With expert coaxing, desert reveals its past

A 14th century pueblo from the Casas Grandes Culture beckons to anthropology professor William Walker and his students.

Walker will return in June to lead a second archaeological field school at a site in southern New Mexico’s Luna County. Last summer, toiling in triple-digit temperatures, students excavated 17 rooms and recovered pottery, arrow points, shell jewelry, knives, bone awls, stone tools such as manos, and metates used for processing corn, beans and squash. They also found numerous bedrock mortars for pounding mesquite beans.

Many of the room floors were discolored in hues of black or orange because they had been burned. This often has a ceremonial reason, Walker said.

“Buildings are perceived as being alive when a pueblo is abandoned,” Walker said. “It’s like a funeral; it’s like a cremation of the pueblo.”

Evidence indicates the 50-to-100-room pueblo belonged to the Casas Grandes Culture that extended across what is now southern New Mexico, southeast Arizona, and northern Chihuahua, Mexico.

The Casas Grandes people are presum- ably descendents of the Mimbres, Walker said. While the Mimbres people were famous for their black and white pottery, the people of Casas Grandes made multicolored pottery such as Gila polychrome and Ramos polychrome. Gila polychrome has a recognizable red, white and black color scheme. Ramos polychrome – yellow, red and black – is the most common decorated pottery in northern Chihuahua.

Accompanying Walker and 10 students last year were retired NMSU electrical engineering professor Lonnie Ludeman, graduate student Mark Sechrist, and a volunteer archaeologist, John Kipp. Kipp initially found the pueblo on land belonging to Rex and Carol Kipp.

They contacted Walker, who helped them map the ruins. Walker then organized a summer school to teach students mapping, excavation methods and artifact analysis. Besides earning college credits, the students gained valuable experience for their professional careers.

“The students need this field school to prepare them for work in private archaeological firms and government organizations like the Bureau of Land Management,” Walker said.