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| 3/24/2009 6:00:00 AM | Email this article • Print this article | Project cultivates
virtual Puebloans
Crow Canyon uses computer-simulated community, Native American-grown corn to study historic culture
Hope Nealson
Journal Staff Writer
Ancestors of the Mesa Verde region's Puebloan people are helping researchers gain insight into the area's sustainable farming practices.
Two Hopi farmers with the Hopi Cultural Preservation Office, Donald Dawahongnewa and Marvin Lalo, shared their experiences with a standing-room-only crowd at the Crow Canyon Archeological Center near Cortez this month as part of the Pueblo Farming Project.
As a descendant of Ancestral Puebloans, Dawahongnewa said growing corn is a strong tradition that was handed down to him through the ages.
Explaining their role in the project, the two farmers shared their experience learning to grow corn, and shared their history and relationship with corn.
"The reason why I'm in this project with them is I like to educate. It has to do with my clan," Dawahongnewa, of the Water and Corn Clan, said in an interview.
"We're the clan that wants people to have nourishment of rain and crops, and so with that, I devote my time to something like this - teaching people how to tend their children, who are their crops. Crops are just like a child. That's how I look at plants."
The crop yields from three experimental corn plots will be plugged into a computer-simulated, virtual, 600 A.D. Mesa Verde region in which 200 ancient Pueblo farm families live. The computer simulation will help archaeologists glean insights into Ancestral Puebloans' habits and relationship with the land.
Geographic, soil and lifestyle data about the 600 A.D. era, along with historic weather patterns based on tree rings, will help create conditions in the virtual 600 A.D. world for the 200 Ancestral Puebloan families.
"Through that simulation, we're measuring the 700 years between humans and their environment and what their impact on the land would have been," said Mark Varien, vice president of programs at Crow Canyon Archaeological Center.
Through the Pueblo Farming Project, researchers hope to learn how Ancestral Puebloans lived and farmed in the region for centuries, why they left, and what role sustainability played in agriculture, Varien said.
Dryland agriculture, which has a short growing season with little moisture, makes the selection of the seed and field locations important to ensure optimum crop yields, Varien said.
Three of the 20 contemporary Pueblo tribes, Hopi, Jemez and Ohkay Owingeh, decided where to place the three garden plots in the eastern campus of Crow Canyon. Each of the plots measures about 100 by 200 feet.
"One of the weaknesses (of the simulation) is we use modern yields. ... (But) using the same techniques the Ancient Puebloans would have used, the model will improve," Varien said.
Contemporary Puebloans will practice the same methods that enabled their ancestors to support the transition from hunting and gathering to agricultural.
"Being a farmer - and the plant of corn itself - has deep meaning for Pueblo people," Varien said. "Nothing is more essential to them as being a farmer and the planting of corn. They don't separate the physical aspects of farming and the spiritual.
"The Hopi still use digging sticks and the traditional methods of dry farming."
As a result, the project is twofold. In addition to gathering scientific and crop yield information, it is a documentary on the ways and beliefs surrounding the Pueblo's crop of choice: corn.
The project began seven years ago when Crow Canyon received a federal grant from the National Science Foundation for a biocomplexity study, Varien said.
Studies measuring variations in temperatures were conducted and recorded to help scientists and researchers understand how ancient people chose locations for corn, beans and other crops.
The original boundary of the computer-generated world covered Canyons of the Ancients National Monument, including Goodman Point Pueblo, where an estimated 500 to 750 people once lived.
With the help of a second grant from the science foundation, the virtual world has been expanded to include Mesa Verde and part of the Rio Grande area, to which Puebloans are thought to have migrated.
"We run the simulation with the families making all these groups of decisions, and we are always comparing where the virtual farm families are to where the known (archaeological) sites are," Varien said.
Population growth and decline and the impact of the long-term settlement of this region will be studied, tracking each computer-simulated individual's choices in relation to 20,000 known archaeological sites, Varien said. As in "real" life, people live and die, with some having accidents and others creating extended families.
"If their farm fails because of bad weather, do they move or trade with an area family? If they move, how far do they search for a new farm - five or 10 kilometers away?" Those are a few of the questions researchers will try to answer, Varien said.
The modern plots of corn at Crow Canyon are smaller than an average Ancestral Puebloan family farm size was estimated to have been - about nine acres, according to Varien. However, the data will be extrapolated to accommodate the simulation.
Contemporary elders are growing a blue corn, a yellow corn, a sweet corn and a kachina corn, which is a mixture of white, red and yellow kernels passed out during ceremonies.
On the Net: Crow Canyon Archaeological Center, www.crowcanyon.org.
Reach Hope Nealson at hopen@cortezjournal.com.
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Reader Comments
Posted: Wednesday, March 25, 2009
Article comment by:
Peter Nadon
Excellent Gentleman, If only I could grow corn like this!
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