Boomer Adventures Sam's Crow Canyon Article

Families Uncover Anasazi Mysteries at
Crow Canyon Archaeological Center

By Sam Dalton (First Published in EcoTraveler magazine)

Perhaps it was my Native American lineage (my great-great-grandmother was a Cherokee) that prompted me to pack my bag and head for Crow Canyon Archaeological Center near Cortez, Colorado, with my 14-year -old son, Eric. Just a few months earlier, my son had sat enthralled as his seventh-grade history teacher riveted his class with tales of the Anasazi--a civilization that once dominated the Four Corners region of the United States but mysteriously disappeared centuries ago. One night shortly after that class, he asked if I knew shy the Anasazi vanished. Sharing a keen interest in all things historic--especially when the subject centers around this Country's Native American heritage--we turned to outside sources for answers. The brochure for Crow Canyon seemed especially inviting because it promised us outdoor adventure and a chance to dig--quite literally--into the Anasazis' past.

Crow Canyon Archaeological Center was established in 1984 as a not-for-profit organization dedicated to research and education about the Anasazi culture. Though the center sponsors a number of archaeological research programs every year in which the public may participate, it devotes one week every summer to families. Here, parents and their kids (seventh grade and up) learn about the Anasazi by attending a fascinating seven-day program comprised of classroom instruction, laboratory exercises, and hands-on experience alongside professional archaeologists excavating Anasazi villages buried nearby.

Driving there, the verdant Colorado countryside leading into Cortez easily could have passed for a chunk of Iowa. Fields of pinto beans, occasionally interrupted by a patch of alfalfa, stretched in every direction as far as the eye could see. I was beginning to wonder if my preconception of the terrain was grossly in error when the flat, emerald landscape suddenly gave way to the scrubby knolls and towering rocky plateaus that were more in keeping with my vision of America's southwest. We spotted the turnoff for Crow Canyon along U.S. Highway 666 about four miles northeast of Cortez.

Continuing along a maze of county roads, the layers of modern civilization seemed to peel away as we crisscrossed acres of rolling pastures brimming with grazing cattle. Soon the roar of distant traffic fell silent, leaving only the steady drone of our engine as a solitary reminder. By the time we reached the parking lot for Crow Canyon, we knew we had taken "one giant leap" backwards from modern mankind.

"Better unload quickly or you'll miss dinner," warned Rick Bell, Crow Canyon's Director of Public Affairs, as he waved at us from the porch of the dining hall. By then, our stomachs were growling so we gladly heeded his advice. After stashing our gear in the dormitory above the dining hall, we headed downstairs. I half expected dinner to consist of chuck wagon fare--mainly beans and corn bread.
Instead, I found a sumptuous feast of blue corn enchiladas and marinated chicken chipolti, prepared by Jim Marten, Crow Canyon's masterful chef.

After dinner, I plopped next to a couple of other parents in one of several wooden rocking chairs that graced a verandah hugging the front of the dining hall. Too stuffed from dinner to engage them in much of a conversation, I rocked in silence for awhile watching a squadron of hummingbirds skitter about a collection of nectar feeders dangling overhead. Eric quickly became immersed in a game of touch football.

Dusk settled quickly over the tranquil campus. The long drive had left me road weary and the gently sway of my rocker nearly lulled me to sleep. My respite was cut short when an instructor summoned us to our first session of the week. Reluctantly, I surrendered my comfortable perch and shuffled back to the dining room. We learned we would spend the next morning in class followed that afternoon by a tour of Crow Canyon's sites. Tuesday would consist of lab work and a session entitled 'Lifestyles of the Anasazi." On days four and five, we would be excavating a site. On Friday, we were to wrap up the week with a tour of Mesa Verda National Park.

We rose early the next morning and consumed a breakfast of pancakes and eggs before heading to class where we were to have our first opportunity to handle actual artifacts. "We're trying to dispel the popular treasure-hunting myth of archaeology and replace it with respect for each piece of cumulative information--not treasure or artifacts--that we learn," the instructor advised as he passed around several pieces of Anasazi pottery. "We treat our campus as a 'living museum' with care taken to preserve a healthy interaction with all the animals and plants that live here. It's not what you find her at Crow Canyon--it's what you find out." He added. His words weighed heavy on my conscience as I handled a simple bowl that time had rendered into a priceless treasure. "Indiana Jones" aside, I was beginning to appreciate the role archaeologists play in discovering the past.

Bell was waiting for Eric and me as we emerged from class. We followed him as he guided us along the main floor of the administration building past a small research library, a lounge, and a seminar room. "This is part of our Gallery at Crow Canyon," he noted, pointing toward several displays of native American artwork and crafts. A mural hanging on one wall depicted an artists rendition of the ruins at nearby Sand Canyon Pueblo as the village would have looked when inhabited by the Anasazi. Life bustled across the canvas as hundreds of Indians scurried about the city. On another, black and white photos traced a pictorial history of Crow Canyon. In one, a couple of sweat-soaked archaeologists learned against a tent. Looking a bit bedraggled, their faces offered mute testimony to life as an archaeologists during the center's humble beginnings.

Continuing downstairs, we stopped at a room where a group of young people sat huddled around huge wooden boxes filled with sand. Eric spotted an attractive young woman hovering over a corner of one and immediately headed her way. "This is our simulated dig, " Bell remarked. "We bury an assortment of artifacts both real and replicated in boxes so seventh and eight-graders can master the techniques used in excavate before they tackle the real McCoy." "

Draw it toward you slowly so you uncover only an inch at a time," an instructor advised as she watched Eric and his newfound friend drag trowels across a layer of sand. "That way you won't ruin an artifact before you even know it there," she added. I watched them work, admiring their enthusiasm and their patience--a virtue that normally eludes me--wondering what they might uncover.

I didn't have to wait long as the two teenagers rapidly made a discovery. "It's a corncob," Eric yelled from across the room. "That indicates you're digging in a kitchen area," the instructor noted as we rushed to their side. "Refuse speaks volumes about the Anasazis' daily life."

Next door to the simulation lab was Crow Canyon's artifact curation room. Inside it, row upon row of shelves stacked floor-to-ceiling sagged with an incredible assortment of Anasazi treasures. "We only keep each relic here until we've finished studying it," Bell explained. "Then they're sent to the anasazi Heritage Center in Delores, Colorado, for permanent curation and display." On one shelf, an ashen-hued vase caught my eye. It sported an ebony patchwork of geometric shapes that seemed to shimmer when turned toward the light. With its delicate symmetry intact, it was hard for me to imagine that it once sat crumbled in a pile of rubble. But the Crow Canyon archaeologists were remarkably adept at matching together pieces of broken artifacts that arrived there by the bag full every day from nearby sites. Students helped out by washing incoming fragments and sorting them into piles categorized by size and type.

One morning, we followed Bell up a grassy hill behind the Crow Canyon complex. Along the way, we passed a couple of honeycomb-shaped adobe mounds protruding from the ground. "They're hornos", he said. "The chef uses them to bake bread." Beyond them sat several eight-sided circular log cabins called Hogans, which are modern versions of traditional Navajo dwelling positioned so that their entrances always face east. Each accommodated four people, and contained Spartan but comfortable furnishings. Shower and toilet facilities were housed separately. Normally, beds in the hogans are assigned on a first-come basis with men and women segregated; however, during family week, families are assigned to individual hogans of their own.

At the top of the hill, we joined several families standing outside a replica of an early Anasazi dwelling called a pit house, a deep earthen depression topped by a thatched roof covered in mud, which served as the center of Anasazi family life. (The familiar cliff dwellings like those at nearby Mesa Verde were not constructed until late in the Anasazi civilization.)

Inside the pit house, we took turns trying out a few ancient household chores. "This was used to make fire," the instructor noted has he handed me a miniature wooden bow. "It takes patience and persistence," he added. Holding it, I gained a sense of admiration for the ingenuity of the Anasazis.
Demonstrating with a bow of his own, the instructor looped a small stick through the bow string and poked the end of it into a charred depression hulled from a small piece of wood that lay in front of him on the ground. "We're looking for a few chunks of hot ash," he said as he twirled the stick back and forth. Within minutes, he produced a thimbleful of tiny glowing embers. Carefully scooping them up into a hunk of leather, he quickly dumped them into a feathery wad of kindling and blew on it until it burst into flame.

Eric fared much better at grinding corn than I did at making fire. Kneeling before a trough-shaped stone called a metate, the instructor handed him an oval-shaped grinding rock. Sweat beaded across Eric's brow as he hovered over the metate pushing the rock back and forth across its surface until he had ground a handful of dried corn kernels into a powdery dust. "An Anasazi bride-to-be had to grind three bushels of corn for the family of the groom. And each one weighed about 100 pounds," the instructor noted.

After lunch, we clambered aboard a rickety school bus for a ride to the day's dig at Sand Canyon (an excavation that has since been completed). The sun burned bright and hot by the time we arrived. Other than a mobile field office that sat perched beside a small parking area cleared from dense forest, I saw nothing to indicate anything else man-made had ever existed at the site before. As it turns out, I could not have been more mistaken. "We're walking on what once was a wall around the city," Bell commented as he led us along a narrow ridge. Pointing toward a Volkswagen-size depression in the ground, he said, "Terrain like that tells us humans were here before." Though it was cleverly disguised under a thick layer of mossy sage brush, a close inspection revealed the telltale outline of a dwelling. Scanning around me, I spotted several of them hidden amid the roller-coaster-topography that undulated across the ground.

We were startled as the metallic chink of a trowel hitting stone rattled through the trees. An excavation awaited us around a bend in the path; the sight of it stopped us dead in our tracks. There before us lay a mammoth stone room, it partially unearthed walls struggling out of the hardened soil like a butterfly wrestling free from its cocoon. Inside it, three generations of one family busily chipped and scraped away buckets of dirt in tight quarters. "We've been coming here for 10 years and we find something new every time we come around," a grandmother said as she showed us several fragments of charred dog bone.

Later, digging in an area of our own, Eric and I uncovered a narrow four-foot-long chunk of stone, its sculpted surface a clear indication that it was cut by hand and purposely placed there long ago.
"Looks like a lintel for a door," an archaeologist said as he helped us brush dust from it. Even though he seemed quite excited about our find, he assured us that stone lintels were a common element found in Anasazi architectural design.

Disappointed, Eric wandered off alone in search of more pertinent buried treasure. I had just about given up on either of us uncovering anything important when I heard his familiar yelp. Looking in the direction of his voice, I saw him across the canyon dancing silhouetted against a russet sky. He had helped uncover the top third of a wall that was part of a Kiva. Now he stood beaming as he straddled it, holding aloft in one hand the remains of what possibly at one time had served as a drinking mug.

On the ride back to Crow Canyon, Bell stunned us with a surprising revelation: once excavation at Sand Canyon was completed, the city would be buried again. "We're not looking for treasure. We're looking for information. Once we've found out what we want to know about a site, there is no need for us to leave it open to the ravages of Mother Nature," he explained. It was a policy I did not quite understand until the next day when we visited the exposed ruins of Cliff Palace at Mesa Verde. There, jostling among a throng of tourists, I was enthralled at the up-close-and-personal perspective I was afforded. But I also was painfully aware of its fragility and, though the ruin had been stabilized by the National Park Service, I regretted any damage I might have inflicted upon the site.

I closed my eyes, and it wasn't hard to imagine voices of long departed Anasazi whispering amid a cloud of coral-tinted dust blown skyward by a relentless afternoon wind. Eric and I had witnessed by a glimpse of their history and now we wanted to know more. But theirs was a world that no longer existed. The mysteries of the Anasazi remain, but it is comforting to know archaeologists of Crow Canyon will continue to dig for answers in the jaunting ruins.