Grant County Archaeological Society

Next Meeting

Wednesday, November 18, 2026, 6:00 PM (ZOOM ONLY- link below): A short business meeting will be followed by a presentation by Michael Searcy on “Research on the Frontiers of the Greater Southwest.”

Over the past 20 years, Mike Searcy has been conducting research on the peripheries of what is known as the Greater Southwest. In Utah, Idaho, and Nevada, he has focused on the Fremont archaeological tradition. He’s also excavated several sites in Chihuahua, Mexico, associated with the ancient Casas Grandes people. Like the Ancestral Puebloans, Hohokam, and Mimbres, the Fremont and Casas Grandes people lived in foreboding desert environments, eventually converted to maize agriculture, lived in pithouses, and painted beautiful designs on their pottery, including symbolic motifs used elsewhere in the Southwest. This presentation will discuss how his research on the frontiers aligns with the better-known cultures of the Greater Southwest.

Michael T. Searcy is a professor of anthropology and chair of the Department of Anthropology at Brigham Young University. He was formerly the director of the New World Archaeological Foundation. Mike has worked in the U.S. Southwest/Northwest Mexico and Guatemala for more than twenty years, with research focused on the Fremont and Casas Grandes archaeological cultures and the modern Maya. He is author of The Life-Giving Stone: Ethnoarchaeology of Maya Metates (2011) and Archaeological Structuration (2025). He also co-authored Hinterlands to Cities: The Archaeology of Northwest Mexico and Its Vecinos (2022) with Matthew C. Pailes. His forthcoming book is the fourth edition of Archaeology of the Greater Southwest (2026) with Maxine MicBrinn and Linda Cordell.

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Next Field Trip

Sunday, November 8, 2026: Torie Grass and Eduardo Arguello will lead a field trip to Beehive Cave near Virden, NM. Meet at the Murray Ryan Visitor Center at 9:00am to carpool. Its a rocky road but an interesting formation with rock shelters, pictographs and rock mortars and possible ancient terracing. The Visitor Center is located at 201 N Hudson St. in Silver City.