The Dig Beneath the Alcove

6/12/11
Lori Dewson

You should have seen the look on Dr. Peet’s face. I don’t know if he was more surprised by the sight of another Trader petroglyph, or by the efficiency of my test plot.


I’m thrilled with my work if I do say so myself. This venture couldn’t have produced more perfect results. I worked hard for it though. The use of remote sensing equipment could have saved me some of the aches and sore muscles now plaguing my shoulders and back, but I had to work with what little I had. It was well worth the effort. For three days I’ve been digging centimeter by tedious centimeter just beneath The Trader, stopping only when the alcove’s evening shadows had grown too dense to see and, after only a few hours of sleep, forcing myself to work by flashlight in the cool early hours of dawn. I may be sore, but my excitement has so far held my weariness at bay.

Piles of dirt, each a measured layer of earth I’ve removed from my two meter by two meter square test plot, now line the alcove floor, meticulously recorded and awaiting sifting screens. I’m now convinced the mounds don’t contain the minute shards of the pottery cache I was expecting. I’ve yet to come across a single potsherd. I did, however, excavate a complete Mesa Verde Black on White olla - the first intact ceramic I’ve ever found!

The olla still sits in situ almost dead center of my test plot. Somehow I had unknowingly zeroed in on the artifact and, expecting it to be the first of many in a cache, I continued scraping and brushing dirt away until, at the base of the wall of strata marking the boundary of my excavation, something caught my eye.

Trading my shovel and trowel for a dental pick and camel brush, I carefully scraped at the earth around the object. However, my hopes of finding another pot were quickly doused when I realized I was pecking away at a stone rather than the slipped surface of a ceramic. But if texture didn’t give the rock away, the color certainly did. As more and more dirt fell away, more and more green appeared at the base of my excavation wall where it continues to tempt me.

The stone is quite large and its color is unlike anything I’ve ever seen. It’s green, unnaturally green, like the gruel of Halloween green. It certainly isn’t expected of an Anasazi site and although I’m chomping at the bit to know what it is, I stopped digging when I began to expose something else.

Bone.

They are small bones lined in a row and slightly curling around the green stone. It didn’t take long to realize they are metacarpals - the finger bones of a human hand holding the strange green stone.

That’s when my excavation came to an abrupt halt.

Dr. Peet was surprisingly reluctant to come up here and take a look at what I’ve found, but by the way his face lit up when he surveyed my excavation I could tell he wasn’t disappointed by the trip. We’re not sure what the green stone is lying there half-buried at the bottom of my pit but if I may speculate a little, I believe I’ve not only found a petroglyph of The Trader, I found The Trader himself!