Small Sites and Big Assumptions: Questioning the Uncritical use of “Field House” to Classify Small Pre-contact Structures on South Cat Mesa of the Jemez Ranger District

Summary

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

Small pre-contact structures throughout the Southwest that lie on the periphery of large village sites are often classified as “field houses”, a term that carries with it the assumption that these structures were utilized seasonally, occupied for a short duration of time, and whose function is tied to agricultural practices. The uncritical and widespread use of this classification without consideration of the entire artifact assemblage may skew archaeological interpretations of land use, demography, and settlement patterns. This paper examines field houses on South Cat Mesa of the Jemez Ranger District to answer whether the broad and uncritical use of this term to describe small pre-contact structures assumes a singular function when they may have served more than one purpose. To test this idea attributes drawn from previous research were analyzed for 131 field house sites including method of construction, presence and frequency of extramural features, assemblage size, ceramic types present, and flaked and ground stone. This study shows that there is variability in sites classified as “field houses” on South Cat Mesa suggesting that some may have been used more intensively, occupied for longer periods of time, reoccupied repeatedly through time, or had other functions.

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): 39636.0