A Preliminary Geophysical Study Involving Remote Sensing at the Archaeological Site Trinchera Cave, Colorado

Resistivity, magnetic, seismic, and geodetic surveys were performed at Trinchera cave, an archaeological site ∼50 km east of Trinidad, Colorado, in order to locate the foundation walls of an ancient jacal structure. This structure, a shelter built during the Apishapa phase (earlier than 750 years before present), was reported - and backfilled - during a 1974 excavation; recent excavations have failed to again find it. The cave is a ∼8 m high overhang, the bottom of which marks the contact between the Dakota formation (yellowish-brown, fine-grained sandstone) and the underlying Purgatoire formation (bedded, organic-rich shale). The foundation was reported to be made of blocks of sandstone surrounded by cave fill/soil that is estimated to be 1.5 m thick in the cave. A total station survey mapped the topography beneath the overhang (the cave, ∼30 by 8 m) and within the adjacent creek. This part of the study should be useful to tie together future archaeological and geophysical work. Our magnetic map of the area is inconclusive due to the presence of metallic pipes left at the site by previous excavations and because of the overhang. Seismic refraction tests yielded varying thicknesses of the cave fill (0.7-2.3 m); however we experienced problems with the equipment in the field and realized that a 1-D model is insufficient to explain the data. A future reflection experiment might produce more useful seismic data. Our most reliable results were obtained by resistivity profiling. They show a more resistive structure in the SW part of the cave, about 1 m from the overhang and at a model depth of 2 m. We interpret this as the `lost' foundation.