Artifact Recovery

We had found a Cortaro point (arrowhead) (3500-2100 B C) on a site in the Cienega Preserve.

I took a picture of it and sent the site report with the picture to the Land Manager.

I was so surprised when the Land Manager e-mailed me back asking if we could go back to the site and recover the point.

Yikes!

We have seen many of these points the Preserve, so I had not taken a GPS reading of the point only the picture.

We have never been asked to recover an artifact from the Preserve.

I emailed the Land Manager back saying we would give it a try but it would be a ‘needle in the haystack’ situation I feared, as the site is huge.

I asked the crew to have their lunches with them as we could be a long time on this search.

We planned to do a really tight ‘shoulder to shoulder’ sweep of the area for the point.

On site we stopped to put up flagging tape at the start of the ‘thought it is about here” area.

There it was at boot tip!

We had been on site less than 10 minutes!

Of course, we had a good laugh and high fives went all around!

Incredible!

Restaurant

We were to have a new Site Steward join us in our weekly treks into the Cienega.

We were pleased because our partner of many years had retired and now there were just the two of us.

It is an isolated area that we go into; one that is used by illegals on their treks into the US or drug carriers who bring in the illicit drugs.

The area can be dangerous and really, it is very isolated.

Several days before the new Steward was to join us I received an e-mail from him, "Do you take you’re your lunch with you or do you take a break and go to a restaurant?"

I really had a good laugh but I responded sedately, "We take our lunch."

This "restaurant’ bit has taken on a life of its own. We always break for lunch about 11:30.

The best places for our lunch breaks are at the Creek's edge amongst the tall and full Cottonwoods.

But with the summer’s heat and the monsoon upon us, we tend to stay away from the Creek with its possible flash flooding events.

We find shade in the Rail Road concrete culverts!

Last week our large culvert was dated 1914.

"This is the finest restaurant in the area," declared our new Steward!

Appreciation is so appreciated!