The Pendleton Ruin Site Revisited: Results from a Complete Reanalysis of the Ceramic Artifacts from the Pendleton Ruin Site, Southwestern New Mexico

Summary

This is an abstract from the "SAA 2025: Individual Abstracts" session, at the 90th annual meeting of the Society for American Archaeology.

Archaeological investigations in the International Four Corners area (where the modern states of Arizona, New Mexico, Sonora, and Chihuahua meet) have long identified markers of northwest Chihuahuan influence north of the border, primarily through the presence of Casas Grandes polychrome types on late prehispanic sites which many argue to be in a past frontier zone. An early investigation aimed at this was conducted by the Peabody Museum of Archaeology and Ethnology in October 1933 by A. V. Kidder and the Cosgroves at the Pendleton Ruin Site in far southwestern New Mexico. The results, published in 1949, remained mostly inconclusive as to the extent of the relationship between the local inhabitants and those farther south. A partial reanalysis of the ceramic assemblages and the notes by John Douglas offered further insight. As part of a larger project, I reanalyzed the entire ceramic collection from the site, resulting in identification of several changes from earlier interpretations. In this talk, I situate the results of the ceramic analysis both in terms of what they inform us about life and exchange in a cultural borderland at the Pendleton Ruin site but also with respect to major nearby sites.

This Resource is Part of the Following Collections

• Society for American Archaeology 90th Annual Meeting, Denver, CO (2025)   •
• SAA 2025: Individual Abstracts

Keywords

Record Identifiers

Abstract Id(s): 52336