Amateur Archeologists Dig a Week of Work at Pueblo

Looking across the sere sparseness of this sunbaked knoll, it’s hard to believe anyone could live here. But in fact, beneath a farmer’s field just a few miles from the Four Corners town of Cortez lies a city.

By today’s standards, it wouldn’t be much of a city. About 500 inhabitants. Maybe 14 kivas. Most buildings one or two stories high.

But by prehistoric standards, it was a bustling place. In fact, combined with other nearby ruins, it represents a population larger than what lives in the Four Corners area today.

The Shields Pueblo, named after the farmer who grew crops here until it became an archeological dig last year, is a source of intense interest today. It is the most recent dig conducted under the auspices of the Crow Canyon Archeological Center.

Crow Canyon is a nonprofit research center, founded in 1968 by Ed and Joanne Berger, prominent Colorado educators who went to the area to start a school for kids who had problems in traditional, mainstream settings.

It evolved into an archeological study center because the area is a hotbed of undiscovered or unexplored archeological sites.

The staff and visitors have excavated various sites with permits from the Bureau of Land Management or the Archeological Conservancy.

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The Crow Canyon excavations are perhaps the most productive sites being studied in the archeologically rich Four Corners. Within the region’s vast landscape are haunting echoes of the Southwest’s prehistoric past: Mesa Verde, Ute Mountain, Hovenweep.

What makes Crow Canyon so special is that it’s a place where amateurs can roll up their sleeves and work side by side with professionals to experience the hot, dirty, sweaty excitement of making an archeological find.

“It is one of the largest unexcavated archeological sites in the region,” says Guy Prouty, project director for Crow Canyon Archeological Center.

But none of it is readily visible.

Some adjacent ruins, partly visible above the surface, are hidden by scrub oak in the nearby gully called Goodman Point.

The visible ruins of the Shields Pueblo were bulldozed by the farmer, who got tired of plowing around them. The rest remain below the surface of the field. Only the deep dimples in the field give away the fact that structures (in this case, kivas) are buried below.

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How does one unearth a city?

With lots of volunteer help.

“Volunteers probably do 99% of the excavating,” Prouty says.

The volunteers go to Crow Canyon on vacation and pay about $700 a week to work there.

Pay to work in the hot sun, performing tedious tasks?

Yes, and gladly.

They get housing, meals and a thorough education in archeology.

Sound like a lot of work? It is. But it’s so fascinating that 40% of the visitors return.

Last summer, for example, Cindy Flosman from Anaheim visited for her third time.

“I love it here,” she says. “It’s just so much fun.”

For 30 years, Crow Canyon (a project name, not a specific place) has been offering outdoor education. For 15 years, it has been using volunteers to discover the remains of ancient civilizations, said marketing director Shannon Gallagher.

“Southwestern archeology and Indian culture have been largely ignored by history books,” Gallagher says. “This is a new learning experience for many people who come here.”

Local Indians often serve as advisors to the professional staff.

“They help us decide everything from the politically correct way to word a press release to where to dig,” she says.

A typical week for a volunteer goes something like this:

Sunday: A new group of volunteers arrives at Crow Canyon and settles into their hogans, a communal living situation divided by gender. Men and women have separate bathhouses. Everyone quickly gets to know one another.

Monday: There is a hands-on exercise where newcomers learn about artifacts and what specifically is being studied at the Shields excavation site. Then there is a tour of other excavation sites, past and present.

Tuesday: Most of the day is spent in the lab, so volunteers can see what it is they’re looking for, and how it’s handled once it’s tagged.

“A lot of discoveries are made not in the field, but in the lab,” Gallagher says.

Wednesday: Volunteers spend a full day at the field site, excavating a 1-by-1-by-1-meter square hole in the earth. They do this not with a shovel but with a trowel and a brush.

“In a lot of ways, we’re like Tom Sawyer getting a bunch of Huck Finns to help us paint the fence,” Gallagher says.

Thursday: Volunteers spend another day in the field excavating, and can take an ecology hike.

Friday: Some opt for a behind-the-scenes tour of nearby Mesa Verde National Park’s famous ruins. Others can’t stop digging.

“If they have been bitten by the digging bug, they can keep digging,” Gallagher says. “It’s very addictive.”

Friday evening: There is an informal party with a graduation ceremony and a rundown of the week’s accomplishments.

Saturday morning: Everyone leaves, “usually reluctantly,” Gallagher says.

It was volunteers, bitten by the digging bug, who excavated Sand Canyon Pueblo, another nearby major site, from 1983 to 1993.

Researchers discovered that the area was inhabited from 1250 to 1280 and had 400 rooms, 100 kivas and 14 towers.

But volunteers and professional archeologists still are seeking answers to many questions about these sites: What the climate might have been like at the time of habitation? What the social organization of the Indians who lived there might have been? What arts and cultural pursuits the residents had? If they were involved in warfare? And--the big question--why they ultimately abandoned the place?

“The Indians tell us that it was no single cataclysmic event that caused the ancestral Puebloans [sometimes called Anasazi] to leave,” Gallagher says. “They feel it was more of a pull to migrate, a ‘honey, I think it’s time to move’ feeling more than anything else.

“There may have been many reasons--drought, soil depletion, the buildup of trash, a threat from an enemy,” she says.

By having a year-round, on-site staff, the Crow Canyon project has the advantage of staying in one place year after year, always pursuing the next step of the dig.

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Visitors shouldn’t expect to see another Mesa Verde here.

After each part of a site is excavated and examined, it is backfilled to protect it.

The Crow Canyon philosophy is, “It’s not so much what you find; it’s what you find out,” Gallagher says. “We’re not actually after the artifacts so much as the information they give us.”

Each year, about 4,000 volunteers--half adults, half children--help uncover the mysteries of the ancestral Puebloan tribes who lived in the area. They come as individuals or in groups. There are sixth-graders and retirees.

The children are often as excited as the adults, and they are great workers, Gallagher says.

“They’re young and healthy and boy, can they move a ton of dirt. We love them!” she says.

Guest celebrities often help spice up the programs at Crow Canyon--last year American Indian flute player R. Carlos Nakai did a workshop. There are other speakers on American Indian culture and crafts, often with hands-on demonstrations or involvement.

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Volunteers also are significant contributors to the Crow Canyon budget. Their tuition pays for the ongoing archeological work.

It takes $3 million a year to run the operation, which has 60 employees when fully staffed. Staff includes people like Adele Bigler, a researcher who can be found intently washing artifacts in the lab or digging through boxes in storage.

Each box of artifacts is cleaned, then cataloged by type--ceramics, bone, or lithic objects, such as arrowheads.

“Everything gets a number” that indicates what it is and where it was found. Many objects are stored. Others, after examination, go to the Anasazi Cultural Center in nearby Dolores.

“We have more of a responsibility than just digging it up and identifying it, then putting it in a box and forgetting about it,” Bigler says.

She picks up a pot from a storage room shelf and examines it.

“Sometimes we find a fingerprint on a pot,” she says. “It reminds us that this was made by a real person. It’s not just an artifact.”

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The presence of volunteers, all asking questions, keeps the professional staff grounded.

“Archeologists tend to live in ivory towers,” Prouty says with a grin. “They bring us back to Earth.”

The experience is one many visitors want to repeat.

“There’s a sense of adventure here, a sense of discovery, and a feeling of family,” Gallagher says. “It’s something many of us lack in our everyday lives. I guess that’s what makes it so special.”