Pithouses in the Taos Valley: What Don't We Know?

Summary

Pithouse occupations in the Northern Rio Grande, specifically the Taos Valley, occurred late in time and at high elevations. There is little evidence of a transitional period from a mobile to sedentary lifeway in this area. Pithouse occupations also occurred during a time when, as little as 30 miles away, multistory pueblo communities were thriving. This change has raised questions and sparked many archaeological investigations over the years. Why do we see this transition from hunter-gatherer to sedentary occupation so late in time in the Northern Rio Grande? Are we in fact seeing a transition from a mobile to a sedentary lifeway or did a new group enter the area? Even as the transition to living in pithouse structures occurred, does the evidence support permanent or seasonal site occupation? This paper will explore these questions by using data gained when multiple pithouse sites were surveyed with ground penetrating radar (GPR). This data, coupled with previous survey and excavation, is being used to create a database of sites across the Taos Valley, thus helping to achieve a more complete understanding of the site occupation, movement across the landscape, and group identity of this time period.

This Resource is Part of the Following Collections

• Society for American Archaeology 81st Annual Meeting, Orlando, FL (2016)   •
• Pueblo Archaeology of the Greater Taos Region: We've Got a Lot to Learn

Keywords

Spatial Coverage