Out There: Can you dig it?

By Melody Romancito

Thursday, February 14, 2008 9:52 AM MST

Back when the newspaper office was in the center of town, no one batted an eye when street repair crews found human bones while excavating a new right of way. Bone yards turn into parking lots and even when you think you’ve moved all of the recorded graves, there are probably more buried just outside the walls — an attempt by the excommunicated to at least get as close to sacred ground as permitted.

Taos and its outskirts is a many-layered paradise for archaeologists. Southern Methodist University students participating in SMU's Archaeology Field School began work on the first phase of a research project in the summer of 2007 that promises to bring together “university faculty and students, Taos community leaders, private landowners, and local, state and federal government agencies.”

The multifaceted and large undertaking will involve surveying on foot and through satellite and Google Earth images, as well as archival research and excavation.

The project marks the first time archaeological exploration has been done on the Ranchos de Taos Plaza. It was made possible because, SMU’s online magazine says, “the Field School has established trust in this traditional community that in the past has regarded such efforts with suspicion.”

Sunday Eiselt, visiting assistant professor of anthropology, is the acting director of SMU's Archaeology Field School.

“Taos is an especially complex challenge,” says Eiselt, who received her doctorate in anthropology from the University of Michigan-Ann Arbor and has been conducting archaeological research in Northern New Mexico since 1998.

Taos, and especially Ranchos de Taos, is described as being “a remote and historically close-knit community; the area has experienced a rapid influx of outside investment in recent years – from tourists drawn to its natural beauty and culture to investors seeking to capitalize on them.”

The article goes on to say, “the tension between tradition and modernization, between preservation and gentrification, is palpable, Eiselt says. ‘Many former households just off the Plaza are in ruins,’ she says. ‘And with Plaza lots going for $400,000 each, the property taxes have created a situation in which residents whose families have lived there for generations cannot afford to do so now.’ ”

But for those of us who are regular residents of this historically close-knit community, knowing where the bodies are buried is just the start.

For more about SMU’s Taos Project, visit http://blog.smu.edu/smumagazine/2007/12/digging_archaeology_taos_proje.html


Overheard: Hitching a ride

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