History of Havano Ranch

Millions of years ago, this valley was once a large inland sea. This later became a large lake, then a marsh. As the climate became drier, the water table lowered, but there were many springs and creeks throughout the valley that were ideal for human occupation.

No—we have not found mammoth bones on the property...yet. But 12,000 years ago, the last Ice Age was ending and the environment back then was much cooler and wetter than it is now. The bones of a hunted mammoth were discovered about 15 miles to the south of us and several other hunting camps showing continuous use have been discovered within a 50 mile radius. So we know that Clovis Man stomped around this area along with the giant sloth, giant bison, camel and saber tooth tiger.

Around 500-1000 A.D., members of the Hohokam, Mimbres, Salado and Mogollon peoples migrated from the south and east and moved into the valley to hunt, farm and gather the natural foods that grew here. Some constructed villages near the springs and creeks. A few of the villages became trading posts for the more migratory natives. Some of the villages existed and flourished for 200 years or so. In some cases, new villages were built on top of old villages...

...and then they all went away, leaving ceramic storage pots, cooking vessels and water urns behind. The adobe dwellings were eventually reclaimed by nature. The wind and weather elements covered up the pit houses. Collapsing walls broke some of the vessels, while others had been either buried with the dead, broken at the edge of the creek while getting water, or put into a collective "trash pile" prior to departure. Where did they go? Some "tribes" mingled with others. Some moved further north, and some....who knows?

In the course of digging up the back yard for our garden this past March, we started finding pottery sherds all over the place! When the we found the first pieces, I thought they were broken pieces of ceramic garden pots discarded by the previous owners of the property. I was VERY wrong! These are not the K-Mart garden-variety sherds, but some really OLD pieces! They have popped up like weeds in places we've been walking, riding and driving over frequently...and never noticed!

Rick found the first two pieces when he was digging up a bed for the gourds. He turned a shovel full of dirt and found what looks like a little obsidian scraper...kinda like half an arrow head. When he started on the next row, he turned over a piece of pottery that was painted black and white and about 1.5" square.

I also find it a little ironic that we're planting Indian corn...and all of a sudden, these pieces are popping up....

The next day, we found six small pieces of pottery that have a red finish on one side. The day after that—now that we were aware that there might be more—we found about 20 very small pieces—one was laying right by a gate that we go in and out of several times a day. Friday, we quit counting the pieces we were finding and started weighing them in pounds :-).

By the end of March 2009, we were literally tripping over pottery sherds all over the property! We've found them in the front yard, back yard, side yard, by the burn barrel, in the front pasture, back pasture, on the driveway, by a gate we go in and out of several times a day and even in the round pen! As of today—almost a year later—we now have about two and a half coffee cans full. I find it strange that in the ten or so years that this house has been here, no one has seemed to see or pick up any of the pieces...or maybe they did, and just didn't know what they were holding in their hands!

Strange that these have been laying here all this time and we never really noticed them before in such abundance. They are showing up in areas that we have driven over, walked over and ridden horses over a hundred plus times.

We've contacted some ancient pottery experts who have told us that the pieces we are finding could date back 400-750 years! WOW! At that time, the Mogollon, Mimbres, Hohokam and Salado tribes came together in our valley and farmed the land. How cool is it that we are the first people to touch a piece of their pottery—even a small one—in all this time?

April was a "research month" for us. We took a trip to our small but mighty local library. Charlene is wonderful at locating research materials and if she does not have a certain book, she will hunt it down and get it for us.

We went straight to the historical section. This is where things begin to fall into place. Rick grabbed a book off the shelf ("Ceramic Production in the American Southwest", written by Barbara J. Mills and Patricia L. Crown) about ancient pottery and opened it at random. On the page was a map of known archaeological sites in our area. One was labeled the "Webb Site"! We checked the book out along with several others and went straight home. I started sending out e-mails to various archaeology firms, the Universities and several museums asking about the Webb Site.

Allen Dart, who is the Executive Director at Old Pueblo Archaeology Center, was kind enough to answer my e-mail the next weekend. He is wonderful! He sent me an old survey map from the 1920's of the area. I was able to show him on the map where our property is located.

In the meantime, Mr. Dart contacted Patricia Crown about the map in her book. Come to find out, had we lived here about 10 years sooner, we would have been neighbors to Jack and Vera Mills. Jack and Vera were weekend archaeologists and had a wonderful collection of ancient pottery. Jack lived to be 102 and Vera passed away at the age of 100. Their extensive collection now resides at Eastern Arizona College in Thatcher.

During the spring and summer of 1955, Jack and Vera worked—literally—hours ahead of excavators that were clearing a field for agricultural planting. With bulldozers breathing down their necks, they were able to recover some artifacts, shell and turquoise "trinkets", document four houses and find some 57 cremation "graves" from the Salado culture, who lived here roughly from the 1100's to the early 1300's. According to their documentation this small village appeared to be a trading post, which would explain the variety of sherds we've been finding. Not only that, but the valley had been a major highway of sorts for other peoples that have traveled through as they hunted and gathered plants. Some stayed and set up small farms. Up until the earthquake of 1887, which impacted the volume of flowing water in many of our rivers, and the water levels of springs and underground tables, Rucker creek used to flow through here, which would explain why we find areas of small river-type stones and pebbles on an otherwise just plain ol' dirt piece of ground. These rocky areas are also where we find many of the sherds.

Sadly, the Webb Site excavation was not on our property, but just on the other side of the property fence to the west. It's quite possible that there are more houses to be found on our side of the fence, but geeze...where do you start?

Here's what Mr. Dart told me:

"The black-painted, white pottery piece in one of your photos looks to me like either Tularosa or Mimbres Black-on-white, which were common in southeastern Arizona and southwestern New Mexico between about A.D. 1000 and 1200 or so. The brown pottery with red-painted designs is probably of the "San Simon" series that is common to southeastern Arizona.

Many archaeological sites in Arizona are defined just by the presence of artifact concentrations, which may vary in size and density. The large number of artifacts that you are finding in what I'm guessing is a relatively small area suggests that the site where you are finding them was a habitation site of the ancient Mogollon culture, which occupied much of the "international four corners" area (southeastern Arizona, southwestern New Mexico, northwestern Chihuahua, and northeastern Sonora) from around A.D. 500 to about 1400. Ancient Native Americans who occupied the Mogollon culture area depended about equally on hunting and agriculture for their subsistence. Their ceramics typically include plain and sometimes “corrugated” brownware, red-on-brown decorated ware, and slipped-and-polished redware, and after A.D. 1000 some black-on-white types. Mogollon houses usually were relatively deep pithouses with long, sloping entry ramps to the outside, but without the built-in benches, wind deflectors, and “sipapu” floor features that are more typical of the Puebloan pithouses found farther north in the American Southwest. Some of the later Mogollon dwellings were above-ground pueblos (apartment-like structures) poorly built from unshaped field stones. Many of the larger Mogollon village sites contained large ceremonial structures shaped like large pithouses (called “kivas” by archaeologists)."

Wow. So our sherds are much older than 400-700 years. My next questions were:

1. Did the Mills "miss a spot" when they were excavating and are we sitting on top of a prehistoric major metropolis?

This is possible. As Mr. Dart explained to me, archaeology is quirky that way. You could be excavating one area, and two feet to your left and another foot down is the "mother of all finds". The Mills did not have much time to do a complete area survey. There may, indeed, be more structures to be discovered.

2. Were we the "town dump" for the broken vessels?

Possible. But in my opinion, if that were the case, I would think we would find the pieces heaped in several locations, not scattered all over 30 acres. That does not mean trash dumps do not exist. They may be buried several feet deep and the pieces that we have found have percolated to the surface over the last few hundred years. Add to that, the east end of the property is a good quarter to half a mile from the Webb Site. I would think that's kind of far to go to take out the trash. Then again with time, weather, dust devils and the way the winds blow here, things can get scattered quite easily. The pieces have had about 900 years to "move around". We have found as many as 47 pieces in a 15x15 foot area...and none of the pieces fit together!

Another possibility is that we have at least one site on our property, if not more.

3. Did the pieces we've been finding wash down from sites in the Swisshelm mountains to the east of us when Rucker creek ran through here?

Possible. We have what's known as a monsoon season during the summer months here. In a good year, we get daily afternoon thundershowers that originate in the mountains. A particularly heavy rainfall in the mountains will result in flash flooding. It might take a day or two for the waters to reach the valley, but they have been known to carry a tree—or in some cases a body—for miles. There have been several sites discovered and documented in the Swisshelms. Since we are upslope from the Webb Site, we know that the pieces did not wash up from there.

On the other hand, the pieces that we have found do not have the "tumbled" look of something that has been carried by water, bashed against rocks or worn down by grains of sand. Most are rectangular in shape and although they are fragments of larger pieces, have maintained distinct corners and edges.

There very well may be another site on our property and the broken pieces that we find in the "old creek bed" were broken when someone went to fill the water jug and it accidentally fell or was dropped.

When I first started talking to Mr. Dart, he asked me if I could send him a map of the property indicating where we were finding sherds. I told him I would gladly send him a satellite image...just throw a dart at it (no pun intended) and that's where a sherd—or several—have been found. The biggest concentration so far has been in the southeast corner of the back yard!

We are now working on our second coffee can, having filled the first up quickly with some 834 pieces. This does not include the "special" pieces that we've found and kept separate. Those pieces include some that are corrugated, the black and white pieces and other painted pieces. The few neighbors that we have must think we've had some type of horrible accident or misfortune involving a back injury. Every time they see us walking across the back part of the property, we are walking slowly and hunched over, looking closely at the ground. Of course we are usually followed by a horse or two, as well as four or five cats tagging along to protect us from giant sloths and offering their opinions and supervision. It's quite the entourage!

It's now the last day of June. Due to being gone for half of May and now the heat and monsoon season beginning, we have slowed down on our collection expeditions across the property. I have found a few more pieces in the back yard, front yard and driveway, though. The other night I was raking some yard debris from under a mesquite tree in the back yard and found a human tooth (YIKES!!!). I don't even know where to begin finding out anything about that—other than it appears to be a molar. Guess I'll take a photo of it and send if off to Mr. Dart with a big question mark over it!

We will continue to carefully document where we find each piece. Even though one of the first rules of archaeology is "Leave it where you find it", we have been picking up pieces. I look at each piece that I pick up and ask, "Where is the rest of you?" Eventually, we will be clearing ground for barns and arenas and the pieces would otherwise be plowed under or destroyed. We haven't gotten into classifications yet, nor do we have a total count of how many we've collected, but we'll get around to that...someday.


Previous		Part 2 Here Comes the "White" Man