Friends of Cedar Mesa Newsletter Sept. 2012
This is a somewhat revised version of an essay initially published in 1980 in a book titled “Camera, Spade and Pen: An Inside View of Southwestern Archaeology” (University of Arizona Press, Tucson). The book is illustrated with fine black-on-white photographs taken by Marc Gaede, and it was edited by Marnie Gaede. I wrote the original version of the essay in 1975 (while employed at the Museum of Northern Arizona and still doing fieldwork in the Cedar Mesa area every summer) but it took several years for the book to come out. As you can see, the term "Anasazi" was still current at that time--now largely replaced by "Ancestral Pueblo."
Bill Lipe
Washington State University, Pullman
and Crow Canyon Archaeological Center, Cortez, CO
Grand Gulch: Three Days on the Road from Bluff
WHAT THE ANASAZI CALLED THIS MANY-HEADED and serpentine canyon we don't know, for the last families drifted away sometime in the late 1200s, and the names they called it have as quietly been forgotten. We have some clues that Pueblo people, perhaps descendents of these same families, returned to hunt, trade with the Utes, or visit the old shrines, but they never settled here again. Utes, Paiutes, and Navajos must have wandered under its cliffs down the centuries that followed, but they left even fewer traces. The canyon probably got its modern name from advance scouts for the Mormon pioneer wagon train that painfully struggled through the area in the winter of 1879-80, on its way to found the village of Bluff on the San Juan River. That name was Grand Gulch–a tribute to the canyon's size and depth–the grandest gulch of all in a country made of canyons, where one must often cross three or four in a single mile, canyons many of which would be celebrated as natural wonders were they to appear almost anywhere else.
Within a few years, Mormon cowboys were pushing cattle into this rugged area, and not far behind were the archaeologists, or at least, the relic hunters. The Wetherills' Mesa Verde discoveries of the late 1880s had stimulated public interest in Southwestern antiquities, especially in the remains of the "cliff-dwellers," and had created in the great cities of our land a demand for artifact collections and exhibits.
By the winter of 1890, an enterprising pair from Durango, Colorado–C. C. Graham and Charles McLoyd–had heard of the splendid dry caves of Grand Gulch and had fielded the first of several expeditions to "explore" them with their shovels. Their collections further aroused the late Victorian passion for curious relics from the Southwest's canyons. Here were tantalizing mementos of a universally human yet terribly remote past, things preserved in the dry caves as if the stream of time had spent itself in the arid protecting dust.
Close behind McLoyd and Graham came Richard Wetherill, of Mancos, Colorado, eldest of the brothers whose efforts supplied so many threads in the early fabric of Southwestern archaeology. The first of Richard's expeditions was in the winter of 1893-94; the second in early 1897. Winters were when work on the family ranch was lighter and time could be stolen for Richard's first love–archaeology. Here's his evocative description of Grand Gulch :
Grand Gulch drains nearly all the territory south west of the Elk Mountain from the McComb Wash to the Clay Hills–about 1000 sq. miles of territory. It is the most tortuous cañon in the whole of the South West–making bends from 200 to 600 yards apart almost its entire length or for 50 miles and each bend means a cave or overhanging cliff. All of these with an exposure to the sun had been occupied by either cliff houses or as burial places. The cañon is from 300 to 700 feet deep---and in many places toward the lower end the bends are cut through by waters making natural bridges...
To enter the cañon a party must be equipped with suitable pack animals and expect to spend 3 days on the road from Bluff...
In the published catalogs of their Utah collections, McLoyd and Graham had noted that remains of a different group lay beneath the cliff-dweller houses. Richard Wetherill directed his Grand Gulch excavations toward documenting the existence of this earlier culture. His letters refer to these remains as the "Basket People," but he left the official naming to his financial backers, who came up with "Basket Maker." This distinction between the earlier Basketmaker and later Pueblo stages is still part of the basic framework of Anasazi archaeology.
The field notes of only the second (1897) Wetherill Grand Gulch expedition survive at the American Museum of Natural History in New York, where the collections rest as well. Fortunately, the field catalogs of both expeditions still exist, and are surprisingly good records, considering the time and place they were made. The catalogs list each specimen, note the number of the room, feature, or pit from which it came, and from what depth. The 1897 field notes, though brief, have sketch maps adequate to identify the site and most of the places where digging was done.
Other clues as to where the expeditions worked are the names and dates Wetherill's men scrawled on the cave walls, using charcoal or bullets. John Wetherill's famous "J.W." shows up, but not as consistently as at sites he visited later in his career. For several years, I thought his older brother had not left his name at all, but one day a local cowboy and pack string operator, Pete Steele, showed me Richard's name carefully engraved in an "axe-grinding groove" on a sandstone boulder. I've since seen that signature in the same kind of feature at several other sites. Pete also showed me some notes penciled on a cave wall–undoubtedly in Richard Wetherill's hand–that record directions and distances to several other sites. As much as I curse the few graffiti left by modern hikers in the Gulch, I'm thankful these pioneer archaeologists were afflicted by that human urge to record their passing. We'll keep looking for these faint old scribblings, and may someday be able to reconstruct from them the course of the 1893-94 Wetherill expedition.
Because of his pioneering work and his contacts with other, more academically accredited Southwestern archaeologists, Richard Wetherill's discoveries had a substantial influence Southwestern archaeology. And it was probably he who introduced the term "Anasazi" to the archaeological profession. But I wish the man had written more. Through the usually stiff sentences of his letters and notes, one can feel the driving enthusiasm that stood up under gagging cave dust, near-bankruptcy, and long days on the 120-mile trail connecting Mancos and Grand Gulch. Also apparent is his empathy with the Anasazi. Not only had he spent years probing their buried secrets, he too had lived most of his days directly on the land. He too knew how it felt to see his crops wither and fail, or to slip on a high ledge and catch himself just in time. He had what we would now call a "feel" for the pattern of Anasazi life.
In a way as roundabout as Grand Gulch's course, the work I did there in the late 1960s and 1970s was bound up with the Wetherills. It started in 1957, with my first paying job in archaeology at the Museum of Northern Arizona. I was an assistant to Dave Breternitz, who was then Curator of Anthropology at the Museum. Milton Wetherill, nephew of Richard and John and son of Winslow, had been with the Museum since 1938; he sometimes joined us in excavations. Then nearly sixty, Milton could still work at a pace that Dave and I had a hard time matching. During breathing spaces on those jobs, or back at the Museum, Milton would tell us anecdotes about Model A Fords, his own early work in Southwestern archaeology, or the exploits of his famous uncles.
Later, during work in the Glen Canyon area prior to the filling of Lake Powell, I became interested in the "Basket People," who had so fascinated Richard Wetherill. The first site I worked on there was Basketmaker II, as was the last one, over three years later. And one summer, I spent a week in a Basketmaker cave, excavating deposits John Wetherill had missed while digging there over 30 years before. That same cave had probably first been spotted by John in 1897, when Richard sent him into the Glen Canyon area on a scouting foray from Grand Gulch.
Because most of the archaeological work on the Basketmakers had concentrated on caves, I became interested in their less well-known open sites. A logical place to start looking was the mesa top around Grand Gulch. By the end of the first day of the 1967 field season, we had found a Basketmaker pit house site, and further reconnaissance revealed other open sites of the same period. That research has since expanded to take in all the Anasazi occupation of the Cedar Mesa-Grand Gulch area, from Basketmaker times through its final abandonment by Pueblo people in the late 1200s.
We made two important finds that day in 1967–the first was the Basketmaker house site, and the other was a good spring at the head of a small canyon. That determined our base camp location, and we used it thereafter. In a little shelter across from the spring are red Anasazi handprints, as well as the date "1890" and a probably later inscription with the name "Lyman Nielson"–a distant relative of the Nielsons who were still running cattle in the area at the time of this writing. Our crews have had some memorable struggles at the spring, trying to save our water-collecting tank from flash floods. One unsuccessful attempt is still memorialized by a crumpled ball of galvanized metal.
The spring defined our camp, both practically and symbolically. I suppose that field camps are getting a bit old-fashioned, and there are many places today where it would be hard to justify one. Fortunately, the Cedar Mesa-Grand Gulch area is not such a place. The field camp has been an important part of our research. Not that we have been doing old-fashioned archaeology. We've used an open systems model and stratified random sampling designs, and our data tests have been statistical and done by computer. As in any scientific work, we've been playing a particular kind of game with the data. Constrained by tough rules of evidence and procedure, we try to recognize, then statistically test for, patterns in the data. If the patterns can be pinned down, the rewards are great–somewhere between drawing to a royal flush and building a fine cabinet.
Although the marvelous knowledge-capturing science game requires that you depersonalize your operations–your "moves" if you will–it doesn't demand depersonalization of the sources of your ideas. And that is where field camps come in. The kind of "feel" for the people, the environment, and the field data that Richard Wetherill had is important–it’s often where the hunches come from that grow into hypotheses. And that subjective understanding comes best through the soles of your feet and the seat of your pants–from getting close to the evidence and staying there. The field camp ensures that, and provides a taste of the environmental challenges the Anasazi faced.
Tent camps are also part of the "romance" of Southwestern archaeology, of an appeal that touches scholar and non-scholar alike. That romantic quality, both a strength and weakness of the field, is compounded from the beauty of the area and its ruins, their remoteness from modern development, and the tantalizing juxtaposition of the complex, well-preserved sites with the mysteries of who lived there and why they left. At its best, this attitude can support an esthetic and humanistic understanding that not only informs but transcends scientific knowledge. If you don't know what I mean, walk Grand Gulch alone some moonlit night, and look up into those black doorways in the ancient walls.
At its worst, however, the romance of Southwestern archaeology bears the seeds of its own destruction. It so often finds expression in no more than shallow curiosity, in a destructive rummaging through the sites in search of some treasure, some tangible relic of the past that can adorn a coffee table, or worse, be discarded after a few days or weeks as would another plastic novelty. And even those who come with respect will be frustrated if too many come at once. The sites are fragile, but even more so are the understandings that are sought. For these, there must be time, and quiet–not crowds, or lectures, or guided tours.
Grand Gulch is beginning to be caught in this dilemma. It is still a place where one can visit the ruins alone, and often walk for days without seeing someone else. But it is no longer "three days on the road from Bluff." More come every year, and there has been recent vandalism in some of the sites. The Bureau of Land Management, the federal agency responsible for protecting Grand Gulch, has stationed several rangers in the area to contact visitors and run patrols. Although they take care not to establish a "police" presence, it’s clear that even in Grand Gulch, we are moving into an era of managed remoteness, of planned romance. I think that is probably how it has to be if we are to preserve the qualities of the area at all in an increasingly mobile and exploitive society. The challenge is to have effective management that does not itself overwhelm the values it is designed to protect. We shall see....
This is a somewhat revised version of an essay initially published in 1980 in a book titled “Camera, Spade and Pen: An Inside View of Southwestern Archaeology” (University of Arizona Press, Tucson). The book is illustrated with fine black-on-white photographs taken by Marc Gaede, and it was edited by Marnie Gaede. I wrote the original version of the essay in 1975 (while employed at the Museum of Northern Arizona and still doing fieldwork in the Cedar Mesa area every summer) but it took several years for the book to come out. As you can see, the term "Anasazi" was still current at that time--now largely replaced by "Ancestral Pueblo."
Bill Lipe
Washington State University, Pullman
and Crow Canyon Archaeological Center, Cortez, CO
Grand Gulch: Three Days on the Road from Bluff
WHAT THE ANASAZI CALLED THIS MANY-HEADED and serpentine canyon we don't know, for the last families drifted away sometime in the late 1200s, and the names they called it have as quietly been forgotten. We have some clues that Pueblo people, perhaps descendents of these same families, returned to hunt, trade with the Utes, or visit the old shrines, but they never settled here again. Utes, Paiutes, and Navajos must have wandered under its cliffs down the centuries that followed, but they left even fewer traces. The canyon probably got its modern name from advance scouts for the Mormon pioneer wagon train that painfully struggled through the area in the winter of 1879-80, on its way to found the village of Bluff on the San Juan River. That name was Grand Gulch–a tribute to the canyon's size and depth–the grandest gulch of all in a country made of canyons, where one must often cross three or four in a single mile, canyons many of which would be celebrated as natural wonders were they to appear almost anywhere else.
Within a few years, Mormon cowboys were pushing cattle into this rugged area, and not far behind were the archaeologists, or at least, the relic hunters. The Wetherills' Mesa Verde discoveries of the late 1880s had stimulated public interest in Southwestern antiquities, especially in the remains of the "cliff-dwellers," and had created in the great cities of our land a demand for artifact collections and exhibits.
By the winter of 1890, an enterprising pair from Durango, Colorado–C. C. Graham and Charles McLoyd–had heard of the splendid dry caves of Grand Gulch and had fielded the first of several expeditions to "explore" them with their shovels. Their collections further aroused the late Victorian passion for curious relics from the Southwest's canyons. Here were tantalizing mementos of a universally human yet terribly remote past, things preserved in the dry caves as if the stream of time had spent itself in the arid protecting dust.
Close behind McLoyd and Graham came Richard Wetherill, of Mancos, Colorado, eldest of the brothers whose efforts supplied so many threads in the early fabric of Southwestern archaeology. The first of Richard's expeditions was in the winter of 1893-94; the second in early 1897. Winters were when work on the family ranch was lighter and time could be stolen for Richard's first love–archaeology. Here's his evocative description of Grand Gulch :
Grand Gulch drains nearly all the territory south west of the Elk Mountain from the McComb Wash to the Clay Hills–about 1000 sq. miles of territory. It is the most tortuous cañon in the whole of the South West–making bends from 200 to 600 yards apart almost its entire length or for 50 miles and each bend means a cave or overhanging cliff. All of these with an exposure to the sun had been occupied by either cliff houses or as burial places. The cañon is from 300 to 700 feet deep---and in many places toward the lower end the bends are cut through by waters making natural bridges...
To enter the cañon a party must be equipped with suitable pack animals and expect to spend 3 days on the road from Bluff...
In the published catalogs of their Utah collections, McLoyd and Graham had noted that remains of a different group lay beneath the cliff-dweller houses. Richard Wetherill directed his Grand Gulch excavations toward documenting the existence of this earlier culture. His letters refer to these remains as the "Basket People," but he left the official naming to his financial backers, who came up with "Basket Maker." This distinction between the earlier Basketmaker and later Pueblo stages is still part of the basic framework of Anasazi archaeology.
The field notes of only the second (1897) Wetherill Grand Gulch expedition survive at the American Museum of Natural History in New York, where the collections rest as well. Fortunately, the field catalogs of both expeditions still exist, and are surprisingly good records, considering the time and place they were made. The catalogs list each specimen, note the number of the room, feature, or pit from which it came, and from what depth. The 1897 field notes, though brief, have sketch maps adequate to identify the site and most of the places where digging was done.
Other clues as to where the expeditions worked are the names and dates Wetherill's men scrawled on the cave walls, using charcoal or bullets. John Wetherill's famous "J.W." shows up, but not as consistently as at sites he visited later in his career. For several years, I thought his older brother had not left his name at all, but one day a local cowboy and pack string operator, Pete Steele, showed me Richard's name carefully engraved in an "axe-grinding groove" on a sandstone boulder. I've since seen that signature in the same kind of feature at several other sites. Pete also showed me some notes penciled on a cave wall–undoubtedly in Richard Wetherill's hand–that record directions and distances to several other sites. As much as I curse the few graffiti left by modern hikers in the Gulch, I'm thankful these pioneer archaeologists were afflicted by that human urge to record their passing. We'll keep looking for these faint old scribblings, and may someday be able to reconstruct from them the course of the 1893-94 Wetherill expedition.
Because of his pioneering work and his contacts with other, more academically accredited Southwestern archaeologists, Richard Wetherill's discoveries had a substantial influence Southwestern archaeology. And it was probably he who introduced the term "Anasazi" to the archaeological profession. But I wish the man had written more. Through the usually stiff sentences of his letters and notes, one can feel the driving enthusiasm that stood up under gagging cave dust, near-bankruptcy, and long days on the 120-mile trail connecting Mancos and Grand Gulch. Also apparent is his empathy with the Anasazi. Not only had he spent years probing their buried secrets, he too had lived most of his days directly on the land. He too knew how it felt to see his crops wither and fail, or to slip on a high ledge and catch himself just in time. He had what we would now call a "feel" for the pattern of Anasazi life.
In a way as roundabout as Grand Gulch's course, the work I did there in the late 1960s and 1970s was bound up with the Wetherills. It started in 1957, with my first paying job in archaeology at the Museum of Northern Arizona. I was an assistant to Dave Breternitz, who was then Curator of Anthropology at the Museum. Milton Wetherill, nephew of Richard and John and son of Winslow, had been with the Museum since 1938; he sometimes joined us in excavations. Then nearly sixty, Milton could still work at a pace that Dave and I had a hard time matching. During breathing spaces on those jobs, or back at the Museum, Milton would tell us anecdotes about Model A Fords, his own early work in Southwestern archaeology, or the exploits of his famous uncles.
Later, during work in the Glen Canyon area prior to the filling of Lake Powell, I became interested in the "Basket People," who had so fascinated Richard Wetherill. The first site I worked on there was Basketmaker II, as was the last one, over three years later. And one summer, I spent a week in a Basketmaker cave, excavating deposits John Wetherill had missed while digging there over 30 years before. That same cave had probably first been spotted by John in 1897, when Richard sent him into the Glen Canyon area on a scouting foray from Grand Gulch.
Because most of the archaeological work on the Basketmakers had concentrated on caves, I became interested in their less well-known open sites. A logical place to start looking was the mesa top around Grand Gulch. By the end of the first day of the 1967 field season, we had found a Basketmaker pit house site, and further reconnaissance revealed other open sites of the same period. That research has since expanded to take in all the Anasazi occupation of the Cedar Mesa-Grand Gulch area, from Basketmaker times through its final abandonment by Pueblo people in the late 1200s.
We made two important finds that day in 1967–the first was the Basketmaker house site, and the other was a good spring at the head of a small canyon. That determined our base camp location, and we used it thereafter. In a little shelter across from the spring are red Anasazi handprints, as well as the date "1890" and a probably later inscription with the name "Lyman Nielson"–a distant relative of the Nielsons who were still running cattle in the area at the time of this writing. Our crews have had some memorable struggles at the spring, trying to save our water-collecting tank from flash floods. One unsuccessful attempt is still memorialized by a crumpled ball of galvanized metal.
The spring defined our camp, both practically and symbolically. I suppose that field camps are getting a bit old-fashioned, and there are many places today where it would be hard to justify one. Fortunately, the Cedar Mesa-Grand Gulch area is not such a place. The field camp has been an important part of our research. Not that we have been doing old-fashioned archaeology. We've used an open systems model and stratified random sampling designs, and our data tests have been statistical and done by computer. As in any scientific work, we've been playing a particular kind of game with the data. Constrained by tough rules of evidence and procedure, we try to recognize, then statistically test for, patterns in the data. If the patterns can be pinned down, the rewards are great–somewhere between drawing to a royal flush and building a fine cabinet.
Although the marvelous knowledge-capturing science game requires that you depersonalize your operations–your "moves" if you will–it doesn't demand depersonalization of the sources of your ideas. And that is where field camps come in. The kind of "feel" for the people, the environment, and the field data that Richard Wetherill had is important–it’s often where the hunches come from that grow into hypotheses. And that subjective understanding comes best through the soles of your feet and the seat of your pants–from getting close to the evidence and staying there. The field camp ensures that, and provides a taste of the environmental challenges the Anasazi faced.
Tent camps are also part of the "romance" of Southwestern archaeology, of an appeal that touches scholar and non-scholar alike. That romantic quality, both a strength and weakness of the field, is compounded from the beauty of the area and its ruins, their remoteness from modern development, and the tantalizing juxtaposition of the complex, well-preserved sites with the mysteries of who lived there and why they left. At its best, this attitude can support an esthetic and humanistic understanding that not only informs but transcends scientific knowledge. If you don't know what I mean, walk Grand Gulch alone some moonlit night, and look up into those black doorways in the ancient walls.
At its worst, however, the romance of Southwestern archaeology bears the seeds of its own destruction. It so often finds expression in no more than shallow curiosity, in a destructive rummaging through the sites in search of some treasure, some tangible relic of the past that can adorn a coffee table, or worse, be discarded after a few days or weeks as would another plastic novelty. And even those who come with respect will be frustrated if too many come at once. The sites are fragile, but even more so are the understandings that are sought. For these, there must be time, and quiet–not crowds, or lectures, or guided tours.
Grand Gulch is beginning to be caught in this dilemma. It is still a place where one can visit the ruins alone, and often walk for days without seeing someone else. But it is no longer "three days on the road from Bluff." More come every year, and there has been recent vandalism in some of the sites. The Bureau of Land Management, the federal agency responsible for protecting Grand Gulch, has stationed several rangers in the area to contact visitors and run patrols. Although they take care not to establish a "police" presence, it’s clear that even in Grand Gulch, we are moving into an era of managed remoteness, of planned romance. I think that is probably how it has to be if we are to preserve the qualities of the area at all in an increasingly mobile and exploitive society. The challenge is to have effective management that does not itself overwhelm the values it is designed to protect. We shall see....
Cedar Mesa: The Cradle of Southwestern Civilization Meets The Internet
By Mark Meloy, Friend of Cedar Mesa 7/15/2012
Archaeologist writer Florence Lister in her book Troweling Through Time, described the Colorado Plateau, a circle of high country around the corners of four states, as an “unlikely cradle of civilization… this is a place where one of the oldest cultures to be found in the Northern Hemisphere was spawned and subsequently flourished. There is scarcely a tract on the Colorado Plateau and its borderlands that ancient men and women did not know.”
In Colorado, New Mexico, Utah and Arizona important archaeological areas on federal land have received special designation and commensurate funding to manage visitation and ensure preservation. In Southeastern Utah, specifically on Cedar Mesa, the importance of that “cradle of civilization” remains unacknowledged in federal policy. Cedar Mesa continues to be managed as “ordinary” public land, despite its extraordinary richness of well-preserved Ancestral Pueblo archaeological sites. It compares well to specially protected areas of land such as the Canyons of the Ancients National Monument in Colorado, and Hovenweep National Monument, on the Utah-Colorado line. According to BLM rangers, Cedar Mesa visitation has shown dramatic increases in recent years, particularly in day use. Users are targeting ruins they can hike to in a day. Artifacts from those ruins are disappearing.
Surging interest in Cedar Mesa can be easily documented by an Internet search. Google Cedar Mesa and you can choose from 17,500,000 results. Better known national parks see considerably less web traffic: Mesa Verde National Park in Colorado, designated in 1906, comes in with 2,600,000 results. Though the search results are unsubstantiated and vary widely, it’s safe to say that Cedar Mesa is a hot item on the web.
What can be learned from the 17 million web mentions? Scanning the surface of that information, it seems clear that people use the web to find ruins through guidebooks, guide services, outing organizations and individual blogs. People sometimes buy or receive free maps and GPS coordinates to guide them to “undiscovered” ruins.
Part of the experience that visitors to Cedar Mesa’s archaeological sites are seeking is the thrill of being able to visit undisturbed sites, with masonry walls that have not been reconstructed, and 800 year-old artifacts still lying in the dirt where they were dropped. Increasingly, however, uninformed visitors pick up ”just a few.” Most are either unaware that removing artifacts from federal lands has been illegal since passage of the Antiquities Act in 1906, or expect not to get caught. On Cedar Mesa BLM rangers report that artifacts are disappearing at an alarming rate. There is almost nothing left on the surface at many of the major ruins in Grand Gulch on Cedar Mesa and the surface evidence of our “cradle of civilization” is disappearing from other sites as well. Visitors who do not take into account the fragility of the ancient structures and rock art are also inadvertently damaging them, and a few have engaged in outright vandalism. This not only makes it harder for archaeologists to investigate the sites, but also diminishes the quality of the experience for others. Today’s Indian people see these losses as disrespect for their ancestors.
In addition, off-road vehicle traffic—primarily for woodcutting—has escalated dramatically in recent years. A 2011 archaeological survey of a portion of the mesa top indicated that nearly two-thirds of the archaeological sites had been recently tracked over by vehicles.
Much can be done to improve this situation. We can begin by recognizing the national importance of Cedar Mesa by making it a National Monument or National Conservation Area. This would provide increased funding for preservation, visitor education and law enforcement. Education is key but has a price tag. Many people don’t know or don’t care about the fragility and value of the sites, or the laws designed to protect them. The few seasonal rangers and faithful volunteers on Cedar Mesa currently can do little but document the destruction of the archaeological record. Greater presence of rangers in the field is imperative.
In May I wandered into a canyon on Comb Ridge, near my home in Bluff, Utah. As many of us do, I wanted to explore and sought a place off the beaten track. I found unexpected footprints in a side canyon. I followed the rocky wash to a huge alcove and ruin near the slick rock rim of Comb Ridge. Four adults and a handful of kids were searching for artifacts as if they were eggs at an Easter egg hunt. They stopped when they spotted me. A man approached eager to talk. He was amazed that such places still existed where you could still find potsherds and stone tools strewn about. The families were from New Jersey and had found this ruin from directions gotten off the Internet. “Took us right from the interstate to here. Really cool.”
The World Wide Web is a mixed blessing. It seems that all available information is at our fingertips, yet information in the hands of the unknowing or uncaring can lead to destruction of a priceless archaeological record. Think of it--17 million times someone thought enough about Cedar Mesa to enter something on the web. The challenge is to use that interest to convince our government to take steps to educate, enforce and preserve the remnants of this “cradle of civilization.” Friends of Cedar Mesa welcome your ideas on how we might do that.
By Mark Meloy, Friend of Cedar Mesa 7/15/2012
Archaeologist writer Florence Lister in her book Troweling Through Time, described the Colorado Plateau, a circle of high country around the corners of four states, as an “unlikely cradle of civilization… this is a place where one of the oldest cultures to be found in the Northern Hemisphere was spawned and subsequently flourished. There is scarcely a tract on the Colorado Plateau and its borderlands that ancient men and women did not know.”
In Colorado, New Mexico, Utah and Arizona important archaeological areas on federal land have received special designation and commensurate funding to manage visitation and ensure preservation. In Southeastern Utah, specifically on Cedar Mesa, the importance of that “cradle of civilization” remains unacknowledged in federal policy. Cedar Mesa continues to be managed as “ordinary” public land, despite its extraordinary richness of well-preserved Ancestral Pueblo archaeological sites. It compares well to specially protected areas of land such as the Canyons of the Ancients National Monument in Colorado, and Hovenweep National Monument, on the Utah-Colorado line. According to BLM rangers, Cedar Mesa visitation has shown dramatic increases in recent years, particularly in day use. Users are targeting ruins they can hike to in a day. Artifacts from those ruins are disappearing.
Surging interest in Cedar Mesa can be easily documented by an Internet search. Google Cedar Mesa and you can choose from 17,500,000 results. Better known national parks see considerably less web traffic: Mesa Verde National Park in Colorado, designated in 1906, comes in with 2,600,000 results. Though the search results are unsubstantiated and vary widely, it’s safe to say that Cedar Mesa is a hot item on the web.
What can be learned from the 17 million web mentions? Scanning the surface of that information, it seems clear that people use the web to find ruins through guidebooks, guide services, outing organizations and individual blogs. People sometimes buy or receive free maps and GPS coordinates to guide them to “undiscovered” ruins.
Part of the experience that visitors to Cedar Mesa’s archaeological sites are seeking is the thrill of being able to visit undisturbed sites, with masonry walls that have not been reconstructed, and 800 year-old artifacts still lying in the dirt where they were dropped. Increasingly, however, uninformed visitors pick up ”just a few.” Most are either unaware that removing artifacts from federal lands has been illegal since passage of the Antiquities Act in 1906, or expect not to get caught. On Cedar Mesa BLM rangers report that artifacts are disappearing at an alarming rate. There is almost nothing left on the surface at many of the major ruins in Grand Gulch on Cedar Mesa and the surface evidence of our “cradle of civilization” is disappearing from other sites as well. Visitors who do not take into account the fragility of the ancient structures and rock art are also inadvertently damaging them, and a few have engaged in outright vandalism. This not only makes it harder for archaeologists to investigate the sites, but also diminishes the quality of the experience for others. Today’s Indian people see these losses as disrespect for their ancestors.
In addition, off-road vehicle traffic—primarily for woodcutting—has escalated dramatically in recent years. A 2011 archaeological survey of a portion of the mesa top indicated that nearly two-thirds of the archaeological sites had been recently tracked over by vehicles.
Much can be done to improve this situation. We can begin by recognizing the national importance of Cedar Mesa by making it a National Monument or National Conservation Area. This would provide increased funding for preservation, visitor education and law enforcement. Education is key but has a price tag. Many people don’t know or don’t care about the fragility and value of the sites, or the laws designed to protect them. The few seasonal rangers and faithful volunteers on Cedar Mesa currently can do little but document the destruction of the archaeological record. Greater presence of rangers in the field is imperative.
In May I wandered into a canyon on Comb Ridge, near my home in Bluff, Utah. As many of us do, I wanted to explore and sought a place off the beaten track. I found unexpected footprints in a side canyon. I followed the rocky wash to a huge alcove and ruin near the slick rock rim of Comb Ridge. Four adults and a handful of kids were searching for artifacts as if they were eggs at an Easter egg hunt. They stopped when they spotted me. A man approached eager to talk. He was amazed that such places still existed where you could still find potsherds and stone tools strewn about. The families were from New Jersey and had found this ruin from directions gotten off the Internet. “Took us right from the interstate to here. Really cool.”
The World Wide Web is a mixed blessing. It seems that all available information is at our fingertips, yet information in the hands of the unknowing or uncaring can lead to destruction of a priceless archaeological record. Think of it--17 million times someone thought enough about Cedar Mesa to enter something on the web. The challenge is to use that interest to convince our government to take steps to educate, enforce and preserve the remnants of this “cradle of civilization.” Friends of Cedar Mesa welcome your ideas on how we might do that.
FRIENDS OF CEDAR MESA NEWSLETTER -- AUGUST, 2012
Life in Ruins BY VAUGHN HADENFELDT
Visiting the incredible landscape of Cedar Mesa and of most of the Colorado Plateau combined with exploring prehistoric remnants of past cultures is a very exciting and addicting experience. But at what cost?
Some time back I guided a photographer to a spectacular set of small Ancestral Puebloan ruins in an upper fork of a canyon. The hike in was highlighted by fresh bear tracks on the canyon floor, but, the most uncommon experience of that day was the number of people visiting the site. Several groups of tourists armed with a newly published guidebook and GPS devices tromped through the site. Many of them quickly peered into the structure while leaning upon and resting their hands on the ancient stone doorsill. They then consulted their guidebook and rushed off to the next site, shown in the guidebook to lie just down-canyon. The author of this particular guidebook, when interviewed prior to publication, talked about writing the book to eliminate the “aggravation” of discovering these sites on one’s own.
Watching people lean on the doorway made me think of Cliff Palace, that most popular ruin at Mesa Verde. A particular doorway there is blackened by and saturated with the residue from sweaty, greasy hands where countless people lean on the sill to peer inside
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Recently, while guiding a couple to a famous “must see” Cedar Mesa ruin, we saw a man and woman hiking across the canyon towards us. We had already spent the early morning at the site and I suggested we start hiking out so those visitors could enjoy it by themselves. As we crossed the canyon and climbed up the other side we met the other couple. After brief greetings they looked at the ruin, still from a great distance away, and started to turn around. We were perplexed when we heard them say: “We still have enough time to knock off another one.” The unique aspects of this ruin can only be seen if you get close to it. I’m not complaining that they didn’t really see the ruin since they certainly didn’t create any impact; but it’s just another example of “ruin bagging”. Been there, done that, don’t ever have to return; once I’ve got mine I don’t have to worry about what I’ve left behind or care that I’ll let the world wide web know its exact location.
The desire to reach archaeological sites often makes people lose sight of the journey. From traipsing across the archaeologically rich middens to intentionally rummaging through them for souvenir artifacts, much of the public has lost respect for these outdoor museum treasures. The human desire to collect something, whether personally pocketing artifacts or just removing them from their original context to display on some “museum” rock within the site, is a problem that grows with increased visitation.
Building cairns and using survey flagging to mark routes has become rampant. I fill my pockets with colorful flagging tape left behind and observe rocks removed from subtle prehistoric rock shrines to construct cairns. While marking routes can sometimes eliminate multiple trails to the same site it can also mean the hiker “hits” more sites each day when route finding is eliminated. The ever popular hiking pole craze is leaving scratches and divots from the poles that should have rubber tip protectors. Whatever happened to the Leave No Trace ethic?
With increased visitation comes more requests to land managers – locally the BLM Wilderness Rangers – to expand trail signage within the canyon wilderness area. The advent of more signs and the ever-popular GPS devices bring about our loss of a wilderness state of mind. Many adventurers apparently want a wilderness experience without the wild-ness that makes it possible! Looking behind us to see where we have come from now seems less important as long as our batteries hold out. Some of my best discoveries were made when I was looking back.
In response to the high traffic volume in archaeological sites, the BLM has placed “ammo” boxes, anchored with a chain, at many sites. Besides information pertaining to site etiquette the boxes also contain a visitor logbook. A sample of comments left by visitors often expound upon the “pristine” beauty and even “mystical” nature of their visit. What most visitors fail to see, however, is the degradation that has occurred. Multiple trails span the landscape. An original kiva ladder has been replaced with a replica in order to protect it from destruction by visitors. Much of the redware and painted pot sherds have disappeared. Sandstone in the rock shelter has been pulverized by foot traffic and the exhibits of “museum” rock artifacts have multiplied.
In my opinion, guides should discourage, limit, or prohibit the use of maps, and especially global positioning system (GPS) devices. Many of the threats to sites involve some of our most popular three-letter words: GPS, ATV, ORV and WEB. Uncontrolled access to site locations combined with a lack of sensitivity to how fragile the sites might be is a growing problem. Revelation of exact site locations, whether found over the internet or in “bend-by-bend” guidebooks, is truly an ethical dilemma. For writers and publishers to promote such pinpoint information, especially to fragile archaeological sites, is a leap in trust these resources cannot sustain. To their credit, many writers briefly caution readers to avoid impacting such things as crypto biotic soils and archaeological middens. Unfortunately, many readers don’t understand what the writer is referring to, let alone, how to recognize and avoid such features.
As a guide who features backcountry trips to archaeological destinations, I am certainly not immune to contributing to the impacts I’ve described. During my tours I strive to impart a sense of reverence and an understanding of the landscape and the archaeology to my clients and to those I meet along the way. We all bear responsibility for understanding the fragility of these places and for knowing how to reduce or eliminate our impact. I am concerned that the demand for access to fragile areas is outstripping their sustainable limits. Placing site etiquette information in an obtrusive box for the purpose of educating the visitors is, in my opinion, often too little and too late to prevent much of the impact that has and will continue to occur. As the public’s interest in archaeology increases, everyone’s awareness and concern for the land must also be elevated. Members of organizations like this one need to address the use of public lands and offer our professional input to preservation and management. In Utah alone, we have 9.5 million acres of BLM land that qualify for wilderness designation under Americas Red Rock Wilderness Act. Much of this public land contains archaeological wonders that deserve protection. We are all - guides, archaeologists and backcountry enthusiasts, responsible for the stewardship of these precious places.
The truth is that many of us are oblivious to subtle details of backcountry travel. The cost of the explosion of “eco” tourism and the world-wide-web that reveals adventure locations could be the loss of the places we most want to explore.
FRIENDS OF CEDAR MESAis a nonprofit organization that supports stewardship of the natural and cultural resources of Greater Cedar Mesa in San Juan County, Utah. Support is welcome. Simply sign up to receive our monthly email newsletter and occasional announcements of news and events. Join us.
CELEBRATE CEDAR MESA
Our first event, Celebrate Cedar Mesa, took place on June 12, 2010, in Bluff, Utah. More than 100 people from the Four Corners and beyond gathered to hear a panel of speakers representing various concerns, including traditional cultural, archaeological, and conservation. We launched our website, www.cedarmesafriends.org, with the same vision as for Celebrate Cedar Mesa: to create a forum for positive discussion and debate about the management of this special place.
CELEBRATE CEDAR MESA 2012 - NOVEMBER 10 IN BLANDING, UTAH
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Stay tuned. THIS WILL BE AN EXCITING ALL DAY SATURDAY EVENT! Schedule of activities to be announced in our September newsletter.
Mark your calendar. You won't want to miss this.
Read more
JOIN US ON FACEBOOKClick like to become one of our fans. It's an easy way to stay informed and show your support.
P.O. Box 338 Bluff, Utah 84512 www.cedarmesafriends.org
Board of Directors:
Ed Dobson, President
Rose Chilcoat, Vice President
Vaughn Hadenfeldt
William Lipe
Noreen Fritz, Secretary/Treasurer
Mark Meloy, Executive Director
friendsofcedarmesa@gmail.com
July 2012 Newsletter http://us1.campaign-archive1.com/?u=ec61f34f9ca28ecee1ae5d5c8&id=52d43260fd
Look very closely and you will see the pattern of sandal prints incised in the mud stucco of an 800-year old kiva somewhere in the heart of Greater Cedar Mesa.
Can we protect this important archaeological record?
FRIENDS OF CEDAR MESA
is a nonprofit organization that supports stewardship of the natural and cultural resources of Greater Cedar Mesa in San Juan County, Utah. Public participation is welcome. Simply sign up to receive our monthly email newsletter and occasional announcements of news and events. Join us.
Cedar Mesa Versus the Internet by Executive Director, Mark Meloy at our website:
http://www.cedarmesafriends.org
Celebrate Cedar Mesa!
Our first event, Celebrate Cedar Mesa, took place on June 12, 2010, in Bluff, Utah. More than 100 people from the Four Corners and beyond gathered to hear a panel of speakers representing various concerns, including traditional cultural, archaeological, and conservation. We launched our website, www.cedarmesafriends.org, with the same vision as Celebrate Cedar Mesa: to create a forum for positive discussion and debate about the management of this special place.
This Fall...
Celebrate Cedar Mesa!
Join us in celebration of Cedar Mesa, a half million acres of scenic grace and prehistoric wonder in the heart of Southeast Utah.
While renowned throughout the world for its singular beauty and wealth of Ancestral Pueblo cliff dwellings and rock art, Cedar Mesa also holds a special place in the cultural heritage of present-day Ute, Paiute, Navajo, Pueblo and Anglo communities, the latter including the Mormon settlers of southeastern Utah. Visitors from the region and all parts of the globe are increasingly making Cedar Mesa part of their personal histories as well, thanks to an American system of public lands that manages such venerated places for all to enjoy.
This year’s symposium presents the intriguing findings of new archaeological and historical research, and explores the landscape from a range of diverse perspectives.
The Celebrate Cedar Mesa symposium, sponsored by Friends of Cedar Mesa, takes place all day Saturday, November 10, 2012 at the Blanding Arts and Events Center on the Utah State University branch campus in Blanding, Utah.
For more information and updates, please visit cedarmesafriends.org.
Read more
JOIN US ON FACEBOOKClick like to become one of our fans. It's an easy way to stay informed and show your support.
P.O. Box 338 Bluff, Utah 84512 www.cedarmesafriends.org
Board of Directors:
Ed Dobson, President
Rose Chilcoat, Vice President
Vaughn Hadenfeldt
William Lipe
Noreen Fritz, Secretary/Treasurer
Mark Meloy, Executive Director
friendsofcedarmesa@gmail.com
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