The San Juan Basin Archaeological Society invites the public to a presentation in the Lyceum at the Center of Southwest Studies and on Zoom on Wednesday, September 13 at 7:00 pm. At 6:30 we will have social time, then after a brief business meeting, Professor Karen Harry, University of Nevada, Las Vegas, will discuss the Virgin Branch Puebloan Culture of Southern Nevada. For log-in information, go to SJBAS.ORG.

Professor Harry specializes in the study of ceramic technology, production, and distribution and the archaeology of the North American southwest. An area of ongoing research deals with understanding ceramic technology and use among sedentary hunter-gathers. For more than a thousand years, the Moapa Valley of southern Nevada was home to people participating in the westernmost expression of Puebloan lifeways. Appearing in the archaeological record at about AD 200, these individuals were members of what archaeologists refer to as the Virgin Branch Puebloan culture. This culture did not appear and progress in a vacuum, how-ever, but developed and changed in response to changing environmental and social conditions. This talk covers the origin, development, and decline of the Lowland Virgin Branch culture while also exploring how the local cultural context affected how this trajectory unfolded.