DOVE CREEK, Colo. — Christopher Kuzawa, a Colorado University undergraduate student on a $750 summer research grant, thought he had stumbled onto something special last July when he found a handful of gray clay pot sherds that had washed down from a 600-foot cliff to the banks of the Dolores River.

Two days later, when he finally found a scrambling route up the rocky cliff face to a hidden five-acre shelf, Kuzawa encountered a find he could not have imagined--a previously unmapped and unstudied Anasazi village that dates back to at least AD 850.

Now, almost four months later, the village, which may contain as many as 200 rooms, is still unexplored. It remains as it has for 12 centuries, protected only by its remoteness and the secrecy surrounding its location.

The village has also spurred a familiar controversy over access among scientists, bureaucrats, local farmers and deer hunters in the Four Corners region, where Arizona, Utah, Colorado and New Mexico meet. It is one of the richest archeological fields in the United States.

The region was once the homeland of the Anasazi, a people thought to be America's first farmers and villagers. From AD 1 to the beginning of the 14th Century, Anasazi farmers, hunters and traders ruled the Southwest, leaving behind scores of thousands of cliff dwellings and canyon ruins.

Today, an estimated 500 professional archeologists are at work throughout the region, studying and trying to protect Anasazis sites, some of which are in public lands--like the village Chris Kuzawa found--and many of which are on private property, like the rangelands and pinto-bean fields around Dove Creek.

The site located last July was not marked on any maps, although the Dolores River Canyon had been studied intensely over the years by archeologists. After news of the find was released, a few local residents claimed to have known about the site for years.

"There are lots of sites around that us locals don't talk about," said a Dove Creek native who has roamed the canyons and scrublands for years hunting both deer and mineral specimens. "If the (federal Bureau of Land Management) and the 'arkies' (amateur and professional archeologists) find out about a ruin, we're shut out. Those are supposed to be public lands but I guess they don't regard us as part of the public."