Coal Bed Village: Test excavations of a major Ancestral Pueblo site in Southeast 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.

Coal Bed Village (42SA920), located at the confluence of Coal Bed and Montezuma Canyons, is one of the largest Ancestral Pueblo sites in the state of Utah. The site was first documented by William Henry Jackson in 1875, but has never been systematically investigated. Rubble mounds covering the top, slope, and alluvial terrace below a small isolated mesita appear to be remnants from a large village probably dating to the A.D. 1200s (although surface ceramics suggest earlier use as well). Much of the site is currently threatened by erosion triggered by arroyo cutting from Montezuma Creek, leading to increased attention from archaeologists. In 2018, Brigham Young University and Weber State University held a joint field school at the site. In this presentation we discuss the preliminary results of our test excavations, surface collection, and aerial photogrammetry, all designed to better document the site and learn what is being lost to erosion.

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): 24474