Ruins with offerings:   The Viking mine.

IT'S UNEXPECTED AND IT'S RIGHT OUT THERE IN PLAIN SIGHT BUT IT DOESN'T LOOK LIKE ANYTHING YOU'D EXPECT AN INCREDIBLE ARCHAEOLOGICAL DISCOVERY TO LOOK LIKE.

Offerings all:  El Mirage Valley.

Today's offerings consist of such everyday items as cans, bottles, wash machines, dryers, freezers, furniture, toilets and particularly, automobiles.

This once great and mighty religion was nearly completely destroyed by the coming of the white man except in remote places in the California desert where to this day it is still practiced with perfect faithfulness and secrecy by desert Indians who have never been seriously proselytized nor forcibly moved from their ancient homelands.

Offering:  Television at isolated ranch that never saw television in its life time

Offering:  Scossa (historic site)

Offering: Typical;  The road to Black Mtn. ranch

Offering:  The road to Hinkley;  Note Jose Cuervo bottle at arm of couch.  Typical.

Upon entering I could see 25 or 30 cans and bottles that just didn't make sense.  There were just too many of them and they weren't all beer and soda cans.  There were mayonnaise and pickle jars and plastic food wrappers and many other kinds of things that have no place in an old, long abandoned mine.  Many were hidden in nooks and crannies.

All that and other oddities convinced me that those cans and bottles were directly related to the cars and hearths outside the mine.

Inside the tunnels I consistently found a bread crumb trail of offerings consisting of all manner of empty food and beverage containers, mostly beer and soda pop cans and bottles but also such inexplicable empty container types as Tide detergent boxes, Arm & Hammer soda boxes, sauerkraut and dog food cans, ivory soap wrappers, Calvin Klein shorts, ladies sanitary supplies and improbable plastic cups of all kinds.

Ruins with offering out on old pole line road:  Note mismatch of fenders

Inside the tunnel the cartridges, shot gun shells, cans and bottles are usually arranged in a distinct bread crumb trail strung out throughout the tunnel.

Often this bread crumb trail of offerings will extend out the mine tunnel to an old dirt mining road.  Then along improved dirt roads.  Then along state and federal highways right up to the on ramps of busy interstates themselves.

Offering:  El Mirage.

Carl and Ed trying to figure it out.  I can tell them and tell them but they just don't get it.

One of the first things California archaeologists noticed when they started studying the desert were piles of broken pottery fragments clearly placed alongside many prehistoric desert foot trails.

They immediately recognized these pottery fragment piles as religious in nature and started calling them 'trailside shrines'

Offering:  No name working mine , Silver Lake area

The Indians still make the old trailside shrines only using modern artifacts but UC anthro has never been able to figure that out.

Offering:  Plush chair.  Typical.  Ruins off hwy. 395

Years ago, riding an old motorcycle out in the Death Valley backcountry I found an exceptional number of broken 1800s wine bottle fragments strung out alongside an old, long forgotten, remote wagon road.

I quickly associated these old Death Valley 1800s wine bottle fragments to the bits of pottery fragments the Indians left as religious offerings alongside old prehistoric foot trails.

Along one old wagon road I found things like 1800s type cans and bottles, pack equipment with old and fashioned square nails and other pre-1900 articles. 

Then with the 20th century along came the automobile.

Old wagon trails morphed into graded dirt roads, then into highways and ultimately into interstates and the old religion never missed a beat as it just kept adjusting to technological advances as they came and went all the while retaining the ancient behaviors, faithfully but secretly.

The monument is the broken, abandoned buildings, the wells, mines, cars, bottles, beds, reefers, toys and just about anything else man made --- all broken and burned and mistaken by the whites for common trash --- all of it connected together like a Hansel and Gretel bread crumb trail coming out of the mines and wells and strung out along every Goddam road, highway, interstate and crapped out old mining road out there.

All the modern roads of California.  The old crapped out mining roads, the highways, the interstates and railroads --- even the historic, long abandoned T&T railroad are all direct analogs to the very mysterious prehistoric roads of Chaco Canyon.

The Shoshoneans never let it die.  It's never finished.  It needs constant replenishment.  The BLM and Forest Service, the railroads and highway departments mistaking the stuff for common trash keep picking up the pieces but the Indians keep coming back and putting it all back together again.  Its a never ending process