Reconstruction of the Site History of the “Zip Code Site,” a Large Puebloan Site at Mt. Trumbull Area in the Arizona Strip

Summary

This is an abstract from the "SAA 2021: General Sessions" session, at the 86th annual meeting of the Society for American Archaeology.

The first excavation study of the Virgin Puebloan structures at Mt. Trumbull in the Arizona Strip was recently conducted after more than 15 years of intense surface surveys. The goal of this study is to gain a better understanding of the settlement patterns and adaptive strategies among the small-scale farmers who lived in this marginal environment. The Zip Code Site (131BLM) chosen for this project is a large site with multiple pueblo structures that are at least 200 meters long. Previous studies suggest a very small number of corrugated sherds, which implies that this site was occupied during the late Basketmaker III, or Pueblo I periods. Both radiocarbon dates and optically stimulated luminescence (OSL) dates, however, range A.D. 476 to 1350, beyond the Pueblo I period. Thus, it is hypothesized that this large site is a result of long-term occupation where not all structures/rooms were used simultaneously. Several rooms were excavated to understand the history of the site’s use and the energy devoted to its construction. In this paper, I will present the results of chemical compositional analysis of soils using pXRF from different depths in one of the rooms, combined with OSL dates to investigate the history of occupation.

This Resource is Part of the Following Collections

• Society for American Archaeology 86th Annual Meeting, Online (2021)   •
• SAA 2021: General Sessions

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Record Identifiers

Abstract Id(s): 33270