Aztec Ruins Administrative History

1922: WINDING DOWN

Exploration of the confused complex of rooms and kivas just to the west of the main West Ruin structure opened the final season of active American Museum archeological involvement in the site. This extramural cobblestone village was home to Mesa Verdians. The adjacent West Wing of the great house was where Morris believed most Mesa Verdians concentrated. This opinion was based upon the number of burials recovered there accompanied by Mesa Verde ceramics. The Annex, in effect, was their suburbs. More substantial masonry wall stubs, some running beneath the large standing building, showed that a probable Chaco community was dismantled to make space and material for the Mesa Verde addition. [102] None of this Annex complex was especially noteworthy or produced many artifacts. Although an alert observer can ascertain occupational hummocks, today the Annex is obscured beneath landscaping and a visitors' trail.

In another development, Morris spied a skeleton and Chaco pottery weathering out of the southeast trash mound trenched in 1916 by Nelson. [103] This attracted his attention because it constituted one of only five Chaco-affiliated burials encountered among the 186 graves examined during the Aztec project. Two others were removed from the same southeast trash deposits. Two more were found lying in interior rooms of the house.

Although at Mesa Verde proper they generally made use of trash heaps for burials, the Mesa Verdians who reoccupied the Aztec Ruin preferred to dispose of their dead within the structure. It was a matter of taking care of the dead with the least amount of trouble. With unused chambers available, why not use them? Thus, 149 Mesa Verde graves were identified through associated ceramics. Twelve additional burials were counted as probables. The remainder were in too poor condition to be definitely categorized. The largest number of Mesa Verde burials were within the West Wing. Most typically, these inhumations were beneath floors of rooms still in use, in pits scraped into soft debris previously drifted across abandoned dwellings, or placed in the open in unused rooms where they were covered by trash gradually thrown in by Mesa Verde housewives. Occasionally, many bodies came to rest within a single room. Mesa Verde grave furnishings ranged from extravagant to nil. [104]

On one occasion, Morris hired two men for a day to do odd jobs that unexpectedly turned up unusual archeological finds. With their assigned tasks done before quitting time, they started clearing Room 196² in the North Wing. This was a second-story room. Oley Owens and Morris shoveled side by side on the floor level to uncover a coiled basket, a stone axe with wooden handle still attached by bright yucca cord wrappings, and the skeleton of a dog. Owens then struck a long wooden object. He had exposed a few feet of it by time to stop for the day. With the light of a lantern, Morris continued digging around this mysterious specimen, until at 11 o'clock he had before him a remarkable runged ladder (see Figure 3.25). [105] Its transverse poles, lashed in place by sturdy bindings, were well polished by the rub of many feet. As Morris reconstructed events, the ladder had been at least 12 feet long when complete. It had leaned against the edge of the ceiling hatchway but had been pushed over when large masonry blocks tumbled from above. The first ladder of its kind found in the ruin, it now forms part of a prominent display in the visitor center.

Figure 3.25. Partial poles-and-rungs ladder recovered from a North Wing room.

Otherwise, to the dismay of Morris, 1922 was a time for closing down the operation. The American Museum was not going to fulfill its pledge to completely excavate the village. Nervously, Morris inquired about the future of the project but received no positive answer. [106]

Having initially recommended that the American Museum undertake this endeavor, Nels Nelson was bitter. He and several associates shelved their own Southwestern studies for five years so that funds were available for Aztec. They felt betrayed at the museum's withdrawal before Aztec Ruin was totally rid of the overburden of centuries of neglect. This was anger Nelson shared with Morris, as he lamented, "The museum and American archeology generally have been enriched, I am sure. For myself, I sometimes wish I had never seen the damn place. Aztec left to Kidder might possibly have yielded you just as good a chance and Andover would presumably have seen the job through [a reference to excavations then under way at Pecos Pueblo]. I personally do not expect to see the American Museum spending any more money on the Aztec Ruin, and I don't look for any other institution to take the unfinished task during my lifetime." [107]

A less prejudiced opinion was that, although the ruin was not completely excavated, the primary goal of the American Museum to reclaim one of the classic Anasazi settlements in the eastern San Juan Basin was achieved. In addition, the ruin was temporarily repaired to withstand weather and looters. That, in itself, was a notable accomplishment for the times. About 75 percent of the house block was cleared. This totaled 200 rooms, 18 residential kivas, and a Great Kiva. The American Museum could take satisfaction in the fact that, even in its derelict condition, the Aztec great house as revealed had an aura of grandeur and illuminated a darkened passage of prehistory. Excavations demonstrated that out of a Stone Age background, its masons summoned up the expertise and human muscle to transform common stone, mud, and wood into permanent shelters of beauty. By 1922, the site supplied raw data from which answers eventually would come as to how many centuries it had taken the Anasazi to reach the formula of having sleeping, eating, working, and worshipping space sharing common ground within the security of the confines of a single edifice. As exemplified at Aztec Ruin, it was apparent that, once accepted, these basic patterns were the standard for all Anasazi communities. There were, of course, some variations attributable to environmental, temporal, perhaps unknown sociological factors, or influences from outside the Anasazi sphere. However, the most typical settlement design applied whether the structures were large or small, whether they were in the bleakness of Chaco Canyon or in the shadowed alcoves of Mesa Verde. If Douglass's idea of the erection of Aztec Ruin within an eight-year period was correct, that implied a social urgency, a master plan, and a high degree of organization in order to bring it to completion. It also implied a purposeful scheme of satellite communities, such as those up and down the Animas valley, around a central administrative or political point. Aztec Ruin and its neighboring large mound might have been that point.

Another facet of Anasazi life, which excavations of Aztec Ruin made obvious, was the prevailing unsanitary conditions with which Anasazi contended. Occupied quarters were typified by inadequate ventilation, heat, light, space, and the lack of flooring except for use-hardened earth. Furniture of any sort to get living activities off the ground was absent. Adjacent chambers were jammed to overflowing with rubbish, turkey droppings, human excrement, and decomposing bodies of the dead. Such conditions fostered inevitable infestations of rodents, snakes, insects, and bacteria. All these factors surely combined to drive most residents out of doors as much as possible, if not for elbow room, at least for a lung full of fresh air. However, the central gathering place, or courtyard, also was strewn with such a volume of the residue of human living that its level raised many feet over the years. It was not surprising that recovered human remains indicated a life expectancy of about 35 to 40 years. Although traces of at least three dozen infants and adolescents were recovered, a probable high infant mortality rate was obscured by the rapid decay of the fragile small bones of the young.

Slightly more than 7,000 catalogued specimens of Anasazi possessions were retrieved at Aztec Ruin. This figure was exaggerated to 76,000 by reporters at the Farmington Times Hustler, who may have speculated about the mass of fragmentary objects Morris presumably discarded. [108] A clue to the amount of artifacts is seen in an inventory of 441 stone projectile points, 168 stone axes, 704 bone awls, 662 pieces of whole or restorable pottery, 87 baskets, 77 arrows, 143 fiber pot rests, 104 sandals, 24 skinning knives, 53 stone knives for other purposes, 45 pendants, and more than 60,500 beads that had been elements of necklaces, bracelets, and other ornaments. The beads were catalogued in group lots, rather than individually. That obscured a higher actual artifact yield. Untabulated in the above listing was the mass of plant and animal remains that sustained the population in one way or another. Not considered also were the minor things that said a great deal about the Anasazi -- the woven bag filled with fibrous packing meant to pad a baby's hard cradle board, the scraps of meager clothing that offered only limited protection from winter chill and summer heat, the delicate wooden altar outfittings found carefully stored in an interior recess, the miniature earthenware vessels that probably were the toys of little girls. Together, these kinds of major and incidental goods provided the substance with which daily prehistoric life on the Animas could be reconstructed.

Morris helped publicize the Aztec Ruin, its contents, and the environment in which the Old People flourished and ultimately failed. He produced seven papers on Aztec Ruin prehistory. Two for the museum's volume concerned results through the season of 1917 and the Great Kiva. Two other journal articles dealt with topics indirectly related to Aztec Ruin research. The price tag for work from 1916 through 1922 stood at $34,238.37. Morris's salary of $4,000 came out of that sum; the remainder were field expenses. Funding came from John P. Morgan (1916), Archer M. Huntington (1917-1921), and the American Museum (1922). [109]

Morris hid his disappointment over the termination of the Aztec Ruin project behind the rationalization that a portion of every site should be left for future researchers with more advanced techniques. Later he was to write: "I do not believe that any great ruin which it is intended to leave as a permanent exhibit should be completely excavated. To my mind it is more instructive and rather essential to an understanding of what has actually taken place to leave a portion of any such structure as it was before the work of excavation and repair was begun." [110] He received no raise in pay for the six-year duration of the endeavor, but he was provided a forum for his ideas. He earned a reputation as a dedicated, skillful field archeologist. When worked ceased at Aztec, his services soon were sought elsewhere.