The Atrisco Sites: Cochise Manifestations in the Middle Rio Grande Valley

Abstract

Since the excavation of Bat Cave and the location of Cochise implements in situ along the banks of Wet Leggett Wash in western New Mexico, it has seemed likely that one or more of the Cochise periods might be represented in the Middle Rio Grande area where living conditions would have appeared very attractive to hunters and gatherers. In 1949 Bruce T. Ellis collected a series of artifacts, spalls, and cores in and along the surface of a wash in the Atrisco Grant, lying some 3 to 5 miles west of the city of Albuquerque. Most of the 72 possible implements were of such irregular and haphazard design that both Ellis and E. B. Sayles (who examined a representative group of specimens) felt that their identification as objects of human manufacture was open to considerable question. But the remaining group of pressure flaked blades and scrapers, the single point, a slab metate of volcanic scoria with slightly concave surface, and a number of one-handed grinding stones led to hope that further search might locate such materials in position, with the small manos, especially, suggesting Cochise affiliations.