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Nearly 9,000 Artifacts Uncovered in CA Desert, Spanning 11,500 Years of History

94 points by diodorus 11y ago

JoeAltmaier 11y ago
Still there because mostly undisturbed I imagine. Any sites near human habitation get messed with pretty badly. My wife grew up on a mesa in New Mexico - White Rock, near Los Alamos. She reports exploring as a child with neighbor kids. They found stone houses with intact pottery inside, wooden frames and tools. The kids messed with them, then the boys knocked everything down and threw the pots over the side of the mesa. Nothing left but a few broken fragments today. We'll be running out of places for archaeologist to explore one day.
- knowaveragejoe 11y ago
  FWIW, there's no way of knowing those houses are actually ancient artifacts.
  - JoeAltmaier 11y ago
    I know of no modern population in the American Southwest that produced pottery and stone houses on mesas. It seems a pretty safe bet. The other preserved sites in the area are estimated at 500 years old. Not terribly ancient; but worth preserving.
    - kragen 11y ago
      Acoma Pueblo is currently producing pottery and stone houses on a mesa, as they've been doing for 900 years, although like everybody else, they buy a lot of their pottery at Wal-Mart. But they also make some to sell to tourists. And more of their construction is adobe than stone at the moment, but a lot of it (especially the older parts) is adobe-grouted masonry. Wouldn't be surprising at all if those houses were 50, or 100, or 150 years old, rather than ancient artifacts.
  - JackFr 11y ago
    At the Temple of Dendur in the Metropolitan Museum of Art one of my favorite things is graffiti chipped in the stone by British soldiers campaigning against Napoleon in Egypt. It's not ancient, but it's still history. (The Temple was relocated with the cooperation of the Egyptian government when the Aswan dam would have flooded it.)
- akiselev 11y ago
  I'm curious, what residual feelings does your wife have about that destruction, realizing much later what historical significance those artifacts have? On one hand, I'm disappointed that kids smashed a bunch of objects that had ancient significance (by our standards of replacing laptops and phones every few years). On the other, more important hand, I think that the responsibility of protecting this history falls exclusively on adults and that kids should explore, play, and have fun. Unfortunately for us, smashing things is really, really fun.
  - sithadmin 11y ago
    >I'm disappointed that kids smashed a bunch of objects that had ancient significance (by our standards of replacing laptops and phones every few years). Uh, what? Though seasoned by local culture, pottery is just another mundane object in most historical contexts. Heck, in Europe there are even some sizable hills that were created because they ran out of places to discard their pottery. The waterways of cities like London are literally littered with earthware fragments from smoking apparatuses. Most ancient potteries and their fragments hold way more meaning to modern collectors and anthropologists than they ever held for their contemporaries.
    - smt88 11y ago
      You never know what "mundane" objects tell us an enormous amount about the past. There have been many discoveries where the pots themselves told us about when a certain technology was developed, how civilizations traveled/spread, or what they ate/drank.
      - sithadmin 11y ago
        You're missing my point; the discussion here is about the level of value objects have to those in their respective periods. I explicitly said that these objects can have a lot of value for those with an interest in research. Akiselev was arguing that ancient pottery was somehow less mundane or disposable than contemporary objects such as laptops and phones, which isn't the case in an overwhelming majority of cases. Most ancient pottery was, to its owners, no different (in terms of significance) than our tupperware or wine bottles.
- the_watcher 11y ago
  This is actually pretty close to Palm Springs. I grew up out there.
- iamcurious 11y ago
  >We'll be running out of places for archaeologist to explore one day. We are also creating new places for archeologist to explore all the time. Like time capsules, abandoned facilities and space debris.

94 points by diodorus 11y ago

Still there because mostly undisturbed I imagine. Any sites near human habitation get messed with pretty badly. My wife grew up on a mesa in New Mexico - White Rock, near Los Alamos. She reports exploring as a child with neighbor kids. They found stone houses with intact pottery inside, wooden frames and tools. The kids messed with them, then the boys knocked everything down and threw the pots over the side of the mesa. Nothing left but a few broken fragments today. We'll be running out of places for archaeologist to explore one day.

knowaveragejoe 11y ago
FWIW, there's no way of knowing those houses are actually ancient artifacts.
- JoeAltmaier 11y ago
  I know of no modern population in the American Southwest that produced pottery and stone houses on mesas. It seems a pretty safe bet. The other preserved sites in the area are estimated at 500 years old. Not terribly ancient; but worth preserving.
  - kragen 11y ago
    Acoma Pueblo is currently producing pottery and stone houses on a mesa, as they've been doing for 900 years, although like everybody else, they buy a lot of their pottery at Wal-Mart. But they also make some to sell to tourists. And more of their construction is adobe than stone at the moment, but a lot of it (especially the older parts) is adobe-grouted masonry. Wouldn't be surprising at all if those houses were 50, or 100, or 150 years old, rather than ancient artifacts.
- JackFr 11y ago
  At the Temple of Dendur in the Metropolitan Museum of Art one of my favorite things is graffiti chipped in the stone by British soldiers campaigning against Napoleon in Egypt. It's not ancient, but it's still history. (The Temple was relocated with the cooperation of the Egyptian government when the Aswan dam would have flooded it.)
akiselev 11y ago
I'm curious, what residual feelings does your wife have about that destruction, realizing much later what historical significance those artifacts have? On one hand, I'm disappointed that kids smashed a bunch of objects that had ancient significance (by our standards of replacing laptops and phones every few years). On the other, more important hand, I think that the responsibility of protecting this history falls exclusively on adults and that kids should explore, play, and have fun. Unfortunately for us, smashing things is really, really fun.
- sithadmin 11y ago
  >I'm disappointed that kids smashed a bunch of objects that had ancient significance (by our standards of replacing laptops and phones every few years). Uh, what? Though seasoned by local culture, pottery is just another mundane object in most historical contexts. Heck, in Europe there are even some sizable hills that were created because they ran out of places to discard their pottery. The waterways of cities like London are literally littered with earthware fragments from smoking apparatuses. Most ancient potteries and their fragments hold way more meaning to modern collectors and anthropologists than they ever held for their contemporaries.
  - smt88 11y ago
    You never know what "mundane" objects tell us an enormous amount about the past. There have been many discoveries where the pots themselves told us about when a certain technology was developed, how civilizations traveled/spread, or what they ate/drank.
    - sithadmin 11y ago
      You're missing my point; the discussion here is about the level of value objects have to those in their respective periods. I explicitly said that these objects can have a lot of value for those with an interest in research. Akiselev was arguing that ancient pottery was somehow less mundane or disposable than contemporary objects such as laptops and phones, which isn't the case in an overwhelming majority of cases. Most ancient pottery was, to its owners, no different (in terms of significance) than our tupperware or wine bottles.
the_watcher 11y ago
This is actually pretty close to Palm Springs. I grew up out there.
iamcurious 11y ago
>We'll be running out of places for archaeologist to explore one day. We are also creating new places for archeologist to explore all the time. Like time capsules, abandoned facilities and space debris.