Upcoming Lectures
All Friends' Lectures are held at the Martha Liebert Public Library,
126 Calle Malinche, Bernalillo, NM. Refreshments are served afterwards.
All lectures are free to the Public. Masks are optional.
Musical Instruments of the Prehispanic Southwest
Emily Brown, Ph.D.
Sunday - Sept 28, 2025 - 2:00pm​
It is a fact that every known human society created music. And, the ancestors of today’s Pueblos were no exception. Archaeological excavations in the Four Corners region have revealed a multitude of musical instruments: from whistles to rattles to rasps. This talk presents what we know of the music of Pueblo peoples prior to Spanish contact from the instruments themselves, the context in which they were found, early Spanish and ethnographic accounts and depictions of musicians in rock imagery and pottery.
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As an undergraduate, Emily Brown majored in music and anthropology at Clark College in Portland, Oregon. Before following her passion – archaeology - Emily worked for the National Park Service for a few years. After securing a masters and doctorate degree from Columbia University where she specialized in prehispanic musical instruments from the American Southwest, she briefly returned to the Park Service. In 2005, Emily established her own archaeology consulting firm in Santa Fe.
Horses, People & Landscapes
In Central New Mexico
1540 to Present
Emily Jones, Ph.D.
Sunday - Nov 23, 2025 - 2:00pm​
Hernan de Alvarado, a member of Coronado’s expedition, arrived in central New Mexico in August 1540 astride an animal new to the region – the horse. The spread of horses in this part of the world was but one part of the Columbian Exchange, the exchange of animals, plants and pathogens between Afro-Eurasia and the Americas that followed 1492. This talk will present the current research on horses and their part in the Columbian Exchange to the role of equines in New Mexico today.
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Dr. Emily Lena Jones, a professor of Anthropology at the University of New Mexico, earned her degrees from Vassar College and the University of Washington. She has published widely from professional books and articles about everything from Iberian rabbits (she received a Fulbright Award to Spain) to a young-adult novel set in archaeological time. In addition, she has taught at Utah State University, and Dine College, University of Arizona. Her hundreds of speaking engagements range from conferences throughout the United States to Paris.