Field Notes

CONSER V ANC Y

FieldNotes

Fencing Project Complete at Victorville Sites

WEST—A half-mile fencing project, done in coordination with the California Department of Forestry, was completed at the Conservancy’s four sites in Victorville, in southern California, this spring. The sites are located adjacent to the Mojave River in an area known as the Mojave Narrows, where the river is lifted by bedrock and walled in by natural stone buttresses, forming an underground channel that forces water to the surface even during the driest years.

Prehistoric peoples made use of the location, which consistently provided them with fresh water for thousands of years. One of the sites containing a rock hearth with ash and charcoal was radiocarbon-dated to approximately A.D. 540. Another contained an unusual number of artifacts identified as seed-processing tools that include stone manos (grinding stones), metates (grinding bins or slabs), and pestles, as well as bedrock milling stations. The sites were donated to the Conservancy by developer Southdown, Inc., in 1997.

Study Confirms Northern New Mexico Prehistoric Mine is the Earliest Documented Lead Mine in the United States

SOUTHWEST—A recent study published by the Albuquerque Archaeological Society presents the results of the first recorded excavation of a prehistoric lead mine in the United States. Following fieldwork undertaken in the early 1970s and research conducted over the years since, the study confirms that the Bethsheba Mine, located in north-central New Mexico near the small village of Cerrillos, is the earliest documented prehistoric lead mine in the U.S.

“This report is an historic first, not just for New Mexico but for the entire country,” stated Homer Milford of the New Mexico Abandoned Mine Lands Bureau. “This will remain for New Mexico the first milestone in mining and smelting archaeology.”

Through the comparison of lead isotope ratios from all known lead deposits of central and northern New Mexico with the isotopes found in the lead glazes of prehistoric Rio Grande pottery, the study, titled “Indian Mining of Lead for Use in Rio Grande Glaze Paint,” demonstrates that the potters of New Mexico’s northern Rio Grande Valley almost exclusively used galena (lead) from the section of the Cerrillos Hills surrounding and including the Bethsheba mine, beginning as early as A.D. 1300.

The extracted lead was used by prehistoric peoples for the creation of glaze paint, which was applied to specially manufactured and widely traded glazewares. Evidence shows that, during prehistoric and early historic times, the inhabitants of San Marcos Pueblo, a Conservancy preserve located less than three miles east, controlled the Cerrillos Hills lead mines and contributed to the production and trade of the resultant glazeware pottery. The Cerrillos Hills were the dominant source of lead for prehistoric peoples as far away as Zuni Pueblo in western New Mexico in the late 13th and early 14th centuries, and remained a major source until the end of the glazeware tradition around 1700.

Within two years of New Mexico’s colonization in 1598, Spanish miners were working mines in the Cerrillos Hills, which were also well known as a source of turquoise, and extracting silver from the galena, explained Milford. Mining continued sporadically throughout the Spanish Colonial and Mexican periods. Because few written records of Spanish mining efforts exist, archaeology must provide the bulk of the data for the early historic period. Excavations of early historic lead smelters are being conducted at San Marcos Pueblo and Paa-ko, another northcentral New Mexico pueblo, contributing to our first comprehensive picture of native and Spanish metallurgy in northern New Mexico.

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