PCAS General Meetings
Monthly lecture meetings feature noted archaeologists and anthropologists who provide insight into a variety of topics. Lecture meetings are held via Zoom at 7:30 pm on the second Thursday of each month. Meetings are free and open to the public.
Many past PCAS lectures are available on the PCAS YouTube channel.
PCAS Zoom Meetings
- Email a registration request to membership@pcas.org by noon on the day of the meeting.
- You will receive an email shortly with a link to the Zoom meeting.
- Guests (non-PCAS members) are welcome with registration.
- When the presentation starts, please mute your microphone and turn off your webcam.
February 13, 2025
Zoom Meeting
Albert Knight
Santa Monica Mountains Rock Art and the Woolsey Fire
On November 8, 2018, the destructive Woolsey Fire began immediately northeast of the well-known National Register of Historic Places listed Burro Flats Painted Cave site complex in the Simi Hills. This fast-moving fire caused widespread destruction and reached the Pacific Ocean, some 25 miles to the southwest, on the following day. Over 1,000 homes and other structures were lost, three people were killed, and many thousands of acres of natural habitat were incinerated. The Burro Flats complex includes numerous loci of rock art, and the area that burned also contains several other sites with rock art components. It was feared that the fire had negative impacts on the Burro Flats sites, and also likely damaged some of the other Santa Monica Mountains area rock art sites. Mr. Knight, with the assistance of several other researchers, initially decided to field check all the rock art sites in the burn area to establish their post-fire conditions. It was later decided to also field check all of the known rock area sites in the Santa Monica Mountains and the Simi Hills, both in and outside of the burn area. This research, which will be summarized in this PowerPoint presentation, showed that fortunately almost all the area rock art escaped destruction, although one small rock art panel was destroyed, and two others were damaged
Mr. Knight is an archaeologist with 35 years of professional experience in archaeological fieldwork and research. He received a BA degree in anthropology at the University of California, Santa Barbara, in 1983. In 1996 he was recognized as a Santa Barbara Museum of Natural History Anthropology Department Associate. Mr. Knight has expertise in the planning, implementation, and completion of all phases of archaeological work and has participated in archaeological investigations as a crew member, crew chief, field director, and principal researcher. He also has extensive experience consulting with Native American leaders and community members. He has conducted extensive original research and has published several papers on the ethnography and archaeology of south-central California. Currently, Mr. Knight is a member of the Board of Directors for the Santa Susana Mountains Park Association and the Pacific Coast Archaeology Society. He is a lifelong resident of California. His interests include California and Great Basin prehistory, history, geography, rock art, ethnobotany, hot springs, and Southern Californian Vernacular Stonemason houses.
March 13, 2025
Zoom Meeting
Dr. Duncan McLaren
Alpine Obsidian Quarries and Perishable Artifacts from the Mt. Edziza Volcanic Complex, Canada
This presentation will focus on recent ice patch research in the vicinity of vast obsidian quarries of the Kitsu Plateau which lies at the center of Tahltan Territory in British Columbia, Canada. Field operations in 2019 and 2024 found numerous perishable artifacts melting from the ice including baskets, a moccasin, an antler billet, atlatl dart shafts, and several walking staffs. These objects provide insights into the materials that were necessary to quarry and transport obsidian and to conduct alpine-situated hunting. Radiocarbon ages on collected materials reveal that they have been frozen and preserved for up to 7,000 years. The results demonstrate that there is a direct correlation between ice patch archaeology sites and alpine stone tool quarries.
Dr. McLaren received his PhD from the University of Victoria. He owns and operates Cordillera Archaeology Inc., a company that conducts archaeological research and consulting in western Canada. He is also an adjunct professor at the University of Victoria. McLaren specializes in the archaeology and paleoecology of the Canadian Northwest Coast and western Subarctic regions of North America.
April 10, 2025
Zoom Meeting
Dr. Marilynn Johnson
What is Philosophy of Archaeology?
Philosophy of archaeology is a relatively nascent area of inquiry—which means that theorists working in this area are in a position to shape how it is understood and where it goes in the future. In this presentation Dr. Johnson will attempt to provide a summary of the history of philosophy of archaeology and philosophical thinking within archaeology that can prove useful both to philosophers and archaeologists who are unfamiliar with the area of study. She will approach this talk as an opportunity to brainstorm about how to best characterize this subfield and what future directions we should all aim toward.
In considering the history of the intersection between these disciplines, theories from philosophy of language have been explicitly used by archaeologists throughout the twentieth century and this continues today. Structuralism allows archaeologists theoretical frameworks with which to go beyond the empirical data themselves and posit meanings. With this history we see an opportunity for clarity about ways that philosophy has already directly contributed to archaeology. At the same time, certain sites and artifacts, such as some caves and bodily adornment, are likely of the sort best understood within aesthetic theories about beauty rather than the symbolism that is the focus of language. Thus, theories from aesthetics are also needed for a robust understanding of interpretation and meaning in archaeology. And philosophical questions of ethics should never be lost when considering archaeological research. Dr. Johnson will argue that there are many fruitful areas of intersection between the theory of philosophy and the practice of archaeology.
Dr. Marilynn Johnson is Associate Professor of Philosophy at the University of San Diego. Prior to her time at USD, she completed a post-doctoral fellowship in Miami focused on the topic of philosophy of archaeology. She completed her PhD in 2017 at CUNY, supervised by renowned philosopher of art Dr. Noel Carroll. Her first book, Adorning Bodies: Meaning, Evolution, and Beauty in Humans and Animals, was published by Bloomsbury in 2022. She is in the early stages of a second book on the topic of philosophy of archaeology. Her scholarly work has been published in the journals Biological Theory, the Journal of Aesthetics and Art Criticism, Frontiers in Psychology, the Croatian Journal of Philosophy, and in an edited volume entitled Explorations in Philosophy and Archaeology. She has published pieces written for a general audience at Aesthetics for Birds, Psyche, and The Philosophers’ Magazine. You can learn more about Dr. Johnson on her website.
May 8, 2025
Michael Tucker
Investigating Mojave Geoglyphs with a Multidisciplinary Approach
June 12, 2025
Dr. Robert Dello-Russo