Discover ancient places within the Grand Canyon where people lived long ago. What did the archeologists find during the first major excavation to occur along the Colorado River corridor in nearly 40 years?
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Archeology along the Colorado River Grand Canyon National Park
Narrator:
Native peoples have inhabited the Grand Canyon for 12,000 years.
Adjusting to the seasons…
…To the availability of food…
…And to the demands of the rugged corridors they chose as their home.
Architecture from the Puebloan period over a thousand years ago is still visible. Partial clues to their way of life remain hidden under layers of sand along the banks of the Colorado river. The park as a preserve, protects these vestiges of the past.
Considering the size of Grand Canyon national park, and the arc of time that people have inhabited the landscape here, the canyon’s prehistory is rich with human culture. There have only been a handful of large archeological excavations in the park, starting with sites at Unkar Delta in 1967, Bright Angel Pueblo in 1968 and Wallhalla glades in 1969 and 1970. These earlier archeology projects tended toward general research. More recent archeology in the park is geared toward preservation. And one of the first steps in preservation is finding out exactly what you’re trying to protect.
Toward that end, in 1990 and 91 the park launched an intensive inventory along the river. Archeologists walked the entire corridor on both sides of the river to find evidence of cultural resources. They identified over 400 sites. Due to their mandate to preserve and protect the resources, information was only collected from the surface. Archeologists monitored the sites to detect changes for the next 15 years.
Meanwhile Glen canyon dam was changing the natural cycle of water flow in the Colorado river, reducing the sedimentation that had taken place seasonally for thousands of years.
Prior to the dam’s construction, seasonal flooding would replenish the sediment along the contours of the river corridor, and many of the archeological sites were preserved under the silt that the river deposited and the wind re-distributed. Since the closing of the dam gates in 1963 the reduction of water flow and sediment has led to increased erosion on beaches and terraces throughout the canyon. Some of the cultural sites that had been safely buried for eons, were exposed, resulting in accelerated erosion.
Erosion was also being accelerated by human visitation to the sites.
In 2006, nine sites were identified by the National Park Service as the most threatened by these combined forces. If no action was taken, these sites would potentially crumble and flow down river, and with them, valuable information would be lost.
To protect the cultural information in the sites that were threatened, they needed to excavate.
(lisa walks to site with Octavious" nat sound…
Narrator Park archeologists met with eleven Native American tribes who claim cultural ties to the canyon to get input on how they felt about examining the sites and excavating the artifacts for study and preservation. Their input helped design the approach that would be taken on the project.
This would be the first extensive excavation in the park in over forty years. It would provide a rare opportunity to learn more of the cultural history of the river corridor.
Grand Canyon archeologists teamed up with the Museum of Northern Arizona. Team leadership was provided by Park archeologist Lisa Leap and MNA archeologist Ted Neff
The crew traveled by raft on nine trips down the river over a four year period to access the sites. Due to their fragility and remote location, all the excavation was done by hand, requiring immense amounts of manual labor to move tons of sand by bucket and wheelbarrow.
The visiting public was invited to observe the ongoing process.
(Ted Neff introducing visitors to site: Nat sound…) "This project is a cooperative project between the National Park Service and the Museum of Northern Arizona."
Narrator Over two thousand people on private and commercial raft trips were given the opportunity to see the process first hand. They could also have the opportunity to enjoy the traveling exhibit including artifacts and professional photos acquired during the digs.
(Ted with visitors: "This is what we're calling feature five. It’s a two room masonry structure" ) (Lisa with visitors: "Good Question, he said Well how do you know its ceremonial? Through oral histories. We work with eleven different tribes in the park"…) (more digging scenes… nat sound of archs )
Narrator: Critical data on the location of artifacts within structures, the design elements of the structures themselves, and dating of any wood found within them help with understanding of chronology. As all the minute details emerge, they provide evidence of living habits, food choices, and general day to day life activities of the people who lived in this harsh environment hundreds of years ago. Many of the sites show signs of multiple occupations from generations of residents coming from several different cultural backgrounds.
Pottery pieces and tools are compared and dated to add to the cultural information. A sampling of significant artifacts were carefully packed out and taken to the lab, and prepared for further analysis. Final curation will be located at the South Rim of the Park.
Ted Neff: MNA Archeologist "The artifacts will be sent out to different analysts. Once the results of everybody's work comes back… You've got ceramics, lithics, pollen, floatation, soil samples of various kinds. All that comes together, all the descriptive information, and interpretations from that all get combined together into a final report, which will give you a really detailed idea of the past lives of these folks because you know… What archeology does is it kind of provides a historical perspective to people who otherwise have not been recorded by written history."
Narrator: Still, making informed judgments on the full spectrum of life that took place here is very difficult with only small pieces of the puzzle to work with.
Lisa Leap: NPS Archeologist “I think What we don’t see often times when we’re in those pits is we don’t step back and just think about how people were moving around, how people were functioning and what their daily lives were. We’re really engrossed in a metate and getting pollen but we don’t step out of that box and say, what did the landscape look like? Was it hot, was it cold, were they happy, were they constantly trying to find food? Those things, you don’t see on a metate or a mano or a point, you don’t see the story behind it, the human story behind it.” Narrator The archeologists at Grand Canyon National Park are keenly aware that the river corridor is sacred ground for many tribes and holds cultural value that needs to be respected. Lisa Leap "This river to the tribes that we work with is very sacred to them. This whole Grand Canyon area is extremely sacred and important to them and I’m sure that has gone on from generation to generation.” The third big component to this project is tribal participation, and we've really tried to stress that from the get-go, even from when we were writing the first draft of the implementation plan, we sent that draft out to the tribes, and we encouraged them to say : give us some questions that you're interested in. We want your participation in every fashion that we can get it. - Video change: Lisa with Octavious:
Lisa Leap: "For an archeologist like me its an absolute privilege, because we are archeologists… we haven't been around, we're Euro-Americans… This isn't our history here. These people have been around for a very long time and they're still practicing these traditions and they are the experts"
Octavious Seowtewa: Member of Zuni Tribe "At first we opposed any archeology digs but with the floods and everything that's happening, if its not done, we're losing our history. There's not a recorded history. We don't have it in books and the only information we have that our people were down here is sites like this. If they're not excavated, if the information is not acquired through digs like this and if its lost at some time then our history, the proof that our people were down here would all be lost."
Narrator:
At Grand Canyon National Park it becomes self evident that even over the large sweep of human occupation, we are all just visitors to this land of extremes and contradictions… where rock, water, and wind slowly erase the past. The challenge for archeologists is to sift through time to understand the living dance between culture and the elements, and protect the resources in the process.
After the excavation, the sites were backfilled in order to provide the greatest protection and preservation. The areas were re-contoured and re-vegetated to minimize erosion and remove all evidence of the activity. The landscape is left much as it was, but the new data acquired helps ensure that another link to people from the past has been preserved for the future. ----------------
end credits
Videographer / Narrator: Tom Bartels
Video Support Crew: Jennie Dear / Sydney Dion / Mitch Dion
Archival photos provided by: School for Advanced Research, Santa Fe, NM
Additional Video Provided By: National Geographic
Special Thanks: Lisa Leap Jan Balsom Jennifer Dierker And all the archeologists on the project crew
The National Park Service (NPS) and the Museum of Northern Arizona (MNA) excavated nine archeological sites along the Colorado River in the Grand Canyon during three years of fieldwork that started in 2006.
The NPS has a “preservation-in-place” mandate, and excavates archeological sites only when they cannot be stabilized and preserved in place. These sites were disappearing due to erosion; artifacts were literally washing into the river. Because these sites were being lost, the NPS initiated excavations to learn more about the people who lived here before the archeological evidence of their lives in the canyon was completely gone.
View interactive 360° photos that capture a specific moment during the excavation of each site. Each image was taken near the end of the field session, when excavation was nearly complete. The rooms with their walls and floors are evident, having been exposed by crew members who carefully dug and hauled the overlying soil away one bucket at a time.
In the 360°photos, you’ll also see archeologists at work, along with their tools, such as shovels, trowels, screens and buckets.
The River Monitoring Program
generates data regarding the effects of Dam operations on historic properties, identifies ongoing impacts to historic properties within the APE [Area of Potential Effect], and develops and implements remedial measures for treating historic properties subject to damage.
Archeological Excavations at 9 Sites along the Colorado River Corridor
Between 2007 and 2009, the National Park Service, in cooperation with the Museum of Northern Arizona, undertook the first major archeological excavations along the river in Grand Canyon National Park in 40 years.
Archeologists Make Exciting Discoveries Along the Colorado River
In October, 2007, archeologists excavated a habitation site along the Colorado River. The fascinating artifacts they found provide insight into the lives of people who once made the Grand Canyon their home.
Canyon Sketches Vol 03 - May 2008 Archeologists Excavate Kiva by the Colorado River
Archeologists excavated nine archeological sites along the Colorado River because they are being impacted by severe erosion. In April and May 2008, crews discovered a complete kiva during the excavation of one of these sites.
Canyon Sketches Vol 09 - March 2009 Archeologists Excavate Two Sites Along the Colorado River.
In fall 2008, archeologists excavated two archeological sites during a three-year project along the Colorado River corridor in Grand Canyon. One of the excavated sites has evidence of as many as six different human occupations over a time span of 3,500 years.
The Vanishing Treasures Program
Grand Canyon National Park is one of 45 National Park Service areas that participate in the Vanishing Treasures Program. The goal of the Vanishing Treasures program is the conservation of architectural remains through research, documentation, and preservation treatment.
Canyon Sketches Vol 04 – June 2008 Vanishing Treasures Archeologists Stabilize Transept Ruin (North Rim)
In late June 2008, archeologists from Grand Canyon National Park’s Division of Science and Resource Management cleaned and stabilized Transept Ruin, a two-room ancestral Puebloan (Anasazi) ruin on the North Rim.
Did You Know?
Grand Canyon's Yavapai Observation Station (1928) located one mile (1.6 km) east of Market Plaza, features exceptional canyon views. Geology exhibits allow park visitors to see and understand the complicated geologic story in ways that all can understand. Exhibits and bookstore open daily.
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