An Introduction to the Archaeology of Montezuma Canyon, San Juan County, Utah

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.

Montezuma Canyon is a large entrenched north to south drainage in southeastern San Juan County, Utah. Significant tributary canyons join it along its course to the San Juan River. Our focus here is the canyon segment from near the head down to the Navajo Nation border. There are a few records of early explorers and archaeologists in the canyon, but in the early 1960s archaeological investigations began in earnest as Ray Matheny, then a Brigham Young University (BYU) graduate student, conducted a Master’s thesis survey. The canyon’s great archaeological potential was revealed by the sites documented, including Montezuma Village and Coal Bed Village, both large, complex settlements. As a BYU faculty member in the late 1960s to late 1970s, Matheny conducted annual field schools in the canyon. In the 1980s Joel Janetski continued BYU’s interest in the canyon as he directed field schools focused on Nancy Patterson Village and its environs. Recent BYU-affiliated work in the canyon, including a field school at Coal Bed Village conducted by James Allison, is offering new perspectives. Prior and recent investigations provide a wealth of data to explore research questions about the Ancestral Puebloan occupation of the canyon and that of later groups.

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): 23287