"Ephemeral Bounty: Wickiups, Trade Goods, and the Final Years of the Autonomous Ute." KIVA, 84(1), pp. 140–141

This study uses geographic information systems (GIS) to examine the prehistoric road corridor that stretches north from Chaco Canyon to the San Juan River in northwestern New Mexico. Termed the “Great North Road,” this roadway has been extensively examined on the ground and with overhead photography and sensors. We apply GIS abilities to quantify descriptive measures of location, direction, and elevation and, in combination with previous work, compile the information to assess basic engineering choices made by the Chacoans in creating the road.

Archaeological data supports Native American oral histories recounting violence, arson, and the abandonment of the Montezuma Castle (AZ O:5:14 [ASM]) and Castle A (AZ O:5:95 [ASM]) dwellings at the end of the fourteenth century. Oral histories provide context for this event by revealing larger patterns resulting in population emigration and the formation of cultural identities in the Verde Valley of central Arizona. The coordinated analysis of archaeological data and oral histories presented in this paper provide an accurate and insightful representation of past events and illustrate a strong connection between contemporary Native American communities and the archaeological sites at Montezuma Castle National Monument.

We address aspects of the Neolithic Revolution in the Mesa Verde region of Southwest Colorado. We first propose a new method of dating habitations within the Basketmaker III period (AD 600-725) using vessel forms in pottery assemblages. Then we adapt this method to new survey and excavation data to investigate demographic processes behind the formation of Mesa Verde Pueblo society. Finally, we quantify extramural storage space across Basketmaker III households to investigate the development of private property during this period. Our results indicate that both in-migration and intrinsic growth were involved in the formation of Mesa Verde Pueblo society; that agricultural households became increasingly dispersed over time; and that household agricultural outputs took the form of a log-normal distribution typical of societies with private property rights. Collectively, these findings suggest private property rights co-evolved with agriculture and settled communities, as researchers have suggested for other world areas.

Ancient Paquime and the Casas Grandes World results from an extended 2012 conference on the current state of archaeological knowledge in the Casas Grandes region of northwest Mexico and the U.S. So...

This well-researched and referenced, comprehensive volume is a long-awaited update to Taylor's Radiocarbon Dating: An Archaeological Perspective, originally published in 1987. It covers radiocarbon...

Excavations at Pottery Mound, a Pueblo IV site on the Rio Puerco south of Albuquerque, New Mexico, exposed three types of rooms: kivas, domestic rooms for both habitation and storage, and “ceremonial rooms.” One of the last was sealed and contained ceremonial artifacts. Others were rooms whose internal features (and possibly also artifacts) differed from those of kivas and domestic rooms. The presence of “ceremonial rooms” at Pottery Mound may have to do with its probable multi-ethnic composition, or perhaps with the transformation of lineage-based to sodality-based ritual and social organization in the Eastern Pueblo world.