Bears Ears Partnership (BEP) is excited to be hosting the Pecos Conference this year, bringing this archaeological conference back to the Bears Ears region.
This year’s conference will be held August 7-10 just inside Bears Ears National Monument, at a location on the Manti-La Sal National Forest colloquially known as the Blue Mountain Boy Scout Camp (located about a dozen road miles north of Blanding, Utah). The conference was held at this same site the last time the Pecos Conference was held in Utah, back in August 2014.
Staff from BEP have attended Pecos for the past several years, appreciating the opportunity to share how archaeological research is being applied to Indigenous-led conservation efforts, connect with fellow archaeologists, and educate participants about Visit With Respect guidelines. This year, we will focus on highlighting the archaeological significance of Bears Ears National Monument, as well as the “Lands Between”. You can learn more about how the "Lands Between" campaign bridges archaeological research and Traditional Knowledge on page 7 of the Annual Magazine.
The Pecos Conference is one of the oldest, longest-running archaeological conferences in the Americas, if not the world. First held at Professor A.V. Kidder’s field camp at Pecos Pueblo in 1927, the Pecos Conference has been held nearly every August since then, usually outdoors, under large canopy tents. It’s a three-day event that provides a humble yet powerful venue for Southwestern archaeologists and interested avocationalists to provide new field data and ideas on topics relating to the human history of the American Southwest, and also to network, reacquaint and reconnect in a comfortable outdoor setting.
BEP Policy Director Carleton Bowekaty presented at the 2024 Pecos Conference.
The conference’s historic importance is baked into its genesis. The product of the first Pecos Conference was the definition of a basic time-space framework for the main Southwestern archaeological cultures: Ancestral Pueblo, Mogollon and Hohokam. While tweaks and additions to that basic time-space framework have been made since then, the outlines of that first framework are still essentially in place today.
The conference has added an annual competition, known as the Cordell / Powers Prize, that serves to reinforce the importance of scholastic presentation among younger archaeologists. The competition is open to presenters under the age of 35, and offers cash prizes to its winners. Oral presentations are judged on intellectual merit, significance of the subject matter, professionalism, organization, and delivery. In the spirit of the conference’s field-camp origins, all oral presentations are shared without graphic aides.
The Pecos Conference has traditionally rotated locations around the American Southwest and northern Mexico each year. While there is a nonprofit organization that is ultimately responsible for the conference (Southwest Archaeology, Inc.), there are no paid positions and the conference relies entirely on the good will of volunteers in order to happen every year. This is especially true of each year’s organizers (and sponsoring organizations), who do the bulk of the work each year, typically in a location of their choice. Thank you to our hard working volunteers – we couldn’t do this without you!
To get more information about the 2025 Pecos Conference, registration, and volunteer opportunities, please see https://www.pecosconference.org/.