Dig this! Archeologists have discovered and are excavating a pueblo and several pit-house sites at the Doña Ana Range for artifacts.

Brian D. Knight, senior archeologist, said the pueblo is believed to date back between the 14th and 15th centuries during the Jornada Mogollon tribe’s time period. The pit-house is believed to be Mesilla phased, which predates the pueblo occupations.

“You are looking at multiple occupations here over a period of time. You’re talking about a separate occupation here and hundreds of years later you have another pueblo built 50 meters away from each other,” said Knight.
“This is the first pueblo excavation that has been done professionally in more than 20 years. I believe the last one was in 1986 … So this kind of excavation is probably going to have a real revolutionary effect on understanding how people lived about 500 years ago out here. It’s a big find for this area,” said Myles Miller, archeologist and principal investigator for the project, Geo-Marine Inc.

The unearthed site was named after John A. Hedrick, a curator who handled the collections at Fort Bliss for many years. He also participated in numerous excavations throughout west Texas and New Mexico.
Knight said the site was found last year, but due to lack of funding they were only able to dig up what their budget allowed. The site was covered with plastic and preserved until recently when more funding became available.

“We had never anticipated it was going to be as nice as it is,” said Knight.

After doing a survey of the land, high densities of surface artifacts were discovered scattered throughout the area, indicating previous intensive occupation. The excavation team then sampled by excavating and scraping back some of the sand.

“And sure enough the pueblo walls started turning up,” said Knight. “The site is pretty spectacular, it’s huge.
The 11 room pueblo has one central large room, which is believed to be a communal room, typical of the Jornada Mogollon tribe. Knight said they can usually distinguish it as a ritual room because it doesn’t have the normal domestic activity type things, such as a ground stone artifact used for food processing. These rooms usually have more ritual type objects and less utilitarian type artifacts.

So far they have found hearths, ground stone and an assortment of prehistoric ceramics. They have also found evidence of various burned beams, which according to some theories were set on fire by the tribes before they abandoned them — it might have a ritual or catastrophic event.

“We have even found in one of the rooms what appears to be cash,” said Knight.

Knight said a large percentage of the Joronada Mogollon is contained on Fort Bliss and White Sands Missile Range.

“We are one of the primary core areas for the Joronado Mogollon culture. We have a giant archeological research laboratory between the two installations,” said Knight.

According to Knight, the fall of the Joronada Mogollon was probably in 1450 A.D. The primary theory for the demise of the tribe was there may have been an extensive drought during that time period causing the group to move.

Another theory is other groups were moving into the area such as the Monzo, Zuma, Jocome, possibly the Tarahumara, and some Apache groups that raided the Joronada Mogollon. This may have contributed to the disruption of the Jornada Mogollon culture.

“The pit-houses that we are finding were dug half into the ground and half above the surface level. They may have been seasonal or periodically used and they are sort pits excavated partially into the ground. They were found during some backhoe trenching out in the area. We will have to do some testing before they turn up and eventually excavations as well. We are still developing a sampling strategy for that,” said Knight.

The site is not open to the public due to safety issues such as live artillery and convoy exercises. According to Knight they will provide opportunities for public visits in the future.


Knight said they will produce reports, which will have complete maps, photographs and detailed descriptions of everything unearthed. The artifacts will be collected and kept in the Fort Bliss curation facility. Researchers are encouraged to visit the facility and analyze the data to use in their own research. They will be available check out the artifacts and get copies of the reports.

“The main thing I want people to understand is that we have a lot of rich archeological resources out here. We are probably providing some of the best research that is being done in the west Texas and southern New Mexico area. Sometimes there is a perception that because we are on a military base the evidence is being damaged and written off, and that is absolutely not the case. It is important for the public to know that the military is doing a very fine job in protecting our cultural patrimony,” said Knight.