My Life in Ruins
Adventures of an Amateur Archeologist
By Sharon White
For The Community Record

Indiana Jones recovering the Lost Ark of the Covenant or Howard Carter finding the treasures of King Tut’s tomb -- these things have always fascinated me, so when I learned of a place that would teach me basic archaeology and let me work on real archaeological digs, I was hooked.
The place is Crow Canyon Archaeological Center in Cortez, Colorado; it’s an educational and research facility with intriguing programs for adults and for kids as young as nine. You can learn about Native Americans of today or the ancient people who lived on this continent a thousand years ago. Cortez is in the heart of the Four Corners region, the spot where Colorado, Utah, New Mexico and Arizona all come together. This is the richest archaeological region in the U. S. so it is the best place to start an archaeological adventure.
When you start to dig, you don’t just grab a shovel and begin moving dirt. Crow Canyon novices receive some introductory sessions that give them a short course on the history of the Mesa Verde region. This only serves to whet one’s appetite for discovering the evidence of these ancient people’s occupation of the area.

Before the excavation can begin there has to be a “research design”, which states the questions you hope to answer with your excavation. It also states how you intend to go about finding the answers. Because Crow Canyon’s current excavations are taking place at the Goodman Point Pueblo, which is administered by the National Park Service, the research design had to be approved by the NPS.

In 1889 Goodman Point Pueblo became the first ancient site set aside for protection from homesteading, so the ruins there are relatively untouched since they were abandoned by their builders in the late 1200s. The pueblo is in the heart of an area of many large communities occupied by groups of related peoples at roughly the same time. These people are officially called Ancestral Puebloan; though many still use the word Anazazi, which is Navajo for “ancient ones.“ So now that we know the “where, why and how” of our excavation, we’re ready to get to work.

My husband Ron and I have been participating in Crow Canyon programs for about 13 years, eight of those years have included Adult Research Programs (that‘s Crow Canyon‘s official name for what we call dig weeks).
The Goodman Point site is about 13 miles from the Crow Canyon campus, so on Monday morning the diggers pile into several eleven-passenger vans to drive out there. The scenery here is awesome, especially to flatlanders like Ron and me. The two dominant features are Sleeping Ute Mountain to the south and Mesa Verde to the east with other mountain ranges marching all the way to the horizon. With the aspen trees turning gold, the view is breathtaking.

At the site we leave the vans at the road and walk down a trail about a quarter of a mile to the site of an ancient village. Partial stone walls and piles of rubble show where buildings up to three stories high once stood. The site supervisor Kristin Kukelman takes us on a tour and points out different kinds of structures, a plaza area and the spring that provided the villagers’ water supply.

After the tour we assemble under a large tent to pick up our digging equipment and get our assignments. The equipment consists of a bucket, a trowel, a kneeling pad and a whiskbroom and a dustpan. Pretty basic.
Ron and I are assigned to a kiva, a circular underground structure believed to have been used for ceremonies as well as for food preparation and other activities of production such as flint knapping. Our kiva exists only as a circular pile of stones with a bowl-shaped depression in the center. In this depression there is a square two meters by two meters delineated by four wooden stakes in the ground with string tied between them. This is our “unit”. I’ve never dug in a “virgin” unit; I’ve always worked in units that other diggers have been excavating before me. This is a new experience.
We grab our trowels and begin piling dirt into our buckets. When the buckets are full we carry them to a big wooden frame suspended from a large tripod. The frame’s bottom is a quarter-inch wire mesh screen. By sifting the dirt through this screen, we can find small artifacts that might go unnoticed as we scoop up the dirt.

The surface of our unit is mostly vegetation material on top of dirt that has blown into the depression since the kiva’s roof collapsed and the walls began to fall in. It’s easy to dig although it’s not too easy to screen. The soil just below the surface is fluffy, loamy stuff that can be scooped up with our dustpans.

Quite surprisingly we begin finding artifacts right away. This is unusual because most artifacts found in kivas tend to be on the floor of the structure and we’re a long way from the floor. I’m thinking that these artifacts have washed into our kiva over time since we’re digging near the bottom of a steep downhill slope. They are randomly deposited the way we ordinarily find artifacts in a midden. “Midden” is the archaeologist’s term for garbage dump.
As we find the artifacts, we place them in a paper bag that has all kinds of information written on it so that when the artifacts are analyzed in the lab, the exact location where they were found is documented. The term for this is “provenience”. Potsherds and chipped stone go in a big bag because that’s what we find the most of. Smaller bags are provided for animal bones and charcoal.

I always get excited when I hear that clink sound that means my trowel has struck a potsherd or piece of stone that may prove to be significant. It’s back to my Indiana Jones dream: will this be the Rosetta Stone of the American Southwest?

At noon we all walk back to the staging tent for a picnic lunch. This is a great time because we all “show and tell” just like in first grade. Since the diggers are in units scattered all over the landscape, we’re anxious to learn what others are finding.

During the afternoon Kristin comes to check on our progress. She compliments us on the amount of dirt we’ve moved and notes that we’ve got a lot more artifacts than the midden excavators are finding. Our dig buddy Larry Livingston from Aurora, Colorado, is digging in a room block just above us; he claims the artifacts we’re finding are rightfully his because they must have washed out of his unit and slipped downhill into our kiva. But we maintain that provenience must prevail.

We are plenty tired by 4 p.m. when we cover our unit and write up our daily notes. After the buckets and tools are stashed in the storage boxes, we head to the vans for the return ride to Crow Canyon’s campus.

Adult participants in Crow Canyon’s on-campus programs are housed in log cabins that look like Navajo hogans, eight-sided structures always with a door that faces east so that the occupants may greet the rising sun. Toilet and shower facilities are just down the sidewalk from the hogans. It’s pretty basic as accommodations go, but quite comfortable and really kind of fun.
Meals are served in the lodge dining room and they are magnificent. The chef Jim Martin could compete with chefs in the finest restaurants. His food is made with the very best of fresh ingredients and is always delicious. Jim even teaches classes on Southwest cuisine and has lead several culinary tours. He also has a wicked sense of humor. He and Ron like to trade insults.

Some evenings there are special programs presented by the staff archaeologists on special topics that add to our understanding of the ancient people.

By midweek we’re ready for a break from excavation and we’re happy to work a day in the analysis lab. Here the artifacts are washed, sorted and then carefully analyzed.

First the potsherds are separated from the chipped stone. The chipped stone pieces are arrowheads, knives, spear points and other lithics made by chipping sharp pieces from a hard stone such as flint. Finding a whole arrowhead doesn’t happen often and is always a thrill for a digger. Mostly we find the debitage or little flakes that are chipped off in the process of making a point.

The potsherds are by far the majority of artifacts taken from a site. It’s amazing how much can be learned from a broken piece of pottery. We learn to determine the age of a piece by looking at its form, the clay it was made from and its decoration. These things also tell us where it was made. The potters from different locales had distinctive ways of shaping and decorating their bowls and jars. Pottery made at a far locale indicates that the people at Goodman Point traded with the people at that locale.

Sometimes we find a potsherd that still bears the fingerprint of the individual who made it hundreds of years ago. When I find such a piece I love to hold it in my hand. It gives me a feeling of connection and communication with that ancient potter.

We visit the lab’s curation room to look at whole or reconstructed pottery pieces. This makes it easier to identify the broken pieces we’re analyzing because we can see how they fit into a complete vessel.

After the artifacts are analyzed they are placed in plastic bags with little tags on which is written all pertinent information. These bags go into boxes, which are archived at the Anazazi Cultural Center. They are considered to be the property of the Native American tribes in the area who are the descendants of these ancient people. The artifacts are available to archaeologists who wish to do further study.

Crow Canyon has a very strict policy regarding human remains. If human bones are found during excavation, the bones are not disturbed, but are left in place and any artifacts considered to be grave goods are put back. Then the unit is back filled and no further excavation is done there. This is in keeping with the Native American Graves Protection and Repatriation Act.
While finding pottery and arrowheads is fun and important, the really hot item for archaeologists is -- believe it or not -- logs. If we excavate a support beam from the roof or second story of a structure, it can be sent to a dendrochronology lab. There the tree rings are analyzed and the exact year the tree was cut can be determined. This gives dates for construction of the buildings and the artifacts found in them. Because building went on almost continuously during an occupation, the latest cutting date gives archaeologists a good idea of when the site was abandoned.

Ron and I celebrate when we find a pilaster in our unit. This stone support pillar is proof-positive that we are digging in a kiva structure. Anazazi kivas have six of these pillars which support a cribbed roof of logs covered with a network of latias, sticks that support the adobe roof of the circular kiva.
We are still finding lots of pottery sherds, animal bones, charcoal and ash, which indicate the secondary use of the kiva as a midden. This seems to indicate that the structures we’re working in were some of the first built in the pueblo as kivas were often used this way after the original occupants left and others came to occupy the site later.

The stone walls of the pueblos were constructed of stacked sandstone blocks that were shaped to fit securely together. Without maintenance, these stack stone walls collapse. That’s what happened at Goodman Point when its builders abandoned it in about 1289 A.D. As Ron and I remove the fallen rubble from our unit, we stack the stones in a one-meter square tower. This will give a fair assessment of the height of the building.

At the end of our two weeks of digging Ron and I have removed a couple of cubic meters of dirt, filled a couple of bags with artifacts and had a lot of fun. We’ll be back at Crow Canyon next year for more digging and we also hope to participate in one or more of Crow Canyon’s Cultural Explorations; these are learning vacations during which participants travel with archaeologists and Native American scholars to visit ancient ruins, experience Native American traditions and workmanship or learn an ancient skill such as pottery making or weaving.

To learn more about Crow Canyon Archaeology Center, its programs and how you may take part, visit their web site at www.crowcanyon.org or write to 23390 Road K, Cortez, CO 81321. You may request a catalog by calling 1-800-422-8975.