Ladders, Axes, and Pithouses: Elements of a Seventh Century Pueblo Technological Complex

Summary

This is an abstract from the "SAA 2024: Individual Abstracts" session, at the 89th annual meeting of the Society for American Archaeology.

Earliest evidence for the widespread use of two-pole ladders and hafted stone axes in the American Southwest’s Central Pueblo area tree-ring dates to the seventh century. That evidence includes, for ladders, remains of the objects themselves, but especially ladder rests found in pithouse floors and, for axes, stone tool heads and stone-axe-cut beams. These innovations were linked, technologically, because each implement relied on bindings subjected to heavy, abruptly applied loads and, historically, because both were adopted in concert with transitions in pithouse architecture. The stone axe facilitated procurement and use of stronger, more numerous, more often newly procured (vs. reused), and increasingly standardized beams, posts, and poles in pithouse superstructures—presumably to extend structure use-lives, but also to accommodate a shift from side-wall to roof-hatch entries. Changes in beam use would have enhanced pithouses’ “tree-ring-datability,” helping to explain a jump in dated structures from the 500s to 600s. Two-pole ladders would have facilitated use of roof hatches. Stone axes and two-pole ladders were elements—along with pithouse antechambers and improved ceramic and possibly bean-farming technologies—of a demographically expansive Basketmaker III life-way, borne by Pueblo communities whose seventh-century colonization of the Mesa Verde region contributed to the post-600 increase in dated pithouses.

This Resource is Part of the Following Collections

• SAA 2024: Individual Abstracts   •
• Society for American Archaeology 89th Annual Meeting, New Orleans, LA (2024)

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Record Identifiers

Abstract Id(s): 38564.0