PUZZLING OVER PAA-KO

How did contact with the Spanish affect a New Mexico pueblo?

By Nancy Harbert

Mark Lycett is showing 18 grade-schoolers from Piñon Elementary in Santa Fe around Paa-ko, a 1,500-room pueblo in the eastern foothills of the Sandia Mountains in central New Mexico where he is investigating the coming together of two cultures.Walking along a path worn by seven years of summer field schools for undergraduate and graduate students, Lycett,now a lecturer at the University of Chicago, patiently answers questions and summarizes his work for a decidedly uninitiated crowd.

As he tells the school group about the community that was initially settled in the 1300s, abandoned for more than 100 years,then resettled in the late 1500s,a woman approaches.Driving by, she stopped to see what the fuss was about.Noah Thomas,one of Lycett’s teaching assistants, greets her and takes her on a tour of the site.

This sizzling July day was typical for Lycett and his crew of 15 students and assistants.In addition to the school groups,at least 100 uninvited visitors drop by each summer, and the crew welcomes them.

Like most of the pueblo communities scattered throughout the Galisteo Basin to the north,and the Rio Grande across the mountains to the west,Paa-ko did not escape the long arm of the Spanish mission system,which changed the lives of its native residents.Beginning in 1598 with an expedition led by Don Juan de Oñate,Spanish colonizers made their way to New Mexico,where they established self-contained mission communities governed by resident priests.

After completing his dissertation in 1995 on the Galisteo Basin, Lycett returned to Paa-ko to explore how life changed in a community that,while being very much under Spain’s control, was removed from that country’s main colonization efforts.A typical missionary community would be fashioned around an imposing church, built by the native residents under Spanish direction.There would also be weaving and blacksmithing shops.The natives would tend crops and cook for their Spanish colonizers.

“We live in a world that couldn’t exist without colo-

Virginia Emery (above) and Michael Latsch map the side wall of an excavated section of the chapel foundation. Emery measures the layers of construction material and Latsch transfers these measurements to a scale graph in order to produce a finished profile drawing. nial expansion,”Lycett says.“I’m interested in understanding the processes of its original development and change through time.”Paa-ko is an example of an indigenous site that was incorporated in the mission system,but it was not a typical mission community.

He expected the excavation of Paa-ko would take about three years.But after completing his seventh field season in late July,there’s no end in sight.The more he and his students uncover, the more they are discovering how sophisticated and complex life was here.

It’s believed that the area was first occupied from around 1300 until 1425 due to the early Rio Grande glazeware ceramics that have been found here.Like many of the New Mexico pueblos, Paa-ko thrived in the 14th century. As many as 1,000 people grew corn,beans,and squash,crafted pottery, and hunted wild game in the nearby mountains.They had a few neighbors at the smaller Tijeras and San Antonio pueblos,but they were generally isolated.By the mid-15th century, Paa-ko was abandoned by its inhabitants,who may have moved to the nearby Galisteo Basin or perhaps the Rio Grande valley. In the late 1500s,after the Spanish had begun their explorations into New Mexico,the site was re-occupied.The residents,who then numbered no more than 250 at one time,built new roomblocks atop the old ones.These informal population estimates are based on the number of rooms excavated,an estimation of the unexcavated portions of the site,and on historical documents.

This mid-17th-century plaza surface was excavated in 1997 and 1998. It is one of several superimposed plaza surfaces excavated at the site. This surface had more than 40 features, including temporary sunshades (ramadas), hearths, and storage pits. Underlying this surface was an early-17th-century surface with more than 20 features.

Paa-ko has attracted archaeologists since 1914.That year, Nels Nelson,an archaeologist with the American Museum of Natural History, excavated 178 rooms and portions of two kivas,in addition to digging a number of exploratory trenches,in less than eight weeks.He determined Paa-ko was an adobe and masonry pueblo with more than 20 roomblocks arranged around at least eight plazas.

In 1938,the 30-acre site became a state monument and additional excavations were conducted to expose more rooms in order to display them to visitors.The idea, according to Lycett, was to create a series of tourist attractions comparable to the California Mission Trail of the same period. Paa-ko would be a stop.The idea never materialized,and the site was decommissioned as a state monument in 1959.

More excavations were conducted in 1949-1950 by archaeologists with the University of New Mexico. Lycett built upon this research, concentrating on the years after Spanish contact.He also was interested in investigating areas where no structures had been built to see what they might reveal.When he arrived at Paa-ko in 1996,he mapped the site and then began to excavate.

Though the earlier excavations yielded no evidence of a church,Lycett,like the other researchers who had worked at the site, wondered if the Spaniards had built one there.In 1999, Lycett found a draft of a map of the site Nelson had begun at the American Museum of Natural History in New York. On a section of the draft, Lycett noticed a three-walled feature built atop a plaza surface.Nelson had described the feature as an “old buried house ruin in a hollow supposed to be a kiva.”Lycett was intrigued.During the 2000 field season he found the walls and he realized they were part of a visita,a chapel used by a visiting priest. Lycett estimates it to be 669 feet by 354 feet.“The shape,orientation,size,and placement were consistent with other colonial New Mexico chapels,” he says.The wall was found atop a kiva,a center for religious ceremonies among pueblo Indians.

Excavations this past summer revealed the chapel’s cobble foundation. It was determined that a portion of the chapel was built on a raised platform mound, probably to increase its monumental effect and to compensate for the slope in the land.The mound underlies the southern and eastern walls of the chapel,making them level with the northern and western walls.

Though the mound could be seen on the surface,its form and function weren’t evident.Nelson,in fact,interpreted it as re-deposited debris from an unspecified source.Having excavated a section of the mound, Lycett realized that it was composed of recycled adobe,cobbles, and midden—the very materials used to construct plaza surfaces.He was able to determine its depth, extent,and relationship to other plaza surfaces.This information made the function of the platform mound clear.

Mark Lycett directs the investigation at Paa-ko.

Hammered sheets of copper were the end product of the metalworking process here. Many show perforations, cuttings, incisions, or other kinds of modification. The finished copper artifacts include ornaments, crosses, and bells.

In 1996, Lycett’s crew recovered metal slag that was associated with a large terrace bounded on three sides by well-constructed masonry walls.They began excavations in 1997 hoping to find facilities associated with metalworking on the terrace,which had been previously bisected by an excavation trench.The crew excavated the disturbed soil in the trench and documented the exposed layers of sediment.At that time,they had no specific knowledge of the facilities used for metal production in colonial New Mexico, and consequently they assumed these features would resemble the relatively small,round furnaces used to smelt copper in other Spanish colonies. Instead,they found a series of facilities, including large earthen mounds with multiple chambers and associated ventilator shafts,as well as smaller,trough-like features with adobe and masonry sidewalls and sophisticated ventilation

This is one of three trough-like metal working features excavated at Paako. This feature was excavated in 1998. It dates to the first half of the 17th century and it’s one of the earliest metal working features found at the site. Its contents included indications of copper smelting as well as the reworking of finished iron artifacts. The feature was later filled with a variety of materials in order create a level surface for subsequent construction of larger metal-working facilities. systems.All of the features contained metal slag and other evidence of metal production.“It’s unlike anything found anywhere in the world,” Lycett says.“This has been our biggest challenge, because it’s hard to excavate a feature when you have no idea what it’s going to look like.”

Some features were inside the terrace walls,others were outside, indicating to Lycett that the facility was used for a broad variety of metalworking processes.“Some of the features we have excavated may have been used for ancillary aspects of the production process,such as charcoal making or ore roasting,but they were certainly part of the smelting process,” he says.

Lycett and his crew have developed a basic understanding of the metalworking that took place here,but they remain uncertain as to exactly how this unique facility functioned.Its structure,as well as its incorporation of indigenous and Spanish technologies,suggest that the 17th century was a period of great technological experimentation in New Mexico.It could be that different kinds of features, including more kiln-like furnaces, are buried in the unexcavated areas of the terrace.“We expect our research to document the full range and variety of such facilities in future seasons,”Lycett says.

Noah Thomas,a doctoral student at the University of Arizona,is writing his dissertation on Paa-ko’s metallurgy. Because of the feature’s unusual nature,he suspects it was an effort at experimentation by the native residents.Due to its ornamental value,copper would have been the most desired byproduct of malachite reduction.“Copper was typically used as a trade good,” he says.“Historical documents show that the Oñate expedition had copper goods such as thimbles,bells,and knives,and excavations at other 17thcentury pueblos have found similar types of artifacts.”

But much of the smelted metal that has been found at Paa-ko contains plenty of iron as well,indicating the conditions in the furnace were more reductive than was desirable for copper production.This may suggest that the metal workers didn’t know what they were doing.“It seems like they are applying iron smelting technology to copper production,but copper melts at a lower temperature than iron,”says Thomas.“It could be part of their learning curve.”

An iron/copper combination would be too brittle for making implements.“This doesn’t make sense according to our understanding of the European technology of the time.It could be that we have found a metal product that would have been refined further. But so far we haven’t found any evidence for this,” he says.“Alternatively, it might be that they found new uses for an iron-copper alloy.”

Thomas has microscopically inspected the pieces of slag and metal.By passing polarized light through the slag samples,the different minerals within them can be identified,often indicating the temperature and atmospheric conditions (such as the presence or absence of oxygen) reached during smelting.Based on the metallic grains in

the sample,he could determine that both the iron and copper were in a liquid state when they formed,which indicates a temperature of more than 1,000 degrees Celsius.

He also has found numerous pieces of copper sheets,but has yet to get them under the microscope.“I want to find out what they were made of and how, whether they were cast or hammered,”he says.“The ultimate goal is to see how the metal worked here played a part in the mission and pueblo economies of the time.”

THE STORIES OF SEEDS AND BONES

Down the slope from the metalworking terrace,Kathleen Morrison has been compiling a chronology of the plants that grew at Paa-ko.Morrison,who is married to Lycett,is the director of the Paleoecology Laboratory at the University of Chicago. She has extracted pollen samples from a six-foot column of soil taken from the flood plain of an arroyo that divides the pueblo.

To get a representative idea of the vegetation, Morrison analyzes 500 This 16th-century illustration of copper ore roasting portrays what was the standard European technolgrains from a pollen sample,each of ogy until the 18th century. In the left trough, the ore is heated to burn off the sulfur. The ore is then which contains millions of grains.To ex- washed with water in the center trough in preparation for smelting. Features similar to these troughs tract the grains from the sample,she have been found at Paa-ko (see photo opposite page), but thus far no evidence of ore roasting has goes through a 20-step process that in- been discovered. cludes boiling the sample in potassium hydroxide,sieving the remains through a screen, rinsing the riparian zone, revealed a large proportion of herbathem in distilled water,and using a variety of acids to further ceous vegetation and grasses and few trees and shrubs.The break down the samples.She ends up with pollen,which disappearance of the trees was almost certainly caused by she inspects through a microscope,and charcoal.She plans the early occupation of Paa-ko,when a great many people to send charcoal samples from the column to a lab for ra- moved in to the area,cutting down trees for buildings and diocarbon dating. firewood and to clear fields for agriculture.

The pollen of specific types of plants can usually be The sediment of the third phase contains high concenidentified by comparing it with pollen of living plants. trations of piñon and juniper pollen,indicating a regeneraPollen analysis can provide a record of vegetation history tion of the forest.The fourth phase represents the historicsince,in the right contexts, the pollen grains produced period occupation of the site, when people returned to the each year by plants in a particular region will build up in area and again cut down trees and established fields that inthe soil,creating stratified layers of sediment full of the cluded plants brought by the Spanish.The fifth phase indipollen grains of the plants that once grew there.Through cates a regeneration of piñon and juniper trees,suggesting analysis of these samples,Morrison has identified five that the pueblo and its fields were abandoned. phases of vegetation change that generally correlate with To her surprise, Morrison didn’t find the typical Eurothe archaeological findings. pean-introduced crops such as wheat, barley, and peaches.

The bottom layers of the soil column represent the “People were still doing traditional things,” she says.“They first phase,which predates the initial occupation of the were using wild plants and eating corn.” site. In these layers pollen grains indicated plants typical of Wild rice,in the form of charred seeds,was also found riparian zones—cattails, sedges,willows, and cottonwoods. here.“Lord knows where it came from,”says Morrison.“As The second phase, consisting of layers immediately above far as I know, this is the only wild rice found in the South-

west.” Because wild rice (which,contrary to its name,is actually an edible grass) was grown in the Great Lakes region during the colonial era, Lycett suspects its presence indicates long-distance exchanges were taking place during the 17th century.

In a lab at the University of California-Santa Cruz, Diane Gifford-Gonzalez’s students pore over the more than 13,000 animal bone fragments that have been uncovered at the site.After Gifford-Gonzalez,an anthropology professor who specializes in faunal research, visited the site in 1998, Lycett invited her to document the animal bones found at Paa-ko. Using a jeweler’s binocular loop, her students inspect each piece,and Gifford-Gonzalez double-checks their work.From years of experience,she can usually identify the animal,but whenever she is unsure,she refers to publications that focus on subtle,

Kathleen Morrison screens for artifacts. Her analysis of pollen taken from the site has yielded information about how Paa-ko’s vegetation has changed over the years. Phil Leckman looks through an optical transit. Leckman directs the mapping operations at the site, and he is responsible for relocating and mapping features first documented by Nels Nelson in 1914. By comparing their maps of the site with Nelson’s, the researchers can see changes that have occurred since that time.

distinctive features.These publications also help GiffordGonzalez determine how a bone has been marred— whether by teeth,or by a metal or stone tool.

The majority of bones came from rabbits,but sheep, goats,and antelope are also well represented.The dearth of deer bones baffled Gifford-Gonzalez, given that deer are attracted to the piñon-juniper landscape that now covers the site.But Morrison’s pollen analysis,which showed periodic removal of the trees,made sense of the situation. Antelope, for example,prefer open country.

Gifford-Gonzalez also discovered that horses were eaten—a practice that veers from Hispanic tradition.“They were handling horse bones just like any other animal:cutting them,breaking them up to get the marrow out,” she says.“This leads me to say that these people aren’t Hispanic in their culture,because one of the features of Spanish colonial middens in Florida and the Caribbean is the absence of horses.”

“Who were these people? What kind of community was this?”Gifford-Gonzalez wonders.“Was this a mixture of different groups living together or an indigenous community that stuck with their own practices even with the new colonial system?”

The story is still unfolding,which is why Lycett keeps coming back.He expects to conduct one more summer field school,then re-evaluate how the Paa-ko research will continue.His work is revealing a more complex,nuanced picture of 17th-century New Mexico than can be found in either the historical or archaeological records,which focus on larger, central missions.He may have to keep at it till he retires.