Wednesday, June 01, 2005
Dig, Day 9. We are busy in the north room, stripping away layers of dirt down onto the original hard-packed dirt floor of the house, put in sometime in the mid-1860s. We found a couple of deadly things in the dirt on top of the floor.
Another Hohokam arrow point.
The Hohokam had the bow and arrow and would have used them to hunt or for protection. We find animal bones at Hohokam sites and Jenny W. analyzes them, identifying which animal, which specific bone, and which portion of the bone each fragment is. The Hohokam mostly hunted cottontail and jackrabbits, with smaller amounts of deer, antelope, bighorn sheep, quail, and coyotes. It is likely the arrows may have also been used during warfare, but this is more difficult to determine. Some evidence for violence that has been seen includes burned villages and mutilated corpses, although the latter is pretty rare.
A more recent dangerous item also turned up.
Duke's Cameo Cigarettes.
Sometimes paper survives here in the desert Southwest. In this case, a cigarette package from the 1890s was found lying among some smashed up adobe bricks. Lots of people smoked in Tucson, mostly cigarettes. When the Mexican soldiers left town in 1856 they took along the town and church records. One of the soldiers later reported that his fellow soldiers tore up the old paper records to roll cigarettes with, since paper was extremely scarce. I don't know if the story is true, but no one has ever been able to find those missing documents.
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Another Hohokam arrow point.
The Hohokam had the bow and arrow and would have used them to hunt or for protection. We find animal bones at Hohokam sites and Jenny W. analyzes them, identifying which animal, which specific bone, and which portion of the bone each fragment is. The Hohokam mostly hunted cottontail and jackrabbits, with smaller amounts of deer, antelope, bighorn sheep, quail, and coyotes. It is likely the arrows may have also been used during warfare, but this is more difficult to determine. Some evidence for violence that has been seen includes burned villages and mutilated corpses, although the latter is pretty rare.
A more recent dangerous item also turned up.
Duke's Cameo Cigarettes.
Sometimes paper survives here in the desert Southwest. In this case, a cigarette package from the 1890s was found lying among some smashed up adobe bricks. Lots of people smoked in Tucson, mostly cigarettes. When the Mexican soldiers left town in 1856 they took along the town and church records. One of the soldiers later reported that his fellow soldiers tore up the old paper records to roll cigarettes with, since paper was extremely scarce. I don't know if the story is true, but no one has ever been able to find those missing documents.
