Cliff Palace at Mesa Verde National Park, Colorado

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If you’re traveling in the southwest, Mesa Verde National Park in the Four Corners region is a must-see destination!  Even though most of the cliff dwellings at the park were partially reconstructed long after the Ancestral Puebloans migrated, they are still amazing.  One of the dwellings you can visit is Cliff Palace, which is the largest cliff dwelling in the park.  I loved exploring this amazing site built by the Ancestral Puebloans over 800 years ago.  During the 1200s, the dwelling likely had 100 residents.  Based on archaeological studies, there were likely 150 rooms and 23 kivas; kivas are typically circular, underground or partially subsurface, spaces used for religious purposes.  The Ancestral Puebloans would live in cliff dwellings like Cliff Palace, while farming on the top of the mesas.  By the end of the 1200s AD, however, most of the inhabitants had migrated elsewhere due to a number of factors, such as environmental degradation to overpopulation.

One thing to keep in mind while visiting Mesa Verde is that the Ancestral Puebloans didn’t simply ‘disappear’ or completely abandon the area.  That’s an unfortunate myth surrounding the Ancestral Puebloans.  For one, their descendants include the modern Pueblo tribes of the Hopi, Zuni, Acoma, and Laguna—so the Ancestral Puebloans didn’t vanish, they moved.  And, they migrated to other parts of the Four Corners over a long period of time, hardly all at once.  As with visiting any archaeological site, it is important to remember to visit with respect and care.

For more information:

https://www.nps.gov/meve/learn/historyculture/cliff_palace.htm

https://www.visitmesaverde.com/discover/cliff-dwellings/cliff-palace/

Artful Artifacts of the Archäologische Zone – Jüdisches Museum

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Cologne, Germany

When I think “Germany,” the first thing that pops into my head typically isn’t “Roman Ruin.”  I was both shocked and impressed by the scale and preservation of the Praetorium, the Governor’s Palace in Cologne Germany.  The Praetorum was the official residence of the Imperial Governor of Cologne, which was the capital city of Lower Germania.  According to the website (all of the signs were in German [I know enough French to sound terrible], so I have noooo idea what they said), the ruins date back to the birth of Christ and construction ended around the eighth century due to an earthquake.  I could actually see the cracks in the walls of the ruins, indicating a general problem with earthquakes overtime.  Various levels were excavated, and so, I could see the changes in architecture. 

Artifacts hanging in the general location in which they were observed during the excavation.

My favorite part of the exhibit was the artifact display, in which artifacts were hanging according to stratum (check out the picture, it’s nifty).  The overall excavation of the Praetorium came about with renovations—and subsequent excavations—of the Town Hall Square in Cologne.  It would be incredible be a part of these digs!  The finds are numerous and diverse, from ceramics, glass, to marble burial stelae.  I found the stelae to be particularly haunting, as they depict the faces/lives of those buried.  Details may have worn away, but the level of care put into the images is evident.   

Fragments of burial stelae.

For more information:

https://www.museenkoeln.de/archaeologische-zone/default.asp?s=4380

The Mundane

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People often ask what is the ‘coolest’ thing I’ve ever found.  I certainly have my favorite artifacts and places, things that completely blew my mind to encounter.  However, when thinking about my day-to-day job and the surveys I conduct, sometimes the coolest things I’ve ever found are the simple remains of day-to-day life.  Now, I don’t expect everyone to get excited about tin cans or an odd flake here and there but there’s something about days and/or months on end of surveys where nothing comes up and then—there it is!  That artifact showing that someone was once there.  These days I mostly encounter historic artifacts and features in the American west.  That means a lot of homesteads, ranches, mining towns, mines, shacks, and dumps.  I’ve come across tin cans dating from the early 1900s (yay, botulism), amethyst and cobalt colored glass, tubes of antiperspirant cream from the 1930s, and entire homesteads with log cabins, barns, and outhouses.  More often than not, the artifacts and structures are all that are left of whoever lived at that location, the story of who lived there and why are long gone.

ArchInk 2021, Day 4

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response to ArchInk prompt "past presented" with an archaeologist ribbon dancing and saying pyramids were built by people, not aliens.

The prompt for day 4 (clearly I’m a bit behind) was “Past Presented.” This got me thinking about all the terrible “ancient aliens” type of television shows that are really doing a disservice not only to the audience but to the ancient people who should be given credit for the amazing things they accomplished (i.e. not aliens). However, these types of shows are increasingly popular, which further demonstrates how much archaeologists are needed to find new and interesting ways to combat this misinformation! Ribbon dancing?

ArchInk 2021, Day 2: The Best Rubbish

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Response to ArchInk prompt, The best rubbish. Cartoon image of 1930s deodorant/footcream tube (i.e. one of my favorite artifacts observed). There's an advertisement for this saying "Mary is beautiful but dumb because she does not realize she she smells poorly." Lather Up!

My response to the ArchInk prompt, “The Best Rubbish.” This is one of my favorite historic artifacts I’ve observed while surveying, a small pink tube of women’s underarm and footcream deodorant from the 1930s. I went down a rabbit hole of advertising for these products from that time and they are horrendous! Who knew a lack of deodorant could shipwreck marriages? Make a woman dumb? And so much more! There’s a wonderful article by Sarah Everts in Smithsonian Magazine about how advertising companies tried to convince women they smelled bad and needed their products: https://www.smithsonianmag.com/history/how-advertisers-convinced-americans-they-smelled-bad-12552404/.

ArchInk 2021, Day 1

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Comic in response to ArchInk prompt "Uncommon Ground," showing an archaeologist easily finding artifacts and features in the southwest USA, while having a much harder time in the grasslands/plains of the USA.

Here’s my contribution for Day 1 of Archaeology Inkotober 2021, the prompt being “Uncommon Ground.” The transition from one’s specialty area to another can feel a bit jarring at times. Yes, the process of analysis is similar across the board when it comes to ceramics and lithics, recording structures, etc. but actually being able to find said artifacts can be tough. I had gotten so used to my high desert environments, where there’s a field house, pueblo, or crazy huge artifact scatter every few meters, that moving to an area requiring shovel tests to see if anything–anything at all–was on the landscape, was a hard shift. But, no matter what, no matter where, there’s archaeology if people were there.