http://www.santafenewmexican.com/Local% ... ieneguillaA La Cieneguilla landowner recently cut into a portion of a prehistoric pueblo while preparing a site for a house.
Archaeologists who investigated the disturbance say the landowner didn’t do anything wrong and had a building permit from the Santa Fe County Growth Management Department, which should have warned him about the ruin, but didn’t.
“The county has a list of landscape features, and La Cieneguilla Pueblo is one of them,” said Wolky Toll, an archaeologist for the state Office of Archaeological Studies in Santa Fe. “I don’t want to sling any mud or anything, but it would probably have been better if the county had paid closer attention to where this site was.”
The landowner had learned from the person from whom he bought the land last year that the property includes prehistoric ruins, according to Merrill Dicks, an archaeologist for the Taos office of the U.S. Bureau Land Management, which owns a nearby 11-acre parcel that includes the core of the prehistoric village, plus additional acreage nearby for the La Cieneguilla Petroglyph Site. But, Dicks said, the landowner wasn’t sure until his excavations for a septic tank and leveling the site for a double-wide mobile home turned up pottery shards, stone tools and cobble foundations.
Archaeologists won’t name the landowner, and county officials said they aren’t sure which permit holder dug into the ruin or why the landowner wasn’t warned.
Dicks said the prehistoric site, including the area disturbed, was mapped nearly a century ago by pioneering archaeologist Nels Nelson.
Dicks said he first heard that the site was being excavated from emails from volunteer group of archaeologists. The landowner finally got through to Dicks in late January. But by then, he said, the damage was done.
“They contacted me and some other entities to try to get some assistance,” he said. “But I wasn’t aware they were going to begin construction as soon as they were going to. Otherwise, I would have gotten out there quickly. … They already had brought in a backhoe, so time is money and they needed to go ahead.”
Phillip Young, an archaeologist who is retired from the U.S. Park Service, said the landowner’s excavations “destroyed at least four intact rooms of a prehistoric room block, displaced hundreds, perhaps thousands, of artifacts from their original context,” and spread the fill from the site onto a graded driveway.
Young recently wrote to state Attorney General Gary King and Penny Ellis-Green, director of the county Growth Management Department, to ask for investigations into what “appears to be a misfeasance by Santa Fe County of a public responsibility and trust. A repeat would indicate malfeasance.”
He included the section of the Santa Fe County Land Development Code that lists “Cieneguilla Pueblo” among dozens of historic or cultural sites or landmarks.
A county spokeswoman said Penny Ellis-Green, director of the Growth Management Department, plans to meet with state and federal officials next week to find out what, if anything, went wrong.
Even if the county notifies someone that their land includes a recognized landmark, the landowner is under no obligation to preserve the site. Only if he encounters human remains is he obligated to contact the state Historic Preservation Division.
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