Archeology

Pot Luck 3 HUGE CLAY POTS FOUND BY CHANCE ARE MAJOR LINKS TO AN ANCIENT CULTURE TEXT BY CARLE HODGE

FOR SIX CENTURIES OR MORE THE EARTHEN VESSELS, a legacy left by people mysteriously long gone, remained unseen, untouched, swallowed by the surrounding crimson canyons.

Only the whisper of winds and the lashing of summer storms intruded upon the still of the cave amid naked red rocks and the piñon-thicket wilderness near Sedona.

Then last summer came the flutter of a helicopter and aboard it five passengers whose eager eyes fastened upon the three pots clustered at the cavern entrance.

Each vessel was as sound as when the Sinagua Indians, whose utensils they were, abandoned them. One would measure two feet in diameter with a 30-gallon capacity, among the largest intact prehistoric jars yet found in Arizona.

The disclosure exulted both the finders and the scientists who quickly collected the artifacts. It also threaded together an extraordinary skein of circumstances.

The unglazed, brownish-reddish Sinaguan ceramics are of a kind called Tuzigoot Plain, fashioned between A.D. 1250 and 1350. Surrealistic "fire clouds," darker swirls seared into the clay where it was exposed to the fuel that fired it, emblazon them.

Their detection showed the Sinagua inhabited the Sedona environs at least a half-century later than had been thought.

Coconino National Forest archeologist Peter Pilles proclaimed the find "of exceptional importance" and declared it might give us "some new perceptions of Sinaguan social organization."

Among other settlements, the Sinagua (pronounced SEEN-ahwah, Spanish for "without water") built the stone towns of Wupatki and Tuzigoot and the cliff condominiums at Walnut Canyon and Montezuma Castle. They flourished below and atop the Mogollon Rim in the Verde Valley and around Flagstaff from about A.D. 600 until approximately 1400.

And they irrigated crops of beans, corn, and squash and served, in Pilles' words, as a sort of "filter for trade items and ideas" between the Hohokam to the south and the Anasazi to the northeast. Scholars still puzzle over why they, along with the other cul-tures, withdrew from their homes six centuries ago and what became of them.

As Pilles sees it, the significance of the three pots is not simply their size and mint condition. An unbroken specimen appears in Arizona about every five years.

What makes the discovery unique, he points out, is "the assemblage" itself: three sizable pots (the two smaller ones are about 20 inches in diameter and might hold 17 gallons each) apparently used in "a single activity." Also found: a broken pot and a bit of rare Sinaguan basketry.

"It was as though you jumped into someone's kitchen while the person was away," he said of their recovery.

At the foot of the cliff, just below the cave, rests the rubble of an ancient village of some six rooms, occupied, judging by the age of shards scattered there, until as late as 1400.

Still, if the archeologist is right, the hamlet could not have accommodated enough people to account for all the culinary bustle up in the cleft. The "kitchen" could have fed many more.

Moreover, one of the pots was made of clay, distinctively flecked with gold mica and shiny gray phyllite, transported from 15 or more miles away, indicative of a busy commerce at the time. "The trade aspect gives us all sorts of theoretical possibilities," Pilles says.

How, then, were the pots utilized? What went on in the cave? These are riddles the researchers hope to resolve through further excavation and analysis.

Pilles led a 13-person crew, equipped with a ladder, ropes and pulleys, that took seven hours to scale the cliff, pack the pots in plastic bubble wrap, and ease them to safety below.

How did the tribesmen get their wares up there in the first place? Pilles smiles. "Probably the same way we got them down, very slowly."

He thinks the dry climate pre-served the pots. The cave sheltered them from weathering. They had not been spied before because they could be seen neither from ground level nor from the cliff summit.

But the saga behind their revelation is as dramatic as their retrieval.

Andy Seagle, a Phoenix recording engineer, harbors a special affection for antiquity, an infatuation inherited from his older brother, Tim. The two spent most of their childhood summers scouring the same area. They came to know the country intimately.

Tim yearned to be a professional archeologist and majored in the subject at the University of Arizona. A lingering illness, however, slowed his studies and eventually extinguished his dream. He died of cystic fibrosis in 1975, when he was 24 and Andy was 16.

At his own request, Tim's ashes were placed in an Acoma pot he picked and buried within a few miles of the cave where the pottery was found last year.

Meanwhile, Andy's passion for the prehistoric never flagged. For his 32nd birthday last summer, his friend Nancy Nenad char-tered a helicopter to give the two an eagle's view of remote ruins. At the last minute, Sedona residents Warren Cremer and Mason Romney joined them.

It was a birthday gift beyond usual remembrance. Minutes before the 45-minute flight was to end, the group spotted the pots. "They were at eye level," Andy remembers. "I'd dreamed of finding caches of arrowheads. But whole pots? Never. I was ecstatic."

Since the cave was on Forest Service land, Cremer notified that agency the following day, and the day after that Andy called the Coconino National Forest's Flagstaff headquarters and asked for an archeologist. He got Peter Pilles, a stranger to him.

While they talked, Seagle mentioned a brother who had been smitten by the area and its ancient remnants. "I wanted Pilles to know the spirit of my brother," Andy says.

Suddenly, the archeologist asked his caller: "Was his name Tim?" In the early 1970s, Tim Seagle had spent a summer assisting Pilles, who says Tim's "intense interest" especially impressed him.

"God orchestrated all this," Andy says now. "Otherwise, there are too many parallels."

Later, Andy persuaded his father, Dr. Joseph Seagle, a retired Tucson pediatrician, to take a helicopter tour of the discovery site.

Before that, though, Pilles, Andy, and Nancy Nenad were sitting in the cavern mouth, discussing their good fortune and the odd order of events. Pilles turned to Andy. Thenceforth, he informed him, the location would be noted on Forest Service records as "Tim's Cave."

Nancy still savors that moment. She recalls: "I felt a cold chill race up my back."