Day Six in Chaco

Tara Beresh

October 10, 2016

Being immersed in a field project, wherever you are, entails delving into a chapter of the past that is often shrouded in mystery. Every moment of picking, digging, shoveling, sifting, brushing, and analyzing incites the anticipation of potentially unveiling new information about a place, a time, or the people who lived long ago. Who inhabited this place? What were they doing? How did they live their lives? We dig carefully to answer questions, to gain clues that will lend to the archaeological record, and in turn, teach the modern world something new about a time and place and its people.

The field crew spent our first week in Chaco Canyon trying to learn more about the Wetherill family through uncovering portions of their homestead, that, over time have been torn down, bulldozed, possibly repurposed or changed. Did the Wetherills incorporate prehistoric materials into their homestead? Did they knowing or unknowingly build on top of prehistoric sites or features? All that we have to reference are old photographs and dated documents. We can surmise from blurry black and white photos that the foundation might have been constructed with time-relevant materials, or that the walls might extend so many meters, relevant to still-standing architecture. But the truth is, we don’t really know what is true about a site that is unexposed until these questions are answered through excavation. Who was the man that resided here, and what can we learn from what is left of his homestead?

We know from historic record that Richard Wetherill was born in 1858, as one of five brothers who were born in Pennsylvania and eventually ended up cattle ranching in southwestern Colorado. In 1887 he became interested in archaeology after stumbling upon the cliff-dwellings of Mesa Verde. He began excavating in Chaco in 1896 and then moved to Chaco Canyon with his wife, Marietta, to ranch and run a trading post near Pueblo Bonito, one of the largest sites in Chaco Canyon.

Excavating the property where this trading post and Wetherill’s homestead once stood, the UNM archaeological field school crew has already uncovered artifacts and construction materials such as buttons, beads, tar paper, plaster, various types of historic colored glass, nails, and shell casings alongside ceramic and stone remnants of the prehispanic Chacoan culture. From photos, we anticipated there to be a wall where, after plotting a line and digging, there was not. This verifies that either a) our calculations as to the positioning of the wall were incorrect, or b) bulldozing by the Park Service has destroyed the structures as they once stood in the late 19^th century.

Today each students was assigned a 1x1 meter unit to define potential architectural remnants from the Wetherill homestead as well as investigate the positioning of a possible privy and uncover what might exist beneath areas of high disturbance possibly indicating prior structures or artifacts. Using trowels, brushes and shovels, each crew member will dig level layers of matrix from their respective unit and then sift that soil through ¼ inch screens to reveal artifacts that will be analyzed and recorded in the field lab. Excavation will help to confirm or disprove our what is believed about the homestead’s history, construction, and placement in relation to the Chacoan Great House of Pueblo Bonito.