The Late Holocene Geomorphic History of Montezuma Canyon and the Puebloan Agricultural Landscape

Summary

This is an abstract from the "Archaeological Research in Montezuma Canyon, San Juan County, Utah" session, at the 84th annual meeting of the Society for American Archaeology.

Our study identified four depositional packages in our Montezuma Canyon study area, the older two of which formed the Ancestral Puebloan canyon bottom agricultural landscape. The older unit began accreting during the mid-Holocene and was formed by a meandering channel that periodically overflowed its banks, filling the canyon from wall-to-wall with multiple interbedded flood deposits. This was the environment encountered by the first Ancestral Puebloans to settle the canyon. A dramatic erosional event opened a deeply incised arroyo in this floodplain sometime during the late A.D. 800s to the early A.D. 900s, and a new floodplain began forming within the arroyo. Puebloans adapted by placing their settlements at localities favorable for agriculture, either along the arroyo edges where the narrower floodplain was accreting nearby or at side canyons where tributary alluvial fans grew out onto the floodplain. This formed the Puebloan agricultural landscape from the mid-A.D. 900s until abandonment in the late A.D. 1200s.

This Resource is Part of the Following Collections

• Archaeological Research in Montezuma Canyon, San Juan County, Utah   •
• Society for American Archaeology 84th Annual Meeting, Albuquerque, NM (2019)

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Record Identifiers

Abstract Id(s): 22831