March Chapter Meetings

Blue Ridge Archaeology Guild

Sunday, March 6, 6:00 pm
University of North Georgia, Young Hall, Room 202, W Main Street at College Circle, Dahlonega, GA 30597

This month’s speaker is the University of North Georgia’s Rick Edwards, a doctoral student, who will speak on his research into the diet of  humans and dogs of  Native and Paleo-Americans.. The title of this talk will be “Dogs and Diet in the past”.   B.R.A.G. is co-hosting this talk so it will replace our normal March meeting on the 2nd Wednesday night.

The location is Young Hall, Room 202 , at 6:00 PM on the Univ. of North Georgia Campus. (Sunday afternoon) .
Please come out to hear this speaker and invite a dog lover to learn a little bit of dog archaeology. It is now believed the man- dog  association is at least 27,000 years old.

On Tuesday, March 8th, B.R.A.G. will have a field trip to Farmer’s Bottom. The size of the group is limited, so if you want to go, please contact Jack Wynn at jtwynn@gmail.com/706.482.0524.

 Greater Atlanta Archaeological Society

Tuesday, March 8th, 6:30-8:00 pm
Fernbank Museum of Natural History{#u_jsonp_4_m ._5xhk}, 767 Clifton Rd NE, Atlanta, Georgia 30307

The speaker will be Georgia State University’s visiting professor, Dr. Nicola Sharratt.

Abstract of Upcoming Feb. GAAS talk:

Nicola Sharratt is Assistant Professor of Anthropology at Georgia State University. After receiving her PhD in Anthropology from the University of Illinois at Chicago, she held post-doctoral positions at the Field Museum in Chicago and then at the American Museum of Natural History and the Bard Graduate Center, in New York. Her ongoing excavation project in Peru concentrates on the short and longer term aftermath of the collapse of the Tiwanaku state circa AD 1000, a process that radically altered the social, economic and political landscape of the pre-Hispanic Andes. She works closely with museums in Latin America and the USA, and curated ‘Carrying Coca,’ an exhibition of archaeological and ethno graphic textiles held in New York City in 2014.

Living and Dying through Political Turmoil: excavations in a terminal

Tiwanaku (AD 950

–

1150) village in the Moquegua Valley, Peru

For

500 years the Tiwanaku, one of the earliest Andean states, exerted ideological, economic and political influence over large areas of what is now Peru and Bolivia. However, around AD 1000, the Tiwanaku state began a process of political collapse and violent turmoil during which cities were abandoned, elite authority was rejected and symbols of the state were destroyed. As with much archaeological work on political breakdown, research on the Tiwanaku collapse has concentrated on explaining why the state fell apart and the large-scale repercussions on social structure and economic systems. Yet, states are made up of groups and individuals who are affected by and respond to political change. In this talk, I discuss recent excavations at the site of Tumilaca la Chimba in the Moquegua valley, Peru, a village that was established by refugees fleeing burning state towns. Drawing on evidence from burials, houses and ceremonial structures, I explore how members of this post-collapse community maintained many

elements of daily and ritual practice but also modified earlier customs as they responded to the turbulence of violent political breakdown

NW Georgia Archaeology Society

Thursday, March 10, 6:00 pm
Cartersville Main Street Library, 429 W. Main Street, Cartersville, Georgia 30120

Jim Langford will be presenting on the impact of the DeSoto expedition in NW Georgia, here is an abstract:

“DeSoto in Northwest Georgia: When the World Came Crashing Down”

When DeSoto appeared in NW Georgia in 1540, the population of the area was on the rise – an acceleration that had been going on for almost 150 years as evidenced by new villages and hamlets that had been springing up in the Etowah-Coosa–Coosawattee Basin since about 1400AD. By 1600AD, or within about 50 years of DeSoto’s arrival, about 95 percent of the local population had disappeared. Multiple epidemics and disruption of the political and social structures of the Coosa Chiefdom almost completely destroyed the complex cultures that had inhabited NW Georgia for several hundred years.

Archaeologists did not understand the complexity of the social structures in NW Georgia until the 1970s and 1980s when researchers began to focus on several of the archaeological sites in these river valleys. I will talk about those early days of examining the sites, the ceramics and the European artifacts and how the evidence began to tell a remarkable story of exploration, death and survival. The DeSoto diaries had been well-known and studied for many years, but we didn’t know exactly where the events in the diaries took place. Now we know a great deal more, and the physical evidence gives us a rich insight into how these people lived and died.

Gwinnett Archaeological Research Society

Thursday, March 10, 7:00 pm
Fort Daniel Monument, Buford, Georgia 30519

The monthly meeting of the Gwinnett Archaeological Society takes place at Fort Daniel on Braselton Highway. Dr. Valerie Pope Burnes will be presenting on her cultural discoveries of the Black Belt region of Alabama. She recently cowrote “Visions of the Black Belt: A Cultural Survey of the Heart of Alabama.” In the book Dr. Burnes and her coauthor Robin McDonald bring to life the layers of history that shaped the Black Belt’s tastes, sounds, and colors–such as Demopolis’s founding by exiles from Napoleon’s France.Look for more information on the upcoming lecture on their facebook page. Gwinnett Archaeological Society.

Posted online on Tuesday, March 1st, 2016