Back in Colorado for another archaeological dig - this time at Mitchell Springs Ruins in Cortez, Colorado. Owner of the land and the head archaeologist, Dave Dove, welcomed about 35 of us for the May field school. Most if not all of us are members of the Colorado or Arizona Archaeological Societies. I am a member of the Colorado Archaeological Society, both the San Juan Basin (Durango) and the Hisatsinom (Cortez) chapters. (At home in Sacramento, I'm also a member of the Sacramento Archaeological Society).
To give you a perspective on the property, I am going to paraphrase directly from the Archaeological Survey of the property compiled by Dave M. Dove dated March 2012. It's an incredible site!
"In the fall of 2010, several members of the Hisatsinom Chapter of the Colorado Archaeological Society began an intensive archaeological survey of a 36 acre parcel of property located just south of the town of Cortez, Colorado. The Puebloan features which lie on this property were part of the greater ancient Mitchell Springs community which is spread across roughly 2 square kilometers and centered on the Mitchell Springs main site group, located approximately seven hundred meters to the southwest. Prior to historic disturbance, this community included over 60 small pueblos dating from the Basketmaker III (ca. A.D. 500-750) through middle Pueblo III (around A.D. 1230) periods. The size and chronological depth of this community center make it one of the largest and longest occupied in the central Montezuma Valley. McElmo Creek flows through the valley which was heavily populated during most of the Puebloan era.
The main site group at Mitchell Springs included at least three multi-story Chaco-like great houses, two or three large 10+meter diameter kivas (Dove et al. 2009:120), several small towers, a tri wall structure, a reservoir and a multi-story tower kiva (Dove et al. 1997). Lewis Henry Morgan, a New York attorney and avocational archaeologist producted a simple map of the Mitchell Springs site and noted the great tower and the largest mound in the group during an 1878 trip through the Montezuma Valley (Morgan 1965 [1881]:215).
Given the close proximity of the prehistoric Mitchell Springs Community to the historic early settlement near the springs and the nearby town of Cortez, many if not most of the prehistoric features and structures have suffered significant deleterious impact from the historic road construction and relic hunters. Fortunately, significant undisturbed portions of the site deposits remain intact.
Approximately 550 contiguous acres of the community have been surveyed and more work is planned."
Check out Dave Dove's website for details on the survey. The website is updated periodically to include more recent excavation information.
http://www.fourcornersresearch.com/Mitchell-Springs.html
The four corners region of Colorado is very rich in ancient puebloan ruins most being on private property. We felt quite fortunate to be a part of this field school. Association with an archaeological society is truly one of the best ways to find out about these opportunities. Here are some pictures of the site I worked on along with my fellow companions:
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| Starting the dig |
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| Dave Dove (white hat) with the site foreman, Larry |
We had a good spot really with plenty of room. Not an extraordinary amount of artifacts were found other than the normal amount of bones, pottery shards and small tools. I'm very grateful we didn't start with the site below! A lot of moving of stones to get to the artifacts but the artifacts found at this site were amazing. Each site and I think there were about ten had a site foreman and maybe three to four volunteers.
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| Sifting to find artifacts - in the hot sun! But I love it! |
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| Hard work but a labor of love for all of us! |
Some scenes of our campsite area, nightly get-togethers, and surrounding scenery...really amazing country.
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| Fields against Sleeping Ute Mtn. |
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| Incredible mountain ranges |
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| Nightly happy hour at the campsites |
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| Nice people...every one of them |
After a really tough but gratifying five days, Dave Dove, land owner and head archaeologist had a BBQ at his home which we all attended. The food was so good and the company really, really good. We
had a great time talking and enjoying our meal with everyone before we said our goodbyes the next morning.
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| Dave's great BBQ! |
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| A few of our fellow diggers |
After the field school, off we went to some other fascinating places. The Southwest is full of them!
Blanding, Utah
From our camp in Blanding, Utah we could do a lot of exploring to other areas. It was nice to stay here for several days.
Hovenweep Towers, Colorado and Utah (Four Corners)
In all of my years traveling to the Southwest, I had never explored Hovenweep thoroughly. In 2010 (see first blog post below) I had worked at the Goodman Point excavation at Hovenweep with Crow Canyon Archaeological Center. A wonderful, amazing experience which I highly recommend to avocational archaeologists.
Hovenweep can be entered from both the Colorado and Utah side. We explored it from the Utah side and maybe next time will enter from Colorado as there's much we didn't see. It's an amazing place somewhat different than other ruins, from what we could see of the remnants. I recommend the book entitled The Towers of Hovenweep by Ian Thompson (forward by Mark Varien, Director of Research Crow Canyon Archaeological Center, Cortez, Colorado). I enjoyed the forward almost as much as the book, as it described the author's love of the area and the vast amounts of time he spent exploring, researching and writing about it.
The bugs were definitely biting the day we hiked on the rim of Hovenweep. We didn't know June was a popular month for these particular flyig insects. What works best is to "keep moving" and herbal, deet-free insect repellent and in fact the visitor's center was selling it (you can also find it at REI Co-op). You can't miss a bit of skin though as the bugs will find it. They really loved me unfortunately.
Here's only a few pictures of what we saw the day of our hike on the Utah side called "Little Ruin Canyon".
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| Twin Towers at Square Tower Group |
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| Square Tower |
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| Hovenweep Castle |
A most amazing place though we were not able to hike too closely to the structures -- I'm sure over the years the ruins have become eroded with those that have explored them. But it was still amazing to see these walls and to look at the workmanship even from the trail. There are tours however going into the canyon. Here's an artist rendition of what a typical settlement may have looked like in the A.D. 1200's (Pueblo III):
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| Drawing from The Towers of Hovenweep by Ian Thompson |
Edge of the Cedars Museum
An amazing small museum in Blanding, Utah. Just incredible displays of petrogylph murals and ancient puebloan pottery. In the back of the museum there was also a partially excavated pueblo ruin you can explore including a kiva to climb into. We thoroughly enjoyed our time there, but it was the end of the day and we literally raced through it. Here's a few pictures to give a small flavor of its treasures:
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| Petrogylph mural |
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| Petroglyph mural |
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| Ancient Puebloan pottery - look at the thin walls! |
Kane Gulch and Mule Canyon Ruins
Incredible doesn't begin to cover what we saw. We purchased topographical maps and a book on Cedar Gulch thinking we were going to spend some serious time in this area. It's quite desolate and so takes some planning. Those that backpacked in certainly must see some amazing sites glimpsed by only a few. We hiked in maybe a mile or two...in the blazing sun. Must have been close to 100 degrees that day. So needless to say, when we saw the ruin at the top of the cliff, we were more than thrilled. We stayed a while and took some pictures and thought we would keep hiking to find others but not to be as the day grew later and later, and we didn't come across another that was as obvious...(but the overhanging rocks typical to this area could have been shelter or hideouts for the ancient ones). We understand that in the eight mile hike in one could see as many ruins, but we never got that far. If there's a next time, we will need to leave much earlier in the morning and not hike during the summer months. Here' some of the amazing terrain we hiked through to get to the ruin you see below:
Petroglyphs!
There are many petroglyph sites in the Southwest some not easy to hike to or find while some are too easy to hike to and find...meaning easily available sites are sometimes defaced by those who just don't understand the amazing historical and almost sacred value of what they are viewing.
One such place was Sand Island petroglyphs near Bluff, Utah which was a mix of ancient and more recent (about 300 years old) art and unfortunately some scratches added by current-day vandals. This is a punishable crime if the vandals are caught, by the way.
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| Sand Island Petroglyph panel |
Another easy to get to area is called Newspaper Rock and it was quite astounding to see so many petroglyphs on one very large rock. I think there are many more in the hills behind it but they are likely protected by the Bureau of Land Management (BLM) or access is minimal. Below is just one of the representative panels jam-packed with images. Looks newsy doesn't it?
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| Newspaper Rock panel |
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One such place was Sand Island petroglyphs near Bluff, Utah which was a mix of ancient and more recent (about 300 years old) art and unfortunately some scratches added by current-day vandals. This is a punishable crime if the vandals are caught, by the way. 
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