American Archaeology Magazine | Winter 2004-05 | Vol. 8 No. 4 by American Archaeology Magazine

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THE CONSERVANCY TURNS 25 • PREHISTORIC MUSIC • A PASSPORT TO THE PAST

american archaeology WINTER 2004-05

a quarterly publication of The Archaeological Conservancy

A Tale of Conflict In Texas

$3.95

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Vol. 8 No. 4

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archaeological tours led by noted scholars superb itineraries, unsurpassed service For the past 30 years, Archaeological Tours has been arranging specialized tours for a discriminating clientele. Our tours feature distinguished scholars who stress the historical, anthropological and archaeological aspects of the areas visited. We offer a unique opportunity for tour participants to see and understand historically important and culturally significant areas of the world. Professor John Henderson in Tikal

MAYA SUPERPOWERS

SILK ROAD OF CHINA

CYPRUS, CRETE & SANTORINI

This tour examines the ferocious political struggles between the Maya superpowers in the Late Classical period. At the heart of these struggles was a bitter antagonism between Tikal in Guatemala and Calakmul in Mexico. New roads will allow us to visit these ancient cities, as well as Lamanai, the large archaeological project at Caracol in Belize, Copan and Edzna and Kohunlich in Mexico. The tour also provides opportunities to experience the still-pristine tropical forest in the Maya Biosphere Reserves. Our adventure ends in Campeche, a UNESCO World Heritage Site.

This exotic tour traces the fabled Silk Road from Xian to Kashgar and includes remote Kuqa, famed for the Kizil Thousand Buddha Caves, Ürümqi, and the fascinating Sunday bazaar at Kashgar. We will explore the caravan oasis of Turfan, Dunhuang’s spectacular grottoes of sculpture and murals, the Ta’er Tibetan monastery, Buddhist caves at Binglingsi, the extraordinary archaeological sites around Xian and Lanzhou’s excellent museum, ending in Beijing.

This popular tour examines the maritime civilizations linking pre- and ancient Greek and Roman cultures with the East. After a seven-day tour of Cyprus and a fiveday exploration of Minoan Crete, we sail to Santorini to visit Thera and the excavations at Akrotiri. The tour ends in Athens, from which we visit the fascinating ancient cities Mycenae and Tiryns.

MARCH 5 – 21, 2005 17 DAYS Led by Prof. Jeffrey Blomster, George Washington U.

Touring includes the Byzantine and Norman monuments CHINA’S SACRED LANDSCAPES of Palermo, the Roman Villa in Casale, unique for its 37 with an Optional Yangtze River Cruise rooms floored with exquisite mosaics, Phoenician Motya This very special new tour brings us into the China of and classical Segesta, Selinunte, Agrigento and past ages, its walled cities, vibrant temples and Siracusa — plus, on the mainland, Paestum, Pompeii, mountain scenery. Visiting three regions, each distinct in Herculaneum and the incredible "Bronzes of Riace." character and landscape, touring includes the ancient MAY 28 – JUNE 13, 2005 17 DAYS temples of Wutaishan and Datong, the Buddhist grottoes Led by Dr. Robert Bianchi, Archaeologist at Yungang and Tianlongshan, as well as Mount Tai in Shandong, which offers China’s most sacred peaks and IRELAND the enduring shrines to Confucius. Lastly, Hangzhou, long Our new tour explores Ireland’s fascinating prehistoric a premier spot of beauty, offers us rolling hills, waterways and early Christian sites. Our touring will span thousands and peaceful temples and pagodas. The tour ends with of years as we study Neolithic and Bronze Age Shanghai’s exceptional new museum. monuments and artifacts, Celtic defensive systems and MAY 15 – JUNE 4, 2005 21 DAYS stone forts. Some of the tour highlights include prehistoric Led by Prof. Robert Thorp, Washington University Newgrange and Knowth, the dramatic dry-stone fort, Dun Aenghus, on the Aran Island of Inishmore, the Ring of TUNISIA Kerry, fascinating Ogham Stones, the enigmatic carved Based in Tunis for four days, we will spend a day at figures on White Island and the museums in Dublin and Phoenician Carthage, and visit Roman Dougga, Thuburbo Belfast. Traditional music and dance performances and Majus and the unique underground Numidian capital at special lectures by local archaeologists and historians will Bulla Regia. We will tour one of the largest Roman sites in enhance this exciting tour. Tunisia at Sbeitla, the Islamic monuments in Kairouan and JUNE 30 – JULY 16, 2004 17 DAYS Tunisia’s major Byzantine sites. We will spend two days Led by Dr. Mattanyah Zohar, Hebrew University exploring oases in the Sahara Desert plus Berber troglodyte villages and exotic bazaars. PERU MAY 20 – JUNE 5, 2005 17 DAYS Our in-depth tour studies the vast Inca Empire that once Led by Prof. Pedar Foss, DePauw University reached from Chile to Colombia. Touring begins with Lima’s museums and includes visits to the Moche tombs EASTERN TURKEY of Sipan, Trujillo, the adobe city of Chan Chan and other Remote and unspoiled Eastern Turkey is one of the most coastal sites, plus a flight over the Nazca Lines. Additional interesting areas of the country. Our tour features Antakya highlights include Caral, a newly excavated city believed (Antioch), Harran, Nemrut Dag, the Armenian and to be 5,000 years old, a four-day visit to Cuzco and the Urartian sites around Lake Van, the Armenian churches of sacred Urubamba Valley and two days at Machu Picchu. Ani, the Black Sea coast and the Hittite sites of Altintepe, AUGUST 5 – 21, 2005 17 DAYS Karatepe, Alaca Höyük and Hattusa — ending in Ankara.

NOVEMBER 11 – 27, 2005 Led by Prof. John Henderson, Cornell University GREAT MUSEUMS: Byzantine to Baroque

As we travel from Assisi to Venice, this spectacular tour will offer a unique opportunity to trace the development of art and history out of antiquity toward modernity in both the Eastern and Western Christian worlds.The tour begins with four days in Assisi, including a day trip to medieval Cortona. It then continues to Arezzo, Padua and Ravenna, where we will see churches adorned with some of the richest mosaics in Europe. Our tour ends with three glorious days in Venice. Throughout we will experience the sources of visual inspiration for a thousand years of art while sampling the food and drink that have enhanced the Italian world since it was the center of the Roman Republic and Empire. MARCH 2 – 13, 2005 12 DAYS Led by Prof. Ori Z. Soltes, Georgetown University ANCIENT EGYPT

Specially Designed for Grandparents and Their Grandchildren

While traveling to the major sites with our scholar, grandparents will be sharing the irreplaceable experience of discovery with their grandchildren. Highlights of the tour include a five-day Nile cruise, the Great Pyramids and Sphinx, the Egyptian Museum, Cairo’s Islamic monuments and bazaars, camel rides and many other exciting events. Our fun-filled days will also include special events shared with Englishspeaking Egyptian children and their grandparents. MARCH 9 – 20, 2005 Led by Prof. Lanny Bell, Brown University

12 DAYS

MALTA, SARDINIA & CORSICA

This unusual tour will explore the ancient civilizations of these three islands. Tour highlights include immense megalithic temples on Malta, Sardinia’s unique nuraghes, and the mysterious cult sites on Corsica, as well as the ancient remains of the Phoenicians, Romans, Greeks and Crusader knights. The islands’ wild and beautiful settings and their wonderful cuisines will enhance our touring of these archaeological sites.

MAY 4 – 25, 2005 22 DAYS Led by Prof. James Millward, Georgetown University

SICILY & SOUTHERN ITALY

Led by Prof. Daniel H. Sandweiss, University of Maine

MAY 29 – JUNE 17, 2005 20 DAYS Led by Dr. Mattanyah Zohar, Hebrew University

ADDITIONAL TOURS

ETRUSCAN ITALY

Libya, Egypt, Japan, Ethiopia, Maritime Turkey, Jordan, Mali, Prehistoric Caves of Spain & France...and more.

Examining the art and culture of the Etruscan people, we will visit the great Etruscan collections in Rome, Florence and Bologna and explore the medieval hill towns of Perugia, Cortona and Orvieto. Our touring will encompass Etruscan necropolises and cities, including Volterra, Marzabotto, Chiusi, Sovana, Cerveteri and Tarquinia. Throughout our tour we will dine on regional specialties 18 DAYS and enjoy the tranquil settings of these fascinating sites.

MAY 4 – 21, 2005 Led by Dr. Mattanyah Zohar, Hebrew University

MAY 22 – JUNE 9, 2005 19 DAYS Led by Prof. Robert Stieglitz, Rutgers University

JUNE 11 – 25, 2005 15 DAYS Led by Prof. Larissa Bonfante, New York University

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american archaeology a quarterly publication of The Archaeological Conservancy

Vol. 8 No. 4

winter 2004-05 COVER FEATURE

20 LIFE UNDER SIEGE

BY ELAINE ROBBINS

VICKI MARIE SINGER

The difficult tale of near constant conflict is being told by the investigation of an 18th-century Spanish presidio in Texas.

MAKING PREHISTORIC MUSIC BY JOANNE SHEEHY HOOVER

Research indicates that the Anasazi played an amazing variety of instruments, and that music played an important role in their culture.

CELEBRATING 25 YEARS OF PRESERVATION BY KATHLEEN BRYANT

The Archaeological Conservancy has saved numerous sites since its modest beginnings.

RESISTING REMOVAL BY CLIFF TERRY

CHARLOTTE HILL COBB

The federal government removed many Native Americans from their lands in the early 19th century. But some Native Americans resisted removal. Archaeologist Mark Schurr is discovering how they did it.

A PASSPORT TO THE PAST BY SUSAN G. HAUSER

Throughout the country, volunteers are taking part in archaeological investigations as a result of the Forest Service’s Passport in Time program.

new acquisition A SITE WITH UNUSUAL POTTERY By preserving the Cary site, the Conservancy will allow researchers the opportunity to examine its curious ceramics.

new acquisition GALISTEO BASIN SITES DONATED TO THE CONSERVANCY Northern New Mexico sites may have been part of an extensive prehistoric network.

new acquisition CHANGING NOTIONS OF MOUND BUILDING The Hedgepeth Mounds have contributed to a better understanding of this ancient tradition.

new acquisition WHAT BECAME OF THE MONONGAHELA? The Squirrel Hill site in western Pennsylvania could answer questions regarding the fate of this culture.

point acquisition MAJOR 16TH-CENTURY IROQUOIS VILLAGE PRESERVED The Conservancy acquires the Eaton site in western New York.

american archaeology

2 Lay of the Land 3 Letters 5 Events 7 In the News Books Banned at NPS Stores • DNA From 65,000-Year-Old Hair Sequenced • Remarkable Mesa Verde Water Management

50 Field Notes 52 Reviews 54 Expeditions COVER: Though conflict was routine at Presidio San Sabá, the huge crack in the fort's northwest bastion is due to shoddy reconstr uction work. Photograph by Timothy Murray

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Lay of the Land

t seems like only yesterday that inventor/businessman Jay Last and I, with the support of many others, got together to form The Archaeological Conservancy. We were growing more alarmed by the day at the rapid destruction of significant archaeological sites all around the country. The more we investigated, the more alarmed we became. In the Mississippi Valley the main problem was big agriculture with its big machines. On the East and West coasts it was urban sprawl that was paving over our heritage. Everywhere it seemed there were looters willing to destroy the past for quick profit. My background was in govern-

ment and Jay’s was in business. We knew we would be unsuccessful if we sought a solution based on government control of private property. What we needed was an American solution that worked within the context of our experience. The answer was obvious. If we acquired title to the privately owned sites, we could protect them. Everyone understands that. After 25 years, we have now completed almost 300 acquisition projects—purchases, bargain sales, bequests, and donations. More sites are being protected by the many land trusts around the country, but we remain the only one that seeks and protects archaeological sites. One by

DARREN POORE

A Practical Solution to a Vexing Problem

MARK MICHEL, President

one we are protecting this rich heritage. In the years to come we expect to pick up the pace and protect even more. Thanks to the help of our loyal supporters, the past 25 years have been challenging and rewarding. I expect the next 25 to be even more so.

Archaeology learning adventures for all ages! Excavation andTravel programs in the Southwest and the world beyond. Cliff Dwellings & Rock Art: Hiking in Colorado’s Ute Backcountry An in-depth exploration in Ute Mountain Ute Tribal Park, in the shadow of Mesa Verde. April 24–30, 2005

Chaco Canyon & the Keresan World Explore one of the most influential sites in Southwestern history. May 15–21, 2005

Adult Research Program Week-long summer dig programs

Mesa Verde Black-on-White Pottery Workshop Create your own replica vessel using tools and techniques of the ancients. June 19–25, 2005

Near Mesa Verde in Southwestern CO For information and reservations or for a Free 2005 program catalog 1-800-422-8975/www.crowcanyon.org AmA

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

CST 2059347-50

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Letters Why Not a Bureau of Antiquities? Pursuant to the article “Budget Shortfalls Threaten Archaeology” in the Fall issue, the problem was looming on the horizon about the same time federal and some state deficits were made public a few years ago. Under these circumstances it always seems that historical and archaeological preservation must go on the wane. This opens a window of opportunity for vandals and looters, and scariest of all, the ventures of big business with schemes to bulldoze and develop large tracts of land for profit. The upshot of this becomes evident in colleges where archaeology is on the curriculum. It’s dismaying

that professors now need political skills in order to obtain funding/grants for surveys, excavations, salvage, lab work, creation of computer-generated slide presentations, etc. Then come the usual responsibilities—press conferences, scholarly meetings/discourses, and of course, teaching in the classroom plus in the field. Our government has a Bureau of Indian Affairs (a division of the Department of the Interior), but no Bureau of Antiquities. Some nations do. A debate on the pros and cons of this idea would be worthwhile to any of us preservationists. Daniel F. Drzewiecki Toledo, Ohio

Sending Letters to American Archaeology American Archaeology welcomesyour letters. Write to us at 5301 Central Avenue NE, Suite 902, Albuquerque, NM 87108-1517, or send us e-mail at tacmag@nm.net. We reserve the right to edit and publish letters in the magazine’s Letters department as space permits. Please include your name, address and telephone number wit all correspondence, including e-mail messages. STATEMENT OF OWNERSHIP, MANAGEMENT, AND CIRCULATION Publication Title: American Archaeology. 2. Publication No.: 1093-8400. 3. Date of Filing: September 30, 2004. 4. Issue Frequency: Quarterly. 5. No. of Issues Published Annually: 4. 6. Annual Subscription Price: $25.00. 7. Complete Mailing Address of Known Office of Publication: The Archaeological Conservancy, 5301 Central Avenue NE, Suite 902, Albuquerque, NM 87108-1517. 8. Complete Mailing Address of Headquarters or General Business Office of Publisher: same as No. 7. 9. Names and Mailing Addresses of Publisher, Editor, and Managing Editor: Publisher—Mark Michel, address same as No. 7. Editor— Michael Bawaya, address same as No. 7. Managing Editor—N/A. 10. Owner: The Archaeological Conservancy, address same as No. 7. 11. Known Bondholders, Mortgagees, and Other Security Holders Owning or Holding 1 Percent or More of Total Amount of Bonds, Mortgages, or Other Securities: None. 12. Tax Status: Has Not Changed During Preceding 12 Months. 13. Publication Title: American Archaeology. 14. Issue Date for Circulation Data Below: Spring 2004. 15. Extent and Nature of Circulation: Average Number of Copies Each Issue During Preceding 12 Months: (A) Total No. Copies (net press run): 32,475; (B) Paid and/or Requested Circulation: (1) Paid/Requested Outside-County Mail Subscriptions Stated on Form 3541 (Include advertiser’s proof copies and exchange copies): 19,944; (2) Paid In-County Subscriptions (Include advertiser’s proof copies and exchange copies): 0; (3) Sales Through Dealers and Carriers, Street Vendors, Counter Sales, and Other Non-USPS Paid Distribution: 4,804; (4) Other Classes Mailed Through the USPS: 900. (C) Total Paid and/or Requested Circulation (Sum of 15B (1), (2), (3), and (4)): 25,648; (D) Free Distribution by Mail (Samples, complimentary, and other free): (1) Outside-County as Stated on Form 3541: 0; (2) InCounty as Stated on Form 3541: 0; (3) Other Classes Mailed Through the USPS: 70; (E) Free Distribution Outside the Mail (Carriers or other means): 685; (F) Total Free Distribution (Sum of 15D and 15E): 755; (G) Total Distribution (Sum of 15C and 15F): 26,403; (H) Copies not Distributed: 6,073; (I) Total (Sum of 15G and 15H): 32,475. Percent Paid and/or Requested Circulation (15C/15G x 100): 97.14%. 15. Extent and Nature of Circulation: Number Copies of Single Issue Published Nearest to Filing Date: (A) Total No. Copies (net press run): 32,600; (B) Paid and/or Requested Circulation: (1) Paid/Requested Outside-County Mail Subscriptions Stated on Form 3541 (Include advertiser’s proof copies and exchange copies): 19,216; (2) Paid In-County Subscriptions (Include advertiser’s proof copies and exchange copies): 0; (3) Sales Through Dealers and Carriers, Street Vendors, Counter Sales, and Other Non-USPS Paid Distribution: 4,127; (4) Other Classes Mailed Through the USPS: 1,470. (C) Total Paid and/or Requested Circulation (Sum of 15B (1), (2), (3), and (4)):24,813; (D) Free Distribution by Mail (Samples, complimentary, and other free): (1) Outside-County as Stated on Form 3541: 0; (2) In-County as Stated on Form 3541: 0; (3) Other Classes Mailed Through the USPS: 45; (E) Free Distribution Outside the Mail (Carriers or other means): 1,200; (F) Total Free Distribution (Sum of 15D and 15E): 1,245; (G) Total Distribution (Sum of 15C and 15F): 26,058; (H) Copies not Distributed: 6,542; (I) Total (Sum of 15G and 15H): 32,600. Percent Paid and/or Requested Circulation (15C/15G x 100): 95.22%. 16. This Statement of Ownership will be printed in the Winter 2004 issue of this publication. 17. I certify that all information furnished on this form is true and complete. Michael Bawaya, Editor.

american archaeology

Editor’s Corner In the late 1700s, the southern end of Lake Michigan was populated by a number of Native American communities. During the early to mid-1800s the Potawatomi tribe was subjected to the federal government’s “civilization” policy, which was designed to assimilate Native Americans into Euro-American society. By the 1820s the government deemed its policy a failure in the East, and it opted to, by one means or another, relocate the Potawatomi west of the Mississippi. This decision was promulgated by the Chicago Treaty of 1833. By 1837, the majority of the Potawatomi were removed from the southern Lake Michigan area either voluntarily or forcibly. It’s commonly thought that contact with Euro-Americans, which resulted in assimilation or removal, led to the decline of Native culture. But recent evidence indicates some of these Native Americans maintained their culture while selectively adopting Euro-American customs. One of our feature articles, “Resisting Removal,” tells how adopting these customs proved, in at least a few cases, to be an effective way to thwart the government’s efforts to relocate them. Historian Ben Secunda calls this practice “adaptive resistance.” He believes that the Pokagan band, a Potawatomi group that resisted removal, resorted to adaptive resistance in order to convince the government that they, the Pokagan, were indeed “civilized” and therefore should be allowed to remain on their land. Through his investigations, archaeologist Mark Schurr is revealing the various strategies, ranging from living in cabins to practicing Catholicism, that defined adaptive resistance.

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WELCOME TO THE ARCHAEOLOGIC AL 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 295 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 902, Albuquerque, NM 87108-1517; by phone: (505) 266-1540; by e-mail: tacmag@nm.net; or visit our Web site: www.americanarchaeology.org

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5301 Central Avenue NE, Suite 902 Albuquerque, NM 87108-1517 • (505) 266-1540 www.americanarchaeology.org Board of Directors Vincas Steponaitis, North Carolina, CHAIRMAN Cecil F. Antone, Arizona • Carol Condie, New Mexico Janet Creighton, Washington • Janet EtsHokin, Illinois Jerry EtsHokin, Illinois • W. James Judge, Colorado Jay T. Last, California • Dorinda Oliver, New York Rosamond Stanton, Montana • Dee Ann Story, Texas Stewart L. Udall, New Mexico • Gordon Wilson, New Mexico C o n s e r va n c y S t a f f Mark Michel, President • Tione Joseph, Business Manager Lorna Thickett, Membership Director • Sarah Tiberi, Special Projects Director Shelley Smith, Membership Assistant • Valerie Long, Administrative Assistant Yvonne Woolfolk, Administrative Assistant R eg i o n a l O f f i c e s a n d D i r e c t o r s Jim Walker, Vice President, Southwest Region (505) 266-1540 5301 Central Avenue NE, Suite 902 • Albuquerque, New Mexico 87108 Tamara Stewart, Projects Coordinator • Steve Koczan, Site-Management Coordinator Amy Espinoza-Ar, Field Representative Paul Gardner, Vice President, Midwest Region (614) 267-1100 3620 N. High St. #207 • Columbus, Ohio 43214 Joe Navari, Field Representative Alan Gruber, Vice President, Southeast Region (770) 975-4344 5997 Cedar Crest Road • Acworth, Georgia 30101 Jessica Crawford, Delta Field Representative Gene Hurych, Western Region (916) 399-1193 1 Shoal Court #67 • Sacramento, California 95831 Andy Stout, Eastern Region, (301) 682-6359 717 N. Market St. • Frederick, MD 21701

american archaeology

PUBLISHER: Mark Michel EDITOR: Michael Bawaya (505) 266-9668, tacmag@nm.net ASSISTANT EDITOR: Tamara Stewart ART DIRECTOR: Vicki Marie Singer, vsinger3@comcast.net Editorial Advisor y Board Scott Anfinson, Minnesota Historic Preservation Ernie Boszhardt, Mississippi Valley Archaeological Center • Darrell Creel, University of Texas Jonathan Damp, Zuni Cultural Resources • Richard Daugherty, Washington State University Linda Derry, Alabama Historical Commission • Mark Esarey, Cahokia Mounds State Park Kristen Gremillion, Ohio State University • Richard Jenkins, California Dept. of Forestry Trinkle Jones, National Park Service • Linda Mayro, Pima County, Arizona Jeff Mitchem, Arkansas Archaeological Survey • Douglas Perrelli, SUNY-Buffalo Janet Rafferty, Mississippi State University • Judyth Reed, Bureau of Land Management Ann Rogers, Oregon State University • Joe Saunders, University of Louisiana-Monroe Donna Seifert, John Milner Associates • Art Spiess, Maine Historic Preservation Richard Woodbury, University of Massachusetts • Don Wyckoff, University of Oklahoma National Advertising Office Marcia Ulibarri, Advertising Representative 5301 Central Ave. NE, Suite 902, Albuquerque, New Mexico 87108; (505) 344-6018; Fax (505) 345-3430; mulibarri@earthlink.net American Archaeology (ISSN 1093-8400) is published quarterly by The Archaeological Conser vancy, 5301 Central Avenue NE, Suite 902, Albuquerque, NM 87108-1517. Title register ed U.S. Pat. and TM Office, © 2004 by TAC. Printed in the United States. Periodicals postage paid Albuquerque, NM, and additional mailing offices. Single copies are $3.95. A one-year membership to the Conser vancy 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 Conser vancy, 5301 Central Avenue NE, Suite 902, Albuquerque, NM 87108-1517, or call (505) 266-1540. For changes of address, include old and new addresses. Articles are published for educational purposes and do not necessarily reflect the views of the Conser vancy, 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 exper t review. POSTMASTER: Send address changes to American Archaeology, The Archaeological Conser vancy, 5301 Central Avenue NE, Suite 902, Albuquerque, NM 87108-1517; (505) 266-1540. All rights reser ved.

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

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Museum exhibits Meetings

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Education

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Festivals

Events

Confer ences

NEW EXHIBITS

AMERICAN MUSEUM OF NATURAL HISTORY

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Museum of Indian Arts & Culture Santa Fe, N.M.—The traveling exhibition “Roads to the Past: Fifty Years of Highway Archaeology in New Mexico” celebrates the history of highway archaeology. New Mexico initiated the nation’s first highway archaeology program in 1954 when the Museum of New Mexico, the New Mexico Department of Transportation, and the Federal Highway Administration began a historic collaboration to document, study, and protect archaeological sites within highway right-of-ways across the state. The program became the model for similar publicly funded programs in other states, and the collaboration resulted in the documentation of over 10,000 years of New Mexico prehistory and history. (505) 476-1250, www.roadstothepast.org (Through January 2, 2005, then traveling to New Mexico State University in Las Cruces January 15–March 15) Canadian Museum of Civilization Gatineau, Quebec, Canada—“The Blackfoot Way of Life: Nitsitapiisinni” tells the story of the Blackfoot People from their own perspective. Created by the Glenbow Museum in Calgary, the exhibition

explores fundamental belief systems, traditional stories, sacred places, dances, and ceremonies through videos, soundtracks, and more than 140 objects. The exhibit also examines relationships with governments and the importance of ensuring the survival of the Blackfoot legacy. 1-800-555-5621, www.civilization.ca (Through February 13, 2005) Guggenheim Museum New York, N.Y.—The spectacular new exhibition “The Aztec Empire” examines the extraordinary civilization of the Aztecs through more than 440 works drawn from public and private collections, including archaeological finds of the last decade never before seen outside of Mexico. Organized by the Guggenheim in collaboration with the Consejo Nacional Para la Cultura y Las Artes and the Instituto Nacional de Antropología e Historia of Mexico, the exhibit is the most comprehensive survey of the art and culture of the Aztecs ever assembled, and the first major exhibition devoted to the subject in the U.S. in more than 20 years. (212) 4233500, www.guggenheim.org (Through February 13, 2005)

Mexican Fine Arts Center Museum MEXICAN FINE ARTS CENTER MUSEUM

Chicago, Ill.—The extraordinar y exhibition “Treasures of Ancient Veracruz: Magia de la risa y el juego” features 60 archaeological artifacts from Veracruz, the cradle of Mesoamerican civilization. Among the collection is a four-ton, 3,000-year-old colossal stone Olmec head. All of the exhibit’s ancient figures demonstrate the fundamental human need to play. (312) 738-1503, www.mfacmchicago.org (Through February 6, 2005)

american archaeology

American Museum of Natural History New York, N.Y.—“T otems to Turquoise: Native North American Jewelry Arts of the Northwest and Southwest” is a landmark new exhibition of more than 500 examples of stunning historic and contemporar y Native American jewelry and artifacts. The exhibit celebrates the beauty, power, and symbolism of Native jewelry arts and includes more than 100 objects from the museum’s extensive collection of Native American artifacts such as totem sculptures, masks, and photographs and videos of Northwest and Southwest rituals that are strongly connected to cosmological beliefs. (212) 769-5100, www.amnh.org (Through July 2005)

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Denver, Colo.—“ Ancient Voices: Stories of Colorado’s Distant Past” represents the first phase of a new 6,500-square-foot American Indian exhibition that explores the complex cultures of Colorado’s earliest inhabitants. The second phase to follow in 2006 will examine how these cultures changed as a result of contact with Europeans, among other influences. (303) 866-3682, www.coloradohistor y.org (Opens January 28, 2005)

Portland Art Museum Portland, Ore.—The first major museum exhibition to focus specifically on the art and culture of the Native Americans who lived along the Columbia River from the mouth of the Snake River to the Pacific Ocean, “People of the River: Native Arts of the Oregon Territory” includes stone sculpture, beadwork, and basketry. The exhibition is drawn from the collections of the Portland Art Museum, the Smithsonian Institution, and the National Museum of the American Indian, as well as from private collections. (503) 226-2811, www.por tlandartmuseum.org (January 22–May 29, 2005)

Orlando Museum of Art Orlando, Fla.—Due to popular demand, the museum is extending “Ancestors of the Incas: The Majesty of Ancient Peru, Selections and Gifts from the Dr. and Mrs. Solomon D. Klotz Collection.” Never before exhibited, the collection includes more than 210 objects made by ancient cultures of the Central Andes region, including the Chavín, Nazca, Moche, Chimú, Huari, and Inca, between 1400 B.C. and A.D. 1530. Highlights from the exhibit include ceramic portraits of Moche rulers, gold and silver royal vessels, delicate inlaid wooden boxes, colorful textiles, and stunning jewelry. (407) 896-4231, www.OMArt.org (Through June 2005) North Dakota Heritage Center Bismarck, N. Dak.—“‘This Grand Scene’...North Dakota from the Palette and Pen of George Catlin” offers five original paintings by George Catlin on loan from the Smithsonian American Art Museum in Washington, D.C. The quotation is from Catlin’s notes and refers to the exhibit’s signature image, “Big Bend on the Upper Missouri, 1900 Miles Above St. Louis.” Catlin (1796–1872) painted this magnificent landscape during his 1832 journey up the Missouri River at a point southwest of present-day New Town, North Dakota. The Blue Buttes looming in the background can be seen today from the same perspective. (701) 328-2666, www.DiscoverND.com/hist. (Through September 2005)

CONFERENCES, LECTURES & FESTIVALS Celebrating Culture Sundays Winter Program Through April 16, Alaska Native Heritage Center, Anchorage, Alaska. Watch Alaska Native dances, learn about traditional art and language, listen to storytellers, and explore new exhibits and village sites. Themes vary each week. (800) 315-6608, www.alaskanative.net 15th Annual World Championship Hoop Dance Contest February 5–6, Heard Museum, Phoenix, Ariz. Top Native hoop dancers from the United States and Canada compete for cash prizes and the World Champion title. (602) 251-0255, www.heard.org Trail of the Lost Tribes Archaeology Speaker Series Monthly beginning February 12 at various locations in Florida. The theme of this year’s series is “Stories Buried in the Ground: How Archaeology Strengthens Florida’s Communities.” The Trail of the Lost Tribes is a Florida non-profit network of three heritage tour operators and 21 public sites that promote a greater appreciation of the ancient cultures of Florida. The series is free and open to the public. Contact Marty Ardren at (941) 456-6128, ArdrenConsulting@comcast.net for the series schedule. Arizona Archaeology & Heritage Awareness Month March 1–31 at numerous locations throughout the state. Events, activities, demonstrations, exhibits, lectures, and tours provide information about Arizona’s archaeological, historical, and cultural resources. This year’s theme is “Respect Heritage.” Contact Ann Howard at (602) 542-7138, ahoward@pr.state.az.us, www.azstateparks.com winter • 2004-05

PORTLAND ART MUSEU

Events

COLORADO HISTORY MUSEUM

Colorado History Museum

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Books Banned at National Parks’ Bookstores Scholars accuse the parks of censorship.

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VICKI MARIE SINGER

he Pecos Conference, the major group of Southwestern archaeologists, has condemned the exclusion of selected books from National Park Service bookstores. At the annual meeting in Bluff, Utah, on August 14, scholars complained about the exclusion of books from Mesa Verde National Park and Petroglyph National Monument. “This form of censorship is detrimental to the dissemination of knowledge and adversely impacts both (archaeological) professionals and the interested public,” stated the Conference’s resolution. “Interested readers are prohibited from reading examples of the best professional research.” Most of the criticism was directed at Mesa Verde National Park, which has perhaps the busiest American archaeology bookstore in the country. Mesa Verde bans books that identify the ancient inhabitants of Mesa Verde as “Anasazi,” including such popular works as The Anasazi of Mesa Verde and the Four Corners by William M. Ferguson and Understanding the Anasazi of Mesa Verde and Hovenweep by David Grant Noble. According to reliable sources at the park, Superintendent Larry T. Weise ordered the books banned because of concerns expressed by some Pueblo people. Weise did not respond to numerous requests for comment. The use of the word “Anasazi” to describe the ancient Puebloan people of the Four Corners has become controversial in recent years because of its Navajo origins, and Mesa Verde and other parks are replacing it with “Ancestral Puebloan.” Both Navajos and Puebloans have claimed to be

american archaeology

These books are some of the well-respected volumes banned at Mesa Verde National Park and Petroglyph National Monument.

descendants of the Anasazi in order to control human remains from Mesa Verde and influence the archaeological work on related sites, many of which are on Navajo lands. According to Mary A. Willie, a linguist at the University of Arizona and a Navajo, Anasazi is “a conglomerate of two separate words meaning ‘non-Navajo’ and ‘ancestor.’” A reasonable translation of Anasazi would thus be “Puebloan ancestors,” ironically confirming the Puebloans’ claim. At Petroglyph National Monument in Albuquerque, park officials have barred books that contain photographs of petroglyphs to which Pueblo people object, including human figures, masks, and fourpointed stars. They also object to the term “rock art,” because “it connotes leisure time activity,” according

to Diane Souder, supervisory park ranger. Books that interpret the meaning of specific rock art symbols are also unwanted at the park bookstore. “It’s a terrible infringement on intellectual freedom,” according to Polly Schaafsma, whose classic rock art studies, Rock Art in New Mexico and Warrior, Shield, and Star, are among the scholarly tomes banned from the park. Because of the economic power of the park bookstores, publishers in the Southwest are struggling to conform, but their efforts are hampered by ambivalent policies. A spokesman for one of the biggest publishers in the region said, “I’m not quite sure what the park superintendents are trying to achieve, but I know I had better not send them a book with “Anasazi” on the cover.” —Mark Michel 7

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Attention, Teotihuacán Shoppers Wal-Mart opens a store near famous prehistoric ruins. odega Aurrera, a division of WalMart Stores, Inc. opened its store near Teotihuacán despite protests and a lawsuit. The store is very near the 2,000-year-old ruins of Teotihuacán, one of Mexico’s most famous archaeological sites. Though a number of Mexicans, from local merchants to artists, have protested the encroachment of bigbox commerce on their cultural treasure, Wal-Mart officials said the store posed no threat to the ruins and is in fact welcomed by many people in the community. According to Walfred Castro, manager of communications for Bodega Aurrera, around 7 a.m. on November 4, the day the store opened, there were roughly 300 people waiting to shop. He said there were only a few people protesting. According to earlier reports, a lawsuit was filed with the federal Attorney General’s office to prevent the store from opening. There were also allegations that an altar that was uncovered during the construction of the store’s parking lot was damaged. “I know there are some lawsuits, but I don’t know who filed them,” said Alejandro Martinez Muriel, the director of archaeology for the National Institute of Anthropology and History (INAH). “Nothing was damaged during construction,” he added. Martinez Muriel described the construction of the store as “more a political problem” than an archaeological problem. He said the store is more than a mile away from the ruins in a commercial area that includes a hotel, auto dealership, and other 8

MARK MICHEL

The opening of a Wal-Mart store near the magnificent ruins of Teotihuacán has created controversy.

businesses. INAH reviewed the archaeological and architectural implications of the construction project and found them to be satisfactory and that no laws have been violated. At one point, INAH stopped construction for four days to assess the possible threat to buried archaeological resources. Martinez Muriel said INAH conducted a ground-penetrating radar survey, dug approximately 120 test units, and extensively excavated three areas, one of which was where the altar was discovered. During this time they found no further evidence of archaeological resources. Once construction resumed, INAH had archaeologists on the site monitoring the work. Martinez Muriel said the altar was documented and care-

fully reburied where it was found. The area is now covered with grass and is no longer part of the parking lot. Wal-Mart officials said they were not familiar with any lawsuits that were filed concerning the store. “They couldn’t sue our company because everything was legal,” Castro said. The governor of the State of Mexico and the International Council on Monuments and Sites, an organization based in Paris, also reviewed the plans for the store. “It’s going to be a Mexican-type store employing Mexican people,” said Bill Wertz, a Wal-Mart spokesperson. He said the store would employ about 150 people. Wal-Mart is the largest private employer in Mexico. —Michael Bawaya winter • 2004-05

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Hopewell Artifacts Dated By New Technique Improvement could mean more accurate obsidian artifact dating.

BILL HARRINGTON/EVANS EAST

new obsidian hydration dating technique was recently used in the analysis of artifacts made of obsidian, a volcanic glass, from the Hopewell site and Mound City in central Ohio. Using secondary ion mass spectrometry (SIMS) to measure the amount of water, a team of researchers, led by archaeologist Christopher Stevenson of the Virginia Department of Historic Resources, concluded that artifacts from these sites are approximately 1,400 to 2,200 years old. These dates were corroborated by recent radiocarbon testing of associated materials. Obsidian hydration has been used to date obsidian artifacts for many years. When an artifact is fashioned from raw obsidian, the outer layers are chipped away, exposing the new surface to the air. Once the new surface is exposed, water begins to diffuse into the glass from the air, or from the soil in the case of buried material. By measuring the extent of this diffusion, an estimate of the age of the artifact can be made. The traditional approach is to take a thin cross-section of the artifact and measure the thickness of the hydrated layer with an optical microscope. The SIMS technique uses an ion beam to drill a tiny hole in the artifact that allows researchers to more accurately measure the hydrated layer.

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Researcher Steve Novak operates an ion mass spectrometry device.

“It’s clear it’s a better way to go than the old way,” Steven Novak, a member of the research team, said of the SIMS technique. “As time goes on it will be used more and more.” —Michael Bawaya

DNA From 65,000-Year-Old Hair Sequenced The analysis of ancient bison hair has important implications for archaeological research.

team of researchers recently sequenced mitochondrial DNA from 12 hair samples, the oldest of which is at least 65,000 years old. This achievement could play an important role in informing archaeologists about the peopling of the New World. The researchers, led by Tom Gilbert of the University of Arizona, sequenced shafts of hair from bison, as well as horses and humans. Radiocarbon dating of the bison hair samples indicated they are roughly 65,000 years old. Gilbert said these samples could actually be older, as radiocarbon testing can’t determine dates beyond this age. The human hairs, which are thought to be several hundred years old, are the youngest of the samples.

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The research shows “how far back you can push DNA evidence,” said archaeologist Robson Bonnichsen, the director of the Center for the Study of the First Americans at Texas A&M University. Several years ago Bonnichsen sequenced and dated hair samples from an 11,000year-old sheep. “Hair is the artifact that humans produce most of in their lifetimes,” he added, explaining that people shed a lot of hair. “It’s an enormously interesting material for archaeology.” Ancient DNA analysis of hair could inform researchers about the movement of people through time and space. Hair, Bonnichsen said, can yield information about race, gender, and even diet. Hair strands are sometimes found at ancient sites, but they were

thought to be of little analytical value because they contain tiny amounts of DNA. “Right now, everyone is using bone and tooth,” Gilbert said, referring to the type of remains that are most often analyzed for DNA. Extracting DNA from bone and tooth requires drilling a small hole in them, which damages the sample. “It’s much less destructive taking a small hair sample,” he said. “We’re literally using a single hair shaft,” and that shaft is less than an inch long. Though DNA analysis is promising, it’s limited by the number and quality of the samples. DNA is a chemical that degrades, especially in warm conditions. —Michael Bawaya 9

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Prehistoric Reservoirs Designated Civil Engineering Landmark Research sheds light on Mesa Verde water management systems.

KENNETH WRIGHT

his fall, the American Society of Civil Engineers designated the four prehistoric reservoirs at Mesa Verde National Park in southwestern Colorado as Historic Civil Engineering Landmarks in recognition of their remarkable engineering. Investigations of the Mesa Verde water management features by multidisciplinary teams of researchers have identified four large reservoirs, feeder and irrigation ditches, check dam systems, terraces, and stone alignments that were built and used between A.D. 750 and 1180 by inhabitants of the valley and mesa-top dwellings. “The Ancestral Puebloans that populated the riverless mesa top conquered the impossible by creating a water system to sustain their domestic and agricultural needs,” said Patricia Galloway, president of the American Society of Civil Engineers. “They are truly civil engineering pioneers.” While earlier researchers recognized the large depression on Chapin Mesa, formerly known as Mummy Lake, as a prehistoric reservoir, later investigators proposed that the feature may have served as a dance arena or other type of group assembly feature. Kenneth Wright of Wright Paleohydrological Institute and his colleagues recently conducted extensive multidisciplinary investigations of this and other water control features on the mesa, substantiating the feature’s function as a reservoir and putting to rest the long-standing debate. As a result, the feature has been renamed Far View Reservoir. Morefield Reservoir, the largest and oldest of the four Mesa Verde reservoirs, was also thought to be a ceremonial dance platform or ancient terrace remnant until Wright’s research proved different. “Although the features had been studied during the 1960s and 1970s, there was not scientific agreement on their original function because there was no identifiable proven water supply to furnish water for storage,” said Wright. “As a result,

The Morefield Reservoir mound of Mesa Verde was trenched in 1997. The trench exposed the centuries of sediment deposition that contained potsherds and tools of the Pueblo I and II periods.

in 1996 I sought and received a permit to excavate the reservoir. Once the reservoir trench was opened, there was no further doubt that it was a water storage facility.” Morefield Reservoir was built as early as A.D. 750 and held up to 120,000 gallons of water. The spoil from centuries of routine dredging of the reservoir formed a mound 16 feet tall and 200 feet in diameter. Fifty years later, a similar reservoir was built in Prater Canyon. It was discovered following the Bircher Fire in 2000. From A.D. 950 to 1100, Far View and Sagebrush reservoirs provided water for the Mesa Verde peple when their population was at its peak. “The Ancestral Puebloans knew more about water harvesting than modern engineers,” said Wright. “They collected and stored water where modern engineers would say there was none.” —Tamara Stewart winter • 2004-05

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Tracking Prehistoric Human Migration in Mesoamerica

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Strontium isotope analysis provides a tool for researchers. esearchers are learning about prehistoric human migration in Mesoamerica by using strontium isotope analysis. Researchers from the University of Florida and Rutgers University recently published the results of strontium isotope analysis at 216 sites throughout the Maya region in the Journal of Archaeological Science. Their study represents the first attempt to assemble a comprehensive strontium isotope database in the Maya region. Strontium isotope ratios can be measured in the ground from which humans obtained food and water. Strontium is a metallic element that’s absorbed into bones and teeth. Analysis of teeth is especially revealing, as the intake of strontium from birth to about age four forms a dental signature that remains unchanged through life. By matching the strontium ratios found in an individual’s teeth with those of a geographic area, researchers can identify the individual’s birthplace. Two strontium isotopes, strontium 87 and 86, are relatively abundant, and their ratios vary slightly across the Maya region. Because the two isotopes have different masses, their ratio in geological, biological, or water samples can be precisely measured. The researchers sought to determine whether the sources of dietary strontium in humans do indeed reflect the strontium ratios of exposed bedrock, and to see if the ranges of ratio values are sufficiently distinct among the principal Maya geocultural areas to infer past migration. “We discovered that the stron-

VICKI MARIE SINGER

american archaeology

Tourists view the ruins of Chichén Itzá from the top of the pyramid El Castillo. Strontium isotope analysis could help researchers determine how Maya cities like Chichén Itzá were populated.

tium isotopic signature of plants and water in each subregion of the Maya area generally reflected the ratio in the local soils and rock, and that the ratios for different subregions could often be distinguished,” said Mark Brenner, one of the researchers. “We were not surprised to find a latitudinal change in strontium ratio proceeding from the north coast of Yucatan to the southern lowlands of Petén, Guatemala, because surface limestone in the north is geologically young, whereas exposed limestone in the south is much older.” “Future studies can use the strontium isotope approach to test whether ancient leaders were locals or outsiders, and can be used to evaluate whether mass migrations may have occurred in response to inferred climate changes, environmental disasters, or

social upheavals,” Brenner said. Strontium analysis of skeletal remains excavated at Teotihucán in the Valley of Mexico was done by T. Douglas Price of the University of Wisconsin and several colleagues, revealing that immigrants probably played a large role in sustaining the massive city’s rapid growth. Based on architecture, artifacts, and burial patterns, two residential areas within the city appear to be distinctive ethnic compounds. Indeed, individuals buried within those areas exhibit large variations in strontium isotope ratios of tooth enamel, but little difference among bone samples, indicating that a number of the individuals migrated to the city after childhood. The technique has been applied to the American Southwest and Europe as well. —Tamara Stewart 11

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CHARLOTTE HILL COBB

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An archaeologist believes that music played an important role in Anasazi culture. In addition to shedding light on the Anasazi, her research could pioneer a new method of examining the past.

he world of the Anasazi has been a major research area for archaeologists of the Southwest, who have examined the nature and evolution of these prehistoric people from many angles. Emily Brown, a National Park Service archaeologist stationed in Santa Fe, New Mexico, is taking a fresh approach to the Anasazi: she is studying the instruments that were used to make music. Music would seem the most evanescent of sources, vanishing as soon as it is produced. If a thousand years from now, a cache of Jimi Hendrix guitars or the remains of Yo Yo Ma’s cello were uncovered, what would archaeologists infer? Would they see the instruments simply as a tool for entertainment? Or would they be able to trace the political and social impact of Hendrix and his guitars within an emergent counter-culture in the Vietnam War period? Or the social and cultural influences across half the world as Yo Yo Ma combined his cello with instruments and musicians from lands along the ancient Silk Road?

For Brown, combining archaeology and music was an almost inevitable life path. Her bachelor’s degree is a double major in music and anthropology, and her master’s and doctorate degrees are in archaeology. She classifies herself as an archaeomusicologist, a subdiscipline so recent that the term is unfamiliar even to many within the field. As David Hurst Thomas, curator of anthropology at New York’s American Museum of Natural History, commented, “It’s certainly not a term that’s on the lips of every archaeologist.” Brown finds music a natural gateway into the world of the past, pointing out that no society has ever been found that did not have music. Instruments are a primary source of music, which she views as a frequent component of ritual, which in turn was used for social and political ends. She has studied 1,300 Anasazi instruments from the greater Four Corners area where the Anasazi once lived. The time period of her research goes from A.D. 200, the first period from which Brown was able to find instruwinter • 2004-05

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EMILY BROWN / AMNH, CAT. #H/4562

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This fragment of a decorated wooden flute was found in the ruin of Pueblo Bonito at Chaco Canyon in northwest New Mexico. It was in a room that was

ments, to 1540, when the Spanish first entered the region. sive study like this before,” said Lekson, who first heard of The majority of these instruments are found in museum Brown’s work through a paper she delivered this past collections on the East Coast and in the Southwest, and summer at the Pecos Conference, an annual event that fosome are in National Park Service collections. Though cuses on Southwest archaeology. “You can learn a lot by the items from more recent excavations have looking at these kind of artifacts. There’s better documentation, she found that enough of them, they’re distributed across those recovered from earlier excavaenough space and enough time that you tions and now housed at the Smithcan wind up saying some pretty intersonian in Washington, D.C., the esting things.” Her research, he noted, American Museum of Natural Hisexamines “classes of evidence that tory in New York, and the two we didn’t customarily or conventionPeabody Museums in Boston ally consider.” had the more unusual instruBuilding on the four-part ments. methodology for the analysis of What she discovered is a surmusical instruments developed by prising range and variety of both Dale Olsen, an ethnomusicologist at materials used and the kind of Florida State University, Brown first sounds that could be produced. measured the instruments, noted any Falling into the basic percussion and features of form or decoration, and wind categories, the instruments yield a checked museum records or other sonic picture that in its own way is as publications for information. Setting up varied as the modern orchestral world Great care was taken in the decoration of this a computer database, she developed tyof strings, winds, and percussion. Ar- gourd rattle from Canyon de Chelly in northeast pologies and noted where and when chaeologist Stephen Lekson, an author- Arizona. The design was created by painstakingly the instruments were used. The second ity on the Anasazi culture, was surprised peeling back the outer skin of the gourd to step dealt with iconology. She examby the great number of instruments expose the lighter color underneath. ined anything depicted on the objects that Brown studied. themselves as well as musicians por“I’m not aware of anyone who’s done a comprehentrayed in rock art, kiva murals, and on pottery. The rock

EMILY BROWN / AMNH, CAT. #H/12557

EMILY BROWN / NPS / WACC CAT. #CACH811

thought to be used for storage of ceremonial items. With its flared end, it is similar to flutes used by the Hopi.

Rattles made by stringing hoofs together and attaching a wooden handle were first used at least as early as A.D. 500, and they were played by members of Zuni Pueblo as late as the 1890s. Found in 1895, this object is in good condition. Sinew, yucca, and human hair were among the materials used to make it.

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An examination of this walnut rattle reveals the ingenuity of its maker. Each yucca cord was carefully twined, then threaded through a native Arizona walnut shell. The

to make a handle. There are many rattles made by suspending hoofs or other objects in a similar way, but Brown found only two walnut rattles in the collections she researched. Both came from Canyon de Chelly.

walnut shells, pieces of petrified wood, or hooves. Rattlers referred to cases with things inside to shake, like gourds with dried seeds and leather cases stretched around wooden frames filled with seeds or small stones. She also studied delicate, small-scale rattles made of cocoons and

MAXWELL MUSEUM

art, for example, included a number of male flute players who were engaged in copulation with female figures, suggesting a connection between music and fertility. The third and fourth steps involved researching historical and ethnographic sources. These included Spanish accounts of Puebloan music that also yielded information on the places, such as plazas and kivas, where ritual performances took place. Then she added a fifth step of analyzing the material in archaeological terms: looking at distribution, provenience, and contextual information for each site. Architectural features of a site were of particular interest since they might offer clues about where and how the instruments were used. She did not actually play any of the instruments. “Curators would frown on the hot, moist air and vibrations going into objects in their care,” said Brown in reference to the wind instruments she studied. But she found that a great deal of sound information was gained simply by gently examining them, turning over small bells, for example, or handling a kiva bell made out of a resonant volcanic rock called phonolite. Her inventory conjures up a vivid sound world that includes flutes and whistles made of wood, reed, and a wide variety of bones from birds like turkey, Canada geese, whistling swans, and eagles, and animals like fox and bobcat. Bells ranged from the small copper and clay variety to the larger kiva bells. Rattles were divided up into two broad categories—tinklers and rattlers. Tinklers referred to objects that could be strung on a string, like seashells,

EMILY BROWN / NPS /

together in such a way as

WACC CAT. #CACH811

ends were then bound

Clay bells such as this one are rarely found at sites other than Pecos Pueblo (where this bell was found), near Santa Fe, and Awatovi, a Hopi site near the Hopi Mesas in northwestern Arizona. However, they are fairly common at these two sites.

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EMILY BROWN / AMNH CAT. #29.1/2319

EMILY BROWN / ASM, CAT. # 15991

EMILY BROWN / ASM, CAT. # GP 4243

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the tube-shaped nests of trapdoor spiders that could be filled with little seeds. Rasps, two pieces of wood or bone, one with a serrated edge, which yielded a percussive sound when rubbed together, were also examined. Curiously, her inventory does not include drums, which are ubiquitous in Pueblo culture today. Are they the as yet unseen sound elephant that some feel must have been there? Brown answered the question with more questions. “Is there a long tradition and we archaeologists just aren’t seeing it? Or are they really a much more modern invention or introduction, and, if so, how did that happen?” Apart from foot drums, the term given to trenches found in kivas that were covered with a board that was danced on, no drums have ever been found in the prehistoric Southwest. Brown has checked various sources in the archaeological record including rock art. She has found many images of the little flute player popularly known as Kokopelli, and depictions of people carrying rattles and wearing shell tinklers, but she has never found an image of a drum. Having documented and classified this large body of instruments, Brown then applied that data to questions of authority and leadership among the Anasazi. Would the instruments and the settings in which they were used yield possible connections between music and ritual, political and social life? The earliest instruments, wood and reed flutes of the Basketmaker period (A.D. 400–700), were few in number and most of them came from small village sites in northeastern Arizona. The sites contained rock art depicting flute players with shamanic characteristics like flying or wobbly legs. She concluded that a few shamans within the society probably used the instruments. Brown found less than a dozen instruments dating to the Pueblo I period (A.D. 700–900). These instruments were found primarily in the Mesa Verde region in southwestern Colorado. It was a period when people were settling down, becoming more agricultural, and it marked the first appearance of foot drums. Brown theorized that in the process of settling down, questions of land tenure and access to resources would arise and that it might be useful to have connections to the land in your mythology and rituals, of which dancing was a part. In the 1980s archaeologist Richard Wilshusen interpreted foot drums as representing sipapus, the holes where Pueblo ancestors emerged into this world according to the origin myth. There is also ethnographic evidence that dancing on the foot drums was viewed as a way of communicating with the underworld. The Pueblo II period (A.D. 900–1150) marks a fluorescence of Anasazi culture, epitomized by the civilization at Chaco Canyon in northwestern New Mexico. Designated a UNESCO World Heritage Site in 1987, Chaco contains many spectacular sites, some with vast plazas and great kivas. According to archaeological interpretations, Anasazi american archaeology

Based on depictions in kiva murals, archaeologists know shell tinklers such as these were sewn onto clothing. The shells made a pleasing sound at the slightest movement of the wearer.

Complete turtle shells, like the one used to make this rattle, are rare finds for archaeologists due to their fragility. Deer or antelope hoofs were strung along the shell’s exterior to create sound.

The handle of this unique basketry ladle is hollow and contains small pebbles or seeds that make a rattling noise when it is moved.

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MESA VERDE NATIONAL PARK CAT. #5MV1452

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The rectangular, stone-lined vault visible in the floor of this ceremonial chamber once had a covering of wooden planks, which made for a foot drum. Researchers studying the Southwestern Pueblo peoples early in the 20th century watched them dance on similar “drums” in ceremonies meant to communicate

social organization and relationships became more complicated, a development that Brown finds reflected in a fluorescence of new instruments. Their sonic power or visual appeal led her to theorize that they were used for public ritual spectacle as well as in the kivas. Some, like conch shell trumpets and small copper bells and shell tinklers imported on trade routes from Mexico, were valued items. Based on the volume of modern shell trumpets played by Tibetans, Pacific Islanders, and other cultures, Brown surmises the shell trumpets could have sent loud waves of sound across the plazas, while the copper bells, sometimes found attached to beads, and shell tinklers were eye-catching musical additions to costumes.

The hollow in the bottom of this mug held small pellets of clay that made it rattle when someone drank from it.

There were also elaborate versions of earlier instruments, notably the wooden flutes. At Chaco they are decorated with paint and carving instead of feathers like some of the Basketmaker flutes, and one example was more than three feet long. They were visually arresting, both in their size and their decorations, such as carved animals and painted geometric designs, though their pitches would have been low and relatively quiet. Brown also theorizes that these flutes could have been used to enrich the spectacle and also to invoke the past and thus add the weight of tradition to the Chaco rituals. Foot drums, which the Anasazi continued to use, could have served a similar purpose. Brown noted that the Chaco burials in which instruments were found contained more grave goods than any other burials uncovered in the Southwest. They included “thousands and thousands of pieces of turquoise, lots of pottery, and carved wood staffs that modern Hopi recognize as being ritual objects,” she said. Brown posits a close correlation between the people buried with so many luxury and ritual items and the music, which might have been either for secular or ritual performance. “Chaco was a lot about spectacle,” explained Brown. “It’s the people at the top who are putting these things on and they have either the power or the means to. And that’s what these [instruments] are being used for.” Early in the Pueblo III period (A.D. 1150–1300) Chaco winter • 2004-05

EMILY BROWN / ANMH, CAT. # 29.0/8237

with their ancestors. Brown was surprised to discover that these are the only kinds of drums archaeologists have discovered in the Southwest so far.

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EMILY BROWN / AMNH, CAT. # 29.0/2478

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Mimbres vessels are known for their detailed depictions of humans, animals, and otherworldly creatures. This drawing (left) based on a Mimbres vessel shows a man swinging a decorated triangular object that is probably a bullroarer. Bullroarers (right) were a relatively late invention for the Anasazi. A string was placed through this instrument’s hole and it was swung to make sounds.

Grande Valley, western New Mexico, and eastern Arizona, where their modern Pueblo descendants live. Brown theorizes that a surge in the number and types of instruments and the expanded variety of materials from which they were made reflect the rise of a new ideology. Rasps, clay bells, kiva bells, eagle bone flutes, and certain kinds of rattles and whistles appear for the first time. Some instruments, like rattles and tinklers, would have been easy to make and play. Others, like eagle bone flutes, were more difficult to play or construct, or the materials they were made from were hard to obtain. Elaborate kiva murals with people carrying instruments offered additional indications of an efflorescence of ceremony. Brown also noted architectural differences between the Pueblo IV pueblos and those from previous times, particularly a shift in the kivas, which overall are much re-

MAXWELL MUSEUM

and its outliers were abandoned due to an apparent extended drought. The disruption is reflected in the instruments. Wooden flutes disappear altogether and shell trumpets and copper bells vanish from Chaco and places where Chacoan influence spread. Brown theorizes that since these instruments had been significant components of ritual spectacle at Chaco, their absence points to a rejection of the Chacoan ideology. In her view, “Whatever rituals and ideology were in place at Chaco ultimately didn’t meet people’s needs during the great drought.” Commenting on these assumptions, Lekson noted, “I, and many archaeologists, consider Chaco to be a major turning point in Pueblo history, and if that’s reflected in music and the way music is produced—that’s very intriguing.” By A.D. 1400 the Anasazi had regrouped along the Rio

The Anasazi made bone whistles and flutes. Bone flutes, such as the one shown at the top of the photograph, were not particularly common until A.D. 1250. Most of them were made from the wing bones of eagles. The smaller whistles were made from the bones of fowl ranging from eagles to turkeys. Brown found more bone whistles than any other type of instrument.

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EMILY BROWN / AMNH CAT. # H/12787

EMILY BROWN / CASA GRANDE RUINS NATIONAL MONUMENT / WACC CAT. #CACH811

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(Left) Conch shells are used for trumpets in many parts of the world. The Anasazi’s version of this instrument was unusual in that they added mouthpieces to the ends. What the shell trumpets lacked in melodic variety, they made up for in volume. The sound likely echoed off the stone walls of Pueblo Bonito at Chaco Canyon, where this trumpet was found. (Right) This is the mouthpiece of a shell trumpet that has been decorated with a mosaic of turquoise.

ers “acquired and maintained their personal, social, and political power by keeping their sacred knowledge very secret and by having, for example, only certain people be able to play these eagle bone flutes. Whereas some of these other rattles and things that are pretty easy to make and play—many more people could use them in the public dances in the plazas.” Brown’s work has not yet, in her words, been “broadcast too widely.” Few archaeologists, she added, “feel comfortable dealing with the subject matter of music just because they don’t know much about it.” She views her theoretical connections between music, ritual, and social and political leadership as her most significant contribu-

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duced in number. Whereas before communities were composed of roomblocks that were near, and therefore seemed to be associated with, both great and small kivas, there are now big, rectangular plazas surrounded by large roomblocks that don’t appear to be associated with kivas. It was an arrangement where certain very public dances took place in the large plazas and a tradition of secrecy surrounded the most sacred knowledge of rituals performed in kivas. Brown theorizes that community leaders used kiva fraternities with specialized ritual knowledge, including use of certain instruments, as a means of organizing and knitting together these large communities. In her view, these lead-

Rasps such as these were played by scraping a stick across the ridges carved into the bones. Rasps were usually made from the shoulder blades of deer and antelope, like the large one at the top of this photograph, but they were also made from ribs and long bones. Brown examined one made from the leg of a dog.

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tion to the field of archaeomusicology. Though the field emerged in the mid-1980s, most of the studies, she explained, were done in Europe, with little in the Americas other than some research on the Incas, Aztec, and Maya cultures and a few other groups. “Apart from empires or cultures that have some sort of written record that you can relate this stuff to, it’s been viewed as a dicier proposition. People haven’t come up with a theory that links the performance or experience of music in the past to anything else, so that’s what I’ve tried to do.” Though disagreements may arise with Brown’s analysis, she is clearly expanding the archaeological toolbox. The scope and thoroughness of her research has produced a body of new data for the field and helped put the infant discipline she champions on solid ground. “To have somebody who has a feel for archaeology, literally from the ground up, a feel for musicology the way she does as a performance musician—I can’t imagine that’s happened before. The third component is her expertise with the museum collections because she did come and study our collection here in New York,” said Thomas. “I really think she’s blazing new ground here.” “Certainly no one has done anything like this project in the U.S. or, as far as I know, anywhere else either,” said Nan Rothschild, a Columbia University archaeologist who knows Brown’s work. “It provides a new dimension to the archaeological understanding of the prehispanic Southwest.” Brown also hopes that her work will benefit the public at large. She foresees that her research could flesh out displays of prehistoric instruments in places like visitor centers and give a more vivid sense of

Brown measures a bone whistle with a pair of calipers.

Anasazi life. She would like to break through the silence of the past, make its music come alive in the imagination. Or, as Shakespeare put it, give to “airy nothing a local habitation and a name.” JOANNE SHEEHY HOOVER has been a music lecturer for the Smithsonian Associates and a music critic for The Washington Post and the Albuquerque Journal.

MESA VERDE NATIONAL PARK CAT. #6835

JEFF BROWN

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These hoof rattles could be tied around the ankles of a dancer. This pair, which was found together, is on display at Mesa Verde National Park.

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Life Under Siege breeze riffles the emerald surface of the San Sabá River in Menard, Texas, a small town of shuttered Main Street storefronts and roadside cafes. Roughly 250 years ago the Spaniards came here to pursue their contradictory goals of bringing guns and God to the frontier. Evidence of that conflicted mission is turning up on a golf course on the outskirts of town, where Texas Tech University archaeologists Tamra Walter and Grant Hall are excavating Real Presidio de San Sabá, the largest Spanish-era frontier fort in Texas. They hope to discover how 100 Spanish soldiers and their wives and children—a total of 300 to 600 people—survived here at the northernmost edge of the Texas frontier. Confined

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to a stone fort about the size of a baseball field, they formed “a lonely island in a sea of Indian hostility,” according to historian Robert S. Weddle, author of . The Spanish had already been in Texas for 50 years by the time the presidio was founded in 1757 along with Mission Santa Cruz de San Sabá, the mission it was charged with protecting. But this far-flung outpost was 100 miles—a five to sevenday journey—from the established network of Spanish missions in San Antonio. “The mission was the primary reason for them being down in this country,” said Hall. “There was a group of Franciscan priests who for a long time had been wanting to Christianize the Lipan Apache who lived in this area of central Texas.”

The San Sabá Mission

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The excavation of a Spanish fort is uncovering clues to how soldiers and their families clung to survival at the edge of the Texas frontier. By Elaine Robbins

While some Spaniards had wanted to build the mission 70 miles to the east, where gold and silver had been found in the Llano Uplift, in the end the priests won out. Like the best-laid plans, though, the Spaniards’ dreams of converting the Apache quickly gave way to a harsher reality.The Lipan Apache feigned interest in the mission but never really took the priests’ outreach efforts seriously. Meanwhile, the Apaches’ many enemies—including the Comanche and other northern tribes the Spanish called Norteños— so resented the Spaniards’ friendship with the Apache that they formed their own alliance.Ten months after the mission was established, a force of 2,000 Norteños atamerican archaeology

tacked, killing eight Spaniards and burning the mission to the ground.The survivors fled to the presidio, where they desperately held on for 10 to 12 years. “Because of the nearly constant Indian threat, the people were basically confined to this area for all that time,” said Hall, pointing to the presidio compound. “And so they left a tremendous archaeological signature out here.” Now the archaeologists are examining that signature.With the help of nearly 450 volunteers from the 1,500-member Texas Archaeological Society (TAS), one of the oldest archaeological societies in the United States, they are undertaking the most extensive excavation of a Spanish presidio in Texas to date. Comparing evidence in 21

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GRANT HALL / JACK FEAGAN MURAL

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This mural depicts an exchange between the Franciscan friars and Lipan Apache Indians. The stone fort is seen in the background. Walter questions the accuracy of this work, given that, due to the threat posed by the Indians, the original wooden fort was replaced by a stronger stone structure. Once the fort was rebuilt of stone there was little interaction between the Spanish and the Lipan Apache.

the ground to historical records, they hope to get a more complete picture of life in a presidio that had the unwelcome job of serving as a human buffer against Indian attacks on San Antonio. “What were their daily activities like? How did they live under such miserable conditions? I don’t really have much to compare it to,” said Walter. “It’s the first opportunity we’ve had to look at a site like this to this extent. We can compare it to missions, but the missions were religious endeavors, while the forts are military installations.”

Guns, Food, and Lodging On a hot summer day at the edge of town, green and white shade tarps flutter festively in the breeze around the 8th hole of the Menard Country Club golf course, where the presidio dig is taking place. Under the tarps, teams of TAS volunteers work steadily, excavating units against a backdrop of evocative ruins of the 1936 reconstruction of San Sabá built in conjunction with the Texas Centennial celebration. Inside the country club, more volunteers sit at long tables and clean animal jawbones with toothbrushes. A few of this week’s finds are arranged on one table: sherds of Mexican majolica (blue-on-white pottery), fragments of green lead-glazed earthenware, decorative appliqués for gun muskets, animal bones, and a large groundstone. “This 22

year we’re actually finding some perishable materials that are a surprise to me,” said Walter. “We found silver thread and some cloth—probably from an officer’s uniform.” Although limited testing of the presidio site had been done as far back as 1934, extensive excavation at San Sabá began with the rediscovery of the mission in the early 1990s. Mark Wolf, a San Antonio architect who over the course of one eye-opening day traced his ancestry directly back to mission soldier Juan Leal, recruited Hall and historian Kay Hindes to help him search for the lost mission site. A historical document noted that the mission was on “the old Hockensmith place.” Hindes traced deed records to an alfalfa field a few miles east of Menard, and in 1993 the threesome surveyed the field. “The first thing we did was a metal detector pass,” said Wolf. “We found beer tabs and goat tags. Then we pulled a Spanish medallion of St. Anthony out of the ground. The hair just stood up on my neck. I thought, ‘Could Juan have actually held this?’” After confirming that the field was indeed the mission site, an excavation of the mission ensued that was completed in the summer of 1997. After that, the next logical archaeological project for Hall was the presidio. Excavation of the presidio began in 2000, when Hall brought the Texas Tech University archaeological field school to the site. Their first challenge was to uncover the fort’s original footprint, which lay underground beneath rubble from a collapsed wall of the reconstructed fort. The archaeolowinter • 2004-05

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eral deep trash middens, where thousands of animal bones—primarily from cows, but also from goats and sheep—are turning up. “Another really interesting thing we’re learning is that they were manipulating their breeding stock,” said Walter. The butchered bones of young animals—so young their bones hadn’t fused yet—indicates that the Spanish were butchering animals before they reached breeding age. “It suggests that they were at times desperate for food and were walking a fine line with their breeding stock,” said Walter. “They were having to kill these animals a little sooner than they would have liked in order to feed themselves and were therefore putting their breeding stock at risk.” Bones of deer, gar, and other wildlife in the trash middens confirms that the fort’s inhabitants also hunted and fished when they could. But it was often risky to leave the confines of the fort. According to The San Sabá Mission, “On February 29 [1767]...Lieutenant Joaquin Orendain and three soldiers disregarded a standing order and left the fort to hunt turkeys. Hostile Indians ambushed them, and all four were tortured and killed.” The archaeologists had hoped to find a cemetery that historical records indicated was located inside the fort. “Having skeletal remains would certainly tell us a great deal about mortality, disease, and general living conditions endured by the resident occupants,” said Walter. But no graves have yet been found. “The cemetery is said to have been moved. Fear of desecration by hostile native groups may have prompted the move.”

TIMOTHY MURRAY

gists got the help of farmers and ranchers, who brought their trucks and moved the rocks off the archaeological site, arranging them in numbered piles so they can be used in any future reconstruction. Work started in the northwest corner of the fort that, according to historical maps, once housed a chapel, a large bastion, and two-story officers’ quarters complete with an interior patio. Excavations revealed not only large foundation stones of the type that would have supported a two-story structure, but the remains of cobble flooring-stones that probably paved a highly trafficked interior plaza. In the summer of 2003, the archaeologists undertook broad testing of the presidio site. They laid a grid across the interior courtyard and excavated a checkerboard of 50 two-by-two-yard squares. They identified several “hotspots” that revealed a concentration of artifacts. Last summer the archaeologists focused on those hotspots, which they hope will reveal where activities such as cooking and blacksmithing took place. With the inhabitants living in a state of siege, feeding the fort’s 600 residents became a critical issue. “How were they making a living here? What kinds of food were they eating?” asked Walter. “We know that they were having trouble getting supply trains cut off from San Antonio. Indians would often raid the supply trains if they knew they were coming through. So they were often short supplied. It must have been a very hard life.” Clues to the Spaniards’ diet are being found in sev-

Members of the Texas Archeological Society field school dig inside the presidio ruins. The society’s field school ran for a week and during that time several hundred people were working at the site. Their efforts resulted in the recovery of a tremendous number of artifacts.

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Fortress Mentality

Volunteers excavate in a large trash pit in the northwest section of the fort

The archaeologists’ other main research goal is to reveal the original architecture of the fort. With the residents in a state of near-constant siege, they want to know how the fort was strengthened over time. “Originally there was a wooden stockade fort with gun platforms and adobe housing,” said Walter, citing historical records. “Later they replaced it with the stone fort. There are different theories about where that original wooden fort was.” Walter and Hall surmise that the original wooden fort was enclosed within the stronger stone structure, but they haven’t yet found any proof of this. This architectural information concerning the stone fort will be useful to the town of Menard, which hopes to eventually build an accurate reconstruction that will serve as a tourist attraction and point of historical interest. The original walls of the stone fort were “still intact until around 1895, when Menard started growing,” explained Hall. “They were going to build a courthouse and a bank and some commercial buildings downtown. Rather than go out in the hills and quarry their own limestone, they said, ‘We’ll just go out and load up the rock out there.’” The fort’s limestone blocks are said to have sold in town for 50 cents a wagonload. Walter also wants to learn what improvements were made after a 1767 inspection tour of frontier settlements ordered by the Spanish viceroy, when Presidio de San Sabá received an unfavorable report. A map made during the inspection by Spanish military engi-

where the skull of a horse was uncovered, as well as Spanish Colonial trash such as cattle bones, colonial ceramics, nails, gunflints, lead shot, and

How were the inhabitants getting supplies? The rich variety of ceramics found at the site—from Mexican majolica to Chinese porcelain—may provide some clues. To Walter, this unusual range of pottery is evidence of supply shortages. “They’re making use of everything they can because they know it’s going to be a long time before they can replace anything. They’re also recycling metal. We’re finding a lot of copper patches that were probably used on cooking pots and the like.” As is typical at Spanish colonial sites in Texas, the most common pottery type found at San Sabá is Mexican majolica. This attractive ceramic, originally imported from Spain, was by the 18th century made in Mexico City and Puebla. Mule trains delivered ceramics from Mexican towns to Spanish settlements in Texas. The archaeologists have also found small amounts of Chinese and Japanese porcelain-pottery that was imported into Acapulco and distributed throughout Spanish Texas. The excavation is also turning up sherds of Spanish olive jar, a thick ceramic jug filled with wine, olives, or olive oil that was shipped from Spain to the New World and reused as storage containers. 24

TIMOTHY MURRAY

broken wine bottle glass.

A member of the field school sketches a large bifacial knife recovered from the excavations.

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Grant Hall, the project’s codirector, stands in front of the west entrance to

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the presidio. Hall has been working on the project since 2000.

reached a crisis point. Indians managed to drive off the Spaniards’ entire herd of cattle. They harassed the fort’s inhabitants, trying to lure the soldiers out of the safety of the garrison. “The commander of Presidio de San Sabá [Felipe Rábago y Terán] made frantic appeals for help,” wrote Weddle. “These failing, he sought permission to abandon this spot, which he had begun to think was accursed. He himself was ill, and had been for several months. His men were dissatisfied and insolent.” Finally, with an epidemic—probably scurvy—raging through the presidio, Rábago decided to take action without waiting for permission from the crown. He ordered the fort abandoned, moving the men, women, and children south to the relative safety of Mission San Lorenzo. Although the crown would not officially abandon the fort until 1772, the move marked the beginning of what Weddle calls “the Spanish pivot in Texas.” In the following years, the Spanish would continue to retreat south, eventually abandoning the whole notion of civilizing the Texas frontier. The fort was abandoned to the lizards, but over the years, travelers took shelter within its walls. Spanish explorers camped there while searching for the legendary

neer Nicolas de Lafora shows bastions in the northwest and southeast corners, each of which housed several cannons. “I’m wondering if they didn’t add another bastion in the southwest corner after the inspection,” said Walter. “We’re seeing some architecture show up there that could indicate a bastion.” Numerous rooms were discovered along the south wall, which borders the San Sabá River. “At many Spanish forts and missions rooms were built along the outer walls of the site; at Presidio San Sabá rooms were indicated on the 1767 map along the north, east, and west walls only. However, we found evidence for structures along the south wall during our excavations. These structures were probably added after the 1767 map was created,” said Walter. About 50 tiny 12-feet-by-15-feet apartments lined the perimeter of the nearly square stone fort. Most of these rooms served as living quarters for soldiers and their families. A few were probably used as workshops or storage rooms. Excavations yielded burned rocks, ashy soil, and charcoal, indicating that the residents made kitchen fires directly on the rooms’ earthen floors. Sherds of pottery and gunflints were also found, along with personal effects such as trade beads, earrings, and a rosary bead. In one room they found a pair of glass cufflinks with a picture of a thistle set under glass.

The End Game By the winter of 1767, the situation inside the presidio american archaeology

Tamra Walter, the codirector, inspects a posthole feature.

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Children also participated in the field school, learning excavation and laboratory methods. Here several of them observe the washing, labeling, and cataloging of artifacts in the field laboratory.

ELAINE ROBBINS is a freelance editor and writer based in Austin. Her article “The World Wide Web of Antiquities” appeared in the Fall 2004 issue of American Archaeology. This decorative piece of copper may have adorned a chest or the butt of a rifle. Several of these types of artifacts were found at the site.

For more information about Presidio De San Sabá, visit the Web site www.texasbeyondhistory.net and select the Presidio De San Sabá site. winter • 2004-05

TIMOTHY MURRAY

This iron artifact found at the site may have been part of a horse bridle.

riches of the Lost San Sabá Mine (at last check it was still lost). German settlers used it as a Comfort Inn as they searched for silver and cheap land. Now the archaeologists have the difficult job of sorting through over 200 years of human presence. Thanks to the huge volunteer workforce, the excavation has turned up a staggering number of artifacts to catalog and study. “We’re talking tens of thousands of artifacts coming through,” said Walter. “We have an entire room full of bone alone.” Only then will the analysis begin, offering a clearer picture of life in a state of near constant siege. These artifacts conjure up the complexity and contradictions of Spanish aspirations on the Texas frontier. Said Wolf, “Last year we found multiple crucifixes here at the presidio.” He laughs loudly. “Finding a crucifix next to a musket ball; there’s something very interesting about that relationship.”

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Celebrating 25 Years

OF PRESERVATION A small organization with big ambitions, The Archaeological Conservancy has accomplished much over a quarter of a century. By Kathleen Bryant

hat do the following have in common: a 1750s. Among the Pleistocene bison bones uncovered at Civil War battlefield near the Mississippi the Burnham site, archaeologists found flakes of stone River, a Mesa Verde Anasazi pueblo comthat could be tools made by humans as long as 40,000 plex, the remnants of a 16th-century years ago—a discovery that could affect the First Ameribarrio in Arizona’s Sonoran Desert, and cans debate, one of the most controversial topics in Amera Pleistocene-era bison bones site in north-central Oklaican archaeology. homa? Though the items on this list might sound as alike Preserving the rich and varied past of our continent, as oranges and orangutans, you’ve probably guessed the from Paleo-Indian campsites to historic battlefields, has common thread that links them all is The Archaeological been The Archaeological Conservancy’s focus for the past Conservancy. They are among the nearly 300 archaeological sites the Conservancy has preserved, all of which contain valuable information about our country’s past. Battery D, near Helena, Arkansas, marks the location where Confederate troops struggled unsuccessfully to capture a Mississippi River port from Union defenders. The Joe Ben Wheat Site Complex in Colorado’s Montezuma Valley includes 90-plus rooms and 14 kivas dating to the 13th century. The Barrio de Tubac is the southern portion of Arizona’s first permanent European settlement, established by Spanish colonists in the Conservancy president Mark Michel, board member Stewart Udall, and Southwest regional director Jim Walker.

CHRISTINE PRESTON

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25 years. It all started when a small group of people working together to enact the Archeological Resources Protection Act of 1979, which empowers federal agencies to prosecute people who loot publicly-owned sites, decided to take their success even further. Inspired by the Nature Conservancy, they formed The Archaeological Conservancy in 1979, with the goal of protecting cultural resources on private land. The Ford Foundation and Rockefeller Brothers Fund contributed start-up grants, and by the end of 1980, the Conservancy acquired its first sites, including the Hopewell Mounds near Chillicothe, Ohio. That acquisition is now part of Hopewell Culture National Historic Park, which is administered by the National Park Service. According to cofounder and president Mark Michel, the Conservancy’s mission is “to preserve a good sample of all archaeological sites left in the U.S. so that future generations are ensured a research base of various kinds of cultures that have existed on this continent for the past 13,000-plus years.” Preserving a varied research base is like building a portfolio of archaeological stock, leveraged to gain from advancing technology. Michel cites as a “classic example” the Borax Lake site in California, first excavated by archaeologist Mark Harrington in 1941. Harrington unearthed large, fluted obsidian points he attributed to the Folsom culture. When Harrington declared the site to be at least 10,000 years old, others scoffed at the idea of human presence in northern California that long ago. In the 1950s and again in 1964, archaeologists returned to Borax Lake, test-

Sterile fill dirt is placed over geotextile material that covers archaeological resources at Madera Reserve in Green Valley, Arizona. These measures ensure that the resources are protected while the land serves as an open

ing Harrington’s findings as well as their own. They used a new technology, obsidian hydration, that was introduced as an archaeological dating method in 1960. Eighty obsidian hydration readings obtained from man-made tools found at the site confirmed Harrington’s dates, shifting perceptions about how early human populations expanded in the New World. Obsidian hydration, now relatively common, continues to be refined as even newer technologies emerge. Borax Lake, a Conservancy site since 1989, continues to be preserved and studied. And as past meets future, archaeologists using emerging technologies may glean even more from Borax Lake and other sites, answering questions that continue to concern humanity today such as plant uses, social structure, population pressure, or climate change, to name a few. Archaeologists conducting research on Conservancy

THE ARCHAEOLOGICAL CONSERVANCY

Establishing a preserve is hard work. In the case of Parkin Mounds in eastern Arkansas, the Conservancy had to move people and their homes off of an 18-acre mound. Parkin is now a state park.

sites employ some of the most sophisticated technologies, such as remote sensing and laser scanning. Three-dimensional computer models were used to produce a CD-ROM that allows people to “tour” Sherwood Ranch Pueblo, an Arizona preserve, even though the great majority of its approximately 100 rooms have been backfilled. “One of the main reasons I wanted to make sure sites were preserved was because of the technologies being developed over new generations,” says Conservancy cofounder and board member Jay Last. No stranger to changing technology, Last helped start industry-shaking Fairchild Semiconductor, which developed the first practical integrated circuits. Important research is routinely conducted on Conservancy preserves. A four-year limited excavation at Albert Porter Pueblo in southwest Colorado by the Crow Canyon Archaeological Center yielded new information about the relationship between the Mesa Verde and

space preserve.

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JIM WALKER

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MARK HARMEL

JIM WALKER

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preserve surrounded by homes. POINT acquisitions can proceed very quickly. Consider, for example, the DePrato Mounds site, purchased in 2004. According to Michel, someone driving through the countryside around Ferriday, Louisiana, spotted a hand-painted “FOR SALE” sign and turned down a lane to investigate. The advertised home stood atop a mound site. After a phone call to the Conservancy, a deal to purchase the property was sealed within the week. The DePrato site is part of a fivemound complex on a natural river levee, incorporating features that date from A.D. 400 to 800. It’s an acquisition that especially pleases Vin Steponaitis, Volunteers often play an important role in the Conservancy’s efforts. Several of them stabilize a stone wall in this photograph taken at Atkeson Pueblo on Oak Creek in Arizona. a University of North Carolina archaeologist, who has a longstanding interest Chaco Canyon Anasazi. At the Barton site in northwest in the archaeology of the Lower Mississippi Valley. SteponMaryland archaeologist Bob Wall has discovered a hearth aitis, who also directs the archaeology research laboratoand stone tools that may be approximately 16,000 years ries at the university, has been a member of the Conserold. Should further research confirm these findings, Barvancy since its early days. He joined the board in 2000, ton would be one of the oldest known delighted to be associated with an organsites in the country. ization he terms “essential.” He now It still surprises Last “how quickly serves as the Conservancy’s chairman. major sites are on the verge of disapSteponaitis explains, “On both state pearing.” He decided to do something and federal levels, the legal structure in about it, launching one of the Conserthe U.S. is set up to protect sites on pubvancy’s most successful ventures, the lic lands. In the face of development Protect Our Irreplaceable National Treapressure, the only way to save sites on sures program or POINT. In fall 2000, private land is to purchase the land.” Last pledged a million-dollar challenge Though the POINT program has amount for emergency acquisitions, added speed and maneuverability to the specifically for those projects in which Conservancy’s acquisitions, slow and having cash on hand would make the steady sometimes still wins the race. Andifference between preserving a site or drews Ranch, a Chacoan outlier about 25 losing it to development. For example, miles south of the great houses along the Smokes Creek site, a 17th-century Jay Last helped found the Conservancy. He Chaco Wash, was acquired in 1993 after Iroquois village south of present-day continues to play an important role in the nearly 13 years of negotiations, proving Buffalo, New York, would have been organization. that persistence pays. swallowed by suburbia if cash-poor deSo does diplomacy. The most comvelopers hadn’t agreed to a deal with the Conservancy. plex acquisitions, according to Michel, often involve multiToday, thanks to POINT funds, the village is a seven-acre ple owners who don’t get along. More than once, the Con-

American Archaeology magazine launches

Opening of first regional office 1987

TAC begins operations 1980

american archaeology

1997

100th site, Lamb Spring, is acquired 1994

2001

200th site, Maddox Island, is acquired 2000

POINT is established

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The Conservancy’s Stallings Island preserve had to be cleared of thick vegetation in preparation for a University of Florida dig in June of 1999. The logistics were complicated. The site is in the middle of an island with no dock or boat landing and there are no barges on that part of the Savannah River, so we couldn’t move a tractor and bush mower to the island. High voltage lines that cross the island prevented us from moving this equipment by helicopter. Two nearby municipal drinking water intakes precluded using herbicides. We tried clearing the site by hand in March, but progress was too slow. So we resorted to goats. Goats will eat any vegetation. I purchased a herd of goats and transported them through downtown Atlanta during the morning rush hour. SCANA Energy employees provided a boat and their goat wrangling skills to help me move the herd to the island. The job proved to be too big even for the goats, and we ended up clearing a lot of the site by hand. The goats became a novelty to the field school students and occasionally a nuisance. On several mornings the crew would arrive and find a goat stuck in an excavation unit.

servancy has played a peacemaker role among family disputes. Conservancy staffers also know tax and property laws, and occasionally need to resolve challenges that are less about legalities and more about logistics. One site, a Mississippian village mound in eastern Arkansas, was inhabited by a small community. The presence of people and homes on top of the mound actually preserved it over the years, keeping it from being looted. Lot by lot, the Conservancy acquired the mound site. One owner, however, was particularly reluctant to sell her home despite Michel’s many visits, featuring hours spent rocking on the owner’s front porch and talking to her about the site. “You know, I don’t think there’s anything here,” she confided. At last, she agreed to sell, with

—Alan Gruber, Southeast Regional Director

one condition—that the Conservancy relocate her…and her house. “The house needed to be moved across a big field, and it got stuck in the mud,” Michel remembers. “It was touch and go for awhile, but it worked out well in the end for everyone.” The former owner still lives in her beloved home, now located in town across from a community center for seniors. When archaeologists began working at the site where her house once stood, they recovered burials containing two effigy pots shaped to resemble human heads. “That was an interesting project,” Michel says, “and one of my favorites in that we were able to acquire the land for a park 30 miles from Memphis.” The 17-acre site, likely the village of Casqui mentioned in Hernando de Soto’s 1541 expedition records, is known today as Parkin Mound Archeological State Park. The park, which now serves as a research station of the Arkansas Archeological Survey, also includes an interpretive exhibit area. Acquiring sites can be the result of careful planning or of fortuitous opportunity. The Conservancy’s vice president and director of the Southwest regional office, Jim Walker, describes the systematic acquisition process, used in the mid-1980s to acquire Sinagua culture sites in the rapidly growing University of Florida researchers investigate the Stallings Island site. The Conservancy resorted to a novel, but not entirely successful, approach—using a herd of goats to clear the land. Verde Valley area of central Arizona. “The 30

JENNIFER GRUBER

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Conservancy begins by asking archaeologists working in a region or state to provide a list of what they consider to be significant sites on private land,” he says. Based on this, the Conservancy will create a priority list of as many as 20 sites and begin researching ownership. Property owners are contacted and asked if they are aware of the archaeological resources on their land. The Conservancy will then request a meeting and go out on the property with the landowner to view the site. “When I see a feature or resource that has been undisturbed for the last 20 or 30 years, I know that property owner has thought at least once about who will protect the resource after he or she is gone,” explains Walker. “These are the landowners I really like to meet.” Walker joined the Conservancy in 1981, with “a newly minted” MBA, an undergraduate degree in anthropology, and experience selling real estate. “I didn’t understand then the motivation of those people who’d been protecting sites on their land. I was surprised the first time a landowner donated property. Now I’m surprised when they don’t.” Most of the Conservancy’s 300 acquisitions in 39 states have been partial or total donations, the “perfect solution,” according to Walker, for those who want to see their legacy of protection continued. Sometimes acquisitions are the result of opportunity rather than planning. The Conservancy often works with developers who’ve discovered archaeological resources and who need solutions that will help them satisfy federal permitting requirements, or who seek alternatives to mitigation through excavation. “I can prove to a developer that if he is dealing with a complex site, one with habitations or

Denis and Marcia Boon donated Boon Pueblo in southwestern Colorado’s Montezuma Valley. Boon is a Pueblo I (A.D. 700–900) site, which are rarely found in this area.

other features, it is cheaper to donate the property for preservation than it is to excavate,” says Walker. The solution is often creative and innovative—preserving a site as part of the rough in a golf course, for example. For developers who hesitate, Walker jokes that he keeps a copy of Steven Spielberg’s movie Poltergeist in his briefcase. Typically, the Conservancy will enter into a one- or twoyear-option agreement with the landowner, and then seek funding. Where option agreements aren’t possible, POINT funds are used. Once a site is acquired, the property is fenced. If there is existing damage, the site is mapped and

In 1984 a developer friend of mine was grading a new street for a subdivision he was building when human bones were unearthed, halting construction. Archaeologists discovered a well-preserved burial mound from which they recovered the remains of 125 individuals. They estimate that more than 1,000 individuals could be buried in the mound. The subdivision, which consists of million-dollar homes situated along the Sacramento River, was subsequently built around the mound. I lived down the street from the site so I frequently drove by it, pondering its fate as I passed. In 2001 I became the Conservancy’s Western regional director, and in 2003 I found myself negotiating with the developer to acquire the site. The developer, who is very successful and is involved in numerous projects, apparently forgot about the small lot on which half of the mound is located. At my behest, he agreed to donate the land to the Conservancy. Another developer owns the other half of the site, which now known as Souza Mound. I’m now working to acquire that portion of the mound.

MARK HOVEZAK

JIM WALKER

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—Gene Hurych, Western Regional Director

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backfilled to protect it. The cost is hours, weeks, sometimes even years of work, and of course, money. The Conservancy’s annual budget runs about $3 million. “This is not a whole lot of money as far as things go,” Michel says. “We pride ourselves on getting a lot done with the resources we have. Of course, with more funding, we could accomplish a great deal more.” Funding comes mostly from member contributions. The Conservancy also receives support from a wide range of foundations all over the country, and from government sources. Much of this money is targeted for specific projects. Raising needed money during the past couple of years has been tough, Michel admits, and yet the Conservancy continues to expand. From a small group of people with a common purpose, the Conservancy has grown into “a large, stable, widely recognized organization, reflecting a lot of hard work on the part of many,” says Last. The Conservancy currently has regional offices in Sacramento, Atlanta, Albuquerque, Columbus, and Washington, D.C. The board encompasses business leaders, professional archaeologists, and conservationists, including Stewart Udall, Secretary of the Interior under presidents Kennedy and Johnson. Udall says that he has watched with “delight and amazement” the Conservancy’s growth from a small, Southwestern-based organization to the national organization it is todayss, adding, “I don’t

think anyone predicted how strong the response would be in other parts of the country.” Membership, now more than 20,000, tripled since the debut of American Archaeology in 1997. The magazine publishes articles about archaeology in North America as well as the Conservancy’s latest acquisitions and research taking place on its preserves. The magazine also has information about archaeological tours—ranging from Mississippian mound complexes to Maya cities to Peruvian tombs—that the Conservancy organizes and leads. During its early years, The Archaeological Conservancy managed to preserve about four sites annually. Recently it’s saved about 30 sites a year. “We hope to expand that in the future. Over the next 10 years, we’d like to more than double the number of sites under our protection, adding 500 or more,” says Michel. “While we will continue to add sites in the Southwest, we are adding emphasis to other parts of the country.” The plan is to target areas where the Conservancy’s presence isn’t yet felt, particularly the Plains and New England states. In 2004, the Conservancy added its first site in North Dakota. The Biesterfeldt site is an 18th-century village believed to be Cheyenne, though researchers have noted Mandan and Arikara influences, including a large ceremonial lodge. Because the site’s future is now assured, archaeologists will be able to investigate how and when the Cheyenne, a settled horticultural Eastern Woodlands tribe, pushed west and took to hunting bison. The peopling of this continent, from Clovis hunters to Plains tribes to Euro-American settlers to African-American slaves, is a story that continues to unfold. The Conservancy is determined that that story be told.

In July of 1995, I received a call from David Pancake of Capon Bridge, West Virginia. Pancake, whose KATHLEEN BRYANT is a freelance writer whose work has name suggested a character in children’s fiction, was appeared in Arizona Highways, Plateau Journal, and Sunset. a man grappling with an ominous fact. Capon Bridge was the site of Fort Edwards, a key defensive work on the Virginia frontier during the French and Indian War. Hampshire County, for which Pancake served as economic development director, hoped to acquire and develop the land as a historical park, but the property had been sold to a developer who was planning to make it a mobile home community. However, the developer was willing to sell the three-acre property for $30,000 if the deal could be completed in 45 days. Apparently Pancake had spent a long, unsuccessful morning cold-calling foundations in a desperate attempt to raise the money. When told that buying endangered archaeological sites on short notice was a specialty of ours, he could only manage an incredulous “What?” After traveling to Capon Bridge, I concluded we should buy the site. The Conservancy acted so expeditiously that the 45-day deadline was met with over a month to spare. In 1999 the Conservancy transferred ownership of the site to the Fort Edwards Foundation, and in 2001 I attended the opening of the Fort Edwards visitor center.

MARK MICHEL

—Paul Gardner, Midwest Regional Director

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RESISTING REMOVAL In the early 19th century the federal government removed many Native Americans from their lands. But some were able to resist the government’s effort. Archaeologist Mark Schurr is discovering how some Native Americans successfully resisted removal. By Cliff Terry

CHARLOTTE HILL COBB

he Collier Lodge site is located about 10 miles south of Valparaiso in northwest Indiana. The site is close to, and named after, the now-dilapidated Collier Lodge, which was built in 1898. In its glory days, the lodge hosted hunters who came from as far as Europe to shoot waterfowl. On a perfect summer day a group made up overwhelmingly of volunteers was busily excavating this site in search of evidence of its former inhabitants—the Potawatomi Native Americans who were dislocated in an ominous-sounding era known as the Removal Period. “One of our goals has been to understand the diverse strategies that Native Americans used to resist or adapt to removal,” said Mark R. Schurr, an archaeologist with the Uni-

versity of Notre Dame who directed the investigation. “Initially, I thought all the Native Americans had been removed from the area. But I started to find out that there were a lot that resisted removal.” “After the War of 1812, a lot of the veterans were promised land,” said Ben Secunda, a graduate student in American history at Notre Dame who is writing his dissertation on the Potawatomi and providing historical information for Schurr’s investigation. “Consequently, the government wanted to take the Indians’ land and move them west of the Mississippi River. They wanted to make Kansas and Oklahoma one big Indian reservation.” The federal government considered the tribes to be sovereign nations, Schurr said, and therefore the

The Potawatomi probably camped in traditional wigwams, but government land payments made it possible for them to buy many manufactured goods, such as kettles, rifles, and cloth. Their selective blending of new ways with old ones is reflected in the archaeological remains found at these sites.

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JOHN HUDSON/KANKAKEE VALLEY HISTORICAL SOCIETY

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This historical photograph of Collier Lodge indicates what a popular destination it once was. The location on the edge of the marsh, on the main channel of the Kankakee River, allowed sportsmen to travel by boat from the lodge to their favorite hunting or fishing spots. This area was also an attractive spot for prehistoric and historic peoples who wanted to use the abundant wild resources.

and these investigations have resulted in theories about how different strategies are reflected in material culture.

MARK SCHURR/NORTHERN INDIAN CENTER FOR HISTORY

government tried to effect removal by methods other than force. The Removal Period started in 1795 with the Treaty of Greenville, the first major treaty in which local Native American tribes started to cede land in what was then known as the Old Northwest (now Indiana, Michigan, Illinois, Wisconsin, Ohio). “We know a lot about the people who voluntarily participated in removal or who were unsuccessful in resisting it,” Schurr explained. “But we know almost nothing about those who were successful in their resistance. And there were quite a large number of these. Reviews of treaty and land records show they were peppered across the landscape. The big question is, how did they do it? How could they resist what most people think of as the unstoppable tide of American expansion? “One thing we have learned is that there was no one strategy. Instead, there were many, some very successful and some not. We’ve become very interested in learning more about these diverse strategies. And because most of those who were successful are largely invisible in historical records, we are using archaeological methods to help us explore this complex topic and try to answer our questions.”

SINCE 1996, SCHURR HAS WORKED AT SITES OF NATIVE Americans who successfully resisted removal, such as the Bennac Village in the Potawatomi Wildlife Park in north-central Indiana, and the Pokagon Village in southwest Michigan, 34

Leopold Pokagon and his followers resorted to Christianity and economic self-sufficiency to resist removal.

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lodge was turned into a store, motorcycle club hangout, and even a brothel. On this morning in the second week of the threeweek dig, about 30 volunteers were outfitted with shovels, trowels, root clippers, brushes, and dustpans. Schurr used remote sensing to locate what were presumed to be archaeological deposits. Schurr’s crew then dug a series of small holes at 15-foot intervals, examining the soil profiles and screening the excavated dirt for artifacts that were later taken to a nearby barn that served as a field lab. Energetic and enthusiastic, Schurr was a patient teacher, dispensing advice and an occasional admonition, as in the case when one volunteer started digging into a feature that obviously was supposed to be left intact. Last year Schurr conducted a two-day survey of the Collier Lodge site. He and his crew found historic ceramics dating to the Removal Period, which seemed to be concentrated in a relatively small area. The site had never been plowed, so there were some relatively deep archaeological deposits and the chance to find intact features. “We’ve found a lot of pottery that was imported from

CHERYL KELLY

But he wanted data from a site where the Native Americans were removed to test his theories against, and Collier Lodge, which he learned of from the Kankakee Valley Historical Society, a local organization, fit that description. “It may be, even if they tried to resist removal, they didn’t succeed,” said Schurr. “However, we still need more information. We need to see if we can find records that would locate specific Native Americans at a specific date. Was it a seasonal camp, or did some Potawatomi actually live on the site for a while? The artifacts suggest more than just a brief occupation.” “Teddy Roosevelt reputedly hunted at Collier Lodge, and it seems, so did Lew Wallace, who wrote Ben-Hur and who had property here,” said John Hodson, president of the historical society, which plans to restore the structure. “We have a statement that Grover Cleveland hunted here, and we know that Benjamin Harrison was here after he was elected President. He came out and got lost. A local farmer found him and took him in for the night. After that, he received seeds from the White House for 20 years.” In its not-so-glorious days, after the hunting died out, the

Judy Judge and Tom DeCola prepare to check the depth of their excavation unit with a line level. Their unit contained a prehistoric trash pit dating to about A.D.

1350. Animal bones from that trash pit will be compared with the kinds of animals consumed by the Removal Period Potawatomi.

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neers—corroborated by historical records, indicate that some Native Americans did indeed live in cabins. Those who resided in the traditional wigwam weren’t as successful in resistance. Wigwams were serviceable for a migratory society practicing some farming and living off of wild game and other resources. But this way of life became increasingly less viable as other settlers moved in to the area and the game diminished. The notion of finding better hunting west of the Mississippi was a major incentive for the Potawatomi who voluntarily participated in removal. It appears that the Potawatomi were living in traditional housing at Collier Lodge. Though brick was discovered at the site, it seems to be associated with pottery styles from the 1840s, which is after the Removal Period and during a time when white settlers occupied the site. “The difference between living in a cabin versus a wigwam is actually an indication of how deeply they were embedded in the traditional subsistence system, which was migratory with the seasons,” he said. “Those who lived in a cabin had the resources to stay tethered to one area probably almost all the time, and, for whatever reason,

Mark Schurr sprays a light mist of water on an excavation floor to bring out subtle soil colors. Because the site was occupied off and on for at least 2,500 years, careful excavation is necessary to isolate Removal Period features from those of other eras.

England dating to the 1820s and 1830s,” he said. “At that time, Native Americans were pretty wealthy. They were getting annuities, or annual payments, for land cessation. It’s all stuff that was imported from the Staffordshire potteries, which gives us the right time period. Staffordshire was responsible for all the fine earthenware (plates, bowls, cups, etc.) that was available during the Removal Period. Their styles were distinctive, and American potteries were not producing similar quality wares.” They also found Native American artifacts similar to those found at other removal sites such as scrap brass (probably from producing clothing decorations), small round beads that were also used to decorate clothing, and a fragment of hand-carved sandstone pipe identical to one found at Pokagon Village.

Village who had successfully resisted removal were all living in fairly substantial log cabins with brick fireplaces and glass windows. He found large amounts of brick fragments, window glass, and nails that he at first assumed were from a later pioneer occupation. However, the archaeological evidence—the ceramics predated the pio36

CHERYL KELLY

SCHURR CONCLUDED THAT THE POTAWATOMI AT POKAGON Many of the volunteers who worked at the site were very experienced. Art Geary, Chrissina Burke, and Charlotte Cable all have degrees in anthropology and prior field experience that they put to good use to map a feature. The feature is a brick layer that was probably part of a previously undocumented structure.

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CHERYL KELLY

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Removal Period artifacts like the blue shell-edged plate rim sherd (far left) and a ribbed white clay pipe bowl fragment (center) were imported from Europe and show that the Potawatomi could afford to buy luxury goods. The other artifacts are prehistoric sherds and stone tool fragments that would have been manufactured on or near the site. They are very similar to the types of things used by the Potawatomi several centuries before European contact.

that made it possible, or easier, for them to resist removal. This is something I’m still working out, and will be a big part of future work at the site.” A faunal expert will identify the numerous animal bones that were recovered during the excavation. Schurr believes that if the Potawatomi were practicing traditional subsistence, evidence of wild, rather than domesticated animals such as cows, pigs, and chickens, should predominate, as it does at other Native American sites from this time period. Once the bones are identified and quantified, assumptions about diet can be made. For example, at Pokagon Village, it’s thought that the residents ate mostly pork and beef. There’s virtually no evidence of wild animals like deer and fish being consumed. Schurr’s teams found evidence of two different strategies to prevent removal at the Pokagon and Bennac sites. Leader Leopold Pokagon and his followers developed ties to Christian missionaries—first Baptists, and then Roman Catholics after the Baptists became pro-removal. “They seem to have consciously used these ties to develop economic self-sufficiency, adapting to traditional farming practices and division of labor,” Schurr noted. “They claimed a special status as the Catholic Potawatomi as a reason that they should not be removed, and used economic self-sufficiency to free themselves from dependence on government treaty payments. “At Bennac, it appears that this band’s leader, Stephen Bennac, emphasized the French portion of his mixed ethnic identity—he was mixed Potawatomi and French—to make himself appear less Indian. His daughter, Mary Ann, briefly married a white American interpreter named Joseph McCartney, who worked for the government during the removals, and she and her father were able to get titles to several sections of land. Unlike Pokagon, the resiamerican archaeology

dents of Bennac’s village were removed or dispersed, and Bennac used the land solely for his own family.” Having recovered abundant collections of British ceramics from Pokagan and Bennac, they compared the quality of the respective assemblages in order to assess the economic status of the sites’ occupants. The Bennac site had the better pottery, suggesting that Bennac and his family enjoyed a relatively affluent lifestyle, a conclusion supported by historical records. “Of course, we are looking forward to plugging the Collier Lodge ceramics into this comparison to see where they will fit—providing a good clue as to the economic status of unsuccessful resisters,” Schurr said. The faunal assemblage at Pokagon was dominated by domesticated animals, a discovery that, at the time, surprised them, as it was a sharp contrast to the assemblages of other known Native American sites that consisted primarily of wild animal remains. Further historical research into the ecology and economics of life at Pokagon suggested that they were keeping livestock; there are historical accounts of annuity payments in the form of hogs and cattle, and of treaty provisions such as having fences built. “That explained the unusual faunal assemblage very nicely,” Schurr pointed out. “Pokagon also produced some other interesting artifacts, including fragments of slate writing boards. Apparently, they were attempting to improve their level of literacy.” At Bennac, they found evidence of one cabin and perhaps a number of wigwams that were occupied seasonally for a short period of time; at Pokagon there was evidence of at least two cabins and one chapel, and two separate middens in different parts of the site, the contents of which apparently accumulated over perhaps two decades. “Based on that data, it appears that the inhabitants of 37

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JOHN HUDSON/KANKAKEE VALLEY HISTORICAL SOCIETY.

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Schurr’s crew works at the site. The building that was once the renowned Collier Lodge is seen in the background. Schurr said scholars know a good deal about the Native Americans who agreed to be removed, but very little about those who successfully resisted removal.

Pokagon were much more sedentary, and that Pokagon may have been a more effective leader at holding his community together for a longer period of time,” Schurr surmised. “As our research continues, we assume we will see strategies other than these that succeeded, and some that were tried and failed.”

THE “TERMINAL INCIDENT” OF THE REMOVAL PERIOD, according to Schurr, took place at a Potawatomi settlement outside of Plymouth in north-central Indiana after 1837. Frustrated by the mixed success it had in removing the Native Americans, the federal government resorted to force. Secunda said the Potawatomi “were literally rounded up by ropes, lassos, and taken right out on a Sunday morning during church services.” In 1830, Congress passed the Indian Removal Act that stripped Native Americans of title to their lands east of the Mississippi in exchange for ownership of lands west of the river. Removal thereby became mandatory, but Schurr said it took approximately 10 years to implement the law. Around noon at Collier Lodge, everyone broke for a hot dog and potato chip lunch, then resumed work. But by late afternoon, the number of volunteers dropped off consider38

ably. “We peak around the lunch hour,” Schurr said with a wry smile. “Only the diehards are left at the end of the day.” The Collier Lodge artifacts are being analyzed at a lab at Notre Dame. “It will probably take the next year just to organize everything, let alone really understand the complex archaeological record of the site,” he said. “At the Pokagon Village site, domesticated animals provided most of the meat in the diet, and fish were virtually absent. The pattern at Collier Lodge seems to indicate much more reliance on wild animals. It will be interesting to see if that works out when the fauna are analyzed. The relative importance of wild versus domesticates is clearly a key issue in how people adapted to their environment.” Schurr hopes to return to the site to find more evidence of Removal Period structures such as postholes and floors. “We have sampled only a small portion of the site,” he said. “We have a lot of work ahead of us.” CLIFF TERRY is a Chicago-based free-lance writer and former staf f writer for the Chicago Tribune. For more information about Mark Schurr’s Removal Period investigation, visit the Web site www.nd.edu/~mschurr/Removal_Project.htm. winter • 2004-05

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A Passport to the Past VICKI MARIE SINGER

The USDA Forest Service’s Passport in Time program offers volunteers an opportunity to participate in archaeological investigations throughout the country. By Susan G. Hauser

tently screening her bucket of dirt until she too found a small point and could erupt in a “Wahoo” while exuberantly pumping the air with her fist. For a moment, with amateur archaeologists acting as if they had just won the jackpot at the slots, the site seemed more like a Las Vegas casino than a remote forest campground in southern Oregon. But they were miles away from the bright lights of any city, spending a midsummer week at the Apple Creek Campground, which was closed to the public for the two-

DAVID FALCONER

ran Crawford and Karen Scott sat side by side in the forest, the bottom edge of their two-legged screen propped against their knees. Crawford’s hand swept over the dirt still remaining on the one-eighth-inch mesh after a vigorous sifting. Her fingers deftly brushed aside small clods and pebbles to reveal the glint from a small obsidian projectile point. “Wahoo!” she cried. After congratulating her neighbor, Scott returned to in-

(Left) The PIT crew excavates a unit at the Apple Creek Campground. In the background people are screening excavated dirt for tiny artifacts. (Right) Volunteer Everett Peterson works in a deep unit. It’s believed that the site once served as a hunting camp.

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Archaeologist Gordon Peters thought that the public would gladly participate in Forest Service projects. His belief led to the creation of PIT.

PIT

week duration of an excavation. The campground, which was established 70 years ago, is covered by the shade of fir and pine trees on the shore of the scenic North Umpqua River. Millennia ago, this site also served as a campground for the earliest inhabitants of the North Umpqua Basin. Crawford and Scott were among 10 women and men participating in Passport in Time (PIT), a volunteer archaeology and historic preservation program of the USDA Forest Service, in which members of the public can work in various projects across the country, including digs conducted by Forest Service archaeologists. There is no fee to participate, but transportation and lodging is at the volunteers’ expense. At Apple Creek Campground, two groups of PIT volunteers, each working for five-day sessions, stayed at the campsites. The archaeologists and volunteers were excavating test units in a section of the site on which the Forest Service planned to build a new toilet. In accordance with the National Historic Preservation Act, the Forest Service evaluates prospective construction sites on its lands to determine if archaeological resources will be disturbed by a construction project. The archaeologists proposed recommendations that included building the toilet where it will have the least effect on those resources.

These volunteers conducted test excavations at the Anton Chico Hacienda to learn about life on the Pecos River in New Mexico in the late 19th and early 20th centuries. The hacienda was a 10-12-room structure built of sandstone and limestone blocks. The volunteers also stabilized the deteriorating structure.

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Isaac Barner, an archaeologist on loan from the Bureau of Land Management, directed the Apple Creek project. To ensure adequate supervision, PIT projects typically have one archaeologist per three volunteers. John Draper, another archaeologist involved in the project, was watching as the volunteers painstakingly removed layers of dirt from the four adjacent test units, two of which were nearly four feet deep. Crawford was the most experienced of the volunteers. In 1991, she and her late husband decided that traveling throughout the West to participate in PIT projects would become their new hobby. They volunteered for two or three projects a year until his death four years ago. After a two-year absence, Crawford Volunteers documented severe looting at Ricketts Bluff Shelter in Arkansas’s Ozark-St. Francis National had recently returned to PIT. This was Forest. The crew also documented rock art at various locations around the area. The work was part PIT’s her second project of the year. “I con- Rock Art Documentation and Bluff Shelter Stabilization project. tinue doing the things we loved to do together,” she said. “I like the feeling that I’ve contributed that is interested in what we do and wants to help is huge and helped.” for us,” she said from her Boise office. “We simply would Indeed, PIT’s National Coordinator, Jill Osborn, said not get the work done without them. But, it’s not just the that without the volunteers—24,000 since PIT’s 1989 inwork that gets accomplished, which is significant, but the ception—Forest Service archaeologists would have had volunteers’ support of historic preservation—their advoneither the time nor the budget to accomplish all the cacy—that is also valuable beyond measure.” work that’s been done during the program. The Forest Passport in Time was the idea of Gordon Peters, a ForService estimates the value of PIT volunteer work at $17.7 est Service archaeologist in the Superior National Forest in million, but Osborn thinks the real value of the program is Minnesota. While he was working on a project next to a hard to measure. “The fact that we have a public out there busy thoroughfare, many people stopped and asked a multitude of questions about it. It made him wonder if there was enough interest to get the public involved in Forest Service archaeological projects. In 1989 he advertised for volunteers for the first PIT project and was overwhelmed by the response. Peters persuaded the agency’s chief archaeologist to find someone to turn his concept into a national program. Osborn, an archaeologist who was then working in the Deschutes National Forest in central Oregon, was hired. “I was in the right place at the right time and had long believed in the importance of involving the public because of the fresh view they A PIT crew surveyed an area of shore line along the Prince of Wales Island via kayak. There is evidence that brought to archaeology and behumans occupied sites in this area more than 9,000 years ago. The crew monitored the conditions of cause we simply needed public recorded sites and searched for indications of undocumented sites. support of historic preservation.” american archaeology

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and lots of teachers.” At Apple Creek Campground, only one of the volunteers, Karen Scott, was not a PIT veteran and she was there because her son, Brian, had invited her to join him on this, his eighth PIT dig. While determining the best location for the new toilet, the crew also worked to learn more about the early occupation of the North Umpqua Basin. The stone projectile points and tools, as well as the flakes from their manufacture, provided information about activities carried out at the site. About 10 years earlier, a small portion of the Apple Creek site had been tested in advance of a road construction project. At that time, broad-stemmed and foliate projectile points from a Middle Archaic component led archaeologists to believe that the site was first occupied about 6,000 years ago. “It probably wasn’t a village location,” said Draper. “It wasn’t occupied continuously and there might have been an occupation gap of a few thousand years.” More than likely, he said, it was a hunting camp, as evidenced by the number of broken points and scrapers, used for working hides, that were found during the excavation. The numerous chert and obsidian flakes and the sharpened points indicated that this site was also used for making and sharpening tools. The crew also discovered a midden that contained a significant amount of debris. The midden raised the question of whether there was once a house associated with it, but no evidence of a house was found during the project. Although some of the stone used to make the tools

DAVID FALCONER

In 1991 she took PIT national. “We knew there were lots of people interested in archaeology because, after all, Indiana Jones proved that,” she said. “But we were surprised at the sophistication of the public’s knowledge. The volunteers bring a huge amount of information, experience, not to mention enthusiasm, to the projects.” Over the years there have been nearly 2,000 PIT projects of various types. Volunteers have restored 250 historic structures, stabilized 42 sites, evaluated 620 sites for inclusion in the National Register of Historic Places, transcribed about 100 oral histories, conducted archival research and lab work, developed interpretive materials, and monitored wilderness areas for vandalism. PIT archaeological projects have taken place at Civil War battlefields in the Eastern U.S. and Gold Rush–era Chinese mining sites in the West. Prehistoric cliff dwellings, hunting camps, burial mounds, and pithouse villages have also been investigated. Volunteers help with every phase of an archaeological project, from the excavation to the processing and curation of artifacts. Volunteers are issued a dark green passport with the PIT logo embossed in gold. At the completion of each project, the passport is stamped and the hours are recorded. To date, passport holders have racked up more than 1.1 million hours of volunteer work. More than 40 people applied for the two five-day sessions at Apple Creek. “We try to get a mix of people with and without experience,” said Barner. “We try to get some with experience to help the new ones. Typically, the backgrounds are varied. There are families with kids, retirees,

These small projectile points from the Late Archaic period, and larger dart points from the Middle Archaic, were recovered at Apple Creek Campground.

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DAVID FALCONER

Passport P39-43

Fran Crawford screens dirt in search of artifacts at Apple Creek Campground. Crawford was one of 10 volunteers working at the site. PIT’s many volunteers make an important contribution to the archaeological record.

could be quarried locally, there was no naturally occurring obsidian in the basin. Obsidian, a volcanic glass, is created when lava cools quickly by coming in contact with water. The closest obsidian sources for the inhabitants of the North Umpqua Basin would have been nearly 100 miles away. Therefore it was obtained for use at Apple Creek by travel to the sources of the stone. The source of the obsidian can be identified through the stone’s chemical “fingerprint” that is associated with distinct geographic locations. X-ray fluorescence analysis is used to measure trace element concentrations in obsidian, which vary by geographic source. One of Draper’s tasks was to send a sample of obsidian tools and flakes found during the dig to a laboratory to determine its source, which in turn can provide information about trade networks. Volunteer Charles Beckerer was satisfied that he had made a few significant contributions to the project after days of screening multiple buckets of dirt. He spied the glint of obsidian and uncovered a dart point one day, and then another the next day. “It is luck, whoever gets the right bucket,” he observed. This was Beckerer’s third PIT dig. He applied for the first one at the suggestion of a friend. “Archaeology was just a curiosity, not an interest,” he said. Now, however, he reads extensively on the subject and is planning a trip to Egypt that will include archaeology classes and visits to museums and sites along the Nile. Osborn said participants’ growing interest in archaeamerican archaeology

ology is just one of the “intangibles” of the PIT program that can’t be measured in dollars or hours. Enthusiastic volunteers such as Beckerer and others like him help spread the word about the importance of historic preservation. Furthermore, their excitement puts zing into the sometimes plodding and bureaucratic work of Forest Service archaeologists. Osborn said, “I had a lot of archaeologists come to me in the first few years of PIT and say, ‘You know what? We had forgotten what great jobs we had. We had forgotten that the archaeology is exciting, the discovery is exciting. We’ve got great jobs and the volunteers remind us of that.’” Many of the volunteers plan their vacations to coincide with the projects and travel from state to state. Osborn said that although working on a PIT project is enjoyable, no one should lose sight of the fact that the volunteers’ work makes for a significant contribution to the archaeological record. “Just because it’s fun doesn’t mean we’re not getting serious work done,” she said. “And we are. It’s not just entertaining the public. It’s a value to the science.” SUSAN G. HAUSER has written for The Wall Street Journal and the New York Times. To learn more about the Passport In Time program and the volunteer opportunities it offers, visit the Web site, www.passportintime.com. The program also publishes the PIT Traveler, a biannual newsletter. To receive a free copy, call (800) 281-9176 or send an e-mail to pit@sricrm.com 43

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A Site With Unusual Pottery By preserving Cary Mounds, the Conservancy will allow researchers the opportunity to examine its curious ceramics.

JESSICA CRAWFORD

nyone familiar with agriculture in Mississippi knows that some of the state’s finest farm land is located in the heart of the Yazoo Basin along a former Mississippi River channel called Deer Creek. This fertile land was first exploited by the region’s earliest farmers, the Mississippians, who built mounds and grew corn, beans, and squash at places along Deer Creek’s banks like the Cary Mounds site, which is named after the west-central Mississippi town where it’s found. The landowner, David Klaus, recently donated the site to the Conservancy. Originally, the site consisted of three mounds. The largest of the three, Mound A, which is approximately 22 feet in height, is still visible. It is possible that portions of the other two mounds remain, but are obscured by thick vegetation and a surrounding neighborhood. Because of its location, Mound A has served as sort of a playground for locals. Bicycle and ATV trails have

Mound A at the Cary Mounds site is eroding due to bicycle and ATV traffic.

caused erosion. While the majority of people living around the site are very protective of it, Klaus recalled that his uncle, from whom he inherited the land, was concerned about rumors of people removing human remains from the site. His uncle unsuccessfully explored the possibility of donating the land to an organization that would protect its resources. Meanwhile, Mississippi’s former State Archaeologist, Cliff Jenkins, fortuitously remembered his father mentioning a mound in his childhood hometown of Cary. Jenkins visited the mound and, realizing it would make an excellent preserve, he informed the Conservancy. The Conservancy in turn contacted Klaus, who was happy to fulfill his uncle’s desire to see the mound protected and generously agreed to donate it. Pottery samples from the Cary Mounds site are certainly of the Missis-

sippian Period (A.D. 1000); however, the clay used to make the pottery is somewhat different from that found on the majority of sites in the area. The unusual clay has been documented on a few nearby sites, but not in the quantity observed at Cary Mounds, which suggests that it may come from the site. In his survey of the Yazoo Basin, published in 1970, Philip Phillips observed, “I suspect that what we have here in the lower reaches of Deer Creek is a hitherto unrecorded late Mississippian complex but will have to leave it as a problem for the future.” Thirty-four years later, this problem remains unresolved, and the unusual pottery complex is still unstudied and unnamed. However, with the Conservancy’s acquisition of the Cary Mounds site, the answers will remain preserved for future researchers to address. —Jessica Crawford winter • 2004-05

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Galisteo Basin Sites Donated to the Conservancy Northern New Mexico sites may have been part of extensive prehistoric network.

GEOFFREY STEWART

laring down the barrel of her 3030, my colleague cowering under a nearby juniper, this tiny yet fiercely determined woman demanded to know what we were doing on her property. I explained that we were conducting an archaeological survey for the highway department’s planned road-widening project. She lowered her gun as she listened, scrutinizing our clipboards and compasses and noting the absence of shovels and other implements that would suggest we were in fact looters. This was my first introduction to Billie Russell, a retired master sergeant who 10 years later donated the Lodestar archaeological sites to the Conservancy for permanent preservation. Determined to protect the sites from looters, she has pulled her gun on other trespassers, some of whom she caught with bags of artifacts taken from her property. “In the beginning, local artifact collectors would come around, but I scared them off,” said Russell. “I love that land, and felt the ancients were there from the time I first walked it in 1992. I made the land a promise then to preserve it, and I’m so pleased that’s what’s happening.” Located on a flat mesa top overlooking State Highway 14 in northern New Mexico’s Galisteo Basin, one of the sites, which covers four acres, was first documented during the 1994 survey conducted for the New Mexico State Highway and Transportation Department. It consists of a rectangular, possibly two-storied masonry roomblock with an estimated 12 rooms, a smaller roomblock with five estimated rooms, a circular masonry depression, a circular firestained area, and an agricultural feature along a terrace just below the

american archaeology

One of the Galisteo Basin sites features a two-story masonry roomblock with an estimated 12 rooms.

mesa. An abundance of ceramic sherds found at the site date it to between A.D. 1200 and 1600, during the Coalition and Classic periods of the northern Rio Grande Valley. A very large metate, or grinding stone, was discovered at the site, as well as numerous chips of turquoise that likely came from the Cerrillos Hills just to the north. Since Archaic times and possibly earlier, prehistoric peoples obtained turquoise from veins in these hills, which they used and traded with other local Puebloan peoples, as well as with Plains peoples to the east and Mesoamericans to the south. In addition to this residential mesa-top site, the property donated by Russell and her partner Loree Sutton contains another 2.5-acre site that consists of a long, possibly multistoried masonry roomblock in the vicinity of a large circular depression that may be a pithouse or kiva ceremonial structure. The sites are located within the context of numerous other small mesa-top sites that are within clear

view of one another, as well as massive San Marcos Pueblo, another Conservancy preserve located about six miles up the road. If occupied simultaneously, these sites may have constituted some form of prehistoric network that involved visual communication and mesa-top dwelling, while farming was done in the valleys and terraces below. As part of the donation agreement, the Conservancy will create a long-term management plan for the sites, and will undertake limited testing to better understand the sites’ functional and temporal affiliation. —Tamara Stewart

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Changing Notions of Mound Building The Hedgepeth Mounds have contributed to a better understanding of this ancient tradition.

ALAN GRUBER

hroughout the last 25 years, archaeologists excavated a series of sites in Louisiana that provided tantalizing clues that mound-building traditions might have reached further back into the past than what the scientific orthodoxy suggested. Most Southeastern archaeologists believed that the people of the Middle Archaic period were loosely organized bands of nomadic hunter-gatherers. Such bands would not have had the social complexity nor be sedentary enough to build monumental earthworks. Most archaeologists argued that the very old dates obtained from other Louisiana sites like Monte Sano, Banana Bayou, Hornsby, and the LSU Mounds had to be wrong. In the midst of this debate, archaeologist Joe Saunders took over the new regional archaeologist position for northeastern Louisiana in 1989. Shortly thereafter he was contacted by Elizabeth Thomas in the nearby town of Ruston. She told him that an Indian mound her family owned had been excavated by “archaeologists” from Louisiana Tech. Thomas said these people did not have her permission to come onto her property, and that they also refused to backfill the deep trench they had excavated. Having informed her that there are no archaeologists employed by Louisiana Tech, Saunders agreed to take a look at the mound. “To tell the truth, I didn’t initially think it was a mound. I thought it could be a natural rise,” he said. But, then Saunders found a stone adze three feet below the surface in the mound fill. Intrigued by this site known as the Hedgepeth Mounds in honor of the family who owned the land (Hedgepeth is Thomas’s maiden name), Saunders set about excavating it in 1992. He determined that it was in fact a mound. It was constructed over an ancient living surface and a hearth. A radiocarbon date from charcoal recovered from the hearth indicated it was approximately 5,000 years old. “I could not get a firm date to prove early mound construction,” Saunders said. “But, there

Mound A at Hedgepeth stands about 18 feet high. It was constructed around 3000 B.C., making it among the oldest earthworks in North America.

was no evidence to disprove it either. The best dates were coming from the submound surface, so I brought in soil scientist Thurmond Allen and geoarchaeologist Rolfe Mandel to look at the mound sediments. Their analysis supported the 3000 B.C. age of the mound. I think this was the first use of pedogenesis for estimating the relative age of a mound in the Southeast.” Simply put, pedogenesis deals with the formation of soils. The following summer, Saunders worked at the Frenchman’s Bend Mounds and the next year at Watson Brake. He obtained multiple radiocarbon dates from both sites indicating that pre-ceramic, Middle Archaic period mound construction dated to around 3500 to 3000 B.C. The pedogenic analysis of those sites revealed soil development consistent with that at the Hedgepeth site. Saunders presented his work in a paper to the archaeological community in 1995. A short time later, the archaeology textbooks would have to be rewritten. Saunders’ work confirmed that the mound-building tradition in the Southeast extended another 2,000 years into the past. The Hedgepeth site consists of about 10 acres containing two mounds, middens, and habitation areas. After years of wrestling with the question of how to protect it, Thomas and her family decided to donate it to the Conservancy, which then nominated it to the National Register of Historic Places. The Conservancy will work with the Hedgepeth family, Saunders, and other researchers to ensure that the site will continue to yield its secrets and advance our knowledge of the origins of mound building in the Americas. —Alan Gruber winter • 2004-05

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What Became of the Monongahela? The Squirrel Hill site in western Pennsylvania could answer questions regarding the fate of this culture. he Monongahela period (A.D. 1000–1600) is divided into different phases defined by different type sites. The Johnston site is one of these type sites and it defines the phase of the late Monongahela Cultural tradition of which Squirrel Hill, the Conservancy’s newest preserve in Pennsylvania, is part. Squirrel Hill is on the Robert Jones Archaeological Preserve located on the Conemough River near the town of New Florance. Robert Jones, a longtime resident of Westmoreland County who realized the need to preserve archaeological resources for future researchers, donated the site, which is approximately two acres in size.

CHARLES L. RIPPER • COLORIZED BY CHARLOTTE HILL-COBB

This drawing shows what a small Monongahelan village could have looked like. The Monongahela lived

DICK GEORGE

near large rivers in Western Pennsylvania, West Virginia, and Ohio.

Pottery from Squirrel Hill exhibits traits from both the Monongahela and Iroquoian cultural traditions.

The Monongahela lived in small hamlets that were usually near the banks of large rivers throughout western Pennsylvania, West Virginia, and Ohio. Though they practiced hunting and gathering, the Monongahela were the first large-scale agriculturalists in western Pennsylvania, focusing on corn, beans, and squash. They also grew tobacco, and pipes are frequently found at sites like Squirrel Hill. As their population grew, many new technologies and cultural practices were adopted. The bow and arrow became the weapon of choice for hunting and warfare.

american archaeology

Most Monongahela sites were abandoned before European migration into Pennsylvania. But Squirrel Hill may have been inhabited until as late as the early 1600s, which is after European contact. During this time the Monongahela may have been highly influenced by invading Iroquoian groups coming from present day New York and Canada. As European populations landed along the East Coast of North America, Iroquoian people moved west, coming into contact with Algonquin peoples. One of these Algonquin tribes may have been the Monongahela. Johnston-phase sites have distinctive pottery exhibiting classic Monongahela styles mixed with an Iroquoian style found in northern Pennsylvania and New York. This melding of ceramic styles seems to indicate contact between groups during the terminal Monongahela time period. Recent research sug-

gests environmental changes could have adversely affected them. A series of droughts or possibly a phenomenon known as the little Ice Age, which lasted from the mid–1400s until the turn of the century, may have cause crop failures and ended the Monongahela’s way of life. Squirrel Hill is the Conservancy’s third acquisition in western Pennsylvania in the last 12 months. It’s one of the most important well preserved, terminal Monongahela sites in this part of the state and consequently it might harbor information that solves the mystery of their fate. —Joe Navari

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Major 16 Century Iroquois Village Preserved th

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The Conservancy acquires the Eaton site in western New York.

STONE ARTIFACTS OF TEXAS INDIANS

N E W P O I N T- 2

MARK MICHEL

Archaeologist William Engelbrecht at the Conservancy’s Smokes Creek site near Buffalo. The Eaton site preceded Smokes Creek by about 50 years and was probably occupied by the same Iroquoian people.

which the Eaton site is located was included in the Buffalo Creek Indian Reservation in the early 19th century and the site contains some artifacts that date to this period. Artifact collectors have known of the Eaton site since the turn of the century; it was then referred to as “Buffalo E” by local collector Ward Benedict. The site was first mapped in 1954 by Marian White of the State University of New York (SUNY) at Buffalo and Charles Gilette of the New York State Museum, and was listed in the National Register of Historic Places in 1979. Despite farming on the site until the early 1950s, gravel quarrying in 1967, and the construction of a nursing home in the early 1970s, a significant portion of Eaton remains intact and it has attracted researchers for the past 30 years. Engelbrecht directed 17 field schools at the site be-

tween 1975 and 2000 for SUNY Buffalo and Buffalo State College with assistance from the Houghton Chapter of the New York State Archaeological Association. The field schools excavated 257 units, revealing numerous burials, several trash middens, three Iroquoian longhouses, and an apparent palisade consisting of an 18-foot line of wooden posts along the northern edge of the village. An additional longhouse was recorded during the 1967 gravel quarrying that took place in the northern portion of the site. The three longhouses recorded by the field schools all had similar PHIL GERACE

ears of research at Iroquois village sites in the Niagara Frontier region of western New York State have given archaeologists a remarkable understanding of 16th- and early 17th-century Iroquois settlement and migration patterns. The Eaton site is located on a knoll above Cazenovia Creek in West Seneca, New York, a suburb of Buffalo. It has a long history of occupation that began in the Early Archaic (ca. 7000 B.C.) and continued through the historic period. The site’s major Late Woodland Iroquoian village occupation dates to approximately A.D. 1550. Ethnohistoric literature for the Niagara Frontier region indicates that the peoples occupying the area during this period were likely an eastern extension of the Erie nation. “In the 16th and early 17th centuries there were two large contemporaneous communities in western New York,” explained William Engelbrecht, a retired archaeologist from Buffalo State College who has conducted extensive research at the Eaton site and in the region. “These communities periodically shifted their location, leaving a series of village sites.” The Eaton site and Smokes Creek, another Iroquois village recently preserved by the Conservancy (see “The Conservancy Acquires Early 17th-Century Iroquois Village” in the Fall 2004 issue), are two such village sites. According to Engelbrecht, the people who lived at Smokes Creek are likely the direct descendants of those who lived at the Eaton site, which was occupied some 50 years later. The area in

This clay pipe is among the thousands of artifacts recovered from the site.

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N E W P O I N T- 2

BONNIE MORRIS

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Bill Engelbrecht directs work at Eaton in this 1995 photograph. Between 1975 and 2000, Engelbrecht directed 17 field schools at the site.

features that include interior benches along each wall that appeared to extend the entire length of the houses, end storage areas, and apartment divisions, probably for nuclear families. These longhouse components appear standardized in shape and size and resemble those documented at other Iroquoian proto-historic longhouses. Artifacts recovered from the site include thousands of pottery sherds, stone flakes from tool-making, triangular projectile points, clay pipes, and stone tools used for grinding plants. Unlike the Smokes Creek site, no European trade goods have been found at Eaton, indicating it was occupied before such items were common in the area. Numerous studies have been conducted on the artifacts recovered from Eaton, and the site still holds

tremendous research potential. “Although the site has been plowed, significant data regarding site structure, group interaction, and resource acquisition remains,” said Roderick Salisbury, a graduate student at SUNY Buffalo who has conducted research at Eaton. “Data from the site, when compared with data from other village sites in the region, has and can continue to yield information about subsistence, settlement, demographic, and technological change in western New York and southern Ontario.” The Conservancy, which is in the process of acquiring the Eaton site, will create a long-term management plan to address site security, access, and any erosion control issues relevant to the site. —Tamara Stewart

POINT Acquisitions Eaton

The Protect Our Irreplaceable National Treasures (POINT) Program was designed to save significant sites that are in immediate danger of destruction. american archaeology

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CONSERVANCY

Field Notes SOUTHWEST—Jim Walker, the Conservancy’s vice president and Southwest regional director, was named the 2003 winner of the Victor R. Stoner Award at the Pecos Conference in Bluff, Utah. The award celebrates the promotion of historic awareness and preservation, and it’s given to someone who brings Southwestern anthropology, archaeology, ethnology, or history to the public over an extended period of time. Walker was recognized for his role in preserving archaeological sites throughout the Southwest. His extensive education and experience in real estate and cultural resource management has served him well during his 23-year tenure with the Conservancy. Over the years Walker has worked successfully with landowners, developers, local governments, and land management agencies to preserve numerous cultural resources.

The Conservancy Adds to its Torres Blancas Preserve SOUTHWEST—The Archaeological Conservancy has taken title to a twoacre addition to the Torres Blancas Village archaeological site, formerly known as Santa Rita Springs, in Green Valley, Arizona. The addition 50

AMY ESPINOZA-AR

Walker Wins Stoner Award

Jim Walker (left) holds his Victor R. Stoner Award plaque at the Pecos Conference. Linda S. Cordell and R. Gwinn Vivian received the Byron S. Cummings Award.

contains important structures and features associated with the original site. The donation was made by developer Eddie Leon, who is building a 22-lot luxury golf course subdivision known as De Anza Links around the preserve. The addition is adjacent to the Torres Blancas site, which was donated to the Conservancy by the owners of the Torres Blancas Golf Course in 1996. The new portion of the preserve will be landscaped with natural vegetation and leased back to the homeowners association to be used as open space. The adaptive use of a preserve as open space within a

housing development represents an important cultural resource management experiment designed to integrate archaeological preserves into neighborhoods. The Conservancy hopes that the preserve will be used as a model by other developers seeking creative solutions to archaeological problems. Torres Blancas Village was first identified in 1993 by archaeologists conducting a survey for the Santa Rita Springs development. In the early 1980s a developer used heavy equipment to begin construction of a golf course lake. This damaged the site, making it impossible to define

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Americans, homeowners, and archaeologists must view archaeological site preservation as a beneficial activity that enhances the community, or it will be an action destined for failure. The Conservancy uses the activity of creating a management plan for the preserve as a vehicle for involving and uniting all entities that have an interest in the site.

JIM WALKER

Resuming the Search for Fort Louis

Lengths of geotextile material protects archaeological resources at the Torres Blancas preserve. The material was then covered with sterile fill dirt, which was planted with natural vegetation.

the site boundaries from the surface. In 1994, Old Pueblo Archaeology Center conducted a subsurface testing program at the site, which identified over 60 intact structures and features, some of them deeply buried. The site was identified as a Hohokam Classic period (A.D. 1100–1450) village. Part of the village extended into the planned Torres Blancas Golf Course. In 1996, just under an acre of the site was donated by the golf course owner to the Conservancy. The surface was leased to the golf course operator and is now part of the rough off of the fairway. Since the Torres Blancas site covered several acres of expensive Arizona real estate, Leon made the decision to excavate over half of the site in anticipation of development and leave approximately two acres as a preserve. The excavation was done by Old Pueblo Archaeology Center in 1998, yielding significant information about the village. The areas to be preserved were covered with geotextile cloth and fill dirt. Both lease agreements allow for archaeological research to be conducted on the properties in the future. The Conservancy, when working with developers, tries to create preserves that make a positive contribution to the neighborhoods that surround them. By making the preservation of cultural resources a community issue, the residents tend to embrace the preservation concept wholeheartedly by volunteering as site stewards and protecting the preserves as if they were their own. Developers, Native american archaeology

SOUTHEAST—The search for the archaeological remains of Fort Louis in Axis, Alabama, will resume as a result of a $33,400 grant from the National Park Service’s National Center for Preservation Technology and Training. Once the headquarters of the French colony of Louisiane, Fort Louis was situated at the site of Old Mobile, the first permanent European colonial town on the Gulf Coast. The DuPont corporation donated an archaeological easement to a large portion of Old Mobile to the Conservancy in 1994. The search will be conducted by the University of South Alabama (USA) Center for Archaeological Studies in conjunction with the Friends of Old Mobile, Inc., a nonprofit organization that preserves, explores, and documents the history of Old Mobile. In 1989, USA began a long-term archaeological study of Old Mobile. Consequently, much of the town has been defined, though the location of Fort Louis has eluded researchers. Gregory Waselkov, the director of USA’s Center for Archaeological Studies, will again direct the search. Waselkov led the initial attempts to locate the fort in December 2001. His crew used three remote-sensing technologies— earth conductivity, magnetometry, and thermal imaging. Because of the grant he will employ two additional remotesensing techniques—electrical resistivity and ground penetrating radar—to comb areas covered three years ago. In addition to trying to locate Fort Louis, Waselkov will also evaluate the effectiveness of the five remote-sensing technologies in conditions common to the Gulf coastal plain. In recent years, Waselkov’s team has dug several exploratory trenches in the area where they thought the fort might be located, but the work was slow and tedious. “It’s not a very efficient way to do it,” he said. “We could miss the fort by an inch or two and not ever know. Instead of blindly trenching, I thought it would be best to bring out these other two technologies.” 51

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Reviews Troweling Through Time: The First Century of Mesa Verdean Archaeology By Florence C. Lister

(University of New Mexico Press, 2004; 288 pgs., illus., $25 paper; www.unmpress.com) No place is more symbolic of American archaeology than the spectacular ruins of Mesa Verde National Park in southwestern Colorado. Much of Southwestern archaeology got its start there and in the thousands of nearby ruins of the Four Corners. Distinguished archaeologist and historian of archaeology Florencqse Lister has produced a delightful history of this era that is full of anecdotes and humor. Lister begins with archaeological pioneers like the Wetherill family, William Henry Jackson, and Gustaf Nordenskiöld. Legends of archaeology like Sylvanus Morley, Edger Lee Hewett, Earl Morris, and Alfred Kidder play an important role as well. Lister weaves a tale of inquiry and adventure in one of the world’s most dramatic and interesting archaeological regions. It is also the story of how archaeology became a science and how women gained acceptance in the profession, including the author herself. The story continues today as new generations of archaeologists build on the successes and mistakes of the past. After a century of exploration, much has been learned, but many of the central questions remain as baffling as they were 100 years ago.

Hero, Hawk, and Open Hand: American Indian Art of the Ancient Midwest and South Edited by Richard F. Townsend

(Art Institute of Chicago in association with Yale University Press, 2004: 299 pgs., illus., $60 cloth, $35 paper; www.artic.edu)

The editor of this stunning large-format book has assembled an impressive collection of 19 essays that cover the whole array of Native American art and archaeology in the Midwestern and Southern United States from about 3500 B.C. to European conquest in the 1500s. Written by leading archaeologists, art historians, and tribal scholars, these essays tell the dramatic story of a fantastic artistic tradition that is little known in this country. Produced to accompany a major exhibition now showing at the Chicago Institute of Art and then traveling to St. Louis and Washington, D.C., this is a beautifully designed book with 320 color and 120 black and white illustrations, maps and drawings. This is the story of the fabled moundbuilders and their art. Beginning around 3500 B.C. in northern Louisiana, American Indians developed a succession of distinct cultures centered around the building of mounds—burial mounds, platform mounds, effigy mounds, and mounds built in circles, squares, parallels, and other formations. Some were small and unobtrusive, but others towered above the forests or spread over hundred of acres. They once numbered in the tens of thousands, but sadly only a handful remain, saved from the scourges of modern agriculture, urban sprawl, and looting. A common world view is reflected in their works of art, which were crafted from stone, ceramics, shell, and a few pieces of surviving wood. There are realistic, symbolic, and abstract works in a wide variety of shapes and decorations. They represent the cosmic and social order of the ancients, including their view of the earth and sky. Domains of the hunt and animal powers are another important theme, and many of the pieces represent natural and mythical animals. Gods, heroes, and ancestors are omnipresent. The authors’ interpretations give added meaning to the extraordinary works of art, and place them in an historical and archaeological context that covers the entire 5,000-year period. Hero, Hawk, and Open Hand is an outstanding addition to the literature of ancient America. winter • 2004-05

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Reviews In Search of Chaco: New Approaches to an Archaeological Enigma Edited by David Grant Noble (School of American Research Press, 2004; 168 pgs., illus., $20 paper; www.sarweb.org)

Since their modern rediscovery some 155 years ago, the puebloan ruins in Chaco Canyon have amazed, bemused, and bewildered laymen and archaeologists alike. Located in a remote, desert canyon in northwestern New Mexico, the ruins tower five stories high in numerous Great Houses with scores of subterranean kivas, some of which could hold several hundred people. Long, straight “roads” lead into the canyon, where steps are cut into solid stone to make the steep decent. Its place near the center of the San Juan Basin is surrounded by dozens of “outliers,” communities that look a lot like miniature Chacoan Great Houses. Twenty years ago, archaeological interpreter David Grant Noble brought together leading Chaco scholars in a widely acclaimed volume that sought to explain the newest thinking on what has come to be called the “Chaco phenomenon.” But the Chaco culture remains an enigma, and Noble has once again called upon leading experts to help unravel it. Old hands from the National Park Service Chaco Center of the 1970s are joined by a new generation of archaeologists. Native American scholars add new perspectives. Comparatively little in the way of basic research, i.e. excavations, has been added in the past 20 years, so this book is more a product of analysis and interpretation. The enigma of Chaco Canyon has as much to do with what has not been found as with what has: massive multistoried buildings, but very few signs of occupants. Great architecture, but few resources to support it. Ample evidence of trade, but little evidence of local trade goods. Long straight roads, but no vehicles or beasts of burden. The authors seek a general theory of Chaco Canyon. Why did it exist? What role did it play? How did it support itself? Why was it abandoned? This impressive volume gives us many new ideas and directions for solving this riddle. —Mark Michel american archaeology

The Olmecs: America’s First Civilization By Richard A. Diehl (Thames & Hudson, 2004; 208 pgs., illus., $40 cloth; www.thamesandhudson.com) Beginning about 1500 B.C. a people emerged from the watery lowlands of the Gulf Coast of Mexico and established the first cities in the Americas. Famous for their colossal stone heads, the Olmecs developed the first civilization in the New World. They built palaces, pyramids, and tombs, and they developed writing, astronomy, and a calendar. They left a vivid artistic tradition that awes critics today. They are often called the “Mother Culture” of the Maya, Toltecs, and other Mesoamerican civilizations, and new discoveries about them come with each new field season. University of Alabama archaeologist Richard A. Diehl has produced the first modern overview of this fascinating culture that was only discovered in the 1940s. Sixty years of research has garnered much knowledge from an area that is difficult to access and explore, where virtually no skeletons or organic materials survive in the acidic tropical soil. Diehl has pulled all of this information into a readable survey of what archaeologists know today. This volume is lavishly illustrated with photos of Olmec exploration and art as well as diagrams and illustrations of the ruins. It is a must for students of ancient Mesoamerica.

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A R C H A E O L O G I C A L

C O N S E R V A N C Y

Monuments of Mesoamerica AZTECS, TOLTECS, AND TEOTIHUACÁNOS When: March 15–24, 2005 Where: Mexico City and

surrounding area How much: $2,395 per person

A series of great cultures developed in Mesoamerica and constructed magnificent temples and pyramids. Today these monuments of the Aztecs, Toltecs, and Teotihuacános remain a testament to the fascinating people that built them. On this tour you’ll visit a number of sites, including those left by the Olmec, a culture known throughout the region for its art. You’ll also visit the monuments of the Aztec, a

MARK MICHEL

($250 single supplement)

A day will be spent touring the extensive ruins at Teotihuacán.

civilization that witnessed the arrival of the Spanish. You’ll explore Teotihuacán, once a great urban center with a population of 200,000. John Henderson, professor of anthropology at Cornell and author of The World of Ancient Maya, will lead the tour.

Southeastern Mound-Building Cultures When: April 16–22, 2005 Where: Georgia and Alabama How much: $1,195 per person

Join us in Alabama and Georgia for a tour of ancient earthen mounds and Civil War battlefields. We’ll visit many mound sites including Etowah Indian Mounds Historic Site, which has the second-largest Indian mound in North America, and Moundville, which is the pinnacle of Mississippian mound construction in the Southeast. We’ll also visit important Civil War battlefields such as Kennesaw Mountain National Battlefield Park. This trip offers an exciting opportunity to learn more about both the rich and complex mound-builder cultures that flourished in the Southeast and to catch a glimpse of soldiers’ lives during the Civil War. Perched atop Mound B, Moundville’s largest structure, is a reconstructed version of the paramount chief’s house.

winter • 2004-05

MOUNDVILLE ARCHAEOLOGICAL PARK

($235 single supplement)

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Effigy Mounds of the Upper Mississippi Valley

CONICALS, PLATFORMS, A N D W AT E R PA N T H E R S When: June 9–13, 2005 Where: Wisconsin and Iowa How much: $799 per person

NATIONAL PARK SERVICE

($175 single supplement)

Thirty-one of the 195 mounds in Effigy Mounds National Monument are effigies. These mounds are known as the Marching Bear Group.

american archaeology

In what is now Wisconsin, prehistoric Native Americans constructed about 20,000 earthen mounds, more than in any other area of comparable size. We’ll visit the best surviving examples of these fascinating constructions with an emphasis on the sites of the Effigy Mound Culture, the characteristic mound-builder culture of the Upper Midwest. Among the sites we’ll visit are Lizard Mound Park, Nitschke Mound Park, and the Panther Intaglio. The tour will begin and end in Milwaukee.

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Living Spirit Circle The Archaeological Conservancy

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Since the inception of the Conservancy’s Living Spirit Circle in 2002, participation has grown to over 80 members. These dedicated members have included the Conservancy in their long-term planning to ensure that America’s past will always have a future. This elite group is open to those who wish to make a lasting contribution by including the Conservancy in their will or estate plans, or by making a life-income gift such as a charitable gift annuity. The Conservancy would like to thank the following Living Spirit Circle members for their thoughtfulness and generosity.

Anonymous (2) Dee Aiani, Illinois Carol M. Baker, Texas Olive L. Bavins, California Earl C. Biffle, Missouri Denis Boon, Colorado Jean Carley, Oregon Elva B. Cook, California Donna Cosulich, Arizona Richard W. Dexter, Wisconsin Patricia H. Douthitt, Ohio Professor and Mrs. Robert C. Dunnell, Mississippi Hazel L. Epstein, California Phoebe B. Eskenazi, Virginia Arthur and Mary Faul, Arizona Preston Forsythe, Kentucky Veronica H. Frost, Ohio Derald and Bridget Glidden, California Grace E. Hartzel, Ohio Barbara J. Jacobs, Washington, D.C. Joyce Kaser, New Mexico Walter and Allene Kleweno, New Mexico Lavinia C. Knight, California Derwood Koenig, Indiana

Jay Last, California Deborah Leitner Jones, Maryland Margaret A. Lussky, Minnesota Osceola W. Madden, Florida Laura Marianek, Ohio Robin Marion, New Jersey Neil E. Matthew, Arizona Mark Michel, New Mexico Janet E. Mitchell, Colorado Sandra Moriarty, Colorado Lynn A. Neal, Arizona James A. Neely, Texas David Noble and Ruth Meria, New Mexico Jan and Judith Novak, New Mexico Lee O’Brien, Indiana Dorinda J. Oliver, New York Margaret A. Olson, Wisconsin Priscilla A. Ord, Maryland Michael R. Palmer, New Mexico Margaret P. Partee, Tennessee Tim Perttula, Texas Marguerite B. Peterson, Florida Donald E. Pierce, New Mexico Barbara A. Reichardt, California Caryl Richardson, New Mexico

Jean L. Ring, California Joy Robinson, California Robert A. Robinson, California Susan J. Rudich, New York Beverly A. Schneider, Tennessee Lorraine Schramm, Missouri Walter Sheppe, Ohio Harriet N. Smith, New York Dee Ann Story, Texas Paula M. Strain, Maryland Jerry M. Sullivan, Texas Ann M. Swartwout, Michigan Ron and Pat Taylor, Virginia Steven Vastola, Connecticut James B. Walker, New Mexico Steven L. Walkinshaw, Texas Mark and Sandra Walters, Texas Karl and Nancy Watler, Colorado Kathleen D. Wells, California Ron and Carol Whiddon, New Mexico Katheryne Willock, Arizona Kathrin W. Young, Alaska Robert D. Zimmerman, Nevada Wendell E. Zipse, Arizona Robert G. Zirkle, Texas

Patrons of Preservation The Archaeological Conservancy would like to thank the following individuals, foundations, and corporations for their generous support during the period of August through October 2004. Their generosity, along with the generosity of the Conservancy’s other members, makes our work possible. Life Member Gifts of $1,000 or more David T. Arthur, Illinois Betty Banks, Washington Robert and Helene Beck, California Donna Cosulich, Arizona Elizabeth Dice, Mississippi Joan Griscom, Tennessee Thomas and Marilyn Hudson, Georgia Neil E. Matthew, Arizona Patricia A. Mead, Arizona Lois J. Paradise, Florida William J. and Priscilla Robinson, Arizona Harlan Scott, Delaware Mary G. Sprague, Washington, D.C. Vincas P. Steponaitis, North Carolina Catherine Symchych, Wyoming Richard F. and Jean Weick, Oregon Burton D. Williams, Montana Richard Woodbury, Massachusetts

Anasazi Circle Gifts of $2,000 or more Boo Heflin, Arkansas Tom and Nancy Juda, California Suzanne Rice, Colorado Conrad and Marcella Stahly, New Mexico Elizabeth and Frank Thomas, Louisiana Frank G. Thomas, Louisiana

TO MAKE A DONATION OR BECOME A MEMBER CONTACT:

Foundation/Corporate Gifts of $1,000–$4,999 Fleischmann Foundation, Ohio Western Mapping Company, Arizona

The Archaeological Conservancy

Foundation/Corporate Gifts of $5,000–$9,999 Summerlee Foundation, Texas Bequests Judith M. Musladin, California Mary R. Thomas, Michigan

5301 Central Avenue NE Suite 902 Albuquerque, NM 87108 (505) 266-1540 www.americanarchaeology.org

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BOOKS Coyote Press P.O. Box 3377 Salinas, CA 93912 Specializing in Archaeology, Rock Art, Prehistory, Ethnography, Linguistics, Native American Studies and anything closely related. We stock thousands of new books and reprints, used and rare books, and the back issues of many journals. Browse or shop online at our newly redesigned e-commerce website: WWW.COYOTEPRESS.COM

Show Pride in America’s Archaeological Resources! Archaeological Conservancy T-shirt: 100% cotton $12, plus $1.75 S&H circle size: S M L XL XXL To order, send your check to:

The Archaeological Conservancy 5301 Central Ave. NE, Suite 902 Albuquerque, NM 87108 NAME ADDRESS

E-mail: coyote@coyotepress.com

CITY

Proud sponsors of: www.californiaprehistory.com

STATE

ZIP

MAYA POTTERY WORKSHOP IN BELIZE APRIL 21-MAY 1, 2005

with Clint Swink Replicate and research Maya pottery with the master of replication in a safe, exotic jungle venue. All experience levels welcome. Information: swink@rmi.net 970/563-4624

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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.

OTTENS PUEBLO ON 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.

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.

Rooms with a view 600 years ago.

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:

Whatever kind of gift you give, you can be sure we’ll use it to preserve places like Sugarloaf Pueblo and our other 295 sites across the United States. Mail information requests to:

Name:

The Archaeological Conser vancy Attn: Planned Giving 5301 Central Avenue NE Suite 902 Albuquerque, NM 87108-1517

Street Address:

Or call:

❏ Gifts of stock

❏ Bequests

City: Phone: (

❏ Charitable gift annuities

State: )

Zip:

(505) 266-1540