenda can be accessed by AAC members and can be found here: 

2022 June AAC Meeting Agenda.pdf

CALL FOR PAPERS

2022 AAC Fall Conference

Sept. 9; 8:30am-4:00pm

Flagstaff, AZ (location TBD)

Best Practices and Ethical Approaches to Arizona’s Archaeology

Archaeologists have long focused on developing better approaches to the methodology and interpretive frameworks of our discipline. Like archaeological communities across the country, Arizona archaeologists have strived to be at the forefront of such advances. Considering recent calls for increased focus on ethical approaches to archaeology and the protection and preservation of cultural resources in a multi-perspective and inclusive space, Arizona archaeology is primed to remain at the forefront of practice and industry. Addressing issues of sexual harassment, racial and social injustice, and gender equality as well as confronting our colonial legacy as a discipline is vital to contemporary practices and training. In addition, rising curation costs have encouraged practitioners to consider how to preserve Arizona’s cultural resources more efficiently without impeding development or sacrificing quality (e.g., fieldwork, artifact and data collection, respect for descendant communities). This year’s conference theme seeks to address these issues head-on to encourage best practices and ethical approaches that promote better preservation of Arizona’s cultural heritage going forward.

We invite submissions for presentations related to this year’s conference theme that focus on ethical, technical, and theoretical approaches to Arizona archaeology. Please submit presentation title and a 100-word abstract by August 1, 2022 to aacboard@gmail.com. If you have any questions about submissions or the conference, please contact Jim Watson at watsonjt@arizona.edu.

2022_AAC_Fall_Conference-call_for_papers.pdf

The CoAS Spring 2022 Newsletter is hot off the digital press! We are very pleased to include the minutes from the 2022 Annual Business Meeting of CoAS as well as the winners of the 2022 State Archaeology Celebration Poster Contest. We’re also excited to introduce you to new SAA board members. We are extremely grateful to all of our CoAS members that submitted updates and news from their respective organizations to include in this newsletter.

Announcing SKOPE (Synthesizing Knowledge of Past Environments), a free web application that provides easy access to PaleoCAR’s tree-ring based annual retrodictions at 800m spatial resolution (calibrated to PRISM) of precipitation and temperature, for the Southwest US for the last 2000 years. At a coarser spatial resolution (~50km), SKOPE offers annual reconstructions of the Palmer Modified Drought Index (PMDI; the successor to the Palmer Drought Severity Index or PDSI) for the contiguous 48 US states, also for the last 2000 years.  Please click these links for a more detailed announcement, to try the SKOPE App, or to view the SKOPE User’s Guide.

The AAC Board voted in January 2022 to establish a standing Arizona Heritage Policy Committee to assume some of the functions of the former Governor’s Archaeology Advisory Committee (GAAC), which was sunseted by the Arizona Legislature on July 1, 2020, as well as replace the AAC Ad Hoc Political Action Committee. The purpose of the standing committee is to offer recommendations to interested organizations such as local, state, and federal agencies, the Arizona Legislature, or any other body whose decisions could impact Arizona’s Cultural Heritage, with the goal of fostering a conservation and stewardship ethic among land managers, developers, utilities, and agricultural and livestock producers while collaborating to preserve significant historical and archaeological resources for the befit of future generations of Arizonans. Specific areas of focus would include public policy and planning outreach, public education and outreach, and professional development for Heritage Resource professionals. The first meeting of the committee will be held on April 14, 2022 at 2 PM via Microsoft Teams. Agenda is attached.

Click here to join the meeting https://teams.microsoft.com/l/meetup-join/19%3ameeting_NzUwOTIyOWMtYjI5Yy00YWQ0LTg4MzgtMjVjNmZlYThhYTFk%40thread.v2/0?context=%7b%22Tid%22%3a%2233b6e2c3-0b1a-4879-b741-47461a6c1a89%22%2c%22Oid%22%3a%225f450e74-eff3-4785-a351-107917a2cee2%22%7d

AHPC April 2022 Draft Agenda.pdf

The Arizona Archaeological Council is holding its next board meeting on April 6th, 2022 at noon. The meeting agenda can be accessed by AAC members and can be found here: 

2022 April AAC Meeting Agenda.pdf