Balke Site

Stephen E. Nash

14 May 1999

The Field Museum curates 41 artifacts from the problematic locus known as the Balke Site. Also known as "Balke Earth Dam" in the Martin archives, this site may have been assigned one of the following Laboratory of Anthropology site numbers LA 9727, LA 9728, LA 9729, LA 9730, or LA 9733. Martin and crew excavated at least one pithouse at the Balke Site in 1950 (Figure 1), though their work was never published.

Figure 1: Negative number 93228. Photo of excavated pithouse at Balke Site.
Artifacts

Three manos and one bone are from the Balke Site, with subsite information listed as "B-1", "B-2", "B-3", and "Trench" respectively. The meaning of the first three of these designations is uncertain and not obviously connected to Martin's previous methods of pithouse excavation, though the "Trench" is consistent with previous usage. One bag of 37 sherds is from the "Site at Balke Ranch House on Blue River", which is almost certainly the same site. The subsite proveniences listed in the sherd tabulation are consistent with Martin's excavation methods, making the "B-#" designations more problematic. Perhaps these are field numbers.


Excavation Records

There are no excavation records or field number lists available for the Balke Site.


Photographic Records

Three photographs in volume 35N of the (negative numbers 93227, 93228, and 93229) Department of Anthropology's photograph archives show the pithouse at the Balke Site during and after excavation. From these photographs it is clear that the excavation of this pithouse proceeded in typical fashion: The depression was bisected with a trench, side-walls were delineated with a circular trench, then the two fill baulks were removed. One negative (93227) indicates that the site may be included in Martin's movie of the 1950 expedition (Figure 2).
Figure 2: Photo of Balke site pithouse during excavations

Accession and Catalog Files

The Balke Site materials were never formally accessioned or catalogued, nor were they published. Accordingly, there are almost no paper records on this site on file at the Museum. Two sherd tabulation sheets can be found in Folder 2 of Box SW 4 of the Department of Anthropology Archives. These include the following tabulations for a "pithouse" at "Balky Earth Dam":

Trench Fill Fill Floor
Alma Plain 30 15 130 175
Alma Rough
16 4 20
San Francisco Red 11 7 7 25
Reserve Smudged 15
52 67
Total 56 38 193 287

A second sheet contains the following:


Trench Trench [sic?] Total
Alma Plain 11 19 30
Alma Rough 7 4 11
San Francisco Red 3 12 15
Total 21 35 56

Given that only 37 of 343 (11%) are currently present in the Museum collections, and that these are from an unknown provenience at the site. It is likely that this sample represents an arbitrary "representative" sample, because there are corrugated, polished and plainwares present.


Synthesis

John Rinaldo noted in an unpublished manuscript (Rinaldo n.d.: 1) that excavations at the Balke Site provide corroborative evidence about the Pine Lawn Phase in west-central New Mexico.


Prospects

The limited collection from this site is perhaps best utilized for technological andy typological groundstone analyses. The sherds are largely redundant with collections from other sites in the area, provenience information is questionable at best, and the bone present, while well preserved, is the scapula of only one individual.

References Cited

Rinaldo n.d. "Notes on Minor Excavations in the Reserve Area, West Central New Mexico." Unpublished manuscript sent to us by Alan Ferg, Archivist at Arizona State Museum. Dates post-1955



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