Garfield/Rio Vista Collection

Collection Description

The Garfield/Rio Vista Collection was generated by the 1973 NMSU Summer Archaeology Field School which took place at the Garfield Site (LA 1082) which is also known as Rio Vista.

In 1973, former UM Director Dr. Stanley D. Bussey ran an NMSU summer field school at the Garfield/Rio Vista site. The Garfield Site is a large Mimbres site that is located on both private property and federal lands that are administered by the Bureau of Land Management (BLM), Las Cruces District office (Mayo 1994, 15). NMSU’s 1973 field school project at the Garfield Site was conducted exclusively on BLM land.

Fieldwork for the 1973 season at Garfield entailed excavation of more than 30 test pits, trenches, and features; the site was largely dug in arbitrary (6”, 12”, and 20”) levels, through not all excavation areas could be evaluated (Mayo 1994, 22). Depths were inconsistently logged as either below datum or below surface. It seems like excavations were composed of test pits and trenches. It is not clear whether screening was used. It seems like individual units were assigned a feature number. The artifact collection that resulted from this fieldwork is property of the BLM. While the UM is serving as a long term repository for this collection, and is fulfilling the role of custodian, the UM has no claim to title of the Garfield/Rio Vista Collection.

Materials from the 1973 Garfield Site field school were originally stored at the NMSU Seed House. The Garfield/Rio Vista Collection was later moved to Kent Hall and storage units on Research Drive (Mayo 1994, 16–17). To the best of Craig’s understanding, with the exception of two burials (Mayo 1994, 136), as of 2022, all of the Garfield/Rio Vista Collections were located in Kent Hall.

Craig reviewed Mayo’s (1994) BA thesis for information on the Garfield Rio Vista Collection, particularly as it pertains to museum records. Mayo (1994, 23) writes that “[i]n the spring of 1990, an inventory of the Garfield collection was conducted.” Other records indicate that “accession” numbers were assigned two years later in 1992, and Mayo’s (1994) thesis was completed two years after that. It looks like Garfield was “accessioned” at the feature level.

Craig and Gilbreath searched the UM’s accession binders and object records files for further information (Figure 1). The accession binder which covers the year 1992 is missing from the UM; Craig has been searching for this binder since 2023. File cabinets housing object record files contained a folder that was labeled 92.3.1 but that folder is empty.

It bears mention that accessioning is a declaration of title (Simmons and Kiser 2020), which the UM was not legally authorized to do for the Garfield/Rio Vista Collection because it is federal property under the jurisdiction of the BLM. Though accession numbers were assigned to objects in the Garfield/Rio Vista Collection, these objects never became property of the UM. In 1993, the collection was accessioned as 92.3.1; today this would be written as 1992.03.¹

Figure 1: Kent Hall 210 showing the location of accession binders and object record files that were searched by Craig and Gilbreath.

Craig noticed that some of the Garfield/Rio Vista boxes are numbered while others do not appear numbered. Mayo (1994) gives no indication about box numbering. The numbers on the boxes appeared recent.

Among the boxes, Craig found a clipboard with some sheets of paper indicating that an inventory was attempted. Barely affixed to the paperwork was an upside down post-it note that contained text in Arakawa’s handwriting that read “Original Garfield Inventory Data. Fumi 5/28/23”. Some of the boxes bear a 2023 date while others do not. Craig thinks Arakawa attempted a bag level inventory but it is unclear whether or not that inventory was ever completed. When looking inside the boxes, it is evident that new tags were created. Dates on the tags indicate the work was done some time during 2023. Craig suspects that Arakawa directed students to do some work on the Garfield/Rio Vista collection, perhaps as part of a class. However, it is unclear what Arakawa directed the students to do because other than the post-it note, there is no documentation of the inventory process or work completed. It looks like each box was completed by a different student or small group of students. Different boxes appear to have been approached in different ways; this likely explains the numbering of some boxes while others remained unnumbered. In addition, there appears to be considerable variation in the tagging and rebagging from box to box.

Figure 2: Paper records encountered with Garfield/Rio Vista Collection

Tags are of varying quality and at least initially appear incomplete. For example, a number of the bags just contain an FS Code, count, weight, inventory date, and comments. These tags give no indication of unit, level, or feature. However, some of the older bags appear to contain more information that is written in sharpie but unfortunately this writing is wearing off and may soon be illegible.

In 2024, Gilbreath counted 14 boxes and determined which boxes were numbered and which were not (Note 1).

Note 1: Garfield Box Numbers

Seven boxes were numbered: 1, 2, 3, 10 (x2), 15, and 16 with 10 being used twice. Given that there are 14 boxes, it is puzzling to find boxes labeled 15 and 16. Craig has no explanation for this and has yet to encounter documentation that accounts for this discrepancy.

Tracking objects in PastPerfect requires some kind of a code or object identifier. Rather than using the accession number which is improper, and appears to have been inconsistently applied (Mayo 1994), Craig decided to track the Garfield/Rio Vista Collection as a long term incoming loan based on the existing “accession” numbers.

Therefore, for the 2024 box level inventory, Craig directed Gilbreath to assign an IL number to each box. This IL number builds on the “accession” that was created in 1992, and takes the form IL1992.03.## where IL1992.03 carries forward the general “accession” for the entire collection. The third place ## is the box number. Where boxes were found to already have numbers (i.e. Note 1), presumably assigned by students in 2023 under Arakawa’s direction, these were used.

For the seven boxes that were not numbered, WHAT DID WE DO?

WHERE WERE THE BOX NUMBERS LOCATED; HOW DID GILBREATH FIND THEM?

where the third digit is a box number then we’ll inventory the boxes using this code. We’ll also put a sticker on the box indicating the IL and box number. These will be photographed and added to PastPerfect.

Tags were created for the box level inventory. The tags read: “IL1992,03.XX Box XX, YYYY-MM-DD, NMC and JG”. Tags were affixed to the outside of each box.

Figure 1: Kent Hall 210 showing the location of accession binders and object record files that were searched by Craig and Gilbreath. Figure 2: Paper records encountered with Garfield/Rio Vista Collection

References

Mayo, Jill Ellen. 1994. “Garfield Revisited: Further Research on a Mimbres Site in the Southern Rio Grande Valley.” PhD thesis, Las Vegas, NM.

Simmons, John E., and Toni M. Kiser. 2020. “3B Acquisitions and Accessioning.” In, edited by John E. Simmons and Toni M. Kiser, 6th edition. Lanham Boulder New York London: Rowan & Littlefield.

Footnotes

1. Accessions are binomials (i.e. YYYY.## like 1992.03) and object identifiers are trinomials based on the accession binomial (ie.e YYYY.##.##) like 1992.03.01 for the first object in the collection).