Arizona woman's donation brings 90 Four Corners artifacts home

Arizona woman's donation brings 90 Four Corners artifacts home

December 27, 2001

By Shane Benjamin
Durango Herald Staff Writer

Two-thousand-year-old artifacts unearthed in the 1930s and carted around the nation have been returned to Southwest Colorado where they were found.

Katharine McLain Bergfield has donated 90 pots to the Center of Southwest Studies at Fort Lewis College. The pots are a mix of basketmaker ceramics and Ancestral Puebloan pottery, said Andrew Gulliford, director of the Center of Southwest Studies.

"These materials are from Montezuma County and the Four Corners area," Gulliford said. "They have left the state, and we’re bringing them back."

The pots were found in the 1930s by Charles W. McLain, who was vice dean of FLC, which was a two-year community college in Hesperus at the time. McLain documented the artifacts and also painted water colors of the pieces, Gulliford said.

The collection was divided among McLain’s three daughters, and just recently, Katharine Bergfield decided to donate her third to the Center of Southwest Studies. The pottery arrived Thursday.

McLain and a friend, Homer Root, a Methodist minister, enjoyed archaeology and together would excavate pots, said Bergfield on Thursday from her home in Sedona, Ariz. They would get permission from farmers to go on their property and look for artifacts, and both kept careful track of what they found and where, she said.

"That was back in the day when (pot-hunting) was not frowned on quite so much," she said.

Bergfield, 73, has kept the pots on display at her home in Arizona, but the desert climate was causing some to dry out and crack. "I was very fearful that they were going to disintegrate," she said.

An FLC graduate, Bergfield decided to donate the pots to the center, believing they would be safe in the new $7.6 million building.

"I’m sure they have good conditions in the new building," she said.

Gulliford said more and more people are making "critical decisions" to donate things they cherish to museums and cultural centers such as the Center of Southwest Studies to ensure they are kept safe.

"Our role is to keep them and maintain them – protect them," Gulliford said. "Just like the McLains have been stewards, we will now be stewards of this collection."

The 90-piece collection includes mugs, canteens, bowls, seed jars and pitchers from the Durango and Montezuma County area, he said. To look at one of the bowls and be in the presence of it is like being in a time machine and receiving a message from 2,000 years ago, Gulliford said.

He also said the center will work with tribes that are interested in the artifacts. For example, the Puebloans consider the artifacts a gift from their ancestors and may be interested in seeing whether some of the patterns used then are still used today, he said.

Anthropology professor Mona Charles envisions FLC students using literature to trace the patterns throughout history. By doing so, they will learn Ancestral Puebloan culture and the meaning of the patterns, Charles said.

Bergfield said her sisters want to hold onto their parts of their father’s collection but might decide to donate the pieces to the center in the future. One sister lives in Texas and the other in North Dakota.

"They probably will do the same thing, but it may not be for awhile yet," she said.