I am still awaiting DSL, still using my antique IMac with an incredibly slow modem (added on– this one also fried its own), a mimiscule keyboard that jumps and puts in multiple exclamation points–!!!–and no ability to access my photos or put in new ones. But an encounter with a fan — a writer we …
A Third Ghost
Steve and I both posted examples of two “ghosts of evolution” – plants that have evolved with animal “partners” to disperse their seeds, who have since gone extinct. These were the osage orange and the devils claw, both plants mentioned in Connie Barlow’s book, Ghosts of Evolution. Earlier this week I thought that it would …
Mayan War Crimes
Yesterday’s LA Times and NY Times each had pieces on a spectacular archaeological find in the Classic Mayan site of Cancuen in Guatemala. Arthur Demarest, an archaeologist from Vanderbilt University, and his team are excavating there and found evidence of a great battle for the city around the year AD 800. Cancuen was taken by …
Art and Science
Steve’s blog brings together three people with, among other things in common, keen interest in their surroundings. Each of us might agree that keen interest is warranted and required by our home places if they are to be even partially understood. Toward this understanding we bring our three perspectives: We have in Steve an experienced …
Technical Difficulties – Slow Blogging from Steve
Steve has asked me to pass on to everyone that he is having technical problems with his computer which will probably keep him from blogging until later in the week. It is also limiting his ability to read and answer e-mail, so don’t worry, he isn’t ignoring you!
Zuni Rock Art Blogging 3
The Kachina Cult (also spelled katsina or katchina) is the keystone of Zuni religion. This cult appears in all the Pueblos, but is most evident and best known from the western Pueblos of Hopi, Zuni, and Acoma. Kachinas are spirits, in some cases those of ancestors, who carry prayers from the people to the gods. …
Great Basin Rabbit Hunting
We know from the ethnographic literature that rabbit hunting was a major communal activity practiced by Native American groups in the Great Basin. Julian Steward’s classic Basin-Plateau Aboriginal Sociopolitical Groups describes these and the equipment used in some detail. The major quarry was jackrabbits (Lepus californicus). Communal hunts were held in the Fall and accounts …
Little Petroglyph Canyon – Coso Rock Art District
In conjunction with the Society for California Archaeology Data-Sharing meeting in Ridgecrest, CA last week-end, a tour was arranged for us at the nearby Coso Rock Art District, a National Historic Landmark. This is a world-class archaeological resource that is located on the China Lake – Naval Air Warfare Center. The fact that this important …
Lives of Pronghorns
This article in the LA Times yesterday by Deborah Sullivan Brennan, laments the decline of pronghorn antelope herds in California from populations estimated at 500,000 at European contact to something in the range of 5-6,000 today. We all lament that. You should look at her piece, but Brennan says that there are too few open …
Trona Pinnacles
While in Ridgecrest, CA over the weekend for an archaeology society meeting, I made a side trip to the Trona Pinnacles National Natural Landmark. Ridgecrest and the Pinnacles are located in the high desert, east of the Sierra Nevada. During the Pleistocene and early Holocene, the Pinnacles area was at the bottom of Searles Lake, …