Society for Cultural Astronomy in the American Southwest

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Third Thursday Food for Thought

“Envisioning a Cultural Landscape”

By SCAAS Cultural Astronomy Researcher Greg Munson

Sponsored by Old Pueblo Archaeology Center, PO Box 40577, Tucson AZ 85717

Greg Munson (Society for Cultural Astronomy in the American Southwest) discussed new ways to record, document, and visualize the cultural landscape of the Greater American Southwest. The program emphasized the SCAAS Cultural Landscapes Survey Program, which has tribal consultation as a key component. At the center of the program is expanding the concept of the archaeological site boundary to include resources from the local environment, relationships to nearby villages, how the architecture relates to the more distant landscape, and a building’s alignment to horizon features such as mountain peaks. SCAAS studies the connection of a site to astronomical cycles and features in the day and night sky and explores new technologies for the visualization of buildings and the landscape like the use of dynamic panoramas, 3D modeling, and infographics. Its goals include establishing a common method of documenting and visualizing links between ancestral peoples and the land and sky that surrounded them so that we can better understand that we live in a unified cultural landscape, inseparable from its parts.

The program was recorded and is now posted to the Old Pueblo Archaeology Center's YouTube Channel at:

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=Ib4s_9McWo0

Please enjoy these additional Zoom lectures sponsored by our friends at Crow Canyon Archaeological Center.

What All of Us Can Learn from the Old Ones with Dr. Scott Ortman

https://youtu.be/WWWfM6gVlYc?si=L5bfC6kc4wsLqkml

Seeking My Center Place: Migrations through Science and Tradition with Lyle Balenquah

https://youtu.be/Eh86t2Kcueo?si=BSl0CKF8toHPiudw

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SCAAS launches Journal Club!

Journal Club WebpagePlease enjoy these

The Society launched its Journal Club in July 2021. The Journal Club is a member's resource and a forum to discuss two papers or articles of interest, normally one from a SCAAS member and one from a qualified researcher on related topics. The event is held via Zoom and the sessions are being recorded for later posting on our You Tube Channel - SCAAS.Connects2U. You must be a member to access downloadable copies of the papers and articles to be discussed at the Journal Club meetings. The public is welcome to attend the meetings.

The purpose of the Society for Cultural Astronomy in the American Southwest (SCAAS) is to advance the study and practice of cultural astronomy in the American Southwest. The Society is committed to recognizing significant contributions to knowledge and the importance of research, professional standards and excellence in the study of cultural astronomy, effective dissemination and presentation of cultural astronomy knowledge, and innovation and originality of approach.

CAASW 2009 Book Cover The American Southwest was one of the early and fruitful areas of cultural astronomy study, and remains so to this day. However, the opportunity for professional and avocational cultural astronomers to share their research has been limited. The first biennial Conference on Archaeoastronomy in the American Southwest was held from June 11-13, 2009 to mark the International Year of Astronomy 2009 and to provide a forum to promote research and a better understanding of the cultural significance of astronomical knowledge among American Southwest cultures, past and present. The theme of the conference, held in Camp Verde, Arizona, was "Creating Sustainability in American Southwest Archaeoastronomy Research."

The proceedings from the 2009 Conference have been published as Volume 23 of the Journal of Astronomy in Culture by the University of Texas Press.

This volume is now out of print. Please search your favorite on-line used book retailer for available copies.

The success of this conference was followed by the Archaeoastronomy in the Field Workshop, held at the Pueblo Grande Museum and Archaeological Park in Phoenix Arizona on March 11-12, 2010. The workshop presented an intense and hands-on series of presentations and discussions to further the standardization of archaeoastronomy documentation and recording.

UNM Press The next event held was the 2011 Conference on Archaeoastronomy of the American Southwest, at the University of New Mexico, site of the historic 1983 conference “Astronomy and Ceremony in the Prehistoric Southwest” [Papers of the Maxwell Museum of Anthropology #2]. An outreach lecture was given on the evening of June 16 by Dr .E.C. Krupp, Director of the Griffith Observatory and acclaimed author of several books on archaeoastronomy. The proceedings of this conference have been published by the Maxwell Museum of Anthropology.