Behind the Bear's Ears: Climate and Culture in the Early Pueblo Era on Elk Ridge, Southeast Utah

Summary

The Pueblo I period was a time of tumultuous throughout the Four Corners region. Long regarded as an era of gradual transition, it is now recognized by most authors as a discrete and decisive turning point in North American prehistory. While this topic has been studied extensively in the central Mesa Verde area of southwestern Colorado, very little formal research has occurred for the early Pueblo era in southeast Utah. The high uplands area of Elk Ridge contains probably the greatest concentration of Pueblo I sites in this region. Cultural resource inventories on Elk Ridge itself, and an extensive published literature on nearby landforms like Cedar Mesa, comprise a useful dataset for investigating the early Pueblo archaeology of southeast Utah. This study presents a synthetic analysis of Pueblo I settlement patterning in the Elk Ridge area in terms of climatic and environmental factors.

This Resource is Part of the Following Collections

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

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Record Identifiers

Abstract Id(s): 15412