Category Archives: Chaco

Chaco Canyon and closely associated topics

New Ute Museum in Ignacio, CO

Utes OK architect to design new museum

The new Ute museum is to be constructed across Colorado Highway 172 from the Sky Ute Casino in Ignacio. A 3,000-square-foot building attached to the casino that has served as a bingo parlor, radio station and community hall now houses the museum’s collection of artifacts.

”It was never meant to be a museum,” Brittner said. …

“Thousands of people visit Mesa Verde without ever learning anything about the Utes,” Brittner said. “The Utes were here before the Anasazi, and they’re alive today and making great contributions.”

Developer finds treasure in ruins

Archie Hanson holds a pot from about A.D. 1200 that was found outside the kiva in the background.DenverPost.com – LOCAL NEWS

Project near Cortez has 19 homes, 210 ancient Indian sites

”Indian Camp Ranch” billed as ”the first archaeological subdivision.”

On the 1,200 high-desert acres just a few miles northwest of Cortez sit 19 high-end homes. The area has one of the highest recorded densities of ancient Indian sites in the country – 210.

The concentration of sites is rivaled only by the subdivision’s neighbor, the 164,000-acre archaeological preserve called Canyons of the Ancients National Monument. …

This settlement, now called the Hanson Pueblo, has a tower, three kivas and some 28 rooms altogether. It likely was home to three families around A.D. 1135, Hanson says. …

If most archaeologists find Hanson less appealing, they can do nothing about it. In this state it is legal for private property owners to do whatever they like with the cultural artifacts found on their land. …

“We’re living in a fool’s paradise. This is freedom’s heaven,” where county officials base decisions on common sense, not politics, he says.

Hanson, who originally asked $232,000 for each of Indian Camp’s 32 lots, each at least 35 acres, never charged a price differential for the cultural resources. Lots now go for about $250,000 each. …

Just down the hill from the Hansons’ house is the Seed Jar Site, thrilling in its gruesome way.

“A raiding party came in and killed everybody. They stayed there long enough to eat them. Twelve dead people,” Hanson says. “There were 9,156 bones they got out of it, not counting the little ones.”

Archaeologist Korri Dee Turner, daughter of Christy Turner, a cannibalism researcher reviled for focusing so much attention on a grisly and hotly disputed topic, reported evidence of witchcraft rituals and trophy-taking.

Cannibalism of the Ancestral Puebloans is an unpopular topic among many contemporary archaeologists and modern Indians. Just about everything Hanson does causes some unease in the conservative community of local archaeologists because of their discipline’s grueling standards and his free-wheeling ways.

Archaeologists churn up ancient tools, figurine near Prescott, AZ

Prescott Newspapers Online

Archaeologists uncovered one of the largest pestles ever found on the Prescott National Forest while excavating a site for the Gray Wolf landfill expansion last week.

A pestle is a long, conical grinding tool with a pointed end that ancient native people used to grind harder items such as nuts and minerals for paint. …

People of the Prescott Culture during the Chino phase, which dates between 1100 A.D. and 1300 A.D., used the site.

After that time, drier sites the Prescott Culture and others inhabited around the Southwest such as the Hohokam, Anasazi and Mogollon experienced widespread abandonment. They left during the “Great Drought of the Southwest.” Tree-ring dating shows the drought occurred between 1276 and 1299.

The Prescott Culture range covered much of western Yavapai County, especially in the Prescott Basin, as far back as 200 A.D. They had a strong Hohokam influence, in that the Hohokam settled the upper Agua Fria watershed around 750 A.D. to 850 A.D.

Archaeologists disagree about whether the Yavapai people are related to the Prescott Culture. Some theorize that the Yavapai came to this area after the Prescott Culture abandoned it.

Moab Men Charged with Digging Up Anasazi Ruins

KSL News: Moab Men Charged with Digging Up Anasazi Ruins

Three men have been accused of causing ten thousand dollars damage to an Anasazi archaeological site, charges that bring a decade in prison and a hefty fine.

Phillip C. Morse, Donald Snowberger, and Woodard J. Cresswell, all of Moab, are accused of damaging the Side Canyon Rock Shelter on Bureau of Land Management property near Moab.

They were indicted Wednesday by a federal grand jury in Salt Lake City on charges of violating the Archaeological Resources Protection Act and damaging property of the United States.
The first count carries a term of up to two years behind bars and the second has a ten-year maximum. The maximum fine for violating each law is 250 thousand dollars.

The alleged violations took place December second, 1998.

A U-S Attorney’s Office spokeswoman says these cases often take years to come to court because experts must assess the damage.

The indictment says that the site consists of material remains of human life and activity dating to the Basketmaker Period. The Utah State Historical Society says the Anasazi came to Utah around 400 A-D, bringing their basketmaker cultural traditions.

(Copyright 2003 by The Associated Press. All Rights Reserved.)

Still more on Chaco corn research

Ancient corncobs unlock riddle

At its height, Pueblo Bonito is thought to have supported between 6,000 and 12,000 people. Excavations of the largest building have found hundreds of rooms, turquoise ornaments, unusual cylindrical jars, finely crafted spear points and icons of tropical birds from Central America.

Beyond the central city, a network of roads led to outlying villages that were scattered across more than 23,000 square miles of the San Juan Basin.

Each of the article I’ve linked to is a little different from the others, though some names & quotes are the same. mjh

Dinétah

AGEEZI, N.M. — The Navajo revere this remote area around a tabletop mesa in northwestern New Mexico as the place where the mythical figure Changing Woman gave birth to two warrior sons who made the universe safe.

Energy companies desire this area for its strategic location in the San Juan Basin, a geological mother lode of natural gas reserves in the Four Corners region that has become one of North America’s richest sources of mineral wealth.

The almost inevitable clash of these conflicting values has laid bare the Navajo Nation’s contentious relations with oil and gas companies, including accusations of underpayment for land leases and negligence by the government agencies overseeing such agreements.

It’s Gas vs. Heritage in Navajo Country

The outrageous actions of the energy industry in the Four Corners have caused ranchers and Navajos to shout “enough!” mjh

Senate OKs Funds for Chaco Collection

Caretakers of the huge Chaco Culture archaeological collection are cheered by U.S. Senate approval of $3.7 million to finish construction of a home for the artifacts.

Wendy Bustard, curator of the National Park Service collection, said the move last week raises hopes that the measure will clear the House by September.

The funding would complete construction of the Frank C. Hibben Center for Archaeological Research at the University of New Mexico. The Chaco Collection will occupy the second and third floors at the center, she said.

“We are excited about it,” Bustard said of the Senate’s approval on Thursday.. “Both the Park Service and UNM are anxious to get on with it.”

Sen. Pete Domenici, R-N.M., sponsored the Senate bill.

Bustard said the Park Service could begin moving the collection into the Hibben Center by fall 2004 if the House approves the money.

For now, an estimated 1.5 million artifacts in about 2,000 boxes are held in a cramped storeroom at UNM. The material was collected at the 35,000-acre Chaco Culture National Historical park, 50 miles west of Cuba.

Some 5,000 Chaco Anasazi lived at the site from the mid-800s to about 1200.

Hibben, who died last year at age 91, donated $4 million to build the Hibben Center next to UNM’s Maxwell Museum. The building’s shell and first floor were completed last year.

Completion of the second and third floors will allow UNM and the Park Service to consolidate their Chaco Culture collections at one site, together with archaeological field records, photos and other archival materials now housed at Zimmerman Library, she said. — by Olivier Uyttebrouck, ABQjournal

Pueblo Bonito arial photoAnasazi drinking mug photoThe Chaco Collection, jointly owned and managed by the Maxwell Museum and the National park Service Cultural Research Division, contains approximately 750,000 artifacts from archaeological field work in Chaco Canyon. The collections were acquired from the 1940s through the early 1980s during excavation, testing, stabilization and survey of sites in the canyon and surrounding areas.

Chaco Canyon

Ancient pueblos forced to cope with drought-or perish

Pueblo Bonito photoWhy did a culture that had survived previous droughts collapse during this one?

The answer, experts say, is a cautionary tale about coping with drought in the arid West.

Wherever you live in the Southwest, it ultimately comes down to the same thing: If it isn’t dry now, wait. It will be. And the pattern appears to be repeating.

Ancient pueblos forced to cope with drought-or perish By John Fleck, Durango Herald Online

Interesting article about the effect of the cycle of drought in the southwestern United States, by the abqjournal’s science writer. mjhmjh

Canyons of the Ancients National Monument

Painted Hands PuebloCanyons of the Ancients National Monument in southwestern Colorado contains a huge number of archaeological sites (more than 6000 recorded, up to 100 per square mile in some places) representing the Ancestral Puebloan and other Native American cultures, as well as important historic and environmental resources.

Bureau of Land Management Colorado – Canyons of the Ancients National Monument

The area of this relatively new National Monument is east of Hovenweep National Monument and north of Mesa Verde National Park. It includes Lowry Ruins, Yellowjacket Ruins and many, many less-well-known ruins. The headquarters are in the Anasazi Heritage Center, between Dolores and Cortez. mjh