Next Meeting – April 9th

All our monthly meetings and presentations are free and open to the public. Our next meeting will be held in person and on Zoom on Wednesday, April 9th, at 7:00 p.m. in the lyceum at the Center of Southwest Studies at Fort Lewis College. After a brief business meeting, Leigh Marymor, Research Affiliate at the Museum of Northern Arizona, will present “Faux Native American Picture-Writing in Colorado and the American West.” A reception will start things off at 6:30 p.m. in the CSWS foyer.

Western Message Petroglyphs are remarkably recognizable by their shared image content and layout, by their method of execution, and by their patterned geographic and historic landscape settings. They were engraved with metal-edged tools on freestanding boulders and natural rock walls located in semi-remote landscape settings throughout the western United States. The individual images are for the most part laid out in arrangements forming a single line, or in two or more parallel lines. Variant configurations are sometimes limited to one or two isolated images, a brief phrase of images, or a cluster of numerous images lacking in formal organization.

The Western Message Petroglyph (WMP) project appears to have been intent on the appropriation of imagery from multicultural picture-writing traditions for repurposing as a new picture-language. The culture-bound images were stripped from their original contexts and recast to function as words in narrative picture-texts. These narrations, obscured by their semi-remote locations and use of esoteric picture-writing, appear to be in the form of brief folk-wisdom and social justice commentaries. Often poignant with ironic, humorous, and numinous overtones, the narrations comment on the human condition as experienced by an unknown author riding along the under-belly of Manifest Destiny in the latter years of western expansion and early industrialization of the American West, approximately 1880-1930.

Leigh Marymor is a Past President of the American Rock Art Research Association where he has been a member for 40 years and also served several terms during that time as Chairperson of the ARARA’s Conservation Committee. Leigh has been awarded the following recognitions by the American Rock Art Research Association: Castleton Award for excellence in research (2002); Conservation and Preservation Award for the activities of the Bay Area Rock Art Research Association on behalf of cultural resource heritage protection (2008); and the Wellmann Award for lifetime achievement in the fields of rock art studies, documentation, education, conservation, and outreach (2021). He co-founded the Bay Area Rock Art Research Association, along with Dr. Paul Freeman in 1983, and continues in a leadership role in that organization today.

Leigh is the Compiler of Rock Art Studies: A Bibliographic Database. The RASBdb project is a searchable bibliographic database of the World’s rock art literature and contains more than 51,000 citations as of Winter 2024. The RASBdb was hosted as a joint project between the Bancroft Library (University of California – Berkeley) and the Bay Area Rock Art Research Association (BARARA) from 2003 – 2016.  In fall of 2016, BARARA affiliated with the Museum of Northern Arizona to continue the free and open access to the RASBdb project. The Rock Art Studies Bibliographic Database search engine at the Museum of Northern Arizona is located at: https://musnaz.org/search_rock_art_studies_db/.

 Leigh is a Research Affiliate at the Museum of Northern Arizona. He holds a B.S. degree in Community Education, University of Wisconsin – Milwaukee, he is a trained textile artist and retired in 2021 as President of The Lunt Marymor Company, a construction firm located in the San Francisco Bay Area specializing in plumbing, radiant heating, and fire sprinkler design and installations.

Link to Join Webinar

https://fortlewis.zoom.us/j/97612418790

Meeting ID: 976 1241 8790

Lifelong Learning Program

This upcoming program takes place at FLC, Noble Hall, Room 130, from 7:00 – 8:30 p.m.

April 17 – Jackson Clark, owner of Toh-Atin Gallery, “Saving Navajo Weaving: Influence of Navajo Traders in the evolution of the Navajo Rug in the Late 1800’s”

The San Juan Basin Archaeological Society (SJBAS) is a Colorado Nonprofit Corporation. SJBAS consists of people who are interested in the archaeology, culture, and early history of the Four Corners region. We have members of all ages and backgrounds, some with extensive training in archaeology and others with more limited knowledge, but a strong desire to learn.

Our mission is to advocate for and promote public awareness and preservation of archaeological, cultural, and historical resources, primarily of the Four Corners region of the American Southwest.

Members are eligible to participate in SJBAS field trips and they receive a monthly newsletter, the Moki Messenger, with information about current SJBAS activities and other matters of archaeological and historical interest.

We support and endow the John W. Sanders Internship and Education Fund. This fund provides ongoing internships for Fort Lewis College students at the Center of Southwest Studies. Donations are welcome to these 501(C)(3) funds: Donate.