Remaking the Mazeway: Pueblo Bonito House Society, Redux, at Wallace Ruin

Summary

This is an abstract from the "SAA 2019: General Sessions" session, at the 84th annual meeting of the Society for American Archaeology.

In contrast to the ubiquitous Ancestral Pueblo practice of residential burial, at least 32 deceased were transported 10 kilometers or more for deposition within the Wallace Ruin great house. This Chacoan outlier, situated near Mesa Verde, Colorado was a ritual-economic center c. AD 1060-1150. Upon the collapse of the Chacoan system, habitation of this building, three great houses nearby, and all domiciles within several kilometers ceased. Between c. AD 1180 and 1220 a minimum of six rooms were used as a Pueblo III mortuary facility for a series of primary burial deposits. The interrogation of this anomaly involved a bioarchaeological approach that included spatial and statistical analyses of mortuary location choices. The diachronic analysis of c. AD 1050-1300 data from roughly 100 San Juan Region sites and about 1200 primary burial deposits revealed several ways in which post-AD 1180 mortuary decisions involving Wallace Ruin departed from longstanding communities of practice. The evidence detailed here supports the proposition that the Pueblo III use of this former Chacoan great house entails a Mesa Verde region reformulation of ancestor veneration protocols established by Pueblo Bonito house societies during Pueblo II times.

This Resource is Part of the Following Collections

• Society for American Archaeology 84th Annual Meeting, Albuquerque, NM (2019)

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Record Identifiers

Abstract Id(s): 25316