PCAS General Meetings
Monthly lecture meetings feature noted archaeologists and anthropologists who provide insight into a variety of topics. Lecture meetings are held at the Irvine Ranch Water District 15600 Sand Canyon Avenue (between the I-5 and I-405, next to the Post Office) in Irvine, on the second Thursday of each month, at 7:30 pm. Meetings are free and open to the public. See site map of the Irvine Ranch Water District and general vicinity map. For additional directions, please call Scott Findlay, 714-342-2534.
You are invited to join the speaker and PCAS members for dinner before the general meeting. It's an informal opportunity to visit with an acknowledged expert. We meet at 6:00 pm at a local restaurant. Please check the newsletter (left menu) for location.
Schedule and Speakers
Please note that last minute changes may occur.
There are no monthly meetings in July or August.
September 9, 2010
Dr. John Collins
An Introduction to Southwest and Southern California Indian Baskets
Dr. Collins will briefly discuss the origins of Indian baskets, after which he will discuss materials, designs, techniques, uses, and care of the baskets. To supplement the verbal presentation, he will "show and tell" a representative selection from his collection of Hopi, Navajo, Tohono O'Odham (aka Papago), Akmel O'Odham (aka Pima), Apache, and Southern California ("Mission") baskets acquired over the past 30-plus years. If PCAS members have baskets they would like to have identified, Dr. Collins will be glad to do his best to do so, but he will not attempt to make appraisals, since an appraisal depends upon many variables.
Dr John E. Collins is a retired educator, retiring in 1985 after 36 years as a teacher, counselor, and administrator. He received his doctorate from the University of Southern California, with a major in Counseling Psychology. After retiring, he began a private practice as a Marriage Family Therapist. For more than 40 years, he and his wife, Eileen, have traveled to Indian Country (Arizona and New Mexico) making many Indian friends while collecting Indian baskets and pottery. Along the way, visiting Indian homes, attending katsina (aka kachina) dances, feast days, galleries, museums, and trading posts (and roadside stands!), they also acquired jewelry, beadwork, katsina dolls, and Navajo rugs.
He has curated three major shows honoring three master Indian potters. In recent years he has taken groups to Indian Country to introduce them to the cultures through visits to the homes of his friends, pottery and weaving demonstrations, museums, trading posts, and natural wonders which figure in their history and culture (Grand Canyon, Monument Valley, Canyon de Chelly, Chaco Canyon, etc.).
Dr. Collins is past president and recently retired program director of the Native American Institute, a non-profit organization devoted to studying and disseminating knowledge about the American Indian cultures, arts and crafts, music, and current concerns, through guest speakers on various subjects and trips, both local and extended.
October 14, 2010
Dr. Steven R. James
Archaeological Field Schools in California and the American Southwest: Historical Perspectives and Personal Reflections
For over a hundred years, archaeological field schools have been held in the American Southwest and were initially tied to the passage of the 1906 Antiquities Act, although most archaeologists today are unaware of this little known fact. In contrast, the rest of the country including California did not have formal archaeological field classes until the 1930s and 1940s. The historical background, reasons for the time lag, and anthropologists involved in these developments are examined, which reflect the growth and maturity of the discipline. The results of recent field schools and classes offered by Cal State Fullerton in southern coastal California and in northern Arizona under the direction of Dr. James during the past seven years are then discussed.
Dr. Steven R. James is an archaeological anthropologist in the Department of Anthropology at California State University, Fullerton. He is also the director and principal investigator of two field classes in archaeology offered by the Anthropology Department, one on the Palos Verdes Peninsula and/or on San Nicolas Island during the regular school year and the other at the Southern Sinagua prehistoric pueblo of Honanki and surrounding area in the Red Rocks near Sedona, Arizona, in early summer. Prior to teaching at Cal State Fullerton, he served as an Associate State Archaeologist at the Cultural Resources Division of California State Parks at their headquarters in Sacramento. He is an archaeologist with over 35 years of experience in California, the Great Basin, and the American Southwest, as well as several other regions of world. His research interests are diverse and include zooarchaeology, prehistoric human impacts on the environment, Paleoindians, historical archaeology in the West, pueblo architecture and use of space, and hominid evolution, especially with regard to the earliest use of fire. He has authored over 65 articles and chapters in books on archaeology and over 200 technical reports on various aspects of archaeology and cultural resource management. Some of his more recent publications include a co-authored book entitled The Archaeology of Global Change: The Impact of Humans on Their Environment published by the Smithsonian Institution Press, and a chapter entitled “Prehistoric Hunting and Fishing in the American Southwest” in a forthcoming edited book to be published in early 2011 by Smithsonian Institution Scholarly
November 11, 2010
Dr. Edward J. Knell
Quarry-Centered Lithic Technological Organization around Ancient Lake Mojave, Eastern Mojave Desert, California
During the past two summers Dr. Knell, undergraduate, and graduate students from California State University, Fullerton (CSUF), undertook an archaeological survey on the eastern flank of the Soda Mountains in the northwestern corner of the Mojave National Preserve. The project sought to reconstruct how prehistoric peoples procured lithic raw material and manufactured, used, and transported blanks and/or tools away from the survey area. Fourteen small and large lithic scatters, workshops, and secondary quarry areas were located on a single alluvial fan. The alluvial fan contains some 15,000+ chipped stone artifacts, 2,213 of which were analyzed (but left in the field). Pertinent data collected to address the research questions.
The data indicate that prehistoric hunter-gatherers around Soda Lake procured, and in some cases quarried, black and green tabular felsite. Nearly all the artifacts represent the early stages of multidirectional core and biface core reduction for the purposes of creating usable blanks, as well as early stage biface tool blank manufacture. Very few tools were identified, suggesting that while the early stages of blank production occurred within the project area the purpose of the procurement and manufacturing efforts was to create and transport usable blanks away from the area.
Dr. Knell is an assistant professor in the Department of Anthropology at California State University, Fullerton. He received his Ph.D. in Anthropology from Washington State University, Pullman, in 2007. His archaeological research focuses on Late Pleistocene/Early Holocene human adaptations, land use, and the organization of lithic technology in the western United States, with particular emphasis on Late Paleoindians of the Great Plains. Dr. Knell also has a research project around ancient Lake Mojave in the eastern Mojave Desert of California that will be the focus of the PCAS lecture. Though regionally distinct, the California and Great Plains research provides important clues to Late Pleistocene/Early Holocene human adaptations.
December 9, 2010 (Holiday Potluck Dinner)
Dr. John Johnson
Clues to California Indian Prehistory as Revealed by DNA Analysis
January 13, 2011
Dr. Jerry D. Moore
February 10, 2011
Dr. David S. Whitley
Mojave Desert Petroglyph Dating and the Peopling of the Americas