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Hello friends,
It's August and we have new staff in the house! The San Marcos office is buzzing with energy and planning for the field and lab work of the coming months. Read on to learn about our growing team and Shumla's involvement in some important programs.
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Wishing you all the best,
Jessica
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We have three people to welcome to the Shumla Team this month!
- Amanda Castañeda - Archaeology Director
- Robert Stein - Preservation Archaeologist
- Sam Steele - Shumla Education Intern
| | As you know, Amanda is no stranger to Shumla. Her first job after graduating college was a Shumla Internship in 2010! She then became a full-time employee and an important team member on the Lower Pecos Rock Art and Preservation Project–our first large-scale documentation project. She left to go back to school and get her Master's Degree in Anthropology. She then returned as part of the team that conducted the first two years of the Alexandria Project. | | |
As you can see in her recent pictures, life took Amanda on a journey to the Northern Plains. She lived for five years in Laramie, Wyoming and worked for the Wyoming State Archaeologist. She gained invaluable experience working with various rock art experts and recording pictographs and petroglyphs across Wyoming, Montana, New Mexico, and Utah.
Now she is back in Texas and armed with both deep institutional knowledge about Shumla, as well as a variety of wide-ranging experience. We are thrilled to have Amanda back helping pursue our mission to preserve the rock art of the Lower Pecos.
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You may remember Robert Stein. Like Amanda, he is not new to Shumla. He has been volunteering and then interning with Shumla for two years.
Robert is a senior at Texas State University pursuing a Bachelor of Arts in Anthropology. He is joining Shumla as a part-time staff member while he completes his studies. His knowledge after having participated in lab and field work with the Shumla team for two years is incredibly valuable. He's also just a joy to be around.
| | As you can see in his photos, he's also well versed in excavation archaeology. He just completed archaeological field school at Texas State University, undertaking surveys and excavations in and around San Marcos. He also recently completed a supplementary field school through the Texas Archaeological Society in Hearne, Texas, excavating a Spanish Mission. We are thrilled to have Robert direct his knowledge and energy toward Shumla's mission. | | Sam Steele is Shumla's Archaeology Education & Outreach Intern this Fall semester. Sam received a Bachelors of Arts in Anthropology from the University of Montana and is currently an Masters of Arts graduate student in Anthropology at Texas State University. His thesis research focuses on the study of glassware from homestead sites in North Texas. While at Shumla he hopes to gain more experience creating archaeology based lessons for elementary students and outreach materials for the general public. | | Sam has experience working as an environmental educator for the City of Austin, teaching college archaeology labs, and in cultural resource management through the Center for Archaeological Studies on the Texas State campus. He even volunteered to join Shumla's collaborator in education, Mandy Newport, at an event at the Wildflower Center representing Shumla. He will be working closely with both Mandy and Shumla Science Director, Karen Steelman, on educational materials for teachers. | | West Texas Students in Conservation | | |
This month, Amanda Castañeda, Shumla Archaeology Director, joined fellow professional natural and cultural resource conservationists invited by the Nature Conservancy in Texas to lead the West Texas Students in Conservation Retreat. This year the program hosted 12 undergraduate students with career goals to become conservation professionals.
Students at the retreat learned that natural resource conservation and cultural resource preservation are closely tied. Humans have been a part of the natural landscape of Texas for over 13,000 years and have been integral in shaping it. Additionally, endangered natural and cultural resources are often found in similar locations and both can benefit from the collaboration of like-minded professionals working in those environments.
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At this year's retreat, Amanda shared the importance of understanding how people lived in the past. She demonstrated how archaeological data and Indigenous Traditional Knowledge can enlighten us about conservation issues today. Examples include changing plant and animal communities due to fluctuating climate trends, and understanding land use practices through time.
Amanda then led the students through an artifact identification activity and an archaeological survey of a known cultural site on the property. The students were thorough in their survey techniques and succeeded in identifying both historic and Indigenous artifacts as well as a bedrock mortar feature. Overall the entire program was a great success in providing students with a wide array of experiences and building community. The future of conservation in Texas is looking bright!
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The Non-profit Management Center of Midland and the King Foundation invited non-profits from across West Texas to participate in a day of learning. Jessica Hamlin, Shumla's Executive Director, attended along with 140 other non-profit professionals. It was an extremely valuable day with sections on:
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The current state of non-profit organizations and philanthropy in the state of Texas.
- A presentation by Texas Rural Funders - a membership group for funders. They shared the tools they have available for non-profit's looking for funding.
- A look at the political climate and the results of legislative sessions in both Austin and Washington D.C.
- How to use A.I. as a tool to do more with less in the non-profit sector by letting it take on some of the workload of data analysis and content creation - with close supervision, of course.
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Planned Giving and how to build organizational endowments to see a non-profit through uncertain times. (Shumla has one! The Shumla Legacy Endowment. If you would like to learn more about how to make a legacy pledge, contact Jessica at jhamlin@shumla.org.)
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Funders Panel - where non-profit leaders were able to ask their burning questions of the funders from various foundations across West Texas.
| | It was a fantastic day of knowledge-sharing and networking. We are grateful to the Non-Profit Management Center and King Foundation for making it possible! | | |
On Wednesday, August 20 at noon (CT), join Amanda Castañeda for our August virtual Lunch and Learn!
Amanda Castañeda, Shumla’s new Archaeology Director, started at the beginning of this month and is excited to be a part of the Shumla team again. For those who have been with us a while, you know that Amanda has been an archaeologist with us before – twice in fact! Join Amanda to get to know her history with Shumla and where she has worked for the past 6 years since she was last with us.
This presentation will take you on a journey from the Northern Plains and Rocky Mountains of Wyoming and Montana to the Chihuahuan Desert of far west Texas near El Paso. Amanda will show examples of rock art sites and projects she has worked on since 2019 and discuss how these experiences have influenced her research questions and ideas regarding Lower Pecos rock imagery.
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AUGUST
Topic: There and Back Again: An Archaeologist's Tale
Presenter: Amanda Castañeda
Day: Wednesday
Date: August 20, 2025
Time: 12:00 PM to 1:00 PM Central Time
Platform: Zoom
| | Note: In case you were planning to participate in the Lunch and Learn by Dr. Charles Koenig this month, we have moved his session to November. He is on-boarding as a new Assistant Professor at UT Austin next week and had to reschedule. His presentation, as well as the September and October programs are available for registration on our website at:https://shumla.org/education/lunchandlearn/. | | Your gift funds our skilled team, our vast archive, archaeological projects, and educational programming. | | Another way to give to Shumla is through our Amazon Wishlist. | | | Our YouTube channel houses our Lunch & Learn presentations as well as other presentations Shumla has done online and in person. Get caught up! And share them! | | |
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