The new building for Montezuma-Cortez High School is about two years away from opening, but its future 35-acre campus behind the Wal-Mart has already started providing history lessons on life in Cortez about a thousand years ago.
Archaeologists have found evidence of two different occupations of the site, around 850 and 1050 A.D.
Jerry Fetterman, the owner of Woods Canyon Archaeological Consultants in Cortez, said rubble artifacts indicate an Anasazi pueblo with an intact pit room or kiva.
The site is “worse for wear” from being disturbed over the years, Fetterman said. It was originally documented in the 1980s as the result of earlier archaeological surveys before some road construction.
Fetterman thinks the site is significant enough to merit an excavation with a permitted archaeologist and perhaps volunteers from the Colorado Archaeological Society.
The findings would then be documented and photographed for state historical and preservation purposes.
Other than the pueblo and evidence of a chipping station, a place where stone tools were made, Fetterman does not suspect there is much else of archaeological significance at the 35-acre site.
Fetterman also does not think the past is going to get in the way of progress.
Archaeological excavation would take place well before school construction is anticipated to start later this fall or early next year, and the archaeological site is also off to the side, in a far northeast corner.
Once the area is excavated and documented for the state, Fetterman anticipated that officials would allow the area to be disturbed.
“It’s called mitigated by excavation,” he said. “You preserve the site in notes and reports.”
Other possibilities might include covering up the pueblo and recording it for posterity with a historical marker.
jhaug@durangoherald.com