Finding Clues

Imagine:  you return to your home after a nice long vacation and a crime has been committed.  What do you do?  You call the police and they collect statements from witnesses and clues from the scene.  They take all this information back and analyze it in order to solve the crime.  If you think about it, archaeologists and paleontologists use many of the same techniques in their work.  The arrowheads from the Virgil and Thelma Linam Collection offer a great example.  I am going to use them in conjunction with Sandy the Mammoth found by Delbert Sanderson.

Try to picture this area 13,000 years ago.  Lush vegetation covered the land, lakes abound, and multiple species of various sizes come to these lakes to drink water.    This was the world of Sandy the Mammoth.  Now take a look outside today:  hardly any vegetation, scarce amounts of water at the surface, and only smaller species of animal surviving in the harsh conditions (compared to the mammoths of 13,000 years ago).  Archaeologists in the Southeastern New Mexico Archaeological society have been digging up Sandy the Mammoth from this dusty terrain.  How did Sandy die?  Why is Sandy in this particular spot?  Here, archaeologists like their forensic counterparts, search for clues to solve a mystery.  Granted, the clues are a little old, but archaeologists use the bones and surrounding area for carbon dating to tell us when this happened.  They look at the soil around the find to try and figure out where it happened.  Archaeologists found four species of aquatic snail so one theory is that Sandy is in a prehistoric lakebed.  But why is he or she there?  No human artifacts have been found to date, but what if they had?  What if an arrow like the ones from the Virgil and Thelma Linam Collection had been found near Sandy the Mammoth?  Then the question might be:  Was this a kill site?  Was this a butchering site?  In that case are there other animal bones around?  Was the lake used to preserve the meat like a refrigerator?  All the clues found, and not found, bring up more questions.  The story of Sandy the Mammoth may never be solved, but archaeologists follow the clues to create several theories of what might have happened.

I’d like to invite you now to come test your own detective skills.  Our newest traveling exhibit, Crime Lab Detective, takes the scenario from the beginning of this article and makes it the Johnson’s house and puts you in the role of expert.  You will need to listen to the statements, gather the clues, and do the analysis in the lab.  Can you catch the criminal?  Crime Lab Detective is open January 24 – May 5, 2013 at the Western Heritage Museum at New Mexico Junior College.  And while you are here, be sure to check out the arrowheads in the Virgil and Thelma Linam Collection.