What's New & Happening with
Taos Archaeological Society?
Next Speaker
LECTURE
Kit Carson Board Room 7pm
Monday May 5, 2025
Alaska Pictographs
Martin Gutoski has been an amateur
astronomer since 1974, an Alaskan
Professional Land Surveyor since 1988 and
holds a BA and MA in Archaeology from the
University of Alaska Fairbanks in 1992 and
2003, respectively. He has lived in Alaska
since 1960 but overwinters (snow birding as
it is called) in Taos, New Mexico since 2017 to
avoid any more winters there but returns to
Fairbanks from Memorial Day to Labor Day
to do archeology and land surveying when the
snow is gone and the sun is up 24/7.
MOOSE CREEK PICTOGAPH SITE
I have been searching for the photographs and tracings made by J. Louis Giddings in June 1940 as reported in the American Antiquity, Vol. 7, No. 1 (July 1941), at pp. 69-70 since I was an undergraduate student in anthropology at the University of Alaska Fairbanks (UAF) in 1992. When I entered the program for my master’s degree in the 2000’s I had to content myself that these were not available after years of searching at intuitions that Giddings attended after leaving Alaska, including Brown and the dendrochronology lab at the University of Arizona.
I competed my MA at UAF in 2003 using another track of focusing on what Giddings described in the AA report as “The largest single figure, crudely human in form, had short legs, outstretched arms, and a long, beak-like projection on the head.” I and a UAF linguist had interviewed an 83-year-old Athabascan elder woman who described the figure as Yaachox a prominent player in their creation story of how animals and humans were separated when the sky was pushed up to create the earth of today.
I had sent a request into the Haffenreffer just by chance in March 2023 to see if there was any news of Giddings photo and tracings. In a reply from Rodney (Rip) Gerry the Exhibition Coordinator at Archives in April, he had found some slides and negatives of the Fairbanks site from Giddings in 1940. And to my surprise in July, he had located the original tracings.
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History of Taos Archaeological Society Project
An effort is currently underway to build a historical timeline of TAS events and history! We need your help!
The Taos Archaeological Society has operated for 34 years. In that time, many documents have been produced. Unfortunately, TAS does not have a complete record of documents produced and distributed.
We are in need of documents/publications that date from September 1999 through February 2014.
You can help by contributing:
Past bulletins, meeting minutes, financial statements, member lists, and other communications.
Thank you for your continued support of the Taos Archaeological Society.
For more information, or to send documents, please contact Paul Mcguff at pmcguff@aol.com
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