Desert People Without Water

I recently visited the ruins at Honanki and Palatki.  These are prehistoric settlements built into the red rock cliffs near Sedona, AZ.  Today, the people who built these dwellings are called "Sinagua", which comes from Spanish for "without water".  But everyone needs water, right?  I wondered where these people got drinking water.

I looked for springs around Honanki and Palatki and didn't find any.  That's weird!

Zoom in to see locations of Honanki (H) and Palatki (P) in relation to USGS-mapped springs (blue) and NAU-mapped springs (green).

Although springs have dried up in recent times, the USGS spring data was mapped in the late 1800s / early 1900s when many more springs were flowing.  It looks like the geology of the Sedona Red Rock cliffs just don't produce springs.  So even if the location of springs was different 800 years ago, it would be surprising if there were springs in the cliffs where these people lived.

The closest mapped spring (blue dot = unconfirmed water source) is 1.5 and 2.7 miles away, respectively, but there is no evidence of water in the aerial imagery.  The next closest (green dot = confirmed water source) is 4.7 and 3 miles away, respectively.   Neither Palatki nor Honanki is even built in one of the larger drainages that might flow more often/longer; the drainages that feed their valleys are quite short.  

I don't think these settlements had access to aboveground water throughout the year unless they dug wells or used cisterns to store water.

These and other prehistoric communities in the desert Southwest often built cliff dwellings high above canyon floors, far from surface water sources.  Archaeologists believe these people collected runoff during rainstorms using check dams and seeps, and stored water in cisterns or ceramic containers for later use.

Across the prehistoric Southwest, populations used ingenious methods to exploit scarce water:

• Rock overhangs and cisterns captured and stored rainwater.
• Seasonal mobility allowed families to occupy dry sites part of the year.
• Terraced fields, check dams, and soil-retention walls conserved moisture for crops.
• Small permanent settlements clustered near ephemeral water sources, such as seeps and seasonal pools.

In conclusion, while many large settlements in the prehistoric Southwest were built near springs or rivers, groups like the Anasazi, Sinagua, and others developed highly effective ways to survive in water-scarce environments through dry-land agriculture, runoff collection, and strategic mobility.

Bear's Ears Research on Legacy Human Plant Communities

The research is quite interesting. They have determined that a large suite of plants used by people in the past are more likely to be found in the vicinity of archaeological sites on Bear’s Ears NM. Basically people were planting medicinal and other useful plants, and those plant communities have persisted at these locations in greater numbers to modern times. We see similar things here in Arizona with agaves, yucca, devil’s claw, and a few other plants. In AZ the phenomenon is sometimes referred to as “Legacies on the Landscape.”

https://www.pnas.org/content/118/21/e2025047118

But looking through the Supplemental table for the paper, they basically included every species that grows up there.  Not surprisingly, native peoples utilized most of the naturally-occurring botanical resources on the landscape.   So their results are really more that cultural sites are associated with biodiversity in general, not specific assemblages of “cultural” species.  

Also, the paper implies that the causality goes native people>plant diversity, but it could just as easily go plant diversity>native peoples, since native people would be more likely to settle in places with more plant diversity (e.g. places with water).

I would be more interested in a paired-down list of the plant species that are truly cultivated and remain associated with prehistoric sites.  For AZ, agave, yucca, devil’s claw, and a few other plants.  Definitely Wolfberry (Lycium pallidum).  They list Wild Potato, Solanum jamesii, which is interesting and does occur in AZ above the rim…..they also list Chenopodium sp, which is a common weed so I’m not convinced that is a good marker of anything.

Chenopodium are usually ubiquitous in pollen and macrobotanical samples taken from archaeological contexts. The typical interpretation is that these plants were used way more than we think. Hard to know whether weedy plants were being intentionally planted or if they started growing more in areas where people were eating, processing, and depositing seeds through their waste. There are a few Chenopodium species that were domesticated prehistorically. In the western US these are amaranths, goosefoot in the eastern US, quinoa in South America, etc.

Loren Eiseley on Archaeology

"Archaeologists, during the course of their lives, see and hear may strange things, but the fact that they are scientific men keeps them for the most part silent.  They have good, if not superior, rationalizations for the things they do.  No layman would dare impugn their motives.  I, for example, have a certain number of skulls in my possession  As I write I can see four on the shelf above me.  At least two are hidden in my filing cabinet, and there is a beautiful fragment on my desk which is often fondled by visitors who are unaware of its human significance.

Now as it happens I am fortunate.  I practice a trade which enables me to keep these objects about in a perfectly logical and open manner.  I have not murdered to possess them, and if one or two were acquired in dark and musty places, my motives, as I have hinted, are beyond reproach.  As an archaeologist I can be both a good citizen and a frequenter of graveyards."

Human remains and the associated objects reminds me of another passage:

"It struck me that every ruined civilization is, in a sense, the mark of men trying to be human, trying to transcend themselves….none of them has quite made it, but they have each left artifacts. 

The archaeologist, it is said, is a student of the artifact.  That harsh, unlovely word, as sharply angled as a fist ax or a brick, denudes us of human sympathy.  In the eye of the public we loom, I suppose, as slightly befuddled graybeards scavenging in grave heaps.  We caw like crows over a bit of jade or a broken potsherd: we are eternally associated in the public mind with sharp-edged flints and broken statues.  The utter uselessness of the past is somehow magnificently incorporated into our activities. 

No one, I suppose, would believe that an archaeologist is a man who knows where last year’s lace valentines have gone, or that from the surface of rubbish heaps the thin and ghostly essence of things humans keeps rising through the centuries until the plaintive murmur of dead men and women may take precedence at times over the living voice.  A man who has once looked with the archaeological eye will never see quite normally.  He will be wounded by what other men call trifles.  It is possible to refine the sense of time until an old shoe in the bunch grass or a pile of nineteenth-century beer bottles in an abandoned mining town tolls in one’s head like a hall clock.  This is the price one pays for learning to read time from surfaces other than an illuminated dial.  It is the melancholy secret of the artifact, the humanly touched thing."

Quotations are from The Night Country, by Loren Eiseley

Lithic Mulch

I have done field ecology throughout New Mexico and Arizona -- but no matter how long I live in the Southwest it seems there is always more to discover...I recently discovered the existence of lithic or cobble mulch gardens while perusing a report by Richard D. Periman featured in "Desired future conditions for Southwestern riparian ecosystems: Bringing interests and concerns together," produced by the Rocky Mountain Forest and Range Experiment Station, and have spent an enjoyable morning reading some of Dale Lightfoot's papers about sites in Northern New Mexico and the Safford Valley of Arizona. Both are areas where I have spent considerable time, and I am now wondering if I have unknowingly visited some of these prehistoric gardens. I am especially interested to learn how thoroughly these type of sites have been studied...from my natural history work I understand that sometimes the best preservation strategy for valuable sites is to keep them undocumented, but I wonder if there is a GIS layer of inventoried sites? These archeologists deserve congratulations on bringing this remarkable phenomenon to light; discoveries like these may help transform how we ecologists think about the Natural Range of Variation (NRV) in these areas.

"Lithic-mulched features have not been thoroughly studied, in the USA or elsewhere. Details are spotty...The research by Maxwell and Anscheutz in the Ojo Caliente Valley in northern New Mexico is very good. The Fish’s work on Hohokam Arizona is good. Berlin et al. 1977 are quite thorough, as is Engel’s work in the Andes. Much remains to be done at all other sites associated with lithic mulching. I understand your comment about leaving things undocumented. It’s best, sometimes, though in cases where features are on the verge of being obliterated, as were many of the gravel mulched plots I worked on in 1988-89 south of Santa Fe (1990 dissertation and subsequent articles), it’s best to record what you can, when you can (i.e. salvage archaeology).

I know of no GIS inventory related to lithic mulching anywhere. I have no plans on the immediate horizon to work on this topic in the U.S. Southwest, but I didn’t have any plans to work on the Safford project, either, until Bill Doolittle approached me about joining his project and I could clearly see a way to contribute to the project."

Santa Fe River Mesa Overlook Petroglyphs

In a recent trip to the Santa Fe River jobsite I was lucky enough to take a side-trip through the horizontal snow up onto the low mesa overlooking La Cienega and Arroyo Calabasas. There, in the fragrant pollinating juniper there are hundreds of classic Pueblo petroglyphs. Petroglyphs are distinguished from pictographs because they are pecked into the desert varnish of large granite boulders to reveal the lighter rock underneath. Their age can sometimes be determined by the extinct of varnish re-growth. These petroglyphs are at least serveral hundred years old. Furthermore, the amount of work required to hammer away detailed images is unlikely to be tolerated by modern day copycats.


Shaman/Huntress Female (note characteristic vagina)

Kokopelli (with prominent archaic jackrabbit ear and separate flute/penis)


Lizard (probably not a turtle due to lack of stereotypical shell markings)


I did not find any kachinas (faces). Here is a comparison of common Kachina elements from Puerco Ruin (Petrified Forest National Park) and vicinity. a-c Antelope or deer kachinas; d-e solstice kachines; f-h, k-u unknown types; i-j Mudheads; v-x possible kachines; y-ii ogre kachinas.