McMicken Prof and Graduates Dig the Grand Canyon

When you visit the Grand Canyon you probably won’t see signs that professor of anthropology, Alan Sullivan, and three of his former students excavated an ancient settlement there this summer. That’s because the site will have been restored to its original appearance

after the valuable information they recovered has been analyzed and interpreted.

A cooperative project between the National Park Service and Northern Arizona University ( NAU) led to Sullivan’s working with park archaeologist Amy Horn and NAU archaeologist Chris Downum to investigate a seldom-studied group called the Cohonina, who lived in the vicinity of the Grand Canyon and across the Colorado Plateau area between 800 and 1,200 years ago.

Park officials have been aware of the site for about 30 years but chose not to excavate it until it was threatened by a nearby housing development. Sullivan, who has been studying Cohonina and other Native American sites in the region for more than 20 years, began work with his colleagues once the developer met environmental compliance law and paid the $40,000 cost of the new excavation.

Sullivan noted that the Cohonina are an interesting, yet largely unknown, group of ancient Native Americans who migrated seasonally depending on the availability of wild plants, wood, and water. They probably inhabited this particular settlement, which had a deep pit house and an accompanying surface structure, most of the year. He believes it was a “perennial settlement” housing a kin group or household of approximately five to fifteen people. The pit house structure on the site was expected to last only 10-15 years or so and apparently collapsed on itself when it was ritually burned and abandoned.

His team wasn’t searching for human remains, said Sullivan. “The days are long gone when American archaeologists deliberately try to find prehistoric human remains. Today, we avoid them, if at all possible.”

For the professor, one of the most gratifying features of the summer’s research was working with three of his former students, who are McMicken graduates. “It’s rewarding to see your students perform at a level that meets or exceeds the expectations of your colleagues at other institutions, as well as in the federal government.” Daniel Sorrell (BA, anthropology, 1990) is an MA student in the anthropology department at NAU and a long-time employee of the heritage resource division of Kaibab National Forest. Philip Mink (BA, anthropology, 1996; MA anthropology, 1999) is a doctoral student in the anthropology department at the University of Kentucky and a specialist with the Kentucky Archaeological Survey. Christopher Roos (BA, anthropology, 2000) is a doctoral student in the anthropology department at the University of Arizona and is supported by the National Science Foundation.