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008 - Explorations and Excavations Pt 2 · Aztec Ruins National Monument, New Mexico

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Speaker 1: Section seven of Aztec Ruins National Monument, New Mexico. This
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Speaker 1: is a LibriVox recording. All LibriVox recordings are in the
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Speaker 1: public domain. For more information or to volunteer, please visit
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Speaker 1: LibriVox dot org. Aztec Ruins National Monument, New Mexico by
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Speaker 1: John M. Corbett Explorations and Excavations, Part two. Obviously, finding
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Speaker 1: such as these could not long remain a secret, and
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Speaker 1: for a considerable time it was a favorite weekend sword
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Speaker 1: to hunt for all remains at this ruin and others
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Speaker 1: in the immediate vicinity. A great quantity of invaluable archeological
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Speaker 1: material must have been carried away in this manner, and
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Speaker 1: as long since been lost or scattered among private individuals.
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Speaker 1: A little of it got into museum collections, but most
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Speaker 1: it was carried off by the people who found it,
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Speaker 1: and who then left it in obscure corners of their
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Speaker 1: houses until it was broken or lost. As how himself
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Speaker 1: said in his later days when he remembered these early findings,
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Speaker 1: when we had finished this work, the stuff was taken
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Speaker 1: out and carried off by different members of the party.
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Speaker 1: But where is it now? Nobody knows. Like most of
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Speaker 1: the material from the smaller pueblos around the larger buildings.
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Speaker 1: It is gone. I, being only a small kid, did
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Speaker 1: not get my choice of artifacts. I had to take
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Speaker 1: what was left, which made a nice little collection at that,
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Speaker 1: but it too is about all gone. We went on
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Speaker 1: with our work, opening all of the rooms. The visitors
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Speaker 1: now passed through the guides, but we found nothing more.
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Speaker 1: The holes we made through the walls had been converted
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Speaker 1: into doorways through which all all visitors now passed from
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Speaker 1: room to rome. For a number of years, rather indiscriminate
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Speaker 1: looting by plot hunters and others interested in these antiquities
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Speaker 1: continued sporadically. Luckily, the plot hunters did not get into
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Speaker 1: the rooms, which seemed to require a lot of hard
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Speaker 1: work in digging, but merely broke into those rooms which
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Speaker 1: were still more or less intact, and in which readily
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Speaker 1: accessible material was lying around on the floor scattered through
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Speaker 1: the debris. In eighteen eighty nine, a patent covering the
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Speaker 1: site of the Aztec ruins was issued to John R.
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Speaker 1: Kuntz and continued in his possession until nineteen o seven,
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Speaker 1: when it was transferred to H. D. Abrams. Due largely
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Speaker 1: to the efforts of these gentlemen. The ruins were relatively
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Speaker 1: protected against vandalism until it could be scientifically investigated by
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Speaker 1: Morris in nineteen sixteen. The name of Earl H. Morris
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Speaker 1: is well known in Southwestern archaeology, although he also did
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Speaker 1: considerable archeological work in Central America, particularly at the Temple
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Speaker 1: of the Warriors at Chichenetza in Yucatan. Trying to unravel
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Speaker 1: the story of the prehistoric inhabitants of the American Southwest
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Speaker 1: was always his first love. Morris was born on October
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Speaker 1: twenty fourth, eighteen eighty nine, in Charma, New Mexico. His
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Speaker 1: family had originally come west from the Pennsylvania oil fields
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Speaker 1: in the mid eighteen seventies, and his father engaged in
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Speaker 1: construction work such as building railway grades and roads, digging canals,
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Speaker 1: and hauling freight. In eighteen ninety one, the elder Morris
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Speaker 1: moved his family to Farmington, New Mexico. There he was
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Speaker 1: able to rent out his teams on a canal construction project.
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Speaker 1: This left free to pursue his hobby digging for Indian antiquities,
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Speaker 1: the love of which he was able to impart to
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Speaker 1: his son, Earle. When Earle was three and a half
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Speaker 1: years old, he actually excavated his first Indian plot, as
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Speaker 1: he used to tell it, one morning in March of
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Speaker 1: eighteen ninety three, father handed me a worn out pick,
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Speaker 1: the handle of which he had shortened to my length,
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Speaker 1: and said, go dig in that hole where I worked yesterday,
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Speaker 1: and you will be out of my way. At my
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Speaker 1: first stroke, they rolled down a roundish great object that
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Speaker 1: looked like a cobblestone, but when I turned it over
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Speaker 1: it proved to be the bowl of a black on
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Speaker 1: white dipper. I ran to show it to my mother,
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Speaker 1: to grab the kitchen butcher knife, and hastened to the
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Speaker 1: pit to uncover the skeleton with which it had been buried. Thus,
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Speaker 1: at three and a half years of age, there it
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Speaker 1: happened the clenching event that was to make me an
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Speaker 1: art and pot hunter who later on was to acquire
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Speaker 1: the more creditable and I hope earned classification as an archaeologist.
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Speaker 1: Morris's father was killed when he was fifteen, and he
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Speaker 1: had to go to work to support his mother and
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Speaker 1: to put himself through school and college as well. In
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Speaker 1: nineteen o eight he entered the University of Colorado, but
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Speaker 1: he left temporarily to join an archaeological expedition to the
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Speaker 1: Maya country of Guatemala. Later, he returned to college and
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Speaker 1: received his PA in nineteen fourteen and as m A
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Speaker 1: in nineteen sixteen. Having spent the winter of nineteen fifteen
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Speaker 1: in New York City at Columbia University, Marris was well
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Speaker 1: acquainted with the leading archaeologist at the American Museum of
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Speaker 1: Natural History. It was therefore, upon doctor Nelson's recommendation that
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Speaker 1: the ruins at Aztec would make an excellent subject intensive
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Speaker 1: study by the Museum, that Morris was hired to conduct
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Speaker 1: the investigations. He was in charge of the Aztec excavations
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Speaker 1: from nineteen sixteen to twenty one, and sporadically through nineteen
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Speaker 1: twenty three, at which time the area became a national monument.
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Speaker 1: Morris was the first custodian, as they were called in
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Speaker 1: those days, and was officially appointed on February eighth, nineteen
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Speaker 1: twenty three, at the salary of twelve dollars per annum.
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Speaker 1: He not only excavated the major part of the west
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Speaker 1: ruin very carefully, but also stabilized and repair the walls
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Speaker 1: as he went along. For the museum greatly desired that
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Speaker 1: this ruin might be preserved as an outstanding monument. Later,
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Speaker 1: in nineteen thirty three to thirty four, Morris's services were
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Speaker 1: loaned to the National Park Service by the Carnegie Institution
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Speaker 1: so that he might accurately restore and remoot the Great
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Speaker 1: Kiva at Aztec. Maurice dug in a number of other
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Speaker 1: places throughout the Southwest in addition to Aztec, and therefore
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Speaker 1: was at a better position than any other man of
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Speaker 1: his time to interpret and explain the development of the
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Speaker 1: prehistoric cultures in the Four Corners country. He produced a
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Speaker 1: number of valuable archaeological reports, most of them under the
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Speaker 1: auspices of the Carnegie Institution, for which he worked for
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Speaker 1: many years. With his death in nineteen fifty six, Southwestern
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Speaker 1: archaeology suffered as severe loss. But there are not many
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Speaker 1: scientific investigators with both his skill and motivation. As his
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Speaker 1: lifelong friend A. V. Kidder has said about him, throughout
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Speaker 1: his career, Marris was doubly motivated, first of course, by
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Speaker 1: the urge to trace the course in discern the causes
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Speaker 1: of historical events and cultural developments. Secondly by an exceptionally
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Speaker 1: ardent wish to make evidenceto the world of to day.
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Speaker 1: The achievements of the past. Back of this was his
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Speaker 1: own admiration for in striving to preserve all ancient things
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Speaker 1: that were beautifully and soundly made. I think he may
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Speaker 1: also have felt, perhaps subconsciously, an obligation to repay by
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Speaker 1: rescuing their work from oblivion, the men and women of
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Speaker 1: long ago whose artistry and manual skills gave him such
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Speaker 1: keen and lasting pleasure. Digging in ruins such as at Aztec,
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Speaker 1: where a dry climate has helped preserve many perishable items
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Speaker 1: normally lost to archaeologists, and where there was always the
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Speaker 1: opportunity of suddenly discovering a fairly complete and undisturbed room,
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Speaker 1: must have been a stimulating experience to a man of
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Speaker 1: Boris's capabilities. One has only to browse through his reports
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Speaker 1: and articles, or to glance at the pictures therein to
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Speaker 1: get the feeling of intense excitement about each discovery that
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Speaker 1: prevailed throughout the five years he was thinking they are.
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Speaker 1: It would be impossible to describe everything that bars excavated,
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Speaker 1: but several of the burials that he uncovered were of
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Speaker 1: exceptional interest. One consists of what may be the only
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Speaker 1: known case of prehistoric poeplo surgery. In one of the rooms,
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Speaker 1: mars on the remains of a young female seventeen to
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Speaker 1: twenty years of age, accompanied by several bowls and a
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Speaker 1: pottery mug. The body had been wrapped in an excellently
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Speaker 1: woven cotton cloth, which in turn had been covered by
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Speaker 1: a mantle of feather cloth and finally with a mat
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Speaker 1: of plaited rushes. The young lady had been seriously injured,
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Speaker 1: perhaps in a fall, for the hip had been severely fractured,
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Speaker 1: several vertebrate cracked, and po bones of the left forearm
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Speaker 1: badly broken. But what was of particular interest was that
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Speaker 1: an attempt had been made to treat the broken arm.
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Speaker 1: Six wooden splints, each flat on one side in convex
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Speaker 1: on the other, had been bound in longitudinal position around
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Speaker 1: the arm. As Morris said, if the Indians who attempted
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Speaker 1: to help this girl realized that if pelvis was also broken,
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Speaker 1: they were unable to do anything about that, but evidently
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Speaker 1: they had attempt to set the arm and return it
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Speaker 1: to normal. Unfortunately, that occurrent before sufficient time had elapsed
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Speaker 1: to permit the healing to begin, so we do not
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Speaker 1: know how successful this sort of treatment might have been,
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Speaker 1: although the surgery may seem crude and bungling to us,
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Speaker 1: at least it chosen awareness of what was wrong and
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Speaker 1: an attempt to correct it. Another fascinating barry was the
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Speaker 1: one which Mars referred to as the Warrior's Grave, in
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Speaker 1: which he found an adult male buried in a grave
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Speaker 1: pit sunk into the floor for a room. A wrapping
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Speaker 1: of feather cloth enveloped the entire body, and there had
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Speaker 1: been an equally extensive outer covering of rush matting. Along
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Speaker 1: with numerous other grave offerings of artifacts and pottery vessels,
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Speaker 1: A large one eight shield was laid over the body.
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Speaker 1: It consisted of a flat piece of coiled basketry thirty
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Speaker 1: six inches long and thirty one inches wide, and on
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Speaker 1: one side was lashed a hardwood handle. The outermost five
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Speaker 1: coils of the shield had been colored with pitch and
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Speaker 1: thickly spangled with minute flanks of selenite. The next five
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Speaker 1: were stained dark red, while the remaining forty eight were
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Speaker 1: greenish blue. In addition to the shield, they were axis
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Speaker 1: of a form intermediate between axis and a hammers, so
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Speaker 1: that it would appear that they were intended for use
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Speaker 1: as weapons rather than tools. One is beautifully fashioned from
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Speaker 1: a piece of hematite or similar iron ore, and both
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Speaker 1: had wooden handles which lay near the right end of
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Speaker 1: the body. Near the left hand was a long knife
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Speaker 1: of red quartzite position, so that it might have been
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Speaker 1: inserted in a belt or girdle. Also beside the body
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Speaker 1: was a long, thin, tapering wooden object which might have
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Speaker 1: been interpreted as a digging stick, but which Mars felt
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Speaker 1: would also have been serviceable as a sword. It is
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Speaker 1: not often an archeologist has an opportunity to uncover spectaculal
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Speaker 1: remains of this sort, But these are only two of
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Speaker 1: the fascinating burials which Mars recovered from the Aztec ruins,
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Speaker 1: and all he found one hundred eighty six interments. Strangely enough,
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Speaker 1: only six, with possibly two others, could be identified as
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Speaker 1: belonging to the Dracoan phase at Aztec. One hundred forty
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Speaker 1: nine were definitely of the maysubverted period, twelve others possibly so,
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Speaker 1: and seventeen were found in circumstances which made it impossible
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Speaker 1: to tell to which period they belonged. But burials were
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Speaker 1: not the only things which Morris uncovered. He began his
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Speaker 1: diggings in the southeast corner of the ruin, excavating the
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Speaker 1: entire east wing from south to north. The problem of
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Speaker 1: moving the dirt, debris and fallen rocks was considerable, especially
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Speaker 1: when he did not want merely to pile it off
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Speaker 1: to one side, where he might subsequently have to move
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Speaker 1: it a second time. Furthermore, the ruin was to be
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Speaker 1: stabilized as a permanent monument, so it was necessary to
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Speaker 1: remove the debris well outside the ruin area. At one time,
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Speaker 1: he evidently considered building a sluiceway from an irrigation ditch
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Speaker 1: which runs along a higher level on the north side
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Speaker 1: of the ruin, thinking that most of the debris could
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Speaker 1: be dumped in the sloofe box and washed out to
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Speaker 1: a lower area by the river. Perhaps this scheme did
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Speaker 1: not prove to be feasible, for instead, during the first
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Speaker 1: season's excavations, he constructed a narrow gage tramway on which
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Speaker 1: the workmen ran dump cars. Unfortunately, this method of dirt
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Speaker 1: removal did not work satisfactorily either, because the relatively light
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Speaker 1: rails which were used would not support the weight of
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Speaker 1: the loaded dump trucks. He also had difficulty with the
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Speaker 1: size and quality of the wheels on the dump guards.
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Speaker 1: Although excavators elsewhere have sometimes used this method of removing dirt,
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Speaker 1: it frequently presents its own type of engineering problems. In
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Speaker 1: the remaining years of the work at Aztec, Morris employed
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Speaker 1: horse drawn carts which could be loaded directly from the
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Speaker 1: excavations and hauled to a vacant area to be dumped.
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Speaker 1: In many places the digging was extremely laborious, but over
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Speaker 1: the centuries the dirt and debris had been packed into consistency,
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Speaker 1: almost like that of concrete. In other places, the rooms
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Speaker 1: were full of all sorts of prehistoric rubbish, intermixed with
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Speaker 1: broken artifacts, which had to be carefully sorted out. In
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Speaker 1: describing the excavations in one room, Morris said, the ceiling
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Speaker 1: failed in the most unusual way, the supports having been
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Speaker 1: broken first at the center, then at each end where
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Speaker 1: they entered the wall. The small poles seemed to have
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Speaker 1: been parted from the walls almost as soon as the
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Speaker 1: center timbers gave way. Some were standing upright against the
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Speaker 1: end walls, while the majority were mashed back against and
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Speaker 1: along the east wall. The splints, bark and adobe were
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Speaker 1: in a grievous tangle, most difficult to excavate. About the
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Speaker 1: first ceiling were decayed but unburned timbers and lumps of
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Speaker 1: charcoal and breadened earth represented, respectively, the second and third ceilings.
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Speaker 1: Mars completely excavated the east wing and eastern half of
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Speaker 1: the north wing. In addition, he also excavated twenty nine
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Speaker 1: rooms in the west wing and about two thirds of
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Speaker 1: the small cobblestone one story rooms which close off the
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Speaker 1: southern third of the plaza area. Besides excavating many of
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Speaker 1: the kivas enclosed within the puebla rooms, Mars also excavated
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Speaker 1: the large charcoal like kiva in front of the northeast corner,
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Speaker 1: as well as the Great Kiva, which is centrally located
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Speaker 1: on the south side of the plaza. Later in nineteen
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Speaker 1: thirty three and nineteen thirty four, Maris returned to Aztec
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Speaker 1: and supervised the stabilization and reconstruction of this great giva,
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Speaker 1: so that today you see it as it supposedly existed
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Speaker 1: when the Indians used it for ceremonial purposes. Immediately to
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Speaker 1: the west of the main ruin, where the brush has
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Speaker 1: been cleared, Morris found a rather extensive low mound area.
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Speaker 1: The surface was an orderless succession of hummocks and depressions,
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Speaker 1: the former thickly strewn with cobblestones, the whole presenting an
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Speaker 1: appearance characteristic of most of the ruins in this end
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Speaker 1: of the valley. Thinking these might be the remains of
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Speaker 1: an earlier structure, he excavated most of it. To his surprise,
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Speaker 1: the rivers proved to be true. Although there had undoubtedly
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Speaker 1: been an earlier charcoal like sandstone structure, at this point,
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Speaker 1: most of it it had been torn down and the
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Speaker 1: debris carried elsewhere or utilized in building the great Ruin itself.
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Speaker 1: Morris said, Overlying the earliest remains there are deposits of
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Speaker 1: gleen earth, some of it presumably laid down by the elements,
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Speaker 1: but the bulk of it is excavated earth, intentionally dumped
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Speaker 1: where it lies. At some later date, the mesa Verdi
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Speaker 1: like people had built cobblestone houses, pit rooms, and small
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Speaker 1: keepers on top of this earlier debris. Today, the outline
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Speaker 1: of some of these cobblestone walls can be seen on
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Speaker 1: the ground just to the left of the visitor trail
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Speaker 1: as it proceeds northward to enter the main part of
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Speaker 1: the West Ruin. Since Morris's excavations at Aztec, there has
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Speaker 1: been a sporadic digging, much of it in connection with
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Speaker 1: the service's Ruin stabilization program to prevent soil moisture from
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Speaker 1: sea into the lower footing of these ancient walls. It
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Speaker 1: is frequently necessary to dig down to their bases and
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Speaker 1: cap them with concrete or preserve them by other suitable methods.
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Speaker 1: In doing so, all refuse pits, broken fragments of pottery,
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Speaker 1: or even a burial is occasionally turned up recently in
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Speaker 1: making excavations in which to place dry barrels but drainage purposes.
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Speaker 1: In two rooms on the east side, two interesting oven
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Speaker 1: like structures, each exactly centered in a room, were accidentally
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Speaker 1: found Their location in adjoining rooms, and their central location
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Speaker 1: in the rooms precludes the possibility that they were pit
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Speaker 1: ovens from an earlier period before the Boibler was built.
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Speaker 1: Doubtless they have been placed deliberately in these two rooms,
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Speaker 1: and they may have been used for roasting large quantities
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Speaker 1: of corn or preparing certain types of baked corn meal
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Speaker 1: or corn bread, also since Morris's time. The rooms to
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Speaker 1: which you may now pass, and which lie between the
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Speaker 1: Plaza proper and the rooms with the intact ceilings have
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Speaker 1: been partially excavated in order to allow you easier access
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Speaker 1: to the plaza. Finally, as part of the stabilization program,
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Speaker 1: the remaining rooms in the south wing, which enclosed the
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Speaker 1: plaza and which were largely composed of kobblestones, were cleared
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Speaker 1: and stabilized. Mars also excavated a few rooms in the
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Speaker 1: east ruin simply as a test to see if it
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Speaker 1: belonged to the same general period as the larger ruin
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Speaker 1: in the west. From his findings there, he felt that
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Speaker 1: the east ruin was erected during the Masiave furthy phase
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Speaker 1: of Aztec. In recent years, one other major excavation had
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Speaker 1: been undertaken at Aztec. This was the complete clearing and
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Speaker 1: stapless of the circular structure to the north of the ruin,
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Speaker 1: known as the Hubbard Mound, a massive circular triple wall
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Speaker 1: structure with underlying scattered remains of earlier structures. Two heavy
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Speaker 1: radial cobblestone walls now extend to the south of the
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Speaker 1: main structure, and excavations revealed remnants of other heavy walls
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Speaker 1: disappearing under the road to the west. This indicates that
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Speaker 1: the building had originally been one corner of a group
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Speaker 1: of structures. The main part of the Hubboard bound consists
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Speaker 1: of three concentric circular walls. The spaces between the outer
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Speaker 1: two rings are partitioned into rooms. There are eight rooms
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Speaker 1: in the inner circle, including an entrance room on the south,
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Speaker 1: and fourteen in the outer if you again count an
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Speaker 1: open passageway on the south side. Interestingly enough, the three
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Speaker 1: circular walls are heavier and extend deeper into the underlying
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Speaker 1: sand than to the partition walls, and therefore were constructed
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Speaker 1: first as continuous circles. Within the innermost circle there is
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Speaker 1: a standard small type kiva. Evidently, the entire structure represents
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Speaker 1: a building for the use of a highly specialized religious organization.
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Speaker 1: Part of the construction is of sandstone blocks, part is cobblestone,
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Speaker 1: and all of it seems to have been generously plastered
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Speaker 1: with adobe mud. There are other examples of triwall structures
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Speaker 1: in the Southwest, but they are not very numerous and
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Speaker 1: the exact uses to which they might have been put
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Speaker 1: are unknown. An analysis of materials found during the excavation
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Speaker 1: of the Hubbard Mound reveals that it belonged to the
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Speaker 1: Masi verdy Phays when Morris first undertook the excavations at Azdek.
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Speaker 1: It was his intention and that of the American Museum
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Speaker 1: of Natural History, to excavate the ruins completely. However, the
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Speaker 1: undertaking was a massive one. World War One intervened with
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Speaker 1: all its uncertainties, and funds frequently ran short. In the
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Speaker 1: later days of the excavations, Mars realized there was an
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Speaker 1: advantage to leaving parts of any ruin unexcavated, so that
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Speaker 1: better archeological techniques in the future might extract information of
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Speaker 1: which he was unaware at present. The National Park Service
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Speaker 1: feels much the same way. Perhaps twenty five or fifty
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Speaker 1: years from now, for the excavations may be undertaken in
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Speaker 1: this area, but for the present the ruins will be
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Speaker 1: left as they are, complete with their feeling of mystery.
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Speaker 1: End of Section seven.