2025 NMAC Member Grant Winner!
The following is an excerpt from the winning grant submission. Click on the link for the full document.
I was fortunate to receive a NMAC grant to conduct research on Diné fortresses on Chacra Mesa, historically referred to as “pueblitos.” These fortresses are located near Chaco Canyon and Pueblo Pintado, NM (Figure 1). The grant supported lodging and travel, including driving from our base camp in Cuba, NM to the sites, and I am very grateful for this support. Our fieldwork took place over three weeks in October (October 7–25, 2025).
Chacra Mesa forms the southeastern flank of Chaco Canyon (Figure 1), a major cultural center of the Ancestral Puebloans from 850 to 1250 CE, known for its monumental great houses and extensive trade networks. While Chaco Canyon lies within northwestern New Mexico, Chacra Mesa is located just outside the Dinétah, the ancestral homeland of the Diné, located to the northeast (Figure 2). The Dinétah played a central role in early Diné cultural development (Towner 1996), but Chacra Mesa provides a distinct and valuable perspective for examining Diné interactions with Puebloan groups, Utes, and Spanish colonists.
The Diné connection to Chaco Canyon is understudied, and fortress sites from the Gobernador Period (1630–1765 CE) may represent some of the earliest Diné settlements in the canyon area. While defensive fortresses in the Dinétah are well documented, those outside this region remain less understood. In the mid-1700s, Diné communities on Chacra Mesa constructed sandstone masonry fortresses to defend against Ute raids and encroaching Spanish colonists. Unlike similar structures in the Dinétah, which often served as both defensive and habitation sites, fortresses on Chacra Mesa appear to have functioned primarily as lookout points along trade and migration routes (Vivian 1960; Brugge 1986; Van Dyke et al. 2023; Winnicki 2023). Residential dwellings, or hogans, were typically located nearby (Dykeman 2023; Vivian 1960).
While the fortresses themselves have been well documented, my research focused on the surrounding communities: where people lived, how long they occupied these areas, and how they interacted with neighboring groups. We re-recorded four Diné fortress areas previously documented by Gwinn Vivian in the 1960s, searching for discrete forked-stick or masonry hogans. Our goals were to better understand community structure, occupation patterns, and site function. We collected cores and cross sections for dendrochronology and collected gray ware ceramics for petrographic analysis. These analyses will help determine whether ceramics were locally produced or acquired through trade.
2025 NMAC Member Grant Winning Submission Link
Projectile Points of New Mexico
For the first time, New Mexico has a volume dedicated to all projectile point types dating from the Paleoindian through Historic period. Filled with historical details, measurements, defining attributes, age estimates, interpretations, references, and images, Projectile Points of New Mexico: 13,000 Years of Technological Innovation edited by Dr. Bradley J. Vierra and with many contributing authors and supporters, is graciously offered on the Archaeological Society of New Mexico's website courtesy of the New Mexico Bureau of Land Management, who provided the grant for production costs, New Mexico State University, who was responsible for the contract, and Statistical Research, Inc., who produced the volume.
There are two posters also available for download included in the volume that provide an overview of the different projectile point types and some well-known flaked stone raw material source locations.
Projectile Points of New Mexico Link
President's Address
Summer, 2026
Good afternoon to NMAC members,
I know that this is a bit tardy in dispersal, but I hope that 2026 has been eventful for you all. I am the President for NMAC for this year, and I look forward to engaging with you throughout the year and beyond as we strive to engage with the shifting regulatory landscape and market. In this address, I want to summarize a few recent events of note and associated thoughts of mine.
In late April to early May, I, along with many of you, attended the Society for American Archaeology’s Annual Meeting in slightly overcast San Francisco where I heard presentations and saw posters on recent CRM investigations and associated research as well as more traditional academic research in the Southwest region and beyond and was able to meet with colleagues from several companies that operate in New Mexico. A common issue identified in many of my conversations was the comparably stark, limited presence of CRM-initiated projects in the program as compared with the extensive traditional academic initiated talks—this is something I wish to challenge you all to advocate for to your colleagues and to your corporate higher ups as vital to the industry. Presenting on your recent projects may seem daunting or even difficult given the variable size and regulatory-specific way we conduct them and budgetary reality that can restrict traditional “research” endeavors. But presenting and conveying the results of our projects not only fulfills our ethical responsibilities as scientists (or scientists-adjacent) but more importantly it demonstrates the importance of maintaining and strengthening the regulatory framework that strives to preserve and protect archaeological resources and their associated data and which enables and promotes descendant community and other interest group engagement. Additionally, presenting on CRM projects conveys to those who are less aware of the substantial quantity of fieldwork, analysis, report writing, and innovative interpretations that have historically and are still continuing to emerge from CRM! In many conversations with those in graduate programs or having just finished, I was told how unaware they were of how much data, ideas, and recently-published technical reports there are pertinent, and in many cases superseded, to what they were trying to study. So, please give it some thought—I certainly look forward to attending your presentations and hearing about all the projects you are involved in and research you are conducting [and make no mistake, it is research (even if past university faculty members may have incorrectly told you otherwise)]!
The week after, I attended the Archaeological Society of New Mexico’s annual meeting in Farmington, where we honored the careers and achievements of Cathy Cameron and Steve Lekson with a series of presentations on the archaeology of Greater Chaco and southern New Mexico. Included in the day’s program were presentations on recent survey projects of some Navajo fortress (pueblitos/bee hołdzil) structures by Chronicle Heritage and of Apache rock imagery in the Sierra de las Uvas by Statistical Research, Inc. as well as a thoughtful piece by Jason Chuipka of Woods Canyon Archaeological Consultants on the need to publish the results of CRM projects in scholarly journals for our colleagues. The day was capped by a paired Bandelier Keynote lecture by Cathy and Steve who discussed their careers, their contributions (including those of their students), and some thoughts for consideration.
On another note, the NMAC executive committee held its first quarterly meeting in mid-March where we discussed existing programmatic agreements being extended for the Permian Basin and proposed for the BLM-Farmington Field Office, the issue of Chaco Canyon’s proposed road development project, and received updates from committee chairs. We continue to monitor and respond with comments to proposed federal (and state) actions that weaken the protection of archaeological resources, including the proposed revocation of the oil and gas development lease moratorium around Chaco Canyon. Please continue to reach out to myself and the legislative committee regarding such actions as, given our day jobs, we cannot always keep appraised of every proposed detrimental action and policy change.
In any case, I thank you for supporting NMAC and I look forward to seeing you at this year’s conference in November!
Best regards,
Thatcher Seltzer-Rogers
2026 NMAC President
tseltzerrogers@chronicleheritage.com
Summer 2026 NewsMAC Newletter
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