Upcoming Events
- ONLINE SPEAKER EVENT: Breck Parkman on: “Sacred Litter.” (June 12, 2025)
In the Spotlight
Field Trip to the UCSC Lime Kiln Site and Chitactac
Friday, September 13, 9:00 am to 1:00 pm Join Archaeological Society members for a trip to the Lime works on the UCSC campus. Meet up at the Barn Theater parking lot at the entrance to the campus by 9am. After the … Continue reading
Archaeological Society General Meeting and Potluck
Please join us for our annual potluck at September’s General meeting. Among our guests will be members of the Sacramento Archaeological Society. Bring a dish and enjoy each other’s company before watching an archaeologically themed movie (the movie TBA). Thursday, … Continue reading
Chitactac Family Day 2019
Celebrate the Amah Mutsun culture and discover the heritage of people who lived in this ancient village site. Play traditional games, make unique crafts, and learn about native plants and wildlife along uvas creek. The event is free and fun … Continue reading
Summer Archaeology Project at the Santa Cruz Mission State Historic Park
The Summer Archaeology Project (SAP) is held in collaboration between California State Parks and Santa Clara University. We meet every Monday, between 10 am and 2 pm, for 10 weeks during summer. SAP volunteers sort through material excavated from the site of the Native American Rancheria at the Santa Clara Mission. Studying this material helps answer critical questions about daily life for Native people in the Mission system. Continue reading
Breck Parkman: “Digging the Sixties: An Archaeology of Hippies and Marines”
When people think of archaeologists, they often picture an Indiana Jones-type character toiling away amongst ancient ruins. Archaeology can be that and yet, it can be so much more. For almost 40 years, Breck Parkman has been constructing an archaeology of the 1960s – that time of tremendous social and political upheaval.
Tait Elder: “Comparing Regional Prehistoric Archaeological Sensitivity Models: What Are We Really Modeling?”
Join SCAS for a talk by Tait Elder. This presentation explores some of the attributes that are traditionally used to develop general archaeological sensitivity models, identify post-depositional and methodological factors that can influence how site distributions are interpreted and how they may vary by region, and considers approaches to weighing these attributes and factors in order to develop region-specific models. Continue reading
Adrian Praetzellis: “Archaeology of the Despised”
Although racism and poverty were accepted parts of life in 19th century California, archaeology shows that human tenacity and the ability to adapt were alive and well. African American railway porters in post-bellum Oakland, Sacramento’s Gold Rush era Chinese merchants, and Polish Jews living in San Francisco were as culturally different as can be. And yet their varied responses to adversity—as preserved in their artifacts and history—show the common resolve to live in dignity that is part of our shared humanity. Continue reading
Cabrillo College Anthropology Club Symposium: Global Impacts of Climate Change
This symposium brings together a panel of Cabrillo College staff from four different fields to provide the community with factual information on and about the progress and impacts of climate change on a global scale.
Tom King: “Fiction as an Archaeological Research Tool”
If an archaeologist writes fiction about the subject of his or her research, can this serve a useful purpose, or does it taint the objectivity of the archaeologist’s conclusions? This is a question that Tom King faced when he elected to write two novels about the hypothetical fate of pioneer aviators Amelia Earhart and Fred Noonan on Nikumaroro, in the Phoenix Islands. To King, imagining how the data he and his colleagues were finding might reflect what had happened to Earhart and Noonan was a way to make sense of them. To others, doing so was fatal to King’s claim to be conducting scholarly research.
Diane Gifford-Gonzalez: “Tales (and Tails) from the Bolcoff Adobe: A Zooarchaeological Analysis of Recently Excavated Fauna”
The Bolcoff Adobe is the oldest standing structure at Wilder Ranch State Park. The floor of the Bolcoff Adobe was excavated in an effort to reach the underlying, precolonial indigenous archaeological deposits. Excavators deemed this effort to have been largely unsuccessful, but zooarchaeological analysis shows that some precolonial archaeological remains were recovered.
