MONDAY, DECEMBER 11, 2023 AT 7:00 PM MST –
DC-CAS MEMBERS NIGHT (HYBRID)
Please note this event is for Members Only. Our next public meeting will be on Monday, January 8, 2024 at 7:00 pm MST. If you are a member who has not been receiving our monthly emails consistently, please contact us through the Contact Us page.
LOCATION NOTE:
Members Night will be held in the food-friendly Martin Family Foundation Room, 4th Floor, History Colorado Center, 1200 N. Broadway, Denver 80203. Please enter the building through the Security/Staff entrance located on Lincoln Street. As the meeting will be a potluck, members who are attending in person are asked to arrive at 6:30pm and to bring a dish to share. Please mark all known allergens. Beverages will be provided.
The evening will feature presentations from the following DC-CAS members:
Speaker 1: Beth Fisher, DC-CAS Member and 2024 CAS Representative/PAAC Coordinator
Abstract: Porcupine Cave, an old mine in South Park, Colorado, was explored in the 1980s by Dan Rasmussen and his son Larry, who recognized the value of what they had found. They worked with paleontologists to identify samples and organized digs for many years. This extensive cave at 9500 feet above sea level dates from 1 million to 600,000 years ago and traces the changes in fauna across that time period and the associated climate change. The age, the altitude, and the astounding number of samples make this a unique find. Beth’s focus for this presentation shares about the logistics of the camp and the dig. They had a wonderful setup that went on for almost a decade, ending when there were many samples and work stepped away from the field to focus on those samples.
Bio: Beth Fisher recently retired from a career in Clinical Laboratory Technology, with the last 11 years at Kaiser Colorado Reference Lab in Molecular Diagnostics capped off with two years of Covid PCR testing. She likes almost everything faunal, regardless of age; and organizing anything that sits still long enough. Beth got her start in old stuff with excavations and digging dinosaurs in South Dakota. This led to the Paleontology Certification Program with the Denver Museum of Nature & Science (DMNS) and more digs whenever she could find them and still keep a paying job. Beth ran field camps with the Museum of Geology (Rapid City, South Dakota), WIPS (Western Interior Paleontological Society), and DMNS. After retirement in 2022, Beth followed her interest in human evolution by volunteering for International Archeology Day and working with History Colorado. Back in the lab with Shawn Fausett at History Colorado and in the field with ERO Resources this year, she has found that archeology uses similar skills as paleontology: picking out and identifying little bitty pieces of stuff from matrix. Because Beth also likes live animals (or the recently alive), she now works in the Spider Lab at DMNS learning to identify spiders.
Speaker 2: Gordon Tucker, Jr., DC-CAS Member and Former DC-CAS President
Abstract: Tel Shimron is an ancient site, located on the edge of the Jezreel Valley in the Lower Galilee region of Israel. Focused and extensive archaeological excavations began there in 2017 and are expected to continue for many more years. In six years of study, Tel Shimron Excavations has uncovered a fortified Canaanite city (1800-1200 BCE), fragments of a First Temple period Israelite city (destroyed by Assyria in 734-732 BCE), a Hellenistic farming outpost (3rd-1st centuries BCE) supplying the port of Acco, a 1st century CE Jewish community, and a Mamluk farming village (12-15th centuries CE). Tel Shimron lies on the main trade route from Arabia to the Mediterranean Sea. Throughout antiquity, this was the major connection from east to west in this region. Shimron is the largest site on that route. Through most of the Bronze Age and Iron Age, Shimron dominated that route between the Mediterranean and the Arabian Peninsula.
Bio: Gordon C. Tucker Jr., Ph.D. (“Gordy”) is a professional archaeologist who has worked for more than 40 years in cultural resources management (CRM) as a consulting archaeologist. During that time, he has been employed with several engineering and environmental firms in Colorado and worked on hundreds of projects, ranging in scope and size from desktop reviews, through pedestrian surveys, evaluative testing, and full-scale excavations at more than two dozen states, mostly in the western U.S. Since 2012, Dr. Tucker has participated in the excavations of two ancient sites in Israel, Ashkelon and Tel Shimon.
UPCOMING EVENTS:
January 8th – Sarah Allaun, Assistant State Archaeologist and State PAAC Coordinator