American Archaeology | Spring 2009 | Vol. 13 No. 1

NORTH AMERICA’S FIRST FRENCH COLONY LIFE ON THE FRONTIER A MAJOR HISTORIC TRADE ROUTE •

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american archaeology SPRING 2009

a quarterly publication of The Archaeological Conservancy

Vol. 13 No. 1

COPING WITH FLOODS AND FIRES

$3.95

The making of an emergencyresponse team.

Archaeological Tours led by noted scholars

Invites You to Journey Back in Time

Southern Spain (14 days)

Korea (16 days)

Study Spain’s treasury of ancient remains left by the Greeks, Romans and Arabs.

Traveling south from Madrid to historic Toledo, Roman Mérida and into Andalusia, we explore the historical monuments from these civilizations with Prof. Ronald Messier, Vanderbilt U. We will be introduced to Moorish architecture at Córdoba’s great cathedral, the Alcazar in Seville and end our tour with Granada’s opulent Alhambra.

Explore Korea’s 5,000 years of history with Prof. Donald Baker, U. of British Columbia.

Beginning in Seoul, tour highlights include a day trip north of the Demilitarized Zone to visit ancient and modern Gaeseong, royal tombs, ancient temples, Buddhist grottoes and exceptional museums, plus colorful traditional music and dance performances.

Peru (18 days) Discover Lima’s museums, the tombs of Sipán, Túcume, Chan Chan, the largest adobe city in the world, and Cuzco with Prof. John Rick, Stanford U. Tour highlights include Cerro Sechín, renowned for its unique stone carvings, the early temple-fortress of Chankillo and amazing Caral plus two days at Machu Picchu.

Ancient Rome (12 days) Search out the hidden city of the ancient Romans with Prof. Myles McDonnell, Baruch College, CUNY. As we look beneath the contemporary city we will rediscover Republican Rome, Rome of the Caesars, the Early Empire, High Empire and Christian Rome, ending with the Imperial Palaces of the Later Empire.

Highlights will include a full day at Ostia Antica and another at Tivoli, visiting Hadrian’s Villa.

Our touring will be chronological and will unravel the complicated stages of occupation and buildings in this great city.

The Balkans (19 days) Join Dr. Robert Bianchi, Art Historian, as we view the glorious Byzantine frescoes in Kosovo and Serbia’s monasteries. We then travel from Dubrovnik, along the spectacular Dalmatian coast, visiting Croatia’s medieval cities and on the Istrian peninsula Pula’s fabulous Roman remains, ending our tour in Zagreb.

2009 tours include: Tunisia • Israel • Ethiopia • Greece • Malta, Sardinia & Corsica • Egypt for Families • Guatemala • India Cyprus, Crete & Santorini • Caves & Castles • Sicily & Southern Italy • Georgia & Armenia • China • Turkey...and more Journey back in time with us – Archaeological Tours. We’ve been taking curious travelers on fascinating historical study tours for the past 34 years. Each tour is led by a noted scholar whose knowledge and enthusiasm brings history to life and adds a memorable perspective to your journey. Every one of our 37 tours features superb itineraries, unsurpassed service and our time-tested commitment to excellence. No wonder so many of our clients choose to travel with us again and again.

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archaeological tours LED BY NOTED SCHOLARS

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american archaeology spring 2009

a quarterly publication of The Archaeological Conservancy

Vol. 13 No. 1

COVER FEATURE

19 RESPONDING TO DISASTERS

12 UNEARTHING NORTH AMERICA’S

19

FIRST FRENCH COLONY

BY HANNAH HOAG Archaeologists are investigating Fort Charlesbourg-Royal, which was established in Canada in 1541 and abandoned two years later.

nps

BY PAULA NEELY Having learned some hard lessons when Hurricane Isabel struck Jamestown in 2003, the National Park Service formed an emergency response team to protect its archaeological resources.

26 LIFE ON THE FRONTIER

33 INVESTIGATING FRENCH AND

INDIAN WAR FORTS

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BY DAVID MALAKOFF Colonial armies and settlers built a series of forts for protection during the French and Indian War. Archaeologists are examining the differences between the military and civilian structures.

39 A TALE OF TWO TRAILS

BY JULIAN SMITH In the 1820s El Camino Real and the Santa Fe Trail were joined, an event that brought about economic, military and social changes.

46 new acquisition

PRESERVING THE POTOMAC’S PREHISTORY The Conservancy acquires two important sites in Virginia.

48 new acquisition

THE REMNANTS OF UTOPIA The Aurora Colony was a 19th-century utopian community in Oregon.

american archaeology

liam maloney

BY DENISE TESSIER The Mogollon and Anasazi cultures came together at Cañada Alamosa. Archaeologists are learning what resulted from the interaction.

2 3 5 7

Lay of the Land Letters Events In the News EPA Accused of Destroying Sites • First Americans Came in Two Migrations • Chocolate at Chaco Canyon

50 Field Notes 52 Reviews 54 Expeditions COVER: Over the last few years, floods and fires have posed a serious threat to the National Park Service’s archaeological resources. The park service has formed an emergency response team to cope with these problems.

Photographs by the National Park Service

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Lay of the Land

M

uch of this issue of American Archaeology is devoted to stories about the relatively new discipline of historical archaeology. We report on research in French Québec, the Santa Fe Trail and El Camino Real, and the French and Indian War forts of the English colonies. Unlike traditional archaeology, historical archaeology is concerned with projects that date to the time of writing and have been written about. Its practitioners combine research in archives and libraries with standard excavation techniques at archaeological sites to present a clearer picture of what actually transpired. History, archaeology, geology, and folklore

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all inform these investigations.

Historical archaeology in the United States evolved into a formal discipline in the 1960s with the formation of the Society for Historical Archaeology and the publication of its scholarly journal. In the succeeding 50 years, it has blossomed into a vibrant branch of learning with innumerable projects spread across North America.

Preserving historical sites is an important goal of The Archaeological Conservancy. We are hard at work on early French, Spanish, and English settlements as well as later American ones.

We are preserving sites on the Santa Fe Trail and El Camino Real. We are

Mark Michel, President

acquiring French and Indian War forts in the East. The old notion that archaeology is concerned only with ancient times is fading as historical archaeologists expand our knowledge of North America’s recent past.

spring • 2009

darren poore

The Emergence of Historical Archaeology

Letters RETH INKIN G THE

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Crediting PIDBA Although not mentioned in the article “Rethinking the Clovis,” the map on page 28 illustrating the distribution of fluted points across North America was derived from the Paleoindian Database on the Americas (PIDBA) [http://pidba. tennessee.edu/]. The maps and primary data on PIDBA are compiled, submitted, and posted through the voluntary efforts of dozens of avocational and professional archaeologists, an effort that has been underway for almost 20 years. The PIDBA team is always looking for new primary data, and especially for people willing to compile and submit information on Paleo-Indian sites and artifacts in their state, province, or country.

David G. Anderson Associate Professor Department of Anthropology University of Tennessee

Sending Letters to American Archaeology American Archaeology welcomes your letters. Write to us at 5301 Central Avenue NE, Suite 902, Albuquerque, NM 87108-1517, or send us e-mail at tacmag@nm.net. We reserve the right to edit and publish letters in the magazine’s Letters department as space permits.

Please include your name, address, and telephone number with all correspondence, including e-mail messages.

american archaeology

Editor’s Corner

Vol. 12 No. 4

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$3.95

The situation in Nine Mile Canyon is, unfortunately, indicative of the situation in Utah generally. The Bush Administration’s imperative to drill anywhere and drill now, coupled with a Utah Congressional delegation with no sense of environmental responsibility and county governments that do not enforce environmental regulations, is seriously damaging many archaeological sites and the general environment. Easy access to remote sites by poorly regulated off road vehicles is, I suspect, leading to the looting and trashing of sites unknown to archaeologists.

Fortunately, as noted in the article “Drill, Baby, Drill?,” there are a number of organizations working to protect both the environment and archaeological sites. Among them is the Southern Utah Alliance whose web site, www.suwa.org, provides a wealth of information on these issues. I urge your readers to join them to protect these incredibly beautiful and fragile lands and the archaeological sites they contain.

Edward S. Riggs Albion, Maine

a quarterly public

Jamestown, one of the most iconic archaeological sites in the United States, had been hit

by Hurricane Isabel. Power was out, buildings were damaged, and one of the country’s premiere historical artifact collections was endangered by flooding.

When this unfortunate event occurred in September of 2003, a small team of National Park Service archaeologists and other specialists hurried to Jamestown, intent on doing what they could to mitigate the damage. These men and women were neither certain of what they would encounter, nor were they trained to deal with natural disasters.

The situation they found was indeed disastrous. The basement of Jamestown’s visitor center, where myriad artifacts were stored, was flooded with five feet of water.

Jamestown’s staff, equally unprepared for such emergencies, was overwhelmed. The park service team realized quick, decisive, even extreme action was required if the archaeological treasures were to be salvaged.

Our feature “Responding to Disasters,” (see page 19) describes this and other recent natural disasters the National Park Service has had to contend with. The Jamestown emergency convinced the park service that it had to be better prepared for such devastating events as hurricanes, and consequently it established the Museum Emergency Response Team, a group of on-call experts consisting of archaeologists, curators, conservators, and collection managers who were trained to deal with these events.

When Hurricane Katrina struck in 2005, the team quickly swung into action, salvaging archaeological resources at several sites. There will be more natural disasters to come, but the park service is no longer unprepared.

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t

Welcome to The Archaeological Conservancy!

he Archaeological Conservancy is the only national nonprofit organization that identifies, acquires, and preserves the most significant archaeological sites in the United States.

Since its beginning in 1980, the Conservancy has preserved more than 375 sites across the nation, ranging in age from the earliest habitation sites in North America to a 19th-century frontier army post.

We are building a national system of archaeological preserves to ensure the survival of our irreplaceable cultural heritage.

Why Save Archaeological Sites?

The ancient people of North America left virtually no written records of their cultures. Clues that might someday solve the mysteries of prehistoric America are still missing, and when a ruin is destroyed by looters, or leveled for a shopping center, precious information is lost. By permanently preserving endangered ruins, we make sure they will be here for future generations to study and enjoy.

How We Raise Funds:

Funds for the Conservancy come from membership dues, individual contributions, corporations, and foundations. Gifts and bequests of money, land, and securities are fully tax deductible under section 501(c)(3) of the Internal Revenue Code. Planned giving provides donors with substantial tax deductions and a variety of beneficiary possibilities. For more information, call Mark Michel at (505) 266-1540.

The Role of the Magazine:

American Archaeology is the only popular magazine devoted to presenting the rich diversity of archaeology in the Americas. The purpose of the magazine is to help readers appreciate and understand the archaeological wonders available to them, and to raise their awareness of the destruction of our cultural heritage. By sharing new discoveries, research, and activities in an enjoyable and informative way, we hope we can make learning about ancient America as exciting as it is essential.

How to Say Hello: By mail: The Archaeological Conservancy, 5301 Central Avenue NE, Suite 902, Albuquerque, NM 87108-1517; by phone: (505) 266-1540; by e-mail: tacmag@nm.net; or visit our Web site: www.americanarchaeology.org

5301 Central Avenue NE, Suite 902 Albuquerque, NM 87108-1517 • (505) 266-1540 www.americanarchaeology.org Board of Directors Gordon Wilson, New Mexico CHAIRMAN Cecil F. Antone, Arizona • Carol Condie, New Mexico Donald Craib, Virginia • Janet Creighton, Washington • Janet EtsHokin, Illinois Jerry Golden, Colorado • W. James Judge, Colorado Jay T. Last, California • Dorinda Oliver, New York Rosamond Stanton, Montana • Vincas Steponaitis, North Carolina Dee Ann Story, Texas • Stewart L. Udall, New Mexico Conservancy Staff Mark Michel, President • Tione Joseph, Business Manager Lorna Wolf, Membership Director • Sarah Tiberi, Special Projects Director Shelley Smith, Membership Assistant • Melissa Montoya, Administrative Assistant Patrick Leach, Administrative Assistant Regional Offices and Directors Jim Walker, Vice President, Southwest Region (505) 266-1540 5301 Central Avenue NE, #902 • Albuquerque, New Mexico 87108 Tamara Stewart, Projects Coordinator • Steve Koczan, Field Representative Paul Gardner, Vice President, Midwest Region (614) 267-1100 3620 N. High St. #307 • Columbus, Ohio 43214 Josh McConaughy, Field Representative Jessica Crawford, Southeast Region (662) 326-6465 315 Locust St. • P.O. Box 270 • Marks, Mississippi 38646 George Lowry, Field Representative Julie L. Clark, Field Representative, Western Region (916) 424-6240 6130 Freeport Blvd., #100H • Sacramento, California 95822 Andy Stout, Eastern Region (301) 682-6359 8 E. 2nd. St. #101 • Frederick, Maryland 21701 Will Sheppard, Field Representative

american archaeology® Publisher: Mark Michel editor: Michael Bawaya (505) 266-9668, tacmag@nm.net Assistant editor: Tamara Stewart ART Director: Vicki Marie Singer, vicki.marie@comcast.net Editorial Advisory Board David Anderson, University of Tennessee • Jan Biella, New Mexico Deputy SHPO Dennis Blanton, Fernbank Museum of Natural History • Todd Bostwick, Phoenix City Archaeologist Sarah Campbell, Western Washington University • Pam Edwards-Lieb, Mississippi Chief Archaeologist Bill Engelbrecht, Buffalo State College • Charles Ewen, East Carolina University Gayle Fritz, Washington University • Barbara Heath, University of Tennessee Robert Hoard, Kansas State Archaeologist • Robert Jeske, University of Wisconsin-Milwaukee Barbara Little, University of Maryland • Peggy McGuckian, Bureau of Land Management Patricia Mercado-Allinger, Texas State Archaeologist • Rick Minor, Heritage Research Associates Mark Schurr, University of Notre Dame • Fern Swensen, North Dakota Deputy SHPO David Whitley, W & S Consultants • Richard Woodbury, University of Massachusetts National Adver tising Office Marcia Ulibarri, Advertising Representative 5301 Central Avenue NE, Suite 902, Albuquerque, New Mexico 87108; (505) 344-6018, mulibarri@earthlink.net American Archaeology (issn 1093-8400) is published quarterly by The Archaeological Conservancy, 5301 Central Avenue NE, Suite 902, Albuquerque, NM 87108-1517. Title registered U.S. Pat. and TM Office, © 2009 by TAC. Printed in the United States. Periodicals postage paid Albuquerque, NM, and additional mailing offices. Single copies are $3.95. A one-year membership to the Conservancy is $25 and includes receipt of American Archaeology. Of the member’s dues, $6 is designated for a one-year magazine subscription. READERS: For new memberships, renewals, or change of address, write to The Archaeological Conservancy, 5301 Central Avenue NE, Suite 902, Albuquerque, NM 87108-1517, or call (505) 266-1540. For changes of address, include old and new addresses. Articles are published for educational purposes and do not necessarily reflect the views of the Conservancy, its editorial board, or American Archaeology. Article proposals and artwork should be addressed to the editor.

No responsibility assumed for unsolicited material. All articles receive expert review. POSTMASTER: Send address changes to American Archaeology, The Archaeological Conservancy, 5301 Central Avenue NE, Suite 902, Albuquerque, NM 87108-1517; (505) 266-1540. All rights reserved.

American Archaeology does not accept advertising from dealers in archaeological artifacts or antiquities.

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spring • 2009

Museum exhibits • Tours • Festivals Meetings • Education • Conferences

frank H. mcclung museum

n NEW EXHIBITS Pueblo Grande Museum and Archaeological Park Phoenix, Ariz.—The new exhibit “Pieces of the Puzzle: New Perspectives on the Hohokam” focuses on the latest archaeological techniques that offer new perspectives on the Hohokam and how their culture changed in the 15th century. The exhibit explores methods for dating and analyzing existing archaeological material, showcases how geographical information systems help determine population growth and decline, and presents new viewpoints on just what happened to this ancient culture prior to European settlement.

(602) 495-0901, www.pueblogrande. com (New long-term exhibit)

Schingoethe Center for Native American Cultures Aurora University, Aurora, Ill.—The center’s award-winning display “Native Peoples of Illinois: There’s No Place Like Home” provides detailed historical information on the early inhabitants of what is now the state of Illinois. A recent expansion of the exhibit includes displays devoted to understanding the

lifeways of the Eastern Woodland tribes that lived in the area between 800 b.c. and a.d. 800. A full-scale wigwam and campsite help bring earlier times to life. (630) 892-6431, www.aurora.edu/ museum (Newly expanded permanent exhibit)

Bureau of Land Management Anasazi Heritage Center Dolores, Colo.—The new exhibit “The Old Spanish Trail:A Conduit for Change” traces the history of one of the Southwest’s earliest and most important historic trade routes, which ran from northern New Mexico to the Pacific Coast and was based on an ancient network of Native American paths. The Old Spanish Trail was the first successful Euro-American effort to connect the Mexican frontier provinces of New Mexico and California. In 2002 it became a National Historic Trail.Through historic Spanish and Mexican artifacts, maps, and images, the exhibition illuminates the dramatic story of this 19th-century trail that ran 1,200 miles through high mountains, arid desert, and deep canyons. (970) 882-5600, www.co.blm. gov/ahc (Through October 31)

university of pennsylvania museum of archaeology and anthropology

University of Pennsylvania Museum of Archaeology and Anthropology Philadelphia, Pa.—The museum’s worldrenowned collection of brilliantly painted Chamá polychromes are on display in the new exhibit “Painted Metaphors: Pottery and Politics of the Ancient Maya.” The exhibit opens a window into the lives of the ordinary Maya who lived along Guatemala’s Chixoy River 1,300 years ago. More than 200 ancient objects, including figurines, jade carvings, musical instruments, ritual objects, weaving implements, cooking pots, and projectile points provide a glimpse of how vibrant their lives were.

(215) 898-4000, www.museum.upenn.edu (Opens April 5)

american archaeology

Events

Frank H. McClung Museum University of Tennessee, Knoxville, Tenn.—“River of Gold: Precolumbian Treasures from Sitio Conte: An Exhibition of Panamanian Gold, Circa a.d. 700 to 1100” features pre-Columbian gold from the University of Pennsylvania Museum of Archaeology and Anthropology’s excavations at an ancient cemetery in central Panama. The exhibit presents gold from the site of Sitio Conte in its unique archaeological and cultural context, and features ethnohistorical information, excavation drawings, and videotaped segments from original 1940 color film footage of the excavations. More than 150 stunning gold objects are on display, including hammered repousse plaques, nose ornaments, gold-sheathed ear rods, pendants, bells, bangles, and beads. (865) 974-2144, http://mcclungmuseum. utk.edu (Through May 3)

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Events

n CONFERENCES, LECTURES & FESTIVALS Arkansas Archeology Month

Peabody Museum of Archaeology & Ethnology Harvard University, Cambridge, Mass.—“Wiyohpiata: Lakota Images of the Contested West” explores the meanings of a unique 19th-century “artist’s book” recently discovered among the holdings of Harvard University’s Houghton Library. The book was created to preserve and interpret a ledger filled with Native American drawings that was recovered from the Little Big Horn battlefield immediately following the defeat of General George Armstrong Custer’s cavalry by Cheyenne and Lakota forces in 1876. The ledger, believed to have originally belonged to an Anglo-American gold miner, contains 77 colored drawings by a number of now-anonymous Plains Indian warriors, probably Lakotas.

The cultural content of the images is enriched by the presence of historic Lakota and Cheyenne artifacts from the museum’s ethnographic collections. The exhibition opens in concert with the Peabody’s annual Weekend of the Americas (April 3-4), which includes lectures, tours, and conversations organized around the theme “Visualizing Power: Plains Pictographic Arts.” (617) 496-1027, www.peabody.harvard.edu (Opens April 3)

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Throughout the month of March at locations across the state. Join the annual celebration commemorating Arkansas’s cultural heritage as revealed through the archaeology of both prehistoric and historic eras. Exhibits, lectures, demonstrations, tours, open houses, workshops, and other activities will be organized around this year’s theme “Planting the Seed.” (479) 5753556, www.arkarch.org

Southwest Seminars “Ancient Sites and Ancient Stories” 2009 Lecture Series Mondays at 6 p.m., March 16–June 1, Hotel Santa Fe, Santa Fe, N.M. Archaeologists, tribal members, historians, and other researchers present lectures to benefit The Archaeological Conservancy. Admission is $10/lecture. For a schedule of speakers, contact Connie Eichstaedt at (505) 466-2775, southwestseminar@aol.com, or visit the Web site www.southwestseminars.org

Society For California Archaeology Annual Meeting

39th Annual Meeting of the Middle Atlantic Archaeological Conference

March 12–15, Doubletree Hotel, Modesto, Calif.The conference features papers, forums, workshops, and social events. www.scahome.org

March 19–22, Clarion Resort Fountainbleu Hotel, Ocean City, Md. The three-day conference focuses on the latest finds and research from the middle Atlantic region. The conference features presentations, discussion groups, workshops, and other events.

Doug Scott, who has pioneered battlefield archaeology research, is this year’s keynote speaker. Contact program chair Liz Crowell at elizabeth. crowell@fairfaxcounty.gov, or visit the Web site www.maacmidatlanticarchaeology.org

Arizona Archaeology Expo March 14–15, Pueblo Grande Museum, Phoenix, Ariz. The museum will host the 2009 Arizona Archaeology Expo, part of the 26th annual Arizona Archaeology and Heritage Awareness Month sponsored by Arizona State Parks and Historic Preservation office. Learn why it’s important to preserve historic and archaeological sites. Discover what archaeologists, historians, tribal communities, and cultural centers do to preserve, understand, and interpret Arizona’s past. The event will feature archaeological hands-on activities, craft and ancient technology demonstrations, tours, and lectures. The weekend kicks off month-long archaeological festivities to be held throughout Arizona.

(602) 542-4174, www.pr.state.az.us

74th Annual Meeting of the Society for American Archaeology April 22–26, Atlanta Marriott Marquis, Atlanta, Ga. A wide variety of papers, posters, forums, symposia, workshops, and excursions are slated for this year’s meeting, as well as roundtable luncheons and evening events. (202) 789-8200, www.saa.org

spring • 2009

peabody museum of archaeology & ethnology

March 28–29, Grand Village of the Natchez Indians, Natchez, Miss. The powwow features traditional Native American dancing, food, and crafts. It will be held at the Grand Village, which was the tribe’s main ceremonial center from 1682 to 1729. Now a National Historic Landmark , it features a museum, a reconstructed Natchez Indian house, and three ceremonial mounds. (601) 446-6502, mdah.state.ms.us/hprop/gvni.html

natchez powwow

Natchez Powwow

In the

NEWS

Chocolate at Chaco Researchers find the first evidence of chocolate consumption in the Southwest.

Marianne Tyndall

C

hemical analyses of organic residues in ceramic sherds from Chaco Canyon in northwest New Mexico suggest that the Anasazi drank cacao beverages. This is the first prehistoric evidence of the use of cacao, from which chocolate is made, north of Mesoamerica.

The researchers found cacao on fragments from either pitchers or cylindrical jars that were recovered primarily from caches at Pueblo Bonito, Chaco’s largest site. The decorative styles of the sherds suggest that they date to a.d. 1000–1125. The samples were selected from hundreds of thousands of sherds that were recovered during recent excavations by the University of New Mexico (UNM). The UNM archaeologists reexcavated trenches originally dug in the 1920s during a National Geographic Society Expedition.

Cacao was consumed throughout Mesoamerica for centuries. It was enjoyed primarily by elite members of society, and it played an important role in rituals. Patricia Crown, a UNM archaeologist who participated in the excavations, noticed that some of the ceramic vessels recovered from Pueblo Bonito resembled Mesoamerican vessels. Crown was also aware of the evidence of trade between Mesoamerica and Chaco. For example, the remains of 36 scarlet macaws, a bird native to the American tropics, had been found at Pueblo Bonito during previous investigations.“If they can transfer a squawking bird 1,200 miles, why not cacao

american archaeology

These reconstructed cylinder jars were recovered from Pueblo Bonito during earlier excavations. They are curated at the American Museum of Natural History in New York.

beans?” she said. So Crown had five sherds tested for cacao, three of which contained residues of the plant.

Crown surmises that, as was the case in Mesoamerica, cacao beverages were drunk by Chaco’s elite, and the imbibing could have been done at ritualistic events such as feasts. If the sherds are in fact fragments of cylinder jars, which, at Chaco, are far more unusual than pitchers, that could suggest they were part of unusual ceremonies such as rituals.

She also suspects that the Mesoamericans provided the knowledge, as well as the raw materials, for the Anasazi to make cacao beverages. Several steps are necessary to process cacao

seeds into a beverage, and one of them, roasting, probably would have been done in Mesoamerica so that the beans were easy to transport.

The acquisition of such exotic, desirable objects made Pueblo Bonito “a very special place,” Crown said. That could have enabled its leaders, who might have had a command of Mesoamerican rituals, to “attract followers and labor” sufficient to build its impressive great houses.

Crown cautioned that only five samples were tested and that further sampling could show that cacao consumption was common at other places in Chaco, as well as other settlements in the Southwest. —Michael Bawaya

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In the

NEWS

First Americans Came In Two Migrations

Sorenson Molecular Genealogy Foundation

Genetic evidence suggests groups took different routes15,000 to 17,000 years ago.

Several Paleo-Indians make their way to the New World. The red arrows indicate the two migration routes.

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n international team of researchers recently conducted an in-depth analysis of the complete genomes of two very rare Native American maternal DNA haplogroups, or lineages, identifying two separate, nearly simultaneous migrations from Beringia into the New World roughly 15,000 to 17,000 years ago. The researchers concluded that one of the Paleo-Indian groups, identified as haplogroup D4h3, followed the Pacific coastline to arrive at the southern tip of South America, while the second group, known as X2a, followed an ice-free corridor east of the Rocky Mountains to settle in the Great Plains and Great Lakes regions.

Researchers have long sought to understand how Native Americans could develop such incredible linguistic and cultural diversity in the relatively short time between the peopling of the New World and the arrival of Europeans in 1492. “While linguists, archaeologists, and anthropologists did agree that there could be more than one migration to the Americas, geneticists were convinced that the similar ages all the haplogroups shared was an indication of a single arrival and expansion following the Pacific coastline,” said Ugo Perego, director of programs at Sorenson Molecular Genealogy Foundation in Salt Lake City, Utah, and co-author of the study. “With our paper, we are saying that there were at least two, if not more, which is more in harmony with the other research fields.”

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Ninety-five percent of Native Americans belong to six major haplogroups, and because people belonging to these haplogroups are found throughout the New World, it had been virtually impossible for geneticists to identify migratory routes. So Perego and his colleagues focused on two rare subgroups, D4h3 and X2a, of the major haplogroups.The 10,300year old human remains found in the On Your Knees Cave on Prince of Wales Island in Alaska belonged to the D4h3 haplogroup. “This finding, together with a D4h3 sample found in China, provide evidence of an ancient Asian origin for this lineage, from Asia through Beringia and into the New World all the way to Tierra del Fuego in Chile,” said Perego. “Less clear is the background about the ancient origin of X2a.”

Drawing on the Sorenson database, the world’s largest collection of correlated genetic and genealogical information, they discovered that members of the D4h3 haplogroup are found exclusively on the Pacific Coast from Alaska to Chile, while members of the X2a haplogroup are found mainly in the Great Lakes and Great Plains regions, indicating two groups of Paleo-Indians took separate routes into the New World.

The researchers arrived at their entry date based on the number of mutations in the DNA samples and how long it takes for mutations to occur. The results of their study were published in the journal Current Biology. —Tamara Stewart

spring • 2009

In the

NEWS

Excavation Reveals Native Political Chiefdoms in Cuba Artifacts left by the Arawakans, the people who encountered Columbus, are shedding light on Cuba’s past.

National Geographic

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rchaeologists investigating El Chorro de Maíta, an Arawakan Indian village in northeast Cuba, are uncovering evidence of the island’s political structure and the effects of Spanish contact. The Arawakans were the first natives encountered by Columbus during his voyage to Cuba in 1492, although it has not been established if Columbus visited the village, which was occupied between a.d. 1300 and 1550.

Archaeologists with the University of Alabama and the Central-Eastern Department of Archaeology in Holguín, Cuba, have determined that the site is much larger than previously thought, covering nearly 92 acres along a hillside above the island’s eastern shore.

“It is beginning to look like there were regional political chiefdoms with capital towns in parts of Cuba at the time of Columbus,” said University of Alabama archaeologist Jim Knight, who codirects the project with Cuban archaeologist Robert Valcárel Rojas. El Chorro de Maíta appears to have been a capital town, and Knight and his colleagues are examining the emergence of native political chiefdoms in Cuba.

Most of the recovered artifacts consist of household debris such as pottery from cooking and serving vessels, stone and shell tools, and food remains.

But the archaeologists have also found finely crafted native ornaments of stone and shell in various states of completion. Human-shaped figurines known as idolillos (little idols) appear to have been made at the site from imported stone, leading Knight to conclude that the village was likely a center for the

american archaeology

Excavators work at El Chorro de Malta. They’ve found household artifacts such as fragments of cooking vessels as well as ornaments such as the olive shell pendant shown below.

manufacture of stone beads and ornaments for the elite.

Sixteenth-century documents written by early Spanish colonizers of Cuba are also providing insights into this period. John Worth, an archaeologist and expert in early Spanish paleography at the University of West Florida,

is analyzing the documents, which are written in a script barely recognizable as Spanish.

“The greatest source of documents relating to early Cuban history is the General Archive of the Indies in Seville, Spain,” said Knight. “The majority of the documents relating to Cuba have never been studied, particularly by those with an interest in the fate of the Indians. It will take a long time and great patience to make headway in transcribing all the new material. However, we have already made progress in placing the native chiefdoms named in the documents much more accurately on modern maps, and in understanding the movements of Spaniards through eastern Cuba at the time of conquest.”

—Tamara Stewart

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In the

NEWS

Study Shows Prehistoric Climate Change Led to Fires Study challenges recent theory that a comet explosion caused widespread fires 12,900 years ago.

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Jennifer Marlon Et Al

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group of researchers examined charcoal and pollen from 35 North American lake cores, finding a direct relationship between abrupt climate changes and fires, specifically that warmer temperatures in the past led to more biomass burning and more frequent fires. Their study was published in the Proceedings of the National Academy of Science.

“This finding is important because global climate change is currently causing widespread increases in temperature, and we’re starting to see increases in fire activity associated with this,” said Jennifer Marlon, a doctoral student at the University of Oregon and co-author of the study. “Our results suggest that we can expect this trend to continue if temperatures continue to rise.”

The study contradicts the recent theory that a comet exploded over North America around 12,900 years ago, leaving a telltale layer of impact debris known as “black mat.” This theory’s proponents think the explosion caused continent-wide wildfires, mass faunal extinctions, and the 1,000-year long cold spell known as the Younger Dryas.

The researchers who participated in the new study examined possible changes in fire regimes between 15,000 and 10,000 years ago, a time of rapid and dramatic climate changes. “Large fires occurred throughout that interval and were not synchronous at the beginning of the Younger Dryas cold interval as the comet hypothesis proposes,” says Pat Bartlein, co-author of the study and geographer at the University of Oregon.

“Instead, fire is widespread only when climate abruptly warms, like at the end of the Younger Dryas interval.”

“Despite this recent study, I see nothing compelling at this point that

This graph shows the incidence of fires increasing after the Younger Dryas period.

negates the comet impact hypothesis,” said James Kennett, professor emeritus at the University of California-Santa Barbara and a member of the comet research team. “I strongly question the veracity of their dating and the methodology they use to determine the relative abundance of charcoal in the lake cores.” He added that “they see a big peak in charcoal about 250 years prior to the Younger Dryas, but they state that the radiocarbon error range is plus or minus 300 years, which brings the onset of the Younger Dryas within the error range of that peak.”

Kennett also said that charcoal in lake deposit cores provides a limited record of very localized events, whereas soot, which is much lighter

and can be transported by the wind, is a more reliable indicator of widespread burning. Chemist and soot expert Wendy Wolbach of DePaul University has found peaks in soot occurrence at the Younger Dryas interval.

“The number Jim referred to was not our estimate of the radiocarbon error range,” Bartlein said. “The true uncertainty range is unknown, but in lake records like ours, it is probably closer to 100 years.”

“Researchers in many disciplines are actively working to test all the different aspects of the comet theory,” said Marlon.“The charcoal data, at least, don’t support it, but I expect the debate will continue for some time.”

—Tamara Stewart

spring • 2009

In the

NEWS

EPA Accused of Destroying Archaeological Sites Complaint alleges the agency is violating federal preservation laws.

John Parker

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complaint filed with the Environmental Protection Agency’s (EPA) Office of Inspector General states that the EPA has routinely ignored cultural preservation laws and destroyed significant archaeological sites at toxic clean-up sites across the country. The complaint, which was brought by the Public Employees for Environmental Responsibility (PEER), was prompted by the EPA’s alleged destruction of cultural materials near the Sulphur Bank Mine site on the Elem Indian Colony Reservation in northern California in 2006.

Archaeologist John Parker alleges that, in violation of the National Historic Preservation Act and the Comprehensive Environmental Response, Compensation, and Liability Act, substantial portions of archaeological sites beneath the toxic mine waste were removed before any of the required archaeological investigations were conducted, disturbing more than 7,000 cubic yards of archaeological deposits and resulting in an estimated $50 million in damages. The PEER complaint points to similar EPA violations at many other sites. “They could have engineered their cleanup project to remove the mine waste without disturbing the intact subsoils,” said Parker, who became involved with the project at the request of the Elem Tribe.

Rick Sugarek, EPA site manager for the Elem Colony clean up, said that a full cultural resources survey had been conducted of the area 10 years prior to the clean up and that previous Bureau of Indian Affairs actions had heavily modified the site in the 1970s, resulting in the mining waste and a low probability for intact cultural resources. “We weren’t sure what we’d find, so we agreed to bring in an archaeologist if anything important turned up,” said Sugarek.

Parker was hired by the EPA two months into the project when bone was exposed by the excavators.“When Dr. Parker was brought on, he immediately measured the hole we had excavated and made a statement that it was all cultural material that had been taken out, but in reality it was mine waste.

He is creating a sense of outrage which is totally fictional.”

Raymond Brown, Sr., chairman of the Elem Indian Colony at the time of the site cleanup, wrote a letter expressing his satisfaction with the EPA’s response to the tribe’s concerns about cultural heritage protection.

The Board of the Society for American Archaeology

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Cheyanne Parker, the wife of archaeologist John Parker, stands in a deep hole dug by the EPA. The red flags mark locations where artifacts were found.

issued a letter in September 2007 stating that the EPA failed to comply with regulations regarding cultural resources, and the California Archaeological Society has looked into Parker’s allegations as well.

“We’re working with Mike Newland, Vice President of the Society for California Archaeology, to implement a number of their recommendations to improve EPA efforts to protect cultural and historical resources that might be affected during Superfund actions,” said Sugarek, who added that the tribe is not part of the PEER complaint and had no knowledge of it. The site has been cleaned of mercury mine waste and, according to Sugarek, is a highly successful project. —Tamara Stewart

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Unearthing North America’s First French Colony In 1541, France established Fort Charlesbourg-Royal in what is now Québec City.

Two years later, it was abandoned.

The site was discovered in 2005, and archaeologists are trying to understand what took place at the settlement.

By Hannah Hoag Photos by Liam Maloney

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n a forested outcrop at the western limit of Québec City, Gilles Samson makes his way across an archaeological site quilted with sheets of plywood and plastic. The coverings protect 16th-century stone walls from the sometimes harsh Canadian elements. He grips the edge of one of the boards and lifts, revealing a strip of neatly stacked grey stones. “We’re following the walls to get a clearer picture of the fort,” he says.

Samson is in the midst of uncovering one of Canada’s most important archaeological discoveries: the charred remains of the first French colony in North America. The walls and other artifacts the archaeologists have unearthed are the remnants of Fort Charlesbourg-Royal, a settlement established

by Jacques Cartier in 1541 and occupied by JeanFrançois de la Rocque de Roberval from 1542 to Cap-Rouge promontory overlooks the Saint-Lawrence River.

1543, along with several hundred colonists.

An archaeologist with Québec’s National Capital Commission and the project’s co-director, Samson reasons that the site ranks with Jamestown, the first English colony in the New World. Cartier-Roberval (as it is now called, after its founders) predates Samuel de Champlain’s founding of Québec City and New France and England’s establishment of Jamestown by more than 60 years.

Somewhat surprisingly, Cartier-Roberval remained hidden until 2005. According to historical documents, Cartier built two forts—an upper and a lower—on Cap-Rouge, a peninsula bordered by the St. Lawrence River to the south and Cap-Rouge River to the west. Presumably, the site was picked because it offered great lookouts, protection from attacks, and a harbor. The forts were later burned

12 According to historical documents, Jacques Cartier built two forts here.

spring • 2009

to the ground, and the site remained unoccupied until 1823, when brothers William and Henry Atkinson acquired the land and built an estate. The land changed hands during the late 1800s, until the Trans-Continental Railway purchased it in 1906 and erected a long steel trestle bridge that is still in use today.

Archaeologists had been looking for the site for more than 50 years. (In 1923 the Historic Sites and Monuments Board of Canada recognized Cap-Rouge as the site of Fort Charlesbourg-Royal although no artifacts had been found.) Then in 2005, archaeologist Yves Chrétien was asked to do a survey of the promontory prior to the construction of a belvedere.

He dug 16 test pits near the southeastern edge of the promontory and exposed the burned wooden remains of the upper fort. american archaeology

The find was kept secret until it could be confirmed. “I had some doubts about it when I first came to the site,” says archaeologist Richard Fiset, the project’s other co-director, who is also employed

by Québec’s capital commission. “There was some evidence, but not enough to say, ‘This is it.’” But his doubts were put to rest in 2006, when Fiset and Samson were hired to confirm the site of the fort.

The archaeologists found strata of burned soil, more charred wood, ceramics, pottery, glass beads, nails, and a colorful fragment of 16th-century pottery from Faenza, Italy. Radiocarbon testing of charcoal samples dated the site to the middle of the 16th century. “At that moment you are happy and you realize you are doing something real,” says Fiset.

Another team of archaeologists is searching for the lower fort and thus far they haven’t found it.

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celebrations of the 400th anniversary of Québec City were underway, the site was open to the public. It proved so popular that tours were scheduled every 30 minutes on Friday, Saturday, and Sundays to groups of 20.“We are going so deep into our history that it is a story with lots of public interest,” says Fiset.

A painting of Jacques Cartier done by Théophile Hamel in 1847.

The Cartier-Roberval project is a remarkable undertaking, with a budget of $7.7 million Canadian provided by the provincial government. Samson and Fiset oversee a multidisciplinary team whose expertise covers such fields as geoarchaeology, archeobotany, and anthrocology—the study of carbonized wood. The researchers have unearthed about 5,000 artifacts. During the summer of 2008, as the

library and archives canada

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harged by Francois I to look for gold and diamonds and a passage to Asia, Cartier undertook voyages in 1534, 1535, and 1541 to Canada. On his third and final voyage, he set to sea with five ships in May, and he established a settlement on Cap-Rouge at the end of that summer to lay claim to part of the New World. However, in January of 1541, the King put Roberval, a friend and nobleman, in charge of the colony, and after several delays Roberval set off to join Cartier in 1542. They met in Newfoundland, and despite orders to the contrary, Cartier returned to France, slipping away one night in June, claiming to have found his precious gems. Roberval continued to Cap-Rouge with three ships, arriving in late July.

According to his descriptions, the upper fort contained two main buildings, a well, and two towers, one of which was a great tower. Samson says the great tower may have been three stories high, with a ground floor, a middle level containing Roberval’s quarters, and an upper level for defensive operations. “That is a classic function for a great tower, but for now, it’s still speculation,” he says. The lower fort, according to historical documents, included another dwelling, which made up part of a two-story tower, and two buildings where provisions and all the other goods they had brought from Europe were stored.

When Cartier left Canada, he took many of the supplies with him. Roberval rationed the items he had, and most of the colonists—a collection of noblemen, tradesmen, prisoners, and several women—survived the winter of 1542. But

dennis leung / ottawa citizen

This is the route Cartier took on his third and last voyage to, and from, Canada. Roberval may have taken the same route.

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The researchers have exposed the remnants of a stone structure (foreground) that may have been a passageway linking the northern and southern sections of the fort.

the settlement was short-lived. Roberval returned to France in 1543, and some historians think that he burned the forts as he departed so that the Iroquois and the Spanish, who were spying on him, couldn’t use them. While there are maps and plans for other French settlements, there are none for Fort France-Roi (Roberval renamed the fort once he arrived), so details of its shape are unknown.

That fire has made it easier for archaeologists to interpret the remains, because, strangely enough, it preserved a good deal of the contents. The fire carbonized the hulls of seeds and pits and other organic items, and metal objects that were buried in the ash were protected from severe oxidation.

Julie-Anne Bouchard-Perron, a doctoral student at Laval University in Québec City, specializes in the analysis of botanical remains. Since 2006, Bouchard-Perron has sifted through huge amounts of excavated soil from Cartier-Roberval using an on-site flotation tank that isolates tiny bits of carbonized organic materials. “Whatever is organic will float, and whatever is mineral will sink,” she says. By analyzing the charred remains, the archaeologists are learning about the settlers’ eating habits and how they lived.

Bouchard-Perron has found thousands of carbonized seeds of grapes, bread wheat, hulled barley, peas, lentils, and mustard, as well as olive pits, all of which came from Europe.

“Olives, grapes, dates, and barley can all be easily dried and

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These are a small sample of the artifacts recovered by the archaeologists. They’ve also found beads and rings that the French may have used to trade with the Iroquois, as well as lead balls that were shot from arquebuses.

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can be kept for long periods of time,” she says. But still, she finds the predominance of European species surprising. “It could indicate a reluctance to eat local foods,” BouchardPerron says.

She has also found local species such as corn and sunflower, albeit in small amounts. She found only eight corn kernels, for example. “They clearly had contact with the native people. There was some kind of exchange going on,” Bouchard-Perron says. She acknowledges that it is possible that the local foods were stored somewhere else on the site that has yet to be found.“Maybe we’ll be surprised if we find the other fort.”

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wisconsin historical society / colorized by charlotte hill-cobb

he evidence the archaeologists have uncovered suggests that France-Roi was unlike other French New World forts of that general time period, which were triangular or quadrangular. “Ours, for the moment, doesn’t fit any of these shapes,” Samson says. Much of the focus of this year’s work has been on the structure of the fort, including how it was planned, what architectural and military

components it incorporated, and the sources of the materials that were used in its construction. The archaeologists have divided the site into a number of excavation areas. One, at the edge of the southern cliff, contains a stone foundation, the remnants of a small, unidentified building. They suspect that as much as 15 feet of the cliff has eroded and may have taken some of the building with it.

To the west is an area that is rich in wood, charcoal, and fired clay.The ground has a thick layer of debris that presumably accumulated after a great deal of wood, which might have been used to construct a building, was burned. It includes a circle of stones that would have once held a tall vertical post.

This evidence, along with the area’s strategic position on the promontory, suggests a tower, probably the great tower, once stood here.“It is still very early to say, but that is our feeling,” says Samson.“It’s in the most strategic place.”

Another area lies to the north of the tower site. There, Samson and Fiset have found a 30-foot-long wall composed of sandstone and dirt that, at one end, angles off to the southeast. One section of the wall was buried about 27 inches

Other French New World forts built during this time period were triangular or quadrangular, but thus far the evidence suggests that FranceRoi had no clear geometric shape. Fort Caroline, depicted in this illustration, was a triangular fort built in northeast Florida in 1564-65.

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below the surface, which, based on knowledge of other forts from that period, suggests that it was an exterior, defensive wall approximately nine-feet high. Behind it is another wall that may have been part of a building.

The angled section of the wall is less substantial. “We’ve been working on understanding the connection between these two parts for a long time,” he says.The archaeologists suspect the less substantial portion of the wall was built behind a sturdier defensive wall that hasn’t been uncovered; or it may be that its proximity to the great tower, which would have allowed the colonists to spot invaders long before they reached this part of the wall, is the reason for its insubstantiality.

Isabelle Duval, the project’s geoarchaeologist, has analyzed rock samples taken from the site’s walls and foundations and compared them with nearby sources. The archeologists want to know if the French used certain types of stone for the construction of FranceRoi, or if they quarried rocks

from the closest sources.

Duval’s geochemical and petrological analysis of the stone artifacts shows that all the walls, foundations, and stone remains were constructed primarily with green sandstone, quarried from an outcrop near the site.“We know that there were different areas they could have taken the sandstone from, but they chose one that was a bit further away, perhaps because it was of a better quality,” says Samson. Shale, which made up some of the foundations, also had local origins. Duval has also found quartz and pyrite (fool’s gold) nearby. The latter was probably one of the sources of the gold Cartier claimed to have found.

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n her analysis of the charred wood, Barbara Godbout, the project’s anthracologist, has identified 16 species of trees.

She uses a microscope to look at the structural details of the wood—the size and orientation of the fibers—to identify the species, all of which still grow in the area with the exception of walnut.The vitrification of many of the samples

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The archaeologists have recovered numerous Iroquoian sherds (top) as well as green-glazed French (middle) and Italian majolica (bottom). The Iroquoian sherds indicate the natives and the colonists were exchanging goods.

suggests that they were still humid when they were burned.“I believe that most of the wood was green—it was newly harvested and not dried out,” says Godbout.

Though some historians believe Roberval burned the forts, there is no mention of that in his accounts. He did, however, write that he built two forts, which leads other historians to suspect that it was Cartier who destroyed the forts before he returned to France. Samson says that Roberval’s account could be hyperbole, and that he merely improved, rather than built, the forts. It’s also possible that the Iroquois burned the forts shortly after Roberval abandoned them, or perhaps they were burned years later.

The archaeologists are trying to solve this mystery. The fact that the wood from the upper fort was vitrified, or glasslike, indicates the time between the cutting of the trees and the destruction of the fort was insufficient for the wood to dry.This leads them to surmise it was burned when Roberval and the colonists departed, or shortly thereafter, presumably by the Iroquois. They hope that further analysis by Godbout will answer the question whether or not Roberval set it aflame.

Another of the project’s objectives is to find out if the settlers had specific uses for certain types of wood. In France, castles were built primarily of oak, and the archaeologists wondered if the colonists would maintain this tradition.“We wanted to know if they had a preference for building the walls, roofs, or floors with a particular wood,” says Samson.

“But it doesn’t look like they did.”Although they have found an abundance of beech, the diversity of trees used in the fort’s construction is representative of the forest when Cartier arrived.When the settlers arrived at Cap-Rouge, they may have been forced to move quickly, using whatever wood was

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A researcher documents a piece of timber (center) that was exposed by the excavators. The timber was part of a tall building.

available. Samson points out that much of the wood they have found consists of unworked logs. “That also indicates that they were pressed for time,” he says, noting the importance of having the fort built by winter.

Part of the difficulty in analyzing the wooden components of the fort is that some woods burn more completely than others. “We know that there is a lot of pine in the area and we have some in our samples,” says Godbout. “But pine burns very quickly and leaves only ashes, so even if pine represents 25 percent of our sample, we’re pretty convinced that there was a lot more used in the construction—but we’ve lost track of it.”

Thousands of artifacts from Cartier-Roberval are housed in the basement of the Québec Conservation Center, where archaeologist Helène Côté, is studying the collections.There are musket balls, locks, fishhooks, abacus tokens, keys and rings, thimbles, and a checker piece. The items offer a peek at the colonists’ lives. Many of them were the goods of the upper class, reinforcing the idea that the upper fort housed Roberval and the noblemen.

Among the most interesting discoveries are a chip of Italian pottery—brightly enameled with yellows, oranges, and blues—several pieces of colored glass from windows, and a piece of green glass with a folded edge that was possibly part of a tassa, a bowl often used for religious purposes.

Colored glass was rare at the time, and it was used mostly in

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castles and cathedrals. “We figure that it belonged to someone with a high rank,” says Samson.

The archaeologists have also found Native American pottery decorated with lines and circles. The pottery, along with the corn kernels, offers evidence that Roberval maintained a more amicable relationship with the Iroquois than Cartier had. (During his second voyage to Canada in 1536, Cartier had kidnapped several Iroquois, including Chief Donnacona, and taken them to France, where most of them died.

When he returned in 1541, he was met with hostility by the natives.) “You don’t bring that into the fort if you don’t have a good relationship with them,” says Samson.

After three years of excavations, the Cartier-Roberval dig concluded so that the archaeologists could focus on analyzing their discoveries. They have planned trips to France and northern Italy to study the fort architecture and the sociocultural order of the 16th century as well as the preceding medieval period, which could have influenced the design and social order of Fort France-Roi. By the early 16th century, the feudal system was giving way to a new sociopolitical system in France, and a better understanding of that transition could help Samson and Fiset interpret the site’s evidence, revealing the details of France’s initial attempt to colonize the New World.

HANNAH HOAG is a science journalist based in Montreal, Canada. spring • 2009

Gulf Islands National Seashore visitor center.

Rusted cannon tubes at Jamestown.

Responding To Disasters When Hurricane Isabel flooded Jamestown in 2003, threatening its precious artifacts, the National Park Service was unprepared to deal with the magnitude of the damage. The park service learned some hard lessons, one of which was that they needed an emergency-response team trained to preserve museum collections and archaeological resources.

Rusted metal objects taken from Fort Pickens.

By Paula Neely

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NPS

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n September 18, 2003, when Hurricane Isabel roared through Virginia, archaeologist Bill Kelso watched as water began seeping under the door of the cottage on Jamestown Island, where he and his wife were staying. Established in 1607, Jamestown was the first permanent English settlement and is now one of the premiere archaeological sites in North America. As the water rose, Kelso decided to see if he could get to the office building across the street where artifacts from the excavation of the James Fort site were housed in a hurricane-proof vault.

He knew they would be safer there, but the water in the road was up to his shoulders, so he turned back.

Just then, a burst of wind flattened the crepe myrtle trees beside the cottage.“I thought, ‘Whoa!’ There were miniature

Sara Wolf (center) and Bob Sonderman (in the dark shirt) are two members of the original MERT formed to deal with the types of disasters seen in the photographs above.

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basement, where over a million 17th–and 18th–century artifacts, including pottery, arms and armor, tools, and glass, as well as archival documents and photos, were stored. They also sandbagged the doors and set up pumps, in accordance with their emergency response plan.

Almost everything was soaked by brackish seawater. Shocked by the damage, the park’s officials contacted the NPS’ regional office in Boston for assistance. Sara Wolf, director of the NPS Northeast Museum Services Center, began recruiting experts to deal with the flooding. Wolf also requested assistance from Pam West, director of the NPS Museum Resource Center in Maryland, who dispatched archaeologists Karen Orrence and Robert Sonderman to Jamestown. Wolf and West also rushed to the site. Most of them had not been trained to respond to a hurricane or other natural disaster.

They arrived a day and a half after the storm, accompanied by other NPS archivists and curators.The park staff was overwhelmed and asked the NPS professionals to take over.

“That’s the dynamic I see every time I go out,” Sonderman said, explaining that the local staff usually isn’t trained to handle emergencies of this nature.

On Wolf’s recommendation, the park hired a professional storm recovery team that started blowing hot air through the building to help dry it out and keep mold from forming.

NPS and APVA teams moved the artifacts out of the visitor center and washed and dried them. The storage cabinets were difficult to drain and water had been trapped inside the drawers for at least a day and a half. Rust was forming on iron objects and mended ceramics were coming apart.

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tornadoes and trees crashing and booming all around. It was like a war zone,” he said. Back inside the cottage, he moved his valuables to the second floor loft and waited for the storm to pass. The worst of it hit that night during high tide, creating a nine-foot storm surge that covered the cottage floor with five inches of water. By morning, the water had receded enough that he could walk around the island. Hundreds of trees were down and two bridges had been dislodged from their footings. Electrical power was out and would remain so for the next two weeks.

The fort excavation site, which is owned by APVA Preservation Virginia, a private, nonprofit organization, was covered by tarps and was largely unscathed.The Visitor Center, where the National Park Service’s (NPS) Jamestown artifact collection was housed, was a different story. (Jamestown is part of Colonial National Historical Park, and the NPS and APVA Preservation Virginia manage the island in partnership.) Doors and a window were broken, and the basement was flooded with five feet of water.“The furniture was upside down and water was still up to the window level, trapped inside,” Kelso, the director of archaeology for APVA Preservation Virginia, said. “Booklets were drifting around…. I saw a notebook in the debris around the building. It was J.C. Harrington’s field notes from the 1930s. I knew then that the archives had been hit.” He sighed, “We had offered to let (NPS) store things in our vault, but the head Jamestown ranger said it has never flooded enough to damage our records.”

Anticipating that the storm might blow out the windows on the main floor exhibit area, the park’s staff had moved some objects and a collection of paintings to the

This reconstructed 17th–century Bellarmine jug came apart during the flooding at Jamestown. The glue that held the pieces together disintegrated when it was exposed to water. The jug was later restored and remended.

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NPS

When cabinets were submerged by the Jamestown flood, the trays of artifacts they contained were mixed up and some provenience information was lost. The cabinets, which cost thousands of dollars, also had to be replaced.

“It was so sad, and it seemed like an insurmountable task,” said Bly Straube, senior curator for APVA Preservation Virginia. She and others tried to save the notes that were floating in the water inside the cabinet drawers. Original documents and archaeological field notes were rinsed in distilled water to clean them and then packed wet in bins to be frozen for later freeze-drying, the standard procedure for stabilizing soaked paper. Sonderman remembered seeing John Cotter’s and Ed Jelk’s field notes from the 1950s afloat: “That got to me.They were my mentors.”

Three days after the storm the NPS emergency response unit, known as the Incident Management Team (IMT), arrived.

(The park service established the IMT in the 1970s to deal with wildfires on NPS lands.) They had been in the area for several days clearing fallen trees from another NPS property, and they were unaware of the efforts underway to save the collections. Preserving the cultural resources was not one of their priorities, Sonderman explained.

The IMT commander took control of the recovery efforts, assigning Wolf to handle the collections. The commander also ordered engineers, architects, and a public health officer to examine the visitor center, which they condemned. “We freaked out,” Sonderman said. “If they closed the building, the iron objects would completely rust out and the ceramics would exfoliate.” Luckily, the commander understood the gravity of the situation and gave them resources, funding, and

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three more days to move the collections to another location.

To make matters worse, they had to race against another hurricane that was bearing down on Virginia.

In order to save the collection, Wolf decided to move all 270 cabinets, with artifacts still inside them, out of the basement. Holes were drilled in the sides of the cabinets to help drain the water, drawers were shimmed and each cabinet was shrink-wrapped in plastic to keep the contents intact.

The team tore down walls so as to move freely from room to room, and they jacked the cabinets onto pallets, and removed them with a forklift. The collections were then taken to an empty, World War II-era warehouse about 40 miles away at Fort Lee in Petersburg just before the next storm hit.

Wolf, who is a conservator, was conscripted to manage the triage effort there for the next three months. She and West supervised five teams of 20 NPS conservators, recruited from parks around the country, who worked 12-hour shifts for 14-day periods to stabilize the material.“It was an incredibly emotional event because no one had ever seen a disaster of this size,” said Wolf.Though the local press were very critical of the park’s response to the disaster, those same critics were impressed by the NPS’ conservation work, she said.

When preliminary salvage of the collections was completed, they were moved again to a warehouse in Newport News with better climate control, where long-term stabilization work began. Some artifacts, such as glass and wooden

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A shrink-wrapped cabinet from the Jamestown visitor center is hauled away by a forklift. Workers tore down a door and part of a wall so the forklift could reach the cabinets.

objects, were sent to various experts who specialize in those media.

Most of the artifacts are now located in a new $4 million storage facility at Historic Jamestowne that was built 10 1/2 feet above the flood plain. The visitor center was demolished and replaced with a new building that is also on higher ground. “Overall, the collection came through beautifully,” Wolf said. “We retrieved 99.5 percent of it.” The biggest loss was the photo collection, but they were able to freeze the photos (freezing stops the deterioration) and save the images in digital format. Some ceramics have been re-mended; others will need to be mended over time. She estimated that the four-year effort cost the federal government about $6 million plus the initial recovery costs.

“We still have a solid archival collection,” said Karen Rehm, NPS Chief Jamestown Historian, adding that they’ve “learned a lot about how to store things properly.” She noted, however, that the provenience organization is not as good as it was.

with their colleagues, they organized a Museum Emergency Response Team (MERT) trained to deal with similar incidents involving NPS archaeological sites, artifact collections, historical buildings, cemeteries, and other cultural resources.

They began by assembling a team of on-call NPS experts including curators, conservators, archaeologists, and collection managers.They also recruited architects and used safety officers to advise the team about whether or not a building would be safe to enter and how to tear down doors and walls, if necessary. Maintenance people were added to help remove water, dry out buildings, clear debris, and move furniture.There are now two MERTs, each with about 20 members, directed by West and Wolf. Each member was issued a “ready bag” packed with tools, masks, earplugs, gloves, safety boots, and other emergency supplies. West said they conducted exercises involving mock incidents “to stretch people and see how they would react.”

The MERTs were subsumed by the IMT, and in order to deploy they had to be called to a disaster by the IMT commander. There are now four IMTs—National, Eastern, Central, and Pacific—that respond to all natural disasters. Their top priorities are maintaining health and safety and restoring the infrastructure. The IMT commander assumes authority over local park officials for the duration of the disaster. This enables the IMT to do whatever is necessary to get the park operating again.

Initially, getting the IMT commanders to call MERT in a timely manner was a challenge.“The first 24 to 48 hours are critical because mold starts growing and chances are we’ll start losing things. Documents need to be frozen to halt the damage or they can be gone within 12 hours or so,” Sonderman said. The commanders have since come to realize that the cultural resources require immediate attention. “They get it now,”Wolf said.

Unfortunately, that wasn’t the case in 2004, when Hurricane Ivan hit the Gulf Island National Seashore Park in Pensacola, Florida. Two weeks passed before the IMT commander asked West to send a team to Fort Pickens, a 19thcentury fort built to defend Pensacola Bay. The storm surge

Isabel was a wake-up call. Nothing like that had ever happened before, but given the increasing frequency and severity of hurricanes and the location of numerous NPS historical sites on the East Coast, West, Wolf, and Sonderman wanted to be better prepared for the next time. In collaboration

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Creating the Museum Emergency-Response Team Members of the original MERT are seen in this 2004 photograph.

Some of these people have since quit the team because of the physical demands and stress of the work.

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had moved the visitor center off its foundation and split it in two, flooding the Civil War exhibit, the natural history collection, and archival documents.Another facility that housed a modular building with more artifacts from various periods also flooded.

West gathered a team that included conservators, an architect, and an archivist knowledgeable about conserving paper documents. They flew in and took a boat across the bay to the fort. “The road was washed out, so we had to do everything by boat,” she explained.That took too much time, so the team decided to camp on the island. For the next three weeks, they took cold showers while they salvaged the museum’s exhibits, saving the majority of the collections.

“The exhibit was ripped apart, slides were everywhere, and there was flash rusting on the metals,” West said. Civil

War uniforms were moldy and cabinets were filled with artifacts soaked in water. Everything lay in the muck until they arrived. “It was déjà vu all over again,” Sonderman said, referring to Jamestown.

Using their Jamestown experience, they set up a triage with help from the local park staff. Documents and photos were stored in freezer chests and later freeze-dried and scanned. Needing help, West called in a hotshot crew—an elite firefighting team—that received on-site training in collections stabilization. They couldn’t remove historical ordnance and cabinets of artifacts stored inside an 1880s structure because the door was too small for their equipment, so, having consulted an architect, they leveled a wall that was not part of the original structure.

They were nearly finished when another hurricane,

julie bell, nps

Coping with Wildfires

Firefighters battle the Long Mesa Fire at Mesa Verde in 2002. The firefighters protected the park’s curatorial facility and office buildings that were threatened by the flames.

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ach year, Julie Bell, an archaeologist at Mesa Verde National Park, takes a refresher course in firefighting and hikes three miles with a 45-pound backpack in less than 46 minutes to renew her certification.

Bell is one of the first firefighters on the scene when a large fire breaks out, as is the case with many archaeologists in Western states. She helps to determine where to dig the fire line and directs crews during suppression activities so that, if possible, archaeological sites can be saved. Since 1996, five large wildfires have burned over half of Mesa Verde’s 52,000 acres. Incident Command Teams are only deployed in the event of large, dangerous fires, and when they’ve been summoned to Mesa Verde, they’ve utilized Bell as a cultural resource advisor.

“The biggest problem for archaeological sites is runoff,” Bell said. She and her team treat the watershed above the sites,

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reseed, and put down matting made from aspen shavings that are sometimes impregnated with native seeds to slow the erosion that can carry away soil and artifacts.

Rock art can also be damaged by spalling. For example, during the 1996 fire, the heat dried out the stone containing the petroglyph panel known as the Battleship Rock Panel. During the next freeze and thaw, the rock exfoliated and many of the petroglyphs popped off. “It’s like someone took a shotgun to it,” she said.

Although they were catastrophic, the Mesa Verde fires revealed 676 previously unknown archaeological sites. After the 1996 fire, archaeologists discovered a string of about 100 check dams and long walls used to capture water, indicating that agricultural techniques were more advanced than previously thought. —Paula Neely

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When Hurricane Katrina struck West Ship Island, Fort Massachusetts, shown here, was inundated by a 30-foot storm surge.

The aftermath of the flooding is seen is this photo.

Hurricane Katrina A year later Katrina, one of the most devastating hurricanes in the history of the United States, hit Louisiana and Mississippi. Almost immediately after the levees failed, flooding New Orleans and the surrounding area, the incident commander requested that Wolf go to New Orleans to assess museum collections and other cultural resource recovery needs. The first priority was at Chalmette Battlefield, where the last battle of the War of 1812 between the United States and Britain was fought.The visitor center’s exhibits had been flooded by three feet of water and skeletal remains in the cemetery were exposed.

Consequently, a MERT was dispatched to Lafayette, Louisiana, where they were escorted by NPS law enforcement officers through six military checkpoints into New Orleans, with its countless abandoned, flood-damaged homes. There were rumors of snipers and vandals, so the team members weren’t allowed out of their cars for protection. It took two hours to reach Chalmette, which is next to the levee just

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south of New Orleans. We saw it all,” Sonderman said.“It was 100 degrees outside. I was almost knocked down by the smell of rot and debris.” Along the way, he remembered seeing NPS officers tear open large bags of dog food on street corners to feed abandoned pets.

He went to Chalmette National Cemetery, where tombstones mark the graves of over 15,000 American soldiers who died in the War of 1812 and subsequent conflicts. Several oak trees had toppled, exposing five burials from the 1800s that were tangled in the trees’ roots. A group of Army Rangers was standing guard over them when Sonderman arrived.

He and Mary Troy, an NPS curator, mapped, documented, and removed the burials. “It took a couple of days and was pretty straightforward,” Sonderman said, but the cemetery

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Matthew, forced them to secure everything inside the fort and evacuate the island by helicopter. When they returned, they finished stabilizing and packing the collections into containers wrapped in plastic, put them on pallets, and loaded them with backhoes onto a World War II landing craft—the IMT can get anything—that took them to the mainland. From there they were sent to conservators to be restored and then to the NPS Southeast Archeological Center for temporary storage.

Katrina flooded large parts of New Orleans. A MERT was sent there to deal with the damage to NPS properties.

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The remnants of a recreated 1800s lighthouse are seen in the background. When Katrina hit West Ship Island it demolished the recreated structure. Ironically, it also exposed bricks and other rubble in the foreground that are the remains of the original structure.

had been submerged for several days, and the smell was “profound.” Once the trees were cut up, the remians were reinterred in the same location.

At the nearby Chalmette Visitor Center, MERT members salvaged a collection of guns and sabers that were rusting.

They wrapped them in mattress pads and shipped them inside cardboard tubes that are normally used as molds for making building columns, to the Springfield Armory in Massachusetts for conservation.“You have to be creative and use whatever you can,”West said.They stabilized and moved the rest of the collections, including uniforms and military artifacts, to a storage facility in Naches Trace, Mississippi.

Sonderman then went to Mississippi’s East and West Ship Islands, part of the Gulf Islands National Seashore Park.

“There was a 30-foot surge and the park was wiped out,” he said. Using GPS coordinates, he located the park’s archaeological sites from a helicopter. East Ship Island was almost submerged. All that was left on West Ship was the circular Fort Massachusetts, built during the Civil War to protect Mobile Bay. All the other structures, including four houses and an 1880s lighthouse, were gone. The flood also revealed the remains of an earlier lighthouse. Under pressure to evacuate the area before Hurricane Rita hit, Sanderman reached West Ship by boat, conducted an assessment, and mapped what was left. He recommended bringing in experts from the nearby Southeast Archeological Center for further assessment after the water receded.

Throughout the Katrina disaster, the team stayed at a hotel in Lafayette for about two weeks with hundreds of evacuees who were forced to leave their homes. “It was different than other disasters as we had to deal with the trauma

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NPS curator Mary Troy recovers a fragment of human remains from Chalmette National Cemetery.

of folks who were affected,” Sonderman said. After each incident, the team holds debriefings to help members cope with their experiences.They met several times after Katrina.

Now, every year from July to November, MERT members keep an eye on hurricanes that might affect national parks.

“It’s fascinating and exhilarating,” Sonderman said, “but as much as you’d like to go, you hope it doesn’t happen again.”

PAULA NEELY’s work has appeared in nationalgeographic.com and DIG magazine. Her article “Redefining the Adena” appeared in the Summer 2008 issue of American Archaeology.

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Life on the Frontier Cañada Alamosa was once a frontier between the territories of two of the Southwest’s major prehistoric cultures, the Mogollon and the Anasazi. What happened when these two cultures interacted?

By Denise Tessier Photos by Liz Lopez To reach the archaeologically rich canyon known as Cañada Alamosa, visitors must ford the Alamosa River dozens of times.The river flows year-round, fed by a robust warm spring. The water is what lured prehistoric people to this southwestern New Mexico landscape that lies between the territories of two muchstudied cultures—the Mogollon to the south and the Anasazi to the north.

Over a 10-year period, archaeologists with two New Mexico-based organizations, the Cañada Alamosa Institute and Human Systems Research, Inc., have investigated four sites in this area, concluding that Cañada Alamosa is a classic frontier site, or “zone of interaction,” where people lived for hundreds of years. “Frontiers tend to be the termination point for migration streams,” says archaeologist Karl Laumbach, the associate director of research and education for Human Systems, which is located in Las Cruces. On frontiers, cultures sometimes came together to “create something new.” At other times they remained at arm’s-length. Both scenarios seem to have played out at Cañada Alamosa.

While doing research in the Cañada Alamosa in the 1980s and early 1990s, Laumbach and his colleagues discovered large ruins on private land that were in danger of being looted. In 1998, Dennis and Trudy O’Toole bought the Monticello Box Ranch, a 5,000-acre spread in the canyon that contains the four sites, known as Montoya,

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The Mesa Verde Anasazi migrated to Cañada Alamosa and built a village on these cliffs, known as Pinnacle Ruin, that they could easily defend. (opposite) Archaeologist Karl Laumbach stands by the remains of one of the village’s structures. american archaeology

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Dennis and Trudy O’Toole purchased the Monticello Box Ranch in 1998.

Kelly Canyon, Victorio, and Pinnacle Ruin. Dennis, who oversaw archaeological programs during his career as a history museum director, walked Victorio before they bought the property, and “saw collapsed buildings and pottery just littering the ground.” Shortly thereafter, the O’Tooles founded the Cañada Alamosa Institute, and they established a partnership with Human Systems to study the entire Alamosa

drainage—more than 728 square miles of Chihuahuan desert, grasslands, and forested uplands.

By the spring of 1999, Laumbach had devised a general research plan. Its central question was inspired by the mix of Anasazi and Mogollon ceramics on the surface of the sites: Did the Cañada Alamosa have a relatively stable and longlived formative population that borrowed from and adapted to the material culture and economics of adjacent areas, or was there a series of occupations and abandonments by various groups of people?

In June of that year, O’Toole and Laumbach held their first field school, excavating a room at Victorio with the help of six graduate students from Eastern New Mexico University. In addition to Laumbach and O’Toole, the project’s other principal investigators are University of Colorado archaeologist Steve Lekson, who has been excavating Pinnacle Ruin; Laumbach’s wife, Toni, curator at the New Mexico Farm and Ranch Heritage Museum, who directs the project’s ceramic analysis; and New Mexico Tech geologist Virginia T. McLemore, who identifies where the raw materials used to make the ceramics came from.

Cañada Alamosa was a frontier between the Anasazi and Mogollon regions. Archaeologists have found ceramics from surrounding areas at Cañada Alamosa’s four sites, indicating that its occupants interacted with people from those areas.

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little sequence, well-preserved,” Laumbach says of Cañada Alamosa. The sequence spans four major Puebloan occupations— Mimbres, Socorro, Tularosa, and Magdalena—that are represented at the four sites. (The Mimbres culture was a subgroup of the Mogollon, while Socorro and Magdalena were subgroups of the Anasazi. Tularosa was related to both.) The archaeologists investigated the Montoya site in 2001, the year Earthwatch Institute became the project’s chief sponsor, a relationship that continues to this day. In eight seasons, nearly 200 Earthwatch volunteers have participated in the investigation, and several of them have worked more than one season. The researchers discovered that Montoya was a periodically utilized Mimbres village made up of flimsy jacal structures. The age of the Mimbres ceramics (a.d. 1000-1130) indicates that Montoya is the oldest of the four sites.

While working at Kelly Canyon in 2002 and 2003, the researchers discovered Socorro Black-onwhite ceramics, which provided the

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Evolution Graphics

“Here we have a tight

first clue that a 12th-century Anasazi community, originating from the Rio Salado west of Socorro, migrated to the area.

The ceramics suggest that Kelly Canyon was occupied from about 1100 to 1175.The researchers also found linear roomblocks with a kiva in front, an architectural style employed by the Anasazi in the Chaco Canyon region.

The evidence of the migrant community at Kelly Canyon led Laumbach to return to the Montoya site to investigate a masonry structure found among the jacales in 2001.

The structure contained what Laumbach calls a “wonderful stratigraphic sequence” of three 12th-century occupations— Mimbres, Socorro, and Tularosa. The archaeologists found Mimbres Black-on-white sherds on the bottom floor, a mixture of Mimbres and Socorro Black-on-white on the second floor, and Socorro and Tularosa Black-on-white on the upper floor. This stratigraphic sequence supports the concept of a continuous, but changing, occupation of the canyon during the 12th century.

It’s thought that Victorio’s occupation starts when Kelly Canyon’s ends, because most of the former’s ceramics are Tularosa Phase (1175-1300). Victorio, which has over 450 rooms and is the largest of the four sites, has also offered evidence of pre-pueblo pithouse occupations.A pithouse at the site has been dated to approximately a.d. 740. Most of the ceramics associated with this early occupation are Mogollon, but there are also numerous sherds of Anasazi whitewares,

indicating that the two cultures were interacting on the Cañada Alamosa frontier at this time.

The youngest site, Pinnacle Ruin, has carbon painted ceramics dating from 1240 to 1300 that strongly resemble those found in the Mesa Verde area. The archaeologists have also uncovered glaze-painted ceramics dating from 1300 to 1400 that may represent a later occupation.

The researchers returned to Victorio in 2005 to conduct a surface collection of artifacts, and they’ve been working there for the last three years. Archaeologist Delton Estes carefully extracts pieces of a pot from the site that, he says,“was their sink.”The bowl-shaped vessel has no bottom and was set into the floor of the structure so it could be used as a container.After collecting all the pieces, Estes examines the rock-hard impression left by the bowl, which he refers to as a “collar.” He then collects samples of this collar for pollen analysis, which can reveal what the environment was like at that time. Joshua Pfarr, an Eastern New Mexico University graduate student, recently found corn and squash pollen near the flood plain of the Rio Alamosa.

Researchers carefully break up hard soil with a metal pry bar and then sift it through a screen in search of tiny artifacts. They’ve found a few lithic tools, a piece of a small bone, and corrugated and painted ceramics, including a sherd with painted spots on the rim. “It’s been very hard-

Karl Laumbach lifts the top of a structure that was built to cover an excavation area at the Victorio site. Rather than backfill the area, the researchers left it exposed so that it serves as an educational exhibit. The corrugated tin and plastic structure protects it.

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fired,” Laumbach says as he turns it over. “It’s not anything I recognize off hand.” The artifacts are sorted, cleaned, and catalogued in a laboratory at the ranch in preparation for their analysis by volunteers at the Human Systems Research laboratory in Las Cruces.

The archaeologists initially assumed that Victorio’s size reflected a long, continuous occupation. But the evidence has shown that, while there are a few rooms from the early pueblo period, most of them were in use during the 13thcentury Tularosa Phase occupation. Finding the older rooms has been challenging, and Laumbach surmises that many were covered by later construction. He and his colleagues did find an early pithouse during the 2008 season when they discovered a floor and a fire pit more than six feet underground.

Describing it as “the most important discovery we made this season,” Laumbach notes that the ceramics associated with the pithouse are predominantly Mogollon, but the style of

the pithouse, which features what archaeologists refer to as a “ventilator shaft” that was remodeled from a Mogollon ramp entrance, is Anasazi. This appears to be another example of early interaction between the two cultures.

Laumbach says the years of research indicate that Cañada Alamosa was occupied on and off by different puebloan groups from a.d. 600 to 1400. The pithouse occupations appear to have ended around 900, and the area remained unoccupied for about 100 years. “There could have been some really severe flooding” during that time, says Laumbach. He also adds that the Anasazi may have been drawn to Chaco Canyon, which was taking shape then, just as the Mogollon could have migrated to emerging settlements in the nearby Mimbres Valley.

During the 11th century Mimbres settlers sporadically

Prehistory Revealed Through Pottery

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he archaeologists’ conclusions about the various occupations at Cañada Alamosa are based, to a large extent, on their interpretation of the ceramic evidence. For example, they believe that a number of Anasazi migrated from the Mesa Verde region to Pinnacle Ruin because of the distinctive carbon-paint ceramics they’ve found there. Plants like Rocky Mountain bee weed and tansy mustard were boiled to a goo and then added to water to make carbon paint, a method that started around a.d. 1200 or earlier. Carbon paint makes blurred lines on clay, which is one of the signatures of Mesa Verde ceramics.

Most of the ceramics they’ve recovered are decorated with mineral paint, which is made by grinding iron oxide or manganese for pigment. When applied to pottery, mineral paint produces the sharp lines characteristic of Mimbres Black-on-white pottery.

Though they’ve identified many of the ceramic styles, the archaeologists also want to know where they were made. This information would reveal the region’s production centers and suggest the extent of the trade networks through which goods traveled.

To obtain that information, the researchers are identifying local and regional clay sources and comparing them with the clays used to fashion the pottery. The pottery clays are identified by instrumental neutron activation analysis, a process that entails bombarding the samples with neutrons to reveal their elements.

The researchers have submitted 420 ceramic samples and 30 local clay samples to the University of Missouri for testing. The analysis is in the early stages, but so far the results show that many of the ceramics were produced outside of Cañada Alamosa in the Zuni and Socorro areas. —Denise Tessier

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Soccoro Black-on-white

Magdalena Black-on-white

Tularosa Black-on-white

Mimbres Black-on-white

St. Johns Polychrome

These sherds represent the various ceramic styles found at Cañada Alamosa.

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Archaeologist Delton Estes holds pieces of a bowl-like vessel that was discovered at the Victorio site. The vessel was intentionally embedded in the ground.

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Earthwatch volunteers gather to review maps before beginning a day of excavating.

inhabited Cañada Alamosa. They traded with, and probably intermarried, the Anasazi living west of Socorro on the Rio Salado. Due to a drought in the early 12th century, the Anasazi came to Cañada Alamosa in search of water and, establishing the Kelly Canyon site, joined their Mimbres neighbors. By the time they moved to Victorio in the early 1200s, the two people became virtually indistinguishable.

By then, the production centers of their respective

ceramic types, Mimbres and Socorro, were no longer making pottery, according to Laumbach. The preponderance of Tularosa Black-on-white as well as St. Johns Polychrome pottery indicates that Victorio’s occupants turned to a different production center, the Zuni area, to acquire their paintdecorated ceramics.

In the mid-1200s, another group, the Mesa Verde Anasazi, migrated to Pinnacle Ruin and built a terraced village on a defensible, rocky promontory one-half mile upstream from Victorio. Many people were abandoning the Mesa Verde region at that time due to factors such as climate change and conflict, and the location of the migrants’ village could have been an expression of fear. In any case, the archaeologists suspect that the occupants of the two sites were never friendly, and both ultimately abandoned the valley.

Laumbach, O’Toole and their colleagues have found that new socioeconomic systems were created as old ones were maintained at Cañada Alamosa. They continue to examine the unpredictable details of life on the prehistoric frontier.

DENISE TESSIER is a New Mexico-based journalist and historian who has written for the New Mexico Independent, the Albuquerque Journal, and the New York Times.

For more information about the Cañada Alamosa Project, visit the Web sites www.humansystemsresearch.org and www.earthwatch.org

Looters dug up this masonry wall at Pinnacle Ruin. It’s the only exposed wall at the site. The archaeologists have found other standing walls, some as high as six feet, that remain buried.

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david malakoff

Investigating French and Indian War Forts

In the mid 1700s, England and France were fighting for control of a vast section of North America. Colonial armies, who were allied with England, and settlers determined to protect themselves, built a series of forts that extended from Maine to North Carolina. Having excavated several of these forts, archaeologists are learning about the differences between the military and civilian structures.

Stephen McBride consults a map of the Fort Ashby site while his wife, Kim, excavates a bastion.

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By David Malakoff 33

small town in the hills of northern West Virginia named after its historic fortification. The McBrides had already conducted a major dig at Fort Ashby in 2007 funded by a West Virginia Humanities Council grant, and they had returned to try to answer some puzzling questions raised by the earlier excavation. “We’re hoping to get a better look at some features that could tell us more about the construction sequence—what came first, what came later—and how the fort evolved,”Stephen explained as a backhoe clawed away fill from the previous dig.

The one-acre site sits along Patterson Creek on the edge of town, just behind a two-story, 18th-century log building that may have once been part of the fort. The building houses a museum owned by the Daughters of the American Revolution (DAR).

The site, which is mostly lawn and meadow, stretches into the backyards of several adjoining homeowners. It was one of those neighbors, Elliot “Butch” Ridenour, who prompted archaeologist Bill Gardner of Catholic University in Washington D.C. to excavate Fort Ashby in the late 1990s.

An avid gardener, Ridenour dug an unusually deep backyard trench one spring. Greg Adamson, a geologist and amateur archaeologist who lives in Dayton, Virginia, noticed the trench and soon learned that “Butch had harvested musket balls, uniform buttons, coins, and a whole bunch of other artifacts that appeared to pertain to the 18th-century fortification.” Adamson’s discovery ultimately led to intermittent digs from 1998 to 2002 that uncovered postmolds left by one of the fort’s wooden walls.“We also found some artifacts, like ceramic pipe stems, gunflints, and such. But we couldn’t really see the whole picture, just a piece of it,” said Adamson.

CHARLOTTE HILL-COBB

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he war was going badly. Enemy insurgents allied with foreign fighters were sowing terror, killing civilians, and driving families from their homes in brutal, unpredictable attacks. Anxious, the generals changed tactics. Thousands of fresh troops surged into the war zone, with orders to build small forward-operating bases, launch aggressive patrols, and restore security.

The surge in Iraq, circa 2007? No, the French and Indian War in Virginia, 1755. Colonial governments, alarmed by escalating attacks on frontier settlers by Native American insurgents allied with the French, rushed to build a string of forts. Now, archaeologists are gaining deeper insights into this Colonial-era military surge by excavating some of those forts, including two that were built under the supervision of a young officer from Virginia named George Washington.

“This is a bit of history we are still learning about,” said W. Stephen McBride, who owns the archaeological firm McBride Preservation Services in Lexington, Kentucky. Over the last seven years, McBride and his wife Kim, an archaeologist with the Kentuky Archaeological Survey, have excavated eight Colonial-era forts. Three—Forts Ashby, Edwards, and Vause—are associated with the French and Indian War, which lasted from 1754 to 1763.

“We’ve kind of become the fort people,” he said.“There aren’t a lot of records that tell us how these fortifications were designed, built, or used. So digs can reveal some pretty interesting information.” The researchers are seeing telling differences, for instance, between forts that were built by the military and those built by settlers to defend their homes.

Last fall, the McBrides’ work took them to Fort Ashby, a

This illustration of Fort Ashby is based on archaeological and historical information.

The fort was built in 1755 and abandoned two years later.

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NEW YORK PUBLIC LIBRARY / COLORIZED BY CHARLOTTE HILL-COBB

The 18th-Century Surge

That glimpse helped rekindle interest in Fort Ashby’s story. It began in the 1730s, when European settlers began working their way up the nearby Potomac River Valley. By 1750, some 5,000 people lived in the region. Initially, their relations with neighboring Native American groups—including the Iroquois, Cherokee, Shawnee, and Mingo—were good.Those relations began to sour, however, as the settlers pushed west to the Ohio River Valley, which the French claimed.

In early 1754, the conflict flared when Virginia’s governor sent a small force led by a 21-year-old officer named George Washington to occupy a contested chunk of land at the confluence of the Monongahela and Allegheny Rivers (now the site of Pittsburgh, Pennsylvania). Washington’s troops ambushed a French scouting party, killing an officer.

The French retaliated, overwhelming and capturing Washington’s men. The future first president was allowed to slink home, tail between his legs. It was just one of a string of French victories that marked the early years of the war.

“The situation got pretty bad for the settlers along the Potomac and Patterson Creek,” said Stephen. “Indian groups were launching these hit-and-run raids all over the place.

Some were led by French officers. They wanted to force the settlers out.A lot of people were getting killed.” Some settlers responded by building their own forts. Many fled east.“It was a big mess,” he said.

Washington, now in command of Virginia’s military forces, struggled to calm the chaos. He boosted the size of Virginia’s provincial army, made up of citizen soldiers, and unleashed his own surge, flooding the western frontier with fresh troops. In October 1755, he ordered the construction of two forts along Patterson Creek.They were part of a much larger plan to build a wall of numerous forts, stretching south at 15- or 20-mile intervals.“The troops were supposed to patrol between the forts and keep an eye out for raiding parties,” Stephen said.

Fort Ashby was finished in just a month or two, records suggest. It was named after its commander, Captain John Ashby of the Virginia 2nd Company of Rangers, which boasted 32 fighters. Ashby’s Rangers were soon engaged in occasional skirmishes, and it’s said that Ashby himself barely escaped death after encountering the enemy while collecting firewood.

Strategically, however, Fort Ashby was failing. Almost no settlers remained in the valley for it to protect, and Ashby’s Rangers had gained a reputation for laziness, drunkenness, and desertion. In a letter, Washington blamed some of the problems on the influence of Ashby’s spirited wife. Financial hardship and political ideology, however, may have also played a role in the low morale. “The war wasn’t popular with many of the soldiers,” said Stephen.“They weren’t paid very well, service took them away from their farms, and they complained that they were fighting for a bunch of rich speculators worried about losing their land. So they sometimes just stayed in the forts.”

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George Washington, shown standing in this illustration, ordered the construction of Fort Ashby.

By the autumn of 1757—just two years after groundbreaking—it appears Fort Ashby was largely abandoned, serving as a little more than a supply stop. Settlers wouldn’t return to the valley in large numbers until the war ended in 1763, with the British victorious. Fort Ashby mostly moldered during the following decades, with the site used for everything from a trading post to a school. In 1927, the DAR paid $200 for the fort’s last building; it was restored and opened to the public in the 1930s.

The McBrides are now trying to understand how Fort Ashby was used, and how its architecture evolved.“From his letters,” Stephen said, “it appears Washington had a pretty clear vision of what he wanted the fort to look like.” In one, for instance, Washington instructed a junior officer to “make choice of the most convenient Ground… in building a Quadrangular Fort of Ninety feet, with Bastions.” (The bastions protruded from the fort’s corners, allowing soldiers to better defend the walls). Other documents suggest Washington envisioned four stockade walls built with vertical timbers, and four diamond-shaped bastions made of squared-off logs stacked horizontally.

Evidence uncovered during the digs at Fort Ashby suggest it largely matched Washington’s vision, except it was smaller than he wished. Postmolds in trenches, for instance, provided clear evidence of three of the four stockade walls.

There were also signs of two of the corner bastions, including discolored earth where the horizontal logs may have been banked with dirt. And the archaeologists have found artifacts that reflect Fort Ashby’s military origins, including uniform buttons, gunflints, and lead musket balls.

But there were postholes from a pair of stockades that didn’t fit Washington’s plan, and it wasn’t clear if those walls

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EVOLUTION GRAPHICS

Colonial armies and settlers built dozens of forts over a large section of the Eastern United States. This map shows some of them.

were built before or after the 1755 fort. Similarly, it was hard to determine the relative age of the big log building, which according to local lore was a barracks for the original fort.

To sort out the sequence,the McBrides carefully removed backfill and peered intently at key features, stooping now and then to get a better view of faint soil discolorations. Stephen even crawled under the log barracks to study several features. “It was really tight under there, I kept scraping my shoulder blades,” he said.

After much contemplation, the researchers reached a consensus: The irregular stockades were built after the original 1755 construction. “But we don’t know how long after,” said Stephen. They “could have come two hours later,

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or two years later.” And the log barracks probably was built even later, or was moved to its present location after Fort Ashby was well established.“There do seem to be very separate periods of construction,” said Stephen.

Settler and Military Forts

These details are helping scholars develop a much more nuanced picture of military life on the Colonial frontier. The McBrides’ work at several other fortifications that date to the French and Indian War suggests there were significant differences between forts built and used by professional soldiers and those mostly constructed and used by civilians.

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This musket sideplate was found in a bastion at Fort Ashby. The sideplate was part of a heavy-caliber military musket. The archaeologists also found large gunflints from other heavy-caliber arms.

For instance, “the civilian forts appear to have much more irregular designs,” Stephen said.

Some of those differences are on display at Fort Edwards, which sits near Capon Bridge,West Virginia, just 30 miles southeast of Fort Ashby. Unlike Ashby, Edwards started as a private fort built on land owned by an affluent settler, Joseph Edwards. As the war intensified, Washington incorporated it into his Virginia defenses and sent troops to defend it. In April 1756, nearly 20 of those soldiers were ambushed and killed after they left the fort to pursue Indian raiders.

Like Ashby, Fort Edwards was ultimately abandoned and largely forgotten. That changed in the 1990s, when a developer proposed building townhomes on the site. A preliminary archaeological survey turned up 18th-century artifacts and postmolds, and local preservationists soon purchased the site. In 2001 and 2004, Stephen led digs that uncovered more than 50 features associated with the fort, including several stockade walls, a bastion, and what appears to be the foundation of Joseph Edwards’ home. Just outside the fort’s walls, the researchers discovered two small features that appeared to be huts or tent sites.“Each one had room for just a couple of soldiers,” he said. “Maybe it was too crowded inside the fort, with the house and everything, so they camped outside.

We haven’t seen anything like that at Fort Ashby.”

The design of Fort Edwards is also unlike anything seen at the forts designed by military professionals, Stephen said.

The walls have unusual nooks and crannies, for instance, perhaps to accommodate buildings that existed before Edwards built the fort. And all the walls appear to have been vertical stockades, with no use of horizontal logs.

Another difference is that Edwards and other settler forts appear to hold more domestic artifacts, such as glazed

pottery and glassware, than the military forts. In part, that may be because some military forts had relatively brief periods of heavy occupation and, said Stephen, “not much of a residential component.” But it also may reflect the fact that soldiers had to keep the fort clean and “probably didn’t cart around a lot of heavy ceramics and glass; they traveled pretty light.”

That artifact pattern is also reflected at Fort Vause, a third French and Indian War fort that the McBrides studied. Located near Shawsville, Virginia, Fort Vause was also originally built by a settler, Ephraim Vause. In 1756, however, it was attacked and burned by French and Indian raiders.

Washington moved quickly to rebuild the outpost, but labor problems delayed the reconstruction. “The troops wanted to be paid the same as carpenters,” said Stephen, who has participated in two brief excavations of the site.

The digs have confirmed that the rebuilt Fort Vause followed a formal military design. “We found evidence of several of the walls and you can still see three of the bastions,” he said. But Vause differs from some other French and Indian War forts in one important respect:The bastions were made of piled-up dirt instead of stacked logs. It’s not clear why the design shifted, but Stephen said “it suggests that, over time, the fort builders were adapting and improvising.”

The McBrides and other scholars are still analyzing the growing body of archaeological information from French and Indian War forts. For instance, both Forts Ashby and Edwards produced lots of bones from wild and domestic animals that were likely consumed. Those bones are being identified by specialists, as are some pollen grains and chunks of wood found at Fort Ashby. Preliminary results “strongly indicate the stockade (at Ashby) was built out of white oak almost exclusively,” said Stephen. This suggests that they wanted certain

STEVE MCBRIDE

A large key recovered from Fort Ashby. The key was found in a postmold, which leads the McBrides to surmise that it was discarded after the fort was torn down.

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andy stout

Preserving Vestiges of the Conflict

This plaque commemorates Fort Littleton, one of the Conservancy’s French and Indian War preserves.

Fort Edwards, West Virginia is one of several French and Indian War sites The Archaeological Conservancy has played a role in preserving. The Conservancy purchased the site in 1995 to protect it from a planned townhouse development. Residents of nearby Capon Bridge subsequently formed their own nonprofit organization, and by 1999 they had raised the money to buy the site.

In 2001 they opened the Fort Edwards visitor center (see www.fortedwards.org).

In 1997, the Conservancy obtained a conservation easement for Dunbar’s Camp in southwest Pennsylvania.

This is where British forces abandoned their supply train and made a hasty retreat following Gen. Braddock’s qualities in the wood. He is also musing over a possible pattern in the distribution of pottery made from red clay—a common material at the time for inexpensive housewares.

This pottery is common at settler forts like Edwards, but nearly absent from Fort Ashby. One theory, he said, is that the settler forts were used by members of relatively informal county militias,“who had to bring their own dishes and housewares with them.” In contrast, the soldiers stationed at Ashby were probably supplied with metal dishes.

Stephen and another archaeologist, James Fenton, have also been in Canada, poring over records that might tell them more about the war from the French perspective.

“We’ve found reports from officers that talk about which Indian tribes were involved in raids, how many settlers they captured, killed, or forced out. But they don’t name any of the forts involved, so it takes a bit of work to see if you can

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disastrous defeat at the Battle of the Monongahela on July 19, 1755.

The Feingold site, north of Albany in upstate New York, was once part of a large British military complex that included Fort Edward. Rogers Island, and the Royal Blockhouse. The Conservancy obtained the Feingold site in 2001.

Fort Littleton, in south-central Pennsylvania, was one of four forts that formed a line of defense against French and Indian forces in what was then the colony’s western frontier. Fort Littleton consisted of two or three houses surrounded by a stockade featuring four bastions. The Conservancy acquired the site in 2005. figure out which ones they are talking about,” said Stephen.

They were surprised to discover that some of the Native Americans involved came from tribes that lived near the Great Lakes, far from the war zone.“It just reminds you how far-ranging this conflict was,” he said.

Ironically, he noted, the British victory ultimately helped sow the seeds of the American Revolution. The cost of the war forced the Crown to raise taxes on its American colonists, helping foment the anger that eventually erupted into the fight for independence. That history has made Forts Ashby, Edwards, and Vause important to today’s historic preservationists and intriguing to archaeologists interested in following the footprints left by some of America’s earliest soldiers.

DAVID MALAKOFF is a writer in Alexandria, Virginia. His article “Rethinking the Clovis” appeared in the winter 2008-09 issue of American Archaeology. spring • 2009

A Tale of TwoTrails When El Camino Real and the Santa Fe Trail were joined in the early 19th century, commerce, war, and a mingling of cultures followed.

An artist’s depiction of Native Americans watching as wagons move along the Santa Fe Trail. The map shows the major stops on both the trail (shown in green) and El Camino Real (shown in orange).

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doug holdread

evolution graphics

Julian Smith

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Edward Staski

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Archaeologist Edward Staski excavated this campsite, known as Paraje de San Diego, located on the northern end of El Camino Real. It was the last campsite before Jornada del Muerto.

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l Camino Real de Tierra Adentro, “The Royal Road of the Interior,” ran from the heart of New Spain to the Spanish settlements along the Rio Grande in what would become northern New Mexico.

It was in regular use by missionaries, colonists, and traders from the early 17th century through the end of the 19th.

“The Camino Real was the umbilical cord for Spanish New Mexico,” says Donald Blakeslee of Wichita State University.“It was the route by which that colony was supplied with all manufactured goods and down which it sent the hides and other products of the frontier.”

From Mexico City, the trail ran northwest through Zacatecas, Durango, and Chihuahua, crossing the Rio Grande at El Paso and following the river north to Albuquerque and Santa Fe. The journey was long and difficult, especially over the dreaded Jornada del Muerto, the “route of the dead man,” a 100-mile waterless shortcut away from the

Francisco Vásquez de Coronado led an expedition on a portion of the Santa Fe Trail in the mid 16th century. A horseshoe nail, two crossbow boltheads (left) and two aglets (above) were among the artifacts recovered from one of his campsites near the trail.

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donald blakeslee / property of floyd county historical museum

n the afternoon of November 13, 1821, a company of Spanish soldiers came upon a party of six bedraggled American traders south of presentday Las Vegas, New Mexico. The Americans were led by William Becknell, a bankrupt Virginia freighter, who was making a last-ditch gamble to reach Santa Fe, the capital of the Spanish province of New Mexico.

Becknell knew that the Spanish prohibited trade with foreigners and that previous expeditions had landed in jail, their goods confiscated. Spain’s vast empire stretched across Mexico, New Mexico, and Texas, but its grip on its northern-most holdings was shaky. There were very few Spanish troops in New Mexico and Texas, and Spain feared it could lose these provinces. Consequently, it punished foreigners, regardless of their intentions, for entering these provinces.

But Becknell also may have known that Mexico’s fight for independence from Spain had ended in success three months earlier, and seen a golden opportunity. Whatever his motives, his plan worked: the Americans eventually reached Santa Fe as businessmen, not prisoners, and Becknell went down in history as the founder of the Santa Fe Trail, a 900mile trade and travel route from Missouri.The trail saw heavy use during the 19th century as control of the region passed from Spain to Mexico to the United States. Santa Fe was also the northern end of El Camino Real, an even older and longer trail that stretched 1,600 miles from Mexico City.

The stories behind these iconic routes are complex, and recent research is showing how they were more than a way for traders to move items from one endpoint to the other.

As they connected the Southwest to the rest of the continent, each trail served as a pathway for people and culture as well as goods. They had an impact that outlasted their widely accepted expiration date of February 16, 1880, when the Atchison, Topeka & Santa Fe Railway reached Santa Fe.

Friends of Arrow Rock, Inc.

Researchers excavate the powder room of the John Sites gunsmith shop in Arrow Rock, Missouri, in 1967. The gun shop was restored and turned into a museum.

Kansas State Historical Society

Rio Grande between El Paso and Albuquerque. Temporary campsites called parajes were established about every 10 miles for parties to rest, gather water and repair equipment.

In 2004, Edward Staski, an archaeologist at New Mexico State University, led excavations along a seven-mile section of the Camino north of Las Cruces that turned up evidence of modern use.A dense scatter of ceramic pieces, broken bottles, and metal cans at one site may have been the remains of a cattle roundup spot from the early to mid-20th century. “On frontiers, despite people’s best efforts, they tend to do things the same way over and over,” says Staski. For example, hearths at sites along the Camino tended to look alike whether they were from prehistoric times or the 17th century. Tire tracks and car parts show the trail was used as a transportation route through the construction of Interstate 25 in the 1960s.

Most sites along the Camino are “ephemeral,” says Staski, meaning they saw ongoing but temporary use. The resulting scatters of artifacts, spanning acres and centuries, can be difficult to interpret archaeologically, he adds, but on the plus side, they’re seldom looted or disturbed. Despite hundreds of years of use, the Camino itself remained, in a sense, temporary. The Spanish never paved it or built bridges or embankments, and for most of its length it was little more than a well-traveled dirt path, or a braid of multiple paths.

“I’m interested in why they never thought it was worth their while to make the Camino into a real road,” Staski says.

One reason may be the absence of traditional treasures like gold and silver in the Southwest deserts. From Mexico City, the region seemed like a far-off backwater; diaries and letters from travelers reveal that people didn’t enjoy coming up here.“It was an arduous, dangerous trip,” says Staski “one they thought wouldn’t be financially rewarding.”

That attitude has had a lasting effect. Even as the Camino set the stage for the Southwest’s great cultural diversity, it also may have kept New Mexico—currently ranked 46th in state per capita income—from developing more than it has. “New Mexico has always been poor,” he says “largely because most commodities and money passed through the region [on the Camino] to larger markets in Chihuahua, Durango, and Missouri.”

The archaeological record also suggests more economic interdependence and cooperation along the Camino than many conflict-focused histories record. The Paraje de San Diego, for example, a wellestablished stopover just south of the Jornada del Muerto, has yielded ceramics made locally as well as in northern New Mexican pueblos and

These U.S. dimes were recovered on the Santa Fe Trail in northeast Kansas. One was minted in 1823, the other in 1854. A metal step from a stagecoach or buggy was found at the Havanna Stage Station in northeast Kansas.

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Santa Fe Trail Association

Independence, Missouri became one of the major stops on the Santa Fe Trail in the 1830s. This 1850s’ illustration shows a town grown prosperous from commerce.

central Mexico. “These groups had to be in contract with one another, in more than just a hostile way,” Staski says.

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fter Becknell’s famous journey and Mexican independence, the Santa Fe Trail joined with El Camino Real into a major overland trade route between the Eastern United States, the Southwest, and Mexico. “Becknell’s arrival and welcome changed the function of El Camino Real,” says Blakeslee. No longer supplied by Spain, Mexico embraced trade with the United States, which, in the midst of its industrial revolution, was producing abundant and inexpensive goods. “It was a very big deal in Missouri,” he says, referring to the trail’s Easternmost point.

Clothing and other manufactured goods made their way south as Spanish mules and silver coins moved north. The U.S. had very little hard currency at that time, so its people prized the silver. Mexican merchants were as instrumental to this commerce as their American counterparts.“Anything to make a buck was welcome,” Blakeslee says, including selling whiskey to the Indians.“Some people became quite wealthy.”

Becknell wasn’t one of those people; however, he did manage to extricate himself from bankruptcy.

Though he’s credited with founding the trail, Becknell wasn’t the first to travel the route, according to Blakeslee.

Eighty years earlier, the French traders and brothers Paul and Pierre-Antoine Mallet had made it from present-day Illinois to Santa Fe. Part of their route through the Rockies

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corresponded to Becknell’s later path. In 1792, French-born explorer Pedro Vial became the first European to travel the entire length of the trail to St. Louis under orders from the New Mexico governor. In 1806, when Lewis and Clark were finishing up their more famous expedition, the explorer Zebulon Pike led a group of 70 on what would become the Santa Fe Trail in Kansas and Colorado.

Long before that, Blakeslee says, one of the first Europeans ever to see the Southwest ended up on the Santa Fe Trail. From 1540 to 1542, Francisco Vásquez de Coronado led 2,000 men on a futile quest to find the legendary Seven Cities of Cibola. The expedition traveled from western Mexico into Arizona and New Mexico, crossing the Rio Grande north of Albuquerque and continuing across northern Texas. This part of the route was unclear until the 1990s, when Blakeslee led a series of excavations in Blanco Canyon, about 60 miles northeast of Lubbock. The discovery of about 30 crossbow bolt heads established the Jimmy Owens site (named after a local history enthusiast who helped find it) as a major Coronado campsite. “His was the only land expedition to Texas that carried crossbows,” says Blakeslee. “It’s a slam dunk— the first material evidence to confirm the location of any of the camps on Coronado’s Texas route.”

Other Spanish artifacts included distinctive horseshoe nails, fragments of bridle chains and bits, lead harquebus bullets, and the brass tip of a sword belt with a three-pointed tulip motif.A pair of copper aglets (cord tips) likely belonged to a captain. Blakeslee estimates that five percent or less of

spring • 2009

Tim Baumann

the metal items they found came from Coronado’s party.The rest—mostly fence staples, bullets, buckshot, wire, and tin cans—was left by Indians, sheepherders, ranchers, and the U.S. Army.

After crossing Texas and the Oklahoma panhandle, Coronado continued north to Kansas with 30 hand-picked Spaniards, a few servants, and an unknown number of Mexican-Indian allies.“He crossed the Arkansas River at its southernmost point in the region, and from there to Great Bend he was on the Santa Fe Trail,” says Blakeslee. After reaching Quivira and realizing the native buildings were not made of gold, he backtracked along the same section of the trail.

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he Santa Fe Trail had many incarnations. In the decades after Becknell’s journey, it was mostly used by traders, but it also served the military. The U.S. government surveyed and documented the New Mexico portion of the trail with the consent of the Mexican government, which had taken control of the territory from Spain.

Ironically, during the Mexican-American War (1846-48), it then became a highway for American troops marching to New Mexico.When the end of the war left much of the West in American hands, more and more settlers took the Santa Fe Trail west.

The journey from Independence, Missouri, to Santa Fe took about eight weeks. Midway through, travelers could choose between the Mountain Route through the Rockies in southeastern Colorado and the Cimarron Cutoff across the grasslands of the Oklahoma panhandle. Travelers had a long list of things to worry about, from deserts and mountains to horrific weather on the open plains. The trail also passed through Native American lands. George Sibley, the Indian

Jack Davis, an expert in early frontier guns, demonstrates the method of loading and firing a flintlock rifle at the John Sites gunsmith shop.

agent and factor at Fort Osage, in Missouri, met with tribal chiefs along the trail to dissuade them from attacking travelers. He succeeded to some extent, but there were many accounts of wagons being raided and people killed.

“A gun was one of the primary tools you needed on the Santa Fe Trail, not only for protection, but also for food,” says Tim Baumann, an archaeologist with Indiana University.

Baumann has studied the history of a 19th-century gun shop in Arrow Rock, Missouri, one of many towns where travelers geared up at the start of the Santa Fe Trail. Missouri gunsmith

charlotte hill-cobb

An artist’s depiction of Francisco Vásquez de Coronado (on horseback), who led 2,000 men into Arizona and New Mexico in search of the Seven Cities of Cibola. These cities were reputed to be bursting with treasure, but Coronado found no gold.

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Kansas State Historical Society

The Kansas State Historical Society and the Kansas Anthropological Association teamed up to excavate the McGee-Harris Stage Station in 1995. The station, located in northeast Kansas, was one of the stagecoach stops on the Santa Fe Trail.

John Sites, Jr. made and sold arms in Arrow Rock throughout the latter half of the 19th century. Baumann recently reexamined documents and artifacts from two excavations of the building in the late 1960s.

Sites started out making flintlock rifles, but as the technology advanced he switched to guns that fired percussion caps. “It was like upgrading your computer,” says Baumann.

Sites’ handmade rifles, marked with “J Sites” on the barrel or

stock, have been found in California, Oregon, Montana, and New Mexico.“What we’re seeing is not just artifacts moving west, but also knowledge and technology,” says Baumann. By the end of the 19th century, though, a flood of cheap massproduced guns left over from the Civil War meant that gunsmiths like Sites were spending most of their time repairing and selling weapons instead of building them.

Many items associated with the gun business were found

A marker on the Santa Fe Trail in central Kansas.

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El Camino Real De Tierra Adentro and the Santa Fe Trail are National Historic Trails, and they are administered by the National Park Service in partnership with other federal, state, and local agencies. Private organizations such as Camino Real de Tierra Adentro Trail Association and the Santa Fe Trail Association also play a role in preserving and interpreting the trails.

But most of the nearly 3,000 miles the trails stretch across is privately owned and beyond the jurisdiction of the park service and its partners. “If a landowner wants to go out and bulldoze his (wagon) ruts, he can do it,” says Harry Myers, the manager of the Santa Fe Trail Association. These public and private organizations try to compensate for their lack of authority by educating landowners about the historical significance of the trails and the threats they face from numerous development projects.

The Archaeological Conservancy is also playing a role in preserving the trails. In 1996, the Conservancy acquired the 80-acre Hole-inthe Rock site in southeast Colorado along the Santa Fe Trail. The site contains trail ruts and the remains of an 1886 stagecoach stop. The Conservancy also owns the Camino Real site, a 17th-century Spanish Colonial ranch that it obtained in 1990. The site is just south of Santa Fe along El Camino Real.

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NPS

Maintaining the Trails

Minette Church

inside the building, including shotgun shells, a rifle butt plate, files, lead shot, and brass cartridges. What’s interesting, Baumann says, is how excavations next to the building in what was probably a powder magazine-turned-trash dump, turned up four fishing hooks, a broken pair of scissors, and two locks. These items show how Sites expanded his business into “more of a general sporting goods store” as early as 1860. Responding to the needs of his customers, he started sharpening knives, repairing locks, and selling fishing tackle.

By now settlers were flooding west along the Santa Fe Trail, and the Oregon and California Trails that branched off it near Gardner, Kansas. Gold had been discovered in California, and new military forts made travel less dangerous. Western Missouri was “the eye of the needle” for all this traffic, says Baumann, and local merchants like Sites responded to the changing needs of travelers over the decades.

“A

typical frontier has many more men than women,” Blakeslee says.“The Western frontier had a very unbalanced sex ratio.” He believes this was a factor in marriages between American men and Mexican women, unions that became commonplace. “Having in-laws in the country you are trading in,” Blakeslee adds,“opens doors for you.”

The history of the Santa Fe Trail often focuses on the commercial side, says Minette Church of the University of Colorado at Colorado Springs, but it’s also important to examine the relationships among the many people who lived along the way. “What we often frame as disinterested Anglo-American commerce along the trail was really embedded in family and community ties,” she says.

Together with archaeologists Richard Carrillo and Bonnie Clark, Church has been delving into the importance of women at two 19th-century settlements along the Mountain Branch of the trail in southeastern Colorado, near the boundary line between the United States and Spain and, later, Mexico. Carrillo and Clark led the investigation at Boggsville, which was settled in 1862, the heyday of trail trade, by Thomas Boggs, son of the governor of Missouri.

Boggs’ access to the land came not through his father, but through his Hispanic wife, Rumalda Jaramillo Luna Boggs, claimant to a two-million-acre Mexican land grant through her uncle.

Like their marriage, the Boggs’ house showed a blending of cultures that fit this border region. It was built of adobe blocks, but had a painted façade facing the trail that resembled a stone-built Missouri building.The family of John Powers, who arrived five years later, lived nearby in a house with a courtyard facing east, not toward the trail or the warm southern sun. This was puzzling until Clark suggested that the style reflected the Cheyenne heritage of Powers’ wife Amache (Cheyenne constructions typically opened toward the rising sun). Kit Carson and his Hispanic wife Josepha Jaramillo Carson later joined the settlement.

At the other settlement, Church and students at the field school she directs have found more evidence of cultures and

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A woman’s hair comb and eyeliner pencil were recovered from the Lopez family homestead.

gender roles in transition. In the 1870s, Domacio and Loretta Lopez settled in the canyon of the Purgatory River along the Mountain Branch of the trail. The family flourished, as did others that joined them, and by the late 19th century “they were well aware of the increasing importance of U.S. trade and settlement around them and to the north and east,” says Church. The train had just come through the area, and with it ever more Anglo, Victorian culture. “They saw which way the wind was blowing.”

The Lopezes held onto some traditions: excavations have yielded Spanish style hair combs and a women’s eyeliner pencil. But family memoirs show they educated their younger daughters in English, an unusual practice at the time. They also decorated their home with “Victorian knickknacks,” says Church, like a ceramic figurine in an 18th-century frock coat.

“Like many iconic western places, I think the Santa Fe Trail has at least two lives,” says Church.“There is the mythic trail, the route for aspiring young Horatio Alger types like Becknell to take a gamble, ‘Go West Young Man,’ and make a tidy profit.” And then there is “the nitty gritty reality of the trail” as shown in its artifacts and settlements, “which also attest to an admirable heritage, but one built more on negotiating a landscape of cultural diversity and the way people relied on the communities they created together.”

JULIAN SMITH is a travel and science writer living in Portland, Oregon. His article “How North American Agriculture Began” appeared in the Spring 2008 issue of American Archaeology.

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new acquisition

Preserving the Potomac’s Prehistory

Edward Johnson

The Conservancy acquires two important sites in Virginia.

Thunderbird Archaeology researchers investigate the Jeffrey Rockshelter. Their work has redefined the boundaries of the site.

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ocated on the Potomac River in Loudoun County in northern Virginia, the Jeffrey Rockshelter contains the remains of over 10,000 years of human activity. A few hundred yards from the rockshelter sits Jeffrey Village, an equally ancient site. Both of these sites are part of the Conservancy’s newest preserve in Virginia.

The Jeffrey Rockshelter was first investigated in the 1960s and ‘70s by the Archaeological Society of Virginia.

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These excavations produced a large amount of data, including hearths, postmolds, projectile points, bone, and fragments of steatite and ceramic vessels.

Radiocarbon testing of samples from the site has produced a variety of dates, some of which are problematic; however, additional analysis of the artifact assemblage indicates the site was used from the Early Archaic through the Late Woodland period (a.d. 900-1400).

Recent work at the site by archae-

ologists with Thunderbird Archaeology, a Virginia-based cultural resource management firm, helped redefine the boundaries of the site to include the area surrounding the rockshelter. This area, which has not been disturbed, has significant research potential. “The rockshelter and its open air component represent a much revisited way station for prehistoric people traveling along the Potomac,” said archaeologist David Carroll, who worked on the project.

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Beth Waters Johnson

new acquisition

Andy Stout

These three quartz biface fragments were recovered from activity areas near the Jeffrey Rockshelter. Quartz cobbles found in and around the river were used to make these types of tools.

“The variety of point and pottery types found at the site is unusual, if not unique for the Potomac Piedmont.”

The Jeffrey Village site was first identified in 1937 by Richard Slattery. Between 1964 and 1975, the Archaeological Society of Virginia conducted surface collections that recovered over 10,000 artifacts spanning 10,000 years. The main component of the site is a Mason Island-period village. Mason Island is a Late Woodland complex that was named after an island in the Potomac. Jeffrey Village has been farmed, but it hasn’t been excavated, and its research potential covers a variety of subjects, particularly the development of the Mason Island culture.

The two sites are located along the main transportation corridor of the region, and people used them throughout prehistory. Their inhabitants could exploit the resources of the Potomac, and they were also in a position to influence, and possibly control, access to the river. They could also quarry stone for tools from nearby lithic outcrops.

Evidence suggests that, during the Late Woodland and

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The Jeffrey Village is located near this floodplain on the Potomac River. The river is visible to the left.

into the early Contact period, the Jeffrey sites were probably part of a larger settlement extending to the Maryland side of the river.

Realizing the significance of the Jeffrey Rockshelter and Village, the Ziai Family Limited Partnership has agreed to donate the property containing both sites to the Conservancy. Thanks to the generosity of the Ziai Family Limited Partnership, a significant piece of Virginia’s history, and the Potomac region’s archaeological record, will be permanently preserved. —Andy Stout

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new acquisition

The Remnants of Utopia

Aurora Colony Museum

The Aurora Colony was a 19th-century utopian community in Oregon.The Conservancy has obtained a site containing the remains of an 1867 hotel built by members of the community.

At the behest of William Keil, the Oregon and California Railroad Company built a stop next to the Aurora Colony Hotel.

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he collaboration between a conservation-minded California investment firm, an Oregon archaeologist, and the Conservancy has resulted in the preservation of the Aurora Colony Hotel site. The town of Aurora, Oregon is one of the historical gems of the Pacific Northwest. Situated within a veritable agricultural Eden midway between Salem and Portland, Aurora boasts 20 sites listed on the National Register of Historic Places.

There were a number of 19th-

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century utopian communities, such as the Shaker and the Oneida, in the Eastern United States, but the Aurora Colony was the only utopian settlement on the West Coast. William Keil founded the Aurora Colony on the same principles—the members of Keil’s colony worked and lived together, and shared all property—that made his first community in Bethel, Missouri a success.

With the Bethel community flourishing, Keil decided to start another. In 1853, Keil sent members of his Bethel Colony

on the Oregon Trail with instructions to find a suitable home for a satellite community in the Oregon Territory. In 1856, Keil settled his colony in the Willamette Valley in northwest Oregon.

Unlike other Utopian leaders of the 19th century, Keil recognized the economic benefits of interacting with the outside world. For this reason he negotiated with the Oregon and California Railroad company to make Aurora a stopping point on the line.The colony’s members began construction of the

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Library of Congress

new acquisition

The Aurora Colony was known for its band, which often performed from the widows walk on the roof of the hotel.

hotel in 1864 and completed it three years later. The Aurora Colony Hotel was especially appealing to Portlandbound passengers. Lifting the spirits of weary travelers, the colony’s acclaimed band welcomed them with lively music played from the widows’ walk atop the hotel, and the colony’s women prepared delicious, authentic German fare for the hotel’s guests.

The Aurora Colony disbanded in 1881, and the hotel was purchased by a private owner, who made extensive improvements to it. After 1921 the building ceased to be a hotel, serving as a butcher shop, saloon, and pool hall.

The building was demolished in 1934.

In 1993, Heritage Research Associates (HRA), a cultural resource management firm based in Eugene, began test excavations at the site in advance of a proposed construction project. During the testing, HRA determined the original locations of the hotel, a bricklined well, the privy, and the concrete

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foundations of a septic tank. HRA recovered artifacts and exposed cultural features in all of these locations.

In 1995, HRA returned to the site to perform more extensive excavations.

The excavations primarily sampled the

portion of the hotel that dated to the post-Colony period (1881-1920s), finding much in the way of intact deposits.

“The Aurora Colony Hotel site retains significant archaeological potential,” according to Rick Minor, the senior archaeologist for HRA. “Much of this potential relates to the earlier, historically more important, Colony period.

Further investigations have great potential to yield significant new information about the original Aurora Colony Hotel and the unique position of the Aurora Colony in Oregon history.”

In 2005, the Conservancy received a call from Mike Gilbert and Nancy Conger, the president and vice president of EMIC, a small California limited partnership that invests in commercial properties. They proposed to purchase historic sites and donate them to the Conservancy when economic conditions were favorable. “The premise is a desire to give back to conservation organizations and to preserve land that may in the future be inappropriately developed,” Conger said. EMIC subsequently purchased the site, and donated it to the Conservancy in December of 2008. The Conservancy is grateful for this generous donation. —Julie Clark

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C O N S E R VA N C Y

Scott Van keuren

Field Notes

Student researcher Grace Cameron exposes a room floor during a University of Vermont field school at Fourmile Ruin.

The excavations were the first at the site in a century.

New Research at Fourmile Ruin SOUTHWEST—Recent excavations at Fourmile Ruin revealed evidence of migrants and long-distance exchange.

Located in eastern uplands of Arizona, the 14th-century Anasazi village was, in its heyday, the largest site in the area and a possible production center for the iconographic-style pottery that shares its name. Last summer, a field school directed by archaeologist Scott Van Keuren of the University of Vermont conducted the first professional test excavations at this Conservancy preserve in more than a century.

Van Keuren’s excavations—the first since Jesse Walter Fewkes’ work

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in 1896— have begun to clarify the construction sequence and layout of domestic and ritual structures. The extent of adobe brick construction is especially surprising. This technology, which wasn’t used in this area, indicates that a large group of migrants arrived in the early 14th century and occupied a pre-planned set of room blocks.

The excavations also recovered an unexpected amount of obsidian, a volcanic glass used in the manufacture of projectile points in the Southwest. The Fourmile obsidian was obtained from sources located some 120 miles to the northwest. This evidence reveals that the village was tied into a far-reaching exchange network, one that may have also circulated painted pottery, cotton

textiles, and other goods.

Excavations planned for 2009 will further investigate the nature of trash deposits in ritual structures and adjacent plaza areas. The research is supported in part by a grant from the National Science Foundation.

Tsama Pueblo Expanded SOUTHWEST—The Conservancy’s Tsama Pueblo site was recently expanded as the result of the generous donation of a 12-acre tract of land that includes well-preserved examples of pre-Columbian agricultural features.

Tsama, located near the Rio Chama in north-central New Mexico, is a large

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Middle Coalition and Rio Grande Classic Period pueblo that consists of three large architectural units containing more than 1,000 rooms. The pueblo was probably occupied at the time of Spanish Contact and its occupants are considered to be the ancestors of the modern residents of Ohkay Owingeh (formerly known as San Juan Pueblo) and Santa Clara pueblos.

During the Coalition period (a.d.1200-1325), the Puebloan peoples in the northern Rio Grande began building gravel mulch garden plots.

These plots, which were arranged in grids made of cobble, reduced water erosion while allowing alluvial soils to build up.They also provided for a more level surface for growing crops and, by retaining more moisture, increased yields.

Intensive agricultural strategies were employed in pre-Columbian times using mulches, soil, and water retention devices such as stone terraces and check dams. Fields were worked until their fertility declined, then they were

temporarily abandoned for more productive ones.

The lowlands along the Rio Chama, which are still farmed today, served as Tsama Pueblo’s primary agricultural areas. During the Rio Grande Classic Period (1325-1600) however, an extensive series of gravel mulch garden plots and water diversion and collection areas were also built along the edges of the river terraces overlooking flood plains.

These areas were likely developed in

the event that bad weather diminished production in the river valley.

The Tsama preserve includes examples of both gravel mulch garden plots and surface water control and containment features. Research at agricultural sites in the Northern Rio Grande region can contribute to an understanding of the Puebloan agricultural landscape as it was developed in the 13th century and through its evolution into the mid 16th century.

Fieldwork Opportunities Elden Pueblo Project, Arizona April 15–October 10, 2009. Elden is a 65 room pueblo with trash mounds, smaller pueblos, kiva, a large community room, and numerous pit houses.

Participants will collect and confirm data and stabilize the pueblo. Recent excavations have uncovered information about the construction sequence of the site, late Sinagua social organization, subsistence, and its role as a major trade center. Indications of long-term eruptions by Sunset Crater Volcano could contribute to new geological and archaeological interpretations for the region.

Contact Lisa Edmonson (928) 527-3452, eldenpueblo@npgcable.com Heckleman Archaeological Project, Ohio June 8–July 10, 2009, Ohio. The Cleveland Museum of Natural History’s Department of Archaeology will investigate Heckleman, a multicomponent, prehistoric site. The Heckleman site was first investigated in the late 1960s and 1970s and archaeologists found evidence of a large ditched enclosure and numerous Early and Middle Woodland (ca. 500 b.c. to a.d. 400) features.

The Middle Woodland artifact assemblage closely resembles Ohio Hopewell materials from southern Ohio and includes Flint Ridge bladelets and expanded stemmed points as well as finely cord-marked ceramics. Participants will investigate the possible village enclosure as well as systematically sample Woodland period features detected during a recent geophysical survey.

Contact Brian G. Redmond (216) 231-4600, x3301, bredmond@cmnh.org Historic Mount Vernon, Virginia January 1, 2009–January 1, 2010. Research has been conducted at Mount Vernon, George Washington’s home, since 1987. The project focuses on a number of themes, including African-American and plantation archaeology, landscape studies, material culture studies, museum education, and public outreach. An unpaid internship program offers high school, undergraduate, and graduate students an introduction to archaeological methods and techniques in the field and the laboratory. Volunteers are also welcome.

No previous archaeological experience is required. Contact Curt Breckenridge (703) 799-6303, cbreckenridge@mountvernon.org Community Archaeology Project, New York July 13–July 24, 2009. The Community Archaeology Program offers a professionally supervised opportunity for non-archaeologists to participate in research projects. Each summer, Binghamton University offers a session for people 13 years old and older and one for children 10 to 12 years old. During the 2009 summer sessions, Binghamton will continue its research within the Upper Susquehanna River Valley, focusing on a multi-component site dating from the late Archaic (4500-1500 b.c.) and Late Woodland periods (a.d. 9001650). Participants will assist in the collection of data on activities, subsistence, and settlement that will contribute to our understanding of life in the Upper Susquehanna Valley during the period when hunters and gatherers roamed the valley, and later as people transitioned to settled village life. Contact Nina Versaggi (607) 777-4786, nversagg@binghamton.edu To learn more about field schools and volunteer opportunities, visit the Web site www.archaeological.org and click on the “fieldwork” link.

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Reviews War Paths, Peace Paths: An Archaeology of Cooperation and Conflict in Native Eastern North America

By David H. Dye (AltaMira Press, 2009; 216 pgs., illus., $70 cloth, $28 paper; www. altamirapress.com)

Written in Bone: Buried Lives of Jamestown and Colonial Maryland

By Sally M. Walker (Carolrhoda Books, 2009; 144 pgs., illus., $23 cloth; www.lernerbooks.com)

Taking advantage of young people’s interest in all things spooky and mysterious, Walker gives a compelling account of the archaeological excavations of long-hidden graves that gradually revealed the lives of several Jamestown and Colonial Maryland colonists.

With numerous color photographs to illustrate her points, Walker shows how detailed clues can provide reliable information about the lives of the colonists. By understanding the “messages” found on the bones, the reader is introduced to the hardships of life during Colonial times. Tooth infections, badly mended broken bones, tuberculosis of the spine, and a hasty, suspicious burial beneath a house reveal how socio-economic forces, medical knowledge of the day, and civic and religious customs all contributed to the fates of these people.

Readers are also exposed to the practice of field archaeology, with its emphasis on finding clues and solving mysteries. Written in clear, easy to understand terms, this well-produced and visually appealing book is targeted for grades five to eight, but it will appeal to all ages. Schools and libraries will find it particularly useful.

This book complements the “Written in Bone” exhibit at the Smithsonian’s National Museum of Natural History, which runs through February of 2011.

—Cynthia Martin

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Archaeologist David Dye of the University of Memphis has produced the first comprehensive study of prehistoric war and peace in Eastern North America. It is long overdue and fills a huge gap in our understanding of ancient societies.

Violence, according to Dye, pervades all aspects of social life.

So does peace. Both can only be understood in the historical context of millennia.

Archaeologists have discovered evidence of burned villages, traumatic injuries, and fortifications, yet for some inexplicable reason the myth of “peaceful savages,” free of the ills of Western culture including violent conflict, persisted into recent times. Excavation of a scalped Archaic man became national news. Disbelief accompanied the discovery of hundreds of massacred ancient men, women, and children in a South Dakota ditch in the 1970s.

The corollary, of course, is that humans are by nature violent, and that warfare is the natural state. In War Paths, Peace Paths, Dye closely examines both cooperation and conflict, taking us to a deeper understanding of how ancient cultures dealt with war and peace. Dye finds three trends in Eastern North America over the last 13,000 years. The first trend is personal grudges that were typical of family-level hunter-gatherers. Second is kin-based feuding. A killing leads to vengeance, which is usually limited to one or two homicides by kin groups. The third trend is warfare, impersonal aggression between communities accompanied by alliances and diplomacy.

War Paths, Peace Paths skillfully traces all three trends in Native culture as violence and peace evolved over the millennia. Just as warfare became more organized and effective over time, so too did peace making, as illustrated by the sophisticated institutions of the Iroquois tribes.

spring • 2009

Reviews

HMS Fowey Lost and Found

By Russell K. Skowronek and George R. Fischer (University Press of Florida, 2009; 272 pgs., illus. $45 cloth; www.upf.com)

In 1978, an underwater treasure hunter happened onto a shipwreck in Biscayne National Monument (now a national park) near Miami, Florida. Mistakenly believing he had found a sunken Spanish treasure ship, Gerald Klein began collecting artifacts and soon went to court to claim ownership of the wreck. The United States intervened, arguing the shipwreck was public property protected by the Antiquities Act of 1906, the Archaeological Resources Protection Act of 1979, and other federal statutes. In 1983, ownership of the wreck was awarded to the people of the United States.

Sunken treasure may be the stuff of legends and movies, but shipwrecks are also invaluable archaeological treasures, and the two are seldom compatible. This intriguing archaeological history tells the story of the ship and its crew, its loss and rediscovery, the scholarly investigations that led to its identification, and the years of litigation and legislative initiatives that resulted in its preservation.

Authors Russell Skowronek and George Fischer were underwater archaeologists working for the National Park Service who played key roles in the shipwreck’s modern saga. In this lively volume they give a fisthand account that reads like an adventure novel, complete with intrigue and murder. The relatively new science of underwater archaeology, which combines sometimes dangerous dives with historical research, is thoroughly explained as part of the bigger story of the wreck.

It’s a great adventure, but more importantly, it tells the history of the efforts to curtail irresponsible treasure hunting and protect historical shipwrecks in the United States and around the world.

In the last 30 years, Congress and the public have recognized the importance of preserving and studying sunken vessels for the vast information they contain. In this story science and the public interest triumph over the age-old quest for easy riches. —Mark Michel

american archaeology

Archaeological Landscapes on the High Plains Edited by Laura L. Scheiber and Bonnie J. Clark (University Press of Colorado, 2008; 288 pgs., illus., $55 cloth; www.upcolorado.com) The High Plains of this study is the short grass prairie between the Rocky Mountains and the tall grass prairies to the east. Water and trees are scarce, and the elevation rises gently from about 2,500 to 6,000 feet. Though it was occupied by the earliest Americans, this rather harsh environment never supported high concentrations of people or many permanent settlements. It was instead dominated by bison and prairie dogs. in this book, 11 scholars use history, anthropology, archaeology, and geography, to examine the changing ways people interacted with this place over a period of 13,000 years. Contemporary, historical, and prehistorical studies make this work particularly interesting.

Compared to other areas of North America, the High Plains has received little attention from archaeologists. Archaeological Landscapes on the High Plains is a noteworthy contribution that focuses on an important place from many perspectives.

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T H E

A rch A e o l o g i cal

C o nser v anc y

Master Potters of the Southern Deserts

Join us for a magical journey through time studying some of the world’s most beautiful pottery crafted by people from the Hohokam, Mimbres, and Casas Grandes regions, and replicated by modern masters today. The trip features Hohokam ruins and pottery from the Phoenix and Tucson areas, Spanish missions and presidios, and a behind the scenes look at the Arizona State Museum. You’ll also see New Mexico’s Gila Cliff Dwellings, extensive collections of Mimbres pottery, northern Mexico’s Casas Grandes, and the potters of Mata Ortiz. Archaeological experts will join us throughout the trip.

jim walker

When: October 2 –12, 2009 Where: Arizona, New Mexico, Mexico How Much: $2,495 (single supplement $350)

This stunning example of Casas Grandes-style pottery came from the village of Mata Ortiz in northern Mexico.

Oaxaca

Visitors explore the extensive ruins at Monte Albán, a city built by the Zapotec and Mixtec.

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Join us in Oaxaca, Mexico during one of the most unusual festivals anywhere—the Day of the Dead.

On this day, people prepare home altars and cemeteries to welcome the dead, who are believed to return to enjoy the food and drink they indulged in while alive. The Day of the Dead is a time of celebrations.

You’ll have the opportunities to explore Oaxaca’s museums and markets. Our tour also explores the Mixtecan and Zapotecan archaeological sites in the region, including Mitla, Monte Albán, San José Mogote, and Dainzú. You’ll also visit several crafts villages featuring weaving, pottery, carved animals, and other local art.

spring • 2009

jim walker

When: October 24 –November 3, 2009 Where: Mexico How Much: $2,495 (single supplement $350)

Cahokia and the Middle Mississippian Culture

mark michel

When: September 17-20, 2009 Where: Missouri and Illinois

Cahokia was occupied by the Mississippians from approximately a.d. 700 to 1400. Thousands of people lived there.

Join us on our exploration of the phenomenal earthworks of Cahokia and the central Mississippi and Illinois River Valleys.

Inhabited around a.d. 700 to 1400, Cahokia was the premier Mississippian town and the center of the most sophisticated prehistoric Indian civilization north of Mexico. This ancient city, located across the Mississippi River from what is now St. Louis, covered nearly six square miles and was home to thousands of people. Monks Mound, the great platform mound in Cahokia’s central ceremonial area, is the largest prehistoric earthen construction in the New World.

In addition to Cahokia, you’ll visit Mastodon State Historic Site, which has provided evidence of humans hunting Ice Age elephants, and Dickson Mounds, a Mississippian mound and village center that flourished 800 years ago and today boasts a state-of-the-art interactive museum. Midwest archaeological experts will join you on this fascinating trip.

Chaco Canyon in Depth

lorna wolf

When: September, 2009 Where: New Mexico, Colorado

Explore the vast cultural system of Chaco Canyon and the extensive network of outlying communities that developed in northwestern New Mexico and southwestern Colorado from A.D. 800 to 1140.

We’ll visit Pueblo Bonito and other spectacular great houses in Chaco Canyon as well as the great kiva at Casa Rinconada.

We’ll hike to some of the most spectacular and remote sites in the canyon. We’ll also have the unique opportunity to visit many of the most important outlying communities that are integral parts of the entire Chacoan complex still being uncovered by researchers.

Scholars are still struggling to understand how this vast system developed and operated, and why it suddenly

american archaeology

Pueblo Bonito is one of the amazing sites at Chaco Canyon.

collapsed around 1140. To complete the experience, we’ll tour the modern day Pueblo of Acoma and spend two memorable nights camping in Chaco Canyon. Some of the leading Chaco experts will join us.

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Patrons of Preservation The Archaeological Conservancy would like to thank the following individuals, foundations, and corporations for their generous support during the period of November 2008 through January 2009. Their generosity, along with the generosity of the Conservancy’s other members, makes our work possible.

Life Member Gifts of $1,000 or more Elizabeth W. Ayer, New Mexico Mr. and Mrs. Duncan Boeckman, Texas Arthur and Carolyne Cushman, Tennessee Claire C. Davis, Virginia Elizabeth Dice, Mississippi Donald and Maureen Dillon, New Jersey Mark B. Goering, Oklahoma Robert S. Hagge Jr., Wisconsin Roger and Frances Kennedy, District of Columbia Susan Mayer Reaves, Florida Lois J. Paradise, Florida Lanny M. Proffer, Colorado Carol A. Robertson, California Mary G. Sprague, District of Columbia Dee Ann Story, Texas Catherine Symchych, Wyoming Tori and Tom Trauscht, Illinois James B. Walker and Michael R. Palmer, New Mexico Barbara Ann Watkins, Nevada John A. Zercher, Pennsylvania Anasazi Circle Gifts of $2,000 or more Anonymous Pete and Christine Adolph, New Mexico Helen Ann Bauer, Illinois James and Audrey Benedict, Colorado Nina Bonnie, Kentucky Donna B. Cosulich, Arizona Barbara Creager, Texas Jerry and Janet EtsHokin, Arizona Walter and Yvonne Grossenbacher, Arizona Jim Heckenbach and Becky Baybrook, California

Living Making a Spirit Legacy Gift Circle Several years ago the ConserThe Archaeological Conservancy

vancy established a leadership society, the Living Spirit Circle, to recognize the growing number of members who were interested in making a legacy gift to support archaeological preservation. Contributors to the group have included the Conservancy in their will or estate plans, or have made a lifeincome gift such as a charitable annuity.

This elite group has grown to over 100 members and is an essential component of the Conservancy’s success in

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David B. Jones, Minnesota Steven and Judy Kazan, California Nelson Kempsky, California Sharon Leftwich and Greg Lewandowski, New Mexico Roland and Martha Mace, New Mexico Leslie Masson, New York Mark D. Menefee and Stephanie K. Wade, Maryland Joseph C. Morris, Virginia Jonathan F. Orser, Ohio Gavine Pitner, North Carolina Carla Thompson, New Mexico Karl and Nancy Watler, Colorado Richard and Jean Weick, Oregon Burton D. Williams, Montana Carol Wilson-Tocher, Oregon Foundation/Corporate Gifts Albuquerque Community Foundation, New Mexico Edwin Miller Trust, Pennsylvania Haskell Fund, Ohio Hill Foundation, Colorado Jonsson Foundation, Texas Malcolm Hewitt Wiener Foundation, Connecticut National Trust for Historic Preservation, Washington, D.C. Taishoff Family Foundation, Florida Bequests Dee Aiani, Illinois David Arthur, Illinois Carl Gregory, California Daniel Hildebrand, Wisconsin Kathleen D. Wells, New Mexico

identifying and preserving America’s most endangered archaeological resources. They have made an important investment in protecting America’s past.

Planned giving may provide significant tax benefits to you and your heirs, and it allows you to specify how your assets will be distributed after your lifetime. This can be done by simply amending your existing will to include the Conservancy as a beneficiary. It can stand as a lasting memorial to you or a loved one.

The preservation of America’s archaeological resources depends on the continued support and generosity of our members. By joining the Living Spirit Circle today, you can ensure the preservation of our nation’s cultural heritage. For more information, contact Mark Michel at (505) 266-1540.

spring • 2009

POSTAGE CHART U.S. Shipping/Handling

No. of Magazines Ordered

Shipping

1 ......................................... $1.85 2 ......................................... $2.70 3-10 .................................... $4.95 11-50 ............................... $10.35