• E-mail
• Print
• Comment
• Font Size
• Digg
• del.icio.us
• Discuss article

Early Indian Site Found in Downtown Dig

Posted on: Saturday, 23 October 2004, 13:00 CDT

Excavations near the Sweeney Center, in preparation for building a modern civic and convention center at the site, have unearthed human remains and pre-Columbian ruins, according to two archaeologists familiar with the area.

Alysia Abbott and Cherie Scheick, who tried to bid on the city contract for the archaeological investigation, say test pits by the state Office of Archaeological Studies revealed American Indian graves, trash pits and structures.

"I don't know for sure what it is," Abbott said. "But I do know that they hit human bone and, in this archaeological context, there are probably burials everywhere."

Scheick said the initial findings lends credence to the theory that Santa Fe is built atop the ruins of a Pueblo Indian settlement, and downtown is "one huge archaeological site."

So far, city and state officials won't confirm the reports of human remains and other significant finds that might slow plans to build a new civic center.

Stephen Lentz, supervisory archaeologist for the recent state dig in the parking lot between the Sweeney Center and City Hall, acknowledged that pottery, animal bones and "lithic," or stone artifacts, were found. But asked about human remains, he said, "I'm not at liberty to say."

Frank Romero, the city's project manager for the convention- center project, said he had been told animal bones were found in the test pits, but knows of no human remains or other significant archaeological finds. City Manager Mike Lujan said the state agency plans to present a report on its findings by Nov. 18.

But Steve Post, a state archaeologist on the city Archaeological Review Committee, told the committee Thursday that the findings are "fulfilling all expectations" by revealing multiple pit houses, ceramics and other proof of habitation 700 to 800 years ago. "The archaeologists are concerned that they're being pressured to make predictions about what's under the Sweeney Center," he said.

Post said it has been suggested an auger be used to look for artifacts from a crawl space under the convention center.

Abbott, who worked as a preservation planner for Santa Fe city government until she started her own archaeological-consulting business, Abboteck, last year, and Scheick, who has done archaeology work for 20 years through her business, Southwest Archaeological Consultants, are protesting how the city chose the state agency to conduct archaeological testing on city property.

They say they tried to bid on the second phase of the work, called data collection, even though they found out about the city's request for proposals, known as an RFP, only days before the deadline. Even though their bid was rejected because they were too late, they say, their protests caused city officials to withdraw the RFP and to reconsider how the contract will be let.

"What we're trying to do is to get them to realize that they have a flawed process," Scheick said. "Whether deliberately or unwittingly, they manipulated the RFP to benefit a state agency, and as a small business practicing here for years, that just doesn't seem right."

For years, Abbott and Scheick said, significant archaeological finds in Santa Fe have been covered up by archaeologists who have falsely maintained there was no need for detailed archaeology because the artifacts found around town were the result of "fill" -- that is, earth hauled in from outlying areas.

In the early 1990s, Scheick said, archaeologists began to find evidence documenting "this sort of fantasy folklore about the pueblo under Santa Fe." She said artifacts have been found along McKenzie Street, near the Lensic Performing Arts Center, First Presbyterian Church and elsewhere on the northwest side of downtown. Three or four years ago, she said, she excavated four or five burials and a huge trash pit near the Awakening Gallery at Johnson and Guadalupe streets.

Federal law calls for licensed archaeologists to move pre- Columbian human remains to an area outside the project area with the assistance of "tribes affiliated with the burial sites," she said. The Santa Fe artifacts appear to be from early Pueblo cultures dating back to 1200 A.D., she said.

Scheick said her firm recently excavated a "pit structure" 3 feet beneath the surface near the U.S. Courthouse, just north of City Hall.

"So we had a real vested interest in this site, I've got to admit," she said. "We felt that if anyone is going to tackle this project, we were as good a candidate as anyone, because we had done more in this particular period of archaeology in town than anyone else."

Abbott and Scheick say the area probably also holds many artifacts from Spanish colonial and early U.S. territorial times, but the pre-Columbian relics are likely to be so significant as to warrant preservation and incorporation into the design of the new civic center.

"If you're going to be doing massive construction on the scale of the civic center, you really have to do full-blown archaeology, because otherwise, you're going to have bodies in the back dirt," Abbott said. "You're not going to be able to put blade to earth without running into archaeology."

Source: The Santa Fe New Mexican

More News in this Category