When is a fieldhouse? Reconsidering fieldhouses on the Pajarito Plateau using GIS modeling and excavation data

Summary

Archaeologists often assume that Ancestral Pueblo groups in the North American Southwest built small one- to three-room structures to serve as temporary fieldhouse shelters for extracting agricultural resources during the farming season, and to minimize transportation to and from their larger villages. If fieldhouses were associated with agriculture, then they should be found near agriculturally productive fields. To determine if there is an association between agriculture and fieldhouses during the Coalition and Classic periods (A.D. 1200-1600) on the Pajarito Plateau in north-central New Mexico, I present results from a GIS modeling study that incorporates the Revised Universal Soil Loss Equation and excavation data from fieldhouse sites located at Los Alamos National Laboratory (LANL). Further evaluation of what these small sites represent will be necessary if this study identifies that some fieldhouses were not built to assist with agriculture. Fieldhouses are the most ubiquitous site type on the Pajarito Plateau, and the results from this study impacts future interpretation and management of these cultural resources at LANL.

This Resource is Part of the Following Collections

• Society for American Archaeology 82nd Annual Meeting, Vancouver, BC (2017)

Keywords

Spatial Coverage

Record Identifiers

Abstract Id(s): 16103