Midden Deposits at a Salinas Province Pueblo: Archaeological Investigations at Chilili (LA 847)

Summary

This is an abstract from the "Hill People: New Research on Tijeras Canyon and the East Mountains" session, at the 88th annual meeting of the Society for American Archaeology.

From March through April 2022, SRI excavated portions of LA 847, the archaeological site of Chilili. Positioned east of the Manzano Mountains on the border of the Plains and Pueblo spheres and representing the northernmost of the Salinas province pueblos, the prehispanic and colonial period occupation at Chilili dates from the late AD 1200s / early 1300s to the 1670s. SRI’s excavations focused on a previously identified midden deposit in portions of the NM 337 NMDOT ROW that will be adversely affected by replacement of the highway bridge over Chilili Creek. Prior to excavation activities, SRI used GPR as a nondestructive means of identifying features not evident from surface documentation. SRI recovered tens of thousands of artifacts and ecofacts from the midden deposits, representing the first sizable collections available for analysis from a major pueblo settlement in the Manzano cluster of Salinas province pueblos in decades. This paper highlights SRI’s findings during the recent excavations at Chilili and outlines how results of SRI’s analyses of the site assemblage will address a variety of research topics, including chronology, local settlement history and dynamics, regional and interregional interactions, movement and mobilities, and diet and subsistence.

This Resource is Part of the Following Collections

• Hill People: New Research on Tijeras Canyon and the East Mountains   •
• Society for American Archaeology 88th Annual Meeting, Portland, OR (2023)

Keywords

Spatial Coverage

Record Identifiers

Abstract Id(s): 36364.0