Group Offering Indian Ruins to Park Service

Buried but reportedly intact Anasazi Indian ruins on a remote 40-acre property adjacent to the Petrified Forest National Park are being offered to the National Park Service by an New Mexico-based organization.

The Archaeological Conservancy, a private, nonprofit organization headquartered in Santa Fe, said that it had purchased the 40 acres from a Montana couple and was offering to donate it to the Park Service to be added to the park east of here.

Village Called ‘Pristine’

Although the scientific research potential of most such sites has been disturbed by souvenir hunters, the village’s location on a roadless mesa reachable only through the park has left it “pristine” and unexcavated, conservancy President Mark Michel said.

He described it as “one of the best examples of an undisturbed Anasazi ruin left in the Southwest.”

The Anasazi, possibly the forebears of the Pueblo Indians, flourished in the Four Corners region until about 600 years ago.

Among the remnants of their civilization are the Mesa Verde, Colo., cliff dwellings and a ritual and commercial center at Chaco Canyon, N.M.

Michel said that the Petrified Forest village is about halfway between those two sites and Hohokam Indian settlements in Arizona’s Salt and Gila river valleys; as a result, the village might provide clues to trade and cultural exchanges between the two societies.

Beneath some “low mounds,” which are all that can be seen, are an estimated 50 rooms, Michel said.

“For that part of the world, it’s a pretty good-size site,” he said. “I’m sure the first-level rooms are intact.”

The village is situated on about 10 acres of the 40-acre property.

Once the Park Service takes possession, scientific study of the ruins can begin, Michel said.

“Hopefully, before too long, we will have some answers to what was going on there so long ago,” he said.

The site was suggested to Michel’s group by Arizona Gov. Bruce Babbitt’s Archaeological Advisory Committee and is the conservancy’s third acquisition in the state.

Previously, the group announced that it had obtained options on two Sinagua Indian sites in the Verde Valley.