Where the Desert Meets the Sea: Archeology

One of my favorite parts of my job is when I actually have a free moment to explore. Sometimes I am just so busy conducting the bird census that I can't stop and check anything out. One of the nice things about having Neil here as an intern is that he has taken over the osprey project for me, allowing me more time for the other surveys. Normally he conducts his nest searches alone, but sometimes it is better with 2 people. There is one really tricky spot to get to in the middle of Santa Cruz estuary that we call the "island" because it is a desert bit surrounded by water. The first time we tried to get out there we walked at low tide, which ended up taking 2 hours of trudging through knee deep thick mud, and by the time we got there, we didn't have time for the survey! This time, we kayaked over at high tide, which was much more effective. While Neil checked the island for active osprey nests, I was free to explore.

The Comca'ac (Seri Indians) lived a nomadic existence from the areas now called Guaymas all the way up to Puerto Penasco. A few people have told me about the cool things you can find in their old camps like pottery and arrowheads. The easiest way to find a camp is to go to a piece of higher ground, and usually there are tons of shells around. This signifies an area where they camped, living off the oysters and clams of one spot before moving onto another. Since clay is abundant here and so is high heat, they were able to make a lot of pottery. It is actually really pretty easy to find pieces of pottery that the Comca'ac left behind. However, this part of the estuary is very rarely visited, so I was able to find tons of it!

Another discovery was this huge den. The entrance was at least a foot high, but thin, and it seemed to tunnel way down into the ground. There were no fresh tracks around the entrance (except small lizard tracks), so I can only guess what might have lived there. Or it's possible that something still does; I was a little worried taking pictures that some creature was going to come flying out of the den!