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Show MOUNTAIN Continued from page 8 the cultural fringe of Anasazi civiliza- knapped small arrowheads for hunting smaller animals. Puebloans added tion as well. Some remains here — such as a wooden kiva, a cliff-dwelling with bannisters, and unusual rock art such as a two-headed man, and mountain lion tracks — are unique in the Anasazi world. beans and squash to their planting and domesticated the wild turkey. Jimson weed seeds and pods are found at cliff-dweller~ sites. Jimson weed is related to belladonna and nightshade, known for their narcotic properties. Anasazi may have used jimson weed ceremonially to induce visionsor recreationally like a prehistoric marijuana. Evidence suggests that the earlier Anasazis Disappear Basketmakers were taller and healthier Vigorous Anasazi communities flourished and dwindled at least three times during eleven centuries of Cedar Mesa occupation. The tree ring record of the prehistoric climate shows no certain evidence of drought or cooling than cliff-dwellers. to account for it. The closer experts Also, the cliff-dwellers flattened the skulls of their infants by using hard cradleboards, confusing early archaeol- look at the evidence from the entire Four Corners area in context, the more mysterious the Anasazi abandonment becomes. the later Puebloan ogists into thinking the remains they found were a different race of people. The Basketmakers created the grandest, most aesthetically pleasing rock art, says expert Polly Schaafsma. Grand Gulch exhibits fine examples of their eerie humanoid pictographs with triangular bodies and crescent-shaped heads. By Puebloan times, about 1100 A.D., the rock art created was “mere doodling” compared to their ancestors’ work. As the Anasazi developed into settled agricultural communities of cliff-dwellers, of weaving they fine, lost the watertight skill baskets so useful to their nomadic predecessors. Grand Gulch, and Cedar Mesa into which it cuts, western. edge Possibly their were at the far northof Anasazi territory. communities were on ne cause may have been warfare between Anasazi communities. A cave just east of Grand Gulch reveals evidence of a brutal massacre during Basketmaker times. The skeletons of over seventy Anasazi found here show they were beaten, stabbed, or speared to death. Some had been scalped, and some may have been tortured. Evidence of cannibalism — fine flint-knife cut marks on human bone — shows up on the skeletons of over three hundred Anasazi found in the Four Corners area. Some researchers believe this was part of a charismatic religion — kachina — that may have drawn entire Puebloan communities away from places like Grand Gulch to larger cities such as Chaco Canyon and Mesa Verde. TIMES Much of what we know about the Anasazi comes from work done by Richard Wetherill, Colorado rancher and self-taught archaeologist. Wetherill was the first white person to visit Mesa Verde and one of the first to dig at Grand Gulch. Archaeology, as we know it today, was not practiced in America then; collectors dug up and sold artifacts. Early in Wetherill’s career, he decided a historical record would be better preserved if Anasazi artifact collections were kept intact in museums He found a wealthy patron, a Swedish baron named Gustaf Nordenskiold, who'd visited archaeological digs in Europe and learned the latest methods, Nordenskiold taught Wetherill to use a spade rather than a shovel and advocated taking precise field notes. Today, Wetherill’s Four Corners archaeological finds are the foundation of Anasazi collections at several important museums, including the Field Museum in Chicago, the American Museum of Natural History, and the National Museum of the American Indian, in New York. Wetherill’s excavation field notes went to museums with his artifact collections. However, since there were no detailed maps of this remote area at the time, and many canyons were unnamed, museums were unable to identifywhere, exactly, most of their Anasazi artifacts came from. They became essentially dead-end collections. As experts thought of new ques- tions to ask, artifacts from unspecified locations could provide no new information about the culture that created them. In.1986, Fred Blackburn, a wilderness guide from Cortez, Colorado, led an effort to track down Wetherill’s original field notes and exactly locate the sites in which his artifacts were found This group of mostly amateurs, the Wetherill-Grand Gulch Research Project, coined a term “reverse archaeology,” for their work. With Blackburn’s encyclopedic knowledge of Grand Gulch, he can look at an old glass-plate photograph of a Wetherill archaeological site and often identify precisely where it was taken. Art & Artifacts The Project relinked important museum artifacts with the sites at which they were found. At Green Mask Spring for example, Wetherill had excavated the mummy of a Basketmaker woman he called the “Princess.” She was painted red and yellow, and was buried under two five-foot wide baskets with a turkeyand bluebird-feather blanket. The Project located the exact pit from which the mummy was taken In the rock art above the burial pit are two androgynous humanoid figures in white, each decorated with a red circle covering its chest. Some experts believe these figures are associated with the “Princess” burial. If. proven, it would be the first time the Continued on page siabog ays Mews o4 409 PMN Where MA aT oe crt ” Eimstein bros me ean really ee abod. ea is ITAL os sl ha th Pre / apeAle | a ee you'll find I] kinds ee Aarmcs ceo Aa Pr. +5. @ Any deli Ss °* sandwich, valid "% ® and a fountain . drink for $3.49 : ois aes coe per visit. Coupon is not er coupon or special offer (au No S oedostone 120m 9: h redemption value ioe licabl taxes ae road 6 gael that's you). Valid repli Ciylocation 1800 AD g ae @ Bagel Corp. 10/37/08: gore Einstein/Noahs Bagel Corp. 51996 Einstein/Noab's Geesoe o Park City location 1890 Bonanza Drive (801) 645-8489 (Our wiener this line) anyy of aaguenrd rey me ieee allele ie la) / 10 |
