GILA CLIFF DWELLINGS Administrative History

Research Priorities

Anderson concluded the summary of his report with a recommendation that no further excavation occur at Gila Cliff Dwellings until seminal research questions are posed that cannot be answered without it. This recommendation underscores a shift in archeological priorities over the years since the monument was expanded, a change that has especially affected plans for research at the TJ Ruin.

When Vivian excavated Gila Cliff Dwellings in 1963, there had been two research priorities: excavation at the cliff site, in this case a salvage operation to prepare for increased visitation; and excavation of the TJ Ruin, which yielded in the budget to the imminent need of the cliff site. [21] In 1966, Superintendent Selznick began the long process of budgeting and planning the excavation of the TJ site. Later the 1968 archeological management plan for the monument, developed by his successor Bill Lukens in collaboration with Don Morris, listed excavation of the TJ site as the most important research need. In September of the same year, however, Lukens changed his mind.

Concerned about protecting an excavated TJ Ruin without enough staff to interpret that site and the cliff dwellings and to manage the visitor center, as well, he withdrew the request for excavation—a $100,000 project already scheduled for fiscal year 1970. Despite the expressed chagrin of the chief of the Southwestern Archeological Center, the regional interpretive archeologist in Santa Fe concurred—at least for "the next year or so."

To date this ruin has not been excavated, and large excavation is no longer even proposed in the resources management plans. Part of the reason is financial: each year the cost rises for a major excavation that includes analysis and a full report, and exposure of the TJ architecture for interpretive purposes would entail an additional and perpetual expenditure of funds for protection and stabilization of the open site. [22] Lukens, of course, had also been specifically concerned about having enough staff to interpret and protect the TJ site, an additional funding issue.

But money was not the only issue. Lukens' change of heart also reflects tension between the mandates to interpret and to preserve archeological sites. On the one hand, it has been observed, meaningful evaluation and interpretation of the TJ Ruin depends on a program of excavation. [23] The components of Gila Cliff Dwellings only emerged after Vivian's 1963 work, for example. On the other hand, excavation threatens the resource on two levels—the physical structure itself and the information the site contains.

First and obviously, architecture exposed through excavation must be stabilized—often at great expense at an open site. Otherwise the site must be reburied or it will decay, the unfortunate consequence of Wesley Bradfield's work at the Cameron Creek site. [24] Nor is weather the only concern. The mere passing footsteps of visitors—to mention the most innocuous impact—repeated thousands and thousands and thousands of times can destabilize ancient and fragile adobe-and-cobble construction that remains exposed for interpretive purposes.

Moreover, excavation destroys stratigraphy and the contextual association and distribution of artifacts. Although that data is usually tabulated carefully, the record is inevitably limited by the current knowledge, interest, and perceptions—not to mention technologies—of the excavating archeologist. [25] The provenience problems of material from Gila Cliff Dwellings may stem largely from this limitation. The best records were kept for the articles that most interested Vivian, the perishables. Similarly the Cosgroves failed to keep samples of wood from the Swarts Ruin, unaware in the late 1920s that techniques of dendrochronology would soon be able to provide absolute dates for the Mimbres Valley site. That charcoal or undisturbed hearths could be dated were possibilities that rely on technologies unimagined at that time.

A partial response to these problems, to the rapid improvement in archeological technologies after the Second World War, and to the accompanying expectation of even greater advances in the future was a theoretical current that welled in the 1960s for the conservation of archeological sites—banking them for the future, so to speak, until better techniques, new questions and a new generation can elicit more information from a site than currently possible. Recently, Lukens said that interest in banking the TJ Ruin and concern about the still uncompleted report of Vivian's excavation at the Gila Cliff Dwellings had additionally contributed to his decision to withdraw Selznick's petition for excavation on the mesa. [26]

Also in the 1960s, influenced by the increasingly scientific orientation of anthropology in technique and theory, American archeology underwent another major change that—among other things—linked excavation to the testing of hypotheses. [27] In other words, specific questions were to govern which sites were to be dug and the kind of information sought. [28] One effect of this new orientation was to limit especially the scale of excavation, with a practical emphasis on just enough testing and sampling to prove or disprove a hypothesis and a reluctance to dig up an entire site.

Anderson's reluctance to see further excavation at Gila Cliff Dwellings reflects an additional need to weigh the value of a question against the scarcity and unknown potential of the resource.

As for the TJ Ruin, Lukens' concerns in 1968 stalled the momentum for major excavation just long enough for the proposal to be overtaken by rising costs and the new professional attitudes about scale, the purpose of digging, and the need to preserve sites for the future. In 1989, archeologists from the Region III office of the Park Service could "forecast no foreseeable plans...to excavate the [TJ] ruin." [29] In the same year, a study of alternatives to commemorate the Mimbres culture—noting the pristine nature of the TJ site and the scarcity of large Mimbres sites in that condition—recommended that "only limited research be allowed, with the major part of the site banked for the future." [30]

Of 14 research projects proposed for Gila Cliff Dwellings National Monument in 1981, only one—next to last in priority—entailed even minor excavation, and four of the first five priorities revolved around the protection and preservation of the physical archeological resources. The most current plan places priority on protection and preservation, with limited testing and surface collecting ranked 11th of the 14 proposals.

Despite low priority, it should be observed that limited excavation at TJ Ruin is still primarily constrained by inadequate funding. If a university wished to make test excavations at the site or donated money were available, the regional office would approve an appropriate sampling project. [31]