Blackwater Draw

Right near Clovis is an incredible archeological site, where you can hike the trails up and down through time, stop at digs that are still in progress, and sit under a shady tree and picture the ancients going about their hunting and gathering. It's a place where mammoth bones have been found together with spear points within the mammoth's body cavity, indicating that almost 11,500 years ago prehistoric men hunted and brought down these huge creatures.

Blackwater Draw, located between Clovis and Portales, New Mexico, is a National Historic Landmark and is considered to be one of the most important archeological sites in the world. As with many archeological discoveries, it came to the attention of archeologists through a series of almost accidental events.

In 1929, a young man named Ridgely Whiteman found an arrowhead and a piece of mammoth bone there and sent them off to the Smithsonian Insitute with a letter. There wasn't much of a response, but the Smithsonian filed his contributions away. It wasn't until much later that he was recognized as the original discoverer of the Clovis Man site.

In 1932, when the highway between Clovis and Portales was being built, an articles on SouthernNewMexico.com tells us: The State of New Mexico had secured a portion of privately owned property as a right of way and as a location for its material pit. The sand and gravel at this spot were quarried with a horse-pulled scraper and screened by hand. Many prehistoric bones were uncovered. They were displayed in the windows of Ed J. Neer's store in Portales, according to the Portales Valley News of Thursday, October 20, 1932, but were not considered an earth-shaking event but rather a curiosity.

Finally, later in 1932, archeological excavation began and it continues today. At the site of the gravel quarry, now owned by Eastern New Mexico University, you can travel down through time from the present to 9500 B.C. It's an exciting place to be--the next stone you see could be part of a wonderful new prehistoric find. There are at least 20 archaic wells on the site with, no doubt, more to be discovered. Current digs are protected with roofs; you can visit them to see down through the layers of time. The self-guided walking trail takes you to an area where the peoples of the past camped--a spot that has yielded thousands of artifacts and prehistoric bones.

Curiously, no human bones have yet been discovered at the site, although all kinds of human-made artifacts have been dug up. There are a number of theories as to why the bones haven't been found--one being that bodies were taken elsewhere to be buried; another that the discovery simply has yet to be made.

A few miles away from the Blackwater Draw Site itself you can visit the Blackwater Draw Museum, which contains displays that show the amazingly exquisite Clovis points made of colored chert, chalcedony, jasper, and agate; and that illustrate how the finds fit into the prehistoric timeline.

For more information, see About.com's Blackwater Draw Locality 1 and Minnesota State University's page on Blackwater Draw, which includes some photos of Clovis points. The Eastern New Mexico University's web page for the Blackwater Draw Museum gives its location, admission information, and hours of operation; the page for Blackwater Draw Locality No. 1 gives the information for the archeological site.

Designing Pragmatic Desert Built Environments

Isn't that a catchy title for this post? It comes from a chapter in the book, Canyon Gardens; The Ancient Pueblo Landscapes of the American Southwest, edited by V.B. Price and Baker H. Morrow, Albuquerque: University of New Mexico Press, 2006. This isn't the usual sort of book you'll find me reading but I have to tell you, I was absolutely captivated by this collection of essays.

Yes, this is serious stuff, written by university researchers. Yes, the facts are often couched in that academic language we all learn in graduate school. But if you persevere, as I did, you will find yourself surrounded by the ancient Puebloan peoples, admiring their survival methods. You will start to see how they could have lived in the harsh desert climate for millennia by using a pragmatic, low-risk approach to siting their buildings and growing their crops, and by seeing themselves as part of the land and the landscape, as opposed to the way we tend to impose ourselves on the land as something apart. You might be surprised to read of the wide variety of crops that were either raised (corn, beans, squash); encouraged--Indian ricegrass and sand dropseed, amaranth and goosefoot species; and gathered--Cholla fruit, the seeds of fourwind saltbush, juniper and algerita berries, piñon nuts, watercress, and the fruit and fiber of the yucca.

You will encounter some unexpectedly lovely writing, as in the essay on "Zuni Maize," by Mary Beath, and you might be greatly touched by Rina Swentzell's piece on "Conflicting Landscape Values: The Santa Clara Pueblo and Day School," which recounts the experiences of children leaving the nurturing shelter of pueblo life to go to a school where they were surrounded by a loss of trust and lack of respect.

In addition to an examination of ancient survival techniques, you will also find a discussion of how we might use some of this ancient wisdom in choosing home sites and in gardening in this desert land. You might just find yourself looking at the land, and your relationship to it, in a new way.