Ancients of the RIo Grande

The Millington Site, a new book released by the Center for Big Bend Studies was presented to the public at Front Street Books last Thursday night in Alpine by the authors Dr William “Andy” Cloud and Dr. Jennifer Piehl.

The archeological find, accidentally discovered when a backhoe operator was digging ditches for sewer lines near Presidio High School in 2002, has become a major site for study of the La Junta peoples who lived in the area during late pre-historic time of about 1200-1450 A.D.

Previous archeological work in the area suggested that the La Junta people were primarily farmers working the alluvial soils near the confluence of the Rio Grande and Rio Conchos with primitive irrigation techniques growing squash, beans and maize.
But the new evidence at the Millington site suggests that the La Junta people were still very much hunter-gatherers and only occasionally relying on farming.

“They were using flood water irrigation but were not investing heavily in agriculture,” Piehl said.

The morturiaral aspects of the human remains has provided, through chemical analysis at UT-Austin, clues about their health and diet.

“There’s a lot of evidence in the skeletal remains,” Piehl, a forensic archeologist, said. “An extraordinary amount of arthritis was found as well as a lot of broken ankles and feet.”

Arthritis in males was found primarily in the knees and ankles and coupled with the broken bones suggests hunting was a primary activity in the rough desert La Junta area.

“These results were similar to hunter-gatherers found in other areas,” Piehl said.
Carbon and nitrogen isotopes were isolated in the bone remains and allowed Piehl to track their diet. The isotopic signature of carbon remnants suggests maize while nitrogen remnants suggest beans because they are nitrogen fixers and have a different photosynthesis pathway.

Piehl found that less than 25 per cent of their diet was corn and that the vast percentage of their protein came from meat. Rodent hairs were found preserved in their teeth which could suggest that they were either very hungry or that cooking meat was not always necessary.

The climate of the time was very much like our present climate, suggesting that the game in the area was similar to ours. Rodents including rabbits and rats along with deer and javalina were likely their main sources of meat.

The human remains at the Millington Site were buried in the flex position. Males had their heads facing south while females were facing north. This ideological aspect of their customs has not yet been unraveled. It is believed however that the La Junta people had their own indigenous practices but picked up a lot of culture aspects from other tribes that passed through the area. Some believe that the La Junta was a sub-culture of the larger Casa Grande civilization that dominated the Chihuahua desert to the south.