The Winona meteorite
A meteorite buried like a person, 800 years ago.
In 1928, archaeologists excavating Elden Pueblo, a ruin of the Sinagua people near Flagstaff, Arizona, found a stone carefully placed in a stone-lined pit, in the way the Sinagua buried their dead. It turned out to be a meteorite of about 24 kg.
The Winona meteorite is a rare primitive achondrite. It gave its name to the winonaites, a small group of meteorites that formed on an asteroid that began to melt but never fully separated into a core and crust.
Its careful burial shows that the Sinagua, like many ancient peoples, saw a stone from the sky as something special.
In the catalogue
- Winona Winonaite, United States, 1928 · 24 kg