The Naco Mammoth Excavation:
Interview with George Cattanach

Welcome to the Arizona State Museum podcasts.

Today we join George Cattanach, the last surviving member of the student crew that excavated ASM’s famous 12,000 year old mammoth in the early 1950’s. Dr. Cattanach talks about his experiences at the kill site near Naco, AZ, working under the direction of pre-eminent archaeologist Emil Haury.

Oh, I think we all realized the importance of it. I think, kids like we were, are not super impressed by things, other than the fact that "Gee, this is nice to get a chance to get in on the ground floor of an interesting discovery like this". But we'd read about Clovis sites, in the literature. So, it was just fun to be involved with it.

Clovis fluted points embedded in a mammoth ribcage. That's interesting. It's unusual. It's rare.

Well, it was. Yeah. That was the part we didn't know, until when we got down there, what we would find, of course.

As far as digging it up goes, I was the one who kicked out the first point. But, it was in the back dirt, more or less. That's what bothered me is I thought I had knocked it out of place. Haury came along. We looked at it and decided, no. He said it was just in some of the fill. So, it wasn't a problem

Yeah.

...to have found that, I bet.

It was yaooo... [inaudible]

[laughter]

You were not expecting to find more projectile points, were you?

Well, I don't know that we were expecting anything particularly. Just, we hoped we'd find projectile points or tools or whatever. We didn't know. So...

Were you afraid of making any mistakes, when you were excavating?

Oh, not too much. We were pretty well trained by Emil. So, We knew how to be careful.

No, I had my first stint with Ted Smiley. I was busy working on the rib cage and turned around and all my back dirt was being cleaned out by Ernst Antevs, Dr. Antevs. He was just busy shoveling my back dirt. None of these people, down there, stood on ceremony at all. They had Lance and Antes and Ted Sales and Emil Haury.

And, other people came in occasionally. It was just a lot of fun.

Any funny stories during the days of the Naco dig, when you were down in Bisbee?

Think we curled the hair a little bit, of the Copper Queen Hotel, because Hayden Russell came across the border and into the Hotel. It wasn't on the border but, when we got to the hotel, he was carrying two demijohns of rum. And, I don't that went over too well, with the people in the hotel. [laughter]

And, of course, we had some tequila, after the dig was over, as you know. I really can't think of anything particularly humorous there. We just had a good time: a lot of fun kidding back and forth and all that but nothing world shattering.

That was in the day, when you could carry people in the back of a pickup truck. Can't do that today.

Would you have gone from Tuscon all the way out there in the back of a pickup?

I rather doubt it.

Yeah. That's a little far.

Yeah. I mean, I don't mind the ride, but I don't think Emil would have wanted to do that, particularly. If you remember,

I was a mere little student, at the time. I worked at the university from '48 to '51, but, by '52, I was just a full‑time student: undergraduate then graduate student not knowing what to expect. So, we looked forward to finding something worthwhile. So, it was a lot of fun.

But, there were four of us students out there. We volunteered to go out, I guess what was it, Easter holiday or something? April 14th to 18th, I think. 1952 was the date. Sure, we were interested, because we were volunteering our time and a good chance to get into the dig business.

[looking at photo from Archives] Yeah. The four of us, Hayden Russell, Al Olsen (the guy in the foreground I think) Garland Marrs, and me. Talk about a stellar crew. Boy! [laughs] Haury may have had his doubts, but, anyway, he put up with us.

This was the day, before global positioning system and all that.

And, how did you end up being the photographer?

I don't know, because I'd done work. I wasn't the only one that did that. Yeah. I was familiar with the camera equipment and all that. That's probably why. No. I think a lot of people probably took pictures there.

[looking at photo from Archives] I think Doc's just sketching the ribs, but that's the sort of thing he was sketching, of course, that part of the ribcage, any points that were visible, and any other artifacts that were around.

And, this is likely the point that you found.

Probably. Yeah. Since it doesn't seem to be involved with the ribcage, I'd assume so.

And, that was probably very exciting. The first one to...

Oh, yeah, well, it was exciting, but, also,… I was afraid I had knocked one loose from the ribcage. So, I was a little bit scared, at the time, thinking I had just screwed things up royally, but it turned out I hadn't. But, we were being very careful, of course. But, since it was in back dirt, probably hit it with a shovel or something like that. I don't remember now.

[looking at photo from Archives] That looks like my old trowel. I don't know if it is or not. Well worn to a nub by now.

How did you decide which area of the assemblage to save?

It was a decision made after everything was in place. Probably Emil said, "This would make a nice exhibit," or whatever. "Let's take out about a meter square." That seemed to be practical from the standpoint of where you could cut and not lose anything significant. We just wanted to be careful we didn't disturb the bone assemblage where the projectile points were.

No, it wasn't scary at all, just a lot of hard work to make sure we didn't damage anything, and do it properly so we'd have the potential for an exhibit later on. Of course, I don't know that anybody knew what would happen eventually.

[looking at photo from Archives] Now this part seems like it would have been scarier to actually lift.

Actually we tunneled underneath so it wasn't scary, just we didn't want to go too high and damage the bone structure from underneath. So we had to allow enough space.

Had you or, to your knowledge, Haury, done a lift like this before?

I don't think so. Certainly not on mammoth, of course. It was newspaper and cloth strips and plaster of Paris and good old H2O and that was about it.

Was it the first time you did that sort of preservation, with the plaster?

First time I did, yeah.

You mentioned the newspaper. Did people from the newspaper come out while you were doing this dig?

I don't know if they did or not. After we got back to the State Museum I know Haury was interviewed by a reporter. He got pretty upset one time because he wasn't used to this sort of thing. He'd spelled it out and I think he looked at the copy but when it came out in the newspaper it had lots of errors in it.

The thing I liked, and got a charge out of—I still have that clipping—is a clipping of Haury and Betty, my wife, and the caption was, "Dr. Emil Haury and Mrs. George Cattanach, who excavated the mammoth." You know she didn't excavate the mammoth. That's the kind of little things the newspapers tend to foul up.

Is there an area on the site where you spent most of your time?

Of course I obviously was working on the ribcage and doing other things. I think we all were doing what was needed. You know, "Hey, George. Come over here. We need somebody. Get a handle on this thing." So, you know, it's that kind of situation. Whoever is handy, they grab and we all did our share and had a lot of fun doing it.

We were a little concerned about doing some damage, of course, that was the big problem. We didn't want to displace any of the artifacts from the ribcage nor damage what had a potential to be a useful exhibit, if they ever wanted to do that, the lift. ...

You weren't worried about the stability of the underside as you were pulling up or was it pretty stable?

No, it was all packed in dirt. That's another reason it might have been a little damp, because obviously it wasn't falling apart, so that probably is the reason. But we left enough margin there so there was a fairly good chunk of earth under there and by having fairly closely spaced two‑by‑fours then you could lift the whole thing without losing everything. Once we got it up, of course, then you could go ahead and get rid of a lot of the excess dirt.

[looking at photo from Archives] It says this is a slide showing putting the plaster on the reversed over a wire mesh?

Yeah, it was a metal lathe. I think in my little book I called it wire mesh or something else but it looks there like it's a regular metal lathe. That was my one contribution to that. I think I was the one that suggested that, for some reason, I don't know why.

And then this was put in the back of this pickup truck?

The old pickup truck, yeah.

That was Emil's truck?

It probably is, I can't guarantee that. But it was fun, sure. We were looking forward to finding something, hoping we would because we knew that the Navarettes had already uncovered material, found material, so we knew there was likely to be more material.

But Emil was always a very nice person to work with. I think we all learned a lot from him. I think at that time most of us were looking forward to having an opportunity to get in and learn excavation skills and work with Haury and a chance to learn something. But we all had a good time, we had a lot of fun. We learned a lot and met a lot of interesting people.