UNM 2013 Fall Field School - Day Two in Chaco

By Joshua Smith

Today marked the second day of our field work at Chaco, and our eleventh day of field work overall.  As yesterday, the weather was frigid but clear, with temperatures in the 20’s but thankfully very little wind.  We initiated the day by clearing more brush in an area believed to have been inhabited by Navajos based on the presence of non-indigenous sandstone which must have been imported at some point, and then we went back to our test pits which we had spent the previous day mapping. Some of these tests pits yielded some interesting discoveries.  

Leon Natker and LeeAnna Reagan found a horseshoe and an artifact carved out of gypsum in their test pit. They also found a feature, which has been labeled as feature number 10, and is theorized to either be a fire pit or a post.  This feature extended over to Lauren Butero and Pablo Flores’ test pit.  If it turns out to be a fire pit, that would be particularly interesting because Professor Wills says that he has not seen one of those on a UNM Chaco dig in several years. Curtis Randolph found some copper and the remains of what might be the grip of a pistol.  There is a precedent for this, as a previous auger test yielded a Colt handle that was almost fully intact.

 Priscilla Aguilera found a shark tooth loose within the debris of her and Stephen Bennett’s test pit.  Contrary to what a layperson might think, such a discovery is not unheard of within Chaco.  Millions of years ago, the Chaco region was immersed by ocean, and remnants of this era are continually being found. Katherine Shaum and Caitlin Holland found an interesting obsidian-like ball that may be a naturally-occurring object or perhaps a prehistoric artifact, but remains a mystery to (hopefully) be solved in the lab.

I did not have any field specimens myself, as I was assigned to reopen an excavation unit initially dug by the UNM Field School in June of 2012.  It had previously been dug to level four (80 centimeters), so I spent the majority of the day trying to locate the black fiber cloths that had been laid out and relocate the wall edges as I was scouring with the trowel.  Once that was located, the task became much easier, as I was able to shift to shovel work and remove larger loads.  I did not dig beyond the initial excavation today, but that is the plan for tomorrow.  Given these notes, and the interesting finds unearthed by my classmates, our Wednesday dig is shaping up to be very promising.