Hangin' with the Mimbres Twins

We went down to see the El Paso Museum of Archeology a few weeks ago. We've passed the building many times as we've traveled the Transmountain Highway into El Paso on our way to the airport, but never had the time to stop. 

The building is much larger than it seems from the outside. We promised ourselves that we would check out the desert trails in the surrounding 15 acres the next time we visited; as it was, the hour we had available between dropping off and picking up visitors at the airport gave us time to look at only part of one of the wings of the museum. After all, the museum exhibits cover 14,000 years of prehistory!

I spent most of my time with the Mimbres Twins exhibit that illustrated a hero twin myth as commemorated by the Mimbres peoples in their pottery.

According to the Smithsonian: The Mimbres occupied the somewhat isolated mountain and river valleys of southwestern New Mexico from about 1000 to 1250 AD. (More here).  

You can see a pdf version here of the Mimbres Twins pamphlet that is sold by the Museum; it contains the complete myth and more illustrations from the exhibit. 

It's so tricky to take photos through glass cases; this one is blurry and the one below has reflections

Next time, I plan to continue my explorations and get the whole story on this snake jug (from Mexico, as I recall) and this wonderful dog effigy, which reminds me of our own Little Pete.

Ancient Mexican dog effigy

The modern version: Little Pete

Pecos: The Archaeological Record

Mission remains

From the New Mexico Office of the State Historian, quoted from an article, Cicuique (Pecos Pueblo), by Richard Flint, and Shirley Cushing Flint:

Archaeologist Alfred V. Kidder, working during the years 1915-1929, uncovered the general plan of the north and south pueblos, their construction techniques, their pottery and other daily artifacts. Kidder determined that, in fact, the north pueblo had a rectangular configuration and that "excavation has so far fully confirmed" Castañeda de Nájera's description from the Coronado expedition.

Mission monastery remains

His excavations ascertained the existence of 660 rooms housing approximately 110 families, staggered passageways, seventeen subterranean round kivas, and four above-ground square kivas he called "guardhouse kivas." He determined that the pueblo had as many as four stories, with some flimsy superstructures accounting for some five-story units. In several rooms he uncovered remains of the covered walkways and subterranean connecting passageways...

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.

Pueblo Ruins in New Mexico

Wall at Pecos National Monument

After reading the Canyon Spirits book, I wondered just how many archaeological sites there are around New Mexico that contain ruins of structures built by the Ancient Puebloans. Here are the ones that I found on the New Mexico Tourism website.

Aztec Ruins National Monument

Bandelier National Monument

Casamero Pueblo Ruins

Chaco Cultural National Historic Park

Coronado State Monument

El Morro National Monument

Gila Cliff Dwellings National Monument

Hawikuh Ruin

Jemez State Monument

Pecos National Monument

Petrogyph National Monument

Poshuouinge Ruins

Pueblitos of Dinetah

Puye Ruins

Salinas Pueblo Mission National Monument

Salmon Ruin

Canyon Spirits and Motel Mysteries

Canyon Spirits; Beauty and Power in the Ancestral Puebloan World. Photographs by John L. Ninnemann; essays by Stephen H. Lekson* and J. McKim Malville. Albuquerque, University of New Mexico Press, 2005.

This is a lovely book; the photos are beautiful and make you want to spend some time looking at all the details and then to map out a journey to see these places for yourself. Lekson's essay, "Anasazi Pueblos of the Ancient Southwest," speculates on the history and events experienced by the Ancient Puebloans who left behind so many tantalizing ruins, still puzzled over today. His interpretations are backed up by scientific methods for measuring past weather patterns and other archaeological techniques for speculating on what is, after all, an ultimately unknowable past.

It was the second essay, "Ancient Space and Time in the Canyons" by Malville, that lost me. I do not see how an archaeologist can look at a cave wall with petroglyph notches and a spiral carved into it and start talking about calendrical stations, triangular shadows, and "hierophanies of space and time." I know the man has studied these things, but it seems to me that his theories are based on pure speculation; one theory balanced on another and another.

I am reminded of David Macauley's spectacular The Motel of the Mysteries. Here is the publisher's description of this book, first brought out in 1979:

It is the year 4022; all of the ancient country of Usa has been buried under many feet of detritus from a catastrophe that occurred back in 1985. Imagine, then, the excitement that Howard Carson, an amateur archeologist at best, experienced when in crossing the perimeter of an abandoned excavation site he felt the ground give way beneath him and found himself at the bottom of a shaft, which, judging from the DO NOT DISTURB sign hanging from an archaic doorknob, was clearly the entrance to a still-sealed burial chamber. Carson's incredible discoveries, including the remains of two bodies, one of them on a ceremonial bed facing an altar that appeared to be a means of communicating with the Gods and the other lying in a porcelain sarcophagus in the Inner Chamber, permitted him to piece together the whole fabric of that extraordinary civilization.

Yes, Howard discovers the ancient site of the Toot 'n C'mon Motel and from the artifacts there (a toilet paper roll! A "ceremonial" and "ritual treasure" toilet seat!) constructs an extremely skewed world view of our own civilization. It just makes me wonder what the Ancient Puebloans might think of Malville's hierophanies...

******

*Lekson was a contributor to Canyon Gardens; The Ancient Pueblo Landscapes of the American Southwest, previously reviewed on this blog.

A Palpable Silence: Sandia Cave

Up the little trail, cave in the distance

I came across this phrase in a book--a palpable silence--that stopped me right there on the page. There it was, the perfect way to describe what I feel sometimes, in some places, here in New Mexico.

On our very first trip out from New Hampshire to take a look around New Mexico with the idea of living here, we drove up into the Sandia Mountains outside of Albuquerque. About four miles up from Placitas, we saw a smallish sign saying "Sandia Cave" and took the turn, curious about what lay ahead. We parked in a little lot off the side of the road and walked the half mile trail. It ended in a concrete staircase in Las Huertas Canyon, which led straight up the side of a limestone cliff. At the top, we stepped out of the hot sunshine into the darkness of a cave. All around us was nothing but silence--no crowds, no inconsequential tourist chat--just a silence so deep that it was a separate presence. A palpable silence. Out of the hot sunshine into the darkness

I was surprised to learn that this deserted and out of the way place, which came to our attention with so little fanfare, was the site of the celebrated Sandia Man. Why, even I remembered reading about him in some textbook or other. This was a famous guy! Here is a quote from the Albuquerque Journal: "Sandia Cave, discovered by an anthropology graduate student in 1936, was excavated by University of New Mexico archeological teams between 1937 and 1941. It contained skeletal remains of such Ice Age beasts as the wooly mammoth and mastodon and giant sloth, as well as stone lance and arrow points, basket scraps and remnants of woven yucca moccasins. The diggers found no human bones in the cave debris. At first, it was thought that Sandia Man may have used the cave as a seasonal retreat about 22,000 years ago. But more recent dating shows that Sandia Man actually lived periodically in the cave only 10,000 to 12,000 years ago. Even that revised age-estimate would make Sandia Man one of the first recorded inhabitants of North America, hunting game in the Sandias during the same era as Folsom Man roamed the plains of Northeastern New Mexico. "

Looking into the cave

This was our first experience with the big silences of New Mexico. I'll write about more of them in the coming days.