Blank Spaces: Bury Me Not on the Lone Prairie...

As many of you know, I have been hired as a field surveyor on an archaeological project in New Mexico. This is my first job as a professional archaeologist and is quite exciting. I have already done one 8 day session but unfortunately I did not bring my computer nor my camera. I can assure you that it was a fantastic first week on the job despite the nearly constant presence of rain. We are surveying ground for a windmill farm that is taking us across a multitude of ranch land in central New Mexico. The majority of our findings are depression era relics however we have also found many stone tools from wandering Native Americans. Today was a particularly exciting day; firstly because I brought my camera and secondly because we found a site that told a story. I am going to share that story with you now.

In the early 1900's the railroads passed through and bought up all the land alongside the tracks. Eventually this land was sold to people all over the country, but mostly back east with the promise that the land would be fertile for years to come. Many of these men and women took to growing beans; think pinto, not soy. This worked fine for awhile, however the elevation of the area keeps the annual rainfall fairly low and eventually the farmland was drying up. Then comes the Dust Bowl and Great Depression. These hard times cause many people to drop everything and leave, some head back east, others west as migrant workers. The remnants of this era are scattered about the empty short grass prairie.

My day started out relatively normal as far as survey goes. We drove our truck down some lonely dirt roads that snake between large tracts of grassland. We parked, we got out, we line up and then marched in lines. For the first hour or so we found nothing, which seems to be the norm out here. A herd of female Pronghorns trotted by and a very short distance, followed closely by two ever watchful males. Shortly after we met the owner of the property who has lived on this land all his life; we all guess he was pushing his 80's. His father moved out here and bought the land in 1913 and started out as a bean farmer but turned to cattle when the farming looked bleak. This is one of the few families the survived through the Dust Bowl.

Remains of Model T


1930's wheel well/running board

In another 45 minutes of walking we began to see scatterings of objects on our transects. The first being an old trash pile with the remains of a Model T Ford as its center piece. Later we found the wheel well and running board of a 1930's style luxury car. Atop the next hill appears to be some kind of structure that our boss guesses is the homestead to which the trash belongs to. As we get close the debris become more frequent. We start seeing old fruit or meat cans, Prince Albert tobacco and shattered glass jars. Upon finally reaching the top of the long rolling hill we come upon the place where someone once tried to make a home.
The bodies of two old farm trucks; one a Ford, the other likely a Chevy, sit rusting away. A well
sits unused, still filled with water, and a scattering of large stones and a deep depression marks where

the dugout that the family lived in once stood. Among the artifacts that we found were broken china with intricate flower patterns, broken wine bottles, cosmetic jars, a belt buckle, a marble, various tools. Now I love the mystery found in a scattering of prehistoric pottery and flaked stone, but those kinds of artifacts leave behind a lot of guess work. Here we had a story of people who tried to make a living in a far away place and failed. These people are likely remembered by someone, their records left behind in a census or bill of sale or some such thing. This makes the site more personal and easier to access in a number of ways. This isn't the only sign of the tragedies of the Dust Bowl, not but 3 miles away is another abandoned farmstead. These are the sad, lonely reminders of one of the worst hard times in