Colorado College Bulletin

Hidden Treasures

By MARY JEAN PORTER

It's not a bad place to attend class. Students in Michael Nowak's field archaeology class sit in the dirt, not in desks.

They work with pen and paper, but also with trowel, brush, bucket and sifting screen. Their classroom is a rock shelter on Trinchera Creek in southeastern Colorado, and their attire it fittingly casual: shorts and sunglasses.

They even have musical accompaniment, compliments of Paul Simon on a boom box and a pair of canyon wrens whose song bounces off the sandstone walls and floats up into the autumn sky.

Nowak and his CC students are working at Trinchera Cave, a site on state property that has been dug three times in the past half-century by professional archaeologists and plundered more recently by pot hunters. They hope to record remnants of the lift that flourished in the canyon along the creek for thousands of years. And they hope to do it before further destruction of the site occurs.

"Dr. Nowak is trying to see what's left and how much damage has been done," said Kevin Black, an assistant state archeologist. "He is also trying to better document the stratigraphy and to get radiocarbon dates to know more about what's already been found."

The amount of perishable material that has survived at the cave (discovered by a rancher in 1947) makes the site significant, Black says.

"There are probably more artifacts made of perishable material from there than anywhere else in Eastern Colorado," he said.

"The cave is a classic rock shelter tucked beneath an overhanging canyon wall; artifacts are kept dry and protected from rot."

Nowak and his students worked for 17 days in June and July and returned in September and October for more work.

In the cool dark of the cave floor, Teo Ballve carefully scraped the ground with a trowel and found a mano fragment.

"I'll label the artifact with tape and, back at the camp, I'll make a card for it," said the junior majoring in anthropology. "If I want to work at a site when I graduate, I'll have this experience."

Photos by Chris McLean

The article, excerpted from The Pueblo Chieftain, is reprinted with permission.

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