🚨EXCITING OPPORTUNITY ALERT🚨
Interested in Phoenix Basin Hohokam archaeology? We need field crew and crew chiefs right now. Crew chiefs need experience but we'll train field techs, so this is a great chance to learn on the job from the best. Hit the link for details.
desert.com/open-positio...
Are you hyper-organized? With accounting expertise? Does herding scruffy archaeologists across 3 AZ locations sound like something you were born to do? We’re looking for a Tucson-based office manager to keep us humming along. Bonus: the best assistant in the industry will have your back.
A pile of chert flakes created by someone living along the Mogollon Rim ~1000 years ago repeatedly hitting the faces of a core with a hammerstone. The heaps of debitage from this site frame mogged anything we’ve encountered before or since and we’re still not over it.
Whatever, people in what is now called Arizona have been looksmaxxing faces (of chert cores) with hammer(stone)s since basically forever
We have SO MUCH going on in southern and central AZ in 2026 and would love you, the experienced archaeological field technician, to help us on our mission of documenting and protecting the past. Sound fun? Check the crew/supervisor job postings at desert.com/open-positio... and hit us up.
We had a joke about flaked stone artifacts, but we’re too tired (we need to knap).
Del Bac has been making a habit of hosting great speakers from the worlds of Sonoran Desert history, anthropology, and ecology, so let's support them. Half the proceeds of this one go to the Presidio San Agustín del Tucson trust.
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
What
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....
The clue for 70 Across in today’s NYT crossword is “Alternative to a trowel for an archaeologist,” three letters
NYT crossword is broken this morning, “backhoe” has way more than three letters
Former brick-makers who did the hard, hot work in the kilns will be there with their families too. To learn about these guys and what the Tucson Pressed Brick Co meant for their lives, check this Field Journal post by Dr. Mike Diehl: desert.com/brickyard/
Monier family descendants will be in attendance, including, possibly, Quintus' 90-yr-old grandson. Raise a glass and a taco!
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
Kids building a model pithouse, or maybe a ramada in a pit, complete with tiny posts, reeds, ceramic vessels, and mats.
An inspector from the Arizona Herpetological Society examines the model pithouse (the inspector is a tortoise). No word on whether bites were taken out of the roofing materials.
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.
A Marshalltown™️ trowel is clenched in a fist against an orange background, circled by text reading get dirty | protect the past | hydrate. The text at the bottom of the image yells DESERT ARCHAEOLOGY in a jaunty all-caps font.
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. 👷➡️😀
A panel from a very old Star Trek comic book depicts a dead Starfleet person (rank indeterminate) in a gold uniform shirt (if not redshirt, why redshirt shaped?) covered with blood (tar?). Mr. Spock stands in the background, examining a spear tipped with a huge blood (tar?)-covered stone point. He says: "This blade is remarkably similar to that of a Folsom point, characteristic of a Stone Age Earth culture located in the area formerly known as North America. A crude design, but efficient." We have no Vulcan ancestry, so who are we to say, really, but: Folsom points exhibited a sophisticated design and required excellent knapping skills. They were also maybe a quarter of the size depicted here. And shaped nothing like the overgrown Gypsum point drawn on the end of the spear.; maybe this is why he was rejected from the Vulcan Science Academy. Other than that, no notes.
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.
Two rusty trowels slightly overlap to form a heart shape with their blades. They are on a scabrous pink background. White vintage Corona typewriter text reads i dig you. The intern spent entire minutes on this five years ago, please enjoy.
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.