GILA CLIFF DWELLINGS Administrative History

McKenna And Bradford

Not all archeological research entails excavation, however, and in July 1986, Peter McKenna and Jim Bradford, Park Service archeologists with the Southwest regional office, began mapping the TJ Ruin, using an alidade and a plane table to record structural mass and individual alignments of the architecture. [32] Limited samples of ceramic sherds and lithics were collected, as well, to establish chronologies and material resources. The results were reported in 1986 at the Sixth Mogollon Conference and published in 1989. [33]

Five distinct roomblocks were documented at this open-air pueblo. More or less aligned along the steep southwest edge of a mesa, the prehistoric structures are oriented towards a plaza that was created by a partially enclosing wall. In the report, roughly 200 rooms were estimated for the entire site, a count that varied according to the measures used to make the calculation: wall alignment vs. rubble mass to determine square footage, for example (see table 4). The central roomblock is the largest structure, has the greatest variation in room size, and may even have had two stories. The peripheral roomblocks appear to be more regular and to have larger rooms. Although only 10 rooms were clearly definable, they averaged 20 square meters each—nearly twice as large as the 12-square-meter average proposed for Mimbres phase sites in the Mimbres Valley. Seven pithouse structures were also discerned, two or three of which appeared to be communal structures containing Mimbres phase refuse. Most of the masonry was cobble or slab set in adobe, and the architecture appeared to date from A.D. 900 to A.D. 1150. A single possibly Salado phase adobe structure was tentatively identified. Surface artifactual material was extensive and evenly distributed, and no definitive refuse area was located.

Ceramics provided evidence for 900 years of occupation at the TJ Ruin, ranging from Georgetown through Salado phases, with a major occupation during the Mimbres phase and the late Mangus phase. Reserve and Tularosa phase ceramics suggested greater contact with populations along the San Francisco drainage than was common for Mimbres Valley pueblos although without studies of ceramic sourcing it could not be determined whether those ceramics represented trade or occupation. All of the lithic material was available from immediately local sources, although some of the obsidian nodules recovered at the TJ site resembled Mule Creek samples.

The mapping project also sought to weave the TJ Ruin into a more subtle regional context than was conceived in the mid-1950s, when the site was definitively recognized by Vivian, Richert, and Steen as an important multi-component Mimbres site. The new context had been initially proposed by James Fitting. In 1982, based on his work in the Cliff Valley and on perceived differences between the archeologies there and in the Mimbres Valley, Fitting had suggested parsing the Mimbres branch into three distinct cultural sequences identified by watersheds—a San Francisco branch, a Cliff-Gila branch, and a more circumscribed Mimbres (Valley) branch. [34]

Plan of TJ Ruin as mapped by Peter McKenna and Jim Bradford in 1986. (click on image for an enlargement in a new window)

The distinctiveness of the San Francisco sequence, which culminated with the Tularosa phase, had long been observed in various and confusing ways, of course, but the Cliff-Gila branch was essentially new. [35] Fitting's distinctions were used in 1986 for studying the TJ Ruin.

In 1955, ceramics from the TJ site had already suggested substantial northern contacts, and the 1986 study proposed that surface architecture further reflected the site's boundary position between Mimbres populations and those in the San Francisco drainage, combining elements characteristic of both areas: scattered roomblocks, for example (Mimbres branch-Mimbres phase), with an enclosing wall at least partially around the plaza (San Francisco branch-Reserve/ Tularosa phases).

Based largely on the prominence accorded the cliff dwellings, Fitting had recognized the boundary position (Mimbres branch/San Francisco branch) of archeological sites at Gila Cliff Dwellings National Monument, and he consequently concluded that they were very different from those in the Cliff-Gila Valley. McKenna and Bradford, on the other hand, suggested substantial archeological continuity between the Gila forks area and the lower Gila valleys around Cliff and Redrock. They based their suggestion on phase sequences and settlement patterns: 1) Mangus phase, which is apparently present in the Gila forks and Cliff-Gila Valleys and is absent in the Mimbres Valley; [36] and 2) concordance of the TJ Ruin's size and location with the "Gila River pattern of greater aggregation and more widely spaced large sites than is found in the Mimbres Valley." [37]

In addition, the presence of communal structures at the TJ Ruin—features presumed to have been abandoned in the Mimbres Valley during the Mimbres phase—also link the national monument site with the Woodrow and the Cemetery sites farther down the Gila River, where communal structures appear to have continued through the Mimbres phase. The study noted, however, that the congruity of the communal structures is not complete. Those at the TJ Ruin appear to be circular and those at the Woodrow and the Cemetery sites rectangular.

Of course, other differences between these archeological sites along the Gila River were observed, as well. Aside from the Tularosa phase encroachment into the Gila forks area, which did not apparently occur in the Cliff-Gila and Redrock valleys, there is a substantial disparity between Salado phase manifestations along the river. The TJ Ruin is one of only two sites on the Gila forks with a possible Salado phase component, [38] an apparent fact suggesting a large decline in population similar to one proposed during the same period for the Mimbres Valley, which has few Salado phase sites. In the Cliff-Gila sequence, however, "[t]he Salado phase is the most spectacularly evident archeology." [39] In short, the TJ Ruin appears to be a unique site, with a mix of traits that suggest affinities to cultural sequences in each of the San Francisco, the Cliff-Gila, and the Mimbres valleys.

To clarify the significance of the TJ Ruin, McKenna and Bradford recommended an archeological reconnaissance to provide a gross overview of settlement patterns along the river between the national monument and Turkey Creek, which flows into the Gila just a few miles above the Woodrow Ruin. In addition, they recommended a remote sensing survey of the TJ Ruin with magnetometer and with areal imagery; the salvage of vandalized rooms—one in Roomblock 5 and another in Roomblock 1; [40] limited testing with pits and trenches to help delineate the basic site structure and to provide materials with discrete proveniences; and an archival search as well as local interviews to establish the history of activities at and collections from the ruin.