Our next meeting will be held on Wednesday, November 13^th, at 7:00 p.m. in the lyceum at the Center of Southwest Studies at Fort Lewis College. After a brief business meeting, Dr. Randy McGuire will present: "Building an International Archaeology in Sonora, México." There will be a social at 6:30 p.m. in the CSWS foyer.

The boundaries and frontiers that define modern North American nations and states had no significance for the ancient peoples that inhabited the continent. But these boundaries have profoundly affected archaeology. In subtle and complex ways, they shape how archaeologists frame questions, how they define their studies, what journals they read, what colleagues they talk to, where they go to school, what institutions they work for and dozens of other aspects of research. We seek to transcend these lines to understand the aboriginal history of Sonora as a dynamic phenomenon. Prehispanic peoples moved back and forth across the modern international border as if it was not there, because it wasn’t. Modern archaeologists have not been so fortunate. Sonora lies between two of the most intensively archaeologically researched regions in the world but the quantity of research in Sonora remains relatively low. We have attempted to change this through a collaborative international archaeology that expands our knowledge of Sonora and the Southwest United States.