The Sedona Heritage Museum concluded its spring Sedona Stories speaker series on April 10 with “Forty Years Documenting Sedona’s Cultural History,” a talk by Neil Weintraub, a retired and self-described “accidental archaeologist” with the U.S. Forest Service. Weintraub took the opportunity to reflect on his career in Sedona, beginning with the motion sickness he experienced in the summer of 1985 while driving down the State Route 89A switchbacks of Oak Creek Canyon to pick up excavation equipment from the Forest Service at Crescent Moon Ranch while working with the Iowa-based Grinnell College Archaeological Field School.

“I had no idea I would be here more than two months when I was expecting to go back to the New York City metropolitan area. I had wanted to be a math teacher,” Weintraub said. “I was going to go get a teaching certificate and coach baseball, because I was a baseball player through my collegiate career at Grinnell College.”

He said that he was originally a math and computer science major but struggled with the math, so his professors suggested he take more anthropology courses to stay on track for graduation. They invited him to join a summer excavation at Lizard Man Village, a small Sinagua pueblo and pit house site near Winona, where Weintraub, a long-distance runner who would much later become the cofounder Northern Arizona Trail Runners Association in 2001, discovered the challenges of high altitudes.

“My first run … I was asphyxiating, and my professor gave me an artifact back, and that was the last time I ran that summer,” Weintraub remembered. He said that one of the discoveries he had most appreciated was a fire pit at Lizard Man Village.

“Touching the past like that just lit me up,” Weintraub said. “When we got down to [excavating] along the floor, one of the important features that we were looking for was a fire pit, a hearth. In part because it would probably have remnants of burned wood we could carbon-date. But for me it was also the idea that at some point in the 11th or 12th century, these people decided to pick up and move elsewhere, and those were probably the ashes from their last fire at the site. It was the feeling that I was connecting with the past that caught my interest.”

After starting his professional archaeological career as a research assistant and field archaeologist with the Museum of Northern Arizona in 1986, where he worked on sites such as the Elden Pueblo Camp, Weintraub went on to become an archaeological technician with the U.S. Forest Service in the Coconino National Forest in 1988. He was promoted to the position of archaeologist for the Kaibab National Forest in June 1990 and held the position until his retirement in September 2020. Weintraub said that he spent most of his career ensuring the Forest Service met its obligations under the National Historic Preservation Act of 1966, the National Environmental Policy Act of 1969 and various tribal laws.

“Learning from traditional knowledge and people’s practices such as the use of native plants and gathering practices was incredibly rewarding,” Weintraub said. “Additionally, through the consultation process, we learned a lot about sacred places and how to work together respectfully. One of the most rewarding experiences was doing spring restoration, especially in collaboration with the Hopi.”

Another of Weintraub’s projects was the excavation of Tim’s Cave, discovered by helicopter sightseers on July21, 1991, which revealed three intact Southern Sinagua pots described as the “find of a lifetime” in the Sedona Red Rock News on Aug. 9, 1991.

“The pots were in a cave, close to a small cliff dwelling … in the wilderness near Sedona,” the NEWS reported. “Officials would not release the exact location of the site for its protection.”

The site was named after Tim Seagle, who had worked with Coconino National Forest archaeologist Peter Pilles and died from cystic fibrosis in 1976.

“Ironically, Seagle’s brother Andy was among the members of a helicopter tour who discovered [the cave] and contacted the Forest Service,” the NEWS reported. “Warren Cramer, Mason Romney and Nancy Nenad were also abroad the helicopter flown by David Windwalker of Arizona Helicopter Adventures.” Manufactured between approximately 1250 and 1350 CE, the unglazed, reddish-brown pots are examples of Tuzigoot Plain ceramics, identifiable by their unique dark markings known as “fire clouds.” The site also included a 30- gallon jar.

“Usually, you find [just one] pot in a cave. Finding a group of pots suggests they were all used used for a major purpose. I can tell it could cook for more than 15 people,” Pilles told the NEWS.

“After we figured out the location,” Weintraub said, “we had to carry a ladder two miles in the wilderness to access [it]. We did this during the course of a hot July muggy day, with the monsoons on the horizon. And we’re carrying an aluminum ladder. I’m thinking, this better be worth it.”

Weintraub said documenting Tim’s Cave was one of the most exciting things he did in his career. Weintraub also discussed another of his career highlights, documenting 72 archaeological sites in Boynton Canyon using 1972 aerial photographs for site mapping over a period of 34 days.

“The result of that was sort of getting the baseline documentation of what was going on in Boynton Canyon ahead of when a lot of the effects were, but we were already seeing people digging, putting crystals inside some of the archeological sites,” Weintraub said.“That behavior [is] illegal, but there was no signage at the time to tell people otherwise. So when you go on a hike today, almost every trailhead has really good signage about how you treat and respect archaeological sites. I like what’s been done down here. I think it’s made a huge difference.”

Weintraub is also a volunteer site steward with the Arizona Site Steward Program, an organization that reports looting or vandalism at archaeological sites to the relevant land manager. For more information about the program visit asspfoundation.org