Durango Herald Online
Archaeologists excavating clues of Ridges Basin
By Dale Rodebaugh
Herald Staff Writer

Fresh data indicate that the ancient inhabitants of Ridges Basin southwest of Durango were there for a much shorter time than previously thought, the archaeologist in charge of excavation said.

A team from SWCA Environmental Consultants is wrapping up four years of investigations this summer because the Animas-La Plata Project, a settlement of American Indian water-right claims, will leave the study area under water within a few years.

“Tree-ring analysis shows there were two distinct periods of occupation,” Jim Potter said on Monday during a tour of the Sacred Ridge, the most significant settlement. “There was a late Basketmaker II period from 200 to 400. After a long hiatus, the area was occupied from 750 to 800 at which time there was a very abrupt abandonment.”

Tree-ring analysis of wood found in pit houses indicates no wood later than the year 803, with intense use of the area in the period 775 to 800, Potter said.

Previous estimates of second-period occupation, which didn’t have the benefit of tree-ring analysis, pegged use of the area from 650 to 850. The earliest tree-ring evidence dates from the 300s.

Narrowing the period of occupation indicates that the basin wasn’t inhabited by a few people moving around, but a lot of people during a relatively short time, Potter said.

“We think that multiple ethnic groups, composing 500 to 1,000 people, lived in the area during the late 700s,” Potter said. “When they left at about 800, they probably dispersed in different directions.”

The inhabitants were probably different to the level of language, Potter said. They were certainly socially diverse, as evidenced by their architecture and how they buried their dead. Modern Puebloans such as the Zia, Acoma, Jemez and Laguna have ties to varying degrees with the inhabitants of Ridges Basin.

Eighty sites, including 72 pit structures, will have been excavated by the time the archaeological field season ends Sept. 30, Potter said. The Sacred Ridge, which overlooked wetlands, was the most populated site, occupied right up to the departure of the ancestral Puebloans.

Three years of data analysis will follow the conclusion of field work, Potter said. Finally, all artifacts, photographs, maps and written records will be housed at the Anasazi Heritage Center in Dolores. All material will be available to researchers and the general public. The Southern Ute Indian Tribe and the Ute Mountain Ute Tribe are interested in the educational and archaeological aspects of the project.

Interpretation of findings is speculative at this point, Potter said, including the reasons the ancestral Puebloans abandoned the basin. Possibilities for their departure could have been environmental (a hard life at high elevation in a cool temperature) or social conflict (trauma evidenced in bones).

In addition to the chronology gleaned from analyzing tree rings, geological evidence indicates Ridges Basin was a very marshy environment, Potter said. Prehistorically, the basin contains a natural lake fed by what today is known as Basin Creek.

Obsidian artifacts from the Jemez Mountains in northern New Mexico and redware shards and vessels from today’s Utah were uncovered in Ridges Basin excavations. Their presence suggests trade connections with neighboring groups, Potter said.

Once excavation is done, archaeologists will have literally millions of artifacts (a single shard is an artifact) to analyze, Potter said. Projectile points, charred botanical matter (corn, wood, seeds and tobacco), bones and ceramics will be examined.

“We have the skeleton of what the Ridges Basin settlement looked like,” Potter said. “We’ll flesh it out in the next three years.”

Arizona Daily Sun-
Much more than doodling
By SARA KINCAID
Sun Staff Reporter

Northern Arizona University professor Kelley Hays-Gilpin looks at rock art in her book “Ambiguous Images: Gender and Rock Art,” which recently received the Society of American Archaeology book award. The book challenges the reader to set aside preconceived notions when interpreting images. …

Hays-Gilpin has spent a career trying to convince other archaeology scholars of rock art’s importance and to challenge popular interpretation. Hays-Gilpin began her career in anthropology as a ceramics analyst. Conveniently, some of the images used in pottery also are used in rock art.

“Symbols and meaning can transcend media,” she said. …

Many rock art images are tied to religious ceremonies. A one-meter image of a young woman giving birth at a place in northern Arizona could depict Changing Woman giving birth to the twin heroes of the Navajo creation story or it could be a fertility shrine, Hays-Gilpin said.

One of the important aspects of interpreting rock images is speaking with descendants of the people who might have made the images, she said.

She’s studying images at Chaco Canyon of people who are missing appendages. While such an image might appear to depict a violent scene, there are other interpretations, including the artist not finishing or the figures emerging from the rock. Given the extent of figures without appendages, it is less likely the artist did not finish, she said.

The area could be a separation between this world and the spirit world.

“That rock could be a surface veil out of this world and the spirit world … we can resolve this by talking to descendants,” she said.

Arizona Event: 56th Annual Navajo Festival

July 30-31, 2005 • Museum of Northern Arizona • 3101 N. Fort Valley Road

Where: Flagstaff, AZ — Artists, musicians, dancers, and food preparers will gather at the Museum of Northern Arizona’s 56th Annual Navajo Festival of Arts and Culture on Saturday and Sunday, July 30 and 31 to share in the weekend’s grand offering of Diné traditions. The central philosophy in Diné life is hozho, meaning everything the Navajo thinks of as good-harmony, beauty, blessedness, and balance.

For more information, go to www.musnaz.org or call 928/774-5213.

ABQjournal: Signs of Otters Spark Debate By Felicia Fonseca, The Associated Press

River otters haven’t been seen in northern New Mexico since 1953.

That’s why University of New Mexico researcher Paul Polechla’s discovery of otter feces last fall on the banks of the San Juan River near the Colorado border was news to be celebrated. …

State officials, meanwhile, hope the possibility of spotting an otter at Navajo Lake State Park, where the droppings were found, will boost human visitors to one of New Mexico’s most popular campgrounds. …

The researchers said more analysis is needed to determine which otter subspecies left behind the scat. When that is determined, scientists will make a decision about how to continue.

One of the possibilities includes the Southwestern river otter, which Polechla says should be on the endangered species list. Nonnative or mixed breed otters also could be present, he said.

River otters are sleek animals usually brown in color with short legs, webbed feet and glossy, dense fur, Polechla said.

“Their fur is so highly regarded— in terms of durability, softness, insulation capacity— that it is regarded as the diamond of the fur world,” he said.

The otters, which travel along waterways, produce a litter once a year yielding between one and six kits.

Playfulness is their outstanding characteristic, said Melissa Savage, an ecologist with the New Mexico River Otter Working Group.

“They are very gregarious and social,” she said. …

Bill Dunn, a supervising biologist for the Game and Fish Department, … said public surveys have shown New Mexicans favor reintroduction in the upper Rio Grande, the Rio Chama and the Gila River.

Mountain Gazette : Vigil — Michael Wolcott

To the Navajo, [the San Francisco Peaks — actually the collapsed remains of a single giant volcano –] is Dook’o’ sliid, one of four cardinal points in the universe. To the Hopi it is Navatikyaovi. Throughout the year, the Hopi dances lure water from the sky above the mountain and marry it to the soil. This keeps the world in balance.

The Daily Inter Lake
Northwest Montana wolves well-behaved
Posted: Sunday, May 22, 2005 – 09:15:33 am PDT
By JIM MANNThe Daily Inter Lake

And for several years now, the packs of Western Montana have shown a strong preference for fleet white-tailed deer over plodding cattle or bison.

Compared to the far more numerous and often-reported livestock depredations carried out by wolves in the Greater Yellowstone Area and Idaho, Western Montana wolves have been keeping a low profile.

“It’s kind of surprising to people that most wolves are around livestock every day of their lives and they kind of choose not to attack them,” said Ed Bangs, the U.S. Fish and Wildlife Service’s gray wolf recovery coordinator. “Given the unlimited opportunities for wolves to chase livestock, it’s kind of surprising, even to us who work with them, that there’s as few conflicts as there are.”

That observation holds true particularly in Western Montana, where only six cows and one sheep were confirmed as being killed by wolves in 2004. The Cook Pack of Idaho, by contrast, killed 85 sheep last year, an offense so severe that all nine wolves in the pack were destroyed by federal trappers in a helicopter hunt. And just two weeks ago, 11 sheep were confirmed as being killed by wolves in the Paradise Valley north of Yellowstone National Park. …

Sheep, Bangs said, are extremely easy prey not only for wolves, but also for coyotes, mountain lions, even eagles.

Despite the abundant populations of white-tailed deer in Northwest Montana, the region’s wolf populations have remained relatively low for years,

“This year, our estimate of wolves was 835 wolves (throughout Idaho, Wyoming and Montana) and only 59 of those are in Western Montana,” Bangs said. “The vast majority of wolves are in Yellowstone and western Idaho, where there are huge blocks of contiguous public land.”

What We Would Lose in AlaskaBy Jonathan Waterman

In the northeastern corner of Alaska is a strange, polygonal-patterned plain that the local Gwich’in people call Vadzaii Googii Vi Dehk’it Gwanlii, or the Sacred Place Where Life Begins. At this cold ocean edge a caribou herd calves, polar bears den and millions of migratory birds roost. Snowy mountains come booming up out of the sea, surrounded by sandy spits and lagoons. The unscarred landscape turns and locks in your eyes. It looks limitless. It also happens to be one of the last places where we can cup our hands to drink pure water, gaze across a skyline uninterrupted by commerce and meet primeval nature. Congress, which calls this protected coastal plain the Arctic National Wildlife Refuge, or ANWR, is close to opening 1.5 million of its acres to oil leasing. Pro-oil politicians, who travel north on weekend delegations to shake the hands of a few natives and glance at the tundra, often denigrate this alien-looking landscape to serve their agendas.

I’ve been going to the refuge for 20 years, and I know that the cold and bugs can blind you to the real value of the place, particularly if you’re accompanying a congressional delegation keen to reduce our dependence on foreign oil. Since Congress is now operating on a fast track that overlooks and seeks to subdue one of our greatest national treasures, the public needs to know what’s really at stake.
Continue reading we will create a precedent for opening up all wildlife refuges →

ABQjournal: Summer Season Starts Out Strong at State Parks

State parks around New Mexico are celebrating a successful launch of their summer season with a 34 percent increase in Memorial Day week crowds.

“The holiday weekend was terrific in New Mexico State Parks,” said Dave Simon, state parks director. “It was safe and it was fun-filled.”

Visits at all 32 state parks increased from 222,000 for the week leading to Memorial Day in 2004 to 296,000 this year, Simon said.

“With lake levels continuing to rise through June and dozens of programs and special activities scheduled, the 2005 summer excitement in state parks is just getting started,” Simon said.

Elephant Butte Lake State Park saw a 14-foot increase in water levels from a year ago. It experienced an 80 percent increase in visitors from 72,800 in 2004 to 131,000 this year.

Nearby Caballo Lake State Park experienced a 100 percent increase in visitors during the week leading to Memorial Day this year with 18,015. It had only 9,021 visitors during the same period last year.

Sugarite Canyon in northeastern New Mexico also saw a huge increase from 2,477 last year to 5,005 this year.

All totals released by the parks officials are based on visitor numbers from Monday, May 23, through Sunday, May 29.

Despite the large crowds, no major accidents or injuries were reported at state parks over the holiday weekend, officials said.

Navajo Lake State Park had more than 19,000 visitors for the week.

About 6,000 visitors made their way to Eagle Nest Lake State Park for its first Memorial Day weekend as a state park. A free fishing clinic and survival strategy demonstration were credited for drawing some of the visitors, state parks officials said.

More than 5,200 visitors went to Santa Rosa Lake State Park in eastern New Mexico during the week. That’s a 26 percent increase.

Drop Elephant Butte and Caballo and you have an average of over 650 visitors per day per park. If I went to any park and encountered 600 people, I’d leave. New Mexico needs more parks. mjh

ABQjournal: Gila Wolf Eludes Pursuers By Tania Soussan, Journal Staff Writer

Efforts to remove a pair of cattle-killing wolves and their pups from the Gila National Forest are continuing.

The Francisco Pack alpha pair of endangered Mexican gray wolves is under a “lethal take” order for killing four cattle on Gila grazing allotments. They also could be removed from the wild through trapping.

The male wolf has avoided sharpshooters and traps for weeks.

Biologists are focusing now on capturing or killing the uncollared male but he remains elusive, said program manager John Morgart of the U.S. Fish and Wildlife Service.

The agency had intended to kill that male wolf in the trap if he was caught but has reversed its decision.

The male was born in the wild but never can be released again because he has killed so many cows, and he does not have the valuable genetics to make him a candidate for captive breeding, Morgart said.

New Mexico Game Commission Chairman Guy Riordan said he told the Fish and Wildlife Service that the state Game and Fish Department prefers to see the wolf captured rather than killed.

“There’s value in all the animals,” he said.

Morgart said the male could be useful in helping to rear his pups if all the animals are taken into captivity.

Michael Robinson of the Center for Biological Diversity said he hopes the male escapes both trapping and shooting, but he praised the decision not to kill him in a trap.

“We’re pleased that New Mexico Game and Fish has won this small concession,” he said.

The female wolf is in a den with four or five young pups, and biologists are using her to lure the male. They also are putting out meat for her to eat.

“We haven’t had any luck drawing him into an area where he can be trapped or where he can be seen to be shot,” Morgart said. “The goal is to remove him from the area in the most efficient way possible.”

Once the male is caught or shot, biologists will try to trap the female and then grab her pups. But she also is under a kill order and that option might need to be used before the pups leave the den five or six weeks from now, Morgart said.

The female also could be hard to trap because she has been caught several times before and is trap savvy, he said. If she is killed, an older pair of wolves already in captivity “would be great surrogate parents,” Morgart said.

A male yearling from the pack was captured two weeks ago and is in captivity. The three adults can never return to the wild but the pups could.

Pay the ranchers enough that they look forward to wolves killing their cows. mjh

ABQjournal: Around New Mexico

Meetings To Examine Gray Wolf Program

The Adaptive Management Work Group for the Mexican gray wolf reintroduction program will hold a series of public meetings this month to discuss a review of the program and proposed changes.

The meetings will be June 15 in Reserve, June 16 in Silver City, June 17 in Truth or Consequences and June 18 in Albuquerque.

The meetings will include a 30-minute presentation on the program five-year review, proposed standard operating procedures and a proposed one-year moratorium on some new wolf releases followed by a 21/2-hour “open forum” session for the public to speak.

Written comments will be accepted through July 31. Details about the meetings and documents about the review and proposals are available at http://azgfd.gov/wolf and http://mexicanwolf.fws.gov or by calling 346-2525.