Variation in Architecture and Occupation of Field Houses on the Tonque Agrarian Landscape

Summary

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

Between the massive Classic Period pueblos of Tonque and Paako runs an intermittent tributary of the Rio Grande River. Along the relatively lush banks of this drainage are a high density of small pre-contact structures, or field houses, as well as agricultural features including check dams, terracing, and grid gardens. The sites on this Tonque agrarian landscape are conventionally interpreted as elements of a strategic settlement pattern in which inhabitants of the large pueblos spread out across the terrain during the maize growing season to maximize the region’s productive capacity. During the 2024 season, the UNM Archaeology Field School set out to survey and document a portion of this area. We found considerable diversity in architectural design, artifact assemblages, interval of occupation, and topographic setting. We present the preliminary results of this study, comparing various field house characteristics across sites to evaluate whether they might be classifiable into an approximate typology. With this information, we test the quality of fit of our data with the seasonal dispersal model. There is a degree of urgency to this work: the study area is presently subject to significant alluvial erosion and channel incision, imperiling many of the 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): 53351