Digging Arizona

[BenjaminEble]

These photos were taken in 1989, about three years after I started collecting, and making arrowheads. In the photos, I am recovering a pot that is in fragments. Along with the pot, I found a set of clay figurines, and a painting pallette. In about four years time, I amassed a very large collection of pots, arrowheads, grinding stones, an axehead, a drilled quartz crystal pendant, beads, etc. Over 95% of my digging, and collecting, was done alone. On this particular outing, I took a friend from Germany, who marveled that I thought pre-1492 was "old". From his view, they are still using buildings in Germany that are as old as my artifacts. Anyway, my entire collection was stolen in 1990. Nevertheless, as strange as it may sound, at this point I get more out of learning, than I get from collecting.

Also, in the second picture, you can see the shovel I used for running trenches. It is a narrow shovel. And, using it made it possible to follow underground features such as pithouses, etc. As for lithics, the Hohokam made some very amazing serrated points. Also, I believe that one amethyst point was recovered from Pueblo Grande ruin.

[neralich]

Great pics,,interesting site!

The story started off great and then went South! (collection stolen,,,sorry to hear about that)

Did you get a chance to take pics before they were stolen?

Anyways, Thanks for sharing the pics from your diggin' days,,Too cool!!!

[OneOneNiner]

Sorry to hear about your collection being stolen, that stinks!
The shovel you speak of is called a sharpshooter. That's what I use to dig trenches to lay pipe or direct burial wire. Great tool.

That sure is a beautiful dog you had there.
Thanks for sharing your story.

[MidlandMan]

I've got permission to work a site in Yavapai Arizona and wondering if anyone is familiar with this area? Sounds like a great site with incised pottery littering the ground and the landowner says a six inch plus obsidian point/knife was found there. Lots of obsidian flakes everywhere as well.

[joshuaream]

Neat pictures. Sorry to hear about the stolen collection.

I've been lucky, aside from a couple of minor walkaways from shows and two lost boxes in the mail, I've never had anything major stolen. I can't even imagine how it must feel to loose an entire collection.

[Trask]

.. Even if I had my collection insured for Double the high Market Value it wouldn't be the same or of much consolation. Losing a hard earned collection would be a real tragedy to endure.
Ben ...Kudos to you for not throwing the towel in

[BenjaminEble]

Hello Midland Man,

If you see pottery on the ground, I would say that there are probably alot more artifacts that you cannot see underground, so long as there is plenty of soil underfoot, and minimal erosion.

Also, you would most likely want to screen everything you dig, because the southwestern tribes produced alot of small artifacts, like beads, and shell pendants.

As for the pottery, it would be worth bagging it up, when you dig, and sorting through it, afterwards. Believe it or not, entire pots are not that hard to reconstruct. The first pot I reconstructed was a Gila Shoulder pot, Sacaton Phase, made around 1200 A.D. It was in 182 pieces. A Gila shouldered pot has a round shallow base, and nearly vertical walls, with a small mouth at the top. The pot was beautiful, and well painted. The sides of the pot were divided into panels. Each panel had it's own set of repeated geometric themes. I believe that one theme was what is referred to as a "negative scroll" type, where the red paint is painted over a buff slip, so as to leave a buff colored spiral, which is repeated from the top to the bottom, of the panel. In another theme, I saw from Tucson, the painter had created a bowl full of interlocking geckos, or lizards, painted geometric style. The way the design was set up was absolutely brilliant.

Anyway, if you do a little research on the area that you are going to dig, you can probably get an idea as to the mortuary customs of the people. Generally, you will find more intact artifacts as mortuary offerings. And, locating these areas can be very fruitful.

I think it is amazing to pick up a small artifact, like a shard of pottery, and see someone's fingerprint embedded in the clay. That fingerprint represents someone's life - a person who lived, and died, a long time ago. My imagination is always provoked when I see someone's fingerprints. What were their joys? What were their sorrows?

Anyway, if you become acquainted with the ceramics in any area that you are going to dig, you can basically identify the age of a site. In the Hohokam areas, ceramic styles changed somewhat every two hundred years, or so. And, these changes continued over a period of about a thousand years. Actually, the Hohokam culture appeared around 100 A.D. And, the ceramic styles continued to change, until around 1450. Of course, these changes were rather slow. You could look at history of a few changes, and it might be longer than the history of the United States, as a nation.

Anyway, previous researchers connected these changes to tree ring dates, known from other cultures, in the Southwest. So, if you are in site, let's say a Hohokam site, in Tucson, and you encounter an intrusive sherd of pottery from the Four Corners, let's say St. Johns polychrome, then you could immediately date the layer that you are in, where you found the intrusive sherd, because that style would be directly tied to a tree ring date, from another culture, hundreds of miles away.

So, this stuff can get very interesting. In fact, I probably knew more about most of these cultures, when I was fifteen or sixteen years old, than I know now, simply because I had committed so much to memory, as a teenager.

Ben

[Trask]

Ben very interesting stuff..All very foreign to me being in the Pacific NW...But fascinating none the less

[BenjaminEble]

Hello Trask,

Well, no one can take the memories away. And, outdoors Arizona can be a beautiful place to hunt artifacts, whether it is in the desert, or up in the pines.

Ben

[MidlandMan]

Benjamine, thanks for the pointers. All good info. Now any idea of what the current laws are in Arizona? Is digging private property ok with permission? and what laws pertain to surface hunting? It's hard to know from state to state what is allowed. I'm sure that anything in a mortuary context is strictly out of bounds.