A Room Remembered: Room Closure through Material Deposition at Homol’ovi I

Summary

Material deposition involves a range of social practices that enact negotiations of identity and interrelationships between people and spaces. Through the deliberate accumulation of artifacts and sediment in certain locations, these negotiations are materialized in the archaeological record. The reciprocal creation and expression of the meaning of spaces and objects can begin to be understood by analyzing the materials deposited in rooms post-occupationally. In this poster, I examine the ways material deposition speaks to the meaning and continued relationships with rooms at the Pueblo IV village of Homol’ovi I. The Homol’ovi Settlement Cluster, located in northeastern Arizona, has been the focus of significant research concerning the range and implications of deposits, particularly in kivas, for the past three decades. Building upon this literature, I investigate three room blocks within the site to understand the social practices involved in the closure of rooms. I pay specific attention to the temporal continuities and discontinuities of depositional assemblages from individual rooms. These patterns should provide insights into the social memories attached to spaces and may speak to the social groups participating in depositional and closure practices at Homol’ovi I.

This Resource is Part of the Following Collections

• Society for American Archaeology 81st Annual Meeting, Orlando, FL (2016)

Keywords

Spatial Coverage