ISLETA PUEBLO, N.M. (KRQE) – The Pueblo of Isleta is working to protect a historic site from the threat of erosion. The site dates back several hundred years and holds key cultural resources, like broken pottery that provides insight into life in the Middle Rio Grande Valley.
“Pottery Mound, of course, is an ancestral site – a pueblo. It was there quite a long time. It’s in the Rio Puerco River area, and it was inhabited by pueblo people. And it was kind of like a trading center,” Pueblo of Isleta Governor Max Zuni told KRQE. “The history is that it was falling down from the cliffs, because of the Rio Puerco River, and so they abandoned it.”
The site was home to peoples living along the Rio Grande from around 1350 A.D. to the 1500s. Studies of pottery from the site revealed a wide range of pottery shards (often spelled as “sherd” in archaeology reports), living structures, as well as fragments of Spanish metal, according to a report published by the University of New Mexico (UNM).
After researchers unearthed and studied parts of the site, UNM gave ownership of the land back to the Pueblo of Isleta in 2012. By then, erosion from the waters of the Rio Puerco, a tributary of the Rio Grande, threatened the site. That problem continues today, and the Pueblo of Isleta is partnering with the U.S. Army Corps of Engineers to study the risk of erosion.
“Today is a really important event with Isleta Pueblo because it represents a significant transition in our Tribal Partnership Program that expands the types of work that we can do,” Michael Connor, Assistant Secretary of the Army (Civil Works), said in a press release.
The plan is to eventually come up with a way to protect the site from erosion in order to prevent key artifacts and cultural objects from being washed away. The federal government will fund the first $200,000 of the study, then the Pueblo of Isleta and the federal government will split the cost after that.
