Excavation and Ceramic Analysis Results from a Moderately Sized, Eleventh- through Early Fourteenth-Century Pueblo (LA135004) near Taos in North-Central New Mexico

Summary

This is an abstract from the "Recent Archaeological Work by Chronicle Heritage" session, at the 89th annual meeting of the Society for American Archaeology.

Chronicle Heritage recently excavated part of a moderately sized, multicomponent site, LA135004, in advance of development near Taos in northern New Mexico. The prehispanic component, dating AD 1050–1300, consists of at least one room block with features, extramural cooking pits, and thousands of ceramics, flaked and ground stone, and other artifacts. Chronicle Heritage excavated four units in the room block’s previously disturbed midden and recovered nearly 1,000 sherds, 120 lithics, and one turquoise pendant, among others. In this poster, I summarize the excavation, present the ceramic analysis conducted, and discuss how the results improve the understanding of eleventh through early fourteenth century patterning for the Taos area, a time when populations aggregated into a few very large villages. In particular, I compare the midden assemblage to similar dating residential sites in the vicinity. Most contemporaneous sites, and nearly all associated data from north-central New Mexico, are from very large pueblos excavated as part of academic investigations. Consequently, LA135004 provides a complementary dataset from a small residential holdover during this period of population aggregation, demonstrating the need to reevaluate assumptions reliant upon prior excavations at the large pueblos.

This Resource is Part of the Following Collections

• Recent Archaeological Work by Chronicle Heritage   •
• Society for American Archaeology 89th Annual Meeting, New Orleans, LA (2024)

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Record Identifiers

Abstract Id(s): 38748.0