News from Room 28

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Things have been very busy in Chaco Canyon.  We have removed a couple more levels of Room 28, but are still working through the backfill from the 1896 excavations.  The work is slowed primarily by the presence of both charred roofing beams (literally hundreds) and burned daub (the material packed around the roofing material to create both roof and floor above).  Safety issues forced us to add two additional screw jacks crossing the room at 90 degree angles—so we now need to negotiate three separate steel pipes crossing the room—but they provide support from the walls of the room and ensure that we are safe.  We also have a security guard protecting the excavation when we are not present—and this turned out to be a good thing on Saturday when a man with a shovel sneaked into the excavation and was scared away by our security guard. 

Emily Jones, UNM faculty member and faunal expert, joined us on Tuesday.  She identified many of the bones we have recovered, including birds, rabbits, and rodents—many rodents!  It was wonderful to have the help and identifications of our fauna.

Some of the material we are finding suggests that the backfill we are digging is indeed from Room 28.  What a surprise if George Pepper somehow managed to return the fill of Room 28 to its original location after moving it around.  While modern archaeologists virtually always backfill with the dirt they remove from an excavation, Pepper's field notes indicate he excavated other rooms before backfilling Room 28 and that he used Room 28 to hold the dirt from those other excavations-- but perhaps only temporarily.  Ultimately, he may have succeeded to putting the Room 28 fill back where it came from.