Tonuco Mesa - BLM Lands, Doña Ana County

pottery sherd

 Tonuco Mountain

Looking northwest  toward the Caballos

About a year ago I came out to this mesa edge with David and Nancy Soules. David and I had both thought it highly probable that we would find evidence of ancient use. It's really not much of stretch to think that, given all the other sites nearby. We parked just on the west side of the exit 32 on I-25 and proceeded south, sometimes staying on the mesa, sometimes dropping to the broken up hill, ridge and ravine country below.  Nancy had said David had commented before they came out that he was sure that pottery would be found today. Well, it wasn't. We did find an animal carcass that was a little difficult to identify, some shell casings, and other twentieth century flotsam and jetsam that had been dug up when the good road had been put in.

 Shell casing from the Peters Cartridge Company of Ohio

 I returned on 1/3/22 to cover some more ground of the 5 or so miles from the exit to where the road turns down into the big arroyo north of Tonuco Mountain. First I went north from where I parked and then went south and southwest exploring out onto the " arms " that extend toward the Rio Grande. Eventually, I came to the outskirts of a sandy area that rose up slightly from the baked caliche flats. There, I thought, is where I will find pottery. Over the last few years, these soft sandy areas seem to be winning out  as places where ceramics and other artifacts will be found. Sure enough after just a few footprints, I found one sherd and then another and then another still. They were gray, brown, orange, red. Some rough, some glazed smooth. One was a rim piece. None were painted, but I wonder now if sites like this one, close to roads, have had all the painted pieces picked out of them. I wandered back and forth and around and around.  It was easy to see where I had been and where I hadn't by the paths of my bootprints.The bright winter sun filtered through thin clouds, making things warm enough for me to be happy I was out, but not so warm that I ever took off even one of my layers.

Pottery sherds and lithic flake

Pottery and lithic flake

rim piece

 I thought of my friend David who has passed on, and how happy it would have made him to be out here finding  this place with me. I thought this site is probably known and in the database, but that didn't matter much at the time, because it certainly wasn't known to me. I came to a road that was just beyond the rise. It ended at the very point of the "arm." I could've driven right up to the site, had I known it was there.

Returning in the late afternoon, I crossed a large rectangular pit that was dug a long time ago in effort to collect water on this flat terrain. After rousting a few jackrabbits and getting back to my truck, I drove around on some of the roads I had found and almost got into a tight spot where I had to back up and turn around (with little room to maneuver) rather than encounter a place where the mesa's edge had retreated through the road.