City of Secrets
Unearthing Santa Fe’s long-buried history
#13328 Courtesy Palace of the Governors
Archaeologist Edgar Lee Hewett with the board of the School of American Archaeology in 1909.
Santa Fe’s original second-home owners didn’t jet in for the opera; they trekked on foot, arriving in time for the piñon harvest. And they hunted big game, not deals on art, turquoise, and pottery. These seasonal residents, the Paleoindians, began using the Wilderness Different as a stopover during the late Pleistocene Era, around 10,000 b.c. Over the course of thousands of years, they grew more attached to the place, first making base camps and then upgrading to small villages. Finally, they built extensive adobe pueblos. This theory—that Santa Fe has been a home to indigenous populations for thousands of years—would have been a surprise to archaeologists as recently as 30 years ago. For nearly a century, many believed the area was too marginal, in climatic terms, to support any sizable communities. It was left to their neighbors to the north, the theory followed, to create more elaborate, tenacious societies.
But in recent years, archaeologists have begun unearthing evidence that suggests Santa Fe has a long history as a hot spot for human habitation. “When many people talk about the archaeology around here, they are mostly talking about 500, 600, 800 years ago,” says local archaeologist and professor Jay Shapiro, author of the 2008 book Before Santa Fe: Archaeology of the City Different. “We now realize that’s just the tip of the iceberg. People have been moving through here for about 12,000 years.”
Contributing to Santa Fe’s reputation as a hotbed of archeological study is the Santa Fe Archaeological Ordinance. Passed in 1987 and mandating reports on most of the city’s development, the ordinance has led to the growth of one of the most vibrant, forward-looking archaeological communities in the country. So while the city of Santa Fe prepares its yearlong bash in celebration of its 400th anniversary, these scientists are uncovering some startling clues to the area’s deep past. And so far, archaeologists have provided plenty of evidence—including a newly unearthed downtown pueblo—that local history goes much, much further back than we ever thought.
Until the 1980s, conventional wisdom held that the area had remained more or less uninhabited—the high-desert climate was considered too squirrely and the soil too thin to host populations of any size—until a few hundred years before the arrival of the Spaniards. This was accepted without much inquiry, or digging, despite the fact that archaeologists have long used Santa Fe as a stopping point for their jaunts in the Southwest. But according to Steve Post, the deputy director of New Mexico’s Office of Archaeological Studies and a 30-year veteran of local digs, archaeologists were instead seeking to confirm the connections between the Prehistoric Period and contemporary Pueblos like Tesuque, Pojoaque, Taos, and Santa Clara.
Among these, Adolph Bandelier, a Santa Fe resident from 1880 to 1892 who challenged the “expert” notion that indigenous peoples were lesser beings, documented the cultures of the Pecos and Cochiti Pueblos, creating methodologies that became the norm for 20th-century American archaeologists. Not long after, Santa Fe’s prolific Edgar Lee Hewett founded the Museum of New Mexico and the School of American Archaeology, now known as the School of Advanced Research. But Hewett is better remembered as the architect of the Antiquities Act of 1906, which gave U.S. presidents the power to protect culturally sensitive lands as national monuments, resulting in the preservation of some 167 million acres and countless cultural artifacts.
Yet even with these visionaries in-house, Santa Fe itself suffered from archaeological neglect: Exerting an inordinate amount of energy unearthing more recent history, archaeologists glossed over enormous reserves of deeper information. These include dozens of ancient local sites recently found, identified by archaeologists through stains in erosion channels and arroyos. Although these sites rarely yield artifacts (the hunter- gatherers, always traveling light, were less likely to leave anything behind), analysis of charcoal remains dates them back 7,000 years. “We were missing 11,000 years of our past,” says Post. “In the last 15 or 20 years, archaeologists have moved away from the ruins, and are expending more effort looking at the base camps and processing sites of the Archaic people, who are likely ancestral to Pueblo people.”
In terms of archaeology, Santa Fe’s watershed moment arrived in 1987, when the city passed its Archaeological Ordinance. The ordinance divides the city into three categories and often requires, dependent on the size and district, archaeological survey work to precede additions or new developments. One striking example took place at Tierra Contenta, the huge development in the triangle between Jaguar, Airport, and Cerrillos roads, where a series of Archaic Period (8500 b.c.–400 a.d.) camps were discovered. These sites have helped stretch Santa Fe’s history further into the past than many expected. “Not only were people visiting Santa Fe on a regular basis between three and four thousand years ago,” Shapiro wrote, “but they were also staying long enough to justify the construction of some fairly substantial residential structures.”
Thanks in part to the ordinance, archaeologists now believe that by the early 1300s, El Pueblo de Santa Fe was one of at least 10 substantial settlements that housed a total of 3,000 to 5,000 residents within what is now city limits. Shapiro describes his book as an attempt to assimilate some of these findings into a more unified theory of Santa Fe’s deep past.
Although Before Santa Fe ends with the arrival of the Spaniards, local archaeologists have been expanding our knowledge of more recent history (anything older than 75 years is considered an archaeologically relevant site). Working in the city’s northwest quadrant, archaeologist Cherie Scheick, of Southwest Archaeological Consultants, has uncovered remnants from the Civilian Conservation Corps, a New Deal project that provided assistance with land restoration in the 1930s. The city’s Hispanic legacy, some of which was destroyed during the Pueblo Revolt of 1680, has been fleshed out as well, thanks to excavations at the Palace of the Governors (where many of the colonists and their livestock took refuge from the battles) and on the Santa Fe Plaza.
Post says the excavation of land at Santa Fe’s railyard helped deepen our knowledge of the arrival of the Americans. The massive, labor- and resource-intensive depot that was unearthed—it was built circa 1880—indicates the lengths to which American powers would go to expand into the West. And a 1989 dig near downtown yielded at least one mystery worthy of a pulp-fiction novel: The remains of some 70 apparently healthy women—most of whom died between the ages of 18 and 30, from 1850 to 1880—were found buried beneath the entrance of the Santuario de Guadalupe. Was something sinister involved? Scientists couldn’t figure it out, and the skeletons aren’t talking.
Archaeology operates with the principle of superposition: The deeper you dig into the soil, the further into history you travel. And the property where the convention center was built has been one of the busiest in the city’s history. So as archaeologists dug, the history of Santa Fe was revealed in reverse, layer by layer. First, artifacts appeared from the American era. Then there’s refuse from what was likely the largest, most lavish private residence in the city—the Garvisu-Baca home—including East Asian porcelain and ceramics from Spain.
Steve Lentz, an archaeologist who headed up an excavation of the property, identified a dozen buildings that had existed on the site between 1766 and 1929, including a military presidio, a hospital, an elementary school, Santa Fe High School, and the Sweeney Center. And then, the real historical jackpot—and plenty of controversy—was unearthed in the form of the remnants of El Pueblo de Santa Fe, the largest prehistoric village yet found in the downtown area.
“Everyone needs to remind themselves that they are living in Pueblo country,” Tesuque chairman Mark Mitchell told the New Mexican in 2005, as his tribe and others called for a cessation of the civic-center project. He further articulated his stance in an editorial. “[The tribe’s] leadership vowed that it would no longer stand silent on matters that violate our core beliefs,” he wrote. “We do not have ceremonies to re-inter such remains. It is not our way and not something that we contemplate ever doing. While some tribes may have chosen this path, Tesuque will not. . . . Standing up for what matters is not always easy, but it is long overdue for the people of the Pueblo of Tesuque and many of the other tribes.”
In this era of emerging technologies and intense scientific inquiry, controversy and archaeology have become increasingly frequent bedfellows, with some long-standing conventional wisdom now being challenged. Charles Mann’s 1491: New Revelations of the Americas Before Columbus, published in 2002, contradicts much of what we’ve been taught about precontact civilization in the Americas. Most of us believe a relatively small number of Native American bands walked softly on the land, leaving little trace and working in harmony with nature, and that they were defeated by superior technologies. Mann’s book, however, cites a growing body of theory that the Americas had pockets of vast populations (one researcher estimates more than 90 million in North America, with 90 percent or more wiped out by European-borne diseases); that Tenochtitlán, the Aztec capital, was more densely packed than Paris and considerably more culturally advanced; and that the Southwest, filled with Pueblos, may have had a larger population 500 years ago than it does now.
Studying the deep past, in other words, can shake our belief systems, with powerful emotional consequence. And that’ll likely be the case as we begin asking questions about Santa Fe’s anniversary celebrations. Did the Spanish actually start Santa Fe? Or did they muscle in on an existing population? “With the 400th anniversary coming along, there will be a focus on Hispanic settlement and culture,” Shapiro says. “Quite frankly, some descendants of the earliest colonists are convinced that history starts in 1598 with Oñate. To them, everything that came before isn’t all that important.”
So what’s the takeaway for contemporary residents? Our knowledge of Santa Fe’s deep past, if taken with an appropriate dose of introspection, can be humbling, reminding us that we are each relatively tiny specks on the ocean of human history. And it reinforces our concept of Santa Fe as a place for mavericks and rule breakers. “The absence of a pattern is the only pattern here,” Scheick explains. “Modern technology has given us a false sense of security,” she says. “People cycled in and out of this area as the climate changed. The Rio Grande flooded and chased people out. And then they returned..”
For Shapiro, the findings situate Santa Fe as one of the world’s truly special locales. “People tend to use and reuse valuable places,” he says. “Think Jerusalem or Istanbul or Rome, where there are thousands of years of history underground. Some places are blessed by the environment; others have spiritual significance or defensive advantages. Santa Fe is one of those places.”
Santa Fe’s Archaeological Record
1890: Adolph Bandelier begins a survey of local sites.
1900: Santa Fe New Mexican announces formation of Santa Fe Archaeology Society, with membership fee of $1.
1906: Santa Fean Edgar Lee Hewett pushes through the federal Antiquities Act.
1907: Edgar Lee Hewett founds the School of American Archaeology.
1909: Preservationists save the Palace of the Governors from demolition.
1922: Harry P. Mera creates L.A. (Laboratory of Anthropology) numbering system for sites, and begins documenting known sites.
1930s–40s: Sites south of Santa Fe excavated, including La Cieneguilla, Pindi Pueblo, and Arroyo Negro Pueblo.
1954–1973: The “salvage period,” in which archaeologists worked just ahead of new building projects. Artifacts from more recent history discovered.
1955: Excavation of San Miguel Chapel reveals structure beneath, dating to 1620.
1957: Passage of the Historic Styles Ordinance, which protects downtown structures.
1971–1974: Extensive excavation of Arroyo Hondo Pueblo, southeast of Santa Fe.
1973: An elaborate dig at Palace of the Governors begins.
1987: Santa Fe’s Archaeological Review Committee established to review city’s development projects.
1988: A parallel archaeological review system created for Santa Fe County.
2004: Excavation at site of Santa Fe Community Convention Center begins.
Adapted from The Archeology of Santa Fe: A Background Report (1988), by Michael Elliot
