GILA CLIFF DWELLINGS Administrative History

Steen

With the abandonment around 1940 of a proposal to elevate the Gila Primitive Area to national park status, the official assessment of Gila Cliff Dwellings declined, as well. In 1941, the superintendent of Southwestern Monuments concurred with the regional director that those ruins, despite their charm, be regarded as only a reserve monument and that visitation be discouraged. The cliff dwellings had, however, been placed on the general stabilization plan as Gordon had suggested in 1935, and a "non-recurring allotment" of $390 was scheduled for fiscal year 1942, an amount that compares favorably with the $200 recommended for Aztec National Monument, for example, or the $240 for Chaco Canyon National Monument in 1938.

In July 1942, stabilization finally began at Gila Cliff Dwellings when Charlie Steen drove to the Gila Hot Springs Ranch in a "Chevy truck with a panel body and a granny gear." A junior- grade archeologist, Steen had started working for "Boss" Pinkley eight years earlier as a custodian at Tonto National Monument in Arizona and later at Casa Grande Ruins National Monument. He spent nearly five days at the cliff ruins, with a hired laborer, taking measurements for a ground plan and core samples from the beams, shooting photographs, reinforcing with dry masonry the foundations of several walls in Caves 2 and 3, cleaning the site, and building a trail from the small stream in the canyon to the cave-sheltered archeological site. Steen also dug two trenches to recover sherds—one along the south wall of Room 10 and another on a north-south axis in the middle of Room 17. With the single exception of a Mesa Verde black-and-white sherd, according to Steen's report, all the other pieces of pottery were Tularosa wares.

Several years later, at the request of "Doc" Campbell, the monument's custodian, Steen and Erik Reed both provided the custodian with brief overviews of upper Gila prehistory. Relying heavily on Haury's 1936 description of the Harris site, Steen repeated the supposition that the Mimbres culture after A.D. 900 was an amalgam of the Anasazi, Hohokam, and Mogollon. [36] The cliff dwellings, Steen proposed, had been built by these Mimbrenos around A.D. 1000, deserted and then possibly but only briefly reoccupied by Anasazi around A.D. 1300. The latter supposition was based on ceramics—presumably the Mesa Verde Black-and-white sherd [37] — and some signs of rebuilding. [38] Undoubtedly, he was aware of King's dendrochronological sample, which postdated the general Mimbres abandonment mentioned in his overview. [39] In addition, the Mimbres component at Gila Cliff Dwellings was partly inferred from sherds although by Steen's own admission they were all Tularosa ware [40] —ceramic types then well-known as products from the upper San Francisco valleys and not of the Mimbres Valley. Part of the problem, of course, was that in 1949 the boundaries of the Mimbres branch were still drawn around the headwaters of the San Francisco drainage. Although material cultures in the two areas were known to differ, the distinction was obscured by limitations of taxonomy. Mimbres construction was invoked, with A.D. 1000 as the generally accepted date for the shift from pithouse to surface architecture, and the true nature of archeological components at Gila Cliff Dwellings would be obscured for another 15 years.

Reed's overview was more cautious. [41] Drawing from the 1937 report of his visit to the upper Gila, he noted the meager amount of archeological reconnaissance and the virtual absence of excavation in the area, and mentioned without comment prevalent pottery types—Mimbres Black-on-white, Tularosa, other Black-on-white types, and Gila Polychrome. Deeper into the overview, Reed distinguished Mimbres from Tularosa cultures based on ceramic firing technique, with the latter showing greater Anasazi influence. Generally without mentioning specific sites, he also described architectural styles, which included small cliff ruins in little caves and moderate-sized open pueblo ruins. The open sites he recognized as "apparently that of the Mimbres." The cave sites he associated with Tularosa, citing the A.D. 1286 date from Gila Cliff Dwellings as the latest known for that people.

Obviously familiar with the then recently published results of the Cosgroves' cave survey, he mentioned the presence on the upper Gila of "Basketmaker" sites, a term he subsequently interpolated as San Pedro phase of the Cochise culture that was and is still believed to have engendered the Mogollon sequence, and he substantiated this phase designation with a list of material culture traits. In the same way, he had associated the "Pueblo" artifactual assembledges with "the Tularosa phase." That San Pedro phase ("Basketmaker") and Tularosa phase ("Pueblo") components had been documented in a cave adjacent to the cliff dwellings and part of the national monument is a fact that he did not mention. Possibly he was not aware that West Fork Cave No.2 lay in the monument—the Cosgroves had not been, after all.

Both written about the same time, Reed's cautious overview differed in style, scope, and conclusion from that of Steen, who for one was prepared to draw some conjectures about the initial history of the cliff dwellings. The cultural affiliation of the cliff dwellers was not resolved until after the ruin was excavated in 1963 and after Mogollon taxonomy had been further refined. The weight given the question of identity, however, seems to have overwhelmed Reed's early—perhaps offhanded but at least initially useful—distinction between open sites and cave sites. After some reconnaissance in 1955, Park Service archeologists were inclined to use Mimbres phase ceramics from open sites to support inferences about a dominant Mimbres phase component at Gila Cliff Dwellings. After additional tree ring analyses and excavation brought into resolution a single Tularosa phase construction and occupation of the cliff architecture, there has been an occasional tendency for inferences to flow the other way. In 1981, for example, a report developed to aid the evaluation and identification of the state's prehistoric resources identified the entire monument as Tularosa phase. [42] Most recently, in a Park Service study for suitable commemoration of the Mimbres Culture, Gila Cliff Dwellings National Monument was identified as "a Tularosa site, with no Mimbres or earlier material represented." [43]

Because allocations to the National Park Service declined during the Second World War, Gila Cliff Dwellings was not officially revisited until 1948, when Steen reported structural damage. Seven years passed, however, before funds were allocated for repairs.