For the past several years, the Friends of Archaeology have sponsored an evening lecture series that covers the history of Southwestern communities from the peopling of the New World to the Reconquest. The lectures are prepared and presented by Dr. Eric Blinman, former director of the Office of Archaeological Studies.

The lectures will be presented live via Zoom on Wednesdays, beginning at 5:45 p.m., starting on January 3, 2024. The lectures will be recorded, and recordings and PowerPoint decks will be available for paid subscribers to review for at least a month after the close of the lecture series. Each lecture will be 1 to 1½ hours long. There will be at least eight lectures following the topic sequence below [the previous series eventually consisted of 12 lectures].

This lecture series will count for at least eight hours of continuing education credits toward permitting qualifications for New Mexico Cultural Resource Consultants. Dr. Blinman will encourage feedback and discussion following each lecture.

A new experiment for this series will be both immediate responses to participant questions as well as more in-depth responses to discussion issues raised by participants and peer archaeologists. In-depth responses will be added to the ends of subsequent Wednesday lectures or will be incorporated into those lectures.

A premise of the lecture series is that archaeology is history that must culminate in the post-colonial diversity of Native American communities. An additional premise is that as a scientific discipline, archaeology presents models and interpretations explicitly for critical evaluation rather than presenting those models as truth. Dr. Blinman's perspective has been shaped by his early exposure to archaeology in 1967, his first collaborative tribal archaeological project (1977–1978), decades of consultations on issues of cultural affiliation under NAGPRA, and decades of building and executing research designs that define the goals of archaeology prompted by economic development projects.

Lectures will include:

• Conceptual and Practical Tools for Understanding Southwestern Archaeology will cover evolutionary models, subsistence economics, how languages change, principles of demography, tools for climate and environmental reconstruction, and measures of time.

• The Destination: Modern Peoples and Cultures of the Northern Southwest will cover the diversity of environments and cultures at European contact, language diversity and history, means of maintaining community identities, and how impacts of colonization have shaped perceptions (and misconceptions) of Native peoples.

• The Early Years: Peopling of the Americas through the Southwestern Archaic will cover the remarkably early traces of humans in the Americas, Paleoindian and Archaic lifeways, and differentiation of distinct peoples within the Southwest.

• Agriculture, Pottery, and the Emergence of Formative Lifeways will cover the diversity of historic relationships as population, domesticated crops, and pottery transform Southwestern communities and establish the foundations of multiculturalism.

• Villages, Economic Intensification, Social Differentiation, and the Foundations of Chaco will explore the rhythms of climate change, intra- and inter-village integration and interaction, and structures of the middle centuries of Southwestern culture history.

• Post-Chaco Communities and the Two Migrations will build on the decentralization of Chaco and the initiation of the waves of migration that set the stage for the modern distributions of peoples and cultures.

• Pueblo Communities at the Threshold of Colonization will explore the impacts of both climate change and colonization and how these contribute to the complexity of contemporary Native identities.

Cost is $180 for FOA members and $200 for non-members. Registration will be through the link on the Friends of Archaeology page of the Museum of New Mexico Foundation website at https:// www.museumfoundation.org/friends/ friends-of-archaeology/ or at our Eventbrite page at https://www.eventbrite.com/e/archaeology-as-history-in-the-southwest-tickets-763645683797?aff=odcleoeventsincollection.

*This is a Friends of Archaeology event and is not sponsored by the Office of Archaeological Studies

Please contact John Taylor-Montoya by email at john.taylor-montoya@dca.nm.gov or Shelby Jones by email at shelby.jones@dca.nm.govfor details on Education Outreach events.

Details of the following events and information on sign-ups are available at the Museum of New Mexico's Friends of Archaeology website.