Living on the Spine of the World: Placemaking at Early Community Centers, Rincon, UT

Summary

This is an abstract from the "SAA 2023: Individual Abstracts" session, at the 88th annual meeting of the Society for American Archaeology.

In southeast Utah, two of the most dominant geographical features, Comb Ridge and the San Juan River, converge in dramatic fashion. Several large villages at the intersection of these features represent central places for wider communities from 500 BCE through at least 900 CE. While the three largest sites represent different time periods, each maintained ritual structures, indicating that the location retained some spiritual importance between occupations. The presence of these three large communities and their ritual features at the intersection between Comb Ridge and the San Juan River may not be a coincidence. Both geographic features are important to indigenous people today and the deep history of occupation at their confluence may have manifested in a ritualized conception of the landscape. A better understanding of this process would provide insights into placemaking and the importance of landscape in the prehistoric Southwest. As the region continues to see increase in recreation and tourism, documentation of sites has become crucial for preserving their legacy. This project completed detailed architectural recordings, lidar imaging, and surface artifact sampling to give more context to the sites and explore their ritual organization without contributing to the disturbance.

This Resource is Part of the Following Collections

• SAA 2023: Individual Abstracts   •
• Society for American Archaeology 88th Annual Meeting, Portland, OR (2023)

Keywords

Spatial Coverage

Record Identifiers

Abstract Id(s): 37483.0