Excavation and Balcony House

Excavation and a Short Educational Lesson

This week was a little different in that it was the start of the excavation season! This meant, (1) that I got older kids (seventh graders) and (2) that I got to go out in the field and mess around at the site. Since I am a staff member I am not allowed to actually dig at the site. My job is to make sure that the kids in my group are excavating correctly and that they don't throw away any artifacts. But the work is outside and a nice change to doing the same modules over and over again every week.

We're excavating at a site called Goodman Point Pueblo. This is believed to be the second largest site in the area and is kiva dominated with 107 kivas. Someone asked me a while ago what a kiva was so I was divulge a little extra information. A kiva started out as a living quarter for Pueblo people. Originally the Pueblo Indians lived in pithouses that where dug about 1-3 feet into the ground. As time wore on, the people started to build storage rooms above ground and the pithouses were dug deeper (6-12 feet). They lived in the pitrooms (what pithouses became) and stored food and wood in the above ground storage. By building into the ground, the temperature stays constant year round (about 50 degrees). As time continues to go on, people started living in the roomblocks (buildings above ground) some of the time and only living in the pitrooms during part of the year (mostly winter). The pitrooms changed from a square shape to a circular shape and the design in how they where made evolved as well (masonry added). Eventually in the P III period (1150 - 1300 AD) kivas are primarily for ceremonial use or for men to work in. Now in days they are almost solely places of worship and ceremonial in nature. When archaeologists are looking at a site, there is typically one small kiva per family or clan and a few Great kivas for everyone in the town or village. I hope that answers the question of what a kiva is. If not I can elaborate at another time.

My excavation buddies were four boys that all wanted to compete with each other for the coolest artifacts. Once boy, Daniel, kept finding little things and so the others took to calling him "Lucy" after the 2 million remains that were found in Africa and thought to be the oldest known ancestor of humans at the time that the remains were found (since them the oldest remains found date to about 3.7 million years ago). Daniel took this as a comment.

One of the other kids I was looking after was nicknamed "Sandy" because he kept saying that he found something and it always turned out to be sandstone (which is the most common rock in the area and what the people used to build their homes). If nothing else these four boys were quite interesting and kept things from getting boring with their quirky banter.

Special Treats at Mesa Verde

This week was a special week at Mesa Verde. I got to see two things that I've never seen yet, but have been wanting to see.

First was the "Sheepapelli." The Sheepapelli is a pictograph (painted on) that was painted on the back of the alcove at Spruce Tree House. It is a flute player like the Kokopelli, but more hunched over and slightly different. The ranger on my very first tour told me about it, but you can only see it if someone shines an industrial light on it because the paint has faded so much. Becky (the educator that I was working with again this week), knew one of the rangers that were hanging out at Spruce Tree and convinced her to shine the light for us. It was a real treat. Sorry no pictures unless Becky remembers to send them to me cause my camera couldn't capture the sight from where I was).














The second treat is that they opened up Balcony House for tours. Balcony House is one of the later cliff dwellings that were built and it is the only cliff dwelling in the park where the original inhabitants built a retaining wall to protect people from falling off the cliff side. It's a really neat dwelling that isn't that easy to get to and from. You have to climb a 30 ft ladder to get in and then crawl through very small tunnels and up the cliff side on ladders and steps cut into the stone to get out (the pictures go in order of how a person would go through). There is a spectacular view from the dwelling. Becky also pointed out some other dwellings on the other side of the canyon that can just barely be seen from Balcony House. The only thing to dampen the experience was that the ranger talked in a complete monotone and was condescending to both the kids and the adults. He was really bad and Becky kept making comments about how she could give the tour better than him. I urged to do so and thus keep the kids from contemplating what a drop over the wall might have been like.

Anasazi Heritage Center

Another change this week is that we got to go with the kids to the Anasazi Heritage Museum. This is the place that houses all of the artifacts that Crow Canyon digs up during their excavations. They also display various exhibits. There was a special exhibit there about the last 150 or so years of archaeology in this region. There's a nice large print of Josh (on of the educators here) working with some kids at Crow Canyon. I made fun of him for it.



Dominguez Site


Escalante Site

Outside the museum there are two different sites: The Dominguez site and the Escalante site. These sites are named after two Priest the explored the area in 1776 looking for a route from somewhere to somewhere else (I don't remember where, if you really want to know, there are things such as history books out there....I can't be expected to know everything). I do know that they never made it to where they originally intended to go though. They ended up exploring this area instead.