On the Expedition
Help dig up history on the boundary between two ancient Pueblo peoples.
In a dramatic canyon lined with willow, cottonwood, juniper, and piñon pine trees, you’ll help excavate the Victorio site, one of the largest pre-contact pueblos in southwestern New Mexico. The site spans 700 years of occupation, from A.D. 600 to A.D. 1300. Your team will spend mornings excavating selected portions of the site, digging and clearing with trowels and shovels, while making notes and drawings of your excavations. In the afternoons you’ll return to the field laboratory, a screened fan-cooled porch, to wash, sort, and catalogue artifacts and review data. Orientation and training will include an excursion to the historic Ojo Caliente warm spring, lectures by visiting professionals, and demonstrations of flint-knapping and spear-throwing.
Meals and Accommodations
You’ll stay at a field camp just a 20-minute walk from the excavation sites, sleeping in your own sleeping bag in a large tent equipped with two or three cots. A nearby cabin with electricity features two full bathrooms, with hot showers and flush toilets, a two-hole privy, and an outdoor shower. The cabin also has a kitchen, where you and your teammates will prepare your own breakfasts and lunches. A camp cook will prepare hearty dinners, served in a hundred-year-old adobe building a short walk from the campsite.
About the Research Area
The project is based at Monticello Box Ranch, located in the canyon of the Rio Alamosa. The perennially flowing Rio Alamosa is lined by tall cottonwoods and is fed by a warm spring that originates three miles from the ranch. Juniper, piñon pine, and a variety of native grasses cover the slopes and terraces above the canyon floor at 6,000 feet above sea level and higher. Vick’s Peak, in the San Mateo mountain range, overlooks the headquarters to the east at an elevation of 10,000 feet.
The project’s study area embraces the entirety of the Rio Alamosa drainage, from its headwaters at the Plains of San Agustin to its mouth on the Rio Grande, and includes all tributary drainages. The largest concentration of archaeological sites (and available water) in this system is located at the Ojo Caliente proper and on the adjacent Monticello Box Ranch. The Alamosa drainage system encompasses approximately 450 square miles and ranges in elevation from 4,400 to 10,335 feet above sea level. Because the Alamosa runs from west to east toward the Rio Grande, it offers a natural pathway from the Plains of San Agustin and the Anasazi Pueblo communities to the valley of the Rio Grande. Likewise, the road from Winston and Beaverhead to the Ojo Caliente follows an open tributary to the Alamosa, providing a second corridor, this one to the headwaters of the Gila and the center of the Mogollon cultural area.