Aztec Ruins Administrative History

RUIN REPAIR AND ARCHEOLOGY

Just two years after extensive repairs were carried out under a Public Works Administration program, the walls of the West Ruin were failing at an alarming rate. In the month of February 1937, the unusually harsh weather brought down 42 weakened portions of walls. One nearly fell on a touring party. [18] The next month, two laborers were called in to shore up these and other weather-beaten wall sections and to waterproof seven original leaking ceilings. Knowing these efforts were at best temporary solutions that could be undone with the next blizzard or upcoming summer thunderstorm season, Miller appealed for further sustained repair activities at Aztec Ruins. He estimated that a minimum of 3,000 man-hours would be needed soon.

In 1938, Pinkley organized a relief squad of men to be trained on the job to cope with relentless deterioration of a number of sites under his administration. Aztec Ruins was on its itinerary as the unit moved throughout the Southwest Region. Custodian Miller was committed to spending an increasing part of his time directing ruins repair efforts (see Chapter 12).

The first archeological work done after the Depression projects was carried out by Charlie Steen in 1938. After graduating from Denver University with a degree in anthropology, Steen joined the National Park Service in 1934 as a ranger at Casa Grande National Monument, Arizona. Two years later, he was named archeologist attached to the Southwest National Monuments headquarters in Coolidge. Beloved for his wit and respected for his technical abilities as an excavator and ruins stabilizer, except for an interval during World War II when he served in the China-Burma-India theaters, Steen remained in the southwestern ranks of the National Park Service until retirement in 1970.

At Aztec Ruins in 1938, Steen's assignment was to eliminate a physical hazard potentially harmful to visitors. For eight days, enrollees of the Indian Civilian Conservation Corps Mobile Unit, under the direction of Steen, cleared Rooms 193, 249, and 202 in the North Wing so that the visitor trail could be rerouted. In the past, persons exiting from the connected rooms with ceilings used a ladder in Room 193 to reach the top of the mound in the unexcavated portion of the ruin (see Figure 6.4). The excavations eliminated this obstacle by making it possible to walk through the site at ground level.

Artifacts retrieved from the three rooms included Mesa Verde and Chaco black-on-white and corrugated potsherds, bone awls, bone beads, a bone whistle, stone knives, arrowpoints, a stone pendant, an abalone shell pendant, and numerous unworked fragments of faunal and bird bones. Partial remains of eight individuals were recovered. Seven of them were children. Because it contained little refuse, Steen concluded that Room 202 had been used until nearly the time of final abandonment of the site. However, a cutting date of A.D. 1110 from one beam indicated it had been put in place by Chaco builders during their main construction effort. Adjoining Rooms 203 and 204 apparently had become middens during the Mesa Verde tenancy. [19]

Other scientific research during the Miller years carried out by persons not connected with the National Park Service concerned tree-ring dating of the site. In the early developmental period of dendrochronology, tree-ring dating had a big impetus from 52 specimens from the West Ruin submitted by Earl Morris. After the series of relative dates was connected to absolute dates, several other collections were made at the village for purposes of cross checking data. Harry T. Getty, Laboratory of Tree-Ring Research at the University of Arizona, bored a few cores in 1934. In 1940, Deric O'Bryan, Gila Pueblo, collected 92 additional samples. [20] The range of dates for the West Ruin continued to cluster from A.D. 1110 to 1115, as they had in Douglass's first appraisal. The years A.D. 1106 and 1131 were the earliest and latest dates of the series. Samples from beams in what had been the American Museum field house conformed to those from the Anasazi communal house. The neighboring East Ruin produced wood dates in the period identified with Chacoan tenancy. In addition, three examples from the site dating in the 1230s conceivably reflected Mesa Verdian building or remodeling. [21]

Four dates obtained during this interval from a large unexcavated cobblestone construction beside the entrance road at Estes Arroyo seemed to represent a widespread regional occupation predating erection of the multiroomed village of the West Ruin. These covered four years from A.D. 1091 to 1097. [22]