Colleagues,
One more message about our scallop-edged sheet metal artifacts: in the text I sent around yesterday, I noted that the 1860 US census of New Mexico includes one Ygnacio Valdez, a "tinner" living in Cuyamungue, the community in and near which we have been working. And, I hinted that it would be interesting if Ygnacio turned out to be related to Vicente Valdez, the owner of the rancho at site LA 4968, where we found the artifacts in question. As it turns out, Ygnacio's father was one Juan de Jesus Valdez, the same name as an older brother of Vicente Valdez. No other Juan de Jesus Valdez is found in Vicente's family tree, which is an important thing to know since the name Juan de Jesus is pretty common. It appears, then, that Ygnacio was Vicente's nephew.
Additionally, the 1860 census shows that Ygnacio's home was the second home visited by the census-taker after visiting Vicente's home. Vicente's home, part of his rancho, was isolated by a couple of miles from the village of Cuyamungue (still within the "community"), and the rancho had at least three residential structures, two of which we did not get to dig. I speculate, with no other corroborating evidence than the artifacts and the possibility that proximity of census visitation implies proximity of residence, that Ygnacio's family (including his wife, two kids, and an Apache "servant"), might have also been living at LA 4968, but certainly cannot demonstrate that.
Now I'm done with this, at least for the report, but, again, many thanks to all who participated.
Jeff

Jeffrey L. Boyer, RPA
Supervisory Archaeologist/Project Director
Office of Archaeological Studies, Museum of New Mexico

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"The past is a foreign country: they do things differently there." -L. P. Hartley, The Go-Between, 1953