The Reserve Area Archaeological Project

Summary

The Reserve Area Archaeological Project (RAAP) is a collaborative effort between the Denver Museum of Nature & Science (DMNS) and the United States Forest Service. Centered in the Reserve/ Pine Lawn region of the Gila National Forest in New Mexico, this project brings together many extant datasets, such as existing collections in the Field Museum from the 1940s/50s, GIS data from the Forest Service, paleoclimate data, and new research that to date has focused on non-invasive methods. Project activities have included fieldwork to find and properly rerecord Field Museum-excavated sites from the 1940s/50s, pedestrian survey to locate new sites, field research on rock art with Zuni colleagues, compositional analysis of obsidian tools from Tularosa Cave, ground-penetrating radar studies, analysis of existing regional paleoenvironmental reconstructions, analysis of existing archaeological tree-ring date distributions, and analysis of new AMS radiocarbon dates on sandals from Tularosa Cave. Long-term goals are to investigate changes in population density and settlement location as related to paleoclimatic changes and changes in resource availability, needs, and cultural significance/ importance. We will also be reevaluating the chronology of the region through extensive radiocarbon dating and ceramic sequence correlation.

This Resource is Part of the Following Collections

• Society for American Archaeology 81st Annual Meeting, Orlando, FL (2016)   •
• Celebrating the Contributions of a Community of Preservation: Forest Service Partners and Volunteers

Keywords

Spatial Coverage