
The University of New Mexico
NEWS RELEASE
Contact: Carolyn Gonzales 277-5920;
cgonzal@unm.edu
Oct. 11, 2006
Chapman to Focus on Otero Mesa in UNM Maxwell Museum Lecture
Richard Chapman, director of the Office of Contract Archeology, a program within the University of New Mexico's Maxwell Museum, will present “Otero Mesa: An Illustrated Tour of the Otero Triangle” on Wednesday, Oct. 25, at 7 p.m. in Anthropology Lecture Hall rm. 163.
This installment of the Maxwell Museum Southwest Lecture Series focuses on the results of preliminary research into the 12,000-year span of human interaction with the varied Otero Mesa environment.
The New Mexico region commonly known as “Otero Mesa,” is a 1,600 square mile triangle of landscape located at the Texas-New Mexico border in southern Otero County, NM. Landholders include the NM State Land Office, Bureau of Land Management and private ownership. BLM-administered lands have recently been proposed for oil and gas exploration by the federal government. In response to concerns about the effects this development might have on this sparsely populated and isolated part of the Chihuahua desert, a number of studies of vegetation, wildlife, water and soils have been launched to assess possible impacts.
The Office of Contract Archeology was awarded a contract by the New Mexico State Land Office to conduct a preliminary assessment of the knowledge about prehistoric and historic cultural resources in the region. Chapman will discuss the assessment results.
Chapman has worked in archaeology in New Mexico since 1964. He received his master's and Ph.D. in anthropology from UNM. In addition to directing UNM's Office of Contract Archaeology, which is a cultural resources management program established in 1973, Chapman is a part-time associate professor of anthropology at UNM. He has a longstanding interest in the prehistory of New Mexico and the greater Southwest, and through his career has been ‘dig bum', field supervisor, project director and principal investigator for numerous survey and excavation projects throughout New Mexico and adjacent states. This was, however, his first fieldwork in the Otero Mesa region.
For more information, contact Mary Beth Hermans at 277-5963, email to mhermans@unm.edu or visit www.unm.edu/~maxwell .
###
www.unm.edu