An email we recieved

Dear UVU Anthropology,

I wanted to let you know of an exciting student opportunity to participate on an archaeological project working on the compelling rock-art sites of South-Central California. This is an University of California accredited archaeological field school that is working on painted prehistoric sites on the spectacular Wind Wolves Preserve in the San Emigdio Hills at the southern extent of the San Joaquin Valley, north of Los Angeles and adjacent to the Grapevine/I-5. It focusses on a landscape rich in Native American rock-art and is famous as a refuge during the Mission Period. We have found evidence of Historical occupation of rock-art sites in our excavations with Spanish and Mexican influences plus American settler activity occurring at the sites or nearby. This also is an international collaborative project with collaborations between United Kingdom and UCLA, so the students will meet other staff and students from around the globe. Attached is an announcement and a colour pdf of a magazine article on the project. Funding assistance is available but students will need to apply fairly soon. If you could please forward this to any potential students and/or post in your department, I would be very grateful indeed!

Best regards,

Dr. David Robinson

Excavating Rock Art in California

David Robinson (University of Central Lancashire), Fraser Sturt (University of Southampton), Julienne Bernard (UCLA/Cotsen Institute of Archaeology)

The Enculturating Environments Project is a field school based on the Wind Wolves Preserve in South-Central California. As the largest private preserve in the American West, it is rich in wildlife and dedicated to the protection and restoration of the native environment. It is a beautiful landscape with sandstone mountain peaks, open oak woodlands, grassland potreros, beguiling rock formations and some of the most spectacular rock paintings found anywhere in North America.

These fragile, often multicoloured pictographs are found on sandstone surfaces; as irreplaceable works of art, it is essential that they are properly recorded and researched in controlled and careful circumstances. Our work aims to educate the need to conserve these vital expressions of the native artistry. Found close to these paintings are complex archaeological sites with evidence of a range of associated activities.

Our international collaborative project includes rock-art specialists, historical archaeologists, and environmental archaeologists. We are investigating the past context of these enigmatic works of Native art through digital survey techniques, excavation, and geo-archaeology. The prehistory of this landscape is only now beginning to be explored; excavations focus on pigment quarry sites and middens containing abundant material culture such as lithics (i.e. arrow heads and other chert tools and manufacturing debris), ground stone (i.e. mortars, pestles, manos, metates), cooking waste (small mammal, deer, river muscle), and importantly beads (both prehistoric shell and historical trade beads). As an historical landscape, the region itself is famous for Native resistance to Spanish and Mexican incursions, as a refuge for Mission Indians after the coastal revolt of 1824, and later, for its ranchero operations, even as a hideout for outlaw gangs such as the infamous Joaquin Murietta, the 'Mexican Robin Hood' of the 1850s.

Students are invited to apply for places, which are limited. As a six week field school, we will teach you rock-art recording, digital survey, field excavation, geoarchaeological investigation, and laboratory analysis while you learn about environmental conservation and the wildlife of this spectacular habitat.

You also will learn regional archaeological sequences and the historical development of Western landscapes, including the American and Modern periods, with the development of 'big business' agriculture, water manipulation and oil extraction, in one of the most intensely transformed environments ever to be attributed to human impact.

Equally, you will be part of an international expedition, with students and staff from many universities both local and distant, including University of California Los Angeles, Southampton (England), University of Central Lancashire (England), and others. You also will meet and learn from local professional archaeologists, rock-art conservators, preserve personnel, and biologists.
As part of the UCLA Archaeology Field Program, this is an accredited fieldschool with a full summer quarter's allocation of credit. 

For further information, see the new on-line free access Project Page just published on the international journal Antiquity:

http://antiquity.ac.uk/projgall/robinson323/

To sign up for the field school, go to:

http://www.archaeology.ucla.edu/programs/north-america/u.s.-california-windwolves-connecting-rock-art-and-environment

For inquiries, contact Dr. David Robinson (dwrobinson@uclan.ac.uk).http://www.uclan.ac.uk/scitech/forensic_investigative/files/sci_fz_doc_enculturatinglandscapes.pdf

For further information on the Preserve, visit:http://www.wildlandsconservancy.org/twc_preserve_wind_wolves.html

____________________________

David W. Robinson

Lecturer in Archaeology
School of Forensic & Investigative Sciences
University of Central Lancashire
Preston

United Kingdom
PR1 2HE

Phone (+44) 01772 893756

MB 238B