Beneath the City Different: The Archaeology of Santa Fe Friends of Archaeology symposium

Deepen your understanding of Santa Fe's 400th anniversary, as well as the new exhibit, Santa Fe Found: Fragments of Time, at this special symposium, 1-5 pm, Saturday, Nov. 7, at the New Mexico History Museum Auditorium, 113 Lincoln Ave. Admission is $10; call 505-954-7200 for tickets.

"Beneath the City Different: The Archaeology of Santa Fe" is sponsored by the Friends of Archaeology (a support group within the Museum of New Mexico Foundation) and the School for Advanced Research — two institutions founded by Edgar L. Hewett, a leading archaeologist and anthropologist and the first director of the Museum of New Mexico. The event features seven archaeologists speaking on different periods of Santa Fe's history, from ancient to modern times.

Through recent archaeological excavations in the downtown Santa Fe area, these researchers have given us new information about a recently discovered past — a past not yet covered in history books. The archaeologists will begin with a look at Santa Fe’s first seasonal residents, nomadic hunters and gatherers who came to pick wild plants and piñon nuts. Then they will talk about the later Pueblo people who built several large villages and survived by farming. The severity and luxury of Spanish Colonial life will also be discussed, as well as the economic and social changes brought by the Santa Fe Trail. Finally, the archaeologists will examine the agricultural and later industrial use of the recently developed Santa Fe Railyard area.

Tickets cost $10 and seating is limited. To purchase a ticket, call 505-954-7200 or mail your name, mailing address, phone number, email address, and payment to:

Beneath the City Different School for Advanced Research P.O. Box 2188 Santa Fe, NM 87504

For a complete schedule, go to http://sarweb.org/index.php?symposium_santa_fe_archaeology

The scheduled speakers:

Stephen Post, deputy director of the Office of Archaeological Studies,"6,500 Years of Living Light on the Landscape: Archaic Hunter-Gatherers and the Dawn of Agriculture in the Santa Fe Area"

Cheri Scheick, program director and owner of Southwest Archaeological Consultants and president of the nonprofit Rio Grande Foundation for Communities and Cultural Landscapes, "The City Different: Variety and Change in the 12th and 13th Centuries"

Douglas Schwartz, former SAR president, on the development and nature of Arroyo Hondo Pueblo

Jason Shapiro, member and chair of the city of Santa Fe's Archaeological Review Committee, "Chain of Cultural Custody: The IDentifiers, Promoters, and Keepers of Santa Fe Archaeology"

Cordelia Thomas Snow, historic sites archaeologist and historian, "The Archaeology of Early Colonial Santa Fe"

Ron Winter, independent contract archaeologist, "The Santa Fe Trail"

Jessica Badner, Office of Archaeological Studies, on what excavations at the Santa Fe Railyard revealed about foundations and infrastructure built by the Atchison, Topeka and Santa Fe Railway in the early 1880s

Santa Fe Found: Fragments of Time, on view at the Palace of the Governors, explores the lives of the colonists and Native peoples who lived in and around Santa Fe 400 years ago.

Prior to the construction of the New Mexico History Museum, which opened in May 2009, Post and his fellow archaeologists conducted a two-year dig to investigate the archaeology of the site at 113 Lincoln Ave., just off the Santa Fe Plaza. More than 90,000 artifacts were unearthed from the 17th-century, revealing tales of life as it once was.

Other featured archaeological sites add to the story. The Baca-Garvisu site was the home of a prominent Santa Fe family in the 1700s, located where the Santa Fe Community Convention Center now stands. The Sanchez Site, an early Spanish estancia, or rural settlement, was partly excavated in the 1980s and is now managed by El Rancho de los Golondrinas. Also prominent in the exhibition is San Gabriel del Yungue at the Pueblo of Ohkay Owingeh, where the first Spanish colonists briefly set their roots.

Funding for the Santa Fe Found exhibition was made possible by the Palace Guard, a support group of the Museum of New Mexico Foundation; the Gala Opening Committee; Friends of Archaeology, a support group of the Museum of New Mexico Foundation; the Santa Fe 400th; and the Museum of New Mexico Foundation.