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What looked like snow in a Colorado field turned out to be an archaeological treasure for Rodney Denardo. As part of his job as an archaeologist with the USDA Forest Service, he was surveying an area north of Aspen, where timber removal was scheduled, for evidence of historic or prehistoric human habitation. The white material turned out to include thousands of pieces of chert and quartzite—remains of tools, projectile points, and other scattered remnants.
“That’s why it’s great working out here,” said Denardo. “In Pennsylvania, there’s so much silt and sediment that you may have to dig a few meters under the ground, sometimes so deep you have to use a ladder. Out here, you only have to dig a couple of inches through sand or sediment and then you’re at bedrock. You walk around and it’s lying all over the place.” Denardo currently works in the White River National Forest, deep in the Rocky Mountains. A large part of his job involves traveling to areas that are scheduled for development—trails, ski runs, building or dam construction, pipeline routes—and surveying the timber and fields for signs of past human habitation. As the areas are undeveloped, his travels are usually on foot. Many of the sites found are related to the Ute Indian tribe. The level of trust between the tribe and the Forest Service has grown over the years. “The Indians visit us and tell us where their sacred sites are,” he said. “It’s their heritage, and it’s important that they trust us enough to release that information.” The Forest Service tells the Utes immediately if they find something relating to their past so the tribe can decide what to do with the site and artifacts. “I can give my best guess as to what something is, based on the evidence at the site,” said Denardo. “But having the people help us who actually know is great.”
The opportunity to work outside and find objects that hadn’t been touched in hundreds or thousands of years fascinated Denardo. “You’re always finding something new, you’re always learning,” he said. “You never know what you’re going to come up with.”
He’s not complaining, though, even though his walks have taken him through the Badlands of North Dakota and the cornfields of Kansas where, as he said, “you don’t know where you’re at because the corn’s ten feet tall and you can’t follow your map.” Denardo believes he has one of the best archaeology jobs a person can get. “To listen to the Utes and relay their history to the public, plus the fact that I get to see some of the most beautiful country in America. I can hike through snowdrifts and alpine terrain to the top of a 14,000 foot mountain, or travel the whole way to the western part of the state where it becomes desert. Here I am, doing what I never knew that I really wanted to do.” All photos courtesy of Rodney Denardo
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Denardo and his
associate documented the site and took some samples back to their lab,
where they discovered that the pieces were from the early Paleoindian
era (approximately 9-10,000 B.C.).
Denardo met his wife,
Nicole, in Colorado. She is a registered nurse in the city of Rifle,
where they live with their children, Kylee and Megan. “It’s funny, my
main supervisor is married to a nurse, and his assistant is married to a
nurse, and we’re not the only ones,” he said. “Maybe it’s because of all
the walking, the leg and back pain, I don’t know…”