The Reserve Area Archaeological Project

Summary

Since 2014 archaeologists from the Denver Museum of Nature & Science’s Reserve Area Archaeological Project (RAAP) have conducted survey work in the greater Reserve, New Mexico region. They examined numerous tracts in a range of biomes to better understand the highly variable topographic setting and archaeological settlement patterns, documenting dozens of new sites in the process. After spending a week in the New Mexico site files in Santa Fe in March, 2016, the team also spent substantial time and effort re-locating and re-recording many previously (and often poorly) recorded sites in the region. The team’s future research will focus on the Torriete Lakes region north of Reserve, where a single isolated great kiva exists within a broad, high-altitude meadow. Small pueblos scatter the landscape like satellites around the great kiva and appear to encompass both the Reserve and Tularosa Phases. Survey work in 2017 will focus on a more detailed survey of the Torriete Lakes region, hopefully allowing us to parse the comparatively ephemeral Reserve Phase occupation from the more substantive Tularosa Phase occupation. All of this will be done with an eye towards initiating an excavation program in 2018.

This Resource is Part of the Following Collections

• A Flurry of Field Schools in the Upper Gila and Mimbres Drainages   •
• Society for American Archaeology 82nd Annual Meeting, Vancouver, BC (2017)

Keywords

Spatial Coverage

Record Identifiers

Abstract Id(s): 16313