Crow Canyon Archaeological Center has received the equivalent of a lifetime achievement award for its educational programs.
The Special Achievement Award was given for the center’s “32 years of educational achievement and outstanding public engagement,” the Professional Register of Archaeologists said.
“I think there’s been a long awareness of our contributions teaching the value of archaeology,” Crow Canyon communications specialist Suzy Meyer said, “and the value of understanding the past.”
The Professional Register of Archaeologists works to achieve universal standards and maintain high professional conduct in the field.
Crow Canyon provides archaeological education to students and adults from across the country as well as conducting significant research into the ancestral Puebloans. In recent years, the center’s work has been featured on the PBS programs “Time Team America” with the “Lost Pueblo Village” episode and the Colorado Experience – “Living West: Water.” The center’s archaeologists also have been featured speakers at the Field Museum in Chicago and the Smithsonian in Washington, D.C.
“We’re gearing up for the next season as soon as it dries out,” Meyer said.
Among the groups coming in will be fourth-graders from Durango School District 9-R. They will stay in new student cabins, which are replacing dormitories in the lodge, she said.
“They enable us to give the chaperones more privacy and more security for the students they’re responsible for,” Meyer said. “And the bathrooms are more modern.”
The upcoming dig season includes projects at three new Basketmaker III sites, dating circa AD 500 to 750.
“We only have remote sensing data so far,” she said, “but there appear to be single habitations at the sites.”
abutler@durangoherald.com