A few extracts from Mr. Osborn’s letters regarding this site form a
fitting introduction to a description of the sites and the objects from
them:
At the present time [December 8, 1913] the nearest permanent water
to this place [site of the cemetery] is either the Palomas Lake
in Mexico, twenty-five miles south, or thirty miles north, where
the Mimbres River sinks into the earth.... This supposed Pueblo
site is situated upon a low sandy ridge which at this point makes
a right-angle bend, one part running south and the other west from
the angle. The top and sides of the ridge, also the “flat” enclosed
between the areas of the ridge, to the extent of about an acre, is
littered all over with fragments, charcoal and debris containing
bones to the depth of from one to three feet. There are also a
great many broken metates and grinding stones.... In digging on top
of this ridge, near the angle, we occasionally found what appeared
to have been adobe wall foundations, but not sufficiently large
to determine the size or shape of any building. In digging on the
ridge a few stone implements were found, including one fine stone
axe, stone paint pots and mortars, and a few arrowheads, also two
bone awls and a few shell beads and bracelets, the last all broken.
The only article of wood was the stump of a large cedar post full
of knots, badly decayed; it had been burned off two or three
inches below the surface of the ground. The cemetery was found on
the inner slope of the angle facing the southwest.... In a large
proportion of cases the body was placed upon its back, feet drawn
up against the body, knees higher than the head; sometimes the head
was face up and sometimes it was pressed forward so the top of the
head was uppermost. In other interments the body was extended its
full length with face up. A large majority of the skulls had a
bowl[13] inverted over them, though I judge twenty per cent were
without any bowl.... In a great many instances after the body had
been placed in the grave with bowl over the head, a little soil was
filled in, and about one foot of adobe mud was added and tramped
down then filled up with soil. This adobe mud is almost like rock,
making it difficult to dig up the bowl without smashing it.... No
article of any kind except the bowl over the head was found in any
grave. In one case a bowl was found with a skull under it and under
that skull was another bowl and another skull.
Few evidences of upright walls of buildings are found at or near
this site. The surface of the ground in places rises into low mounds
devoid of bushes, which grow sparingly in the immediate neighborhood,
but no trees of any considerable size were noticed in the vicinity.
Before work began at this place the only signs of former occupancy
by aborigines, besides walls, were a few broken fragments of ancient
pottery, metates, or a burnt stump protruding here and there from the
ground. None of the house walls projected very high above the surface
of the ground. Excavations in the floors of rooms at this point yielded
so many human skeletons that the place was commonly referred to as
a cemetery, but all indications support the conclusion that it was
probably a village site with intramural interments.
The human burials here found had knees flexed or drawn to the breast
in the “contracted” position, sometimes with the face turned eastward.
The skeletons were sometimes found in shallow graves, but often were
buried deeply below the surface. Almost without exception the crania
had bowls fitted over them like caps. The graves as a rule are limited
to soft ground, the bowls resting on undisturbed sand devoid of human
remains. In some instances there appears to have been a hardened
crust of clay above the remains, possibly all that is left of the
floor of a dwelling. The indications are that here, as elsewhere, the
dead were buried under the floors of dwellings, as is commonly the
case throughout the Mimbres Valley. While there is not enough of the
walls above ground to show the former extent of the dwellings, the
indications are that they were extensive and have been broken down and
washed away.