A group of BYU professors and students braved the heat of the Mexican desert in search of ancient artifacts.
Instead, they were looking for ancient artifacts, some of which had been buried for 1,000 years and consisted of pottery shards, hammer stones, maize kernels and — peculiar when considering it was found at a location 250 miles inland — a shell bead from the Pacific Ocean.
"What makes it significant is that it's in this desert valley, yet these people found ways to harness the water, build this massive city and then also support the populations not only of the site itself of Paquimé, but also all the neighboring sites all around," Searcy said. To document its discoveries, the team used advanced technology, including robotic surveying instruments that map artifacts with millimeter-level precision, survey-grade GPS and unmanned aerial systems that take images of the site from the sky.
Their hypothesis turned out to be correct and the team unearthed a 4- to 5-meter-diameter "pit house" near the larger communal structure. These questions are what drive Searcy and Ure's research and why they've been so fascinated with Paquimé and its surrounding areas. The discoveries the team made, Searcy said, "feeds into this idea that they went from a rather more simple life to one that was urbanized."
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