Historical archaeologist Homer Thiel will be talking about his new book, Saloons of Tucson, at the Whiskey Del Bac distillery on October 21. Homer is THE go-to guy for stories of historic Tucson, and this will be a treat. Details at the link. whiskeydelbac.com/event/octobe...

The 250th anniversary of Hugo O'Conor saying build it HERE is coming up this week. Pls enjoy this excellent story about the 1775 founding of the Tucson Presidio and everything Desert's work has added to its history, featuring our own Homer Thiel.

One like = 10,000 pieces of debitage

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Desert Archaeology bioarchaeologist Rachael Byrd and lithic analyst RJ Sliva contributed to a new American Antiquity paper on how early agriculturalist groups moved around in what is now the borderlands region of the Sonoran Desert. Fascinating (really)! Free access here: doi.org/10.1017/aaq....

NYT crossword is broken this morning, “backhoe” has way more than three letters

Do you love going to the Mercado San Agustin like we do? Yes! Have you ever wondered why the very handsome Monier Building is named that? Probably! Come to a celebration this Fri (5/23) to eat, drink, and hear Homer Thiel talk about the people who made the bricks that built modern Tucson!

Who knew the xkcd guy was a lithic analyst

Justin, Connie, and Lindsay repped us at the SRPMIC Earth Day fest over the weekend with shell-etching demos and a build-a-pithouse set Connie fabricated. Great fun for everyone!

We're looking for a records specialist to assist the Gila River Indian Community in Sacaton, AZ. You don't have to be an archaeologist for this position, just an organized records keeper who can put up with archaeologists 20-40 hrs/wk. See desert.com/open-positions for the listing.

Your regular reminder that we really like old things around here. And dirt. And waiting for some electrolyte product to hit us up with a major sponsorship

Don’t miss the chance to hang out with fellow scruffy Southwestern archaeologists this Friday as we celebrate an unexpected extension of Tucson Patio Weather™️

What is the Presidio San Agustín del Tucson, you ask? Sit back and get ready to open nine million tabs for all the fascinating things we have learned about life in 18th + 19th c Spanish, Mexican, and Territorial Tucson. Homer Thiel tells you all the stories here.

Our friends at the Presidio San Agustín have partnered with Barrio Brewing to bring Tucson this 250th birthday present!

Anybody want to hang out and be happy for two hours? Yowl archaeologically, or sit and watch the trains go by, we can facilitate either one. April 4 at Borderlands in downtown Tucson. 👷➡️😀

If not lithic analysis, why lithic analysis shaped

Looking for part-time or seasonal cultural resources management work in Arizona? Check desert.com/open-positio... for listings and come work with the best port in any storm.

Roses are red We all do our part The social media intern Offers you this art

Trying to find an archaeology angle here and failing, other than science is: fun (look at figure [d])

Waiting patiently for @pattmeeples.bsky.social to invite us over to play because helloooooooooooooo

Not obsidian, but super neat. Not a thing we encounter in Arizona.

Thanks to everyone who came out to celebrate John Douglass. We’re freshly resolved to live our lives such that when we go, 50-odd people come stand in the cold to tell stories and raise a glass in love one last time. See you next time around, friends.

Please join us and Statistical Research Inc this evening at MotoSonora Brewing as we remember John Douglass. We have a corner of the beer garden reserved (with heaters!) and would love for you to come help us celebrate the memory of our friend and colleague. 1015 S. Park, Tucson, 5-7 pm

Here’s a fun thing for next week: Jim Watson will talk about the earliest farmers in the Tucson Basin, which our work has helped bring to light. Our corner of the desert has been kicking it for 4,000 years, Jim’s a great scientist AND a great presenter, go listen! whiskeydelbac.com/event/8843/

Thread re: NPS lifting filming restrictions in parks, with a mini-thread on how Navajo mgmt in Canyon de Chelly might help.

We're here (Tucson), we're there (Tempe), we're every... where (Prescott). Find the mailing address on the website and celebrate our groundbreaking THIRD office by sending our mappers a postcard if you like. desert.com

Welcome to the public domain, Popeye. Happy New Year to everyone else!

We are honoring John Douglass next month at his favorite brewery. Please join us for stories, memories, and community as we celebrate our much-loved and missed friend. Friday, January 17 5-7 pm Moto Sonora Brewing 1015 S. Park, Tucson Look for us outside

AI is not a great choice for rendering images of archaeological best practices or anything really (the unit walls are a mess and the excavators suspiciously clean). Why pay for artificial dreck when you could have quality human-created art? We can do that. desert.com/archaeologic...

“Kids, meanwhile, were apparently shooed off to their own corner of the cave. There, on a flat stretch of wall at toddler’s eye level, children seem to have etched a series of doodles that wouldn’t be out of place in a modern kindergarten class” #scicomm #art www.science.org/content/arti... 🧪

It’s fun when the company holiday party swag reminds us why we come to work here and then usually stick around forever #wecandothat

Isotope analysis used to characterize a Clovis toddler’s mother’s diet ➡️ similar to a scimitar cat (!) ➡️ mammoth all day. 🦣🦣🦣

Welcome new followers and refugees from the other place! You can learn about what we do at desert.com. Be sure to click on the Field & Lab Journal tab to read bite-sized stories about our work in the greater US Southwest, from the oldest field system in N. America to 19th-C intrigue.

Accurate blueskyroast.com

Historical archaeology is a big part of what we do, and decades of work under the asphalt in downtown Tucson gave Homer Thiel plenty of material for his new book: Saloons of Tucson, Arizona Territory. Stand in the empty lot across from the train depot and imagine how your night out might have gone.

In honor of Shop Local Saturday, just a reminder that we are your one-stop shop for all your local Section 106 compliance needs. Is there a coupon somewhere? Brb checking on that

Do any of our zooarch pals have some dermestid beetles we could borrow? This turkey roasting rack isn’t going to clean itself

It's an apt time to mull how we strike a balance among competing interests and always strive to do the right thing, even when it's hard. From a 2018 post: what happened when archaeologists, developers, descendant communities, and the general public intersected at Honey Bee Village.

Still trying to fathom the unfathomable. Southwest US archaeology lost a good one, and we lost a friend.

Optimist: The cup is half full Pessimist: The cup is half empty Petrographer: Ooh the cup contains temper from the Beehive petrofacies which means we can use it to trace Hohokam exchange networks because SCIENCE (desert.com/hohokam-cera...)

Wake up babe, new echo chamber just dropped (the chamber is curated collections and it is echoing with data waiting to be revisited) (ok it dropped a while ago but you might have missed it) Anyway, this is why it’s important to hang onto stuff. Even debitage. desert.com/artifact-cur...

Neanderthal knee prints AND debitage?!? Sign us up

Need a spot of oh wow? Might we recommend some Hohokam etched shell? Our Chris Lange explains how artisans created elaborate relief images on shells brought from the Pacific coast to the Phoenix and Tucson areas 1000 years ago. Neat! desert.com/etched-shell/

Here is a mini-thread of links to our most-read Field & Lab Journal posts, many of which have popped up on undergraduate syllabi over the years: The Early Agricultural period: desert.com/early-ag-sum... Pithouse architecture: desert.com/pithouse-arc... Mano/metate ID: desert.com/mano-metate

What really happened? Jim Vint's background research for a survey uncovered major discrepancies between sensationalized Wild Wild West accounts of a 1901 homicide and the mundane but equally tragic reality of a Pima County Coroner's inquest. Always check your sources! desert.com/robledo/