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In central New Mexico, tourists admire the majestic ruins of old Spanish churches and historic pueblos at Abo, Quarai, and Gran Quivira in Salinas Pueblo Missions National Monument. The less-imposing remains of the earliest Indian farming settlements, however, have not attracted nearly as much notice from visitors or from professional archaeologists. InConstructing Community, Alison E. Rautman synthesizes over twenty years of research about this little-known period of early sedentary villages in the Salinas region.Rautman tackles a very broad topic: how archaeologists use material evidence to infer and imagine how people lived in the past, how they coped with everyday decisions and tensions, and how they created a sense of themselves and their place in the world. Using several different lines of evidence, she reconstructs what life was like for the ancestral Pueblo Indian people of Salinas, and identifies some of the specific strategies that they used to develop and sustain their villages over time.Examining evidence of each site's construction and developing spatial layout, Rautman traces changes in community organization across the architectural transitions from pithouses to jacal structures to unit pueblos, and finally to plaza-oriented pueblos. She finds that, in contrast to some other areas of the American Southwest, early villagers in Salinas repeatedly managed their built environment to emphasize the coherence and unity of the village as a whole. In this way, she argues, people in early farming villages across the Salinas region actively constructed and sustained a sense of social community.

\"Learn about the seven wonders of the United States: The Everglades, Glacier point: Yosemite National Park, Grand Canyon, Mississippi River, Mount McKinley: Denali National Park, Niagara Falls and Redwood Forest\"-- Provided by publisher.

A Dan Josselyn Memorial Publication A 17th-century trading post and Indian town in central Georgia reveal evidence of culture contact and change. Ocmulgee Old Fields near Macon, Georgia, is the site of a Lower Creek village and associated English trading house dating from the late 17th and early 18th centuries. It was excavated in the early 1930s as part of a WPA project directed by A. R. Kelly, which focused primarily on the major Mississippian temple mounds of Macon Plateau. The specific data for the Old Fields was not analyzed until nearly 30 years after the excavation. Part of the significance of this site lies in its secure identification with a known group of people and the linkage of those people with recognizable archaeological remains. The Old Fields site was among the very first for which this kind of identification was possible and stands at the head of a continuing tradition of historic sites archaeology in the Southeast. Carol I. Mason's classic study of the Ocmulgee Old Fields site has been a model for contact-period Indian archaeology since the 1960s. The report includes a discussion of the historic setting and an analysis of the archaeological materials with an identification of the Lower Creek town and possibly of the English trader who lived there. Now, for the first time, the original report is widely available in book form. With a new foreword by the author and a new introduction from Southeastern archaeology expert Marvin T. Smith, readers have the benefit of a contemporary view of this very fine piece of careful scholarship. Carol I. Mason is Adjunct Professor of Archaeology at Lawrence University in Appleton, Wisconsin, and author of Wisconsin Indians: Prehistory to Statehood. Marvin T. Smith is Professor of Anthropology at Valdosta State University and author of Coosa: The Rise and Fall of a Southeastern Mississippian Chiefdom. Additional reviews: "This volume is valuable as a landmark in Southeastern research. It is somewhat outdated in its archaeological comparisons, but it is an excellent source for site findings and historical documentation. . . . The book provides greater insight into more current documents on the topic of these early relationships between the Old and New Worlds in the Southeast. It is a starting point from which to move forward and is valuable as a catalyst for future research."— Southeastern Archaeology " Mason's work presents the analysis and interpretation of a large body of material excavated by Works Progress Administration archaeologists during the 1930s and, in this case, continued into the 1940s. Large-scale projects, undertaken by field crews numbering in the hundreds of workers, amassed quantities of artifactual material and supporting documentation. In many instances, substantial amounts of material remain unanalyzed and unreported to this day. . . . The Ocmulgee Old Fields site with its mix of indigenous and European people, local material culture and trade goods, and varied functions represents an opportunity to study the Lower Creeks between 1670 and 1717. . . .I recommend (this volume) to all colleagues laboring to understand the early historic peiod in the Southeast."— The Florida Anthropologist "A masterful blend of meticulous archaeological analysis and wide-ranging historical research . . . with extraordinary style and wisdom."— Journal of Field Archaeology

Miss Fun buys a motorhome and takes her friends on an adventure, from New York City to Hollywood, California, with plenty of stops in-between--and plenty of complaints from Mr. Grumpy.

In Here, George Washington Was Born, Seth C. Bruggeman examines the history of commemoration in the United States by focusing on the George Washington Birthplace National Monument in Virginia's Northern Neck, where contests of public memory have unfolded with particular vigor for nearly eighty years. Washington left the birthplace with his family at a young age and rarely returned. The house burned in 1779 and would likely have passed from memory but for George Washington Parke Custis, who erected a stone marker on the site in 1815, creating the first birthplace monument in America. Both Virginia and the U.S. War Department later commemorated the site, but neither matched the work of a Virginia ladies association that in 1923 resolved to build a replica of the home. The National Park Service permitted construction of the \"replica house\" until a shocking archeological discovery sparked protracted battles between the two organizations over the building's appearance, purpose, and claims to historical authenticity. Bruggeman sifts through years of correspondence, superintendent logs, and other park records to reconstruct delicate negotiations of power among a host of often unexpected claimants on Washington's memory. By paying close attention to costumes, furnishings, and other material culture, he reveals the centrality of race and gender in the construction of Washington's public memory and reminds us that national parks have not always welcomed all Americans. What's more, Bruggeman offers the story of Washington's birthplace as a cautionary tale about the perils and possibilities of public history by asking why we care about famous birthplaces at all.

Large and severe wildfires have raised concerns about the future of forested landscapes in the southwestern United States, especially under repeated burning. In 2011, under extreme weather and drought conditions, the Las Conchas fire burned over several previous burns as well as forests not recently exposed to fire. Our purpose was to examine the influences of prior wildfires on plant community composition and structure, subsequent burn severity, and vegetation response. To assess these relationships, we used satellite‐derived measures of burn severity and a nonmetric multidimensional scaling of pre‐ and post‐ Las Conchas field samples. Earlier burns were associated with shifts from forested sites to open savannas and meadows, oak scrub, and ruderal communities. These non‐forested vegetation types exhibited both resistance to subsequent fire, measured by reduced burn severity, and resilience to reburning, measured by vegetation recovery relative to forests not exposed to recent prior fire. Previous shifts toward non‐forested states were strongly reinforced by reburning. Ongoing losses of forests and their ecological values confirm the need for restoration interventions. However, given future wildfire and climate projections, there may also be opportunities presented by transformations toward fire‐resistant and resilient vegetation types within portions of the landscape.

Efficient detection and management of non-indigenous species are critical for mitigating their ecological impacts. Environmental DNA (eDNA) techniques have transformed biodiversity monitoring by enabling sensitive and cost-effective surveys. This study compares the efficacy of passive eDNA samplers (PEDS) to conventional active filtration methods for detecting the cryptogenic macroalga Chondria tumulosa within the Papahānaumokuākea Marine National Monument, Hawaiʻi, USA. Three components of the species-specific eDNA assay were evaluated: clinical sensitivity, DNA yield, and overall performance. Site-level detection sensitivity of 15-minute PEDS deployments matched that of 2-L active filtration, with both methods detecting C. tumulosa in all cases where it was known to present. Site-occupancy models provided a robust framework for evaluating overall performance, offering critical insights into the tradeoffs of PEDS for detecting rare taxa. The success of PEDS is largely dependent on the increased number of qPCR replicates employed in this study compared to the previously developed eDNA assay for C. tumulosa . Passive method performance resulted in lower qPCR detection rates with higher probabilities of false-positives and false-negatives. Model estimates for C. tumulosa eDNA occupancy were similar between PEDS affixed to stationary buoys and PEDS attached to roving SCUBA divers. There was, however, a decrease in the eDNA capture rate among samples collected while on SCUBA. We also tested two passive membrane types—research-grade mixed cellulose ester filters and low-cost cotton rounds. The absorbent cotton rounds yielded greater target eDNA yields and were more reliable for inferring the presence of C. tumulosa . However, DNA yields from PEDS were consistently lower than actively filtered samples, indicating the importance of optimizing sampling and processing protocols to balance erroneous detections. Despite these limitations, passive sampling successfully detected C. tumulosa at low abundances (<1%), demonstrating its utility for uncovering cryptic taxa. PEDS are a cost-effective, versatile, and scalable alternative to active filtration, particularly in remote or resource-limited settings.