All day we spotted Archaic manos, grinding stones, whole or broken–this in terrain we’d hiked for decades. What was it about today?

First mano. Front elevation, rear elevation, then back into its nest for the next few thousand years:

More manos: Some were carefully shaped. Some were an expedient cobble, one or both sides slicked by use on a handy flat rock as metate.

Unlike more recent, Puebloan manos, which were flat and wide for grinding corn, Archaic manos–thousands of years old–were a characteristic oval. Mostly they were used to grind wild seeds: Indian rice grass, for example. Or whatever edibles the desert had to offer. A friend in Zuni said of his wild-resourceful grandmother, “Grandma eats everything.”