Artifact Garden at the Painted Pony Resort

In the back courtyard of the guest house at the Painted Pony Resort is a stone garden.  Though it is not your average stone garden with tastefully arranged rive rock suitable for meditation, rather the stone garden is composed of fragments from over 2 dozen metates and grinding stones.  There are also manos, hammer stones, scrapers, and other other artifacts collected off the property included in the stone artifact garden.  Started by guests of the former owner the tradition has continued and fragments of metates are added to the garden as they are discovered by guests or while working on the property.

Artifact Garden in the Guest House Courtyard at PPR.

Another Used Rock

Out walking more fence line in the area around the Painted Pony Resort and came across this nice little obsidian stemmed serrated projectile point.  Its shape and color jumped out from the surrounding water worn pebbles covered in desert varnish and was spotted from about 10 feet away.  Finding used rocks is a common occurrence around here but it would be nice to occasionally find a new rock.

A serrated, stemmed, obsidian projectile point

Find of the Day

The Painted Pony Resort is bounded on the north and east by New Mexico State land and with state land also comes grazing leases and cattle.  New Mexico is a "fence out" state and requires land owners to protect their property with fences, see Article 16. Fences.  The rational for "fence out" as opposed to the English common law approach of "fence in" may be found at this link.  To ensure cattle stay off the property requires fence, gate, and cattle guard maintenance on an regular basis.   An afternoon of walking fence line between the east side of the San Simon Riverbed across the Painted Pony Resort to Amigos del Cielo air park checking for downed and broken fence resulted in the following surface find.  A nice 2 inch stemmed projectile point of a fine grained black material.  Eroded out of the ground it was not found in association with other materials making dating difficult.

Stemmed projectile point

Only 2 areas of weak/partially downed fence line were discovered on the adjacent land to the east.  Cattle had pushed down the fence line and crossed from State land onto private property to the south.  All the fence line surrounding the Painted Pony Resort was in good condition but cattle have been congregating outside the gate on several occasions seeking access.  Adding cable wings to the gate and cattle guard along with several hundred feet of fence line on the other side of the road (to take advantage of cattle propensity to walk fence line) deflects them back south and away from the entrance to the property.  The combination seems to have worked and the gate can remain open for guests and deliveries.

Digging in the Desert

With guests in residence inside cleaning is not an issue and there is time to tend to other work around the resort.  The runway was showing signs of weeds and had received herbicide about a month ago but dead plants and newly sprouted weeds needed removal, so a day was spent removing a variety of weeds that were trying to take over the 2 runways on the property.  Tumbleweeds are the most aggressive and pervasive but quickly yield to an herbicide mix (4% glyphosate with 0.2% 2,4D).  Even with dead weeds runway weeding is all hand work done with a scrapping motion of the shovel since machines tear up the runway surface.  Operations started early and with shovel in hand weeding started at the south end of the runway and moved north.  Some clouds kept the temperatures moderate but since weeding is a fairly monotonous activity requiring very little mental activity engaging in other mental activities helps with the task.  I used the opportunity to look for evidence of habitation along the runway.  The area had not been walked in awhile and rains frequently uncover new evidence of the previous inhabitants.  Several partial metates were found and a single projectile point, but the most interesting piece found was a hand adze.  Not ground like other early axe heads frequently found but chipped and shaped into a usable tool that fits nicely in the hand.  Created out of a fine grained greenish gray sedimentary rock the tool is just another gentle reminder that people have been digging plants around here for several thousand years and a day spent cleaning the runway is not a big deal.

Adze

Hand adze found while weeding.