Mimbres Archaeology

I once took part in an Arizona State University archaeology excavation in the 1990s.  It was on the rugged eastern slopes of the Black Mountains in southern New Mexico, due west of a town named “Truth or Consequences”. 

There was this wonderful pre-historic Pueblo culture (ancestors to the modern day Pueblo Indians living along the Rio Grande River in New Mexico or perhaps to those living in the Casas Grandes areas of northern Chihuaha.  These people lived in large villages along an unspectacular river named the Mimbres.  So anthropologists named the people after this river.  The Mimbres people produced the most wonderful pottery with very unique black and white painted designs of birds, fish, rabbits, dear, etc.  

 

 

 

I have lots of memories about the time out team spent that summer, camped in a remote desert valley, 40 minutes from the nearest paved road.  It was so rough, we’d usually blow two tires each way in four wheel drive trucks.  It was actually on one of Ted Turner’s (started CNN, owned the Atlanta Braves, also skippered a yacht to an America’s cup victory in the 70s) immense bison ranches, and the research was funded in part by his foundation.  Ted and Jane Fonda would arrive via helicopter and then hop into their luxurious Mercedes SUV to check on our progress.   He looked rather debonair (in a Hemingway sort of way) in his yellow shooting glasses, canvas hunting jacket and English riding boots, and let’s not forget the silk scarf.  He also supported the reintroduction of the Mexican Grey Wolf on the property, which pissed off the local ranchers to no end.  So we lived amid the rattlesnakes and the wild buffalo and the wolves for about six weeks.  Every day we’d remove layers of dirt from an old dwelling, on the top of a distant hill, trying to get to the floor level.  And every morning we’d arrive to the sight of a buffalo wallowing in our work.  And a few rattlesnakes curled up within the excavation to which we’d remove with a long pincher devise on a pole. 

One memory from this place is one of the stranger experiences I’ve had . . . We were camped in tents next to a dry arroyo creek bed, near the ranch house.  The deer mice were prodigious and would burrow under my tent.  I could feel them moving as I tried to sleep until exhaustion got the upper hand. 

One evening the clouds formed over the mountains, and I could see that a thunderstorm was brewing.  This was the time of the year in the Southwest called the monsoon (July-September) when thunderstorms rise up like clockwork in the afternoon and sweep from the mountains through the valleys, washing the desert with rain.  You know that scent of new rain hitting the parched earth?  How good it smells?  Yes, that was the smell that day.  Anyway, this approaching storm was no gentle shower but a deluge with large hail and booming thunder and lightning.  It hailed so much as to pile up six inches and rather looked like snow.  And then it passed, moving up and out of the valley, towards Santa Fe. 

For about 15 minutes all was quiet as we inspected our tents.  Most were still standing.  We noticed that a few vehicles were dented severely from the hail.  While we were eating dinner in the ranch house, we heard this strange sound, like that of a train or maybe a tornado.  So we ran outside and saw a huge wall of water barreling down the canyon, coming right at us.  It missed the ranch house (barely), but not our tents.  It washed some of them away (including mine), and they are to this day buried somewhere in the mud of a remote arroyo feeding the Rio Grande, down near Truth or Consequences.  Hell, they could be in the Gulf of Mexico by now.  Turns out that the dam broke on a large stock pond up the canyon, sending a wall of water down the creek bed.  Evidently, the pond filled with the hail . . . too much for the dam to support.