Cowboy Wash Pueblo and Community Organization on the Southern Piedmont of Sleeping Ute Mountain

Summary

Located on the southern piedmont of Sleeping Ute Mountain in southwest Colorado, Cowboy Wash Pueblo (5MT7740) is a large, late Pueblo III site containing thirteen kiva depressions and more than thirty rooms. It is the largest site within what has been termed the Cowboy Wash community, yet it is one of the least well documented of all the habitations composing this community. Recent investigations at the site documented a very different configuration for the site than had originally been understood, identified a large D-shape structure previously unidentified, and conclusively placed the construction and occupation of the site after A.D. 1225, when it appears that about half of the small sites in the Cowboy Wash community aggregated in Cowboy Wash Pueblo. This paper discusses the transmogrification of the community from the Basketmaker III period to the end of the occupation sequence at around A.D. 1280 and suggests that, even at its peak in population, this residential-drainage community was too small to be a sustainable community; it is likely that the entire southern piedmont comprised a larger sustainable community. The paper concludes with a comparison of Cowboy Wash Pueblo with other large late settlements in the vicinity.

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This Resource is Part of the Following Collections

• Society for American Archaeology 80th Annual Meeting, San Francisco, CA (2015)   •
• Communities through Time: Societal Continuity and Transformation in the Northern San Juan Region

Keywords

Spatial Coverage