Aztec Ruins Administrative History

1917: FIRST FULL-SCALE EXCAVATION
(continued)

As diggers burrowed through the Aztec Ruin mound, it was increasingly obvious that the original building changed over time. Because present-day pueblos are known to be revamped constantly, this was not unexpected. At the West Ruin, some doorways were blocked with masonry. Other openings were altered to make them larger or smaller. Several successive earthen floors were in a single room. For example, in Room 40 approximately five feet of refuse separated the lower floor from a secondary upper floor. [35] An 11-foot ceiling height permitted that kind of reuse.

Detectable reoccupation of at least some parts of the house block presented Morris with opportunity to refine his reconstruction of the site's past history. The notion with which he began the project of joint but segregated tenancy by the two eastern branches of the Anasazi -- the Chacoans and the Mesa Verdians -- or some sort of cultural cross-fertilization of the two was open to question with the new evidence. During the season of 1917, Morris began to speculate about a sequential use of the site, first by Chacoan builders and then by Mesa Verdian migrants. That idea seemed confirmed by finds in Room 38. Fragments of Chaco pottery sprinkled the floor. At some time after the chamber was no longer used, two feet eight inches of fallen masonry obscured the floor. Later the remaining walls above this layer were repaired, and a new floor was smoothed over the debris rather than removing it. Eventually the room again was clogged with four to seven feet of discards including broken Mesa Verde pottery. [36] Applying the Nelson stratigraphic principles, Morris concluded that Chacoans had come and gone before Mesa Verdians moved in. The interval between the two occupations must have been substantial in order for the large volume of trash to have accumulated. With only four rooms thus far studied with demonstrable layered deposits of what appeared to be Chacoan material below Mesa Verde material, Morris admitted the evidence remained inconclusive (see Figure 3.14).

Figure 3.14. Mesa Verde-style wall built on top of Chaco debris in unidentified West Ruin room.
(Courtesy American Museum of Natural History).

At the end of the season of 1917, the crew had opened 30 more rooms of the East Wing (Rooms 31 through 58), three rooms of the North Wing (Rooms 99, 112/122, 113/123), and six kivas (see Figures 3.11 and 3.15). They had repaired the most unstable walls. Less than half of the site had been explored. Wissler had hoped for greater progress, but difficult excavation made for slow going. [37] Four kivas (Kivas D, E, F, and H) had Mesa Verde characteristics, one (Kiva G) was Chacoan, and the style of one (backfilled Kiva I) is unknown. Its four-pilaster plan was unusual. Kiva E exhibited a Mesa Verde chamber placed over a lower Chaco chamber.

Figure 3.15. Excavated rooms and two roofed kivas of the West Ruin at the end of the field season of 1917.
(Courtesy American Museum of Natural History).

The yield of artifacts was great. Although the sort of specialized goods that came from the Hyde Exploring Expedition at Pueblo Bonito was lacking, what was recovered showed how fully and ingeniously the West Ruin dwellers had utilized their environment to create the material paraphernalia necessary to carry on a simple agrarian mode of life.

By far the most abundant category of artifacts was pottery (see Figures 3.16-3.19). [38] Presumably, it was made of local clays. At the time of the Aztec project, there had been none of the detailed ceramic studies destined to become central to Southwestern archeology. Even so, Morris had sufficient years of experience with the Animas valley pottery that he felt confident in identifications. He recognized two stylistic schools among the decorated whitewares, or what he called "two-color ware." Combinations of design format and elements, pigment, vessel shape, wall and rim treatments, and degree of excellence in manufacture distinguished Chacoan pottery from Mesa Verdian pottery. By Morris's calculations, a mere five percent of the whiteware ceramic sample was Chacoan or Chacoesque. Its presence precluded other considerations, such as secondary deposition. Although it now would be considered questionable interpretation, Morris counted any level containing Chaco pottery as a Chaco-related level. He regarded the remaining 95 percent of the pottery from Aztec Ruin as being of the Mesa Verde tradition. He used descriptive terms, such as archaic, nascent, or degenerate, to express some of the stylistic variations of the decorated types through time. Morris felt that he could suggest a relative temporal outline of the site's utilization based on pottery recovered and, through extension of the data, could supply a working chronology for the entire San Juan Basin. [39]

Figure 3.16. Room fill contained many shattered ceramic vessels.

Figure 3.17. Two Mesa Verde Black-on-White bowls in compacted room fill.

Figure 3.18. Three corrugated jars and a stone-lined mealing bin sunk into a room floor.

Figure 3.19. Workman sorting potsherds into decorative types.

Utilitarian pottery was abundant in the debris of the West Ruin. It was a greyware (Morris's "coil ware"), which was both plain-surfaced and corrugated. Large corrugated jars commonly were encountered beneath floors, where they had been sunk to their orifices to serve as storage cists.

Some ceramic trade was represented by smudged and corrugated types (Morris's "three-color ware") typical of a broad area astride the New Mexico-Arizona border to the south of Aztec. Another red-on-orange bichrome identified with the Kayenta branch of the Anasazi was not as frequently recovered at Aztec Ruin.

Many implements were ground or chipped from stone. [40] Among ground objects made from quartzite, granitic pebbles, sandstone, and hematite were generalized pecking, pounding, rubbing, and polishing tools used in construction, food preparation, clothing manufacture, and the making of jewelry. Items having identifiable function in these activities were hammers, mauls, axes, arrow straighteners, tcamahais, sandal lasts, pot covers, pipes, mortars, metates, and manos. The purpose of polished stone slabs, discs, and cylinders was unknown. Blades, knives, drills, and projectile points were chipped from quartzite, jasper, chalcedony, agate, and obsidian.

Stones with pleasing colors or sheen, mammal and bird bones, and shells were the resources from which Aztec Ruin jewelry was fashioned. [41] Selenite, quartzite, quartz crystals, turquoise, and other colored rocks were drilled to be strung into necklaces, anklets, and pendants. The most outstanding example of jewelry of this sort from the season of 1917 was a 57-foot strand of 31,000 black stone beads so tiny that the crew had to rush a flour sifter and a milk strainer into action in order to recover as many as possible from a bed of soft earth. [42] Bone beads, pendants, and foundations for inlays of gilsonite, turquoise, shell, and jasper represented by-products of the hunt. Nine genera of shells, many of Pacific species such as abalone, olivella, Conus, and marine bivalves, were cut and drilled into beads, pendants, or foundations for mosaics. Special ornaments were frog effigies or bracelets. Aboriginal craftsmen strung short lengths of bird bones to make necklaces and anklets. [43]

Other bone artifacts for more utilitarian purposes were awls, fleshers, and spatulas. [44]