One of Santa Fe's earliest streets and a possible plaster pit also dating from the 1600s were discovered by archaeologists involved in a completed downtown dig.
The state Office of Archaeological Studies has been exploring an area a couple of blocks east of the existing Santa Fe Plaza for Drury Southwest, a hotel chain that plans to redevelop the former St. Vincent Hospital complex.
A 2008 excavation turned up a cobbled surface about four feet below today's ground level — proof of how much earth has been added over four centuries to what once was a marsh fed by springs around today's Cienega Street.
A second dig, which began in September and ends Thursday when the site is to be reburied, has determined that the cobbled surface was a street running generally north-south.
No one knows the street's name or where it started and stopped, but it is believed to shadow today's Otero Street and may have led to Santa Fe's first parroquia, or parish church. The street does not appear on the first known map of Santa Fe in 1766.
Archaeologists exposed about half of what they believe was its standard Spanish width of 7 1/2 varas, or 21 feet. Although the route of Palace Avenue is believed to have been in existence early in the 1600s, the newly discovered path could be Santa Fe's first paved street.
"We're not talking about cobble being placed carefully like they did cobblestone" in Europe and some Spanish colonial cities, archaeologist Jim Moore said. "It just looks like somebody brought in a couple of loads of gravel and dumped them on the road to create a nice solid surface."
Amid the cobbles were bits of Pueblo Indian pottery, some of it glazed ware from Galisteo Pueblo and other villages from the south, that ceased to be produced in the early 1700s, and types of majolica pottery from Puebla, Mexico, that also were discontinued after the 1600s. That means the road was used during Santa Fe's first century as a Spanish city.
Guadalupe Martinez, an archaeologist on both digs who has handled questions from a never-ending parade of locals and tourists at the site, joked that the finds prove New Mexicans have been throwing their trash on the streets for centuries. "It's a tradition," he said.
Another excavation a few yards from the road surface dug into a garbage pit. It may have started out as a hole from excavating earth for adobe bricks, Moore said, but soon was filled with dirt plus bits of pottery, bone, wood, ash and a few metal objects like nails.
One of the most intriguing of the artifacts from this fall's dig is a piece of Chinese porcelain from the garbage pit. The archaeologists say it may have been made a century before Santa Fe was founded, then was acquired in the Philippines, taken by Spanish galleon to Mexico and hauled by wagon up the Camino Real to Santa Fe.
"It was an heirloom piece when it was brought," said Patricia Rogers, another archaeologist working on the dig. "It was something highly prized."
Drury Southwest is expected to keep some of the artifacts to display inside its new hotel.
Excavation of the garbage pit also revealed a 12-to-16-inch layer — an artifact-free alluvial deposit from a massive flood in the 1600s. The approximate dating is possible because pottery shards from that century were found both above and below the layer.
Near the back side of the Cathedral Basilica of St. Francis of Assisi, another excavation explored the ruins of a structure that was described after its discovery three years ago as a "whitewashed vault."
Moore said Drury Southwest elected to pay extra to have the structure explored. At first, the archaeologists thought they might have discovered the site of Santa Fe's first parroquia, built early in the 1600s and destroyed in the Pueblo Revolt of 1680.
But the lack of a cobble foundation — a necessity for any adobe building the size of a church — or evidence of adobe walls led to the conclusion that the structure was part of a lesser building or perhaps a lime-slaking pit for mixing plaster.
Burned or baked adobe bricks were found inside the pit — possibly remnants of the burned church. Gov. Antonio de Otermin wrote that the Pueblo Indians burned the church as the Spanish retreated. When Don Diego de Vargas returned in 1693, corn grew where the parroquia had stood.
Moore said he is "70 percent positive" that pottery shards found in the pit date to the 1600s, but will conduct thermoluminescence tests on the burned adobe to get a firm date.
Author: Tom Sharpe | Source: The New Mexican [October 19, 2011]
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| Scott Jaquith with the state Office of Archaeological Studies takes measurements for a profile drawing of a cobbled path uncovered during an excavation near Cathedral Park in preparation for the redevelopment of the old St. Vincent’s Hospital complex [Credit: Luis Sánchez Saturno/The New Mexican] |
A 2008 excavation turned up a cobbled surface about four feet below today's ground level — proof of how much earth has been added over four centuries to what once was a marsh fed by springs around today's Cienega Street.
A second dig, which began in September and ends Thursday when the site is to be reburied, has determined that the cobbled surface was a street running generally north-south.
No one knows the street's name or where it started and stopped, but it is believed to shadow today's Otero Street and may have led to Santa Fe's first parroquia, or parish church. The street does not appear on the first known map of Santa Fe in 1766.
Archaeologists exposed about half of what they believe was its standard Spanish width of 7 1/2 varas, or 21 feet. Although the route of Palace Avenue is believed to have been in existence early in the 1600s, the newly discovered path could be Santa Fe's first paved street.
"We're not talking about cobble being placed carefully like they did cobblestone" in Europe and some Spanish colonial cities, archaeologist Jim Moore said. "It just looks like somebody brought in a couple of loads of gravel and dumped them on the road to create a nice solid surface."
Amid the cobbles were bits of Pueblo Indian pottery, some of it glazed ware from Galisteo Pueblo and other villages from the south, that ceased to be produced in the early 1700s, and types of majolica pottery from Puebla, Mexico, that also were discontinued after the 1600s. That means the road was used during Santa Fe's first century as a Spanish city.
Guadalupe Martinez, an archaeologist on both digs who has handled questions from a never-ending parade of locals and tourists at the site, joked that the finds prove New Mexicans have been throwing their trash on the streets for centuries. "It's a tradition," he said.
Another excavation a few yards from the road surface dug into a garbage pit. It may have started out as a hole from excavating earth for adobe bricks, Moore said, but soon was filled with dirt plus bits of pottery, bone, wood, ash and a few metal objects like nails.
One of the most intriguing of the artifacts from this fall's dig is a piece of Chinese porcelain from the garbage pit. The archaeologists say it may have been made a century before Santa Fe was founded, then was acquired in the Philippines, taken by Spanish galleon to Mexico and hauled by wagon up the Camino Real to Santa Fe.
"It was an heirloom piece when it was brought," said Patricia Rogers, another archaeologist working on the dig. "It was something highly prized."
Drury Southwest is expected to keep some of the artifacts to display inside its new hotel.
Excavation of the garbage pit also revealed a 12-to-16-inch layer — an artifact-free alluvial deposit from a massive flood in the 1600s. The approximate dating is possible because pottery shards from that century were found both above and below the layer.
Near the back side of the Cathedral Basilica of St. Francis of Assisi, another excavation explored the ruins of a structure that was described after its discovery three years ago as a "whitewashed vault."
Moore said Drury Southwest elected to pay extra to have the structure explored. At first, the archaeologists thought they might have discovered the site of Santa Fe's first parroquia, built early in the 1600s and destroyed in the Pueblo Revolt of 1680.
But the lack of a cobble foundation — a necessity for any adobe building the size of a church — or evidence of adobe walls led to the conclusion that the structure was part of a lesser building or perhaps a lime-slaking pit for mixing plaster.
Burned or baked adobe bricks were found inside the pit — possibly remnants of the burned church. Gov. Antonio de Otermin wrote that the Pueblo Indians burned the church as the Spanish retreated. When Don Diego de Vargas returned in 1693, corn grew where the parroquia had stood.
Moore said he is "70 percent positive" that pottery shards found in the pit date to the 1600s, but will conduct thermoluminescence tests on the burned adobe to get a firm date.
Author: Tom Sharpe | Source: The New Mexican [October 19, 2011]