Ancient Santa Fe TEN THOUSAND YEARS of HIGH DESERT LIVING
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CHAPTER ONE ❈ Ancient Santa Fe TEN THOUSAND YEARS OF HIGH DESERT LIVING Stephen S. Post In the summer of 2006, my research way of life. Farming and living in vil- team from the Museum of New Mex- lages, attributes of both Pueblo Indians ico’s Office of Archaeological Studies and Spanish colonists, formed the foun- uncovered five highly unusual storage dation that defines Santa Fe and its pits with fire-reddened interior walls people today. This was but one part of only a few blocks from Santa Fe’s cen- a rich story that reaches back ten thou- tral plaza. They lay within El Pueblo de sand years. Santa Fe, a centuries-old settlement underlying part of downtown. After col- lecting and processing archaeomagnetic Early Santa Fe Archaeology samples, our laboratory director For more than a century, Santa Fe’s informed me that five of the pits dated rich and diverse multicultural past has from 400 to 600 CE. In amazement, I fascinated archaeologists. While early realized they were six hundred years archaeologists focused on large pueblo older than anything else found at this site ruins and cliff dwellings, researchers and could place farmers in the Santa Fe today are more likely to study the area four hundred years earlier than pre- smaller and less prominent sites left by viously known. More than a century early hunter-gatherers, Ancestral Pueblo before, Adolph Bandelier had described farmers, and historic Spanish and Anglo- this same site, which lies right under our American settlers. Each of these cultural noses, but, with the passage of time and groups lived, or still lives, in the Santa growth of the city, we were no longer Fe area with its high desert landscape certain of its exact location. Now, after backdropped by the Sangre de Cristo analyzing the unique storage pits, we Mountains. realized we were looking at evidence of In the late nineteenth and early twen- the emergence of the Ancestral Puebloan tieth centuries, antiquities collectors and Adolph F. Bandelier at an archaeological ruin. www.sarweb.sarpress.org Copyrighted material from Santa Fe: History of an Ancient City ❈ 1 archaeologists sought out ancient cliff which was a military chapel on the animal life, however, its inhabitants dwellings and ruins in search of fine south side of Santa Fe’s plaza, and La sometimes found it to be a challenging artifacts to send back to museums or Garita, a torreon (tower) and guard environment. sell to collectors in the East. Scholars house on the slopes of Fort Marcy Hill. Around Santa Fe, most precipitation like Adolph Bandelier, Edgar Hewett, In the late 1980s, both the city and falls as winter snow in the high moun- and Alfred V. Kidder tried to define a the county of Santa Fe enacted ordi- tains and intense summer thunder- historical link between the then dwin- nances requiring that archaeological storms in the valley and piedmont hills. dling population of Pueblo Indians of and historical study precede commercial The growing season averages 170 days, the Rio Grande and the Ancestral and residential developments. Since with the last frost in May and the first Puebloan sites in the Four Corners then, archaeologists have had opportu- killing frost in October. Annual vari- region. At Pecos, Cieneguilla, and San nities to study many small sites in ability in the length of the growing sea- Cristóbal pueblos, all within twenty- diverse environments on private land. son and the timing and amount of five miles of Santa Fe, they employed As a result, we have been able to look precipitation affects both wild and new methods to an emerging field of beyond the melted walls of pueblos and domesticated plant productivity. During archaeology. the city and report on such topics as historic times, unpredictable precipita- Santa Fe, a far inland outpost of the seven-thousand-year-old hunter-gatherer tion made irrigation farming risky, with Spanish Empire, was contemporary camps, population increases in the first the result that downstream farmers with St. Augustine, Florida; Jamestown, centuries of the Common Era, pottery- often struggled to water their crops. Virginia; and Quebec City in Canada. firing kilns left by Pueblo Indian ances- Periodic droughts or temperature In the 1950s and 1960s, in order to tors, metalworking of Spanish settlers, extremes adversely affected everyone learn more about the early colony, his- and the vast Spanish acequia systems regardless of culture or technology. torical archaeologists Bruce Ellis of the that predated Santa Fe’s earliest munici- Reaching nearly 13,000 feet in eleva- Palace of the Governors and Stanley pal water systems. tion, the Sangre de Cristo Mountains Stubbs of the Laboratory of Anthropol- and foothills are covered by dense ogy excavated several seventeenth- forests watered by narrow, fast-running century sites in Santa Fe, including La A Good Place to Live streams that feed into the Santa Fe and Parroquia (the predecessor of today’s St. Santa Fe’s natural beauty captivates all Tesuque rivers below. In the past, both Francis Cathedral), San Miguel Chapel, who live there. Meandering river val- Indian and Spanish people hunted elk, and parts of the Palace of the Gover- leys, grasslands, wooded hills, and high bighorn sheep, and mountain goats in nors. Their interest in Spanish institu- mountains combine with a temperate the high-elevation stands of fir, spruce, tions also led them to excavate the climate to make it a desirable place to and aspen. They transported game and eighteenth-century sites of La Castrense, live. Even with its diverse plant and plant foods long distances over difficult terrain to valley settlements and camps. On lower slopes, pinon-juniper and ponderosa pine forests supplied wood for fuel and building. Rocky outcrops of sandstone and limestone contained abundant deposits of fine-grained, multicolored chert used by Native Americans and Europeans to make tools for hunting, plant processing, and starting fires, as well as for gunflints for flintlock rifles and pistols. Men hunted deer and small game near the quarries, while women and children foraged for yucca, cactus, pinon nuts, and other La Garita ruins, ca. 1910. seeds, nuts, and berries in season. 2 ❈ Copyrighted material from Santa Fe: History of an Ancient City www.sarweb.sarpress.org The Santa Fe River, spring 2007. A characteristic piedmont landscape west of Santa Fe. The Santa Fe River flows out of the offered grazing for antelope and, later, North American continent. Archaeolo- foothills into a valley cut through a cattle and sheep. In ancient times, just gists find evidence of these Paleoindian twenty-million-year-old hilly piedmont as today, Santa Fe’s environment hunters throughout the New World. bordering a grassy plain. Springs, strongly influenced where and how However, despite an abundance of local arroyos, streams, and the Santa Fe people lived. resources, we know of only one Pale- River contributed to a high water table oindian site in the Santa Fe area. that formed a swamp north and east of Ancient Peoples Located on an isolated butte west of today’s downtown plaza. Over the cen- town, these early nomadic Native turies, this swamp and the surrounding By studying the implements, stone tools, Americans left many spear points dating braided floodplain with its deep soils broken pottery vessels, and architecture from the Clovis, Folsom, Midland, and surface water first attracted hunter- that people left behind over ten thou- Cody, and Plainview periods (9500 to gatherers and, later, Ancestral Puebloans sand years, archaeologists can assemble 6000 BCE). From this elevated setting, and Hispanic settlers. Farmers culti- a rich story about Santa Fe’s cultural these nomadic people could monitor vated the floodplain downstream all the history. This long span of time is nearby watercourses for game animals way to Caja del Río canyon ten miles divided into four eras peopled by such as bison, elk, and deer. In addition west of Santa Fe. In the foothills, people Paleoindian big game hunters, desert- to meat, their diet consisted of fruits, gathered wood to use for building mate- adapted Archaic hunter-gatherers, nuts, seeds, and the roots of edible rials and fuel. They also collected Ancestral Pueblo farmer-foragers, and plants. All such food resources could be plants, such as yucca, to make fiber for European-descended colonists from gathered from the surrounding rolling clothing and hunted animals for meat. Spain, Mexico, and the United States. piedmont hills and the distant alpine Chert, washed down from the moun- meadows. This diverse landscape sup- Paleoindian Hunters tains, supplied Ancestral Puebloans plied everything they needed for food, with a valuable resource for fashioning At the end of the Pleistocene era (around shelter, clothing, and toolmaking. sharp-edged tools such as knives, scrap- 9500 BCE), bands of hunters roamed the Why have archaeologists found only ers, and projectile points. South of the vast open grasslands as they followed one Paleoindian site in this resource- foothills, juniper-covered grasslands herds of large mammals across the rich area? One reason may lie in the www.sarweb.sarpress.org Copyrighted material from Santa Fe: History of an Ancient City ❈ 3 Paleoindian spear points. Left to right: Clovis, Folsom, and Plainview. fact that nomadic people lived in their camps for short periods of time and had few possessions, most of which were perishable and did not preserve in open settings. Another factor is erosion, which either erases or buries sites of great age, rendering them invisible to Artist’s reconstruction of an Archaic camp. archaeologists. Due mostly to late Pleis- tocene climate changes, large game mammals migrated to the Great Plains. selected their leaders according to age, made tools and consumed rabbit and By 6000 BCE, Paleoindian culture skill, and knowledge.