The Pueblo Farming Project: Research, Education, and Native American Collaboration

Summary

This is an abstract from the "Research, Education, and American Indian Partnerships at the Crow Canyon Archaeological Center" session, at the 88th annual meeting of the Society for American Archaeology.

Maize farming represents a fundamental aspect of Pueblo people’s identity. This paper focuses on an experimental farming program conducted as part of the Pueblo Farming Project (PFP). The PFP represents one of Crow Canyon’s longest-running projects and one of the center’s most important collaborations with American Indian partners. The experimental farming component serves as the centerpiece of the PFP, but the project also develops and delivers educational curricula, publishes research results, and pursues Hopi interests in maize and maize farming. We discuss how Hopi perspectives shaped the PFP, present a brief review of experimental garden projects in the region, then compare the experimental gardens located on Crow Canyon’s campus, with a garden located about 50 km north, near Dove Creek, Colorado. This comparison examines how a suite of environmental and ecological factors affects differences in maize yields between these gardens. We evaluate one of the primary Hopi goals for the project: whether Hopi seed and farming techniques would produce yields in an area they view as their ancestral homeland. Finally, we discuss how our results contribute to understanding the depopulation of the central Mesa Verde region at the end of the thirteenth century AD.

This Resource is Part of the Following Collections

• Research, Education, and American Indian Partnerships at the Crow Canyon Archaeological Center   •
• Society for American Archaeology 88th Annual Meeting, Portland, OR (2023)

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Record Identifiers

Abstract Id(s): 36268.0