Arizona Republic Advocates Expansion of Casa Grande National Monument

Southwestern Archaeology Making the News - A Service of the Center for Desert Archaeology

- Arizona Republic Advocates Expansion of Casa Grande National Monument: The National Park Service, which oversees Casa Grande monument, has done extensive studies and public outreach that make a strong case for the proposed expansion. The addition fits the Park Service's dual mission of preservation and interpretation. Enlarging the monument would protect evidence that current and future researchers need to continue answering the many questions about the Hohokam, whose culture faded away after 1450. This is part of our American heritage that must not be lost.
http://tinyurl.com/ya2o4wy - Arizona Republic

- BLM and Utah Stakeholders Reach Compromise on Preservation in Nine Mile Canyon: A wide coalition of interests -- including conservationists, tribal leaders, land regulators and a natural-gas developer -- has reached an agreement that could curtail the fight over damage to rock art in Nine Mile Canyon, state and federal officials announced Tuesday. The document, scheduled for signing Jan. 5, outlines how the U.S. Bureau of Land Management proposes to protect pictographs and petroglyphs created by Puebloan ancestors who lived throughout the Southwest more than 700 years ago.
http://www.sltrib.com/news/ci_14050574

- Pressure Mounts to Reestablish Wilderness Study Areas: The conservation community is counting on Ken Salazar, the native Coloradan heading the Interior Department, to reverse a ruling by his predecessor. The Bureau of Land Management (BLM) used to be able to set aside land in Colorado and elsewhere as "Wilderness Study Areas (WSAs)" to be protected from development until Congress could decide whether to permanently designate all or part of it as federal wilderness. That WSA determination process was halted by Bush administration Interior Secretary Gail Norton, but Salazar could reinstate it.
http://www.publicnewsservice.org/index.php?/content/article/11926-1

- Archaeology Cafe in Tucson to Examine Historical Impact and Future Potential of Tucson's Electric Streetcars: The next meeting of Archaeology Cafe will take place on Tuesday, January 5, 2010, at 6:00 pm. Our guest this month will be transit historian Gene Caywood, who will share the history of Tucson's electric streetcars, as well as information about the City of Tucson's Modern Streetcar Project.
http://www.cdarc.org/2009/12/02/archaeology-cafe-tucsons-transportation-history/

- California to Examine Preservation on Route 66: Of the eight states through which Route 66 passed -- the others are Illinois, Missouri, Kansas, Oklahoma, Texas, New Mexico and Arizona -- California is the only one that has not done a cultural survey of the highway.
http://tinyurl.com/yahpsg9 - Los Angeles Times

- Pueblo Grande Museum Honored with AAM Accreditation: Phoenix’s Pueblo Grande Museum and Archaeological Park has, for the second time, earned a rare distinction from the American Association of Museums. The Association recently renewed Pueblo Grande Museum’s Accreditation, an honor earned by less than 5 percent of the 17,500 museums in the United States.
http://phoenix.gov/news/122209pueblo.html

- Efforts to Save Comanche Language Begin at Texas Tech: This fall, a Texas Tech University professor of anthropology will begin the difficult task of collecting the remnants of the near-extinct Comanche language, then creating a way it can be taught in a university setting. Jeff Williams, chairman of the Department of Sociology, Anthropology and Social Work, will serve as an external evaluator for Numu Tekwapu, a project to document and revitalize the Comanche language. He will work with tribe members and researchers at Comanche Nation College in Lawton, Okla., to record what’s left of the language and create a method for teaching it to students at the college.
http://www.indiancountrytoday.com/living/79894182.html