Fajada Butte after the Great Snow of 1986, or was it 1987? Photo by M. Severson

I am an archaeologist who has lived in the desert for almost 50 years so let me start off by clearing the air: I hate snow!

Yes, I know it looks pretty on the mountains, like the powdered sugar you sprinkle on your French toast. And, yes, it is magical to stand out amid the whispering of light flakes spiraling gently from the gray blanketed sky.

After that delightful experience is over, I want it gone!

I doubt there is an archaeologist worth his trowel that likes the idea of snow covering the ground but part of my ‘curmudgeon-y’ attitude comes from my years as a tour guide.

And one of my first trips to Chaco Canyon came the day after a major snowstorm.

If you live in or have visited in the southwestern United States and are interested in Indian culture, or ruins, or rock art, or hiking and you haven’t been to Chaco; shame on you! First reported to the United States government in the mid-1800s, Chaco is the heartbeat of prehistoric archaeology in the southwest. The small sampling of photos that I have included here barely begin to convey the vast array of fascinating places to see in this World Heritage site.

Fajada Butte, sans snow, is the site of the solstice marking Sun Dagger it is seen here from the ruins of Una Vida. The park headquarters is to center left. Photo by M. Severson

The park was first established back in the early 1900s and originally included only the massive 800-room Pueblo Bonito. Gradually more of the current park was added until it included all the major ruins and dozens of outlying prehistoric communities and resources. 1)

Originally access to the canyon was only by two primitive roads. However, today you can drive nearly any vehicle into the park by way of the “Pueblo Pintado” road coming either from Bloomfield or Cuba, New Mexico. 2)

Photograph of fine chaco style masonry technique from Pueblo Pintado. Amazingly enough after creating these painstakingly beautiful stoneworks they coated it all with plaster so it was never seen. Photo by M. Severson

Ah, you say but what was that I said about about snow?

Okay, I better fess-up. Back in the day, and I’m talking mid-80s here, I decided to begin offering tours of archaeological sites and Indian reservations as part of the Community Outreach program at Pima Community College in Tucson. I am also trained as an educator and it just seemed a natural outgrowth of my various careers to visit the places I liked to go and take others with me. It became the perfect second job.

In scheduling my first tour into Chaco however, I made the mistake of setting it in February.

I live and work mostly in Tucson, Arizona in the great Sonoran desert. It is hot. We received a dusting of snow this winter and also last year but that is an infrequent occurrence at best.

Chaco Canyon though is 40 miles from anywhere in northwestern New Mexico. True it is located in a desert but it is the Great Basin; a high, cold desert.

In February they get SNOW! The day we were scheduled to leave Tucson a massive storm had settled over the Four Corners area.

Choosing discretion for once, we waited a day longer before leaving to head north. When I got there I saw that it had been quite a storm. Snow blanketed everything. Realizing that the south road into Chaco was definitely the worse of the two main routes available to me, I chose to enter the canyon from the north. In those days, from the north you could select either the road at the Blanco Trading Post or the one at the Nageezi Trading Post as both eventually hooked up to the Park Service road and the canyon. In good weather I always chose Blanco to go in and Nageezi to return so that we would get a different look coming and going.

Blanco it was.

Corner doorways are an interesting feature in Chacoan towns. This one is at Pueblo Bonito. Photo by M. Severson

Turning off NM 44 I was surprised to see that no one had as yet driven on the gravel road once it passed the trading post buildings. The snow covered it uniformly though I could vaguely see the outlines of the ruts. I was not too concerned, I had driven the road many times, I was in a high clearance vehicle and it was only 25 miles to the park. The proverbial piece of cake — ice cream cake!

In very short order I realized the road beneath the snow was frozen solid, if I drove over 10 miles an hour the van would begin to fish-tale and slide off the road into the ditches on either side. Two and a half hours and several badly bitten fingernails later, we arrived at the park entrance where I faced my next crisis.

The old park service road into the canyon was cut down through the sandstone talus and was about one and one third lanes wide. If someone was leaving by way of this road, which was still frozen; and we happened to meet . . . well, I didn’t really want to think on it further, I had come this far — down I went.

I, of course, shared very little of this with the people in my charge, though I had casually mentioned earlier that usually it took only about forty-five minutes to reach the Visitor’s Center once we left the highway; they couldn’t help but notice the time discrepancy.

My luck held, we arrived at the Visitor’s Center in one piece and amazingly enough we were the only sightseers at that hour and for much of that day. Who would’ve thought?

Everyone loved the canyon’s picturesque sandstone walls topped all in white. The sun came out, the trails drained and it was a chilly but wonderful day.

Yes that is a person emerging from the rocks! One highlight of any trip to Chaco canyon should be hiking up the cliff walls to the overlooks. The views are magnificent. Photo by M. Severson

Later as we were leaving the Visitor Center to return to our motel in Farmington, I happened to mention how bad the Blanco road had been. The Park Service ranger behind the desk laughed and replied, “Oh Blanco, nobody uses ‘that’ road in the winter!”

Here is a view of Pueblo Bonito from the overlook. Photo by M. Severson

OK then, in leaving I would use Nageezi. In retrospect I guess it was the right decision, the Nageezi road was not frozen . . . it was mud! Two and a half hours later I was thrilled to see pavement!

Today you will probably have no such adventures arriving safely at Chaco but if I were you, my trips would be confined to spring and summer.

1) http://www.nps.gov/chcu/index.htm

2) from the Park Service Guide: The preferred and recommended access route to the park is from the north, via US 550 (formerly NM 44) and County Road (CR) 7900, and CR 7950.

Serendipity was one of the things that drove me to offer my many tours for the twenty-odd years that I hauled myself and guests around the vast distances of the American southwest. I was also fortunate enough to have many adventuresome participants along for the ride, or more properly, with me for what was invariably a very long drive! Since we spent many hours getting to the main attractions, it was important for me to find things to stop and see along the way.

Typical view from the Hopi mesas looking towards the eastern spur of Second Mesa. Photo by M. Severson

On my Hopi trips I usually stayed in Winslow, Arizona. I had found that it offered many advantages: a variety of eating options, visits to local sites such as the Homolovi Ruins State Park, the historic Hubbell Trading Post building in Winslow and Harvey’s La Posada hotel. Another advantage was I could take two different routes from Winslow to the mesas. On the second day of the tour I would usually take the Leupp road up to the Hopi capital, Kykotsmovi (New Oraibi), so we would see a very different landscape from the more traditional Route 87 drive through the Hopi buttes.  It was one of these second day drives to Hopi when a tour participant suggested we could stop by Grand Falls.

Petroglyphs at Homolovi Ruins State Park. Photo by M. Severson

For those unfamiliar with the Leupp region of the Navajo Reservation, and I assume there must be some of you out there, it is a town just west of the Little Colorado River where it approaches the lava fields of the Sunset Crater area. Grand Falls is a magnificent natural waterfall that sits right on the edge of the ancient sedimentary sandstones and the much more recent igneous basalts and it only takes about 45 minutes to an hour to get there from Leupp.

One of my recent expeditions to Grand Falls was with my daughter, some friends of hers and my grandson, Joseph. This view is towards the NW with the Sunset Crater volcanic fields in the distance to the upper left. You can clearly see the dark igneous rock on the left side of the canyon and the lighter sedimentary rock to the right.                 Photo by M. Severson

In order to be properly prepared to go you just have to remember my universal rule of driving in the southwest: to get to most places high clearance and patience are all you need. The highway trending west from Leupp is well maintained and when you reach the turnoff to the Falls you may be feeling pretty good about your chances. To get to the Falls you turn right at the first dirt road after the sign that advertises a crossroad, in other words a road that enters the highway from the south and continues on to the north. Upon leaving Leupp, prior to this well-advertised intersection, all the other roads only come in from the left or right but not both directions.

After leaving Leupp heading west you turn right on the next dirt road after you see this sign. Photo by FreeDigitalPhotos.net

You will see the stop signs on both sides of the Leupp highway and turn north. It won’t take long after you get onto the gravel (here read ‘rocky’) road (‘track’) for you to realize that you must slow down and be patient. Personally I have driven a lot of nasty roads and this one is not bad at all when dry (don’t go if it is wet!) but it is dusty, deeply-rutted and sandy with many small and not so small rocks flying up and reaching heights in direct proportion to your speed; so take it slow and you’ll get there. It also has my personal favorite (blatant irony) driving feature: washboards, in abundance. One of the real nice things is there is so little traffic on the road you can drive either lane, the middle or even the shoulder if you think that is the best way for you to go.

Driving back roads like this you may just get lucky and see a herd of pronghorn antelope out for a morning stroll. Photo by M. Severson

To see the Falls from the Navajo Nation’s parking and picnicking area you turn off on the last dirt road to the left before crossing the river. Be very careful here because this is a pretty bad stretch of road but it is very short and you can see the picnic area as soon as you get over the road berm. Once you have navigated the lava residue strewn around the initial part of the trail, driving will get much easier and you can actually cruise all the way over to the other side of the canyon area to look back at the Falls if you want to. Any way you look at it, with or without water flowing, the Little Colorado’s Grand Falls are very impressive and worth the drive.

View of Grand Falls from the west, looking back the way we came. The height of Grand Falls (185 feet) is even greater than that of Niagara Falls (165 feet). Photo by M. Severson

I spent over twenty years as an archaeologist/ tour guide in the southwest. In that time I saw many wonderful sights and had some amazing experiences. All of that was due to my commitment to share my archaeological experience with others.

I was lucky. I managed to convince Helen Murdock and Nancy Thompson of Pima Community College that this was a great potential draw for their community outreach program. That was the easy part. I took them on a whirlwind tour of Chaco Canyon and Canyon de Chelly in three days and they were convinced.

Looking across the ruins of Pueblo Bonito in New Mexico. I took hundreds of people to these spectacular sites and Old Pueblo continues that tradition with tours led by well-known archaeology buffs such as Ron Towner. Photo by M. Severson. Pictured: L. Burnett and son Ian. ca 1980.

After that it was simply my willingness to set aside four or five days, several times a year and work non-stop for those days making sure that everyone got as much as possible from the excursions into prehistory. It was great, I got to go to my favorite places and I was willing to take people along with me to share the experiences. Pima College did all the advertising and made all the arrangements, it was a a godsend second job for an archaeologist turned teacher.

During most of this euphoric time another archaeologist was laboring in a parallel fashion to increase archaeological education for the greater good of the public. His name is Al Dart and his mission since establishing the non-profit organization Old Pueblo Archaeology has been to bring the fascination of the field of archaeology to children and adults alike.

Al brings unquestioned credentials to the endeavor as an archaeologist and professional educator. He received his bachelor’s in anthropology at the University of New Mexico, a master’s from the University of Arizona and has worked extensively in Arizona and New Mexico. He maintains high professional standards for all he does and demands that any program that represents Old Pueblo Archaeology also achieves those goals.

As a founding member of the board of directors for Old Pueblo Archaeology I have witnessed first-hand Al’s unwavering commitment to his vision of public archaeology awareness. It has not been an easy road to follow. There are times when it appeared the organization must dissolve into obscurity due to lack of public and private support. And yet time and time again through sheer force of will and tireless devotion to his dream Al has managed to keep the doors open and the programs available.

And yet lacking a handful of donations this year, the end of that dream could occur at any time. Archaeology is a non-renewable resource. What we see now will never be replicated once lost through inattention, the forces of progress or blatant vandalism. I join with Al in believing that only through aggressive education can we preserve and possibly protect the archaeology that still remains for us to marvel at.

Ignoring the problems means the loss of amazing cultural heritage.

Very large, old archaeologist and visitor to bedrock mortars that give Los Morteros, a Hohokam site in the Tucson Basin, its name. OPAC visits many sites in and around Tucson as well as other well known southwestern places like the Mimbres Valley in New Mexico and the Hopi Mesas.  Used by permission.

That time may be fast approaching. As we all know, our economy especially in Arizona, has been sluggish at best. In times like these non-profits often are forced to rely upon what little they have managed to stash away to keep the wolf from the door. That wolf is howling outside OPAC as I write, rattling the door jambs and shaking the windows.

Early man site Ventana Cave is another of the fascinating sites to be seen on tour with Al Dart and his staff from Old Pueblo Archaeology Center. Photo by M. Severson

If, like me, you believe in Al’s mission and the concept of Old Pueblo Archaeology it is time to do what you can to help preserve this important organization. There are numerous ways to help. You can go to their website and become a member, you can attend the free Third Thursday talks held at various restaurants in and around Tucson and add a donation to your evening’s entertainment. Or quite simply you can donate to Old Pueblo Archaeology’s outreach program which helps fund scholarships for the various educational programs sponsored by the organization. 1)

If you would like to mail Old Pueblo Archaeology Center a tax-deductable, let me repeat that, a tax-deductable donation, please make your check payable to “Old Pueblo Archaeology Center” (or simply OPAC), and please write “Armchair Marcaeologist Donation” on the check’s memo line  (so we can track donation sources and I can see if anyone reads this stuff I write), and send it to:

Old Pueblo Archaeology Center

PO Box 40577

Tucson AZ 85717-0577

Thank you.

1.) https://www.oldpueblo.org/

My first visit to this amazing site had me reeling from all that I saw. The location, set just upslope from Nutria River, was a perfect spot, with ample sandstone, a preferred building material of Ancestral Puebloan people. Then there were the two huge kivas, the smaller attached to the the village and the larger unattached to any building and set just west of the pueblo. It reminded me so much of Penasco Blanco, my favorite Chaco town.

At Penasco Blanco, there are several great kivas, one specifically, is separated from the main ruin and actually lies across the park service fence in what is likely Navajo Reservation or BLM land. (What? Yes, of course I jumped the fence, shhhh don’t tell the Park Service or they may not rehire me.) In a future post I will spend more time on Penasco Blanco and all the wonders there but the clear relationship of a disassociated great kiva intended to serve as a gathering place for outlying smaller communities cannot be ignored. Casa Rinconada, the largest great kiva in Chaco Canyon would be another similar example of an isolated great kiva that comes to mind.

View inside the excavated great kiva of Casa Rinconada on the south side of Chaco Canyon. Pueblo Bonito lies across the wash in the distance at far left and Chettro Ketl in the center right distance, east of Bonito. View to the NE. Photo by M. Severson

This perspective is from the northern overhang, the lower of the two pictograph panels, showing a perspective of the size of the masks and their location. Notice the desert varnish coating the rocks that indicates that there has been water running down the rocks. This contributes to the general greater wear on the pictographs of the lower panel. The view is generally to the southwest. Photo by M. Severson

Finding the array of petroglyphs covering the naturally varnished panels above the site gave life to the ruin, showing much of the thought and dreams of the people who had dwelt there nearly a thousand years before. We walked along that high trail, scouring every flat surface for more rock art. Finally as I worked my way east, it seemed that the finding of the panels was at an end. But the trail went on around the corner and continued around to the east facing bluff. Could there be more glyphs? I had to know.

As I clambered through a notch formed by sandstone boulders that had tumbled down from above I looked up and stopped. I am sure my breathing literally stopped for a moment as I saw things I could not have imagined would be waiting there.

This is the upper panel, the first one you see as you come around the corner and climb between the rocks. There is little or no varnish on these rocks indicating this one is better protected from the elements. Photo by M. Severson

Spread out before me, larger than life and in vivid natural colors were masks, kok’ko masks. Animals, human representations and imaginary creatures surrounded me, wrapped around a slightly concave panel protected by a overhanging roof of stone. Beyond lay another array of masks that were slightly more exposed and so somewhat more weathered and yet nonetheless impressive in their stoic display.

My personal favorite, an ogre that I imagine is asking children if they are listening to their parents. Photo by M. Severson

Shalakos, ogres, animals masks, Comanches and other masks vied with each other for my attention as I sat down on a handy rock and at my leisure simply surveyed the amazing tableau. After perusing the pictographs for a time I began to notice evidence of other drawings that appeared more weathered and older than these. It set me to wondering if there were older paintings that had been replaced and also how long these panels may have been used. Thinking back to Penasco Blanco, anyone who has hiked that trail and seen the numerous petroglyphs that adorn the sandstone walls along the way can only begin to wonder at the lost art — the pictographs that once were left by the ancestral puebloan people in celebration of their lives and religious beliefs.

Various masks from the northern panel show more wear than those on the higher, more protected southern panel. Photo by M. Severson

From the southern panel a Shalako mask to the left. Photo by M. Severson

Notice the figure that stands to the right of this scary creature. To me, with its overall shape and posture, it appears to be a faint representation of another Shalako. This could indicate that these paintings are not a single work of one artist but a compendium of many over a longer period of time. Photo by M. Severson

The Village of the Great Kivas

When my girls were younger they loved going to places like Sea World and Disneyland.  For me it was Chaco Canyon. Chaco Canyon is the place where archaeologists go to vacation. But Chaco is not just one place, it had an enormous effect on the world of the Ancestral Pueblo people. Prehistoric roads stretch out from the canyon enfolding a huge expanse of the region within its grasp.  The towns of Chaco spawned many smaller sites, called outliers by archaeologists.

Lower Nutria Lake on the Zuni Indian Reservation back in the late 80s. The site is to the left out of the picture.

For years I had heard tell of an amazing Chaco outlier site on the Zuni Reservation, excavated by Frank H.H. Roberts, a legend of early southwestern archaeology, in the 1930s. It was called The Village of the Great Kivas because there were two of the huge subterranean rooms at  what was otherwise a relatively minor site. The implications for archaeologists were that it served as a regional center for all the local Chacoan villages, a materials redistribution point and political symbol of Chaco Canyon’s long reach. I wanted to go there.

I knew from my readings that it was near lower Nutria Lake in the northeast corner of reservation lands. From the time I started doing Chacoan tours in the 80s I marked a spot with bright red in my personal itinerary that said, “locate the Village of the Great Kivas.”

As often is the case with me, I chose to look upon it as a quest and a personal challenge rather than a research project. There were certainly people I could have asked for specific instructions and without much doubt they would have probably just told me how to get there but where is the fun in that?

A friend points to the drawings found on some of the lower rocks on level with the ruins. While most of the glyphs are found on the higher trail, there are a few tucked in amongst the boulders to the east of the ruin.

I did mention to one of my Zuni friends, Charles that I was going to look for the site and smiling he responded that he used to like to go out there to fish off the dam, back when he had time. Unfortunately he was just too busy to go fishing now.

Charles had introduced me to Hawikuh, the site where Esteban the Moor had met his end and Father de Niza reported cities of gold. But Hawikuh, a Zuni historic place, had been very close to is family’s traditional farm at Ojo Caliente, so he felt that he had a right to take people there. Nutria was also an area of summer farming communities for Zuni families but Charles’ family was not one of them. He had intimated I was on my own.

I could have asked the Zuni Tribal Office of Tourism about the site. Because security has been greatly augmented over the years, they are the ones you have to see if you want to go there today. They would have helped me, but this was back in the day and I was Illinois Smith (think about it). I’d just do it myself.

Looking up at the site from approximately where the the van was in the previous photo. In the foreground you can see a person standing beside the village, which was excavated by Roberts in the 30s. The petroglyph trail is just below the center row of sandstone blocks above the site.

It wasn’t the first time or the last that I would follow my guiding principle in life: “It’s easier to offer a heartfelt apology than to gain a requested permission.”

My first sally was when I was going from Zuni to Gallup. I took the Nutria turnoff saying, somewhat enigmatically, to the group with me that I wanted to ‘take a look at something’. They being mostly vets of previous trips with me were not the least surprised at the serendipitous event.  I had driven in a couple of clicks toward Nutria lake on a good gravel road when I hit a muddy road that caused my van to fishtail and spin out. Looking ahead I saw no improvement. Never having been one to avoid bad roads when I knew where I was headed, I decided that at this time I would bow to discretion being the better part of valor, I turned around and at the time none but me were the wiser.

I would have to try to find the site again, another time.

View from the petroglyph trail back toward the village with a good perspective of the two great kivas. The smaller, also excavated by Roberts is in the lower center of the photo. The larger lies up and to the right with the large round juniper growing from its walls.

The next try came about a year later, in better weather the road was dry and easy driving.

We got to the lake and I kept watching for signs that I was there. It had to be off to the left somewhere, towards the sandstone talus slopes of the Zuni Mountains.

All the turnoffs looked like they lead to small farms comprised of several dressed sandstone buildings with corrals and clear fence lines. All except one; that one lead back to a rail fence but I saw no buildings. That might be the place but to me it seemed to be too close to the lake.

A few more miles I realized I was gaining altitude, heading for Upper Nutria and I decided. At the first pullout I turned around, went back to the one road near the lake and turned toward the pale stone cliffs. Reaching what I had thought to be a rail fence it revealed itself to be road blocks, meant to prevent vehicles from continuing. Just up ahead I saw the telltale indication that the search was over — stacked sandstone blocks in the classic Chacoan style. We were there.

There are many different types of figures seen on the various panels.

I knew from others that had been there that one of the best features of the site was the rock art. We spent a considerable time wandering around the ruins but the trail beckoned so we trudged up the side of the hill to where the petroglyphs were.

A large panel of petroglyphs that includes one that echoes the pictogragh at Penasco Blanco in Chaco Canyon thought to represent the ‘nova’ phenomenon.

Various figures including a ‘kokopelli’ or hump-backed flute player in the upper right.

It was a stiff climb and the old trail up was largely gone now so it was more of a scramble but we got there and were amply rewarded. Nearly all the panels that were exposed on the sandstone boulders above were covered with graphic expressions of the prehistoric world. Humans, animals and creatures of indeterminate etiology vied with symbols and lines and unusual figures.

The climb was more than worth it when we found all that the artists had previously left for us to see. Most exciting for me was the star and moon pairing which seemed to echo a famous pictograph at Penasco Blanco in Chaco Canyon. The meaning of the pictograph is generally agreed upon by archaeologists to represent the Crab Nebula supernova event of 1054 AD.

(Wow! You mean there is actually something that is generally agreed upon by archaeologists? Who knew?)

After a slow leisurely viewing of the Ancestral Puebloan artistic expressions I thought it couldn’t get any better than this. But I was wrong; the best that this incredible archaeological site had to offer the to diligent and persistent traveller was yet to come . . .

In the lower left is a possible kok’ko (Zuni for katsina) mask.

(To be continued.)

I laid my well-worn hat down on the trail as scale to illustrate the scope of some of the glyphs. You may notice the resemblance of some of the figures to the familiar southwestern icon  ’kokopelli’

When Emil Haury took over for Byron Cummings as the head of the University of Arizona archaeology program he brought with him a new focus. Prior field schools had been held at University Indian Ruin near Tucson and Kinishba on the Apache Reservation. Haury wanted to continue the investigation of the prehistoric culture he had dubbed the Mogollon culture named for the mountain range in New Mexico but since Cummings had retired to his home at Kinishba, if Haury wanted to put his own stamp on the program he needed to find a new site to excavate.

The road into the University of Arizona’s archaeology field school at Point of Pines. View south. Photo by M. Severson

The cabins at Point of Pines field school where the students stayed. Looking west. Photo by M. Severson

Initially he looked at Forestdale Pueblo located very close to the historic trading post of the same name. But being within shouting distance of Showlow, that site didn’t seem to fulfill his desire to establish the field school program in a truly remote locale.

He turned instead to a much more isolated place: Point of Pines ruin near the Black River in east-central Arizona.

His choice proved to be inspired.

Pines line the top of the ruin at the edge of the meadows near “Point of Pines”. Looking north. Photo by M. Severson

Not only was the site remote, it was spectacular both in it’s natural beauty and archaeological potential. Haury would devote much of  the remainder of his career as a professor of archaeology to Point of Pines.

It took me two tries to find the site. As you can tell from the photos I eventually succeeded but the first time I tried and failed but I did have an excuse, of sorts.

One day, I loaded my girls into the van and told them we were going exploring. They were fairly used to this by now and chose to humor the old man. We drove a couple of hours and when I felt I had arrived where I wanted to be I stopped the van to reconnoiter.

Within seconds of me exiting the vehicle, as hard as it is to believe in retrospect, a white SUV with prominent colored lights on its roof drove up and stopped behind me. My girls looked nervously at the uniformed young man who got out and walked up to me.

The magnificent view to the northeast from atop the ruin mounds. Photo by M. Severson

“Good day sir,” he said politely but seriously from behind his aviator sunglasses.

Looking him over I recognized he was 1) Native American and 2) some kind of cop.

“Can I see your license and registration please?” he continued. I reached back in and got them out.

“Is there a problem, officer?”

He looked over the proffered papers and handing them back he continued, “No sir, no problem, I’m a Ranger for the Apache Tribal government. I just wondered what you were doing?”

Now, although I am a great storyteller, and as such an accomplished prevaricator, when I am not trying to do so, I am a terrible liar. So I didn’t even try.

Debris field along the top of the ruin mound. one of the most interesting results of the investigations at the site was the discovery of an influx of immigrants who arrived at the site late in it’s history. View northeast. Photo by M. Severson

“I’m an archaeologist with Pima College in Tucson, Arizona,” he nodded as if in recognition, “and I came up today to scout a new tour to Point of Pines ruin.” I pointed off towards where I had been headed. “I believe the site is right there and I was going to have a little look.”

“Do you have a day permit to visit an archaeological site on the reservation?”

There he had me. “No, are they necessary?”

“I’m afraid so sir.”

“Where do I get them and are they expensive?” I began to wonder what I had gotten myself into.

“You can get them back in Peridot, and I think they’re free, or maybe a couple bucks, mainly you just have to fill out the paperwork.”

Realizing that once again I had gone off totally unprepared, I decided to try and salvage the day. “OK next time I’ll do that, but can you tell me, ” I pointed off at a mounded area a few hundred yards west the road, “isn’t that the Point of Pines ruin?”

There are a lot of ceramics, stone tools and shell jewelry fragments laying about on the ground at Point of Pines. The Swiss Army knife is intrusive and left to give scale. Photo by M. Severson

He smiled finally and responded, “I’m sorry sir but I can’t tell you that.” I couldn’t tell from his tone whether he actually couldn’t or simply wasn’t willing to humor me. Turning he walked back to his vehicle, leaving me with “Have a nice day, sir.”

“Yeah, you too.”

Looking back toward Nantack Ridge from atop the mound. Looking southwest. Photo by M. Severson

A little voice came from inside the van. “What did that policeman want Daddy?”

“Nothing honey, lets go home.”

Cummings at his lab in Kinishba. Photo by Tad Nichols used by permission of the Arizona State Museum.

One of my first tours to venture out of the general Tucson Basin area was to Kinishba. The name means “brown house” in Apache (Inde′). It is one of the more important sites in the history of archaeological study at the University of Arizona. When Byron Cummings was lured from Utah to Arizona he immediately began to upgrade the museum collections and archaeological program at his new school. One of his first acts was to begin a program of field training in archaeology for university students.

Excavations were initially begun at a site a few miles east of Tucson called University Ruin. The land was donated to the college by the owner and digging went on there for several seasons. The university still maintains that site and recently archaeological research work by Paul and Susan Fish has been resumed.

Cummings was interested in taking his students farther afield, both figuratively and in actuality. He discussed his intentions with others and secured permission to begin work at a large late pueblo on the Apache reservation near White River. That pueblo was Kinishba.

Kinishba had everything he was interested in: it was remote, the potential for research was enormous and it was located in the temporal and regional frontiers between the Anasazi and what would come to be known as the Mogollon Culture.

Kinishba is a huge site. At one time there may have been as many as a thousand people living there. There are several room-blocks on both sides of the draw that provides water for the site. Room-blocks are clusters of contiguous living rooms that surround a plaza or open area and they can rise up several stories. Cummings chose the southern rooms to focus his excavations on for several reasons. One, it promised to be of more than one story, also the walls seemed most intact. Finally, there was a tantalizing architectural anomaly that attracted him. The southern room-block appeared to him to feature an unusual entry: an ‘L’ shaped corridor that lead into the plaza.

My first visit was back in the 1970s. I had heard of the site and in my inimitable fashion I decided to go there, trusting that I could find it with little or no directions. I knew it was near White River and that it was close to the road. Luck held for me, there was actually a little, very unobtrusive sign pointing to the dirt road turnoff. The site is visible from the highway if you know what to look for. After that it came down to the correct navigation of a few turnoffs and I found myself at Kinishba.

The road in is dirt but very passable in all but the most extreme weather conditions. Looking northwest. Photo by M. Severson

My first visit back in the late 70s found the old museum still occupied by a family that watched over the site, the ruins in fair shape and lots of ceramic debris scattered across the area. I was charmed. Dean Cummings had put a great deal of effort into Kinishba, hoping that by showcasing the site he might be able to wrangle National Park status to protect his protege in perpetuity. His reconstruction included some very speculative features. Though some say there was little evidence to support it, he built his second level on the south ruin. Even more troublesome to other professionals Cummings rebuilt the southern part of the room block with the postulated, ‘L’ shape, covered entrance, a feature that was unparalleled in any other southwestern prehistoric pueblos.

Kinishba seen from across the wash looking east. Photo by M. Severson

The site itself is large, like many late Mogollon pueblos, with three room-blocks;  two on the east side and one on the west side of the wash. After the 1100s there was a move towards aggregation of populations in the region and for a time some pueblos got larger.

Kinishba may have been one of the sites that benefited from this period of growth.

Over the years I made many trips to Kinishba, and while I was always happy to get there, the tour itself became problematic. The distance involved made it a very long day tour and I had no other sites to include other than historic Ft. Apache to turn the tour into an overnight one. I finally solved the apparent quandary by adding Grasshopper and Point of Pines and making it a three-day, Field Schools of the University of Arizona trip.

Unfortunately, over the years another concern arose. From the first trip to to my last I watched the slow decline of the restored ruins and historic buildings that Cummings had constructed. For a time after his retirement in the late 30s Cummings lived at Kinishba in the museum and while there he oversaw it and the other structures though it was difficult because of his original stricture that authentic materials were to be used on the stabilized ruin wherever possible, there was little he could do to prevent steady degradation of the site. After ten years Cummings was too old to stay any longer at Kinishba and he relocated to Tucson and caretakers moved in. They stayed until sometime in the 70s when the site was basically abandoned.

This is the deep wash cut that divides the blocks of room at the site. Upstream a short distance is a spring. At the time of occupation in the 1200s the draw may have been a steady stream running south to the White River, making Kinishba a very attractive location despite it’s rather high elevation. View is south and the main ruin is in the upper left corner. Photo by M. Severson.

Once that happened the end result was fore-ordained. Year by year, the site became more unstable and occasional incidents of vandalizing exacerbated the decline. My last trip to Kinishba as a tour guide was in 2004. I arrived on an overcast day with a group of five. What I saw broke my heart. There had been a fire at the museum, the building was a ruin now too. I saw graffiti and worst of all the reconstruction that Cummings had done was almost entirely collapsed.

While I was there an odd thing happened. I was wandering the ruins of Cummings outbuildings behind the museum; his garage, the guest houses, and his shed when I clearly heard the distant call of an owl from up the draw. While there was only dim sunlight due to the cloud cover, it was daytime and I could not remember hearing an owl call out like that during the day. Intrigued I left the group and followed the calls which continued to sound in a random fashion. Working my way up through the dense junipers and various shrubs that grew along the edge of the draw I found that I wasn’t getting any closer to the sound of the owl. After ten minutes or so I gave up and turned back.

I did not hear the owl again.

The roof in the foreground left is what remains of Cummings laboratory that he constructed in the second story of the ruins. You can see collapsed roof beams and construction debris scattered over the site. Photo by M. Severson.

After that visit I wrote to the Heritage foundation on their website that was asking for nominations of historic American sites that were in desperate need of protection. Fortunately my voice was not the only one heard. In the end Kinishba received some long overdue attention and today, it at least looks cared for. The White Mountain Apache Tribe, despite the fact that the site is not part of their cultural heritage, have helped with the process by establishing and maintaining a museum and foundation that oversees Ft. Apache, Kinishba and cultural heritage sites of the people. 1) If you want to see an excellent set of photos of what the site looks like today go to Randall Schulhauser’s Hike Arizona site. 2)

If you want to visit the site, make sure you go first to the museum in White River where you can get a day pass by paying a nominal fee that will help continue to provide the over-watch and protection of Kinishba. Despite all the abuse of time and man Kinishba remains one of my favorite places because it combines potential for prehistoric and historic archaeology research and it represents a major site that was occupied at a time of great change in the southwest.

1) http://www.wmat.nsn.us/fortapachepark.htm

2) http://hikearizona.com/decoder.php?ZTN=864

This is the thirty year old mesquite that shades my kitchen and provides grandpa with what his grandson calls “Indian food”. Photo by M. Severson

Over thirty years ago I planted a mesquite tree in my front yard. Actually, I threw mesquite bean pods on the ground and waited. I got the seeds from a friend’s trees. Or I got them from his neighbor’s trees, I don’t remember. But since my friend Lance’s trees were robust specimens of mesquites and his neighbor was noted botanist George Brookbank, I figured I win either way.

My intent was to provide shade for my kitchen, easily the hottest room in the house, using a native tree species. Three decades later I have succeeded magnificently, sort of. The mesquite quickly put out roots that located my sewage water line and drawing on that source, grew huge and healthy. Of course periodically I have to invite a plumber to bring a power router with him to clear my pipes but that is the price we pay in Tucson — anything for shade.

One of my greatest professional recognitions as an archaeologist came from Julian Hayden, a man who knew both his mesquites and his shade. We were arriving at a summer luncheon lecture and round-table discussion when I drove across the entire parking lot  to park beneath the shade of a handy mesquite. Julian looked at me, in that way he had of not letting you know whether you were in for a lecture or accolades, and said, “You know, for an archaeologist you show a remarkable turn of intelligence.” Golden.

Despite the fact that mesquites are ubiquitous in the Sonoran desert and especially in and around Tucson, my belief is that they were once more confined in their occurrence as a secondary riparian tree, growing only near water sources. This is supported by the location of prehistoric resource use areas which are localized near known water resources.

The reason for their extensive spread in the historic period is simple. Mesquite trees produce a delicious pod, full of complex carbohydrates and it is sweet. Cattle love chewing the mesquite pods. Since the seeds within those pods are as hard as BBs the cattle eventually redeposit them along the way with a lot of moisture and fertilizer. Voila, mesquite bosques!

These are a little dry by this time of the summer having laid for a while on the hot desert ground but they would crush up into flour just fine.

But cattle weren’t alone in their desire for mesquite bean pods. For centuries man has looked upon the early summer production of a plethora of the delicious pods as a windfall and a natural hedge against starvation. There is ample evidence that the prehistoric population of Arizona were well aware of the bounty that lay around them, available for the picking.

There are still a few bean pods left on the tree in early July. Photo by M. Severson

At Ventana Cave 1), there is a large volcanic rock sitting just outside the spring area. Hand-drilled into this rock are numerous deep holes. These holes are the remains of mesquite processing activity.

Pods would be dumped into the holes, acting as mortars and then the pods would be crushed, probably with wooden pestles made from the local hardwood — mesquite. The mush that resulted was then either dried into a powder-like flour or formed into cakes that could also be dried and preserved against later need.

Los Mortreros, a site that owes it’s preservation to the efforts of many Tucsonans, is named for the numerous bedrock mortars that were left behind by the prehistoric inhabitants.1)

Mesquite, while not a staple, was certainly an important food resource for the people living in the Sonoran desert in prehistory.

Children probably just grabbed the fresh seed pods off the tree and chewed them up enjoying the mild, sweet, molasses-flavored treat and spitting out the quid. Julian told me that the dessicated remains of those quids were found thousands of years later in Ventana Cave. 2)

Bedrock mortars like this are found wherever mesquite grew. The sherds are Tanque Verde red on brown dated to the 1200-1300s. Photo by M. Severson

Often while on surveys in places like the Sierrita, Rosruge, Coyote and Silverbell mountains I would find similar evidence of mesquite pod processing anytime we came upon sites that had water and the right kind of stone. Igneous, basaltic rocks, because of their rough surface, vesicular nature (it often has little holes in it) and hardness was the rock of choice, just as it was for manos and metates used in corn grinding.

Personally I think there may have been an added benefit that the prehistoric people discovered over the long run. Corn as a dietary staple has certain nutritional inefficiencies, one of which involves iron. The iron acquired from the the grinding of the pods in an iron rich stone would help ameliorate those problems. (Same reason I still cook with a cast iron skillet.) In other areas granite also serves as a ready replacement for basalt as a grinding stone though it doesn’t offer the same benefits.

Notice that the mortar is not very big or deep, that may indicate that it was used seasonally during the year, just for the mesquite harvest. This one is near the rodeo grounds in Sells, AZ. Photo by M. Severson

In Tucson  we have had something of a mesquite renaissance. Going online or perusing the regional news outlets you can find recipes for using mesquite flour in cooking and baking (it needs no sugar!) and there are some local producers of mesquite based cookies, cakes and pancakes.

These pods are sitting on a stone composed of vesicular basalt, one of the favorite grinding materials employed by prehistoric people for processing mesquite.                        Photo by M. Severson

1) Sites that will be discussed at length in future posts.

2) Julian Hayden personal communication

One of the most famous archaeological sites in the southwest is Chaco Canyon. Chaco lies in northwest New Mexico somewhere between Gallup and Farmington. Actually Chaco Canyon is not a site but a district containing thousands of archaeological sites and it is recognized as a World Heritage Site.

I will be taking you to some of the lesser known places in Chaco Canyon in some later posts but for now I am stopping at an outlier about 50 miles south of Chaco and it is one that is integrally related to the prehistoric cities of the canyon.

Outliers in the professional archaeologist parlance are habitation sites that are somehow connected to a larger sphere of influence but located somewhere outside it’s core.

Driving from Gallup, exit at Thoreau (pronounced ‘threw’; it’s named for a former railroad man) as if to take the short cut to Farmington, New Mexico. Traveling by this back road toward the Bistii Wilderness, and eventually Farmington, as I am sure you have done many times, you may have noticed in passing an interesting rock formation east of the highway near Crownpoint. It looks much like a natural spire of sandstone when seen from the road traveling 70 plus miles an hour. Closer inspection though, discloses that while it is a stone spire, it is of man-made origin.

The Navajo (Dine′) have named it Kin Ya’a — the Tall House.

The Tall House, notice how the shadow makes it look like a natural formation. Looking east. Photo by M. Severson

It represents the remains of what must have been an imposing structure in its day. Archaeologists refer to it as a ‘tower kiva’ because there appears to be a ceremonial significance to the interior room at the top of the tower. Modern kivas are ceremonial rooms in pueblo towns and by the referential process of archaeological interpretation, archaeologists have identified these rooms as being ceremonial in ancient pueblos also. Tree ring dates place the building of Kin Ya’a around 1100 AD.

Generally kivas make up a small percentage of the overall rooms in a village. Tower kivas are a unique structure even among these less common specialized rooms because rather than being subterranean as  are most prehistoric kivas, they rise several stories into the air.

One theory is that building a kiva so high up gives it a stronger connection to the realm of the sky and therefore increases the viability of any prayers for rain that originate there. Since it appears that some tower kivas may be several of the structures stacked one atop the other, they may also replicate the four worlds of pueblo myths.

Tower kivas are not exclusive to sites that are linked to Chaco Canyon but they are most commonly found in Chacoan towns. The one at Chettro Ketl, the second largest town in the canyon, has some interesting stone projections that appear to allow for entry by those adventurous souls brave enough to ascend the exterior of the tower in that manner. A more likely function is to illustrate to the people when it was time to re-plaster the exterior walls. When the rock projections start to show it’s time to start mixing more plaster.

The Chettro Ketl tower kiva has been excavated to illustrate the amount of work that went into the foundations of the structure. Not surprisingly it sits upon an impressive stone base excavated more than twenty feet into the Chaco soil. West of Pueblo Bonito, the compact town of Kin Kletso has two structures that appear to be tower kivas. If you are interested in learning more about Chaco you can go to the NPS site. 1)

Here in a close-up of remains of the tower kiva interior wall where you can see the reddish coloring of oxidation on the sandstone bricks indicating that the structure probably burned. Looking north. Photo by M. Severson

Most archaeologists agree that the tower kiva at Kin Ya’a has a very specific reason for its placement at this particular Chacoan town. But because they are archaeologists they don’t all agree on what that reason is. It all depends on who you talk to.

This site is unexcavated, which means all the information is still there waiting for future improvements in archaeological techniques. Looking northeast. Photo by M. Severson

The purpose of the structure may have long been open to debate but I like the signal tower aspect that has been presented in many discussions. The idea is that fires built atop the kiva could be used to signal other sites far away, especially at night. Kin Ya’a lies along the Great South Road out of Chaco, in fact the road bisects the pueblo diagonally.

To read more information on Kin Ya’a and a nice interpretive reconstruction painting go to the NPS brochure 2).

If you want to go to Kin Ya’a I better tell you my story.

Anyone traveling to Chaco today normally enters by the Pueblo Pintado road between Bloomfield and Cuba, NM;  built a decade or so ago to facilitate visitation to the remote site. Back in the day, a generation or more in the distant past, this adventurous explorer used to enter the canyon by the south road at the old trading post (TP) turnoff and return the next day by the Blanco TP or Nageezi TP road. I have always been a lover of bad roads.

Exploring the site, Chaco road is in foreground. Exploring the site, people are standing on the ruins of multistory rooms. A portion of a Chaco road is in the foreground, the tower kiva to the right of picture. Looking west. Photo by M. Severson

Of course, while on tour, I also wanted to stop and see Kin Ya’a since I drove right by it. Not bothering to get directions, (Don’t say it!) I felt I could find my way to the site. After all, I am a trained archaeologist. I’ve surveyed hundreds of miles of desert without getting lost. I can surely find my way to a stone spire that anyone can plainly see.

Yep.

On my first attempt I wound up in a local front yard somewhere south of Kin Ya’a. Sitting there slightly embarrassed but unashamed I watched as a Navajo granny in long skirts came out her front door. She looked at the huge white van loaded with bil-ganas (the term Navajos use for ‘white people’) that was being driven by some big guy with a nervous smile on his hairy face. She slowly shook her head, turned around and walked back in the house shutting the door behind her

As you can tell by my photos, I did finally find my way to Kin Ya’a but I still owe that granny an apology.

The carefully constructed Chacoan walls usually had a visual pattern to the layers of sandstone. Then they were covered by plaster and never seen by the people who lived there. Looking northwest. Photo by M. Severson

1) http://www.chaco.com/park/brochure.html

2) http://www.nps.gov/chcu/planyourvisit/upload/

KIN%20YA’%20A%20-%202005.pdf

(Many thanks to Mark Evans my indomitable editor for helping me finally get this together and ready to publish. In the future, digital Neanderthal that I am notwithstanding, I’ll try and manage better on my own. MBS)

Success, by my own standards at least, in my other writing (ReTired Tucson Teacher) has encouraged me to venture back in time to my first profession: archaeology. I spent several years working as an archaeologist back in the 70s and then as I moved into education I continued to dabble in the field both figuratively and in fact. While I would like to say that I enjoyed the scientific investigation and thrill of discovery but, truth is, I just loved getting dirty.

My intent in these articles is to take you places you may be interested in seeing. Most of you will probably never get to these places in person. If you are a professional archaeologist you have probably already been to most of them so it may not be of that much interest to you. But I will highlight some of my favorite archaeological sites that are off the well-beaten, asphalt path or gravel path, okay, barely recognizable marks of tire tracks in the dirt; and in doing so I hope to convey to the interested layman or the involved avocational archaeologist, some of the wonder I feel upon arriving at places of storied history and less storied prehistory for the first time.

When your Dad is an archaeologist you get to tromp through Pueblo Bonito in your Oshkosh overalls and Holly Hobbie sunbonnet for your first vacation. Photo by Marc Severson

For twenty years I worked for Pima College. Part of the time it was as an archaeologist working in a lab analyzing archaeological finds. But for most of those two decades I was a teacher in community service classes and a tour guide to various archaeological and anthropological sites in the southwest. I described the job as going to the places I liked to go to and taking other people with me. It was the best second job ever!

Most of my tours were localized in Arizona and New Mexico though I also visited places in Colorado and Utah. Occasionally I would even venture across the border into Mexico. Usually I would be gone for three to five days staying in motels near to where we were going. I got to know some of the best restaurants in towns like Gallup and Chinle. And to answer your question, “Yes there are some!” I also got to know a lot of great people along the way and I will share some of my memories of them. Come along for the ride if you like, I’m going places that I like to go and you are welcome to join me.

Riding with our guide as we approach the White House in Canyon de Chelly. Even an experienced tour guide sometimes needs to call on the expertise of someone more familiar with the nuances of his area. My favorite guide in de Chelly was named David. He knew every sight and all their stories. In all my trips into the canyons with him we only got stuck once, and that was a mechanical breakdown not quicksand. Photo by Marc Severson

Many towns and other locations on Indian reservations will have information of a general nature for their visitors. This sign is from the town of Zuni. Zuni Pueblo, locally known as Halona-wa was once a bustling place. Most of the 49ers stopped off here to get supplies prior to heading across the Mojave desert. Photo by Marc Severson