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.
June 12, 2025
Zoom Meeting
Dr. Robert Dello-Russo
Context is Everything: Ruppia cirrhosa and Dating the White Sands Footprints
There is a fascinating scientific controversy surrounding the radiocarbon dating of the footprints left by early humans at White Sands National Park. Accurate ages of the footprints are important to our understanding of the Peopling of the Americas so, in this presentation, Dr. Dello-Russo will focus on several factors critical to this debate, including 1) Geological aspects of the Paleolake Otero Basin and the trackway site; 2) How the Ruppia cirrhosa seeds came to be found at the site; 3) The impact of the hard water effect on the radiocarbon ages attributed to the tracks; and 4) The role of stable carbon isotopes in evaluating the accuracy of Ruppia radiocarbon dates. Our research demonstrates that these contextual factors have largely been ignored by the NPS researchers, to the point that their Last Glacial Maximum (LGM) claims for the ages of the human footprints are likely erroneous.
Dr. Robert Dello-Russo is the retired Director of the Office of Contract Archeology at the University of New Mexico. Prior to that, he was the Deputy Director at the NM Office of Archaeological Studies and the Compliance Archaeologist for the NM Department of Game & Fish—both in Santa Fe—and the owner and principal of Escondida Research Group, a private archaeological consulting firm. He has almost 40 years of archaeological experience, including field work in the Rocky Mountains, the Pacific Northwest, the Intermountain West, and the Southwest, where he served as Principal Investigator for dozens of grants funded and large scale CRM projects (including at White Sands National Park). In addition, he was the Principal Investigator for 20 years at the Water Canyon Paleoindian site in west-central New Mexico. His fields of research include hunter-gatherer prehistory in western North America, paleoclimate and paleoenvironmental studies, geomorphological processes, and the XRF sourcing of silicified rhyolites and dacites. Dr. Dello-Russo has a PhD in Anthropology/Archaeology from the University of New Mexico.
No meetings in July and August
September 11, 2025
Dr. Douglas J. Kennett
Maize Domestication and Dispersal in the Americas
October 9, 2025
Dr. Hector Neff
Fire, Salt, Ceramics, and Commerce on the Pacific Coast of Southern Mesoamerica
November 13, 2025
Dr. Tom D. Dillehay
The Archaeology, Genetics, and Environments of the First South Americans
December 11, 2025
Dr. Ulrike Matthies Green