American Archaeology Magazine | Summer 2001 | Vol. 5 No. 2

E X C AVAT I N G T H E H U N L E Y • B AT T L E F I E L D A R C H A E O L O G Y E M E R G E S

american archaeology

SUMMER 2001

a quarterly publication of The Archaeological Conservancy

Vol. 5 No. 2

Driving into Prehistory:

$3.95

Our Tour of Amazing Places

american archaeology a quarterly publication of The Archaeological Conservancy

Vol. 5 No. 2

summer 2001

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COVER FEATURE

D R I V I N G I N T O P R E H I S T O RY

BY TAMAR STIEBER

We take you on a tour of unforgettable Southwestern archaeological sites.

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INSIDE THE H. L. HUNLEY

BY ANDREA COOPER

The famous Civil War submarine is undergoing a historic excavation.

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A R C H A E O L O G Y G O E S T O WA R

BY ANITA STRATOS

A small group of battlefield archaeologists is investigating some of America’s most important wars.

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A C I T Y SEARCHES FOR ITS ROOTS

BY MICHAEL BAWAYA

An excavation helps Tucson define its past.

38 2 Lay of the Land 3 Letters 5 Events

The site links the prehistoric people of Chaco Canyon with modern Tewa-speaking pueblos.

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7 In the News Paleo-Indian Site Found in Virginia • Oldest Maya Sweat House Discovered in Belize • Conference Studies Mississippian Symbolism

44 Field Notes 46 Expeditions

new acquisition: H O W I R I P U E B L O S AV E D

new acquisition: A R I Z O N A C O M PA N Y D O N ATES SITE This prehistoric agricultural complex demonstrates the Hohokam’s ingenuity.

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new acquisition: C O N S E RVA N C Y O B TAINS EASEMENT P R O T E C T I N G P E T R O G LY P H S The site is famous for its variety of images.

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48 Reviews

point acquisition: SAV I N G A LATE MISSISSIPPIAN TOWN The Parchman Place site may help researchers answer questions about the Mississippians.

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Spider Rock towers 800 feet above the canyon floor.

point acquisition: A RARE AGRICULTURAL SITE

photograph by William Stone

Prehistoric garden beds are saved from destruction.

COVER: Spider Rock at sunset in Canyon de Chelly National Monument.

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Lay of the Land Telling the Whole Stor y about the importance of these small items that are often moved without malice. Every artifact has a story to tell.

DARREN POORE

portant part of the whole story. When hobbyists and collectors, or just uninformed tourists, collect or move these items, the story is distorted.

The same is true of prehistoric Indian ruins. Small pottery sherds often cover the sites, and visitors love to collect them (often leaving them behind in a neat pile). But even the plainest sherd contains unique information, and by mapping them in situ archaeologists are able to tell the age and function of different parts of the site. Moving or collecting the sherds skews the sample and contaminates the scientists’ research.

We need to educate everybody

MARK MICHEL, President CCAC’s programs and admission practices are open to applicants of any race, color, nationality, or ethnic origin.

When we consider the looting of archaeological sites, we usually think of grave robbers seeking elaborate burial goods such as Mimbres pots or Hopewell effigy pipes—items that bring thousands of dollars on the black market. We seldom think of less dramatic artifacts such as Civil War bullets or metal arrow points from the Indian wars. But as our article “Archaeology Goes to War” amply illustrates, these items are of immense scientific importance. Archaeologists are now plotting the location of every bullet, every arrowhead, every cartridge, in order to recreate the battle. Even the smallest, seemingly insignificant item is an im-

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Letters Credit Where Credit Is Due I read with interest John Graves’s letter in the Spring issue, which questioned why the Texas Historical Commission did not credit Glen Evans for first discovering the Fort St. Louis site in “La Salle, La Belle, and the Lone Star State” (Fall 2000 issue).

In fact, Herbert Bolton is credited with first locating the site in the 1920s; however, he had no solid archaeological proof. Evans undertook excavations at the site in 1950 and Kathleen Gilmore worked there in the early 1970s, but the quantity of French artifacts recovered from the site was insufficient to prove its identity. The materials could have been obtained through trade between the Spanish and the French. The Texas Historical Commission’s 1996 recovery of the eight iron cannons, which were buried by the Spanish when they found the French fort in 1689, conclusively proved the site to be Fort St. Louis, corroborating what Bolton, Evans, and Gilmore had long argued.

James Bruseth, Director, Archaeology Division, Texas Historical Commission, Austin, Texas The Importance of Curation I am a longtime supporter of The Archaeological Conservancy and a regular reader of American Archaeology, and I want to thank you for the fine magazine.

As immediate past-president of the San Diego Archaeological Center, I am keenly aware of the need to educate the general public and agencies about the need to properly curate archaeological collections. american archaeology

I would like to suggest that, wherever possible and appropriate, your articles mention where site collections are curated in order to raise awareness that archaeology is not just about digging. I would also encourage you to consider including articles on the curation process and issues. The site protection process which the Conservancy so successfully accomplishes in effect provides in situ curation of unexcavated material for the benefit of future generations, and I wholeheartedly support that work!

James Royle, Jr. San Diego, California

Deciphering Maya Hieroglyphs I was deeply intrigued by the Cancuen article in your Winter 20002001 issue. It is amazing how many new sites are being found in Central America. It was remarkable how Arthur Demarest was prompted to explore the site due to the translation of hieroglyphs at the Dos Pelas site.

I believe that deciphering more and more of the Maya hieroglyphs will reveal more secrets about the Maya’s disappearance. Have any of the archaeologists developed any theories on whether Cancuen was primarily a trade center or did it have strong ties with any other dynasties?

Craig Southern Fayetteville, Arkansas

Editor’s Corner

The City of Tucson, Arizona is involved in a very ambitious undertaking.

Our feature “A City Searches For Its Roots,” tells of Tucson’s Rio Nuevo Project, a downtown redevelopment of such broad scope that it’s expected to take 10 years and $320 million to complete.

One of the most striking aspects of the Rio Nuevo Project is its intention to connect the city’s future to its past. Archaeology is an important tool in establishing this connection. The Rio Nuevo Archaeological Project is revealing the city’s rich historic and prehistoric past, which stretches back several thousand years. It’s estimated that approximately $2 million of the project’s budget will be spent on archaeology.

It’s encouraging to see how successful the city has been in engaging the public in this archaeological project. Several thousand people have visited site and expressed their approval of the work.

The residents of Tucson are learning about their predecessors— the Early Agricultural people, the Hohokam, the Pima, the Spanish— and in the process they’re learning about themselves.

Michael Bawaya, Editor

Sending Letters to American Archaeology American Archaeology welcomes your letters. Write to us at 5301 Central Avenue NE, Suite 402, Albuquerque, NM 87108-1517, or send us e-mail at archcons@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.

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WELCOME TO THE ARCHAEOLOGICAL CONSERVANC Y!

he Archaeological Conservancy is the only national non-profit 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 210 sites across the nation, ranging in age from the earliest habitation sites in North America to a 19thcentury 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 402, Albuquerque, NM 87108-1517; by phone: (505) 266-1540; by e-mail: archcons@nm.net; or visit our Web site: www.americanarchaeology.org

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5301 Central Avenue NE, Suite 402 Albuquerque, NM 87108-1517 • (505) 266-1540 www.americanarchaeology.org

Board of Directors Earl Gadbery, Pennsylvania, CHAIRMAN Olds Anderson, Michigan • Cecil F. Antone, Arizona • Janet Creighton, Washington Christopher B. Donnan, California • Janet EtsHokin, Illinois • Jerry EtsHokin, Illinois W. James Judge, Colorado • Jay T. Last, California James B. Richardson, Pennsylvania • Peter O. A. Solbert, New York Rosamond Stanton, New Mexico • Vincas Steponaitis, North Carolina Dee Ann Story, Texas • Stewart L. Udall, New Mexico Conser vancy Staff Mark Michel, President • Tione Joseph, Office Manager Erika Olsson, Membership Director • Shelley Smith, Membership Assistant Martha Mulvany, Special Projects Director • Yvonne Woolfolk, Administrative Assistant Heather Wooddell, Administrative Assistant Regional Offices and Directors Jim Walker, Southwest Region (505) 266-1540 5301 Central Avenue NE, Suite 402 • Albuquerque, New Mexico 87108-1517 Paul Gardner, Midwest Region (614) 267-1100 295 Acton Road • Columbus, Ohio 43214-3305 Alan Gruber, Southeast Region (770) 975-4344 5997 Cedar Crest Road • Acworth, Georgia 30101 Rob Crisell, Eastern Region (703) 979-4410 1307 S. Glebe Road • Arlington, Virginia 22204

american archaeology

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PUBLISHER: Mark Michel EDITOR: Michael Bawaya (505) 266-9668, archcons@nm.net SENIOR EDITOR: Rob Crisell ASSISTANT EDITOR: Tamara Stewart CREATIVE & PRODUCTION DIRECTOR: Kathleen Sparkes, White Hart Design Editorial Advisor y Board James Bruseth, Texas Historical Commission • Allen Dart, Old Pueblo Archaeology Center Hester Davis, Arkansas Archeological Survey • David Dye, University of Memphis John Foster, California State Parks • Lynne Goldstein, Michigan State University Megg Heath, Bureau of Land Management • Susan Hector, San Diego County Parks Gwynn Henderson, Kentucky Archaeological Registry • John Henderson, Cornell University John Kelly, Washington University • Robert Kuhn, New York Historic Preservation William Lipe, Washington State University • Mark Lynott, National Park Service Bonnie McEwan, San Luis Historic Site • Giovanna Peebles, Vermont State Archaeologist Peter Pilles, U.S. Forest Service • John Roney, Bureau of Land Management Kenneth Sassaman, University of Florida • Dennis Stanford, Smithsonian Institution Kathryn Toepel, Heritage Research Associates • Richard Woodbury, University of Massachusetts National Advertising Office Richard Bublitz, Advertising Representative; 22247 Burbank Boulevard, Woodland Hills, California 91367; (800) 485-5029; fax (818) 716-1030 dick-rcb@juno.om American Archaeology (ISSN 1093-8400) is published quarterly by The Archaeological Conservancy, 5301 Central Avenue NE, Suite 402, Albuquerque, NM 87108-1517. Title registered U.S. Pat. and TM Office, © 2001 by TAC. Printed in the United States. Periodicals postage paid Albuquerque, NM, and additional mailing offices. Single copies are $3.95. A oneyear 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 402, Albuquerque, NM 87108-1517, or call (505) 2661540. 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 402, 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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Museum exhibits Meetings

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Tours

Education

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Conferences

■ NEW EXHIBITS Los Angeles County Museum of Art

Los Angeles, Calif.—“The Road to Aztlán: Art from a Mythic Homeland” explores the nature of ancient interactions between the American Southwest and portions of Mexico as revealed in shared features of art, architecture, agriculture, and religious beliefs and ceremonies dating back to as early as 1200 B.C. (213) 857-6000 (Through August 26)

EITELJORG MUSEUM

Red Earth Museum

Oklahoma City, Okla.—The new exhibit “Earth & Water: Lifeways of the California Indians” explores the artistic and cultural similarities and differences between north, central, and southern California tribes from prehistoric to modern times. A large collection of baskets, cradleboards, shell ornaments, clothing, and other historic and prehistoric artifacts from the various tribes will be on display. (405) 427-5228 (Through September 3) Dickson Mounds Museum

Lewistown, Ill.—A major new exhibit from the collections of the Illinois State Museum, “Pueblo Pottery of the American Southwest” features a large, rarely seen collection of early historic pottery from the pueblos of Arizona and New Mexico. (309) 547-3721 (Through October 21) Lake Champlain Maritime Museum

Vergennes, Vt.—“The Burlington Schooner Project” will build a reproduction 1862-class sailing canal boat at Burlington Harbor, modeled after the General Butler and the O. J. Walker, two historic shipwrecks located within a mile of the proposed construction site that have been the subject of intense american archaeology

Events

Festivals

historical and archaeological study. The new schooner, Louis McClure, named after a major contributor, will become a harbor-side educational exhibit illustrating how the lake was used for commerce during the 19th century and teaching visitors about the history and archaeology of the Champlain Valley. (802) 475-2022 (Open to the public June 21)

■ CONFERENCES & FESTIVALS Native Voices 2001: American Indian Lecture Series

Selected Mondays at 6 P.M. through October 29, Hotel Santa Fe, Santa Fe, N.M. Southwest Seminars presents this free public series of lectures by native peoples and scholars. The series is underwritten by Hotel Santa Fe, a Picuris Pueblo enterprise, and the New Mexico Endowment for the Humanities. For a list of speakers and dates see www.SouthwestSeminars.org or call (505) 466-2775.

Fort Ancient State Memorial Celebration

June 9–10, Oregonia, Ohio. Visit this 2,000-year-old Hopewell site for a celebration of Native American heritage with storytelling, traditional dances, and food, games, vendors, demonstrations, and hands-on activities for the entire family. (513) 932-4421 San Diego Museum of Man’s 18th Annual Indian Fair

June 9–10, San Diego, Calif. Breathtaking Native American dancers, skilled artisans, mouth-watering traditional fare, and quality

Eiteljorg Museum of American Indians and Western Art Indianapolis, Ind.—The Canadian Museum of Civilization’s traveling exhibition “Iqqaipaa: Celebrating Inuit Art, 1948–1970” presents a fascinating glimpse of arts created by the indigenous people of the Canadian Arctic, now known as Nunavut. The delicately carved bone, ivory, and stone works—many of which have never been shown in the United States—are the works of a people who were forced to abandon their nomadic lifestyle in the 1940s. (317) 264-1724 (June 9–September 30)

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CANADIAN MUSEUM OF CIVILIZATION

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arts and crafts draw thousands of visitors to this lively annual Indian Fair. (619) 239-2001

Hull, Quebec, Canada—More than 300 Viking and indigenous artifacts, photos, scale models, artists’ impressions, and maps combine in “Full Circle: First Contact—Vikings and Skraelings in Newfoundland and Labrador” to tell the fascinating story of the first encounter between the Vikings and the native people they called the Skraelings at the site of L’Anse aux Meadows in northern Newfoundland.

Viking objects found in indigenous archaeological sites and early indigenous carvings representing Europeans provide insights into the relationships between people whose ways of life developed on opposite sides of the globe. This traveling exhibition was produced by the Newfoundland Museum.

(800) 555-5621 (Through September 3)

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Center for American Archeology’s 2001 Archeology Day

June 30, Kampsville Archeological Center, Ill. Families experience a full day of archaeological excavations, site tours, demonstrations, displays, and lectures showcasing regional prehistory, prehistoric technologies, and the center’s research and educational programs. Call (618) 653-4316 or visit the center’s Web site at www.caa-archeology.org Museum of Northern Arizona’s 2001 Heritage Programs

Flagstaff, Ariz. The Hopi Marketplace: June 30–July 1; Navajo Marketplace: August 4–5; Zuni Marketplace: September 1–2; Festival of Pai Arts: September 22–23.

Marketplace and Festival weekends give visitors a chance to enjoy traditional Native American dance, music, and food, buy artwork directly from artists, and view art demonstrations. (520) 774-5213

THE COLONIAL WILLIAMSBURG FOUNDATION

Canadian Museum of Civilization

Colonial Williamsburg Family Programs Mid-June through August, Williamsburg, Va. In the restored capital of colonial Virginia, America’s largest outdoor living history museum, families experience a key period in Williamsburg’s history by participating in 18th-century activities and reenactments.

Visit www.colonialwilliamsburg.org or call (757) 220-7286 for activities and dates.

Coronado Summer Festival

2001 Pecos Conference

July 28–29, Coronado State Monument, Bernalillo, N.M. Native Americans will demonstrate pottery making and firing, weaving, jewelry making, traditional dancing, and music throughout the weekend, which will include art and craft sales. (505) 867-5351

August 9–12, Flagstaff, Ariz. A reception at the Museum of Northern Arizona kicks off the conference on Southwest archaeology, with tours of local sites held on the 12th.

For more information contact David Wilcox at dwilcox@mna.mus.az.us or visit the Web site www.swanet.org@pecosconference.html

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Paleo-Indian Site Found in Virginia

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NEWS

Charcoal from a hearth suggests a pre-Clovis occupation.

VIRGINIA DEPT. OF TRANSPORTATION

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ecent excavations at the Brook Run site in Culpeper County, Virginia, have uncovered what may be one of the earliest dated Paleo-Indian sites in the Mid-Atlantic region.

Lithic artifacts and charcoal found in a hearth have been dated to approximately 9500 B.C. Pieces of charcoal found in another hearth are believed to have been burned between 13,000 and 15,000 years ago, suggesting a pre-Clovis occupation.

“There are very few Clovis sites with intact deposits in this region of the country. They’re usually plowed or eroded,” says Eric Voigt, senior archaeologist with the Louis Berger Group, Inc., the company excavating the site. “Brook Run is pretty unique.”

Since the site has yielded only one pre-Clovis date, Voigt downplays that aspect of the excavation.

The Brook Run site was discovered in 1998 when the Virginia Department of Transportation (VDOT) conducted an archaeological identification survey in preparation for the expansion of a state highway.

Early work at the site uncovered 12,588 prehistoric artifacts, including 73 prismatic blades, which are often indicative of Paleo-Indian occupation. Most of the lithic materials were jasper.

“The whole time, we’re trying to figure out where the jasper comes from,” says Voigt, “because there’s no

american archaeology

These jasper tools were found at the site. The tools will be analyzed under a microscope to determine wear patterns, which indicate what they were used for.

jasper in the area. We were finding nodules the size of bowling balls, and we couldn’t figure out why people would bring it to the site.”

On the last day of the excavation, the archaeologists found a seam of jasper around 100 feet long and 11 feet deep. At the very bottom of the seam were bifacial digging tools, indicating the people at Brook Run were mining jasper.

Analysis of the artifacts found at Brook Run is now underway. Researchers will test carbonized plant remains and pollen to learn more about the environmental conditions

of the time. A Neutron Activation Analysis will identify the chemical signature of the jasper found at the site, and researchers hope to compare it with other jasper artifacts to see if the stone that was mined at Brook Run was used or traded throughout Virginia.

Today VDOT is redesigning the highway to preserve the unexcavated portions of the site within the right of way. The site will be backfilled, landscaped, and protected by the state.

—Martha Mulvany

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Archaeologists Discover Ancient Cemetery Analysis of more than 300 remains reveals details of prehistoric life and death in the Bay Area.

RICHARD THOMPSON

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major excavation at a cemetery site in Fremont, California, has revealed the presence of 303 human remains dating between about A.D. 500 and 800. Archaeor Archaeological Consultants has finished its excavation of the site and plans to complete analysis of the remains

by December 2002.

Two prehistoric peoples, the Meganos and the Ohlone, are buried at the site. They are distinguished by their particular burial postures: The Meganos were stretched out for burial, while the Ohlones were interred in a curved position. Comparison of other distinguishing traits has shown the Meganos tended to be taller and more robust than the Ohlone. Further analysis may indicate other differences.

This bifacial obsidian blade was found at the site. The obsidian is believed to have come from a quarry 100 miles to the north, suggesting a trade network with Indians from that area.

So far, 109 burials have been analyzed at the Fremont cemetery, the largest percentage of which are women over the age of 45.

Christine Marshall, an osteologist with Archaeor, is studying the health of the population. Several of the burials show evidence of death by violence.

Researchers believe that the Meganos people came from the lower Sacramento Valley into the San Francisco Bay area between A.D. 500 and

700. They are believed to have coexisted, though sometimes not so peacefully, with the Ohlone Indians who lived in the area.

Based on the recommendations of Native American groups, Archaeor carefully exposed, studied, and removed each burial to its laboratory for later analysis. The remains will eventually be reburied at the Ohlones Indian Cemetery in Fremont. —Tamara Stewart

Oldest Maya Sweat House Discovered in Belize The ancient structure’s location suggests its importance.

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rchaeologists from Boston University uncovered a 2,900-year-old Maya sweat house, the oldest to be discovered, at the Cuello site in northern Belize in the spring of 2000.

Norman Hammond, a Boston University archaeologist, led investigations at the site from 1975 to 2000 that showed Cuello to be the oldest Maya settlement in the lowland region, its occupation beginning in 1200 B.C. and spanning the next 16 centuries. The crew uncovered remains of elite residences or public buildings surrounding an enclosed courtyard on three sides. What once stood on the eastern side remained a mystery.

“This was an important gap in our knowledge of this earliest Maya community core,” says Hammond. “The east was the most important orientation in later Classic Maya culture, because it was where the sun rose. So we decided to look for the buried east side, and see what was there.”

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When the archaeologists uncovered the sweat house during the recent excavation, they weren’t certain what it was. Someone remarked that excavating the structure, which measured about 13 feet by 10 feet, was like being in a sauna, and they suddenly realized they had discovered a pib na—a sweat house—used for actual and ritual cleansing.

Dating to around 900 B.C., the Cuello sweat house had a domed roof and an outside firebox chamber. Hot embers and stones were raked inside the house through a channel that went under an arched opening in the plastered stone wall. Up to six bathers could have sat on benches with their legs stretched above the channel.

According to Hammond, the sweat house, built some 500 years before the next oldest example that has been found, bore a clear resemblance to the elaborate royal bathhouses found at Maya cites such as Tikal and Piedras Negras in Guatemala. —Tamara Stewart summer

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Scientists Say Radiocarbon Dates for Some Paleo Sites Are Wrong

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Due to cataclysmic events, dates may be off by thousands of years.

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fter more than 10 years of research, two scientists have found what they believe to be hard evidence that a supernova or a giant solar flare blasted the Great Lakes region about 12,500 years ago, devastating all life forms in the vicinity and effectively resetting the radioactive clock for carbon-bearing Pleistocene (Ice Age) remains.

Despite radiocarbon dating of some South American Paleo-Indian sites to around 32,000 years ago, archaeologists have traditionally assumed people first arrived in the New World about 13,000 years ago, since radiocarbon dates of North American Paleo-Indian sites are generally within this time period.

Some researchers believe that dating of Pleistocene sites by methods such as thermoluminescence, geoarchaeology, and sedimentation often indicate that many radiocarbon dates for northeastern sites are too young. This inconsistency prompted William Topping, an archaeologist and geological consultant in Michigan, to seek an explanation. Four years ago, Topping contacted Richard Firestone, a nuclear chemist with Lawrence Berkeley National Laboratory.

According to Firestone and Topping, Paleo-Indian artifacts from the Great Lakes region and surrounding areas show depleted levels of the uranium isotope 235U and elevated levels of the plutonium isotope 239Pu, which they say could only result from an enormous neutron bombardment during the Ice

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Ages. They say evidence gathered from a broad range of sources, including ice core and sea sediment data, irradiated Pleistocene cherts scarred by high-speed neutron particles, and astronomical data support their conclusions.

The radiocarbon record from tree rings, corals, and marine sediments indicate that three cataclysmic events occurred about 41,000, 33,000, and 12,500 years ago, Firestone and Topping state in the March issue of Mammoth Trumpet, published by the Center for the Study of the First Americans. Neutrons from these events would have transmuted residual nitrogen in organic remains to radiocarbon, resulting in artificially high radiocarbon levels and accounting for the anomalous dates.

The closer the archaeological sites to the Great Lakes, the scientists contend, the greater this effect and thus the greater the dating error, in some cases by tens of thousands of years.

The researchers state that, depending on location and overburden, dates for many North American Paleo-Indian sites should be changed by as much as 40,000 years.

“The repercussions of these cosmic events go beyond changing the age of artifacts to forcing a reexamination of fundamental archaeological theories, and have widespread ramifications toward our understanding of the geology and climatology of the Ice Ages,” says Firestone.

“If Firestone and Topping’s theory is correct, all radiocarbon chronologies would be in a state of

utter confusion,” says C. Vance Haynes, Regents Professor Emeritus in geoarchaeology at the University of Arizona. He adds that many, if not most, radiocarbon dates of Paleo-Indian artifacts are corroborated by stratigraphic testing and are “remarkably consistent with their radiocarbon ages elsewhere in the continent.”

Dennis Stanford, chairman of the anthropology department at the Smithsonian’s National Museum of Natural History, agrees with Haynes, saying that he does not see any major problems with radiocarbon dating when the limitations are understood and poor samples are removed.

Haynes says it’s possible that some unknown event may have occurred about 13,000 years ago that caused the extinction of Pleistocene fauna. Both he and Stanford say that they look forward to learning how nuclear physicists react to the theory.

With the support of the National Science Foundation Physics Division and the U.S. Department of Energy, among others, Firestone and Topping are currently conducting new measurements of uranium ratios and analyzing cherts and sediments, hoping to find evidence for other isotope anomalies.

“Once the cosmic ray events are fully verified, we will look for samples from a broader variety of materials and geographical locations to characterize the extent and nature of the events,” says Firestone.

—Tamara Stewart 9

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Conference Studies Mississippian Symbolism

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outhwest Texas University recently sponsored the Mississippian Iconographic Conference, which brought together scholars in anthropology, art history, folklore, and ethnography for a weekend focused on deciphering the symbolic language of the prehistoric Mississippian culture. Kent Reilly, a professor of anthropology at Southwest Texas University, chaired the conference, which he believes is the only one of its kind in the country.

The Mississippian culture existed from about A.D. 900 to 1600 in the Mississippi Valley and the other great river valleys between Illinois and east Texas. The major Mississippian sites of Cahokia in Illinois, Etowah in Georgia, Moundville in Alabama, and Spiro in Oklahoma are characterized by massive temple mounds and spectacular artifacts with common

This Mississippian pipe, which may represent a cosmic hero, was found at the Shiloh site in Tennessee. It is an exquisite example of fired clay sculpture.

forms and symbols such as human dancers dressed as falcons.

The scholars analyzed the costumes and symbols represented in

copper, shell, clay, and wood artifacts to establish patterns and styles.

Ethnographic sources were then checked for possible interpretations.

Most scholars agree that Cahokia was the place of origin for much of the Mississippian symbolism. Because linguistic evidence indicates that some variant of Southern Souian was spoken at Cahokia, the researchers can use the large body of Southern Siouan ethnographic information in their interpretations.

“We can now assign meaning to a number of symbols, and recognize that some have astronomy and cosmological identifications, and some relate to themes of warfare and the journey to the realm of the dead,” said Reilly. “We also believe that many of the symbols were used by Mississippian elites as public and visual validations of their status.”

—Tamara Stewart

New Technique Discovered for Dating Ancient Iron Artifacts Researchers say the method is more reliable and less expensive.

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esearch at Lawrence Livermore Laboratory has produced a new technique for dating ancient iron artifacts that may change accelerator mass spectrometry (AMS) carbon dating of iron. Researchers Andrea Cook, Jeff Wadsworth, and John Southon discovered the technique.

This radiocarbon dating method measures the rate at which atmospheric radiocarbon, which is ingested by plants and animals during their lifetimes, decays after an organism’s death. AMS allows researchers to determine the remaining radiocarbon in a sample by counting atoms rather than measuring the rate of decay. The new technique, which uses a different method to prepare samples, is much simpler, and therefore requires less material and is significantly less expensive than the traditional method.

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“With other AMS dating versions, researchers could date iron artifacts found out of context, but it wasn’t often done because it was so expensive and difficult,” explained Cook, who now teaches at High Tech High School in San Diego. “Now we can date an artifact without destroying most of it, and with a technique that is much less expensive and more reliable.”

While this technique has obvious applications for dating Old World Iron Age artifacts, it can also tell researchers how prehistoric cultures such as the Hopewell of eastern North America produced their iron. Preliminary data indicate the technique can also date rust, which researchers were previously unable to do. —Tamara Stewart

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DAVID DYE

Scholars conclude that some symbols speak of warfare and astronomy.

in the

NEWS

Coalition Forms to Save Important Site Officials are deciding how to preserve a 4,500-year-old site in Kansas City.

TRISH SCHURKAMP

LINE CREEK MUSEUM

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n 1999, volunteers from the Kansas City Archaeological Society were sifting through dirt that was removed to build a shelter house at Line Creek Park in Missouri. The volunteers found thousands of artifacts and construction of the shelter house—which was to host simulated archaeological digs for children—was stopped.

A coalition of government officials, Native Americans, and historians is now working to preserve this site, which dates to about 2500 B.C. and is thought to have one of the richest deposits of artifacts in the Kansas City area.

There is evidence that this area was occupied by several prehistoric cultures, including Archaic, Woodland, and Mississippian peoples, over the course of several thousand years. The site was first investigated in the 1870s by archaeologist Edwin Curtis of Harvard University’s Peabody Museum, as well as by other researchers. The most recent work done there was in 1969–1971 by researchers from the University of Kansas. Five years ago a multimillion-dollar community center equipped with an ice rink and other facilities was built on the site.

“There was extensive research done on the site before the community center was placed there,” said Sandra Aust, a Kansas City Parks and Recreation commissioner.

A group of consultants, consisting of historians, archaeologists, and museum specialists, was hired to assess the situation. The consultants

american archaeology

(Above) This point is one of thousands of artifacts found by volunteers in 1999. The great majority of the artifacts are Middle Woodland.

(Left) This cooking vessel was found in pieces in August 1987. The vessel is also believed to be Middle Woodland.

recommended a noninvasive study of the site, which Aust said may begin by fall. A nonprofit organization, which is under the jurisdiction of the Parks and Recreation Department, has been formed to make decisions regarding the future of the site.

“I think the group is very open to all kinds of options,” Aust said of

the nonprofit organization. “I believe this group has a much greater vision for this park than it’s ever experienced.”

Officials have discussed the site’s educational value.

The park contains a small museum building that housed artifacts, but it was closed due to structural problems.

Gary Brenner, an amateur archaeologist with the Kansas City Archaeological Society, believes the community center should be converted into a museum.

“It’s unfortunate that what’s taking place now didn’t happen ten years ago,” said Brenner, referring to the time prior to the construction of the community center.

—Michael Bawaya 11

I N S I D E

T H E

H. L. Hunley

By sinking a Union ship in the Civil War, the Hunley made naval history.

Now the excavation of this Confederate submarine is making archaeological history.

By Andrea Cooper

T

he dark of night, and the task ahead, were bonechilling. Some 137 years ago, nine volunteers for the Confederate States of America operated the Confederacy’s secret weapon, the H. L. Hunley submarine. With no modern navigation system to guide them, members of the crew planned to spear a torpedo into the Union sloop-of-war, the USS Housatonic.

No matter that two previous Hunley crews had died while in training on the sub, nor that a submarine had never before sunk another vessel in battle.

A lookout on the Housatonic apparently saw the Hunley coming, but thought it might be a porpoise. The Hunley managed to plunge its forward spar into the Housatonic’s hull, releasing a torpedo that sent the Union ship into the depths of the sea. Whether by luck or skill, the Hunley directly hit the Housatonic’s powder magazine, creating an even more powerful explosion than the torpedo alone could produce. The Hunley had made naval history. With a flash of blue light, the crew signaled victory to Confederates on shore.

That was the last time human eyes saw the H. L. Hunley—until 1995. That’s when a dive team led by novelist Clive Cussler, in conjunction with archaeologists from the South Carolina Institute of Archaeology and Anthropology at the University of South Carolina, found the mysterious sunken vessel using sonar and global positioning systems. The Hunley was raised by a team of ar-

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chaeologists last year. It’s being excavated and conserved in the Warren Lasch Conservation Center at the former Charleston Naval Base.

Most archaeological projects have an element of romance and mystery about them. But the Hunley has captivated people who never thought about archaeology before: One recent afternoon, a Charleston hotel clerk gave guests an update about the excavation as easily as if he were reporting the weather. TNT made a movie about the Hunley, starring Donald Sutherland.

Part of the Hunley’s allure lies in the sheer bravery of the crew, who fought in a hand-cranked, claustrophobic vessel about the height of a first-grader, with only a single candle to indicate when there was no longer enough oxygen to breathe.

Part lies in the legends, such as the photograph thought to be ship captain Lieutenant George Dixon— the only photo available of any of the crew—discovered in a gold locket that once belonged to his fiancé. Dixon’s fiancé also gave him a gold coin as a good-luck piece.

When Dixon was shot at the Battle of Shiloh, the bullet ricocheted off the gold piece in his pants pocket, saving his leg and possibly his life. Dixon always carried the gold coin with him. It may still be on board the Hunley.

And part of the Hunley’s attraction lies in the human remains on board. The lack of oxygen in the sub creates conditions for a high level of artifact recovery, says South summer

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CONRAD WISE CHAPMAN 1863 • COURTESY MUSEUM OF THE CONFEDERACY HUNLEY PHOTO COURTESY NATIONAL HISTORIC CENTER • SIMON LAKE SKETCH COURTESY NATIONAL ARCHIVES

Carolina state senator Glenn McConnell, head of the Hunley Commission, one of the governmental bodies overseeing the project.

“The range of possibility is from jumbled bones to hair, skin, and flesh.”

For archaeologists, the Hunley provides an unprecedented opportunity to learn from the largest iron artifact ever recovered, and to study technology that was decades ahead of its time: World War I German U-boats are believed to be modeled after the Hunley.

“The Hunley is the most difficult composite iron artifact ever undertaken, and it is by far the most complex object ever recovered,” says Robert Neyland, project director and chief archaeologist. “We look at it as important because of the technology we’re discovering in the submarine. We also have a certain amount of historical information we can prove or disprove archaeologically.”

Neyland is on loan to the Hunley from the Naval Historical Center, the U.S. Navy’s underwater archaeology branch. A slender man with thinning brown hair and glasses, he has worked on shipwrecks in the Mediterranean and the Netherlands, among others, and would clearly rather be excavating than talking to reporters. He gives the clamoring local and national media a total of three hours of interview time per week, but for him, the excitement is in the lab.

“It’s a unique situation to be able to bring the archaeological site into the laborator y, american archaeology

(Top) A painting of the Hunley by Conrad Wise Chapman, circa 1863.

(Above left) Horace Hunley, after whom the submarine was named. Hunley financed the construction of the vessel.

(Above) After torpedoing the USS Housatonic, the Hunley sank for the third and final time. This sketch of the boat by Simon Lake is from a description by Charles Hasker, one of the crew that survived the first sinking.

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Center in North Charleston on August 8, 2000.

(Below) The Hunley is lowered into a 99,000-gallon tank of fresh water at the center later that day. The submarine is placed at a 45-degree angle, the same angle at which it rested on the ocean floor.

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and do the excavation in the laboratory with all the tools there,” he says. “We’re bringing in geologists and microbiologists and macrobiologists. I think we’re going to have a very, very complete story. We’re also using some very advanced technologies that will have an influence on archaeology.”

In 1999, Hunley archaeologists held an international symposium on their plans, receiving guidance from specialists in archaeology, metal conservation, human remains, and engineering. The advancements included the complex strategy required to lift the Hunley off the ocean floor.

On a good day, the murky waters four miles off Charleston Harbor allowed only a foot or two of visibility. As divers assessed the boat’s structural condition, stinging jellyfish wrapped their tentacles around them. An ultrasonic device was used to measure the hull’s thickness.

Eventually, a team assembled from the Department of the Navy, the National Park Service, Oceaneering International Inc. (which does all deep-sea recovery for the navy), the Hunley Commission, and Friends of the Hunley, among others, created and funded the massive structure that raised the vessel.

The contraption must have looked like a skyscraper on its side, under the sea. Bookending the sub were two 18-by-12-foot custom-engineered suction piles, so-called because they suck themselves into the sediment. The suction piles served as a foundation for an elaborate truss, akin to a bridge, lowered onto the Hunley.

Nylon slings wrapped underneath the boat. Attached to each sling was a load cell, which gauges weight, monitored by a computer at the dive site. The load cells gave summer

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©FRIENDS OF THE HUNLEY • NATIONAL GEOGRAPHIC

(Above) The Hunley is carried in its truss to the Warren Lasch Conservation

(Top) Scientists lifting the first plate from the hull of the H. L. Hunley submarine.

(Middle) Doug DeVine of Pacific Survey/Epic Scan reviews a laser scan image of the first hull plate removed from the Hunley.

©FRIENDS OF THE HUNLEY • NATIONAL GEOGRAPHIC

(Bottom) A digital image of the Hunley.

the precise weight on each strap. Through two-way communication, engineers on land could instruct divers to tighten or loosen a strap to adjust the load balance. To provide a cushion for the journey, divers placed a polyurethane foam that hardens quickly under the Hunley, giving it a kind of form-fitting body cast.

On August 8, 2000, a crane lifted the Hunley, truss and all, to the surface. It was loaded onto a barge and greeted by thousands of well-wishers, receiving a hero’s welcome after an eight-hour recovery journey.

“The vessel was found tilted towards starboard at a 45-degree angle. We raised it exactly in the position it lay on the sea bottom,” explains Hunley senior archaeologist Maria Jacobsen, a native of Denmark recruited by Neyland for this project. “We wanted to preserve the stratigraphy inside the sub, in order to understand the filling-in sequences and what happened to the Hunley as it lay on the sea bottom.”

The Hunley resembles a sick whale being nursed back to health in its custom lab at the Warren Lasch Conservation Center. Most crucial in the lab design was the steel tank and water pumping system. The Hunley is saturated with salt, a highly corrosive material. If the sub were to dry out, the salt would crystallize and expand, with disastrous consequences to the boat’s structure.

“It’s a bit like leaving a bottle of water in your freezer,” Jacobsen says.

So the tank is filled with fresh water that is chilled to 40 to 45 degrees Fahrenheit. A thin layer of greenish, concrete-like material called concretion glazes the ship.

Without this protection, the hull would be vulnerable to rapid corrosion. Like any patient, the ship is monitored minute by minute with probes and electrodes. An overhead crane can raise and lower the boat as needed.

Prior to excavation, lasers successfully mapped the hull in three dimensions, saving archaeologists the work of mapping it by hand. “It gives us an accurate architectural drawing” that could one day be used to create holographic images or virtual reality tours of the sub, Neyland says.

No detailed plans of the Hunley’s interior exist. Archaeologists are proceeding gingerly in the excavation, not knowing exactly what they’ll find. The team prepared by filling a model sub with sand and creating an artificial concretion layer. Using x-rays, they successfully penetrated the model sub’s steel plates and saw some objects. american archaeology

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What does it take to save a Civil War submarine? More government agencies, cheerleading, fundraising, and organization than you might ever imagine.

Just trying to identify the agencies involved is daunting. The Hunley Commission negotiated with the federal government to keep the vessel in South Carolina.

(The United States retains title to the ship, while South Carolina has custody in perpetuity.) The Friends of the Hunley, led by ebullient businessman Warren Lasch, is responsible for cajoling individuals and groups to contribute the approximately $17 million it will take to recover, restore, and display the sub. Then there are federal agencies such as the U.S. Coast Guard, and state agencies, such as the South Carolina Department of Archives and History, and private groups, such as Clive Cussler’s National Underwater Marine Agency, that have contributed to the work.

“This project is a milestone in cooperation between agencies and the private sector,” says Christopher Amer, state underwater archaeologist with the South Carolina Institute of Archaeology and Anthropology. “It’s the first time a project of this magnitude has been attempted.”

Already, $4 million has come from the state of South Carolina, $3 million from the federal government, and an undisclosed amount from the National Geographic Society. A variety of companies have donated goods, including almost $500,000 worth of x-ray equipment and software from Fuji.

Visit the Web site, www.hunley.org, click on Hunley store, and

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©FRIENDS OF THE HUNLEY • NATIONAL GEOGRAPHIC

The High Cost of Saving a Submarine

A barge goes out to sea to retrieve the Hunley. Hundred of boats were on hand to observe the historic moment.

you’ll get an inkling of how far grassroots fund-raising has come.

You can fill your shopping cart with Hunley T-shirts, polos, and sweatshirts. Or maybe you’d like accessories: license plates, hats, key chains, logo pins, mugs, even koozies (those circular foam things that hold a cold drink).

Visitors touring the Conservation Center are spending their money.

“We can sell $10,000 to $20,000 worth of caps and golf shirts on a Saturday to less than 1,000 people,” Lasch says. “The Hunley is that captivating.”

At the Center’s visitors’ area, you can crawl inside a replica of the Hunley used in the TNT movie, or watch the excavation on large a closed-circuit TV screens. Those who join the Friends of the Hunley ($35 for an individual membership) can see the excavation as it occurs via a webcam on the Web site.

All the money coming in is used for some big-ticket items. It took $3 million to renovate the

Warren Lasch Conservation Center.

Another $5 million will be spent on recovery and excavation. Two million will be devoted to conservation, with the remaining funds placed in an endowment for future Hunley repairs and conservation.

Given South Carolina’s recent controversy concerning the Confederate flag flying atop the State House dome, some might find it disconcerting to see the flag on some Hunley T-shirts or bumper stickers, even if it is historically accurate. But Lasch, an Ohio native, sees this project as one that crosses boundaries.

“The Hunley isn’t about North–South. It isn’t about the Confederacy. It isn’t about slavery, state secession, or any of that,” he says. “The Hunley’s about courage, bravery, honor, call-to-duty, and technological advancement. Those are attributes that transcend generations, they transcend causes. Those are the lessons we want the Hunley to teach for generations to come.”

—Andrea Cooper

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©FRIENDS OF THE HUNLEY • NATIONAL GEOGRAPHIC

(Above) Conservators Paul Mardikian and Philippe de Vivies apply protective wrappings to the iron hand crank in the submarine.

(Right) This glass apothecary bottle was found close to the wooden bench in the forward section of the boat.

On the real ship, scientists tried several non-invasive methods to coax the Hunley into revealing its interior.

X-rays were unsuccessful, says Jacobsen. While the x-rays penetrated the outer concretion and hull plates, they couldn’t go much farther: The Hunley is 3½ feet wide and filled with sediment, an ideal substance for blocking x-rays. The opposite problem arose with sonar, an acoustic pulse sent through the submarine. Sonar travels through different materials at different speeds and would ideally provide some answers. But while sonar can penetrate through sediment and concretion, it had difficulty crossing through metal in the sub’s central compartment. Together, x-rays and sonar yielded some information about the forward conning american archaeology

tower’s construction, but only that. A third method, fiber-optic cameras, didn’t provide a big enough picture to be useful.

The team decided to do a preliminary excavation through the largest of three holes in the submarine, located in the stern starboard section of the ballast tank. By studying the stratigraphy, the team determined the sub had probably not moved much in the last 136 years.

Archaeologists also determined how the submarine was constructed, looking behind the plates and at the backing.

With this information in hand, the team decided to drill out rivets and lift the hull plates.

That plan produced another problem: How could they prevent the sediment inside from collapsing, possibly harming artifacts in the process?

The solution was thermal plastic. When a hull plate is lifted up, a plastic shoring device is inserted in its place, keeping the sediment intact.

By early March, three hull plates from the central compartment had been removed, providing the first access to the hull. Two weeks later, the team found the first human remains: six ribs.

Doug Owsley, who heads the Smithsonian Institution’s physical anthropology department and is in charge of identifying and preserving the crew’s remains, calls the ribs “very well preserved.”

Typically, bones aren’t found in underwater excavations. However, “based on the sand and shells we’re removing from the crew’s quarters, we’re thinking the crew and their possessions would have been covered up relatively quickly, and that enhances the chances of good preservation of organic matter,” Neyland says. From the concretion, geologists have determined that the sub was probably buried in 20 to 30 years—a very short time in geological terms.

At press time, the archaeologists had found the partial remains of eight of the nine crew members, including six skulls. CAT scan images of the skulls detected brain tissue.

“The crew members’ remains being discovered at their proper stations indicated both a recognition and acceptance of their fate,” observes Warren Lasch, the leader of the Friends of the Hunley.

Skeletal remains make it possible to reconstruct and identify the faces of the crew.

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Wes Hall, Ralph Wilbanks, and Harry Pecorelli observe the excavation. The three men are members of the team

“At this point, we’re confident we’ll be able to positively identify the remains and hopefully even be able to create 3-D [computerized and clay] models of what these men looked like,” Neyland says.

Following the excavation, the remains will be buried with full military honors and laid to rest with previous Hunley crews in Charleston’s Magnolia Cemetery.

Among the various artifacts that have been discovered are tobacco pipes, a corked glass bottle, two pocketknives, a military hat, and a plank thought to be the bench on which the crew sat to crank the submarine’s propeller. Strangely enough, the dog tag of a Union soldier was also found.

It was apparently worn by one of the crew.

It was assumed that the hand crank that powered the Hunley was operated by eight men, but archaeologists now believe it was seven. One sailor apparently operated the bellows that drew air into the submarine.

“After excavating seventy-five percent of the H. L. Hunley, the submarine continues to amaze us with its advanced technology,” Neyland says.

Tools used to excavate the sediment resemble those of a dentist: tiny metallic scrapers, scoops narrower than a teaspoon. Jacobsen says tongue 18

depressors also make excellent scrapers, particularly near metal, because wood won’t scratch metal. There is not a shovel in sight. Each level of excavation is about five centimeters deep. By sampling sediments, scientists can determine how fast the submarine filled and what organisms may have grown inside the vessel.

The team anticipates completing the excavation this summer. There is some time pressure: Artifacts raised from sea must be cared for immediately, or they could fall apart.

The final stage of the Hunley’s journey will be conservation, led by Senior Conservator Paul Mardikian, a French native whose previous experience includes conservation of American Civil War artifacts.

Conservation, which involves using caustic chemicals to remove the salt from the metal, could take up to 10 years. Archaeologists must also store, stabilize, and study the recovered artifacts. The Hunley and its artifacts will then go on display somewhere in South Carolina. The cities of Charleston, North Charleston, and Mount Pleasant are competing for the honor.

The Hunley has intrigued people for more than 100 years. (Jules Verne wrote his classic submarine adventure novel, 20,000 Leagues Under the Sea, just a few years following the Hunley’s demise.) After this final leg of the Hunley’s journey, researchers may finally be able to answer the age-old question about why the boat sank. For archaeologists, the work is equally significant.

“Hunley is raising the bar for underwater archaeology and conservation,” says Michael McCarthy from the Western Australian Museum’s Department of Maritime Archaeology. “Not only is she viewed as a significant object of history, but also a significant research and science project. This is perhaps the find of the century.”

ANDREA COOPER writes for Newsweek, The New York Times, and other national publications.

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©FRIENDS OF THE HUNLEY • NATIONAL GEOGRAPHIC

that discovered the Hunley in 1995.

Archaeology Goes to War Battlefield archaeology is advancing as a small group of researchers use sophisticated equipment to investigate the conflicts that formed America.

SANDY BARNARD

By Anita Stratos

Volunteer Irwin Lee uses a metal detector to search for artifacts around Marker 7 at Custer battlefield, the main battlefield at the Little Bighorn site. Markers like this were placed where soldiers fell. Archaeologists surveyed many of the markers to determine whether a soldier or soldiers had been buried there.

american archaeology

The battle of Little Bighorn was a turning point for Douglas Scott. The archaeologist had the audacity to use a metal detector while excavating the famous 700-acre battlefield in Montana, and in doing so he both revised the history of Custer’s Last Stand and changed the science of battlefield archaeology.

When investigating the battles that helped shape America, researchers are informed by oral and written history. But oral histories can become inaccurate as memories fade or as the stories are passed through the generations, while military records can be slanted for various reasons, such as to conceal an officer’s poor judgment.

These accounts are often riddled with large gaps in their sequence of events, sometimes raising more questions than they answer. Entombed in battlefields is information in the form of military and personal artifacts, and human and animal bones—information that can provide the elusive details of military conflicts.

Prior to the excavation of Little Bighorn in 1984, battlefield archaeology languished.

The science’s conventional method was to conduct a visual survey consisting of a line of people, each 50 feet apart, walking across the field in search of surface artifacts. Usually, very little was found. It was assumed the battlefields had been heavily looted, making excavations largely fruitless. Because of their vast size and the widespread scattering of artifacts, it would have taken decades for archaeologists to locate artifacts with traditional excavation methods.

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This map shows where artifacts were found on the Little Bighorn battlefield, which covers approximately 700 acres. The black marks represent markers that show where the soldiers fell during the battle. The red and magenta marks show where Indian cartridges and bullets were found. The yellow and blue marks show where where the soldiers’

CYNTHIA BUNSELMEYER

Though a few archaeologists had experimented with the use of metal detectors in battlefields during the 1950s and 1960s, the machines were stigmatized as the tool of looters.

“We had the bias when we walked onto [Little Bighorn battlefield] in May of 1984 that metal detectors were bad things,” Scott, a supervisory archaeologist at the Midwest Archaeological Center, explained. “But that’s like equating the shovel to the pot hunter.”

In the first few hours, a crew of metal detector operators unearthed over 100 artifacts, persuading Scott and archaeologist Richard Fox, who codirected the excavation, of the efficacy of the machines.

“We had incredible results,” Scott said.

The excavation yielded new information indicating that, while some of the traditional views of the famous battle were accurate, others were not. One of the accepted theories was that most of the soldiers, fearing capture and torture, had committed mass suicide. However, a few skull fragments found during the excavation showed those soldiers died in combat. Scott said the excavation also “refined” the number of combatants, which was the subject of debate.

It’s believed that about 1,500 Indians attacked 210 soldiers.

“Scott treats a battle like a huge crime scene,” said fellow battlefield archaeologist Charles Haecker. He uses the same analytical techniques as a police investigator. Because of this, Haecker explained, “We now can reconstruct the various tactical positions of the combatants through time and space.”

Indeed, the methodology implemented at Little Bighorn

has been used in the investigation of war crimes in the former Yugoslavia.

Once the excavation at Little Bighorn was completed, Scott estimated how many of the 5,000 recovered artifacts would have been found by the conventional means of shovel testing.

Using his computer, he overlaid a topographical map of the area with traditional rectangular grids. He then plotted in the points, roughly ten yards apart, where shovel tests would have been done. He concluded the tests would have found only about 10 artifacts.

The size of Little Bighorn would have required digging

Douglas Scott carries two of tools of his trade: surveyor pin flags and a global positioning system instrument.

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DOUGLAS SCOTT

cartridges and bullets were discovered.

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NATIONAL PARK SERVICE

Charles Haecker (in gray baseball cap) and his crew plot the locations of artifacts at Apache Pass, Fort Bowie National Historic Site, in southeastern Arizona. In 1862, Geronimo and the Chiricahua Apaches ambushed the California Volunteers here.

40,000 test holes to obtain those few artifacts, an effort so great the excavation would still be in progress.

In addition to metal detectors, battlefield archaeologists are employing a variety of other tools to advance their science. Haecker, who is with the National Historic Landmarks Program in Santa Fe, New Mexico, used false imagery infrared aerial photography and a proton magnetometer at Pecos National Historical Park in New Mexico to discover the site of a previously unknown 1862 Union army encampment. The camp, found just off the Santa Fe Trail, was occupied by the First Colorado Volunteers before and after the Battle of Glorieta Pass, a Union victory and a turning point of the Civil War in the New Mexico territory.

False imagery infrared aerial photography can perceive the imperceptible, revealing the minutest variations in the color of the vegetation caused by soil disturbance, which is a consequence of underground anomalies such as a foundation or a trench. A proton magnetometer also detects underground anomalies by measuring the magnetic field of a given area. The magnetometer and infrared photography indicated where army tents had been placed and where wagons had circled for protection.

“There’s enough disturbance there even though the camp was occupied almost 140 years ago,” Haecker said.

This information helped to explain the large number of nails that had been found by metal detectors within three circles 20 meters in diameter. Haecker theorized that the nails were from ammunition and ration boxes that were stored within the wagon circles. Just prior to the battle, american archaeology

hundreds of boxes were broken open and their contents passed around. After the battle, some of the boxes were used as fuel for the campfires, but others just rotted in place, leaving thousands of nails.

Along with correcting historical misconceptions, Haecker believes that battlefield archaeology can reveal “how soldiers react to the extreme stresses of combat.”

“Published accounts of a battle have generals pushing units around like faceless automatons, but the archaeological discoveries get it down to an individual level. They put a face on it,” he said. “When we find shattered musket parts, slivers of bone, and chewed bullets, it really brings to life the sheer terror that went on in the battle.”

The Battle of Little Bighorn has been romanticized and fictionalized; however, the evidence shows it was simply brief and brutal. The soldiers deployed and fought in “skirmish order,” which eventually broke down, as did the command order. An Indian who witnessed it was quoted as saying: “The battle lasted as long as a hungry man took to eat his lunch.”

A NEW ACCOUNT OF THE RED RIVER WAR In Texas, four Red River War battle sites were located and excavated between 1998 and 1999 under the direction of Brett Cruse, an archaeologist with the Texas Historical Commission. Cruse’s goal was to locate and document sites of the better-known battles that took place between the U.S. Army and various tribes of the Southern Plains Indians in 1874. A number of the sites were known through military records, but their precise locations had never been determined.

Having found the general area of each battle, Cruse and his team used metal detectors to locate artifacts and establish the boundaries of the battlefields. They then faced 21

National Historical Park in New Mexico.

(Right) These metal arrow points and fired and unfired cartridges were found at the Battle of Red River site in Texas.

the problem of how to map these large areas; the site of the Battle of Red River, the first battle of the campaign, covered approximately 35 square miles, and artifacts were scattered throughout rough terrain that included canyons.

The solution was a hand-held global positioning system (GPS), which, by using satellites orbiting the earth, can identify locations with a margin of error of less than one meter. The location of each artifact was recorded by the GPS unit, and the information was then fed into a computer-mapping program called Surfer. Cruse had already programmed topographical maps of the Red River Battle site into Surfer, and the artifacts’ locations were incorporated into these maps.

Each type of artifact, be it bullets or buttons, was either color-coded or assigned a symbol, resulting in a precise map showing the locations and identifying the types of all artifacts on the battle site. This map, augmented by military records, produced a clear picture of the Red River battle. The distribution of military artifacts revealed the advance of the U.S. Army as well as Indian defense positions and retreat routes.

GPS played a crucial role in the investigation of another Red River War conflict, the Battle of Sweetwater Creek. Based on military records, it was believed that the battle took place somewhere in what is now northwest Wheeler County. Cruse found an 1875 military map showing military supply routes, but there was no mention of the battle site. The map included a tiny sketch of a pair of crossed sabers, which was thought to be the general battle area. Using the latitude 22

and longitude markings on the map, Cruse calculated the latitude and longitude of the sabers. However, once out in the field, it was difficult to find the exact spot. Miscalculating by even a few degrees could result in missing the target by several miles. But Cruse found the spot by programming the latitude and longitude into the GPS unit, which directed him to the site. Within 30 minutes of reaching it, he and his team began finding cartridges, bullets, and artillery shrapnel.

“When we began to find cartridges of the right time period, we knew we had located the battle site,” said Cruse.

Cruse expects the history of the Red River War to be modified as he analyzes the data. Gatling gun cartridges were found at the site, the first evidence of these guns being used west of the Mississippi River.

Cruse’s findings question military reports stating that there were several hundred wellarmed Indians fighting in these battles. He has discovered that the army was equipped with new Springfield .45 rifles and carbines, while the Indians were apparently using whatever arms they acquired over the years.

Rifle balls from old muzzleloaders and cartridges from Henry repeating rifles and Sharps 50-caliber rifles were found, but the most commonly found cartridge was the Spencer. These cartridges hadn’t been manufactured for at least eight years prior to the battle. It appears that the Indians were being very conservative with their ammunition, and the number of cartridges found led Cruse to surmise that there were fewer Indians than military reports stated.

“At the battle sites we have investigated, the ratio of military cartridges to Indian cartridges is generally about five to one,” Cruse stated.

Artifact patterns also indicate that the Southern Plains Indians were not, as history summer

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COURTESY TEXAS HISTORICAL COMMISSION

(Above) An archaeological crew conducts a metal detector survey at Camp Lewis, a Civil War encampment at Pecos

portrayed them, hostile aggressors. There was no evidence of them attacking the army. The army, however, attacked Indian camps, and small groups of warriors briefly fought back, giving their families a chance to escape; then the warriors retreated, scattering to disperse the army.

DAN SIVILICH

REVISITING THE REVOLUTIONARY WAR “This is the largest field artillery engagement in the American Revolution,” observed archaeologist Garry Stone.

“We’re talking about tons and tons of ordnance.”

The engagement took place in 1778 at Monmouth Battlefield in New Jersey. Stone, who is also the historian for the Shore Region Office of the State Park Service, is overseeing the excavation of three square miles of the battlefield. As with other battlefield excavations, the archaeology is expanding on the historical documents and occasionally rewriting them.

“There are clues in the ground that the documents don’t even hint at,” he said.

In 1778, the Continental Army’s prospects were improving. The British had abandoned Philadelphia and were marching across New Jersey to their base in New York City. Knowing that the British army was larger than his, General George Washington tried unsuccessfully to limit the battle to an action between his advance force and the British rear guard.

Together, the archaeological and historical records enable Stone and his crew to “choreograph” the battle. Six thousand artifacts have been unearthed so far, including concentrations of grapeshot, howitzer shell fragments, and musket balls. These concentrations of ammunition help Stone determine troop positions, retreat routes, and areas used as field hospitals. In order to interpret the battle, the ammunition must be identified as having been fired by British, American, or French guns. This, in the case of musket balls, is relatively easy when the musket balls are still spherical and their diameters identify the calibers of the guns that fired them. But an impacted or chewed musket ball can resemble a flattened piece of gum.

Avocational archaeologist Dan Sivilich, who has worked with Stone at Monmouth for over 10 years, developed a formula whereby the original diameter of a nonspherical musket ball can be calculated. Sivilich measured the diameters and recorded the weights of hundreds of round musket balls, determining that a certain diameter equals a certain weight. By weighing a nonspherical musket ball, he can calculate the original diameter of the ball and then deduce which gun fired it. His formula, used with other archaeological and historical information, enables researchers to conclude that a given cluster of impacted musket balls came from, for example, British Brown Bess muskets, or French Charlevilles (which were used by the Americans). american archaeology

Ron LaBarca, president of U.S. Radar, operates a Surface Penetrating Radar unit at Monmouth Battlefield. SPR is used to find underground anomalies. LaBarca said the machine is capable of detecting objects 30 feet below the surface.

At one point during the raging battle, Washington relieved Major General Charles Lee of his command due to Lee’s insubordination. The place where this occurred, called Point of Woods, had for years been marked by a granite boulder with a bronze plaque, courtesy of the Sons of the American Revolution. By finding large concentrations of spent ordnance, the excavation, supported by a rereading of the accounts of the battle, proved that the boulder is in fact about two-thirds of a mile west of the actual meeting place.

Battlefield archaeology is a young science—approximately two dozen battlefields have been excavated in America—but it’s rapidly maturing.

“Historians and historical archaeologists tend not to collaborate toward a common research goal,” Haecker noted.

Archaeologists often fail to place their findings within a larger historical context while some historians resist the notion that archaeology can disprove the written record.

But artifacts don’t lie. Battlefield archaeology, Haecker said, is “taking the written data one step further.”

ANITA STRATOS is a freelance writer and a member of BRAVO, an amateur archaeological organization excavating Monmouth Battlefield.

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A City Searches for

By Michael Bawaya

T

he top of “A” Mountain affords a superb view of 21stcentury Tucson, the climax of some 11,000 years of local history. Paleo-Indians roamed the area thousands of years ago, hunting giant Ice Age mammals. About 3,000 years ago, farmers established villages along the banks of the Santa Cruz River. Hohokam villages subsequently emerged around ballcourts and platform mounds which may have been used for ceremonies. All of these peoples were drawn to this riparian oasis at the foot of “A” Mountain, which is now called Rio Nuevo.

This birthplace of Tucson will soon undergo a dramatic transformation. The city has embarked upon the Rio Nuevo Project, an ambitious 10-year, $320-million downtown redevelopment that’s expected to accomplish the neat trick of taking Tucson both forward and back. Every day and every dollar may be necessary, as the multifarious project’s scope ranges from housing and hotels to restaurants 24

and retail. There will also be several museums, theaters, an ethno-botanical garden, an equestrian center, an aquarium, and plenty of parking. Rio Nuevo’s aim is to invigorate the downtown area. But as project director John Jones says, “There’s a historical context for everything we’re doing.”

The Rio Nuevo Master Plan states that “Tucson evolved as a community of cultures immediately connected to the mountains, the Sonoran Desert, and its rivers.” It also notes that Tucson’s population is expected to increase 33 percent during the next 20 years, and the growth of the city has weakened these connections, which the project endeavors to strengthen.

Toward that end, a dozen or so men and women are excavating near the base of “A” Mountain (named for the large, volcanic stone “A” placed on its peak by University of Arizona students in 1913), searching for the legacies of past inhabitants. The Rio Nuevo Archaeological Project, summer

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Its Roots CONNIE COLBERT

Tucson has undertaken a massive redevelopment project that celebrates its history. An excavation is playing a crucial role in helping the city define its past.

which began last November, is a fundamental component of the redevelopment. J. Homer Thiel, a tall, slender, thirtyish archaeologist is directing the excavation. Because Rio Nuevo hosted a number of occupations over the course of several thousand years, Thiel, who specializes in the historic period, is assisted by Jonathan Mabry, who presides over the prehistoric aspect of the excavation.

Thiel and Mabry are employed by Desert Archaeology, Inc., a contract archaeology firm, and they’ve worked together for a number of years.

The Rio Nuevo Archaeological Project is often described as a search for Tucson’s origins. Grand as this endeavor sounds, it looks utterly prosaic. The excavation is taking place on a barren patch of dirt, once a landfill, which Thiel’s team patiently works. In prehistoric times the land produced corn, beans, and squash, cottonwood, mesquite, and willow trees. But now it is desiccated, the american archaeology

Santa Cruz, immediately to the east, having dried up over the last 100 years.

Over the centuries, the early farmers, the Hohokam, and the Pimans inhabited the site. Between 500 and 1,500 years ago it was the site of a large Hohokam village.

In 1697, Father Eusebio Kino, a Spanish explorer and Jesuit priest, found a Pima village here, and in the 1770s the Spanish established the San Augustín Mission. Thiel and his team are excavating the mission complex, which once included a convento (a two-story priest’s residence and trade school), a chapel, a granary, and other buildings, all of which were surrounded by a wall to protect the residents against Indian attacks. The Spanish built a presidio on the other side of the river.

“There was always a division between the church and the military,” Thiel explains.

The mission was abandoned by the 1840s. Between 25

ADRIEL HIESEY

This aerial photograph of the site shows evidence of historic and prehistoric occupations. The 200-year-old compound wall was built upon a more than 2,000-year-old agricultural village. The circular features bordering the wall are pithouses from the village.

1862 and 1880, the chapel collapsed, but the convento remained in relatively good condition until the late 1890s. Archaeologists had hoped to find the remains of the convento’s foundation, but they were destroyed in the 1950s, when the city turned its birthplace into a landfill.

In 1982, when the banks of Santa Cruz River were being straightened, three to four feet of dirt was dumped onto the mission site, which may have helped preserve its archaeological resources.

WORKING THE SITE

The workday at the San Augustín Mission site starts at 7 A.M. It’s a chilly December morning, and the crew dresses in layers. Jackets and sweaters are shed as the day warms.

Because of the cold, Thiel, who lives two blocks away, catches a ride to the site instead of walking.

He and his crew are following in the footsteps of other researchers. Minor excavations in 1949, 1950, and 1953 located two cemeteries and portions of the wall that enclosed the mission. In 1956, William Wasley of the Arizona State Museum led an excavation that uncovered the church and convento foundations, exposing their reddish-orange adobe brick floors.

Thiel began with the hope of finding intact portions of the mission complex. His crew soon uncovered a portion of the stone foundation of the west compound wall, which extends for 315 feet. They also found the southwest corner 26

and a small section of the south wall. Backhoe stripping uncovered the foundation of the granary, used to store crops during the occupation of the mission. The granary is about 55 feet long and 25 feet wide.

Ellen Brennan is strolling around the site, carrying a white backpack. Brennan is a technician with Geo-Map Inc., the company surveying the site, and her backpack contains a component of a sophisticated Global Positioning System (GPS) that enables her to map the site as she walks it. GPS (which is offered in rental cars to help visitors get around in unfamiliar cities) uses satellite timing signals to pinpoint locations on earth. Its margin of error is a mere one to two centimeters.

The archaeologists have plenty of maps. There’s an 1862 field map, various Government Land Office maps, and archaeological maps from previous excavations, not to mention a variety of aerial photographs. Geo-Map furnishes the archaeologists with a master map that incorporates pertinent information from all the others. The company can also produce a three-dimensional rendition of the site.

“Once we gather the data, it’s up to the archaeologists to tell me what they’d like to see and what they need,” says Jim Holmlund, the president of Geo-Map. For example, the archaeologists wanted to know precisely where the convento foundation had once been. So Geo-Map digitized a 1940s aerial photo that showed portions of the foundation as well as landmarks that still exist, plotted the locations of the landmarks, and fed this and other information into the GPS system, which directed the archaeologists to the very spot.

Though archaeologists are well served by technology, a sharp eye can be as valuable as the most advanced summer

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GEO-MAP, INC.

equipment. Crew chief Allen Denoyer lacks a degree in archaeology, but he has such an eye, one that can detect the subtlest differences in the color and texture of the dirt.

“You train your eyes for what you’re interested in,” he says, pointing to a virtually imperceptible change of color in the soil. “There are certain characteristics that features have.”

Some days he sees more clearly than others, and the light plays a crucial role.

“The angle, the colors; they look different from the morning to the afternoon. The middle of the day is best, when the sun is shining straight down. Or if it’s slightly overcast, that’s the best of all.”

Denoyer’s skills, which are lauded by the crew, are also the result of more than 10 years of experience and a store of “intuition.”

There are times when, examining the dirt, he may sense a feature that even he can’t see.

“I can feel it,” Denoyer says. “I can’t explain why I know it.”

Dan Arnit, the crew’s backhoe operator, has found a rusted cast-iron cobbler’s anvil, which he holds aloft as if it were a trophy. The excavation has reclaimed thousands of artifacts, each speaking of its time and culture, that had been lost to the earth: two Early Agricultural period knobbed stone trays, Hohokam pot sherds, Piman arrowamerican archaeology

heads, an iron wok from China. Thiel stands over a ninefoot-deep well used by Chinese farmers. The railroad, along with the Chinese laborers who laid much of the track, arrived in Tucson in 1880. Some of these laborers stayed to farm, renting land from Leopoldo Carrillo, a prominent Mexican businessman who moved to Tucson in the 1850s.

The maker’s marks on bottles found in the well date it to 1880-1900. The marks don’t include dates, but those come courtesy of the book Bottle Makers and Their Marks, which Thiel, like any self-respecting bottle collector or historical archaeologist, keeps close at hand. They’ve also found five intact soy sauce jugs and about a dozen broken ones, as well as two wine jars, rice bowls, bone toothbrushes from France, and seafood from the Pacific Ocean in the well.

All the artifacts are sorted by material type: ceramics, metal, glass, etc. Thiel estimates that two to three years will be spent analyzing them, at which point some of the artifacts will be displayed at local museums, and the rest, along with project notes and photographs, will be curated at the Arizona State Museum in Tucson for use by future researchers.

Digging up Tucson’s history can be exciting, though it also has its hazards.

“You have to be worried about killer bees, hantavirus, scorpions, rattlesnakes, Gila monsters—if you’re stupid enough to grab one,” Thiel observes.

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And then there’s sunstroke and dehydration, the latter being a common problem.

What’s even worse than grabbing a Gila monster is cutting a utility line. Excavating in the shadow of the city’s skyline means negotiating gas, electric, and water lines.

“In some cases the lines aren’t marked,” he says, “and you discover them with a backhoe.”

Fortunately, Arnit, who is renowned for being able to spot archaeological features, has as keen an eye for detecting utility lines. At one point he came dangerously close to striking a 10-inch water main. Had he cut it, the site would have quickly become a wetland.

SOLVING THE MYSTERY OF THE HOHOKAM?

Jonathan Mabry, a compact and energetic man who recently turned 40, has been working in archaeology for 25 years.

“I’m one of those few people who grew up to be what he wanted to be when he was a kid,” he says.

Mabry stands beside an ancient pithouse, a number of which have been found a few feet below the modern surface and a foot below the Spanish-period surface. The culture that built those ancient pithouses hasn’t been officially named because, he says jokingly, “No one has had the

(Top right) San Augustín’s convento, circa 1885.

The archaeologists hoped to find the convento’s foundation, but it was destroyed.

(Top) The remains of the mission’s west compound wall, which was one of the first features uncovered by the excavation.

CONNIE COLBERT

(Above) A reconstructed pithouse and (right) a pithouse foundation. The excavation identified 45 pithouses, which are estimated to be as much as 2,500 years old.

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temerity to name it.” But the period, which spans from 3,700 to 1,900 years ago, is called the Early Agricultural and Mabry has temerity enough to informally refer to its people as the first farmers of the Sonoran Desert.

“For a long time the big question was, where did the Hohokam people come from,” Mabry says.

One theory has it that they migrated from Mexico about 1,500 years ago. Another theory assumes they descended from the first farmers. The Hohokam are famous for their irrigation technology, and the discovery of an Early Agricultural canal estimated to be 2,000 to 2,500 years old, one of the oldest found in the United States, suggests a connection between the two peoples. The results of the dating are from a geomorphological study that matched the silt in the canal with the silt of pithouses that were known to have

Homer Thiel holds a celadon-glazed bowl and a stoneware rice wine bottle from China. The artifacts were found in a well used by Chinese farmers.

flooded during that time. A few 3,000-year-old canals have been found several miles north near the Santa Cruz.

Identifying the canal is an achievement, but it’s only half of the job. Next comes the “retrodicting.” This word may never find its way into a dictionary, however, that doesn’t stop archaeologists from using it. It is the opposite of predicting; in this case, it means examining the canal to envision how it once functioned. Determining the canal’s size, engineering, and how much water it carried reveals the sophistication of the first farmers’ irrigation technology. With this information the archaeologists can deduce how large and productive the farms were, which in turn suggests the size of the community.

CONNIE COLBERT

ASSESSING THE DIG

Jonathan Mabry examines a cross section of a Hohokam canal that is estimated to be 700 to 1,200 years old. The Hohokam’s irrigation technology was remarkable.

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The Rio Nuevo Archaeological Project has four major phases. The first phase consisted of testing for Early Agricultural villages east of the San Augustín site. Phase two, the San Augustín Mission, ended in February. Phase three, the Clearwater site, located north of San Augustín, began in May. This fall Thiel will lead the final phase, the search for the remnants of the presidio, an excavation that will be conducted on the lawn of the county courthouse downtown and below a nearby parking lot.

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The experienced, formally educated, and capable archaeologists working at Rio Nuevo marvel at the skills of Dan Arnit. Arnit is a backhoe operator, and his job is to move dirt from the site in order to expose archaeological features. Southwest archaeology has a 50-year-old tradition of using construction equipment, and many backhoe operators have worked on archaeological sites, but Arnit is highly unusual in that he works exclusively on archaeological digs, and that somehow, from the perch of his machine, he can scrutinize the ground and discern features that elude archaeologists.

His coworkers are just short of reverential, calling him “a master,” “the best backhoe operator in the state.”

One could say that Arnit, the owner of Innovative Excavating, Inc., has pioneered new uses of the backhoe in archaeology.

“I created this style, this type of excavating,” he says.

Backhoes were used to dig trenches, but in the The San Augustín dig was a productive one. More than 51,000 artifacts were recovered and 45 Early Agricultural pithouses identified, 21 of which were completely or partially excavated. Pima artifacts were found in middens—the first Piman artifacts discovered in downtown Tucson. A number of Hohokam features were identified, including a large canal estimated to be 700 to 1,200 years old.

The dig also succeeded at another of its goals, which was to engage the public. Forty-two volunteers worked on the excavation, and approximately 2,500 people visited the site. The great majority of them applauded the project, though one man wished that they were breaking ground for a new Home Depot. An “open house” was held in early February, which drew more than 1,000 visitors. A local newspaper mistakenly reported that the event was to begin the day before, and “500 people unexpectedly showed up,” Thiel says. There was one tour guide to direct the crowd.

“It became an unexpected training session for the open house,” he remarks. “It actually went quite well.”

The results of the fieldwork in this phase of the archaeological project, as in the others, informs the redevelopment planning. The San Augustín site was backfilled in April.

The mission foundation and the interiors of all pithouses were covered with a special fabric to protect them. The city plans to build an interpretive center for the mission here, 30

early 1980s Arnit advocated stripping large areas to expose features. Whereas the standard backhoe blade has pointed teeth, Arnit built a flat blade that allowed him to remove dirt without gouging the surface. He began with a two-foot-wide blade and has since graduated to an eight-foot blade. Blunt and powerful as a backhoe is, it requires a delicate touch when stripping the ground at an archaeological site.

“If you strip too much, you can strip a feature away,” says archaeologist Allen Denoyer. “You say, one more strip to make it clear, and then it’s gone.”

Arnit’s touch is so delicate that, without disturbing the feature, he makes it distinct. He “floats” the blade over the ground, removing, he says, as little as an eighth of an inch of dirt.

“It’s mainly just my eyes and my knowledge,” explains Arnit, who has worked archaeological sites for almost 20 years, despite having no formal training in the science. —Michael Bawaya which will include re-creations of the chapel, the convento, and some of the pithouses in their original locations. As few archaeological resources as possible will be disturbed by the construction of the center or any other portions of the Rio Nuevo Project.

“With the remains of a 2,500-year-old village found in the same location as the Spanish mission from the 1700s, Tucson can claim truthfully to be one of the oldest continuously inhabited settlements in the U.S.,” Mabry declares.

With many of its residents born elsewhere, Tucson may appear to be another example of our mobile, rootless, at times disconnected society. But the Rio Nuevo Archaeological Project, at least to a degree, proves otherwise. In addition to his archaeological duties, Thiel is creating a genealogy of everyone who lived in Tucson prior to 1856. An archive of images portraying life during the mission period is also being amassed.

“There are some families in Tucson who can trace their roots back to the original soldiers at the Spanish presidio here,” says Mabry. “There are Native Americans living here that can trace back their ancestors two or three thousand years, we’re finding.”

So much for rootlessness.

MICHAEL BAWAYA is the editor of American Archaeology.

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CONNIE COLBERT

A BACKHOE VIRTUOSO

Summer Travel Special Driving into Prehistory

WILLIAM STONE

by Tamar Stieber

I was running late, as usual.

Tossing hiking boots into my car, I slammed the hatchback over hastily packed duffel bags filled with clothing and toiletries. The back seat held notebooks and pens enough to write the Cliffs Notes version of War and Peace, while a disorderly hodgepodge of maps, guidebooks, protein bars, and water bottles sat next to me up front. Thus I departed from my home in Santa Fe, New Mexico, to Albuquerque, where I would begin the first loop of a 1,000-mile archaeological road trip through Indian Country.

My first stop was Acoma Pueblo, inhabited continuously since at least A.D. 1150. Encompassing 365,000 acres of stark, stunning high desert, the pueblo counts approximately 6,000 members, perhaps 30 of whom reside on the ancient mesa-top village of their ancestors—Sky City. A hardy bunch, they live in centuriesold adobe houses without electricity or running water.

With Albuquerque 60 miles behind me, I pulled off westbound Interstate 40 at exit 102. Electronic signs beckoned me to try my luck at the casino to the right. I turned left, passing beneath the highway. Ahead lay miles of barren, inhospitable-looking country that nonetheless has sustained the Acoma people for centuries. Nearing Old Acoma, the road steepened markedly. Taking a hairpin curve to the left, I found myself looking down into an enormous valley encircled by mesas far in the distance.

Closer in, lone sandstone monoliths erupted from the dry earth like benign red giants from the underworld. This is indeed sacred country, I thought.

I arrived at the visitors center in time for the last tour of the day. They were closing early for an all-male religious ceremony on the mesa. Paying $9 for the tour and another $10 to bring my camera, I boarded a shuttle bus which deposited me on the mesa-top in less than five minutes.

A full moon at dusk at Pueblo del Arroyo, in Chaco Culture National Historical Park. The pueblo was built between A.D. 1065 and 1140. More than half of it was excavated by the National Geographic Society from 1923 to 1926.

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Unlike those at most pueblos, the kivas at Acoma Pueblo are above ground and are entered from the roof. Ladders provide the means of entry.

A short, squat man with large aviator glasses and a droll manner met the bus. He introduced himself as Orlando Antonio, one of the 30 mesa-top residents.

Citing facts and figures as he walked, Antonio led us through dirt streets to San Esteban del Rey, a 360-year-old Spanish mission that took 11 years and, according to Antonio, hundreds of Acoma lives to build. As we approached the grounds, Antonio requested that we take no pictures of the mission or the cemetery fronting it. He also asked me not to take notes inside the mission itself.

“It’s oral history,” he stated, offering no further explanation.

Antonio related a bitter history of subjugation by the Spanish going back to 1599, when Don Juan de Oñate sent a military expedition to avenge the death of his nephew, which occurred a year earlier. Oñate ordered the pueblo destroyed, survivors enslaved, and one foot hacked off all men over 25. Reconstruction came with Father Juan Ramírez, who arrived from Spain in 1629 to oversee construction of the cavernous adobe mission. Pointing to the enormous log vigas on the ceiling, Antonio noted that his ancestors carried those and all other building materials up the steep slopes of the mesa—an unimaginable labor.

Back on I-40, I drove through Grants and across the Continental Divide en route to my next stop, Canyon de Chelly National Monument.

Heading northwest to Chinle, Arizona, I said adíos to New Mexico at Window Rock as the waning sun cast a warm-hued gamut of colors upon the sandstone.

A moonless night cloaked the alpine beauty of Defiance Plateau en route to Ganado and Hubbell Trading Post, where I would return in daylight. As I drove into a darkening forest, the octagonal outline of a log hogan, its door fac-

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ing east as tradition dictates, marked my entry onto the Navajo Reservation—a vast territory encompassing 7,400 square miles across northwestern New Mexico and northeastern Arizona. From an elevation of 7,750 feet, I began a slow descent to U.S. 191, where I swung northward to Chinle, just 30 miles away, and then on to the physical, historical, and spiritual center of the Navajo Nation, Canyon de Chelly.

The Navajo have always called it tseyi—“in the rock.” The Spanish spelled it chegui (shay-GUI or SHAYgui), which American settlers later anglicized to “de Chelly” (d-SHAY).

The name may vary, but Canyon de Chelly’s steep red sandstone cliffs have probably changed very little since humans first settled there about 2,000 years ago. Reaching 1,000 feet up at the far end of the canyon, these walls protect 1,000-year-old cliff dwellings and tell tales of the site’s earliest inhabitants through petroglyphs and pictographs.

After a comfortable night’s sleep at the Thunderbird Lodge—an elegantly rustic motel located inside the park just beyond the visitors center—and a breakfast of huevos rancheros at the lodge’s buffet-style restaurant, I walked to the gift shop next door, the meeting place for a $37 half-day guided tour of the canyon. I was accompanied by the guide supervisor, David Bia. Over the next four hours, we stopped at a dozen different sites in the canyon—really several canyons of which Canyon de Chelly on the south and Canyon del Muerto to the north are the largest and most traveled. Bia, a Navajo, first showed us examples of Basketmaker (200 B.C.– A.D. 750) and Puebloan (A.D. 750– 1300) rock art, including a figureeight he described as an “Anasazi calendar” and a hump-backed flute player.

In Canyon del Muerto, Bia

A Navajo pictograph panel at Standing Cow Ruin at Canyon de Chelly National Monument. The panel depicts the musket-bearing Spanish cavalry of the Narbona expedition (1804–1805).

JERRY JACKA

JERRY JACKA

work on bridge tables conveniently, if incongruously, set up in front of the ruin. With Hubbell Trading Post next on the agenda, I kept my wallet safely tucked away.

Though designated a “national historic site,” the 122-year-old Hubbell Trading Post is still an active marketplace. The main trading area, called the “bullpen,” looks very much today as it did a century ago. Every surface is covered with all manner of provisions: food, fabric, and feed; housewares, hardware, and harnesses. What doesn’t fit on counters and shelves hangs from the ceiling.

The “Jewelry Room” features a large, if disorderly, selection of Navajo silver and turquoise as well as pottery, basketry, fetishes, and other trinkets costing anywhere from a few bucks to a few grand. A third room displays an eye-popping array of hand-woven Navajo rugs spread out on the floor, draped over tables, hanging on walls, and folded in piles.

My sole purchase was a book about the trading post to fill in the gaps left after a free guided tour of founder John Lorenzo Hubbell’s pointed out Ledge Ruin, a two-story cliff dwelling the Puebloans built more than 900 years ago, and Antelope House and Standing Cow ruins, centuries-old pueblos named for the pictographs Navajo artists painted there. The Navajo first settled in Canyon de Chelly in the 1700s following three centuries of an intermittent Hopi presence. They found fertile earth and refuge from enemies, the latter for only a short time. A mural painted above Standing Cow depicts the 1805 massacre of more than 100 men, women, and children by Spanish soldiers.

Our last stop was White House, the largest and best-preserved site in the canyon. Built between A.D. 1060 and 1275, White House is really two separate structures—a cliff house with 21 rooms and a 60-room pueblo on the canyon floor. Artifacts indicate it supported up to 12 families at its peak. Today, it supports a small group of jewelers who display their Framed rug designs embellish the wall in the rug room at Hubbell Trading Post. The designs were used by early salesmen to help their customers choose a commissioned rug.

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Far View House, in Mesa Verde National Park, was first excavated by Smithsonian archaeologist Jesse Walter Fewkes in 1916. It once contained 50 rooms.

art-filled residence next door. Untouched since the last of his descendants left in the 1960s, the house is a veritable time capsule that reveals the old man’s heart and spirit—both highly esteemed by his Navajo clients.

I handed my book to a man behind a raised wooden counter. Without saying a word, he opened it and started scribbling.

“Um, excuse me, are you writing in my book?” I asked with some alarm.

“There’s a picture of me,” he said, nonchalantly flipping to page 75. Indeed, there he was behind the very same counter. His inscription read, “Enjoy Navajo land. Bill Malone, Trader H. T. P.” Back at the Thunderbird Lodge, I thumbed through The Teaching of Buddha, which I found in the nightstand alongside the Gideons’ Bible. The next morning found me traveling north to Mesa Verde National Park, for seven centuries the home of ancestral Pueblo Indians. The drive, which was less than three hours, took me from the chiseled red sandstone and multi-hued gorges of canyonland to mountains layered with ponderosa pine. Upon arriving, I handed $10 to a park ranger, and, with a seven-day ticket in hand, I embarked on a 21-mile scenic drive up the mesa.

Located between Cortez and Mancos in southwestern Colorado, Mesa

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Verde was once wild, forbidding country offering defense as well as food and shelter. Today, it’s the most visited archaeological landmark in the country, with paved roads and groomed trails welcoming millions of visitors from around the world.

I began my self-guided tour at the visitors center and museum, behind which begins the half-mile trail to the 13th-century ruin called Spruce Tree House. The third largest cliff dwelling in the park and the least restored, Spruce Tree House contains 114 rooms and eight kivas, including the single kiva at Mesa Verde accessible to visitors. A 25¢ trail guide (free if returned) directed my attention to various features including patches of plaster, smoke stained ceilings, and remnants of a balcony. I would learn more about Anasazi architecture on the six-mile Mesa Top Ruins Loop, a self-guided driving tour with 10 stops showing a 700-year progression of building styles beginning with the earliest pithouses to the increasingly sophisticated masonry of the 12th century.

I hoped to visit Cliff Palace, the largest cliff dwelling in North America, and Balcony House, a challenging ranger-led hike involving a 60-foot vertical climb on ladders and steps carved into the cliff face. But with no vacancies at the park’s magnificent Far View Lodge—150 balconied rooms providing 100-mile views instead of televisions and telephones—I forewent a second day at Mesa Verde. Instead, I pressed on to Durango, an hour’s drive west into the foothills of the San Juan National Forest.

Once a rough-and-tumble little mining town, Durango today boasts gourmet cuisine, designer coffee, art galleries, and the Durango Mountain ski resort, a.k.a. Purgatory. Still, the city manages to retain its Old West character despite encroaching gentrification and a steady influx of skiers who consistently vote it one of the

KATHLEEN SPARKES

country’s top ski towns. Durango owes much of its charm and popularity to the 120-year-old Durango & Silverton Narrow Gauge Railroad—a coal-fired, steam-powered locomotive that still wends its way through the San Juan National Forest on its original tracks. Although I didn’t ride the train this go-around, the back of my lodgings—the Jarvis Suite Hotel, which is listed on the National Register of Historic Places—faced the train depot. The train’s 7 A.M. whistle provided my morning wake-up call.

I left Durango reluctantly, wanting to peruse the old bookstores and antique shops. But I followed the call of the Anasazi to the site of their cultural pinnacle— Chaco Canyon in New Mexico. En route, I stopped at Salmon Ruins on U.S. 64 between Farmington and Bloomfield.

Named for the homesteading family that protected the ruins from looters for nearly a century, Salmon Ruins is a Chaco outlier built between A.D. 1088 and 1094. The twostory pueblo contained at least 175 rooms and eight kivas, making it one of the largest of all outlying Chaco colonies.

Archaeologists estimate that 200 to 250 Chacoans lived here, but only until about A.D. 1130. Fifty years later, migrating Mesa Verde Indians occupied the site en route to the Rio Grande. By A.D. 1285, they, too, were gone.

A $3 entrance fee bought me access to the ruins and “Heritage Park”—a series of life-sized outdoor exhibits representing all cultures, past and present, of the San Juan

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Valley. I passed Navajo hogans, Ute and Jicarilla Apache tipis, and temporary brush shelters called wickiups, a Basketmaker period pithouse, a clay horno (oven), and a locked trading post.

The ruins were far more extensive, requiring a trail guide to navigate a maze of dirt pathways over and around excavated chambers. I stopped at 22 stations, starting at a 410-foot-long wall with some of its secondstory masonry still intact and ending at the pueblo’s great kiva. Even without a roof or innards, the kiva’s sheer scale of dimension and precision inspired awe.

I peered into room after roofless room, many originally built as squares and later converted by the Mesa Verde to round chambers for use as kivas. From above, these concentric rooms looked like hollow round pegs squeezed into tight square boxes. They also showed a marked difference in masonry methods. The Chacoans mastered an elegant core-and-veneer style in which an overlay of carefully chosen and shaped stones covered a core of sandstone rubble and mortar. Mesa Verde builders utilized a simpler, but plainer, double-course masonry that emphasized function over form.

Passing through a surviving second-story doorway, itself a rarity, I arrived at the “Tower Kiva”—an aboveground, Chacoan-built ceremonial chamber with walls 12-feet high and 6-feet thick. A unique network of cobblestone foundations and wooden and stone buttresses

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Salmon Ruins is a 300-room pueblo that was purchased for preservation by San Juan County in 1968.

supported the structure. According to an account in the trail guide, which some archaeologists dispute, they also bore the weight of a tragic event. During the Mesa Verde period, circa A.D. 1263, a fire broke out in a nearby room, spreading out of control. Thirty-five young children and two adults fled to the kiva rooftop for safety, but it collapsed. All perished in temperatures reaching 1,500 degrees Fahrenheit—hot enough that it fused sand into glass. I felt a chill down my spine as I stared into the empty roundness—a feeling I would experience again at Chaco Canyon.

I left Farmington early the next morning, tuning in Navajo radio for my 65-mile journey (45 miles as the crow flies) to Chaco Culture National Historical Park. In the east, Angel Peak watched over me from 6,880 feet as I drove south on N.M. 44. A distant mesa loomed tall and hypnotic, piercing pastel skies of blue and mauve. It remained a focal point as I arrived at the Chaco Canyon visitors center—a 21-mile drive from the highway, most of it on rocky dirt roads that turn to mud when it rains. Call the park for road conditions.

Inside the visitors center, I learned it was Fajada (banded) Butte that so captured my attention. Rising more than 300 feet above the canyon floor, the imposing sandstone landmark served as a Chacoan solstice marker that measured the movement of light and shadow to keep track of the summer and winter solstices and spring and fall equinoxes. Sunlight filtering through three upright stone slabs would cast daggers of light on two spiral petroglyphs carved into the cliff face. These “sun daggers” moved along various points of the spirals as the seasons changed. Sadly, the Chacoan “calendar” is no longer accurate; the slabs have shifted slightly in recent years due to foot traffic, hence the park’s decision to bar human access.

But there’s much else to see, not least of which is the beauty and serenity of the canyon itself. Located in a remote area of the San Juan Basin, Chaco Canyon is a shallow, 15-mile gorge bisected lengthwise by the mostly dry Chaco Wash. Its red cliffs cast giant, craggy shadows on the earth, adding to the mystery of a place still considered sacred by many Native Americans. When

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WILLIAM STONE

the wind blows, you can hear the whispers of an ancient civilization that flourished here for 300 years, and all but disappeared by A.D. 1150. But their complex culture and achievements live on through their architecture and their descendants, today’s Pueblo Indians.

The best way to see Chaco is on a ranger-led tour. None was available the day of my visit, so I followed a four-hour, self-guided tour. Driving a nine-mile loop of paved road to each trailhead, I walked through the ruins of four great houses—massive, multistoried, masonry buildings containing hundreds of rooms and enormous enclosed plazas.

At the trailhead for the largest, longest occupied, and most celebrated Chacoan great house, I grabbed a trail guide from a box near the road and walked the 0.3-mile gravel trail to Pueblo Bonito. The park service describes Pueblo Bonito, occupied from A.D. 850 to the mid1200s, as the “core of the Chacoan complex” and “center of the Chacoan world.” I initially took this for hyperbole. But I changed my mind as I stood on a hill overlooking the ruins of a four-story structure with more than 600 rooms and 40 kivas. It was breathtaking. And it was a hard act to follow. While the other great houses—Hungo-Pavi, Chetro Ketl, and Pueblo del Arroyo—have a fascination all their own, to my eyes they seemed anticlimactic after the scale and grandeur of Pueblo Bonito.

Among my favorite spots is Casa Rinconada, one of Chaco’s five great kivas and, at 20 meters in diameter and 5 meters deep, one of the largest anywhere. Like most great kivas, Casa Rinconada’s features—firebox and deflectors, floor vaults, seating pits, antechamber, and entryway—follow a north-south axis. But here, they’re aligned to one degree of true north, a remarkable precision found throughout Chaco

WILLIAM STONE

Canyon and the amazing network of roads connecting it to outlying communities. I was looking forward to sitting inside the kiva, having found it a wonderfully contemplative experience on previous occasions. Sadly, the interior was closed to visitors this time.

Leaving the canyon, I reflected on a recent conversation with an elderly friend who visited Chaco a few years ago—the first time since moving to New Mexico in the 1930s. Uncharacteristically, she found herself so unnerved by its ancient secrets that she was unable to walk through the ruins. I felt a mere glimmer of it myself.

But unlike my friend, it will draw me back again and again.

TAMAR STIEBER is a Pulitzer Prize–winning writer who loves to visit archaeological sites.

The sun rises over the great kiva at Chetro Ketl in Chaco Canyon. This subterranean room, which is over 60 feet wide, was used for ceremonial purposes.

When You Go . . .

ACOMA TOURIST CENTER HOURS • Open November through March from 8 A.M. to 4:30 P.M., April through October from 8 A.M. to 7 P.M. The last tour is one hour before closing.

(800) 747-0181 FEES • Tour: $9 for adults, $8 for seniors, $6 for children. Photo privileges: $10.

CANYON DE CHELLY HOURS • Visitor center open daily from 8 A.M. to 5 P.M. October to April, 8 A.M. to 6 P.M. May to September.

(520) 674-5500 FEES • Admission is free. Thunderbird Lodge Canyon Tours: Half day $39 for adults, $30 for children; full day (includes lunch) $63 all ages.

LODGINGS • (In Canyon de Chelly) Thunderbird Lodge (520) 674-5841; (In Chinle, five minutes away) Holiday Inn Canyon de Chelly (520) 674-5000 HUBBELL TRADING POST HOURS: • Open daily 8 A.M. to 6 P.M. in summer, 8 A.M. to 5 P.M. the rest of the year. Free ranger-guided tour of residence and grounds. (520) 755-3475 MESA VERDE HOURS • Park open daily year-round, though some sites close in winter. Chapin Mesa Museum open from 8 A.M. to 6:30 P.M. mid-April to mid-October, 8 A.M.

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to 5 P.M. the rest of the year. Far View Visitor Center open from 8 A.M. to 5 P.M. mid-April to mid-October.

(970) 529-4465 FEES • Admission is $10 per vehicle, good for seven days. Ranger-guided tours free for some sites; $2 per person for Cliff Palace, Balcony House, or Long House. LODGINGS • (In Mesa Verde) Far View Lodge (970) 529-4421; (In Cortez, 45 minutes away) Comfort Inn (970) 565-3400, Holiday Inn Express (970) 565-6000 SALMON RUINS HOURS • Open daily 9 a.m to 5 P.M. In winter, (November through March), Sunday hours are noon to 5 P.M. (505) 632-2013 FEES • $3 adults; $2 seniors; $1 children 6–16; free for children under 6.

CHACO CANYON HOURS • Visitor center open daily from 8 A.M. to 6 P.M. Memorial Day through Labor Day, 8 A.M. to 5 P.M. the rest of the year. Sites and trails open from sunrise to sunset. (505) 786-7014 FEES • Admission is $4 per individual or $8 per vehicle, good for seven days.

LODGINGS • (In Chaco Canyon) Camping only; (In Farmington, two hours away) Holiday Inn of Farmington (505) 327-9811, La Quinta Inn (505) 327-4706

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Howiri Pueblo Saved from Development The site links prehistoric people of Chaco Canyon with modern Tewa-speaking pueblos and marks the agreement that shaped today’s cultural resource management.

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MUSEUM OF NEW MEXICO

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fter nearly 20 years of negotiations with the primary landowner, the Conservancy has signed an option to purchase 22 acres containing most of Howiri Pueblo, a large two-story village located in northern New Mexico and occupied between the mid-15th and early 16th centuries. The site is part of a private subdivision developed in the early 1960s. By purchasing the property, the Conservancy will prevent homes from being built on it.

Howiri Pueblo, derived from the Tewa meaning “Gray Point Pueblo Ruin,” is the northernmost of several villages termed “Biscuit Ware” pueblos that were built during a period of relatively rapid population expansion in the lower Chama Valley of northern New Mexico. These settlements are named for their distinctive prehistoric biscuit ware pottery that resembles unglazed vitreous china, which is also called biscuit ware.

Archaeological pioneer Adolph Bandelier first reported Howiri in 1892, when his explorations of the Southwest led him to the area. During the height of its occupation (approximately A.D. 1450–1525), Howiri boasted more than 1,700 rooms and an estimated peak population of about 1,300 people. Howiri and the other lower Rio Chama pueblos were the last settlements occupied by the prehistoric Tewa people before Europeans arrived in the mid-16th century.

“The prehistoric occupation of Howiri Pueblo bridges two important events and two geographical areas,” says Tim Maxwell, director of the Museum of New Mexico’s Office of Archaeological Studies in Santa Fe. “Temporally, it was occupied between the abandonment of Chaco Canyon and the establishment of the modern pueblos, while geographically, it sits between Chaco in the San Juan Basin of northwest New Mexico, and today’s Tewa pueblos along the Rio Grande in central New Mexico.”

Howiri Pueblo is considered the ancestral home of the Tewa people who now reside at nearby San Juan

These postholes and walls were exposed during an excavation of Howiri Pueblo in 1978–1979 by archaeologists at the Museum of New Mexico.

Pueblo. According to Maxwell, Howiri’s location and period of occupation have long led researchers to reflect upon the relationship between the modern pueblos and the prehistoric people of the San Juan Basin. Prior to the 13th century, when Chaco was in full force, research in the lower Chama Valley indicates that the area was either summer

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MARK MICHEL

appearance of nomadic raiders, inter-village warfare, or the widespread drought of the late 16th century in the Chama Valley.

According to the oral history of the Tewa communities of San Juan and Santa Clara, prehistoric peoples living in the Chama Valley generally migrated east to join some of the existing pueblos along the Rio Grande, where conditions were more favorable. By A.D. 1600, the Chama Valley pueblos were no longer occupied.

Howiri is also significant for triggering the inception of highway salvage archaeology in the early 1950s, a legacy of archaeological investigation and Jim Walker (left), southwest regional director, and Steve Koczan, southwest regional site maintenance coordinator, examine artifacts at Howiri. protection that quickly became the model for the rest of the nation. In 1952, unoccupied or was populated by when the New Mexico State Highnon-Puebloan groups. There is eviway and Transportation Departdence of Pueblo peoples establishing small settlements in this area in the mid-13th century, a few decades after the decline of Chaco. The lower Chama Valley reached its peak population during the Classic period (A.D. 1325– 1600), at which time villages in this area became quite large. The number of inhabitants abruptly declined shortly after A.D. 1500, when evidence points to the hasty abandonment of several large villages.

Researchers have proposed various reasons for the area’s abandonment and the subsequent settlement in the Rio Grande Valley, such as the

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Conservancy Plan of Action SITE: Howiri Pueblo CULTURE and TIME PERIOD: Ancestral Puebloan (Classic period, ca. A.D. 1325–1600) STATUS: The Conservancy has an option to purchase 17 lots (22 acres) containing most of the site.

ACQUISITION: The Conservancy has already been awarded a $100,000 challenge grant by an anonymous donor. We still need to raise $134,700 for the remainder of the purchase price plus preservation costs.

HOW YOU CAN HELP: Please send your contributions to The Archaeological Conservancy, Attn: Howiri Pueblo Project, 5301 Central Ave. NE, Suite 402, Albuquerque NM 87108.

ment bulldozed a portion of the pueblo in order to reroute U.S. 285, public and governmental concern led the highway department to reach an agreement with the Museum of New Mexico to excavate the damaged portion of the site and recover what information they could. This agreement was a precursor of the Federal-Aid Highway Act of 1956, which mandated archaeological salvage in areas affected by highway construction.

Between 1978 and 1979, prior to the widening of U.S. 285, Museum of New Mexico researchers excavated portions of Howiri, which were subsequently backfilled and preserved. The project revealed a great deal of information about Howiri’s occupational history and its relationship to nearby prehistoric settlements, confirming the site’s importance and its tremendous research potential.

—Tamara Stewart

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Arizona Real Estate Development Company Donates Hohokam Site This prehistoric agricultural complex demonstrates the Hohokam’s ingenuity.

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SWCA ENVIRONMENTAL CONSULTANTS

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ust north of Phoenix a 5,700acre residential community, Anthem, is being developed by the Del Webb Corporation.

When completed, the development may have up to 14,000 homes. Within the community is a unique Hohokam agricultural site, which Del Webb has donated to the Conservancy.

Constructed during the Sedentary period (A.D. 900–1100), the 26-acre Anthem preserve, which extends for one-half mile along the New River, contains 171 features, which were documented by archaeologists working for SWCA Environmental Consultants.

The features showcase a number of the agricultural innovations that allowed the Hohokam to build thriving communities in the harsh desert environment of the Phoenix basin’s northern periphery.

Those innovations include canals, checkdams, and rock alignments designed to divert, transport, and conserve runoff water, as well as cobble terraces and rock piles.

The archaeologists have also identified several artifact concentrations, which may mark the locations of buried habitation structures.

Although many Hohokam villages, habitations, and structures have been identified and studied over the years, it is rare to find intact agricultural systems of the sort Anthem possesses.

The Conservancy is working with Del Webb to integrate the preserve into the Anthem community.

These rocks were the foundation of a Hohokam agricultural building.

A management plan is being formulated that will give the community’s residents the opportunity to work as site stewards and as docents leading tours of the preserve.

Anthem is the Conservancy’s 18th preserve in Arizona. The donation demonstrates one of the founding principals of the Conservancy: Preservation of cultural resources can be achieved without compromising development. In recognition of their actions, Del Webb was given a prestigious Arizona Heritage Preservation Honor Award by the Arizona Preservation Foundation and the Arizona Historic Preservation Office. —Jim Walker

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Conservancy Member Donates Easement Protecting Northern New Mexico Petroglyph Site The site is famous for its variety of images.

KATHERINE WELLS

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lack Mesa is a major geological formation just north of San Juan Pueblo in northern New Mexico that overlooks the Rio Grande. Located along Black Mesa’s eastern slope is the Wells petroglyph site, which contains more than 6,000 petroglyphs meticulously carved into its massive basalt boulders.

Dating from Archaic (5500 B.C.) to historic times, the form and style of the glyphs vary greatly, with most corresponding to the Classic or Pueblo IV cultural period (A.D. 1325–1600), when the area’s inhabitants built large villages along the upper Rio Grande and its tributaries, and rock art reached its florescence. During this period, the Black Mesa area is believed to have been a center of ceremonial activity for the Tewa populations of Oke’Oweenge (present-day San Juan Pueblo), the large prehistoric Pfioge Pueblo across the river, the nearby pueblos of Santa Clara and San Ildefonso, and smaller neighboring settlements.

The site is famous for its many shield images and its remarkable number of flute-playing animals, more of which have been documented at this site than at any other in the United States. Historic images and inscriptions, which are rare at other petroglyph sites in the central Rio Grande region, are also abundant at the Wells site. Spanish settlers, who moved into the region in 1598, created much of the historic rock art along the mesa.

The land was purchased in american archaeology

This basalt boulder at the Wells petroglyph site has various glyphs, including a shield (left), and several geometric figures.

1992 by longtime Conservancy member Katherine Wells. She nominated the site to the National Register of Historic Places.

“Once I realized how important the site was to the area’s history, I became very concerned about its protection,” Wells says.

Virtually all of the land containing the petroglyphs is privately owned and could be used for boulder and gravel mining. Her concern for the site prompted Wells to contact the Conservancy and create a conservation easement that would protect the property from future development, mining, and grazing.

Wells plans to donate the remainder interest to the Conservancy as a bequest. —Tamara Stewart

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new POINT acquisitions

Saving a Late Mississippian Town The Parchman Place site may help researchers answer questions about the Mississippians.

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ALAN GRUBER

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tanding on the top of the massive platform mound at the Parchman Place site, the hum of tractor engines is distinctly audible as farmers till cotton fields as far as the eye can see. This is the heart of the Mississippi Delta, and the fertile soils that are farmed today drew Indians here around A.D. 1400.

The Mississippian people were the first to intensively farm this land, and they also constructed these enormous mounds, one basket load at a time.

The Parchman Place site was a large Late Mississippian period town dominated by three large platform mounds, the largest of which was tiered, and towered about 20 feet over the plaza. Thatched-roof houses with walls of wattle and daub surrounded the plaza.

Although the site is on the National Register of Historic Places and has been known to archaeologists for years as the type site of the Parchman Phase, it has never been professionally excavated. Much of what we know about Parchman has been gained either through professional surface reconnaissance or from excavation of other Parchman Phase sites. Archaeologist John Connaway of the Mississippi Department of Archives and History has been interested in the site since the late 1960s.

“It’s a wonderful site. I went out

Mound A, which is approximately 20 feet high and covers more than an acre, is the largest of Parchman Place’s three mounds.

there in the late 1960s and ‘70s and you could find chunks of daub as big as your head. The surface was littered with daub and burned food remains so that you could see where each house stood,” states Connaway. “Unfortunately, since then, a lot of deep plowing has occurred, which has obscured those locations, but the evidence of the houses should be there under the surface.”

The Parchman site was purchased at a substantial discount from owner Joe Noe, who preserved it. As a late prehistoric site located

close to the point where the Hernando de Soto expedition crossed the Mississippi River in 1541, it could answer questions about the collapse of the Mississippian culture. Was the Mississippian world brought to ruin by the introduction of European pathogens by de Soto’s party, as many scholars believe?

When was the Parchman site abandoned and where did its people go?

This site, the Conservancy’s third preserve in Mississippi, may help solve these mysteries.

—Alan Gruber

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The Conservancy Acquires a Rare Agricultural Site Prehistoric garden beds are saved from destruction.

PAUL GARDNER

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n the Eastern Woodlands after A.D. 1000, agriculture formed the basis of most Native American economies. However, the rich archaeological record of the Late Prehistoric period is made up mostly of habitation and ceremonial sites.

Agricultural sites such as the White Potato Lake garden beds in Oconto County, Wisconsin, are particularly rare.

The White Potato Lake site consists of a roughly two-acre expanse of raised garden beds.

The individual beds are about 8 to 12 inches high and about two to three feet wide. They vary widely in length from approximately 5 feet to 40 feet. Their arrangement is quite chaotic: Rows of beds run parallel for some distance, then wildly veer off at a sharp angle. Though rare, more of these prehistoric garden beds are found in eastern Wisconsin than anywhere else.

The Conservancy acquired the garden beds due to archaeologist Janet Speth of the Neville Museum in Green Bay and landowner Randy Parins. Speth saw a land rezoning notification in the Oconto newspaper, and knowing that the land contained the garden beds, she arranged a meeting between Parins and the Conservancy. Parins was planning a residential development on his property. When he learned that his land contained the garden beds and that they would be threatened by the development, he decided to sell that american archaeology

Though the Late Prehistoric period has a rich archaeological record, White Potato Lake is one of the few known agricultural sites of this time.

portion of his land to the Conservancy. Fortunately, the POINT project funds were available to make the purchase, and Parins’s generous bargain-sale-to-charity allowed him to receive a tax deduction.

“I never knew they were there when I bought the property,” said Parins of the garden beds. “I’m glad we were able to preserve them before the houses go in.”

—Paul Gardner

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C O N S E R V A N C Y

Field Notes Brewer Stabilization Completed

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The Conservancy Adds to Its Old Cahawba Preserve A backhoe delivers a load of dirt as Steve Koczan, southwest regional site maintenance coordinator, spreads the fill by hand.

As part of the preservation project, the Conservancy fenced the preserve and nominated the pueblos to the Colorado State Register of Historic Properties. A management committee designed a long-term site management plan for the preserve that addressed security, erosion control, and opportunities for public education. Four rooms and two kivas of Brewer Canyon Pueblo that had been looted years ago were prone to

SOUTHEAST—The Conservancy has acquired four additional tracts of land totaling about 14 acres to add to the Old Cahawba Preserve near Selma, Alabama. These acquisitions, which include the Bonning, Easters, Tatum, and Zito tracts, preserve much of the old town’s frontage on the Cahawba River and the location of the toll bridge that once connected Cahawba to Selma. These tracts are also expected to include a variety of prehistoric occupations dating back as far as the Archaic period.

Cahawba is best known for being Alabama’s first state capital from 1820 to 1826. Cahawba grew into an important cotton shipping summer

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JIM WALKER

SOUTHWEST—Last fall, the Conservancy completed the stabilization of portions of Brewer Canyon Pueblo, located within the Brewer Archaeological District near Dove Creek in southwestern Colorado.

The Conservancy established the 120-acre district as a permanent preserve in March 2000 with the assistance of a State Historical Fund grant awarded by the Colorado Historical Society.

The Brewer Archaeological District includes two large prehistoric villages, Brewer Mesa Pueblo and Brewer Canyon Pueblo, forming the center of a Mesa Verde community that existed for nearly 300 years between about A.D. 1000 and 1300 (see “Changing Centers of Village Life” in the Fall 1999 issue of American Archaeology). With their dense concentrations of residential buildings and massive, multistoried structures with great kivas and plazas, researchers believe that both Brewer Mesa and Brewer Canyon Pueblos were community centers. Brewer Canyon Pueblo is considered one of the best preserved examples of a canyonhead village site that was occupied in the period immediately preceding the general migration of prehistoric peoples from the Mesa Verde region in the early 14th century.

erosion and vandalism. In October 2000, Conservancy personnel mapped and photographed these areas, and volunteers helped backhoe operators fill the rooms with dirt and reseed the areas with native grasses.

The Conservancy is preparing an educational display about the Brewer Archaeological District that will be permanently located in Dolores County, and another display that will travel between the Dove Creek Community Bank, Crow Canyon Archaeological Center in Cortez, and the Anasazi Heritage Center near Dolores.

A sample of historical artifacts recovered from the Old Cahawba site.

COURTESY OF LINDA DERRY

Cahawba was Alabama’s first capital.

center and one of Alabama’s largest and wealthiest towns. But the Civil War, a continuing series of economic setbacks, and a major flood spelled doom for Cahawba. By the mid-1870s, the once-prosperous burg had become a ghost town.

Since 1995, the Conservancy has acquired over 300 acres of Cahawba including prehistoric sites, unique historical ruins, and the last two remaining original structures in the town. The Conservancy plans to transfer the four recently acquired parcels to the Alabama Historical Commission for inclusion in the Old Cahawba State Park.

Fieldwork Opportunities The Hohokam Experience—Kids’ Archaeology Summer Camps June and July, Pueblo Grande Museum, Phoenix, Arizona. Kids ages 6–14 learn about the Hohokam and other prehistoric people of the Southwest through hands-on craft activities, storytelling, games, and tours of museum exhibits and prehistoric ruins. Call (602) 495-0901 to register.

Abbe Museum’s Field School July 8–13, Bar Harbor, Maine. This year’s field school will explore the Conant site on the Androscoggin River near Farmington, an important late 17th- to mid-18th-century Native American site discovered by an Abbe Museum researcher last year. No previous archaeological experience is necessary.

Participants will learn to use field excavation techniques, recover data, and identify archaeological materials, and will attend daily lectures on Maine’s prehistory, botany, and geology. Contact the museum at (207) 288-3519 or e-mail abbe@midmaine.com.

Lake George Battlefield Park Field School July 16–August 24, Lake George, New York. Participate in excavations at Fort George, a late-18th-century fort located near the site of the Battle of Lake George, which took place between French and British forces in 1755. Call David Starbuck at (518) 494-5583 for more information.

Archaeology Summer Camp for Adults July 23–27, Arizona State Museum, Tucson, Arizona. Work in the museum’s research laboratory alongside scholars and curators as they analyze artifacts recovered from the Homolovi Ruins site, an ancestral Hopi site in Arizona.

For more information call Darlene Lizarraga at (520) 626-8381.

Mississippi Valley Archaeology Center’s Field and Lab Experience July 30–August 3, University of Wisconsin—La Crosse. Spend three days working with professional archaeologists at a site in the La Crosse area, followed by two days of lab work. The program provides training in archaeological field and laboratory techniques. No previous experience is necessary. Registration deadline is the end of June. Call (608) 785-8454 for more information about this and other MVAC summer archaeology programs.

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Excavating the Internet STRATEGIES FOR PROTECTING ARCHAEOLOGICAL SITES ON PRIVATE LANDS

http://www2.cr.nps.gov/pad/strategies An invaluable resource guide with practical information and case studies on archaeological site protection. Funded in part by a Cultural Resources Training Initiative grant from the National Park Service, and administered by the staff of the Society for American Archaeology.

THE H.L. HUNLEY EXCAVATION www.hunley.org This site offers a wealth of information about the history, recovery, and excavation of the Civil War submarine.

The excavation photos are frequently updated. Hunley merchandise can be purchased on-line.

THE FORT ST. LOUIS ARCHEOLOGICAL PROJECT www.thc.state.tx.us Follow the work of the Texas Historical Commission’s archaeologists as they uncover artifacts from the first European colony in Texas, Fort St. Louis. The site provides a history of the colony, a video journal of the archaeologists’ discoveries, and the opportunity to visit the Fort St. Louis Public Archeology Laboratory.

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Celebrating Ceramics

MASTER POTTERS OF THE SOUTHERN DESERTS When: October 5–15, 2001 Where: Southern Arizona,

Southern New Mexico, and Northern Mexico How Much: $1,995 ($350 single supplement) This new tour explores the ceramic traditions and cultures of the Hohokam, Mimbres, and Casas Grandes people.

The trip includes visits to a number of pottery exhibits, This ancient doorway is just one of including a behind-the-scenes many fascinating architectural details tour of the more than 10,000 found at Casas Grandes. pots at the Arizona State Museum. You’ll also visit Hohokam sites such as Pueblo Grande in Phoenix, and the Spanish mission of San Xavier del Bac. Also included is a tour of the Gila Cliff Dwellings in New Mexico, a daylong exploration of the vast ruins of Casas Grandes in Mexico, and a visit with the potters of Mata Ortiz.

Throughout the trip experts will join the tour and share their knowledge with the group, including Jerry Brody, Cynthia Bettison, and Paul Minnis.

C O N S E R V A N C Y

The Wonders of Oaxaca OAXACA

When: October 26–November 4, 2001 Where: Oaxaca, Mexico How Much: $1,895 ($250 single supplement)

Join us in Oaxaca, located in a semitropical valley surrounded by the peaks of the Sierra Madre del Sur. In addition to taking part in Day of the Dead festivities, our tour explores the ancient Mixtecan and Zapotecan archaeological sites in the region, including Mitla, Monte Albán, Zaachila, and Dainzú. You’ll travel to several crafts villages, where you’ll find exquisite weaving, pottery, carved animals, and other local art. Throughout the tour you’ll have opportunities to explore the city of Oaxaca, including its museums and markets.

Upcoming Tours – Winter 2002

JIM WALKER

T H E

GUATEMALA AND TIKAL Our tour explores the world of the Maya in Guatemala and features an in-depth look at Tikal, located in the Petén rainforest.

VERACRUZ Join us in Mexico’s oldest port city, Veracruz, for an exciting look at Olmec, Totonac, Huastec, Maya, Aztec, and Spanish cultures that have dominated the region for thousands of years.

JIM WALKER

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

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summer

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2001

Patrons of Preservation The Archaeological Conservancy would like to thank the following individuals, foundations, and corporations for their generous support during the period of February through April 2001. Their generosity, along with the generosity of the Conservancy’s other members, makes our work possible.

Life Member Gifts of $1,000 or more

Charlotte Adelman, Illinois Leonard Blake, Missouri Olive Brewster, Texas Nance and Barbara Creager, Texas Donald Pierce, New Mexico Suzanne Rice, Colorado Ian and Talmadge Silversides, North Carolina Sally Strazdins, New Hampshire E. M. Tucker, Ohio Kathleen Thomson, Michigan David Whitley, California

Anasazi Circle Gifts of $2,000 or more

Anonymous (2) Olds Anderson, Michigan Edward Godbersen, Oregon R. M. and Joanne Hart, Colorado J. E. Loughridge, Florida Robert Robinson, California Harlan and Ann Scott, Delaware LeRoy Weber, Jr., California

Foundation/Corporate Gifts of $1,000–$4,999

The Arthur Vining Davis Foundations, Florida Dominion Resources Services, Inc., Virginia Nancy and Rich Kinder Foundation, Texas

Foundation/Corporate Gifts of $5,000–$9,999 The J. M. Kaplan Fund, New York Stewart Foundation, California

Foundation/Corporate Gifts of $10,000–$14,999

Longwood Foundation, Inc., Delaware

Foundation/Corporate Gifts of $15,000–$24,999

American Express Company, New York The Chrysalis Foundation, Tennessee The Roy A. Hunt Foundation, Pennsylvania Tom and Nancy Juda Foundation, California

Foundation/Corporate Gifts of $25,000–$50,000

Placing Stock in the Past with Gifts of Appreciated Securities One easy way to help protect America’s irreplaceable archaeological resources is through a gift of appreciated stock.

Mrs. P of Ohio, a Conservancy member since 1990, made a generous gift of 200 shares of Amoco stock. When she inherited the stock, it was worth about $1,400, but her gift to the Conservancy was worth $11,154. Mrs. P got to deduct the full value of the securities on the day that she transferred them, and she also avoided paying the capital gains taxes that she would have incurred had she cashed the stock.

“When I’m going to make a gift, this is the easiest way for me,” says Mrs. P. “You get the value of the stock today and I get the deduction of its value today. It works out fine for you and great for me.”

Mrs. P, who is 67 and originally from Mississippi, says that she’s most excited about the work that the Conservancy is doing in the South and the Midwest. She worries about how quickly development is threatening sites in states like Ohio, and she’s also concerned that not enough is being done in her native South to protect archaeological resources.

“What the Conservancy does is really important. If the stock market would just go up a little bit, I’d give you more this year.”

—Martha Mulvany

TO MAKE A DONATION OR BECOME A MEMBER CONTACT :

The Archaeological Conservancy 5301 Central Ave. NE, Suite 402 Albuquerque, NM 87108 (505) 266-1540 www.americanarchaeology.org

The Tucker Foundation, Tennessee

american archaeology

47

Reviews Riddle of the Bones: Politics, Science, Race, and the Story of Kennewick Man

By Roger Downey (Copernicus/SpringerVerlang New York, 2000; 202 pgs., $25 cloth; 800-777-4643)

Native American Weapons

By Colin F. Taylor University of Oklahoma Press, 2001; 128 pgs., illus.; $20 cloth, 800-627-7377 In this engaging volume, Colin Taylor describes weaponry made and used by Native Americans from prehistoric through historic times, when European technology caused drastic changes. He also tells of defensive weapons, like body armor, and the symbolic weapons that played such an important role in Indian ceremonies. With 122 color and 33 black and white illustrations, it is a delight to read.

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Since its discovery along a bank of the Columbia River in Kennewick, Washington, the ancient skeleton called Kennewick Man has ignited a raging political controversy that dwarfs the scientific controversy about its age and importance. Seattle reporter Roger Downey chronicles the epic, beginning with the discovery of the skeleton in 1996, the media feeding frenzy that followed, and the legal circus involving some of America’s leading Paleo-Indian archaeologists.

Kennewick Man’s is a complex story—partly about science, partly about law, partly about publicity, but mainly about power. It is a metaphor for the tragic struggle between Native Americans and archaeologists that was set off by a poorly crafted statute passed by Congress in 1990—the Native American Graves Protection and Repatriation Act (NAGPRA).

The fate of this 9,000-year-old skeleton seems to rest on the determination of its race. If it is Native American, it will be turned over to a local tribe and reburied.

If the remains are of a non-native race, it will be made available for intensive study.

In Riddle of the Bones, Downey tells the story without frills or emotion, baring the facts of the case and exposing the personalities that color it so vividly. The outcome of the case will most surely shape the future of American archaeology.

The Ancient Mounds of Poverty Point

By Jon L. Gibson University Press of Florida, 2000; 292 pgs., illus., $55 cloth; 800-226-3822

One of America’s most intriguing prehistoric monuments sits on a small ridge overlooking Bayou Maçon in northeastern Louisiana.

Consisting of a series of concentric earthen half-rings and several large mounds, it is one of the most unusual and confounding sites in the New World. Louisiana archaeologist Jon Gibson, the grand old man of Poverty Point archaeology, tells the story of this great site and the scholars who study it in this folksy, readable volume.

When radiocarbon testing dated it to 3,500 years ago, Poverty Point was upgraded from unusual to extraordinary.

Nothing so complex and old had ever been found before, and archaeologists flocked to the Louisiana swamps to study it. They found massive construction for the rings and mounds, and a continental system of exchange. Stone for tools came from as far as 1,500 miles away. Conventional wisdom said monumental architecture could not flourish in a time before agriculture and pottery, but it did at Poverty Point.

Famous archaeologists including Clarence Webb, William Haag, and James Ford helped make the site a state park in 1972.

Yet for all the attention, Gibson estimates that only three tenths of one percent of the site has been excavated. Poverty Point is one of North America’s greatest sites, and Gibson has done it justice.

—Mark Michel summer

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2001

HELP PRESERVE A

WINDOW INTO THE PAST

Join The Archaeological

Conservancy and become a member of the only national non-profit organization preserving the country’s endangered archaeological sites. Your support will help save America’s cultural heritage before it’s lost forever.

As a Conservancy member,

you’ll receive American Archaeology, which will keep you up to date on the latest discoveries, news, and events in archaeology in the Americas.

You’ll also learn about the Conservancy’s current preservation projects.

To join the Conservancy, simply fill out the form below and return it to us.

Sign me up! I want to become a member of The Archaeological Conservancy at the following level: ❑ $25 Subscribing ❑ $50 Supporting

❑ $100 Contributing ❑ $1,000 Life

❑ Enclosed is a check. ❑ Charge my gift to: ❑ VISA ❑ MasterCard ❑ AmEx

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The Archaeological Conservancy 5301 Central Avenue NE, Suite 402 Albuquerque, NM 87108 (505) 266-1540

Conservancy membership starts at $25.

Contributions are tax deductible to the full extent allowed by law.

Please make your check payable to The Archaeological Conservancy.

Make your mark in time.

Some Conservancy members think the only way to help save archaeological sites is through membership dues. While dues are a constant lifeline, there are many ways you can support the Conservancy’s work, both today and well into the future. And by supporting the Conservancy, you not only safeguard our past for your children and grandchildren, you also may save some money.

Sugarloaf Pueblo, AZ Atop Sugarloaf Mountain A Conservancy preserve since 1991

Place stock in the Conservancy.

Evaluate your investments.

Some members choose to make a difference by donating stock. Such gifts offer a charitable deduction for the full value instead of paying capital gains tax.

Give a charitable gift annuity.

Depending on your circumstances, you may be able to make a gift of cash and securities today that lets you receive extensive tax benefits as well as an income for as long as you live.

leave a lasting legacy.

Rooms with a view 600 years ago.

Many people consider protecting our cultural heritage by remembering the Conservancy in their will. While providing us with a dependable source of income, bequests may qualify you for an estate tax deduction.

JERRY JACKA

Part of our cultural heritage today.

Yes, I’m interested in making a planned-giving donation to The Archaeological Conservancy and saving money on my taxes. Please send more information on: ❏ Gifts of stock

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Whatever kind of gift you give, you can be sure we’ll use it to preserve places like Sugarloaf Pueblo and our other 210 sites across the United States.

Mail information requests to: The Archaeological Conser vancy Attn: Planned Giving 5301 Central Avenue NE Suite 402 Albuquerque, NM 87108-1517 Or call: (505) 266-1540