The Big MACC, Solar Eclipses, Very, Very Old High School Parties

I’ve lived the greater portion of my life in the American southwest.  I want to know it well.

But so much isn’t known.  That’s the reason, at the deepest level, Lynn and I decided to attend this year’s  “Big Meeting at Crow Canyon.”  It’s a day of interim current reports by archaeologists working in the American southwest, sponsored by the Crow Canyon Archaeological Center in Cortez, Colorado.

And, philosophy aside, it’s also incredibly great fun to spend a day listening to people working on the leading edge of southwest archaeology .

This year, the plain of southwestern Colorado and the cliffs of Mesa Verde were beautifully deep in new snow.  After registration, coffee and blueberry muffins that were distinctly better than usual conference fair, we gathered  in a modest conference room for the talks.

A note here about academic conferences.  I’ve attended innumerable international, national and regional  conferences.  The rigor, professionalism  and scholarship at “Big MACC” was uniformly impressive.  I filled 53 pages of my little field notebook with scribbled nearly inscrutable notes.

While I’ll necessarily forgo a précis of each of the 22 presentations I want to give you a sense of the diversity, strength and importance of the papers by describing a few.

One of my favorites was the first,  “Social Connections in the Basketmaker III period:  Preliminary Results from the Basketmaker Communities Project by Shanna Diederichs et al.  In the Basketmaker III period, 500-750 AD, (which came just before the dawn of the Chacoan age) the population of the Mesa Verde region (100 miles to the north of Chaco) grew exponentially.  Diederichs and her colleagues are doing one of my favorite things in archaeology, they’re teasing important, abstract knowledge from careful and comprehensive analysis, often of the most innocuous evidence.  In particular, their multi-aspect analysis of the Indian Camp Kiva and the Dillard site generally shows that the migration which so strongly contributed to the population growth, came from the west, from Utah.  Further,  examination of the artifacts suggest a heterogeneous matrix of concurrent lifeways.  Artifacts in the only Pueblo III great kiva in the area show it was used not just for ceremonial activities but for feasting as well.  And so the outline of one of societies which prefigured Chaco, (possibly even essentially) continues to clarify and delineate.

A very cute piece of analysis was presented by Don Simonis in “Moon House or Sun House?”  Total solar eclipses are very rare, mean time between them is around 350 years and their paths are narrow, around 200 miles.  Using the publically available NASA tools he discovered that the paths of two, one in 1257 and another in 1259 intersected over the Four Corners Region.  At the moment of total eclipse the ambient air temperature drops by as much as 20 degrees, stars become visible, birds and other animal life are silent.  Total eclipses are often short but these were relatively long.  Whilst they wouldn’t have been total in Chaco, the first would have been over the ancient ruin of “Moon House” in Cedar Mesa and the second would have been nearly so.  Interestingly, that corresponds to the mural in Moon House itself, which previously everyone interpreted as a depiction of the phases of the moon.  Simonis drew the useful conclusion that archaeologists need to make effective use of the science and scientific results beyond their discipline.

Highest marks for humor has to go to Jerry Fetterman’s presentation on “Private Land Archaeology:  Balancing Private Landowner Concerns, Development and Historic Preservation.”  He presented a list of skeptical responses to the question of whether there was an archaeological site on a piece of private land.  Second best answer:  “there’s no site there:  just a bunch of shards.”  But by far the best was, “Oh, that’s just the remains of high school parties.”  Thousand year-old high school parties, probably.  Humor aside he accurately and intelligently presented challenges and strategies for balancing valid, sometimes conflicting interests.

And there were 19 others that were startling, provocative and always intelligent.  Jason Chuipka discussed  the challenges in identifying an early Athapaskan (such as the  Diné) presence in the Four Corners, an issue I’ve always been partial to because of the manifold possibilities that more knowledge may be present in their ethnography than has been credited.  Ben Bellorado discussed the result of a physically challenging survey of sometimes remote murals in delicate and failing ruins in one of my favorite areas.  They were able to date all and added 12 new ones to the 87 already known which is simply amazing.

Finally, Laurie Webster described her progress in a project to photograph and document perishable pre-historic artifacts from Cedar Mesa stored in various museums from the Field (800 artifacts) to the Smithsonian (400).  This latter project seems one of the most vital.  Contrary to popular belief, museums are often unable to maintain perishable artifacts as they should.  Yet those artifacts are one of our most important and powerful links to that past.  An ancient Puebloan sandal or a Macaw feather sash makes the people who lived in the ancient southwest  visceral and immediate in an entirely unique way that’s too easily lost or neglected.

And there were more.  Steven Lekson didn’t attend but he was there implicitly.  In nearly every presentation there was the sense that researchers were looking well beyond the local both in space and time, a very important and good thing, particularly as the discipline is beginning to cusp the large challenge of creating, managing and making effective use of multiple large data sets.  It’s incredibly difficult to scratch out a living as an archaeologist these days, but at times, and for some, it must be one of the most rewarding.

By now, you’re probably really sorry you weren’t there.  The good news is that Big Meetings at Crow Canyon aren’t quite as rare as total solar eclipses.

In We, Charles Lindbergh explains why he undertook to fly alone across the Atlantic and why he’s writing about it by reiterating Socrates practical observation:  “the unexamined life is not worth living.”

Do you know who you are?  Grant that you are complex, nuanced and growing more so all the time.  Grant that you’re shaped by your human relationships, your experience of the natural world, possibly your religion or philosophy, your virtual experiences, your education, where you’ve traveled, where you’ve lived.  Do you know who you are?

Consider just that last element:  where you’ve lived.  Do you truly know the places you’ve lived?  They’ve shaped you.  Should you not know them, deeply?

(First image:  photo of Crow Canyon poster by author)

(2012 Solar Eclipse Image by Dr. Robert Jensen)