Aztec Ruins Administrative History

1916: EXPLORATORY SEASON
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A second group of workers undertook to clear rooms comprising the southern end of the eastern wing of the great house. Cells of various sizes backed up to the solid outer village wall on the east. They were more inset from the court than the uniformly designed complex of rooms to their north and perhaps were tacked on at a later time. The sandstone masonry was composed of a veneer facing over a rubble core typical of Chacoan workmanship. Because of the incorporation of large jagged chunks of purplish concretions, cobblestones, and unsightly daubs of adobe mortar, it was less neatly executed than usual. A stratum of refuse and stubs of dismantled walls lay beneath the surface building. [13] As elsewhere in the ruin, rooms originally had ceilings from nine to 11 feet high. These were made of heavy pine or spruce stringers, small cross supports or peeled poles at right angles above them, and a cedar bark capping (see Figure 3.6). In instances of a second-story room, builders spread a layer of packed earth and clean sand over the bark to create a floor for the upper level. In this part of the village, most ceilings that once had separated two stories were gone. The result was masonry shafts filled with compacted rubble of fallen walls; broken, charred, or sagged ceiling timbers; and some prehistoric trash. Dismantled adobe and cobble walls and Chaco refuse at floor level underlay part of this room block. [14]

Figure 3.6. Exposed first-story roof of primary beams, cross poles, and strips of cedar bark.

In order to photograph the lower portions of the East Wing rooms, Morris had to sit astraddle the crossbeam of a flimsy, high-legged sawhorse placed over the excavated shafts and point his camera straight down (see Figure 3.7).

Figure 3.7. Morris on an elevated scaffold photographing the ruin. (Courtesy University of Colorado Museum).

As work proceeded, the East Wing was threatened with being swallowed again in its own residue. Hence, Morris relied on his farm hands to scrape aside this disturbed earthen cocoon through use of teams of horses and fresnos rented from local barnyards (see Figure 3.8). This practice explains an entry unusual in archeological field expenditures for $1.80 to cover the cost of 75 pounds of oats. [15] In order to expose the site more completely, workers laid 2,500 feet of rails through the alfalfa field between the two main mounds of West Ruin and East Ruin. The rails were for operating four steel ore cars drawn by horses (see Figure 3.9). The bulk of the sterile fill from the interior of the western site was deposited along one of the river's banks to the east of Mound H in the southeast occupational zone and away from the surrounding farm. [16] Had work commenced on the western wing of the house block, it was arranged to dump waste dirt in a young orchard to the west of the site that was on ground too low to be irrigated easily. Much of the debris from outer tiers of rooms simply was shoveled outside the village walls (see Figure 3.10). Morris did not adopt an alternate plan of using a sluice box carrying a head of water from a nearby irrigation canal to flush overburden to the Animas River. If he had, many small objects likely would have been lost. "A canal running at the foot of the hill north of the ruins would supply an ample quantity, and the fall is sufficient to enable a sluice box two feet on the bottom to carry all the dirt we could be in a position to dump into it," Morris wrote. [17] Building stone and sound but dislodged roof timbers usable in repair of walls and ceilings were stockpiled.

Figure 3.8. North Wing excavations in 1918.

Figure 3.9. East Wing excavations in 1916.

Figure 3.10. Workers in 1916 screening room fill; mine car and tracks to dump in background.

Anasazi subsistence, which permitted the kind of sedentary cultural elaboration evident at Aztec Ruin, was based on farming. The environment along the Animas valley, assumed to be relatively unchanged over the last 700 years, today is riparian. The soil is fertile loam. However, geographers class the zone as a high desert more than 5,600 feet in elevation with abrupt and often unpredictable climatic fluctuations. The annual precipitation rate is 10 inches or less. Growing season for crops of corn, beans, and squash is 160 days. It is not known that the aborigines had knowledge of fertilization. One thing they did have was a permanent water supply in the perennial river, and they learned how to make use of it.

When Euro-American settlers came into the valley of the Animas in the 1880s, they saw some stretches of prehistoric canals leading off both sides of the river that could be traced for several miles. [18] One crossed what became the Abrams property between the West Ruin and the gravelly terrace to the northwest. [19] Another on the east side of the Animas ran from north of Knickerbocker Arroyo south to Hampton Arroyo, due east of Aztec Ruins. Observers described these ditches as two and one-half feet wide and one and one-half feet deep, with a thick sediment deposit on sides and bottom. [20] Both channels took advantage of a gentle southward gradient. Undoubtedly, they provided water that could be directed onto bordering communal gardens. Modern farmers made use of them prior to digging ditches more suitable for their needs.

Some cultivated land depended on runoff from higher ground rather than on irrigation. Sherman Howe, crew member from a pioneer family, recalled waffle gardens of the Anasazi at the mouth of an unidentified arroyo. At some undetermined time, these plots had been covered by three to four feet of sand, probably deposited by a flash flood. In 1884, a violent summer rain washed away the sediment to reveal the Indian plots. [21] From their small size, modern researchers infer either a restricted production or diversified cropping practices. Probably they were the gardens of villages on the top of terraces, where loam and irrigation waters were lacking.

The canals associated with the Aztec Ruins environs and other sections of ditches near the confluence of the Animas and San Juan rivers were among the earliest to be recognized as part of Anasazi water-control measures. [22] They have disappeared with modern activities.

When Morris's crews finished digging at the end of the summer of 1916, considerable progress had been made in laying bare two arms of the house block and in establishing collection and preservation procedures to be continued in later work. Twelve rooms of the South Wing (Rooms 1-12), 16 of the East Wing (Rooms 13-29, 54), four of the North Wing (Rooms 76, 112, 154, 197), one of the West Wing (Room 121), and three possible kivas had been dug (see Figure 3.11). In correspondence, Morris gave the tally as 34 rooms and three kivas, but this does not jibe with the published accounting. [23] In the plaza clearing, a huge depression hinted at a possible Great Kiva, or community sanctuary, but its exploration awaited the future. Morris packed a sizable collection of specimens and sent it to New York. Its cataloguing was postponed until later. Workmen temporarily repaired some walls. They laid one cement slab to protect an original roof from moisture. They reroofed Kiva B. The combined results of the diverse aspects of the over-all project were sufficiently substantive to assure continuation of the work the next summer. In Wissler's view, the excavation and restoration of the Aztec Ruin would be a noteworthy monument to the American Museum of Natural History. [24]

Figure 3.11. Excavated units at the time of the establishment of the monument.
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In the summer of 1916, Morris sold the museum a collection of San Juan pottery, which he and his father had acquired over many years of digging. That gave him money to pay tuition and living expenses for a year's graduate study at Columbia University. While in New York, he continued his association with the American Museum.