Mining has got to be one of humankind’s oldest professions. In fact, it is probably only just behind food-gathering, and maybe, oh well, you know, that other one, too.
For tens of thousands of years, people have dug up rocks for whatever uses they could think of – the making spear-points or arrowheads, to trade as bits of currency, or for some kind of ornamentation. This is not to mention the use of big chunks of rock for creating buildings, bridges, or pyramids, even.
Much of what the ancients valued is very different from what we value in today’s world. They had uses for things that we don’t even think about these days, and vice versa. Obsidian, a volcanic glass, was once highly sought-after, and traded far and wide, because it was the perfect stone from which to shape points and blades. How about good old salt? Yes, salt is a mineral, and it was once an expensive commodity, used as a form of payment.
People once catapulted balls of acrid, burning sulfur at each other, well before they started using it in gunpowder. And back then they thought of smelly, oily, petroleum tar as a curiosity – something that trapped certain animals in the pits where it occurred – and wondered why on Earth anyone would ever need very much of that stuff.
Not that any of these musings had been on my mind as I headed into the backcountry for a little archaeological adventure. I had been wanting to check out some more ancient cliff dwellings – remnants of what we now call the Salado Culture. What that trip turned into was a reminder that you never know what to expect out there. There is always some stone to be up-turned, so to speak.
It began as a gray, windy, rainy day, though springtime, and as I started out I wondered whether the hike would be a good one. I was headed into the gentle, lower reaches of a canyon in the craggy Sierra Ancha. This area is home to some of the most remote and undisturbed prehistoric ruins in the Southwest.
The mountains sort of blend northward into the Mogollon Rim, so they don’t stand out as a separate island of peaks like so many other ranges in this part of the world. That belies how rugged the wilderness really is there, however. Sheer cliffs of hard, massive reddish and purplish Precambrian quartzites rise abruptly out of the creek beds, presenting formidable walls to any easy passage, and one has but a limited number of routes by which to penetrate the cliff-dwellers’ domain.
Add to that numerous thickets of chollas, and tall stands of plump, green Saguaro cacti, and you have a scene of bewildering beauty. Within a few hours, the land started to rise higher and higher above me, and after crossing a small divide, I started to feel almost surrounded by the towering ledges.
Groves of trees closed in too, along with prickly brush and tall grass, and my eyes searched everywhere I was planning on putting down a footstep, lest I put it right on top of an idle rattlesnake. The fresh moisture in the desert air added both a sense of thickness and security.
I would have missed the dwellings, had it not been for the tiniest of a crumbly, worn trail leading up through a leafy thicket, right up to the base of some red overhangs. Then appeared the stone walls, the dry, daubed-on mud, and the small doorways of the ruin.
I had read of this place just before my journey, so I thought I knew what to expect. And it was just like how the author described it.
Except for one thing: he missed the reason for the place being where it was.
The stone forming the back walls of the musty, old rooms was a rich rusty color, layered with alternating bands of golden ochre, making for a half-completed rainbow look.
The rock had been scoured and scooped out by perhaps generations of residents, and the dirt all around was red and yellow, too, and soft and powdery. And I knew right at that moment that this was no ordinary cliff village.
The previously-visiting writer had seemingly missed its significance completely: that this was a mine. The rooms were where the miners lived and worked.
What they mined was the soft, brightly-colored rock from behind, and from this spot, those powdered pigments were probably exported to faraway villages and cities of the time.
I was fortunate. Had I not been a geologist, and one with some archaeological training, I don’t think the significance of the place would have even dawned on me. I thought of all that red and buff ancient pottery I’ve seen in museums, the vermilion, angular markings, and the paint once covering the “big house” at Casa Grande National Monument, and I thought to myself, “I’ll bet I know right where that coloring came from!”
The place had come to life for me.
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PLEASE STAY TUNED for Part II of this story, next month.
Tags: Archaeology, Gemstones & Diamonds, Hohokam, Natural Arizona Gemstones, The SouthWest, Turquoise