Mimbres Life and Society : The Mattocks Site of Southwestern New Mexico [1 ed.] 9780816537396, 9780816535637

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Mimbres Life and Society

Mimbres Life and Society The Mattocks Site of Southwestern New Mexico

PATRICIA A. GILMAN AND STEVEN A. LEBLANC

THE UNIVERSITY OF ARIZONA PRESS

TUCSON

The University of Arizona Press www.uapress.arizona.edu © 2017 by The Arizona Board of Regents All rights reserved. Published 2017 Printed in the United States of America 22 21 20 19 18 17   6 5 4 3 2 1 ISBN-13: 978-0-8165-3563-7 (cloth) Cover design by Miriam Warren Cover image MimPIDD 4239 courtesy of the Mimbres Foundation Support for this publication was provided by the Arizona Archaeological and Historical Society.

Library of Congress Cataloging-in-Publication Data Names: Gilman, Patricia A., author. | LeBlanc, Steven A., author. Title: Mimbres life and society : the Mattocks Site of southwestern New Mexico / Patricia A. Gilman and Steven A. LeBlanc. Description: Tucson : The University of Arizona Press, 2017. | Includes bibliographical references and index. Identifiers: LCCN 2017007699 | ISBN 9780816535637 (cloth : alk. paper) Subjects: LCSH: Mimbres culture—New Mexico—Mattocks Site. | Excavations (Archaeology)— New Mexico—Mattocks Site. | Mimbres pottery—New Mexico—Mattocks Site. | Pueblo Indians—Antiquities. Classification: LCC E99.M76 G55 2017 | DDC 978.9/01—dc23 LC record available at https://lccn.loc.gov/2017007699 This paper meets the requirements of ANSI/NISO Z39.48-1992 (Permanence of Paper).

We dedicate this book to our spouses, Paul Minnis and Kathy Register, without whom this wouldn’t have been nearly as much fun.

CONTENTS

List of Illustrations

xi

Acknowledgments

xv

Introduction: The Mattocks Site, the Mimbres Region, and Early Pueblos in the North American Southwest

3

Early Pueblos in the Mimbres Region 3 History of Research and Pothunting at the Mattocks Site 8 The Mimbres Foundation Research Program 11 The Special Role of the Mattocks Site in Preservation and Public Education 16 The Structure of This Volume 16 Conclusions 17

Chapter 1. Mattocks Site Chronology Mimbres Regional Chronology Mattocks Site Tree-Ring Dates Mattocks Site Archaeomagnetic Dates Mattocks Site Obsidian Dates Mattocks Site Ceramic Dates Temporally Diagnostic Hearth Shapes Best Dates for Mattocks Site Rooms and Excavation Units

Chapter 2. Pit Structures at the Mattocks Site: Few and Mostly Classic Pit Structures in General Pit Structures Excavated by Nesbitt Pit Structures Excavated by the Mimbres Foundation Mimbres Foundation Pit Structure Descriptions The Pit Structure Periods at the Mattocks Site Classic Period Pit Structures

Chapter 3. Pueblo Architecture at the Mattocks Site Pueblo Architecture in General Surface Rooms Excavated by Nesbitt Correspondence Between Nesbitt’s and the Mimbres Foundation Excavations Surface Rooms Excavated by the Mimbres Foundation

Chapter 4. Social Contexts of the Mattocks Site Room Blocks:  A Summary and Discussion of the Architectural and Dating Patterns The Pit Structure to Pueblo Transition at the Mattocks Site Pueblo Room Blocks at the Mattocks Site Households and the Mattocks Site Room Blocks

18

18 20 22 22 23 36 36 41

41 42 46 46 66 67 68

68 69 70 77 161

161 163 171

viii

Contents

Chapter 5. Hunting, Gathering, Harvesting, and Preparing Food at the Mattocks Site. With a Contribution by Michael D. Cannon

173

The Environmental Setting 173 Faunal Remains from the Mattocks Site 175 Evidence for Human Impacts on Large Mammal Populations at the Mattocks and Other Mimbres Sites, by Michael D. Cannon 175 Further Aspects of the Mattocks Site Faunal Remains 187 Paleoethnobotanical Remains 192 Pollen Studies 195 Chipped Stone 203 Ground Stone 223 Conclusions 231

Chapter 6. Mattocks Site Ceramics

235

Typology 236 Sherds 237 Whole and Partial Vessels 239 Compositional Analyses 246 Non-Mimbres Pottery 247 Worked Sherds 250 Conclusions 250

Chapter 7. Mattocks Site Burials

252

Previous Studies of Mimbres Burial Populations 252 The Mattocks Site Burial Data 255 Mattocks Site and Mimbres Valley Classic Period Burials 264 Conclusions 265

Chapter 8. Mattocks Site Unusual Artifacts

267

Palettes 267 Bone Tools 268 Pipes 271 Shell Artifacts 275 Turquoise, Stone, and Ceramic Jewelry 276 Copper Bells 278 Other Artifacts 278 Raw Materials 278 Conclusions 278

Chapter 9. The Mattocks Site Dating the Mattocks Site and the Classic Period Nature of the Pit Structure Occupation The Transition from Pit Structures to Pueblos Nature of the Classic Period Occupation Importance of the Mattocks Site Appendices 1. Mattocks Site Tree-Ring Species and Dates 2. Mattocks Site Sherd Counts and Proportions 3. Mattocks Site Test Unit and Backhoe Trench Descriptions 4. Mattocks Site Obsidian Artifact Data 5. Mattocks Site Projectile Point Data 6. Stone Hoes from Nesbitt’s and Mimbres Foundation Excavations 7. Mattocks Site Mano Data

280

280 281 281 283 289 293 305 314 329 337 347 350

Contents 8. 9. 10. 11. 12. 13. 14. 15. 16. 17. 18. 19. 20. 21. 22. 23. 24. 25. 26. 27. 28. 29.

Mattocks Site Metate Data Mattocks Site Miscellaneous Ground Stone Data Mattocks Site Axe and Maul Data Whole and Partial Painted Vessels from Nesbitt’s Excavations at the Mattocks Site Whole and Reconstructible Unpainted Vessels from Nesbitt’s Excavations at the Mattocks Site Whole and Partial Painted Vessels from the Mimbres Foundation Excavations at the Mattocks Site Whole and Reconstructible Unpainted Vessels from the Mimbres Foundation Excavations at the Mattocks Site Photographs of Mattocks Site Whole and Partial Vessels Mattocks Site Worked Sherds Burial Pit and Skeletal Data from Nesbitt’s 1930 Excavation Burial Artifacts from Nesbitt’s 1930 Excavation Burial Artifacts from Nesbitt’s 1931 Excavation Mimbres Foundation Burial Pit and Skeletal Data Mimbres Foundation Burial Artifacts Mimbres Foundation Non-burial Human Bone Mattocks Site Palettes Mattocks Site Bone Tools Mattocks Site Pipes Mattocks Site Shell Artifacts Mattocks Site Turquoise, Stone, and Ceramic Jewelry Mattocks Site Other Artifacts Mattocks Site Raw Materials

ix

366 375 383 385 395 398 403 408 475 479 482 486 488 492 496 497 498 501 504 507 510 511

References Cited

515

Index

523

ILLUSTRATIONS

Figures I.1. The Mattocks ranch in 1929 or 1930 I.2. Location of the Mattocks site and other major sites mentioned in text I.3. A reconstruction of the Mattocks site I.4. Map of the Mattocks site with both the Mimbres Foundation and Nesbitt’s rooms I.5. George Mattocks at the Mattocks ranch, September 1929 I.6a. Photo of Mattocks site crew in 1930 I.6b. Photo of Mattocks site crew in 1930 I.7a. Photo of Mattocks site crew at work, 1930 I.7b. Photo of Mattocks site crew at work, 1930 I.8. Camp on the Mimbres River east of the Mattocks ranch, 1930 I.9. Crew on field trip to White Sands National Monument, 1931 I.10. The Mattocks site in 1929 prior to excavation 2.1. Comparative depths of Mattocks site pit structures and pueblo rooms 2.2. Unit 80b plan and Units 80a and b profile 2.3. Photo of Unit 80b excavated floor and floor pits 2.4. Unit 115b plan 2.5. Photo of Unit 115b-10-26 excavated hearth 2.6. Units 286a and b plans and profile 2.7. Photo of Unit 286b-7F-6 excavated floor 2.8. Photo of Unit 286b-7F-10H excavated hearth 2.9. Unit 410 plan 2.10. Photo of Unit 441-4F-8 excavated floor and pit structure walls 3.1. Plan of the 100s room block 3.2. Photo of the 100s room block 3.3. Plan of the 200s room block 3.4. Plan of the 400s room block 3.5. Photo of Unit 41a 3.6. Plan of Unit 41b (lower floor) 3.7. Plan of Unit 80a 3.8. Photo of Unit 106 with excavated floor, floor pits, and bin 3.9. Plan of Unit 111 3.10. Photo of Unit 111-3-8 with excavated floor, artifacts, and unexcavated hearth 3.11. Photo of Unit 112-4-4 roof fall 3.12. Photo of Unit 113-5-9 part of excavated floor, pits, and hearth 3.13. Plan of Unit 114 3.14. Photo of Unit 114-3-2 excavated floor and hearth 3.15. Plan of Unit 115a 3.16. Photo of Unit 115-4-5 excavated floor and pits 3.17. Photo of Unit 115-6-12 excavated hearth

4 5 6 7 8 9 9 10 10 10 10 11 47 49 50 55 55 59 60 61 63 65 90 91 92 93 94 95 97 99 101 102 103 104 106 107 109 110 111

xii

Illustrations

3.18. Photo of Unit 115-6-20 excavated hearth 3.19. Plan of Unit 116 3.20. Photo of Unit 116-4-8 excavated floor, hearth, and pits 3.21. Photo of Unit 116-5-9H excavated hearth 3.22. Photo of Unit 116-5-20 rectangular subfloor feature 3.23. Plan of Units 121, 130, and 131 3.24. Photo of Unit 121-2-3 excavated floor and artifacts 3.25. Photo of Unit 121-3-3 excavated floor and pits 3.26. Photo of Unit 127-5-3 excavated floor, pits, and pothunted area 3.27. Plan of Unit 237 3.28. Plan of Unit 325 3.29. Photo of Unit 423-4F-3 excavated cobble floor 3.30. Photo of Unit 423-5S-4 excavated adobe floor 3.31. Plan of Unit 426 3.32. Plan of Unit 431 3.33. Photo of Unit 431-4-3 excavated floor and pits 3.34. Plan of Unit 433 3.35. Photo of Unit 433 excavated floor and pits 3.36. Plan of Unit 435b 3.37. Plan of Unit 435a 3.38. Photo of Unit 435 west wall opening 3.39. Photo of Unit 435 east wall vent 3.40. Photo of Unit 435 west wall doorway 3.41. Photo of Unit 435a-4F-4 to 7 excavated floor and hearth 3.42. Photo of Unit 435-4F-9H excavated hearth 3.43. Plan of Unit 438b 3.44. Plan of Unit 438a 3.45. Photo of Unit 438-3F-4 excavated floor, pits, and artifacts 3.46. Photos of Unit 438-3F-13H two excavated hearths 5.1. Photo of the Mimbres River and Valley 5.2. Obsidian projectile point photos 5.3. Archaic projectile point photos 5.4. Projectile point photos 5.5. Projectile point photos 5.6. Chalcedony projectile point photos 5.7. Chalcedony projectile point photos 5.8. Some Mattocks site stone hoes excavated by the Mimbres Foundation 5.9. Mano photos 5.10. Mano photos 5.11. Ground stone photos 5.12. Metate, mortar, and worked slab photos 5.13. Axes, mauls, and shaft straighteners 6.1. Relationship of bowl height to diameter 6.2. Miniature vessels 8.1. Mattocks site palettes 8.2. Mattocks site bone awls and punches 8.3. Mattocks site bone awls, punches, and modified antlers 8.4. Mattocks site pipes 8.5. Mattocks site pipes 8.6. Mattocks site shell artifacts 8.7. Mattocks site figurines and turquoise pendants 8.8. Mattocks site copper bell

111 114 115 115 116 118 119 120 123 127 130 132 133 136 139 140 143 144 147 148 149 149 150 151 152 155 156 157 158 174 212 213 214 215 216 217 221 226 227 228 229 230 243 244 268 269 270 272 273 276 277 278

Illustrations

xiii

1.1. Mimbres Chronology 1.2. Latest Tree-Ring Dates from Mimbres Classic Sites 1.3. Mattocks Site Archaeomagnetic Dates 1.4. Ceramic Seriation Derived from Excavated and Chronometrically Dated Mimbres and Reserve Structures 1.5. Ceramic Percentages for Excavated Mattocks Site Structures 1.6. Ceramic Dates for Excavated Mattocks Site Structures 1.7. Mattocks Site Proveniences with Unusually High or Low Sherd Type Proportions 1.8. Temporally Diagnostic Whole Vessels 1.9. Best Chronometric and Ceramic Dates for Structures and Units at the Mattocks Site 2.1. Nesbitt’s Excavated 1929 and 1930 Pit Structure Room and Floor Data 2.2. Nesbitt’s Excavated 1929 and 1930 Pit Structure Hearth Data 2.3. Nesbitt’s Excavated 1929 and 1930 Pit Structure Posthole, Burial, and Non-burial Artifact Data 2.4. Mimbres Foundation Excavated Pit Structure Wall and Floor Data 2.5. Mimbres Foundation Excavated Pit Structure Pit and Posthole Data 2.6. Mimbres Foundation Excavated Pit Structure Hearth Data 2.7. Mimbres Foundation Excavated Pit Structure Artifact, Burial, and Room-Burning Data 3.1. Nesbitt’s Excavated 1929 and 1930 Surface Structure Room and Floor Data 3.2. Nesbitt’s Excavated 1929 and 1930 Surface Structure Hearth Data 3.3. Nesbitt’s Excavated 1929, 1930, and 1931 Surface Structure Postholes, Burials, and Non-burial Artifacts 3.4. Mimbres Foundation Excavated Surface Structure Wall and Floor Data 3.5. Mimbres Foundation Excavated Surface Structure Pit and Posthole Data 3.6. Mimbres Foundation Excavated Surface Structure Hearth Data 3.7. Mimbres Foundation Excavated Surface Structure Artifacts, Burials, and Room Burning 5.1. Numbers of Identified Specimens of Artiodactyl and Leporid Taxa in the Proveniences from the Mattocks Site Included in This Analysis 5.2. Numbers of Identified Specimens of Artiodactyl and Leporid Taxa in the Proveniences from the Galaz and McAnally Sites Included in This Analysis 5.3. Numbers of Identified Specimens of Artiodactyl and Leporid Taxa in the Proveniences from the Old Town Site Included in This Analysis 5.4. Numbers of Identified Specimens of Pronghorn (Antilocapra americana) and Deer (Odocoileus sp.) from Mimbres Valley Sites 5.5. Numbers of Identified Artiodactyl and Leporid Specimens by Period from the Mattocks Site 5.6. Numbers of Identified Artiodactyl and Leporid Specimens by Period in the Combined Samples from the Mattocks, McAnally, and Galaz Sites 5.7. Numbers of Identified Artiodactyl and Leporid Specimens by Period from the Old Town Site 5.8. Numbers of Identified Artiodactyl and Leporid Specimens from Deposits at Old Town That Can Be Assigned to Shorter Periods within the Three Circle Phase 5.9. Numbers of Identified Artiodactyl and Leporid Specimens by Period from the NAN Ranch Site 5.10. Numbers of Identified Artiodactyl and Leporid Specimens by Period from the Wind Mountain Site 5.11. Mimbres Foundation Faunal Counts for the Mattocks Site 5.12. Proportions of Unidentifiable Animal Bone 5.13. The Number of Ungulate Bones for Each Carcass Portion at the Mattocks Site 5.14. The Relative Frequencies of Bones from Non-meaty Compared to All Carcass Portions 5.15. Comparison of Calcined (cal) and Charred (char) Bones 5.16. Propagule Remains from the Mattocks Site 5.17. Wood Remains from the Mattocks Site 5.18. Mattocks Site Pollen Sample Counts 5.19. Pollen Counts from Mattocks Site Ground Stone Washes 5.20. Mattocks Site Unmodified and Modified Flake Materials

19 21 23

Tables

24 25 26 28 35 37 43 43 44 51 52 53 54 71 72 73 78 83 87 88 178 180 180 181 182 183 184 184 185 185 188 189 190 191 191 193 196 199 204 206

xiv

Illustrations

5.21. Mattocks Site Unmodified and Modified Flakes and Cores by Material Texture 5.22. Mattocks Site Obsidian Artifacts 5.23. Mattocks Site Mano and Metate Materials 5.24. Mattocks Site Mano Forms 6.1. Comparison of Painted Sherd Proportions in Post-occupation and Room Use Contexts 6.2. Proportions of Sherd Types Versus Whole Vessel Types 6.3. Whole Vessel Contexts 6.4. Whole Vessel Shapes 6.5. Average Bowl Heights and Diameters 6.6. Naturalistic and Geometric Bowls by Room Block or Site Area 6.7. Reserve Area Sherds at the Mattocks Site 7.1. Nesbitt’s 1930 Burials by Age 7.2. Mimbres Foundation Burials by Period and Age 7.3. Minimum Number of Burials per Room Excavated by Nesbitt 7.4. Mimbres Foundation Burials by Period and Sex 7.5. Mimbres Foundation Intramural and Extramural Burials by Period 7.6. Mimbres Foundation Intramural Below Floor Burials (Individuals) per Room Block 7.7. Individuals per Mimbres Foundation Burial Pit by Period 7.8. Age of Individuals in Mimbres Foundation Multiple Burials 7.9. Numbers of Burial Vessels per Age Group (Nesbitt 1930) 7.10. Numbers of Classic Burial Vessels per Age Group, Mimbres Foundation 7.11. Burials with Non-ceramic Artifacts by Age Group (Nesbitt 1930) 7.12. Classic Burials with Non-ceramic Artifacts by Age Group, Mimbres Foundation 7.13. Mimbres Foundation Classic Period Burial Cranium Orientation by Age 7.14. Positions of Mimbres Foundation Classic Burials in Pits 7.15. Mimbres Valley Classic Period Grave Goods Analysis 7.16. Mimbres Valley Classic Period Vessels per Burial 8.1. Mimbres Foundation Pipe Attributes 8.2. Mimbres Foundation Pipe Dates

208 210 225 225 239 240 241 242 244 245 249 256 256 257 258 258 259 259 259 261 261 262 262 263 263 265 265 274 274

ACKNOWLEDGMENTS

A project this long in the making collects many people who have helped the authors. We will thank numerous of them here, and we thank others in the appropriate sections of the text or in the appendices. There are undoubtedly countless more that our now-older brains have forgotten, and we wish we could remember them so that we could acknowledge them as well. We first recognize Robert McAnally who allowed us to excavate at the Mattocks site in 1974, while it was under his ownership. Jerry and Iris Wilson, who owned the north part of the site, were excellent neighbors. We thank the many archaeologists who helped both excavate at the Mattocks site and analyze the resulting materials, and the many more who offered their advice and encouragement. We particularly appreciate David Doyel and Jeffrey Eighmy for taking our archaeomagnetic samples. Mrs. Zapata not only kept us fed, but her homemade tortillas—for 25 of us each season because store-bought ones just were not good enough—and her green chile cheese enchiladas set the standard for both to this day. Private donors to the Mimbres Foundation also sustained our research, and we especially thank Jay T. Last and Laura Lee Stearns. A 1983 National Science Foundation grant, “  The Classic Mimbres Period and the Mattocks Site: Old Data and New Interpretations,” to the authors supported our visit to the Logan Museum at Beloit College in Wisconsin and to Alabama to interview Paul Nesbitt, among other activities. Paul and Helen Nesbitt were gracious hosts to Pat Gilman when she interviewed Paul. Two Junior Faculty Summer Fellowships from the College of Arts and Sciences at the University of Oklahoma supported Gilman’s work on the manuscript for this book, and several Faculty Enrichment Grants, also from the College of Arts and Sciences, supported her travel to conferences to present results on this and other Mimbres research. The Arizona Archaeological and Historical Society awarded us a subvention grant to assist in publishing the best book possible. In terms of Nesbitt’s artifacts and notes, we very much appreciate the help of Jane Ketcham, Nicolette Meister, and William Green of the Logan Museum at Beloit College. Nancy Fox, Julia Clifton, Christopher Turnbow, Diane Bird, and Maxine McBrinn greatly facilitated our knowledge of and access to the 50 whole vessels from

Nesbitt’s excavations that are at the Laboratory of Anthropology, Museum of Indian Arts and Culture, in Santa Fe. Leslie Cohen, Erin Hudson, and David Phillips helped with many questions about the Mimbres Foundation pottery and other artifacts curated at the Maxwell Museum of Anthropology, University of New Mexico. Many students have assisted with the analyses, and we know that this list is not complete. At the University of Oklahoma, these included Cassandra Burns, Robby Robinette, and Kari Schmidt. Martha Graham and Jeffrey McDonald aided us at the University of New Mexico. At the Peabody Museum, Katelyn Warden helped us in many ways. Gigi Bayless and Ron Stauber drew the original maps and profiles, and more recently Will Russell has made corrections to the maps and drew the map and reconstruction of the Mattocks site. Will also produced the illustrations of the whole and partial vessels that are housed at the Laboratory of Anthropology. We appreciate the time and energy that Darrell Creel, Harry Shafer, and two anonymous reviewers took to review all or parts of our manuscript. Their comments improved it immeasurably. Advice from Roger Anyon, Paul Minnis, Ben Nelson, and Margaret Nelson has also improved our thinking and this manuscript. We would like to recognize the volunteer work of Marilyn Markel, who has spearheaded the day-to-day preservation of the Mattocks site and who provides archaeological education to all who come—school­children, interested adults, and professional archaeologists alike. She coordinates her efforts with the Grant County Archaeological Society, the Mimbres Culture Heritage Site, and the Imogine F. Wilson Education Fund. We especially appreciate the willingness of Archaeology Southwest to take on the task of preserving the subsurface archaeological remains at the Mattocks site. At the University of Arizona Press, we thank Allyson Carter, Scott De Herrera, Amanda Krause, Leigh McDonald, Miriam Warren, Abby Mogollon, Nora Evans-Reitz, and Rosemary Brandt for their patience with us and their invaluable assistance to us in producing this book. We appreciate their efforts. We also thank Andrew Christenson for doing the index. Thanks to everyone who helped with this enormous project; we are finally there.

Mimbres Life and Society

INTRODUCTION

The Mattocks Site, the Mimbres Region, and Early Pueblos in the North American Southwest The Mimbres region of southwestern New Mexico holds a unique place in the prehistory of the United States. “Mimbres” is simultaneously an important ancient society, the most densely populated region of the Mogollon area before A.D. 1130, a contemporary of the Chaco culture to the north, and a very long and stable environmental and cultural adaptation that ended quite abruptly. The ancient people in the Mimbres region produced a unique art tradition that has inspired and pleased both Native Americans and the general public since it became known a century ago. No other pottery, either earlier or later, has naturalistic and geometric designs like those on Mimbres Classic Black-on-white bowls, and nowhere else in the southwestern United States can individual artists who painted designs be identified. Mimbres is also unique because no other early southwestern pueblos were so long-lived, and no other group had so many burials below the floors of pit structures and pueblo rooms. Moreover, no other sites of such a relatively large size have had little to no evidence of a social hierarchy. All these factors make Mimbres archaeologically interesting, but they are not separate phenomena. Archaeologists study the famous painted bowls, and the public, once they see the painted designs, turn to archaeology with the question, what do we know about the makers of these bowls? These two factors, the archaeology and the beautiful pottery, sometimes interact in a more tragic way. The presence of the pottery has led to some of the most destructive looting of archaeological sites anywhere in the world, to the great detriment of our understanding and, incidentally, to the permanent loss of many bowls. It was this confluence of interesting archaeology, famous pottery, and looting that led to the Mimbres Foundation excavations at the Mattocks site. Archaeologists and residents of the region have known the Mattocks as one of the 25 or so large Mimbres sites in southwestern New Mexico. It was named after the

Mattocks family, who owned the site and the ranch buildings to the south of the site for several decades (figure I.1). These buildings include one of the oldest ranch houses still standing in the Mimbres Valley, known locally as the Mattocks House (because Bert Mattocks lived there for about 50 years) and alternately as the Gooch House because it was probably Benjamin Gooch who built it in the 1890s. The site was first recorded in the site files of the Laboratory of Anthropology, Museum of Indian Arts and Culture, Santa Fe, in 1930, and thus it has one of the early site numbers—LA676. Personnel from Beloit College, perhaps Nesbitt himself—because he was excavating at the site at the time—provided the site information. The site is on a terrace above the Mimbres River floodplain at an elevation of about 5900 ft, or 1800 m (figure I.2). Today, irrigation canals divert water to fields just above and downstream from the Mattocks site, and the floodplain below the site was farmed in the not-too-­ distant past. The site (figures I.3 and I.4) had a relatively small occupation during the Pit Structure periods (A.D. 200–1020/1050; see chapter 1 for an extended discussion of the chronology that we use), but it had perhaps as many as 180 rooms contained in probably eight separate room blocks during the Pueblo or Classic period (A.D. 1010– 1130). The Mattocks site is a mile (1.6 km) south of the Harris site excavated by Haury (1936a) in the 1930s, a site that was critical in formulating the concept of the Mogollon. Immediately across the river on a high knoll is the McAnally site, an Early Pit Structure site (A.D. 200– 750) that was occupied before the Mattocks (Diehl and LeBlanc 2001).

Early Pueblos in the Mimbres Region The first use of Mimbres pueblos happened relatively early, compared with much of the Southwest. People

4

Introduction

Figure I.1.  The Mattocks ranch in 1929 or 1930. Photo from Paul Nesbitt.

in the Mimbres region were mostly living in contiguous surface rooms by the A.D. 1000s (LeBlanc 1983; Nelson 1999:33). Although we cannot pinpoint an exact date for the transition, it happened between the late A.D. 900s and the early or middle A.D. 1000s. There is conflicting evidence from the Mimbres region about whether Mimbres pueblos were built rapidly, with little use of transitional forms, or whether there were bridging architectural forms used during the A.D. 900s. In fact, both scenarios may be correct. Shafer (2003:40– 54) has characterized the interval of A.D. 900–1000, his Late Three Circle phase (equivalent to our Late Late Pit Structure period), as one of the most dynamic in Mimbres history because it was the time when houses, ceremonial buildings, mortuary patterns, and ideology all began to change from those characteristic of the Pit Structure periods to those of the Classic period. Shafer (2003:40) suggested, however, that during the A.D. 900s some people started to build structures transitional between pit structures and pueblos, while other people may have continued to use pit structures. Anyon and LeBlanc (1984; LeBlanc 1983) have observed that people were living in pit structures during the A.D. 900s at the Galaz site, although Unit 20, an isolated, semi-subterranean cobble room and side chamber, was occupied during the Three Circle phase (our Late Pit Structure period) as indicated by two Boldface (Style I) Black-on-white bowls in the subfloor burial (Anyon and LeBlanc 1984:54–61; see chapter 1 for

pottery terminology). Our Mattocks site data, however, show no transitional forms. This variation in the presence of transitional structures and the timing of the pit structure to pueblo transition is paralleled by variation in the forms of Mimbres pueblos and the social structures of the groups inhabiting them. It hints that people with different customs, household traditions, or circumstances built the pueblos and that Mimbres society allowed people to continue these differences through the Classic period. There is certainly no evidence in the Mimbres Valley for the kind of Ancestral Pueblo transition in which people changed surface storage cists to storage rooms and then to habitation rooms. Lekson (1988) has suggested that the Mangas phase, a period in the Mimbres region defined as transitional between pit structures and surface structures and characterized by small surface pueblos with Boldface and Transitional (Styles I and II) Black-on-white pottery (Gladwin and Gladwin 1934; Haury 1936a), may actually have been present in the Mimbres Valley. However, the best data to support this contention are from the Upper Gila Valley, to the west and north of the Mimbres Valley (Dycus 1997; Fitting 1972; Hammack et al. 1966). Transitional structures are present at most sites in the Mimbres Valley (with Mattocks being an exception), but they are not associated with Boldface pottery, and we do not yet know the degree to which they are associated with Transitional or Classic ceramics.

Early Pueblos in the Mimbres Region

5

Figure I.2.  Location of the Mattocks site and other major sites mentioned in text.

The Mattocks Site as an Example of an Early Pueblo The Mattocks site provides two sources of data with which to examine the early use of pueblos in the Mimbres region. The first is change through time across the pit structure to pueblo transition, considering what might have prompted the conversion from one kind of architecture to another, along with other factors that might have changed with the architecture. The second data set focuses on what was happening within this early pueblo

in terms of the architectural structure, the foods and other natural resources that people used, and the social organization, especially the household structure and social differentiation.

The Pit Structure to Pueblo Transition Comparing Mattocks to other large Late and Late Late Pit Structure and Classic period sites in the Mimbres Valley, it is obvious that people did not use the Mattocks site very intensively during any of the pit structure periods (A.D. 200 to about A.D. 1000). There were, however,

6

Introduction

Figure I.3.  A reconstruction of the Mattocks site. By Will Russell.

three buildings at the site that dated to the Late or Late Late Pit Structure period or both (figure I.4), and there was at least one known pit structure, and perhaps a second, that lay along the terrace edge to the south and perhaps to the north, well beyond the area of the Classic occupation. At the Mattocks site, people also used pit structures contemporary with pueblos during the Classic period (Gilman 2007). These lines of evidence show how the transition from one architectural form to another occurred at the household level, how the household structure did not change across the transition, and how the population may have later grown during the Classic period, at least at the Mattocks site. As we marshal the information from the Mattocks site, it will become clear that no perceptible population growth, radical change in diet, variation in household structure or size, or change in social differentiation preceded or accompanied the first use of pueblos for habitation at the Mattocks site, and perhaps in the Mimbres Valley. This is certainly counter to previous explanations of the pit structure to pueblo transition (Gilman 1987a).

The Mattocks Site as an Early Pueblo Given the artistic quality of the painted pottery during the Classic period, as well as the rapid change to surface pueblos, a pertinent question is how Mimbres society was structured and how it operated. Although it is plausible that the designs painted on the pots reflected or engendered social differentiation that had not previously been

present, evidence suggests that this was not the case. We will therefore examine what else accompanied the first use of pueblos and the blossoming of the painted designs, in terms of increasing numbers of painted bowls, the extreme variation in designs, and the artistic quality. We will argue that the Mattocks site, perhaps opposed to other Mimbres pueblo sites, had one household per room block, and therefore several contemporary households lived at the site. At the Mattocks site, the presence of several households was a change from the situation during the preceding Pit Structure periods, but this was probably not the case at other Mimbres Classic pueblos. One of the important aspects of Mimbres pueblos was their degree of variation; there was no “standard” pueblo from which a few could vary.

Conclusion After hundreds of years of building and living in pit structures, people in the Mimbres region began to build pueblos instead. This raises questions about the circumstances surrounding that change, as well as questions about how many people lived in early pueblos, how agricultural their diets were, and whether the social setting changed during or after the transition. Mimbres pueblos are some of the earlier examples of people using surface room blocks in the North American Southwest, and so they are ideal for investigating these questions. The Mattocks site is one of the few Mimbres pueblos excavated using modern

Figure I.4.  Map of the Mattocks site with both the Mimbres Foundation’s and Nesbitt’s rooms. Finalized by Will Russell.

8

Introduction

archaeological techniques, and indeed, given the amount of pothunting at most large Classic sites, excavations such as the relatively recent ones at the Mattocks, NAN Ranch (Shafer 2003), and Old Town (Creel 2006b) sites may never again be possible. We will therefore present as much data in this monograph as we can to facilitate future research on Classic pueblos, but we will also provide our interpretations of these data in terms of the research questions on early pueblos presented in this section.

History of Research and Pothunting at the Mattocks Site Nesbitt’s Excavations, 1929–1931 Nesbitt (1931) of the Logan Museum at Beloit College in Beloit, Wisconsin, undertook the first professional excavations at the Mattocks site. He reported the first two years of his project, 1929 and 1930, in a monograph entitled The Ancient Mimbreños, Based on Investigations at the Mattocks Ruin, Mimbres Valley, New Mexico, which was published in 1931. The only extant field notes at the Logan Museum for any of Nesbitt’s excavation seasons are those by two students in 1930 (Frost 1930; Kirkpatrick or Parker 1930). The Logan Museum catalog provides additional information, and most of the artifacts that Nesbitt excavated are at the museum. There are also some whole vessels from Nesbitt’s Mattocks site excavations at the Laboratory of Anthropology, Museum of Indian Arts and Culture, in Santa Fe, New Mexico, but Nesbitt noted in Gilman’s interview with him (see below) that he did not send copies of the field notes to the Laboratory. As was appropriate for the culture history paradigm of the time, Nesbitt was most interested in understanding what happened when, and in describing the norms of the Mimbres culture. Although he had no access to chronometric dating, he did use architectural styles to propose three periods of occupation at the Mattocks site: Early, Middle, and Late. Nesbitt distinguished pit structures from pueblo rooms, and his Early period was the equivalent of the Pit Structure period, as currently defined. We discuss Nesbitt’s Middle and Late period distinctions in chapter 3. Nesbitt’s concern with the norms of Mimbres culture is clearest in his excavation and collection strategies. Following the standards of the time, he focused on the artifacts that archaeologists felt represented a specific culture, such as painted pottery, architecture, and decorative items that may have been for personal adornment or ritual use. Nesbitt therefore did not screen the deposits to obtain comparable samples, nor did he collect faunal or ethnobotanical remains. There is, however, a large collection of whole, painted pottery from Nesbitt’s excavation, as well as characteristic pieces of ground and chipped stone, worked bone, shell and stone ornaments, and unusual artifacts.

In the summer of 1983, Gilman, supported by a National Science Foundation grant, “The Classic Mimbres Period and the Mattocks Site: Old Data and New Interpretations,” which had been awarded to her and LeBlanc, visited Nesbitt at his home in Northport, Alabama, to interview him about his research project at the Mattocks site. Gilman had prepared for the interview by reading all the unpublished material in the archive at the Logan Museum. (The National Science Foundation grant also supported the trip Gilman and LeBlanc took to Beloit.) For historical interest and accuracy, the material presented below includes information from both the archives and the interview. When Nesbitt worked at the Mattocks site from August 16 to November 27 in 1929, he appears to have been relatively untrained. He used three laborers: Frank Aguilar, Luis Domingues, and Samuel Ortiz. Dr. George L. Collie, professor of geology at Beloit College, assisted in September, and Alfred W. Bowers was the student assistant in October and November. (Nesbitt [personal communication, 1983] remembered the laborers as Manuel Gonzalez, Simon Ortiz, and Blas Rodriquez. He paid them two dollars a day.) George Mattocks (figure I.5) always took an interest in the excavations. No field notes are extant from this year, and it appears that few notes were taken, given the scant descriptions of these excavations in the published report compared to the more complete descriptions for the 1930 excavations. Bowers, in a 1984 letter to

Figure I.5.  George Mattocks at the Mattocks ranch, September 1929. Photo from Paul Nesbitt.

History of Research and Pothunting at the Mattocks Site

Figure I.6a.  Photo of Mattocks site crew in 1930. Paul Nesbitt, Alexander (Jack) Frost, Martin Prehn, J. Harter Kirkpatrick, and Robert E. Parker (left to right) at the field camp near the river. Photo from Robert Parker.

Gilman (the letters discussed in this section, along with notes from Gilman’s interview with Nesbitt, are on file at the Maxwell Museum of Anthropology, University of New Mexico, Albuquerque), remembered that he had turned over “notations and notes” to Nesbitt and “that there were some rather extensive plats and drawings made.” None of these remain at the Logan Museum. In the 1930 season, from June 25 through August 10, four students—Alexander (Jack) Frost, J. Harter Kirkpatrick, Robert E. Parker, and Martin Prehn—worked with Nesbitt at the site (figures I.6 and I.7). The field notes of two of these students, Frost and either Kirkpatrick or Parker, are available at the Logan Museum, although any notes that Nesbitt and the other two students might have taken have not been located. In a 1984 letter to Gilman, Parker said that there was a large display of Mattocks site bowls and life-sized cutouts of the crew members in the Social Science building at the 1933 World’s Fair in Chicago. Nesbitt, in a 1983 letter to Gilman, remembered that they were housed in a camp near the river during the 1930 field season (figure I.8). The camp consisted of three tents, one of which was a huge army tent suitable for eight people. On or about August 4, a severe thunderstorm felled a cottonwood tree that wrecked one of the tents. The incident “scared hell out of the students and they moved into the adobe house. This took place while I was at the Gila cliff dwellings with Geo. Mattocks (Aug. 3–8, 1930).” During the 1931 season, Kirkpatrick returned as a student assistant, along with John Martin, Robert Van Valza, Robert B. Voight, and Lloyd Maurer (figure I.9). Nesbitt

9

Figure I.6b.  Photo of Mattocks site crew in 1930. J. Harter Kirkpatrick, Paul Nesbitt, Robert Parker, Alexander (Jack) Frost, and Martin Prehn (left to right) in more formal attire. Photo from Robert Parker.

did not remember Van Valza during his interview with Gilman, and he added Albert Baker to the list of 1931 students. No student notes are extant from 1931. Robert Voight, in a 1984 letter to Gilman, mentioned that during his excavation season (which he remembered as 1930), the crew slept in the “old adobe bunkhouse,” which of the two houses on the Mattocks property is probably the building closest to the Mimbres River. Voight also remembered Baker being on the crew. In 1929, Nesbitt excavated 39 rooms of which four (Rooms 11, 23, 27—which was perhaps a communal structure—and 32) were apparently pit structures. This total disagrees with the three that Nesbitt (1931:19) said they excavated. Nesbitt (1931:19) stated that they uncovered about 125 skeletons in 1929, but skeleton numbers began at 117 in 1930, and so either they excavated 116 skeletons in 1929, or they did not number some of the skeletons from that season. The crew excavated 22 rooms, including one pit structure (Room 43; Room 41 is labeled as a pithouse on Nesbitt’s map but is not one) and one so-called kiva (Room 48), in 1930. These rooms were numbered from 40 to 61. Nesbitt (1931:32) said that approximately 100 burials were removed during this season. Actually, 90 burials were uncovered, numbered from 117 to 205, with one burial known to be unnumbered. Thus, Nesbitt excavated at least 61 structures and 206 burials in two seasons at the Mattocks site. Rooms for which there was information either in the field notes or the published report are discussed in chapters 2 and 3; most of these are from the 1930 season. Data on burials from the second season, taken from the field notes, are presented in chapter 7. When we examined the materials and catalogue at the Logan Museum, we discovered that Nesbitt had excavated

10

Introduction

Figure I.8.  Camp on the Mimbres River east of the Mattocks ranch, 1930. Photo from Paul Nesbitt and Robert Parker.

Figure I.7a.  Photo of the Mattocks site crew at work, 1930. Paul Nesbitt, Robert Parker, and Martin Prehn (left to right) photographing and recording room excavation. Photo from Robert Parker.

Figure I.9.  Crew on field trip to White Sands National Monument, 1931. Unknown person, John Martin, Lloyd Maurer, and Robert Voight (left to right). Photo from Paul Nesbitt.

Figure I.7b.  Photo of Mattocks site crew at work, 1930. Alexander (Jack) Frost with George Mattocks, Jr. (left to right). Photo from Robert Parker.

at the Mattocks site in 1931, a season he did not report in his publication. He worked there for an indeterminate period until August 19, when he moved to the Hudson Ranch site near Reserve and then to Alamogordo. Although we know that Nesbitt used two rooms in the adobe house south of the Mattocks site in 1931 and that he hired a cook, no notes are known to exist and none of the rooms that the crew excavated were added to the site map from the 1929 and 1930 excavations. In the interview, Nesbitt thought that they might have excavated in what he called the Southwest Group and in the west part of what we called the 100s room block. We found excavated

The Mimbres Foundation Research Program

11

Figure I.10.  The Mattocks site in 1929 prior to excavation. Photo from Paul Nesbitt.

rooms in the latter that are not on Nesbitt’s map, although these rooms could have been looted. We discussed field techniques during the interview. Nesbitt noted that they began screening the fill in 1929 as he had learned to do in France, but he felt that they were recovering little information, and so they stopped. They subsequently screened nothing, including burials. The crews always excavated below the room floors after using a probe to find sub-floor burials, and they did not remove the room walls during excavation. The crews always excavated complete rooms, and they always left the hearths intact. The rooms on the north and west sides of the site remained unexcavated. The only extramural excavations they undertook were in search of rooms. The crews uncovered no rooms with flagstone floors, no circular pit structures, and no pueblo rooms superimposed onto pit structures.

Pothunting While we do not know the extent of pothunting at the Mattocks site, we are certain that it happened, as it has at the majority of Mimbres sites. Pot collecting had begun in the Mimbres region by at least the early 1900s, as attested by Fewkes’ (1914, 1923, 1924) purchase of Mimbres pottery for the Smithsonian Institution. Nesbitt (1931:15) noted that at the Mattocks site “except for a few rooms here and there, the ruin was undisturbed. . . .” Figure I.10 shows the Mattocks site in 1929 prior to excavation.

Because we are not certain exactly which rooms Nesbitt excavated, we cannot ascertain which rooms might therefore have been pothunted. Local knowledge stated that pothunting at the Mattocks site occurred after Nesbitt’s departure in 1931 and continued until the Mimbres Foundation gained control of the site in the early 1970s. As we excavated, we learned that previously excavated or pothunted rooms had several characteristics, although it was only when we reached the floor level that we would know for certain that the room had been disturbed. If the floor was not present or not intact, then the fill above the floor was clearly not in situ. In retrospect, disturbed rooms often had fine, soft, homogeneous, and uncompacted fill. In this fill, there would be scattered rocks from the walls in no discernable pattern, and sometimes there were few wall rocks at all. Few large painted sherds were present, although there were sometimes historic artifacts and disarticulated human bone. It is possible that gravel on the present ground surface indicates a disturbed room.

The Mimbres Foundation Research Program Our work at the Mattocks site was part of a much larger regional Mimbres research project, which consisted of five field seasons from 1974 to 1977, with a short session in 1979. We note that for the first two years, in 1974 and 1975, our research project was called the Mimbres

12

Introduction

Archaeological Center (MAC). It was the Mimbres Foundation thereafter. We use the latter for convenience here, but the field notes and analysis forms will have the name MAC for 1974 and 1975. The larger project began as a rescue effort to see what we could learn from Mimbres Classic sites before they were all destroyed by looters. The initial thrust had two foci. First, most sites clearly had been heavily looted, but we hoped we would find undisturbed areas. This initial work focused on the Classic period components at the Mattocks and Mitchell (Anyon and LeBlanc n.d.) sites. Second, we began an informal survey for additional sites that might be better preserved. This subsequently became a systematic, sample survey of the Mimbres Valley. Several things became clear after a few weeks. There were few unlooted sites, and any research design was going to have to adapt to that reality. This meant that broad scale excavations were not likely to be useful, as only small areas here and there were undisturbed on large sites. This in turn meant that much excavated material would be difficult to interpret on an intrasite basis, but it would still be useful for intersite comparisons. More positively, the early results of the survey yielded unexpected, but in hindsight not surprising, results. In the valley, there were sites that were older than had previously been recognized, and we later defined the Early Pit Structure period (Anyon et al. 1981; Diehl and LeBlanc 2001) to encompass these sites. There were also undisturbed Late Pit Structure period sites and structures superimposed by later pueblos. Haury (1936a) had excavated one of these, the Harris site. Our early work determined that it was possible to obtain controlled samples of fauna, flora, lithics, and the like that had not previously been available from sites of this period. It was thus realistic to sample a series of sites that spanned the time between A.D. 200 and the end of the Classic period, which was then believed to date well into the A.D. 1200s. Moreover, there were later time periods that had not yet been defined. Some sites from these periods had Gila Polychrome pottery and were similar to sites in the Gila Valley that had been previously excavated both by avocational archaeologists and the Museum of New Mexico, although the projects were not well reported at that time. Nevertheless, it was clear that these sites, and by extrapolation similar ones in the Mimbres Valley, should date into the A.D. 1300s. Thus, we felt that we could obtain a temporally continuous sample of sites extending across 1,100–1,200 years. While such a sample would not contribute to the rescue of Mimbres Classic sites per se, it would situate them in a new context and help us make sense of what had been excavated in the 1920s and 1930s, and what we and others later excavated from looted sites. We began an excavation program that ultimately sampled some 14 sites of various periods in the upper, middle, and lower parts of the Mimbres Valley. This excavation

strategy allowed us to build a comparative frame of reference for changes within the Mimbres Valley, both through time and across space. This research focus was well within the processual paradigm that framed theoretical discussions at the time, in that it focused on variations within a regional system. It assumed that most causes of variation were internal to the system, and in its application it concentrated on subsistence and settlement pattern data. We were also able to find more intact areas at the Mattocks site than we had first anticipated, although not many such areas at other Classic sites. Thus, there was always a compromise between more extensive excavations at the Mattocks site and more limited excavations at a broad range of other sites. While other archaeologists might have made different choices, at the time ours seemed like the most propitious ones to follow. Our excavations and research at the Mattocks site and at the Galaz (Anyon and LeBlanc 1984), Mitchell, Montezuma, and Wheaton-Smith sites (Anyon and LeBlanc n.d.) in the upper valley, coupled with excavations in the southern valley at the NAN Ranch (Shafer 2003) and Old Town sites (Creel 2006b), and with work beyond the valley but within the Mimbres region (e.g., Lekson 1990; Nelson 1999; Woosley and McIntyre 1996), have provided a comparative sample for the Mimbres Classic period that was not available or even envisioned in 1974. This has led to a variety of comparative studies (Anyon and LeBlanc 1980; Creel 1989; Creel and McKusick 1994; Gilman 1990, 2006; Powell 2000; Powell-Martí and Gilman 2006). It is in these comparative studies that future understanding of the Mimbres lies. The Mimbres Foundation used the level-locus system of recording for all excavations, including that at the Mattocks site. LeBlanc (1976) and Anyon and LeBlanc (1984:18) have described it in detail, and we summarize it here. Because we intended to only lightly sample many sites and because we wanted room data to be internally coherent such that, for example, excavation units did not include both room and non-room contexts, we did not impose a rectangular grid on the site. Instead, we numbered each room and each trench or exterior area, assigning rooms near each other to the same series: “100s,” “200s,” and so forth. Within each numbered space, which were called units, vertical excavations were by levels, either arbitrary or stratigraphic. However, each excavated horizontal area was called a locus. If, for example, a room was excavated in four quadrants, each quadrant would be given a locus number, along with a level number. All lot samples, such as sherds or lithics, from that quadrant in that level would have a combination of a level and a locus. Thus, the first level of one quadrant for a room would be 1-1, with the level number first and the locus number second. The second level for that quadrant would be 2-1 and so on. If a feature was encountered and it was excavated as a unit—that is, the artifacts kept as a group—it would

The Mimbres Foundation Research Program be assigned its own locus number. For example, a post hole uncovered in level 5 of locus 3 would have its own locus number and would be 5-4. A room could have many combinations of loci and levels, and they could consist of room portions by level or features such as hearths, postholes, or burials. Each would have a unique combination of level and locus numbers. The numbers would provide some idea of where in the room the artifacts and samples were collected. Obviously, level 2 was below level 1, and 2-4 was below 1-4, while 2-5 was roughly the same depth as 2-4, but in a different part of the room. To help when doing analysis, we often suffixed the level or the locus number, and so a floor level, for example, would be 3F-5. We often used letters such as B for burial and H for hearth as suffixes for loci as well—for example, 3-5B or 3-5H. In the text that follows, we designate provenience using three numbers: unit-level-locus, that is, 114-3-5. If we wanted to designate a particular artifact or sample such as a flotation sample, instead of a field-number approach, we simply numbered the first uniquely designated artifact from a level-locus with a forward slash and then a number. Thus, the first artifact or sample from 1143-5 was 3-5/1, the second was 3-5/2, and so forth. Because we did not have a formal grid oriented to the cardinal directions at the site, we needed some convenient way to refer to room walls and other orientations. The Mimbres River, the edge of the terrace, and the basic layout of the Mattocks site were close to northwest-­southeast. Also, we were working from the old Nesbitt map, which was oriented along the terrace and not to true north. We therefore simply considered the river and terrace to be running north-south, and that way everyone would consistently label and describe all walls and other features in the same manner. A wall that we call the north wall is most likely to be the northwest wall in a cardinal sense, but might be north-northwest or west-northwest in a more technical sense. We consider our terminology for north and for all other cardinal directions to be “conceptual north.” All of the Mimbres Foundation field notes, artifacts, and other materials are curated at the Maxwell Museum of Anthropology, University of New Mexico, Albuquerque. These include the Mattocks site artifacts and records.

Mimbres Foundation Excavations at the Mattocks Site, 1974–1977, 1979 When the Mimbres Foundation began excavations in the Mimbres Valley in 1974, the consensus among southwestern archaeologists was that there was nothing left at Mimbres Classic sites. Although there had been no large-scale excavations in the valley since the 1930s, archaeologists felt that the pothunting had been so severe that virtually no data would remain. The Mattocks site, however, was a large Classic pueblo to which Foundation personnel had

13

access, and so Mimbres Foundation archaeologists tested this idea by beginning excavations at Mattocks and other sites in 1974. Because the Mattocks site was large and apparently composed of distinct, separate room block areas, and because it took a long time to superimpose Nesbitt’s (1931) site map on to what we observed at the site, we initially assigned each room block a separate number series (figure I.4). We designated the 100s room block, in which all rooms were assigned numbers starting at 100, and we used the same system with what we termed the 200s, 300s, and 400s room blocks. We started in the 200s room block, in which Nesbitt had worked intensively and that probably had been heavily pothunted, because it was one of the two largest at the site. We then moved during the first season to the 100s room block, which was much more intact. By the end of the first season, we had uncovered undisturbed deposits in the 100s room block, and we would eventually locate such deposits in the 200s room block and on much of the rest of the site. The knowledge that deposits yielding useful data were present on a Mimbres Classic pueblo allowed the Mimbres Foundation to expand the scope of investigations. Because the Mimbres Valley changes significantly in elevation between its north and south ends, and because it is surrounded to the east, north, and west by mountains, people had access to a variety of environmental zones, depending on where they were living in the valley. The Mimbres Foundation focused on how ancient people used the resources that were most readily available to them, given their location. Specifically, we were interested in contemporary north-south variations within the valley. Starting in 1975, we began a systematic archaeological survey of the valley and its tributaries (Blake et al. 1986), something that no one had previously done, although parts of the area had seen some survey work (Graybill 1973, 1975). Our survey, accompanied by discussions with local people, allowed us to record for the first time the settlement patterns of the Mimbres Classic period, as well as of earlier and later times. We defined the Early Pit Structure period (Diehl and LeBlanc 2001) as well as the Postclassic Black Mountain (Animas) and Cliff (Salado) (Nelson and LeBlanc 1986) phases, and we began excavations on selected sites from these periods to broaden our understanding of what preceded and followed the Classic period. We were thus able to initiate the final part of our research design, the comparison of how people adapted to the Mimbres Valley through time. Excavations at the Mattocks site played a crucial role in the Mimbres Foundation research design. Although we simultaneously excavated several sites during 1974, it was the Mattocks that allowed us to see that there were enough intact deposits to address our other research questions. It was also the one large Classic site that we sampled, although we did excavate at Classic sites in other

14

Introduction

parts of the valley, and as such it formed a critical data set for the comparisons we were making across space. We ultimately learned that the Mattocks site had a few pit structures that dated both before and during the Classic period, providing some assessment of how people made a living through time at one site. In total, we excavated for approximately eight weeks each year from 1974 through 1977, and we then returned to the site for a week in 1979 to test the great kiva (Unit 213).

Mimbres Foundation Excavation Strategies at the Mattocks Site The Mattocks site was also where we developed strategies for investigating heavily pothunted and previously excavated sites. Since all earlier excavations had been backfilled, there were only depressions, mounds, and some rock alignments on the ground surface to guide us initially. We could not, at that point, coordinate Nesbitt’s (1931) map with what we observed, and none of the surface indications told us what had been previously excavated. We present here the sequence of how we excavated the site and why, so the reader can understand the process. We discuss each of these excavation units in detail in chapters 2 and 3, although not in the order they were excavated. We set the site datum at the southeast corner of the concrete slab on which the small building that houses the water well shaft sits. This building is north of the main Mattocks house and south of the Mattocks site. The datum is on the original site map that is on file at the Maxwell Museum. We arbitrarily designated the datum at 10 meters so all elevations would be positive. Our goal in 1974, the first year of work at the Mattocks site, was simply to find some undisturbed Classic rooms. We were successful most notably in Units 111, 112, 113, 114, and 115. We began excavations in 1974 with test trenches in the 100s, 200s, and 300s room blocks, which we excavated and screened in arbitrary 20 cm levels. The difficulty faced in interpreting some of these units, and the obvious disturbances in others, led us to abandon this tactic. For example, we screened each of five 20 cm levels of the defining test trench in Unit 300 only to discover at the bottom that the room had already been excavated. It was more efficient to use the first test trench to determine whether the room or area had been disturbed, and to then decide on an excavation and screening strategy. Another technique that we tried the first year was to excavate half-rooms; we thought some rooms might have been partly pothunted but might still yield usable information. In such a case, we thought it might have been better to excavate only part of the room to determine what data were retrievable. We used this method in Units 110, 231, and 233. The latter two were rooms that were partly disturbed, and we halted excavations after we had completed half of each because we had large enough samples of

materials. Unit 110 was an extramural area that led us to the room in Unit 111. We began excavating Unit 115 in this manner, but upon exposure of the in situ roof beams and the intact floor, we decided to excavate the entire room. We excavated several intact rooms, including Units 111, 112, 113, half of 114, 115, and Unit 325, an isolated room west of the 300s room block, during our first season. Doing this allowed us to develop a strategy for future excavations. The first step was to determine the extent of the structure. Ideally, the first test trench was placed along a row of surface rocks to determine whether this was a wall, and if that trench extended to the floor. If no floor was present, then the room probably already had been excavated, and work ceased. If a wall and floor were present, we continued with test trenches to define the other walls. This was not an easy task in rooms where pothunting had removed wall corners and extensive wall sections. Additionally, because unshaped river cobbles were used for walls, wall fall would often resemble walls. The block of dirt remaining in the center of a room after the walls had been defined generally consisted of humus development near the modern ground surface, overlying post-occupation fill above roof fall, the roof fall itself, and then the room floor. Occasionally, either natural or cultural fill was present between the roof fall and floor. Unless we could see evidence of stratigraphy in the wall-trench profiles, we removed the fill above roof fall in arbitrary 20 cm levels, although the excavators could choose to adjust size of these. We selected 20 cm levels initially because we felt they were large enough to obtain an analytically useful artifact sample but small enough to permit meaningful comparisons. For example, laboratory examination of the sherds from the top 20–25 cm of the fill in several rooms showed the presence of non-Mimbres sherds that were not detected during excavation and that probably dated to the Late (after A.D. 1100) or Terminal (after A.D. 1130) Classic periods. Since screening was undertaken both to recover artifacts and to assemble unbiased and comparable artifact samples for analysis, the amount of screening per level depended on the number of artifacts that were retrieved. Fifty percent screening in the post-occupation fill levels might have yielded enough artifacts for analysis, but as we reached roof fall and floor, we screened 100 percent of the deposits. After we carefully cleared the roof fall and floor, we photographed the latter and recorded any artifacts on it. We then excavated floor pits with 100 percent screening to recover items that might indicate pit function. Burials were carefully cleaned, recorded, photographed, and removed for further analysis. Often the ancient people living in the rooms had resurfaced the room floors or built new ones, and so we removed the floors in each room, sometimes exposing more pits and lower floors. When we had completed a room excavation, we photographed the

The Mimbres Foundation Research Program walls and used an architecture form to record details about the walls, corners, doors, vents, roof, and other architectural features. At the end of a unit excavation, we often discovered that we had reexcavated a room that had already been explored. In these cases, the initial exploratory trench had exposed intact floor surfaces next to the wall, and so we considered the room to be intact. However, pothunters regularly left sections of floor in place, especially at the room peripheries, and so we would only realize that a room was not intact when it had been fully excavated. We could still gather some data about architectural details and postholes and burials remaining in and under the intact sections of floor. Occasionally, we would excavate part of a pothunted room to retrieve tree-ring samples that could help to date the room block. We screened minimally in rooms that we knew had been pothunted. The preceding discussion of room excavation strategies at the Mattocks site is a general outline of our excavation strategies. The excavators could, and did, modify these approaches as was appropriate for the material being excavated, and we often tried new strategies. In addition to actual excavation and artifact collection techniques, we gathered flotation, pollen, and tree-ring samples. We took flotation and pollen samples from room floors, hearths, and other features and areas that seemed as if they might contain botanical remains. We collected every piece of charcoal on which we could count 25 rings, regardless of size, for tree-ring samples. The latter strategy provided us with the first chronometric dates from Mimbres Classic sites. Nesbitt (1931) apparently excavated seven rooms in the 100s room block. His Rooms 44, 45, and 61 were in the center of the room block and corresponded to Mimbres Foundation Units 122, 125, and 126 respectively. We completely reexcavated these rooms. To the south of these rooms, Nesbitt excavated his Rooms 46 and 47, which probably correspond to our Unit 134 and the western part of Unit 136. Our excavations here were test trenches placed along the south walls to ascertain whether the rooms had been previously excavated. Nesbitt’s final two rooms, 13 and 15, were probably part of the south edge of the room block. We placed a small test trench (Unit 144) within Room 13, but we did not excavate in Room 15. Some pothunting activity also had occurred in the 100s room block before the Mimbres Foundation excavations. We found that Units 120, 123, and 137 were completely disturbed and that half to two-thirds of Units 114, 119, and 127 had been pothunted. The room west of Unit 137 was also apparently pothunted, as indicated by the eastern part of Unit 136. The Mimbres Foundation excavated only seven rooms in the 100s room block that were generally untouched—Units 106, 111, 112, 113, 115, 116, and 121. In 1975, we aimed to expand our knowledge of Mimbres Classic room blocks and their construction, use, and

15

abandonment sequences, their characteristics, and their sizes. We excavated many disturbed rooms in this year, these being very difficult to distinguish from intact rooms until a sizable portion of the floor area had been exposed. We excavated several more rooms in the 100s room block, many of which had been pothunted or had been exposed by Nesbitt. We trenched the southernmost two tiers of rooms in the 100s room block rather than excavating them because we assumed that Nesbitt had excavated them. Once we determined that a room had been excavated, we quickly removed the redeposited fill to determine whether a floor or other features remained. In most cases, tiny areas of floor were intact along the walls, and we were able to take the floor elevation. Postholes and even burials also were often present. We thought that the southern tier of rooms in this room block had been pot­ hunted, and so we only placed wall trenches in this area to determine the number of rooms present. Our work in the 100s room block ended during this second year so that we could investigate other parts of the Mattocks site. We continued excavations in the 200s room block in hope of finding an intact room. Although we opened a large area in and around Unit 232, the untouched sections were so small and scattered that interpretation was difficult. We also placed a test trench (Unit 290) northeast of the room block and excavated it toward the rooms in order to find the outer wall. We did not find it, but we did take a stratified, screened sample from cultural deposits outside the room block. We also continued to excavate trenches on the mound east of the 100s room block. We had placed two small test trenches there in 1974, but they seemed to be in a disturbed area. The later trenches (Units 128 and 129) were placed all around the mound, which we eventually determined was not a cultural feature. When we finally were able to interpret Nesbitt’s map in 1976, we noted that he had excavated rooms south of this mound and that the mound appears to have been his rock and backdirt pile. We also began excavation in the 400s room block on the west side of the site in 1975. Two of the three rooms were untouched, and we placed trenches along the north side of the room block to determine its extent. Near the end of the season, we used a backhoe to investigate the nature of the deposits between the room blocks. Archaeologists rarely used backhoes in the mid1970s, but we felt that the amount of fill a backhoe would remove would not damage the deposits and that the labor savings would be tremendous. The backhoeing worked well in that, when it was finished, we had learned that there were virtually no cultural deposits in the areas examined, except for artifacts in the overburden. We continued to use the same excavation strategies in the final two years of major excavation at the Mattocks site. In 1976, we excavated only two rooms and a ramada area in the 400s room block. We excavated two

16

Introduction

more rooms there and a nearby pit structure (Unit 410) in 1977, along with a large flagstone-floored room (Unit 41) on the southeast corner of the 200s room block, a Georgetown phase pit structure superimposed by a Classic period extramural activity area (Unit 80) near Nesbitt’s Southeast Group room block, and a superimposed Classic room and Three Circle phase pit structure (Unit 286) in the 200s room block. During the analysis phase of this project, we realized that the large depression west of the 200s room block might have been a great kiva. We had tested this area in 1974, but the presence of historic trash in the trench discouraged us from going deep enough to determine the origin of the depression. In 1979, we returned to the site for a week with a small crew to test this area again and found that a great kiva (Unit 213) had indeed formed the depression.

Mimbres Foundation Analytic Strategies A key point to understanding the Mimbres Foundation analytic strategies—that is, how we analyzed artifacts beyond identifying them—is the concept of an analytic unit. Analytic units combine like excavation units such that, for example, all roof fall excavation units are analyzed as a single analytic unit, even if there were multiple roof fall excavation units in a room. Similarly, we generally combined all postholes from the same floor in a pueblo room into a single analytic unit. The analytic units for our Mattocks site excavations are on file at the Maxwell Museum of Anthropology, University of New Mexico, Albuquerque.

The Special Role of the Mattocks Site in Preservation and Public Education Robert McAnally owned the Mattocks site when we began work in the Mimbres Valley. He allowed us to work at the site and to use the Mattocks house for our field camp. After several years of field work, thinking all the while that we needed to excavate before looters destroyed the remainder of the site, the Mimbres Foundation purchased the southern part of the site at McAnally’s suggestion. Although a few archaeologists similarly had preserved sites by purchasing them, it was not common practice. As word spread that we had acquired the Mattocks site, LeBlanc was asked to help other archaeologists acquire sites (not in the Mimbres area) to the same end. He was not successful; he was sued and realized that we had succeeded at the Mattocks site only because the land owner was so interested in preserving it. Understanding that the concept of acquiring for preservation rather than “digging in front of the bulldozers” was a good one, the board of the Mimbres Foundation decided to form the Archaeological Conservancy so

that a professional, knowledgeable, and adequately funded organization could pursue this approach (LeBlanc 1979). The Conservancy was functioning by 1980 with LeBlanc, Richard Ford, Jay Last, Douglas Schwartz, Stephen Williams, and Richard Woodbury as founding board members, with initial funding from the Ford Foundation and the Rockefeller Brothers Fund. Thus, it was the acquisition of part of the Mattocks site that led directly to the foundation of the Conservancy that has now preserved more than 400 sites. For some reason, the role that the Mimbres Foundation played in the early Conservancy is now largely unacknowledged (Bryant 2006; Stewart 2009), and the Mimbres Foundation returned to supporting the investigation of Mimbres sites. Recently, the Mimbres Foundation has conveyed the rights to the archaeological remains on the southern part of the Mattocks site to Archaeology Southwest, a preservation organization based in Tucson that has also obtained the rights to the archaeology on the northern part of the site. The location now serves as an interpretive center for the prehistory and history of the Mimbres Valley, with a signed trail over the site. Except for the Gila Cliff Dwellings National Monument to the north, which is not a Mimbres culture site, this is the only site-based interpretive center in southwestern New Mexico, and it has opened a new chapter in preserving and educating the public about the region’s history. Once again, the Mattocks site has played a key role in this process. In terms of public education, the Mimbres Foundation held an annual open house for the community, during which we discussed our excavations, particularly at the Mattocks site, and the artifacts and samples that we had collected. Our goal was to show the value of scientific excavations, as opposed to pothunting, as a means of understanding the lives of ancient people living in the Mimbres Valley. Because the Mattocks site is adjacent to the main north-south road through the valley, many people visited the site during our excavations, and we always gave them site tours, again emphasizing scientific methods. We also employed several local high school students and gave talks for local organizations, including the Grant County Archaeological Society.

The Structure of This Volume Our goal in this volume is not only to present the basic data that we recovered from the Mattocks site but also to address questions that are of particular interest to us. We realize others have questions that are equally interesting, and so we have tried to tread the line inherent in every archaeological site report between presenting the information relevant to our questions and anticipating what might be of use to others. We feel that the trend in United States archaeology has been toward fewer descriptive

Conclusions reports of field work. We find this movement disturbing, as excavations are destructive whether done by professionals or looters. It is our obligation not only to preserve the original field notes and recovered artifacts but to provide others with as much information as practical. We hope we have found a responsible balance in our presentation. The original field notes, maps, photographs, and artifacts from the excavations reported here are preserved at the Maxwell Museum, University of New Mexico, and we encourage others to review them, both to explore new research directions and to evaluate our interpretations. In this introduction, we have outlined a particular focus of ours—the development of the earliest pueblos in the North American Southwest. We have discussed the history of archaeological work at the Mattocks site and the overall research program of the Mimbres Foundation. In the next chapter, we consider the dating of the Mattocks site and, to a lesser degree, that of the Mimbres sequence overall. The Mattocks site is one of the best dated in southwestern New Mexico, and its dates are relevant to much of what follows. In chapters 2 through 4, we discuss the site’s architecture through time, in terms of details, the changes that took place, and the processes that occurred. In chapter 5, we focus on the environmental setting, fauna, ethnobotanical remains, pollen, chipped stone, and ground stone from the site. Our investigation centers on the nature of subsistence change, especially the role of agriculture, during the period when the site was occupied. We include chipped stone and ground stone artifacts here because we use them to address these same

17

questions. Chapter 6 deals with the ceramics, particularly emphasizing what they can reveal about social differentiation at the Mattocks site, and we pursue the same theme in chapter 7 with regard to burial information. Our last data-focused chapter, chapter 8, considers palettes, bone tools, pipes, shell, jewelry, copper bells, other artifacts, and raw materials. We provide detailed descriptions of these items and use this material to again pursue the question of social differentiation, to the extent that this is possible. We conclude with chapter 9, which synthesizes all of the Mattocks site material and places it in regional and intellectual contexts.

Conclusions We will use data from the Mattocks site, a large Mimbres Classic period pueblo with earlier and contemporary pit structures, to examine the transition from pit structures to pueblos in the Mimbres Valley. It may be that this transition was a major one, in that population growth, dietary change to include more agriculture, and presumably new kinds of social organizations accompanied the transition. As we will show, however, the data from the Mattocks site that address these contentions do not clearly support them. We will also use the data that we present to investigate the nature of some of the earliest pueblos in the Southwest. These materials are particularly interesting in the Mimbres case because the use of these early pueblos is associated with spectacular black-on-white pottery.

CHAPTER 1

Mattocks Site Chronology

The dating of archaeological remains is critical to understanding and interpreting them, and so Mimbres Foundation practice was to obtain as many chronometric dates as possible and to use relative dating methods fully. In this chapter, we briefly review the chronology of the Mimbres region and then discuss the tree-ring, archaeomagnetic, and obsidian dates obtained from the Mattocks site. We continue building the chronology with three analyses using ceramics and one using hearth shapes, and we conclude the chapter with a consideration of the “best date” for each Mattocks site room and excavation unit for which we have dating information. Within the data presented in this chapter are references to many of the specific pit structures and pueblo rooms at the Mattocks site, detailed information about which will be presented in chapters 2 and 3.

Mimbres Regional Chronology The development of a chronology for the Mimbres region began with Haury’s (1936a) research at the Mogollon village to the west of the Mimbres Valley, at the Harris site in the Mimbres Valley, and with the excavations by the Cosgroves (1932) at the Swarts site, which is also in the Mimbres Valley. Haury defined three phases, Georgetown (now the late part of the Early Pit Structure period, A.D. 550–750, table 1.1), San Francisco (now the Middle Pit Structure period, A.D. 750–800/850), and Three Circle (the early part of this phase is now the Late Pit Structure period, A.D. 800/850–900/950, and the late part is the Late Late Pit Structure period, A.D. 880/950–1020/1050). Haury’s chronology was based in part on a suite of treering dates from the Harris site, while the Cosgroves described what became the Mimbres Classic period (A.D. 1010–1130), although they did not produce any chronometric data. The results of these two projects still form the basis of Mimbres chronology, although of course there have been changes due to the addition of more chronometric dates, the recognition of the Early Pit Structure

period, the more nuanced division of time within the later pit structure and Classic periods (table 1.1), and recognition of the Postclassic period and phases. As we will discuss, chronometric dates from the Mattocks site are important for establishing the dating of the Mimbres Classic period and for fine-tuning the overall Mimbres Valley chronology. We refer the reader to Anyon et al. (1981), LeBlanc (1980), and LeBlanc and Whalen (1980) for discussions of the initial chronology modifications, and to Gilman (2010), Gilman et al. (2014), Hegmon (2002), Nelson (1999), Shafer and Brewington (1995), and Shafer (2003) for more recent discussions. Hegmon et al. (1999) have detailed the chronology of the Mimbres Valley and surrounding areas after the Classic period. Before the pit structure and pueblo periods (prior to A.D. 200) in the Mimbres region, Paleoindian and Archaic (preceramic) period groups used the area, and these people may have been the predecessors of those who built the later pit structures and pueblos. Sites used by these people are not particularly evident in southwestern New Mexico because of low population densities, seasonal movements, and changes in land surfaces. Fitting and Price (1968) have reported on two Paleoindian sites, and the Mimbres Foundation (Blake and Narod 1977) and the El Paso Archaeological Society (Rose 1970) have recorded some Archaic sites around Deming, to the south of the Mimbres Valley. Fitting (1974) and Hemphill (1983) have also reported the presence of a Late Archaic site in the Cliff area to the west of the Mimbres Valley. More recently, Brown (1998) has noted Late Archaic material at two sites west of the Mimbres Valley and east of Silver City. Turnbow et al. (2000) later discussed excavations at three Late Archaic sites along Highway 90, southwest of Silver City. These latter sites contain structures, large storage facilities, numerous extramural pits, burials, high artifact densities, thick cultural deposits, and evidence of maize agriculture. There are doubtless many more Archaic sites throughout the area, including in the Mimbres Valley. Because neither Nesbitt nor the Mimbres Foundation excavated Paleoindian or Archaic sites or deposits dating

19

Mimbres Regional Chronology Table 1.1.  Mimbres Chronology. Pit Structure period dates are from Gilman et al. (2014:93), and Classic period dates are from Shafer and Brewington (1995:17–22). The chronology presented here generally has one painted pottery type per period. Period

Dates (A.D.)

Architecture

Pottery

Early Pit Structure

200–750

shallow pit structures

plain, red-slipped

Middle Pit Structure

750–800/850

deep pit structures

Mogollon Red-on-brown, Three Circle Red-on-white

Late Pit Structure

800/850–900/950

deep pit structures

Boldface Black-on-white

Late Late Pit Structure

880/950–1020/1050

deep pit structures

Transitional Black-on-white

Early Classic

1010–1080

pueblos

Early Classic Black-on-white

Middle Classic

1060–1110

pueblos

Middle Classic Black-on-white

Late Classic

1110–1130

pueblos

Late Classic Black-on-white

before A.D. 200, our chronology here begins with the Early Pit Structure period. The Mimbres sequence, which is related to other Mogollon manifestations in southeastern Arizona and southwestern New Mexico, began with the advent of pottery and the Early Pit Structure period about A.D. 200 (table 1.1; Diehl and LeBlanc 2001; LeBlanc 1980). In the Mimbres Valley, the sites are often on steep, isolated knolls, mesas, or high ridges next to and above the Mimbres River. This settlement pattern is present for sites of this period over most of the Mogollon area and is not peculiar to the Mimbres Valley (LeBlanc 1999). A common explanation is that such locations served defensive purposes (LeBlanc 1999), although other opinions exist (Diehl and LeBlanc 2001), including that of Rice (1980), who has suggested that the locations were close to the wild plants and animals that people used during their seasonal rounds. Early Pit Structure period sites contain relatively shallow circular or oval pit structures. Associated artifact densities are not high, being mostly of chipped stone with a little ground stone and pottery. The pottery is plain brown, occasionally with fugitive red wash, and late in the period with a red slip. (See chapter 6 for descriptions of these and other pottery types mentioned here.) The Early Pit Structure period ended about A.D. 750, when people began to use painted pottery designs (Gilman 2010:123). A major shift in site location occurred sometime during the Early Pit Structure period (A.D. 200–750), perhaps late in that period, from the isolated knolls to the edge of the first bench (the first terrace) along the Mimbres River, although we have no evidence for this. We do have a small number of circular pit structures with plain and red-slipped pottery but no painted ceramics on the first bench of the river, including one (Unit 80b) at the Mattocks site. Anyon et al. (1981) have suggested that this move signified a major adaptive shift, but they did not specify the nature of the change. We suspect that it was

due to the intensification of agriculture and the decreasing importance of hunting and gathering wild foods, but the development of social mechanisms that reduced warfare may also have played a role. Agriculture was certainly a major part of the Early Pit Structure period subsistence system, but the amount of it being undertaken was probably less than during the Late and Late Late Pit Structure periods (Diehl and Minnis 2001:51). The proportion of agriculture increased during those periods, and possibly earlier, perhaps necessitating a move to the first bench, closer to the prime agricultural land of the floodplain (Minnis 1985). Temporally diagnostic changes in pottery styles and pit structure shapes characterized Haury’s (1936a) delineation of the Georgetown, San Francisco, and Three Circle phases noted above. Although these style and shape changes were likely meaningful in terms of social life, they may not have demarcated a major adaptational shift, such as that which the move to the first bench signified. In Haury’s system, circular and D-shaped pit structures and San Francisco Red pottery typify the Georgetown phase, the San Francisco phase is characterized by rectangular pit structures with rounded sides and Mogollon Red-onbrown pottery, and the Three Circle phase has rectangular and square pit structures and Three Circle Red-onwhite and Boldface Black-on-white pottery. The changes in pit structure shapes and especially the changes in pottery styles were gradual, and they seem to have evolved in place. Gilman (2010) has posited that the first painted pottery, Mogollon Red-on-brown, began to be made about A.D. 750. She suggested an Early Pit Structure period combining the Early Pit Structure period and the Georgetown phase that lasted from A.D. 150 to A.D. 750 and included the use of plain and red-slipped pottery, and a Middle Pit Structure period from A.D. 750 to 800/850 that encompassed the use of Mogollon Red-on-brown

20

Chapter 1

and the subsequent, very short-lived Three Circle Redon-white pottery. Shafer (2003:38) divided the long Three Circle phase (our Late Pit Structure period, A.D. 800/850– 900/950; table 1.1) into early and late, based on changes in Boldface Black-on-white painted designs, and he proposed a Late Three Circle phase that was characterized by Transitional Black-on-white pottery (Shafer 2003:6). We call the latter the Late Late Pit Structure period (A.D. 880/950–1020/1050). Shafer and Brewington (1995:13– 17) separated Transitional Black-on-white pottery into early and late, and they postulated an end-point of A.D. 1020 based on pottery designs from different stratigraphic positions at the NAN Ranch site. These modifications to the Mimbres Valley chronology all fit well with the finegrained data obtained from the most recent excavations, and our revisions of the pit structure periods correlate each period with a specific pottery type. Both large (more than 100 rooms) Classic period (A.D. 1010–1130) sites and some smaller ones were located on the first bench of the Mimbres River. Most, if not all, of the large excavated Classic sites, including Mattocks, developed from underlying Late Late Pit Structure period occupations, at least in part. The change from subterranean, noncontiguous pit structures to aboveground, contiguous pueblo rooms (which we also call masonry or surface rooms) was a major shift that may also denote significant changes in subsistence and social systems. Ceramic style changes from Transitional to Classic Black-on-white (Shafer 2003:6; Shafer and Brewington 1995:13–17) accompanied this architectural shift. Shafer and Brewington (1995) detailed the changes in painted ceramic styles during the Classic period, naming the styles Early, Middle, and Late Classic. Tree-ring dates from the Mimbres Foundation excavations at the Mattocks site made it obvious that the Classic period ended in the first half of the A.D. 1100s, probably by A.D. 1130. Much subsequent work by the Mimbres Foundation and others (Creel 1999:117–118; Shafer 2003) has supported and elaborated this end date, with Shafer (2003:6, 216–217) presenting A.D. 1140 as a slightly different possibility. Tree-ring dates relevant to the Classic period are available from 15 sites. The latest date for each site is presented in table 1.2. While many of the sites have only one or a few dates (and three sites were dated using samples from pothunters’ backdirt), the cumulative picture is significant. None of the large number of samples from the Mattocks (see appendix 1, which lists all Mattocks site tree-ring dates) and NAN Ranch sites, or the smaller number of samples from other sites, have any dates after A.D. 1130. It is unlikely that the Mimbres Classic period ended much later than A.D. 1130. Mimbres Foundation excavations and survey provided the first documented evidence that people occupied the Mimbres Valley after the Classic period. Although the

Postclassic Black Mountain and Cliff phases have puebloan architecture, the room walls are usually adobe instead of cobble masonry, and the sites are in new locales along the first bench in the southern part of the valley and in the desert to the south. Pottery types and burial practices also changed from the Classic period. The time directly following the Classic period includes the Terminal Classic in the Mimbres Valley (A.D. 1130 and later), a critical but poorly understood interval between the end of the Classic period and the subsequent Black Mountain phase (Hegmon et al. 1999). There seems to have been continued occupation at some Classic sites but with much smaller populations and different pottery types. Because the beginning of the Black Mountain phase is not well defined, the Terminal Classic could have been as short as a generation or as long as three. The chronology differs outside the valley proper (Hegmon 2002; Hegmon et al. 1999). In the area east of the Mimbres Valley, there was a Reorganization phase (A.D. 1150 to early A.D. 1200s; Hegmon 2002:313). The Black Mountain phase in the southern part of the Mimbres region was a markedly different archaeological complex with new and distinctive pottery, architecture, and settlement patterns. It was contemporary with and likely related to the Animas phase of the New Mexico Bootheel, with the Casas Grandes Medio period material farther south, and with the El Paso phase southeast of the Mimbres Valley. The dating of the Black Mountain phase is far from clear, but it may be from the late A.D. 1100s into the A.D. 1300s. The Cliff phase (A.D. 1300–1410) postdates all of the above, and it is related to Salado manifestations to the west in New Mexico and Arizona (Nelson and LeBlanc 1986). The Janss site in the Mimbres Valley has tree-ring cutting dates of A.D. 1379 and A.D. 1381; Kwilleylekia in the Cliff Valley to the west has two cutting dates of A.D. 1380; and the nearby Ormand site has a non-cutting date of A.D. 1342. These dates are not enough to provide endpoints for the occupation, but they suggest that no sedentary agriculturalists occupied the Mimbres region after circa A.D. 1410. There were probably Apaches in the region at the time of Spanish contact and during historic times (Seymour 2002, 2008). People lived at the Mattocks site during the Early, Late, and Late Late Pit Structure periods, and during the Classic period. There were no Black Mountain or Cliff phase occupations at the site, although a few sherds from these periods were present there.

Mattocks Site Tree-Ring Dates There were virtually no chronometric dates from sites in the Mimbres Valley when the Mimbres Foundation began its investigations in the mid-1970s, except for Haury’s

21

Mattocks Site Tree-Ring Dates Table 1.2.  Latest Tree-Ring Dates from Mimbres Classic Sites. All other tree-ring dates are in appendix 1. Site Name

Number of Dated Specimens

Latest Date*

Reference

Martin (NM Z:1:6 [ASM])

1

1043+vv

**

Upton (NM Z:5:20 [ASM])

1

1063r

**

Mitchell (LA12076)

1

1065vv

**

NM Y:4:5 (ASM)

1

1098vv

**

McSherry (NM Z:5:85 [ASM])

1

1099vv

**

Baca (NM Z:5:17 [ASM])

2

1104r

**

SJ Hamlet (LA45028)

2

1105+vv

**

Berrenda Creek (LA12992)

1

1105vv

Gomolak and Ford (1976:128)

15

1107+v

Creel (2006b:36)

Old Town (NM Z:5:14 [ASM]) DeFausal

9

1108+vv

**

Elk Ridge (LA78963)

4

1110r, 1112vv

Sechrist and Russell (1995)

NAN 15 (LA73824)

8

1116vv

Shafer (1986:40)

1117r

this volume

1

1126vv

Lekson (1990:89)

50

1128v

Shafer (2003:18, 76)

Mattocks (LA676) Saige-McFarland (LA5421) NAN Ranch (LA15049)

250

* r: Cutting date. v: Non-cutting date, but probably close to cutting date. vv: Non-cutting date; an unknown number of outer rings missing. + symbol: One or more rings may be missing near the end of the ring series, the presence or absence of which cannot be determined because the specimen did not extend far enough. ** Date list on file at the Laboratory of Tree-Ring Research, University of Arizona, Tucson.

tree-ring dates from the Harris site (Bannister et al. 1970). We therefore embarked on an intensive strategy for collecting tree-ring samples. As noted in the introduction to this book, we saved every piece of charcoal on which we could count 25 rings, in the hope that the Laboratory of Tree-Ring Research personnel at the University of Arizona would be able to identify the required 50 rings. Our strategy was successful (appendix 1) in that many of the samples provided us with cutting dates, while other samples gave us non-cutting dates. We also obtained species identifications from the Laboratory of Tree-Ring Research on almost all samples (chapter 5). We acquired so many tree-ring samples and dates from the Mattocks site excavations that we chose not to submit samples for radiocarbon dating. The latter would have provided much broader date ranges than we obtained from tree-ring analysis. The Mattocks site tree-ring material (appendix 1) not only provided dates for some of the rooms and excavation units, but the dates supported the contention that most habitation at the site was during the Classic period, and it was probably relatively late in that period. The earliest

tree-ring dates from the site are A.D. 936vv (see appendix 1 for an explanation of the “vv” and other tree-ring symbols) from Unit 286b and A.D. 991+vv from Unit 111. The first sample is from the ramp of the underlying pit structure in Unit 286. We can state that the pit structure dated to the Late and Late Late Pit Structure periods based on architecture, ceramics (both Boldface and Transitional Black-on-white), and a surface room that was built over the eastern half of the pit structure and aligned with its walls. The analysts could not tell how far the A.D. 936 ring was from the final growth ring of the tree, but its presence indicates a minimum date for the pit structure, and therefore that it might well have been constructed after A.D. 936, placing it in the Late Late Pit Structure period. The A.D. 991+vv date for Unit 111 is less useful, given that this was a surface room and that other indicators suggest Unit 111 was one of the latest to have been built onto the 100s room block. Most of the Mattocks site tree-ring dates are in the A.D. 1000s, with a few extending into the early A.D. 1100s (appendix 1). Cutting dates or close-to-cutting

22

Chapter 1

dates show when specific rooms were constructed. In the 100s room block, such dates include A.D. 1079r in Unit 114, A.D. 1089+rB in Unit 125, and A.D. 1107+rB in Unit 115. These units are all surface rooms. The first two also have later dates—A.D. 1088vv for Unit 114 and A.D. 1097vv for Unit 125—that suggest subsequent maintenance or rebuilding episodes after initial construction. Allowing time for the latest rooms to be inhabited after they were constructed, these dates hint that the 100s room block was built and used over a period that spanned at minimum three or four decades late in the A.D. 1000s and early into the A.D. 1100s. Two cutting dates—A.D. 1084r in Unit 232 and A.D. 1095r in Unit 237—are available for the 200s room block. Two other relatively late non-cutting dates are also present, A.D. 1074vv in Unit 200 and A.D. 1096+vv in Unit 231. However, the 200s room block was highly disturbed, as evidenced by the fact that the room boundaries in all four of these units are uncertain, which suggests that we should not read too much into any of these dates. The presence of the pit structure in Unit 286, and the carefully placed surface room atop it, along with the pre-­ ­Classic pottery that was associated with the pit structure, all support the likelihood that the 200s room block began in the Early Classic period, before the A.D. 1084 tree-ring cutting date. The 400s room block has two cutting dates in the A.D. 1000s—A.D. 1095r in Unit 426 (a ramada on the east side of the room block) and A.D. 1079r in Unit 433 (a surface room)—along with one that is a very close to cutting date, A.D. 1095v in Unit 425 (a small surface storage room just north of Unit 426). Both Units 426 and 433 also have later non-cutting dates, which suggests maintenance or remodeling, and both of these are A.D. 1100 or later. The 400s room block also has a cutting date of A.D. 1117r in Unit 438. Other useful tree-ring dates in the 400s room block include A.D. 1020+vv for Unit 410, a Classic period pit structure (chapter 2; Gilman 2007), and relatively late non-cutting dates for Unit 427 (A.D. 1080vv) and Unit 435 (A.D. 1092vv). The latter support the likelihood that construction of the 400s room block, like that of the 100s room block, began in the late A.D. 1000s, but occupation may have lasted a few years longer in the 400s room block. The tree-ring dates in the 100s and 400s room blocks show that construction continued into the A.D. 1100s at the Mattocks site. The A.D. 1117r date is one of the latest cutting dates for a Mimbres surface room (table 1.2), with only three dates—A.D. 1116vv from Room 8 at NAN 15 (LA73824) (Shafer 1986:40), A.D. 1126vv at Saige-­ McFarland in the Gila Valley (Lekson 1990:89) to the west, and A.D. 1128v from Room 84 at the NAN Ranch site (Shafer 2003:18, 216–217)—being virtually the same or later. If Unit 438 was one of the last Classic rooms built in the valley, and if it was occupied for 10 to 15 years— not an unreasonable span (Cameron 1990:161)—then the

habitation use of the Mattocks site, and the Mimbres Classic period, probably ended sometime around A.D. 1130.

Mattocks Site Archaeomagnetic Dates Three of the four archaeomagnetic dates from the Mattocks site (Premo 2000; Premo and Eighmy 1997) are from pit structures, and one is from a Classic period room (table 1.3). These samples were initially dated using a master curve from 1970, and the dates were later revised with the version of the Southwest Master Curve in use during the late 1990s (LaBelle and Eighmy 1997). Although there are no surprises in the dates, they provide support for the temporal placement of these structures that was determined using other data. Archaeomagnetic samples from the hearth and the burned ramp wall of the pit structure designated Unit 286b yielded intercepts of A.D. 925–1000 and A.D. 920– 1025 respectively. These dates parallel the A.D. 936vv tree-ring date for that unit. The sherds and vessels from the floor and roof fall contexts were a mix of Boldface, Transitional, and Classic Black-on-white (appendix 2), and the presence of Transitional pottery, unusual at the Mattocks site, suggests a Late Late Pit Structure period date. The archaeomagnetic date range of A.D. 1015–1250 from the later of two hearths in Unit 410, a pit structure north of the 400s room block, suggests a Classic period date, which is supported by the floor and roof fall sherds. Unit 410 is one of several apparently Classic period pit structures at the Mattocks site (chapter 2; Gilman 2007). The A.D. 1050–1160 archaeomagnetic date range for the hearth in Unit 116, a Classic period surface room, fits well with standard Classic period dates. Units 116 and 410 clearly fall within Classic period date ranges, while the two date ranges from Unit 286b are just as clearly from the Late Late Pit Structure period. This comparison supports other data suggesting that Unit 410, a pit structure, is correctly dated to the Classic period and not to the preceding Late Late Pit Structure period.

Mattocks Site Obsidian Dates In the 1970s, we undertook a small obsidian hydration study from various Mimbres Valley sites that included six samples from one Classic period surface room, Unit 325, at the Mattocks site (Meighan and Vanderhoeven 1978). The hydration band widths were 3.1 μ (Unit 325-1-2), 3.2 μ (Unit 325-1-1a), 2.9 μ (Unit 325-1-1b), 2.9 μ (Unit 325-2-2), 2.7 μ (Unit 325-3-3), and 2.6 μ (Unit 325-3-2). This group yields an average band width for Unit 325 of 2.9 μ. By way of contrast, five to six specimens per pit structure were measured at two other sites. Obsidian samples from three earlier pit structures at the Galaz site

23

Mattocks Site Ceramic Dates Table 1.3.  Mattocks Site Archaeomagnetic Dates* (Premo and Eighmy 1997). Sample Number

Provenience

Feature Type

Archaeological Date

SWCV595** Statistical Date(s) (all A.D.)

SWCV595 Visual Date(s) (preferred)

LA676-MT001

286b-7F-10a

hearth

Late Late Pithouse

910–1020

925–1000

1570–1630 LA676-MT002

286b-4-9R

burned wall

Late Late Pithouse

920–1025

1325–1450

1300–1415

1650–1700

1435–1590 1625–1695 LA676-MT003

410-5S-6H

later hearth

Classic

995–1200

1015–1250

LA676-MT133

116-5-9H

hearth

Classic

1040–1170

1050–1160

* The samples were initially dated using a master curve from 1970 and were revised with the version of the Southwest Master Curve in use during the late 1990s. The dates presented here are the revised ones. ** SWCV595 refers to a master curve created in May 1995 for the southwestern United States area (LaBelle and Eighmy 1997).

had average band widths of 2.9 μ, 3.5 μ, and 4.1 μ, and one earlier pit structure at the Wheaton-Smith site had an average of 3.5 μ. On the premise that all obsidian was taken from the same source and has similar depositional histories, thicker hydration bands indicate older samples. Almost all obsidian in the upper Mimbres Valley comes from the Mule Creek source (Taliaferro 2004), and the depositional histories of the three sites are quite similar, and so this premise is sound. The obsidian hydration results suggest that Unit 325 was more recent than the pit structures at the other sites (except for one that would be contemporary). However, determinations from a room at the Walsh site and another at the Montoya site, which both date to the later Postclassic Black Mountain phase based on chronometric dates, architecture, and ceramic types, had average hydration bands of 2.9 μ and 3.4 μ respectively, which would make them the same age as Unit 325 or older, when they clearly are not. There are problems with obtaining dates from obsidian—including that obsidian flakes are typically small, that they can be easily displaced, and that they can be readily reused—and thus determining their association with and within a given archaeological unit can be problematic. Although the hydration rate is not necessarily linear, 0.1 μ of hydration equals about 38 years for these samples in this time range. However, there is an estimated measurement error of ± 0.2 μ on each specimen. These factors, when combined with the difficulty associating any small obsidian flake with a room occupation, mean that the error associated with these dates is substantial. Even the ± 76 years associated with a ± 0.2 μ reading error is

greater than our ability to estimate dates from the pottery during the occupation range of the Mattocks site. Thus, obsidian hydration data do not help us to date Unit 325.

Mattocks Site Ceramic Dates Mimbres ceramic types changed through time (Anyon and LeBlanc 1984:153–161), and we can use types and combinations of types to provide general dates for a site, a structure, or a deposit. Using a regional seriation based on tree-ring dated deposits, an intrasite comparison, and whole painted vessels, we discuss Mattocks site ceramic dating here. The goal is to provide ceramic dates for as many structures as possible. A note on ceramic terminology is in order. Early archaeologists (Cosgrove and Cosgrove 1932:72–79) divided the Mimbres black-on-white sequence into two types: the Boldface Black-on-white that was associated with pit structures and the subsequent Classic Black-on-white that was typical of pueblos. The excavation of an intermediate style bowl in Unit 114 at the Mattocks site (chapter 3) and an analysis using a large sample of complete bowls showed that we could make a tripartite division, and the Mimbres Foundation (Scott 1983) therefore began to use the term “Transitional Black-on-white” for pottery that is temporally situated between Boldface and Classic. However, since almost all Transitional bowls would have been classified as Boldface in the original scheme, the term Boldface then became ambiguous. New terminology—Styles I, II, and III for Boldface, Transitional, and Classic respectively—evolved to clarify this, but it does

24

Chapter 1

not follow traditional southwestern ceramic naming conventions. We use the original type names in this volume. Shafer and Brewington (1995) have verified and refined the painted ceramic sequence using stratigraphic sherd and whole vessel data from the NAN Ranch site, and they have described Early and Late Transitional (Style II), Transitional/Classic, and Early, Middle, and Late Classic (Style III) Black-on-white.

Table 1.4.  Ceramic Seriation Derived from Excavated and Chronometrically Dated Mimbres and Reserve Structures.

Seriation Using Ceramic Proportions from Sites in the Mimbres and Reserve Regions

Mogollon Red-on-brown plus Three Circle Red-on-white 1. If 5% and 8%, then probably earlier than A.D. 800

Employing the proportions of pottery types in tree-ring dated floor and floor fill contexts, Gilman (1988) developed a ceramic seriation useful for dating structures and deposits that do not have associated tree-ring dates. She constructed this seriation for the Wind Mountain site on the Gila River drainage in southwestern New Mexico, a site with considerable Late and Late Late Pit Structure period occupations but with relatively little evidence of Classic period use. The seriation used tree-ring dated floor and roof fall sherds from Mattocks site pit structures and surface rooms along with data from chronometrically dated structures on other sites in the Reserve (Cibola) region to the northwest of the Mimbres Valley, the Gila Valley to the west of the Mimbres Valley in New Mexico, and the Mimbres Valley itself. The Mattocks rooms included two pit structures, Units 286b and 410, and 10 surface rooms or ramadas (extramural activity areas), including Units 80a, 106a, 111, 114a, 115a, 116, 426, 433, 435a, and 438a. Here we use the dates resulting from this seriation to provide temporal information for otherwise undated Mattocks structures. The seriation established the degree to which the proportions of red-slipped and various types of painted pottery changed through time. These changes and their associated chronometric dates are listed on table 1.4 as a series of if-then statements. For example, if the proportion of red-slipped sherds to the entire sherd assemblage is 14 percent or more, then the structure date is before A.D. 650. Within any structure, the dates for the seriations of the red-slipped and various painted types do not always agree. This may relate to both the functional differences of some structures and to the need for more chronometric dates for parts of the ceramic seriation. The data for the Mattocks sherd seriation, in the form of percentages of various types of pottery from floor and floor fill contexts, are in table 1.5. The percentages are proportions of each type to the total sherd count from the provenience. The table includes both the units with tree-ring dates and the units dated using the seriation, and so all information pertaining to ceramic seriation at the Mattocks site is available to other researchers. Because of problems with small sample sizes, we used only those Mattocks site structures with 200 or more

Red-slipped 1. If 2% and 6% and 14%, then earlier than A.D. 650

Boldface Black-on-white 1. If 1%, then between A.D. 750 and A.D. 950 Classic Black-on-white 1. If 2% and 6%, then later than A.D. 1000 All Painted Types Combined 1. If 4% and 15% and 26%, then later than A.D. 900

sherds in the floor and floor fill contexts for the ceramic seriation. We arbitrarily chose the figure of 200 sherds, and we also used it to select units with which to develop the ceramic seriation for the greater Mimbres-Reserve region. The ceramic dates provided by the pottery types from each usable unit at the Mattocks site all overlap to some degree (table 1.6). It is thus possible to determine a “best ceramic date” from the several that are available for each unit, but most of these only suggest that the units are later than A.D. 1000. An examination of the ceramic percentages associated with tree-ring dated deposits indicates that a finer seriation of ceramic types after A.D. 1000 is not possible with these data. Most of the ceramic types used in this seriation did not occur in the Classic period (Mogollon Red-on-brown and Three Circle Red-on-white); they occurred only in very low proportions (red-slipped, Boldface, or Transitional Black-on-white) or are not yet temporally divisible within the Classic period (corrugated and plain pottery). We did not classify the Mattocks sherds using Shafer and Brewington’s (1995) finer temporal divisions because we completed our sherd analysis before they developed these categories.

25

Mattocks Site Ceramic Dates

Table 1.5.  Ceramic Percentages for Excavated Mattocks Site Structures. (Only floor and fill above floor contexts with more than 200 sherds were used. Italicized structure numbers have tree-ring dates and were used to help derive the ceramic seriation. Each type is represented as a percentage of the total sherd count from the provenience.) Transitional Black-on-white was not used because this type was not defined when many of the sherd counts used in this seriation were undertaken. Unit

Plain

All Unslipped and Unpainted

41b

51

70

80a

49

68

80b

58

106a

Redslipped

Mogollon R/br

Boldface

Classic

All Painted

0.6

0.6

8

30

1

0.3

7

29

75

1

1

6

24

52

70

0.7

0.7

8

29

111

52

68

0.4

0.4

9

31

114a

43

75

0.2

14

24

114b

51

75

0.9

8

24

115a

47

62

0.5

35

38

0.05

Three Circle R/w

0.05

0.6

116

41

73

0.4

0.5

9

27

121a

50

71

0.7

0.3

7

28

141

48

66

0.3

8

33

233

57

75

0.1

0.8

9

25

286a

50

68

0.2

2

7

31

286b

59

73

p

290a

50

72

0.5

290b

57

76

410

65

423a

426

2

5

26

0.1

8

27

0.3

0.4

7

24

71

1

0.5

7

28

47

66

0.5

8

33

46

69

0.3

0.1

8

30

431

54

78

0.6

1

8

22

433

50

67

0.9

0.2

9

32

435a

50

76

0.3

0.1

7

23

438a

49

70

0.5

0.1

10

31

438b

50

71

8

29

Although we devised this seriation to include the Middle, Late, and Late Late Pit Structure periods from A.D. 750 to A.D. 1020/1050 as well as the Classic period, no Mattocks site deposits that could be used in the seriation dated before A.D. 935, and the clear majority dated after A.D. 1000. Other evidence suggests that Unit 80b is a pit structure from the Early Pit Structure period, and the three other pit structures (Units 115b, 213, and 286b) that do not date to the Classic period were dated to the Late and/or Late Late Pit Structure periods. From the seriation of the deposits on and above the floors of these structures,

0.1

0.1

the pit structure represented by Unit 286b may have been filled earliest—between A.D. 935 and A.D. 1000. Unit 286a, a surface room superimposed over Unit 286b, was apparently built, used, and filled earlier than other surface rooms at the Mattocks site, which hints that this part of the 200s room block may have had some of the earliest surface rooms yet excavated at the site. Units 80b and 115b were filled after A.D. 935, in the Late Late Pit Structure or Early Classic periods, although a few sherds of Boldface and Transitional Black-on-white ceramics were present in the fill of these structures. Although there was a small

26

Chapter 1

Table 1.6.  Ceramic Dates for Excavated Mattocks Site Structures.  All dates are A.D. Unit

Redslipped Date

Mogollon R/br / Three Circle R/w Date

Boldface Date

Classic Date

All Painted Pottery Date

Best Ceramic Date*

286b

>935

>850 or 900

935–1000

80b

>935

>850 or 1000

>800

935–>1000

Latest Tree-Ring Date

936vv

115b

>935

>850 or 1000

>900

935–>1000

286a

>935

>850 or 1000

>900

935–>1000

41b

>935

>850 or 950 or 1000

>900

>1000

80a

>935

>850 or 950 or 1000

>900

>1000

1100vv

106a

>935

>850 or 950 or 1000

>900

>1000

1105vv

111

>935

>850 or 950 or 1000

>900

>1000

991+vv

114a

>935

>850 or 950 or 1000

>800

>1000

1079r, 1088vv

114b

>935

>850 or 950 or 1000

>800

>1000

115a

>935

>850 or 950 or 1000

>900

>1000

1107+rB

116

>935

>850 or 950 or 1000

>900

>1000

1095vv

121a

>935

>850 or 950 or 1000

>900

>1000

141

>935

>850 or 950 or 1000

>900

>1000

233

>935

>850 or 950 or 1000

>800

>1000

290a

>935

>850 or 950 or 1000

>900

>1000

290b

>935

>850 or 950 or 1000

>800

>1000

410

>935

>850 or 950 or 1000

>900

>1000

423a

>935

>850 or 950 or 1000

>900

>1000

426

>935

>850 or 950 or 1000

>900

>1000

431

>935

>850 or 950 or 1000

>800

>1000

433

>935

>850 or 950 or 1000

>900

>1000

1079r, 1100vv

435a

>935

>850 or 950 or 1000

>800

>1000

1092vv

438a

>935

>850 or 950 or 1000

>900

>1000

1117r

438b

>935

>850 or 950 or 1000

>900

>1000

1020+vv 1095r, 1108+vv

* Narrowest date range if all ceramic dates overlap.

amount of Transitional Black-on-white pottery in the fill of Unit 213, the great kiva, there was no Boldface, suggesting that this building was also filled in the late A.D. 900s or early A.D. 1000s. Thus, except for Unit 80b, which was probably not used after A.D. 750, the ceramic dates suggest that Mattocks site occupation began after A.D. 935. All structures except the four discussed above dated after A.D. 1000 by the ceramic seriation, which emphasizes that the site was mainly in use during the Classic period. Although three sets of superimposed units (Units 114a and 114b, 290a and 290b, 438a and 438b) postdate

A.D. 1000, the available seriation dates do not differentiate them. Units 114a and 114b and Units 438a and 438b yielded the same ceramic dates, regardless of the ceramic type used for the seriation. Units 290a and 290b had only one difference: the “all painted pottery” date from the lower unit (Unit 290b) may have been slightly earlier than the date for the upper unit (Unit 290a). The ceramic seriation dates do not confirm the existence of the so-called Mangas phase, a proposed transition between the Late Late Pit Structure and the Classic periods. This phase was suggested to have contained both pit

Mattocks Site Ceramic Dates structures and surface rooms, with Transitional and possibly Boldface Black-on-white pottery in the surface rooms (Fitting et al. 1982:39; Lekson 1988). The proportion of Boldface to all ceramic types at the Mattocks site is 1 percent or lower in all surface rooms except Unit 286a, where it is 2 percent. The proportion of Transitional Black-onwhite is 1 percent or lower in all units except in Units 114b and 290b, both of which are superimposed by later deposits. With ceramic dates from A.D. 935 to after A.D. 1000, Unit 286a may have been a Mangas phase surface room, but it is equally likely to have been constructed in the Classic period.

Seriation Using Ceramic Proportions from the Mattocks Site We used another ceramic seriation to examine sherds from the roof fall and floor (building and use) contexts and from the post-occupation (abandonment) fill of each room excavated by the Mimbres Foundation at the Mattocks site. In general, the seriations within the same room did not differ to a degree that proved useful in establishing temporal distinctions. Indeed, the sherd assemblage across the Mattocks site is remarkably homogeneous, and we thus were forced to consider the slightest variations in this homogeneity as indicators of temporal difference. Specifically, we compared the proportions of various temporally diagnostic ceramic types to the total number of sherds in that analytic unit. Variation by a percentage point or two may indicate an important temporal difference. We therefore were able to detect likely temporal variations at the site, although even with this analysis there were few. One outcome of the analysis is that different types and amounts of non-Mimbres sherds seem to distinguish contemporary room blocks, and these sherds perhaps reflect different social networks of the households inhabiting each room block. We discuss the results of the latter analysis in chapter 6.

Methodology We originally tallied the Mattocks site sherds (appendix 2) in two different ways. The first, and more commonly used, method was to count all sherds collected from a provenience. The second method, which we often used for unscreened deposits, pothunted contexts, and small test trenches, was to record only the diagnostic sherds from the provenience, even though many other sherds may have been collected. These included all temporally diagnostic sherds, all rims, and any other sherds that were different in some way from “normal” sherds. Sherd tabulations using the latter method are useful for presence or absence data but not for comparing proportions of different ceramic types. We disregarded all samples where the total number of sherds was less than 100, since small sample sizes might

27

contain distorted proportions. We also disregarded those samples that had more than 100 sherds but for which only diagnostic sherds had been collected, although we did examine those contexts for the presence of pre-Classic and non-Mimbres sherds.

Classic Black-on-white (Style III) Classic Black-on-white sherds ranged from 3 to 19 percent in analytic units from proveniences that had not been pothunted, had been partly or fully screened, were not Pit Structure period or extramural contexts, and had more than 100 sherds (appendix 2, table 1.7). Most of the analytic units that did not fit these criteria, however, contained between 6 and 9 percent of this painted type. One exception was the sample from the roof fall and above-floor fill in Unit 41, which contained 24 percent Classic Black-on-white ceramics. The small sample size (100 sherds) probably impacted this proportion, as noted above, and so it cannot be considered representative. The second exception was Unit 115, including both the Classic period room and the underlying pit structure. Here, percentages of Classic pottery in all contexts from the post-occupation fill in the surface room to the floor of the pit structure ranged between 21 and 34 percent. This is probably due to the use of two different sherd count forms. The earlier form did not distinguish sherds that were indeterminate between two recognized types (such as Transitional/Classic indeterminates), nor did it have a category for Mimbres painted pottery that could not be typed (which we later called truly indeterminate). These indeterminates must therefore have been included in Boldface, Transitional, or Classic categories, which would have inflated the counts in those types. The later sherd form, which we used for some Unit 115 contexts and for all other sherd counts at the Mattocks site, had categories for these indeterminates, and so the actual painted type counts are likely to be lower than the numbers for Unit 115 would suggest. The Mattocks results are considerably different than the proportion of painted and red-slipped from Classic contexts that Anyon and LeBlanc (1984:160) reported as 24 to 33 percent for the Galaz site. This difference could be because Anyon and LeBlanc included all painted types and all red-slipped pottery in these proportions. In Classic contexts, however, the clear majority of the painted pottery should be Classic Black-on-white, and there should be very few red-slipped sherds. The potential presence of the non-Classic types should not change the proportions to a great degree. Anyon and LeBlanc noted that the variation among contemporary units at the Galaz site was greater than what could be explained by any potential diachronic change. We did not see such variation among contemporary units at the Mattocks site, and we wonder whether the Galaz variation resulted from the fact that the Mimbres Foundation excavated few Classic contexts

intrusive burial

fill

extramural fill, fill of limited time depth

fill of limited time depth

fill, roof fall

fill, in situ roof

in situ roof, floor pits/postholes, burials associated with and postdating occupation

fill above floor, burials postdating occupation

80a

106a

110

110

112

114a

114a

114b

trash, fill above floor

roof fall, fill above floor

fill

fill, pothunted

pothunted

fill, trash

115b

115b

213

226

231

233

fill, trash, in situ roof

roof fall, fill above floor

41a

trash, in situ roof, floor pits/postholes, burials associated with and postdating occupation, subfloor

fill, roof fall, or floor

41a

115a

fill or extramural fill, fill above floor or fill of limited time depth, floor

31

115a

Analytic Unit

Unit

3003

2098

1970

794

210

1130

2877

2623

337

938

1223

161

160

4499

574

168

100

844

390

Number of Sherds

22

27

34

21

14

4

4

24

12

3

Classic %

2

2

2

2

2

Transitional %

Table 1.7.  Mattocks Site Proveniences with Unusually High or Low Sherd Type Proportions.

2

Boldface %

p

p

p

p

p

Three Circle/ Mogollon presence

2

Redslipped %

2

3

3

Scored/ Punctate %

1

1

1

2

1

1

1

NonMimbres %

p: Presence less than one percent.

extramural fill

450

fill above floor, floor pits/postholes

425

floor pits postdating occupation

fill

425

433

trash

410

fill

roof fall, fill above floor, floor pits postdating occupation

325

433

fill

325

fill

extramural fill

290

431

pothunted

290

roof fall, in situ fill above floor, floor, floor pits/postholes, burials postdating occupation

subfloor, extramural trash

290

426

trash, roof fall, floor, floor pits/postholes

286b

fill

fill

286b

fill, roof fall, in situ fill above floor

fill, trash, roof fall

286a, b

426

trash, roof fall, floor, floor pits/postholes, burials postdating occupation

286a

426

Analytic Unit

Unit

Table 1.7.  (continued)

298

263

937

1021

1187

261

394

110

267

275

234

1340

924

600

586

1448

875

288

1977

Number of Sherds

4

4

11

19

4

Classic %

2

2

2

2

Transitional %

2

3

3

2

2

Boldface %

p

p

p

p

p

p

Three Circle/ Mogollon presence

2

2

4

Redslipped %

2

Scored/ Punctate %

3

1

1

1

1

NonMimbres %

30

Chapter 1

there, making the sample size of appropriate contexts and sherds low and consequently quite variable.

Transitional Black-on-white (Style II) The proportion of Transitional Black-on-white ranged from 0 to 2 percent, with most proveniences having either 0 or 1 percent (appendix 2). This low proportion supports the notion that there was only limited occupation at the site during the Late Late Pit Structure period and even during the Early Classic period into which Transitional ceramics might overlap. Eight proveniences had 2 percent Transitional Blackon-white (appendix 2, table 1.7), one (Unit 41a) that also had a relatively high proportion of Classic Black-on-white, and two (Units 31 and 112) with low proportions of Classic Black-on-white pottery. Unit 41 is adjacent to Unit 286, which was constructed quite early, and this proximity may account for the Transitional Black-on-white pottery there. Unit 31 is the hand-excavated area at the north end of Backhoe Trench 3. While the nature of this area is not clear, it is probably just south of Nesbitt’s Room 11, a possible pit structure. The relatively high proportion of Transitional Black-on-white pottery in Unit 112 is unexplained, except perhaps by the comparatively low overall number of sherds from the room. From the above, and from other proveniences, the presence of Transitional Black-on-white may indicate a slightly earlier date for the unit or a nearby one than is common across the site. The best examples of this are in the earlier occupation of Unit 114b, in the post-occupation fill of Unit 213, and in the construction and use levels of the pit structure in Unit 286b. Unit 114b is probably one of the earliest rooms built in the 100s room block, as supported by independent architectural data, Unit 213 is a great kiva, and Unit 286b is a pit structure from the Late and Late Late Pit Structure periods. It is surprising that the pit structure represented by Unit 115b yielded only eight sherds of Transitional Black-on-white pottery (appendix 2), although the hearth characteristics, discussed later in this chapter, suggest that it was filled during the Late Late Pit Structure or Early Classic period. The lack of Transitional Black-on-white sherds in the two pit structures in the 400s room block (Units 410 and 441) supports their Classic period dates (Gilman 2007). Finally, the fact that two of the three proveniences with 2 percent Transitional Black-on-white pottery are in or near the 200s room block strengthens the idea that this room block was the first of those investigated to be built at the site, probably from an earlier pit structure base. Boldface Black-on-white (Style I) The proportion of Boldface Black-on-white ranged between 0 and 3 percent in any given analytic unit at the Mattocks site (appendix 2, table 1.7). Only four such units had as much as 2 percent Boldface Black-on-white, and

only two had 3 percent. Significantly, four of the analytic units are clustered in Unit 286, an Early Classic room and an underlying Late and Late Late Pit Structure period pit structure. Unit 31 had a relatively high proportion of Boldface Black-on-white pottery, which is appropriate for its low proportion of Classic and high proportion of Transitional Black-on-white. Unit 325 also yielded 2 percent Boldface Black-on-white; the sherd counts in this room are the most unusual at the site, as we discuss below. As with Transitional, most of the Boldface Black-on-white pottery at the Mattocks site was in the 200s room block.

Three Circle Red-on-white and Mogollon Red-on-brown Only small proportions of Three Circle Red-on-white and Mogollon Red-on-brown were present at the Mattocks site (appendix 2, table 1.7), always less than 1 percent of the sherds from any analytic unit. Because these types were often present only as a single sherd in a provenience, their occurrence may not indicate an early date for a specific provenience, but yet even the limited presence of those types at the site suggests that a few people—perhaps only one household—were living at the site when the ceramics were made. The Three Circle Red-on-white and Mogollon Red-onbrown examples in Unit 115a may be markers of the early underlying pit structure. A single sherd of Mogollon Redon-brown was present in the fill of Units 213 and 286b, although the sherds are earlier than the building and use of those pit structures. The other units with these sherd types, according to other dating methods, were built later. Red-slipped As expected in a predominantly Classic assemblage, there is very little red-slipped pottery (San Francisco Red and Other Red on appendix 2 and table 1.7) at the Mattocks site. The range was from 0 to 4 percent, but only three proveniences had 2 percent, and only one had 4 percent. The 2 percent of red-slipped in Unit 115b, a pit structure below a Classic room, may indicate its earlier date, but the presence of red-slipped in Units 325 and 425 is unexpected. Although it is more common in the earlier period, red-slipped pottery did continue into the Classic period, which may account for its presence in these units. Also unexpected is the lack of red-slipped in some of the few apparently earlier analytic units, such as Units 31, 80, and 286b. Scored and Punctate Incised Gilman’s (1994) investigation of pottery from Mogollon village has shown that scored pottery, sometimes called Alma Scored, probably dated to the Middle Pit Structure period, is contemporary with the Alma Neck Banded type, and is often associated with a high proportion of red-slipped pottery. We felt that punctate incised

Mattocks Site Ceramic Dates pottery might also be early, and so we combined the two types for this analysis. However, very few examples of either type were present at the Mattocks site, which again supports the relative lack of Pit Structure period occupation there. Two proveniences had 2 percent of these types, while two more had 3 percent (appendix 2, table 1.7). The relatively high proportions in Unit 80a and 115b may relate to the pit structures in these areas, while the 2 percent in the fill of Unit 213, the great kiva, may associate with the building or early use of that structure. On the other hand, it is not clear why the post-occupation fill over Unit 426 would have 2 percent of scored and punctate incised pottery. It is likely that we do not fully understand the dating of these two ceramic types.

Non-Mimbres Sherds We considered two issues associated with non-Mimbres sherds: (1) to ask where they had been made and thus whether they were traded, and (2) to assess their dating. Our discussion of non-Mimbres pottery in chapter 6 provides detail on these issues. Given their dating in other regions of the Southwest, most of the non-Mimbres pottery types were Postclassic, that is, after A.D. 1130. The types include the Playas Red series, Chupadero Black-on-white, Ramos Polychrome, Gila Polychrome, White Mountain Red Wares, El Paso Polychrome, and perhaps Cibola White Wares. The occasional presence of these ceramic types, often in the upper post-occupation levels of rooms, may be evidence for light, late use of the Classic period sites and structures. Creel (2006b:214–215; Creel et al. 2002) has suggested that these types instead indicate what he called a Terminal Classic period use of the sites after A.D. 1100, based on the presence of Classic Black-on-white vessels with Chupadero Black-on-white, early El Paso Polychrome, Playas Red series, various White Mountain Red Wares, Three Rivers Red-on-terracotta, and Tularosa Fillet Rim pots at various Mimbres Valley sites. In this volume, we refer to the time at the Mattocks site after A.D. 1100 as the Late Classic in order not to confuse it with the Terminal Classic proposed by Hegmon et al. (1999), which began about A.D. 1130. The presence of these non-­Mimbres pottery types therefore may indicate a Late Classic use of the Mattocks site. We initially thought that most of the non-Mimbres types were in the uppermost post-occupation fill level in the rooms, that is, in the upper 25 cm or so. The scenario was that people living at the site in Postclassic times were camping in rooms where the roofs had already collapsed and that had started to fill. The sherd data (appendix 2), however, are ambiguous about this hypothesis. After we removed pothunted and partly pothunted contexts from the sample, there were 61 analytic units with non-­Mimbres types at the Mattocks site. Thirty-five (57

31

percent) of those proveniences were below the uppermost 25 cm of post-occupation fill, and so they did not include the post-occupation fill closest to the ground surface. While it is possible that post-occupation mixing by rodents could account for the non-Mimbres sherds below the top 25 cm, we did not expect the high proportions that were present in these proveniences. However, when we examined those with two or more non-Mimbres sherds (not including the “Other” category in appendix 2), 18 of the 26 proveniences (69 percent) included post-occupation fill. Of the remaining eight that did not include the top 25 cm of fill, five were extramural. The presence of more than one non-Mimbres sherd of the types noted above per provenience might therefore be used to date Late Classic deposits at the Mattocks site. The Mattocks site non-Mimbres sherd data reveal some other points that are pertinent to Creel’s revision of the Late Classic/Postclassic dating. The first is that, while most of the non-Mimbres types likely date to the Late or Terminal Classic periods, some such as Ramos Polychrome and Gila Polychrome are later. Whalen and Minnis (2001:41) have dated Ramos Polychrome from A.D. 1200 to A.D. 1450, and Crown (1994:19) has identified Gila Polychrome as being most common in the middle to late A.D. 1300s, although still present into the A.D. 1400s. Both types occurred in very small quantities at the Mattocks site (appendix 2), and their presence may relate to people who lived at the few Cliff phase Salado sites in the valley (Nelson and LeBlanc 1986). A second point is that, although Creel (1997) cites instances of Reserve area textured pottery with Mimbres Classic Black-on-white vessels, there were no Cibola White Wares such as Reserve or Tularosa Black-on-white in these contexts. There were also very few Cibola White Wares in the assemblage (appendix 2). This is surprising, given the presence of these white wares in ceramic assemblages from the northern Mimbres drainage (Bettison 1997), farther north in the Gila Forks area (Brewington 1992; Dycus 1997), to the west along the Gila River (Lekson 1990), and in the San Simon drainage (Gilman 1997). Non-Mimbres sherds made up between 0 and 3 percent of the sherd assemblage of any provenience (appendix 2, table 1.7), although only two of these, Units 213 and 325, had more than 1 percent non-Mimbres sherds. Unit 213 is the great kiva, and as we discuss in the next section, Unit 325 had an odd sherd assemblage in several respects. Most non-Mimbres sherds were in the 200s and 300s room blocks, while the 100s room block had fewer, and the 400s block had the fewest. This pattern suggests not only that the 200s room block was the earliest of the excavated areas built at the site but that people used it after occupation had ceased in the 100s and 400s room blocks. The non-Mimbres sherd data also hint that the 300s room block was used quite late, as was Unit 325, an isolated room. We do not know if the 300s was built as

32

Chapter 1

early as the 200s block. The early and late use of the latter might indicate that it was a core room block accommodating a long-lasting household, which perhaps had access to the best agricultural land and was the most socially important at the site.

Dating Rooms, Excavation Units, and Room Blocks Using Sherds Using the data examined above, we can assign dates to some of the rooms and units at the Mattocks site based on sherd proportions (see appendix 2 and table 1.7 for the bases of all these assignments). We can also state that people were living in the 200s room block area earlier than—and later than—any other part of the site that the Mimbres Foundation excavated.

Unit 31 This hand-excavated square, located at the north end of Backhoe Trench 3 and south of Nesbitt’s Room 11 (a possible pit structure), may predate the Classic period, likely dating to the Late and Late Late Pit Structure periods. This assessment is based on the low proportion of Classic Black-on-white sherds and the relatively high proportions of Boldface and Transitional sherds present there. Both non-Mimbres sherds from Unit 31 are El Paso Polychrome, which dates from the A.D. 1100s to the A.D. 1300s (Whalen 1981), but they were in the level that was 10 to 40 cm below the ground surface. The proximity of Nesbitt’s Room 11 and the 200s room block may account for the early ceramic date for Unit 31. Unit 110 The fill in Unit 110, an extramural area off the northwest corner of the 100s room block, may be relatively early. The fill was near the culturally sterile soil base of the unit, and it contained a low proportion of Classic Blackon-white. Unit 110 had nine sherds of the early Three Circle Red-on-white and Mogollon Red-on-brown, more than any other area at the site. Unit 112 Although the sample size from Unit 112 was small, it contained a low proportion of Classic Black-on-white and a relatively high proportion of Transitional Black-onwhite pottery. The architectural building sequence does not support an early date, but perhaps the room was early, given its proximity to Units 110 and 114 and the presence of Transitional Black-on-white pottery. Unit 114 The lower floor of Unit 114 had a relatively high proportion of Transitional Black-on-white pottery, although no other ceramic indicators suggested an early date. The presence of Transitional Black-on-white sherds and an Early Transitional bowl in the burial (114-5-9B) associated

with the lower floor supports the likelihood that this was one of the core rooms of the 100s room block.

Unit 115 The fill in the pit structure below the surface room in Unit 115 contained relatively high percentages of redslipped and scored and punctate incised pottery. There were also four sherds of Three Circle Red-on-white and Mogollon Red-on-brown in the surface room. Given the rectangular shape of the pit structure and other data presented in chapter 2, the pit structure probably dated to the Late and/or Late Late Pit Structure period. Unit 213 The fill in this great kiva contained relatively high proportions of Transitional Black-on-white, scored and punctate incised, and non-Mimbres sherds, most of which were Cibola White Ware, and it yielded one Three Circle Redon-white sherd. It had very little Boldface Black-on-white or red-slipped pottery, suggesting that it did not date to the time when Boldface Black-on-white pottery (Late Pit Structure period) was produced, or earlier. Therefore, the relatively high proportion of Transitional Black-on-white sherds probably dates the fill to the Late Late Pit Structure period. Unit 286 All four analytic units in Unit 286 had relatively high proportions of Boldface Black-on-white pottery, and one contained a sherd of Mogollon Red-on-brown. Perhaps most importantly, the bottommost analytic unit, which consisted of the pit structure fill, floor, and floor features, not only had a high proportion of Boldface Black-onwhite but also had a high proportion of Transitional and a low proportion of Classic Black-on-white. These indicators all suggest that this area was in use quite early and that the pit structure underlying the surface room dated to the Late and Late Late Pit Structure periods. Other evidence (discussed in chapter 4) supports this date for the pit structure and an early Classic period date for the surface room. Unit 290 Unit 290 was a test trench that extended from the north side of the 200s room block, in which a relatively high proportion of Transitional Black-on-white pottery and one sherd of Mogollon Red-on-brown were present. This may be early trash associated with the 200s room block or from an early structure that was located near the trench. We are not surprised to see these early sherds here, since the 200s room block contained more early sherds than any of the other excavated room blocks. Unit 325 Unit 325 was unusual in three ways. First, it was separate from all other rooms, although it had been built close to the 300s room block. Second, the high proportions of

Mattocks Site Ceramic Dates several ceramic types are quite striking, especially when taken together. From the roof fall and below in the room, there was a very high proportion of Classic Black-onwhite pottery and a relatively high proportion of Boldface Black-on-white, along with one sherd of Three Circle Red-on-white. In the post-occupation fill above the roof fall was the highest proportion of non-Mimbres Postclassic sherds at the site. Not only were 42 non-Mimbres sherds present in Unit 325, but it contained a great variety of pottery types, including Playas Red Incised, Chupadero Black-on-white, El Paso Polychrome, Ramos Polychrome, Gila Polychrome, White Mountain Red Ware, Cibola White Ware, and El Paso temper. Three of the five Ramos and three of the six Gila Polychrome sherds recovered from the site were in this provenience. Third, the post-­ occupation fill had a higher relative abundance of artiodactyl remains than any other provenience at the site (see chapter 5). If we regard the one Three Circle and four Boldface Black-on-white sherds as being general material from the nearby 300s room block, then the rest of the evidence suggests that Unit 325 was a particularly late room. Not only did it contain a high proportion of Classic pottery, but high proportions of Creel’s Late/Terminal Classic period ceramic indicators were present in the post-­occupation fill overlying the roof fall of the structure. The Cliff phase Salado ceramics suggest some late, perhaps non-­habitational, use of the area. Indeed, the fact that Late Classic and Salado sherds were present in the post-­occupation fill suggests that two groups of people from different periods were active in the area, with the later group perhaps camping in the room so that trash accumulated above the roof fall. A large pit in the southwest corner of the room extends through roof fall to the floor, and this may also be evidence for the late use of the room.

Unit 410 Although Unit 410 was a pit structure to the north of the 400s room block, it had a relatively high proportion of Classic Black-on-white pottery in the trash fill. The pit structure can be dated to the Classic period using other dating methods, and so the presence of so much Classic pottery in the post-occupation fill suggests that people used the depression as a trash dump later in the Classic period. Unit 450 (1976) Unit 450, excavated in 1976, was an area around a pile of manos and mano blanks about 12 m south of the 400s room block. It yielded a relatively low proportion of Classic Black-on-white pottery, which may relate to an early date, although there is no other evidence to confirm this. 200s Room Block The 200s room block contained higher proportions of the less common ceramic types than other room blocks.

33

The high proportions of Transitional Black-on-white and Boldface Black-on-white in this area, including Units 31 and 41a and the associated great kiva in Unit 213, suggest that the 200s room block was the earliest of those excavated by the Mimbres Foundation. Other data from Unit 286 (see chapter 4) hint that the room block began with this pit structure that was used in the Late and Late Late Pit Structure periods and that was superimposed by an Early Classic surface room. There were also far more non-Mimbres sherds in the 200s room block than in other areas at the site, which suggests that it was still in use during the Late Classic period. Thus, the sherd evidence strongly supports the idea that the 200s room block was the first to be built and was used longer than either the 100s or the 400s room blocks. In chapter 4, we make a case that one household built and used each of these room blocks. If so, then the “first” household also may have controlled the best farmlands in the area and potentially the best areas for wild plant gathering, hunting, and other important resources. This household would thus have been in the best position to accrue wealth and control important ceremonies. It may be no coincidence that the great kiva (Unit 213, which dates to the Late Late Pit Structure period, is closer to the 200s room block than to the others. It also may be no coincidence that the 200s room block has undergone the most pothunting and that Nesbitt excavated extensively here. The room block is the largest, and the area was used longest, and so there would have been many burials. However, pothunting made it impossible both to test the idea that one household built and occupied this block over a relatively long period and to determine that this household therefore might have been different from others at the site.

300s Room Block Although Unit 300, a test trench in a room at the south edge of the 300s room block, was almost completely pothunted, it contained many non-Mimbres sherds: 21 Playas Red Incised, 1 Chupadero Black-on-white, 12 El Paso Polychrome, and 14 El Paso temper sherds. The 300s room block is as large as or larger than the 200s room block, and so the very limited sherd data suggest that, like the 200s, the 300s room block may have been used late into the Classic period. It may be that the 300s is a second “core” room block at the site, having been begun early and used late. We hasten to emphasize here that we have no evidence for an early date and little data to support a late one.

Dates from Temporally Diagnostic Whole Vessels Whole Mimbres black-on-white vessels are temporally diagnostic (table 1.8) and offer a useful addition to the suite of dates provided by other methods. We discuss the

34

Chapter 1

whole vessels catalogued during Nesbitt’s and the Mimbres Foundation excavations in chapter 6, and their details are provided in appendices 11 and 13. For the dating analysis, we used Shafer and Brewington’s (1995) microseriation of the Mimbres painted styles because they divided the Transitional and Classic types into microtypes that span shorter periods of time than the types themselves. Whole vessels from pre-Classic periods suggest results that are similar to those obtained from other dating techniques. Very few Boldface and Transitional Black-on-white pots were present at the Mattocks site (table 1.8). No whole Boldface or Early Transitional vessels were uncovered during Nesbitt’s excavations, and the Mimbres Foundation recorded parts of only two Boldface, three Boldface or Transitional, and three Early Transitional vessels. Seven of those eight were from Unit 286, where a pit structure of the Late and Late Late Pit Structure periods was superimposed by a surface room. The remaining Early Transitional bowl was in Unit 114. Transitional and Late Transitional Black-on-white vessels were present in Nesbitt’s Rooms 13 and 15 (table 1.8), which are next to each other in the southern tier of the 100s room block. Both rooms also contained Early or Transitional/Classic, Middle, and Late Classic vessels. Nesbitt provided no descriptions of these rooms, but if all of these pots were associated with burials, then the burials might have been in what Shafer (2003:95) has called a lineage cemetery, one that was used by a group over several generations. The fact that they were at the edge of the room block instead of being near the center is puzzling. It may be that the room block was started in the northsouth tier of rooms, from Nesbitt’s Rooms 13 and 15 in the south, to Unit 114 in the north, and then expanded to the east and west over time. Nesbitt designated Room 11, which was perhaps attached to the south edge of the 200s room block, as a pit structure. While we do not think that it is (chapter 2), it did contain a Transitional Black-on-white bowl, along with an Early and two Middle Classic Black-on-white vessels. Similarly, Nesbitt’s Room 23, in the small room block to the east of the 200s room block, had two Transitional and one Late Transitional vessels, as well as one Early and three Middle Classic bowls. These rooms, especially Room 23 with its larger number of vessels, could be examples of Shafer’s lineage cemetery rooms, but their locations on the edges of room blocks make this difficult to ascertain. In fact, it is not clear from Nesbitt’s records whether these vessels all were associated with burials. Unit 431 is unlike any other room excavated at the Mattocks site in that it had Late Transitional, Transitional/ Classic, and Early Classic vessels, but none from Middle or Late Classic periods. These early pots, along with other dating information (table 1.8; chapter 4), support the idea that this room was among the earliest to be built in the 400s room block. Tree-ring dates from the contiguous and

contemporary Unit 433 suggest that construction of the room block began about A.D. 1079. Shafer and Brewington (1995:17) have provided the dates for Early Classic painted designs as being between A.D. 1010 and A.D. 1080, and so the Early Classic bowls in Unit 433 may be very late examples of that stylistic tradition. Transitional/Classic (A.D. 970–1020) is a specific type that Shafer and Brewington (1995:17) defined, and they dated it to the same period as Late Transitional Black-onwhite pottery, although it has more Classic design characteristics than Late Transitional does. (This type is not the same as the Mimbres Foundation’s Transitional/Classic indeterminate, which refers to pottery that could not be differentiated into Transitional or Classic). Nesbitt’s Rooms 15 and 44, the latter of which was excavated by the Mimbres Foundation as Unit 122, are both in the 100s room block, and the presence of this relatively early type in these rooms is support for the north-south tier of rooms, which goes from Unit 114 south through Units 122 and 134 (Rooms 44 and 46) and Rooms 13 and 15, with the latter two perhaps being the earliest in the room block. Room 65, which Nesbitt excavated in 1931, contained only a Transitional/Classic bowl, but Nesbitt provided no map of that year’s excavation. Of those excavated by the Mimbres Foundation, Unit 286 had three Transitional/ Classic vessels, and Unit 431 had one, which fits with the other early dates from these structures. While 87 percent (127 of 146) of vessels from the Mattocks site that have an identifiable type are Classic Blackon-white, 14 percent (20 of 146) are Early Classic. There is no obvious pattern to the Early Classic vessels from Nesbitt’s excavations (table 1.8), but an Early Classic bowl was present in his Room 11, which is a possible pit structure on the south side of the 200s room block. Most of the Early Classic pots that the Mimbres Foundation excavated were in the 400s room block, possibly because it was generally undisturbed. Early Classic bowls were present in most of the rooms in this room block, including Unit 438, which appears to have been the last room built at the site. Nesbitt’s and the Mimbres Foundation excavations uncovered Early Classic vessels in every room block at the Mattocks site, except the 300s block. Given that most painted Mimbres pottery excavated to date is Middle Classic (about A.D. 1060–1110; Shafer and Brewington 1995:20), it is not surprising that 66 percent (96 of 146) of the identifiable painted vessels from the Mattocks site can be dated to that period. This type also was distributed across the whole site, with vessels in every room block but the 300s. It is notable that two Middle Classic bowls but no other types were present in Nesbitt’s Room 43, a possible pit structure east of the 100s room block. Similarly, the two Middle Classic bowls in Unit 210, just to the west of the 200s room block, were the only type in that unit, one of them being part of a cache below the extramural surface. Middle Classic vessels were

Table 1.8.  Temporally Diagnostic Whole Vessels. Room

Boldface

Boldface or Transitional

Early Transitional

Transitional

Late Transitional

Transitional or Classic

Early Classic

Middle Classic

Late Classic

Nesbitt Rooms 6, in 200s room block 7, in 200s room block 11, in 200s room block 13, in 100s room block 14, east of 200s room block 15, in 100s room block 17, in North room block 20, in North room block 22, in North room block 23, east of 200s room block 26, in North room block 43, east of 100s room block 44 = Unit 122 63 64 65 77

1

1

3 1 1

1

2

1

5

1

1 1

1

1

1

2

1 1

2

1

1

4

1

4 3 2

1 3 1

1 3 1

1

1 4

Mimbres Foundation Units 41 80 106 114 115 120 121 137 210 286 410 431 433 435 438 441 Totals

2 1 1

2

3

2

3 1

2

3

3

4

3

1

7

1 2 3 1 2 20

1 5 1 4 6 1 1 1 2 2 2 5 20 7 1 96

1 1

3 11

36

Chapter 1

also the only type present in Mimbres Foundation Units 41, 120, 121, 137, and 441, all of which are on the edges of their respective room blocks. Seven percent (11 of 146) of the painted vessels at the Mattocks site were Late Classic (about A.D. 1110–1130; Shafer and Brewington 1995:22). Again, they were recovered from most of the room blocks at the site, including the 100s, 200s, 400s, and Nesbitt’s North room block. Nesbitt’s Rooms 13 and 15, which are noted above as having early pottery, also contained Late Classic vessels, as did Unit 114, which also had an Early Transitional vessel. Unit 438, the latest surface room in the 400s room block, contained three Late Classic bowls, more than anywhere else at the site. Their presence supports the late date for this room, but Unit 438 also had Early and Middle Classic bowls. Nesbitt’s Room 20 in his North room block had only a Late Classic vessel.

Temporally Diagnostic Hearth Shapes Circular, adobe-lined, basin-shaped hearths in front of ramps are characteristic of the pit structures of the Late and Late Late Pit Structure periods (Shafer 2003:43). These hearths generally had a stone embedded into the adobe on the ramp side of the hearth. Nesbitt did not record any such hearths at the Mattocks site, but the Mimbres Foundation recorded one in a pit structure (Unit 286b). Shafer (1995:26–29; 2003:43–44) documented a change to rectangular, slab-lined hearths during the Late Late Pit Structure period (his dates are A.D. 900–1020) from his work at the NAN Ranch site, and such hearths became the most common type during the Classic period. The fact that the pit structure in Unit 115b at the Mattocks site had a rectangular, slab-lined hearth suggests that the room dated to the Late Late Pit Structure period. This hearth may be associated with a possible second ramp in the room, hinting that parts of the pit structure were rebuilt. Nesbitt recorded this type of hearth in Room 48. While he called this a kiva, we think that it dated to the Classic period (chapter 2), a proposition that is supported by the presence of a rectangular hearth. Creel (1999:108–110) noted that circular, clay-lined hearths (without deflector stones) may be dated to the Late Classic period (after A.D. 1100). Units 111 (two circular hearths), 115a (two circular hearths), 116, and 121 in the 100s room block had such circular hearths, although there were also slab-lined hearths in Units 113 and 114a (chapter 3, table 3.6). Unit 232 (two circular hearths) provided the earliest tree-ring cutting date from the 200s room block at A.D. 1084. Units 431 (two possible circular hearths), 435a, and 435b all contained circular hearths, although Unit 438b had two slab-lined hearths. Thus, of the intact hearths in surface rooms at the Mattocks site, only four were of the slab-lined type commonly used

during the Classic period. In contrast, slab-lined hearths were present in most Classic habitation rooms at the NAN Ranch site (Shafer 1995:26–29, 2003:59–61), although it also had a few circular late hearths. The earliest tree-ring cutting date from the 100s block, A.D. 1079, was from Unit 114a (table 1.9; chapter 4). Although Unit 113 was probably built simultaneously with Units 111 and 112 late in the room block construction sequence (chapter 4), it is anomalous because it was a small room with an adobe floor and a slab-lined hearth (chapter 3). It is therefore possible that the rectangular, slab-lined hearth in Unit 113 is indicative of a somewhat earlier construction date than the circular hearths in Unit 111 would suggest. Unit 121 was probably built at the same time as Units 111, 112, and 113. Unit 115a had the latest tree-ring cutting date in the 100s room block, A.D. 1107, which falls in the Late Classic period. Unit 116 was probably built at the same time as Unit 115a (chapter 4). Thus, slab-lined hearths are associated with the earlier rooms in the room block, and circular hearths with the later rooms. Unit 431 was perhaps among the earliest to be built in the 400s room block, but it is not clear whether the circular features on its floor were hearths. Units 435a, a habitation room with a non-cutting tree-ring date of A.D. 1092, and Unit 435b, a possible ramada surface, were built immediately before Unit 438 but after the other rooms in the block (chapters 3 and 4). The circular hearths in this room block may well denote late use, and they are consistent with the relatively late non-cutting date. The tree-ring cutting date from Unit 438, A.D. 1117, is the latest from the Mattocks site, and it was taken from roof fall material that had collapsed onto the upper floor. Two slab-lined hearths, one of which replaced the other, were present in the lower floor, suggesting that the lower floor may have been much earlier than the roof fall. However, other data (chapters 3 and 4) indicate that Unit 438 was the latest room built in the 400s room block, and so the presence of these hearths remains enigmatic.

Best Dates for Mattocks Site Rooms and Excavation Units Table 1.9 presents the dates derived from our chronometric and relative dating analyses presented above for each Mattocks site excavation unit and room that had appropriate material to date. From that information, we have obtained a “ best date.” This analysis supports our observation that most of the material from the Mattocks site is relatively late. That is, the site was little used during the Pit Structure periods, and the most intensive occupation—during the Classic period—began in the late A.D. 1000s and extended into the early A.D. 1100s. This pattern may make the Mattocks

surface room

bounded work area

120

121a

surface room

116

1050–1160

>1000

surface room

extramural work area?

114b

pit structure

surface room

114a

115a

surface room

113

115b

>1000

surface room

112

1095vv

1107+rB

1079r, 1088vv

1091vv

>1000

>1000

935–>1000

>1000

>1000

test trench north of 114

991+vv

surface room

112

>1000

111

1105vv

1048vv

surface room

surface room

100

935–>1000

>1000

>1000

Date Using Ceramic Proportions from Other Sites**

extramural

pit structure

80b

1110vv

Archaeomagnetic Date

106a

extramural work area

80a

1095vv

TreeRing Date*

110

surface room

surface room

41b

extramural?

31

70

Provenience Type

Unit

Early Pit Structure?

Early Classic

Early Classic

pre-Classic

Late and Late Late Pit Structure

Date Using Ceramic Proportions Within the Mattocks Site***

Table 1.9.  Best Chronometric and Ceramic Dates for Structures and Units at the Mattocks Site.

one Middle one Middle

circular

circular

2 circular rectangular

one Early, six Middle

rectangular

rectangular

two circular

Hearth Shape

red-slipped, plain, Three Circle Neck-Corrugated, possible Boldface worked sherd

one Early Transitional, above extramural surface

four Middle, one Late

one Middle, one Late

two Early, five Middle

one Middle

Whole Vessel Data#

>1000, Late Classic

Middle Classic

>1100, Late Classic

continued

Late and/or Late Late Pit Structure

1107+rB, Late Classic

Early Classic

1079r, Early Classic based on tree-ring date

Classic, Middle Classic

Early Classic, but architecture does not support

>1100, Late Classic

>1000, Late Classic

pre-Classic

>1105, Late Classic

>1050

Early Pit Structure, 935– >1000 for fill

>1110 Late Classic except for bowls

>1100, Late Classic

>1000, Middle Classic

Late and Late Late Pit Structure

Best Date

surface room

surface room

235

237

extramural surface, trash dump

surface room/ plaza?

233

290b

surface room

232

extramural surface, trash dump

surface room

231

290a

surface room

230

surface room

great kiva

213

pit structure

extramural cache and fill

210

286a

surface room

201

286b

surface room

200

surface room

127

surface room

surface room

126

extramural pit

surface room

125

137

surface room, Nesbitt’s room 44

122

141

Provenience Type

Unit

Table 1.9.  (continued)

936vv

1095r

1046vv

1051vv

1084r, 1085vv

1096+vv

1067vv

1042vv

1074vv

1090+vv

1087vv

1095v

1089+rB, 1097vv

1028vv

TreeRing Date*

920–1025, 925–1000

Archaeomagnetic Date

Late Pit Structure

Early Classic

Early Classic

>1000

>1000

Late Late Pit Structure/Early Classic

Date Using Ceramic Proportions Within the Mattocks Site***

935–1000

935–>1000

>1000

>1000

Date Using Ceramic Proportions from Other Sites**

two Boldface, three Boldface or Transitional, two Early Transitional, one Early, one Middle

one Middle

one Middle

one Transitional/ Classic, one Middle

Whole Vessel Data#

two circular

Hearth Shape

Early Classic

Early Classic

Late and Late Late Pit Structure

Early Classic

1095r, Middle/Late Classic

>1050, Middle Classic

>1050, Middle Classic

1084r, Middle/Late Classic

>1100, Late Classic

>1070, Middle Classic

Late Late Pit Structure, burned

Middle Classic

>1050, Middle Classic

>1075, Middle Classic

>1000

>1100, Middle/Late Classic

>1090

>1100, Late Classic

1089+rB, Middle Classic

>1030, Early/Middle Classic

Best Date

extramural burial from ramada surface

mano cluster

probably a pothole

441

450

490

1026vv

1117r

1041vv

1015–1250

Archaeomagnetic Date

>1000

>1000

>1000

>1000

>1000

>1000

>1000

>1000

Date Using Ceramic Proportions from Other Sites**

Early Classic

Classic

Late Classic

Date Using Ceramic Proportions Within the Mattocks Site***

* Latest tree-ring cutting date, if present, along with latest noncutting date if the latter is later. ** From table 1.6. *** From table 1.7. # From table 1.8.

surface room

surface room

surface room

ramada?

435a

435b

438a

1092vv

surface room

433

438b

1079r, 1100vv

surface room

1063vv

1080vv

1095r, 1109vv

1095v

431

surface room

425

extramural surface

surface room

423a

1020+vv

1048vv

430

pit structure

410

ramada

pothole

350

surface room

isolated surface room

325

1022vv

426

surface room

300

TreeRing Date*

427

Provenience Type

Unit

Table 1.9.  (continued)

one Middle

two Early, seven Middle, three Late

one Early, 11 Middle

nine Middle

three Early, five Middle

one Late Transitional, one Transitional/Classic, two Early

one Early, two Middle

Whole Vessel Data#

two rectangular

circular

circular

Hearth Shape

>1026

Early Classic

Middle Classic

>1000, Early/Middle Classic

1117r, Late Classic

Late Classic

>1095, Late Classic

1079r, Middle Classic

>1045, Early Classic

>1065, Middle Classic

>1080, Middle Classic

1095r, Late Classic

>1100, Late Classic

>1000

Classic

>1050, Middle Classic

Late Classic

>1025

Best Date

40

Chapter 1

site different from other large Pit Structure and Classic period Mimbres sites, and it hints that at least some people moved onto the site in the late 1000s. Early Pit Structure period use is difficult to detect because the plain and red-slipped pottery that characterizes this period continued through the Mimbres sequence. However, the circular shape of the pit structure represented by Unit 80b suggests that it dated to the Early Pit Structure period. The sherds that accord it a date from A.D. 935 to after A.D. 1000 (table 1.9) were mostly from the fill above the floor of the structure, and it therefore must have stood open for some time before it was filled, perhaps with Early Classic materials. The presence of a rectangular slab-lined hearth suggests that the pit structure in Unit 115b dated to the Late Late Pit Structure period. However, the high proportion of red-slipped and scored and punctate incised sherds, the red-slipped, plain, and Three Circle Neck-Corrugated whole vessels, and the red-slipped and possible Boldface worked sherds (chapter 2) in the subfloor burial infer that the hearth was associated with a second ramp, and perhaps a rebuilding episode that included the hearth. The possible Boldface worked sherd in the burial would suggest a Late Pit Structure period date for the building, while material from the fill above the pit structure floor can be dated between A.D. 935 and A.D. 1000. Because of the ambiguity in the evidence, this building could date to either the Late or Late Late Pit Structure periods, or both. The date from another pit structure, Unit 286b, is more clearly within both the Late and the Late Late Pit Structure periods. Tree-ring, archaeomagnetic, and ceramic dates support a date after A.D. 936, but there were Boldface sherds and partial vessels (chapter 6) on the floor of the structure, and so it was perhaps built in the Late Pit Structure period and used into the next period. Alternatively, the Boldface pottery on the floor of the structure might have been placed there later, as part of a closing ceremony. The fill in the great kiva (Unit 213), and perhaps the building itself, probably dated to the Late Late Pit Structure period, a time contemporary with the use of the pit structure and Early Classic surface room in the nearby Unit 286. Two other units, 31 and 110, may have dated to the Late and Late Late Pit Structure periods, or they are at least pre-Classic. Unit 31 is near the 200s room block, while Unit 110 is off the northwest corner of the 100s room block, and it is difficult to interpret the contexts of either unit. Thus, during the Pit Structure periods, the Mattocks site had an excavated pit structure from the Early Pit Structure period, excavated pit structures from the Late and Late Late Pit Structure periods, and a great kiva from the Late Late Pit Structure period. A small amount of other material and contexts dated to the Late and Late

Late Pit Structure periods in general. (See chapter 2 for a discussion of Nesbitt’s pit structures, none of which can be clearly dated to the Pit Structure periods.) Even if there were double or triple the number of domestic pit structures we know were present at the Mattocks site during the Pit Structure periods, there would still have been relatively few people at the Mattocks site for these several centuries. If five or six people lived in each pit structure, and each pit structure was inhabited for 10 to 15 years (Cameron 1990:161), or even a possible period of 45 to 50 years or longer (Blake et al. 1986:454), then the site probably would have seen only sporadic use prior to the Late Late Pit Structure period, when there may have been only two contemporary structures and perhaps a dozen people. However, because the walls of the Unit 286a surface room were aligned with the walls of the Unit 286b pit structure below it, and because the former is an Early Classic period room, it is likely that the household who built that pit structure was one of the founding households at the Mattocks pueblo. The household who lived in Unit 286b also may have constructed the great kiva, which is spatially associated with the 200s room block. Even though it would have served relatively few people from the Mattocks site, the great kiva may have drawn people from nearby sites (Gilman and Stone 2013). Neither of the other pit structures had a surface room superimposed on it in a way that referenced the shape and location of the pit structure, and so newcomers may have built the later superimposed surface rooms. Other possible Early Classic proveniences include Units 112, 114b, 290a, 290b, 431, and 450, and so there was an Early Classic component to the 100s, 200s, and 400s room blocks. Unit 286a might have been the only surface structure at the site that was constructed before A.D. 1000. All dates from other surface rooms are later than this, and the earliest tree-ring cutting date is A.D. 1079, from Unit 114a. All available dates, especially the tree-ring dates, support a major habitation episode at the site between about A.D. 1080 and A.D. 1130. This brief, late use of the site contrasts the Mattocks site from other large Mimbres pueblos. Late Classic period dates, those from after A.D. 1100, suggest that the latest use of the Mattocks site for habitation was in Units 70, 80a, 106a, 111, 112 (the test trench north of Unit 114), 115a, 116, 121a, 126, 231, 325, 425, 426, 435a, 435b, and 438a. There was thus late use in the 100s, 200s, 400s, and Nesbitt’s Southeast Group room blocks, as well as in Unit 325, which was a single isolated room. This pattern, and the presence of many circular hearths that are associated with the Late Classic period at other sites, supports our contention that most of the occupational material at the Mattocks site is from late in the Classic period. Indeed, we might even call it a predominantly Late Classic site.

CHAPTER 2

Pit Structures at the Mattocks Site Few and Mostly Classic

Most, if not all, large Classic period sites in the Mimbres Valley superimpose earlier Pit Structure period sites. Unlike most such Classic sites, however, the Mattocks site has few pre-Classic pit structures, and most pit structures at the site can instead be dated to the Classic period. In this chapter, we present the pit structure data from both Nesbitt’s and the Mimbres Foundation excavations, and we consider how the use of the Mattocks site during the Pit Structure periods was different to the use at other Mimbres sites. The pit structure data can be used to address the transition from pit structures to pueblos at the Mattocks site, and consequently on other Mimbres and southwestern sites. Given that the locations of the large Classic sites were in use during the Early Pit Structure period at some point between A.D. 200 and A.D. 750, and that continuity in painted ceramics started about A.D. 750 and lasted through the Classic period, the processes at work during the Pit Structure periods must at least partly relate to the use of Classic period surface structures and Classic Blackon-white pottery. It is traditional to inquire whether the people living in pit structures near the end of the Late Late Pit Structure period were numerous enough to promote their apparent aggregation into surface pueblos, or whether other people entered the valley. Since there were few people at the Mattocks site and perhaps in the Mimbres Valley during the Pit Structure periods (Gilman 2010), other factors may account for this abrupt change. There were few people living at the Mattocks site during the Late Late Pit Structure period. This is unusual compared to other Classic period sites in the Mimbres Valley, which had relatively larger occupations during this time. Several questions arise from this contrast. Why were there so few Late Late Pit Structure period buildings at the Mattocks site, and what were the purposes of the Classic period pit structures? What was the role of the Late Late Pit Structure period great kiva? Was the population at the Mattocks site during the Early Classic period concomitantly low (see chapters 3 and 4)?

To evaluate the Mattocks site pit structures in terms of the low numbers of people at the site and the pit structure to pueblo transition, this chapter contains descriptions and discussions of the Mattocks site pit structures that have been excavated. We first consider the conditions under which pit structures are used, wherever and whenever they occur, to offer a perspective on why people might have chosen pit structures rather than some other architectural form. We then provide descriptions of the pit structures that Nesbitt and the Mimbres Foundation excavated. Discussions of the Pit Structure periods at the Mattocks site and the role of Classic period pit structures end the chapter.

Pit Structures in General Pit structures are characteristic of the earliest occupations of the Mattocks site. Our discussion here is a consideration of the advantages of noncontiguous underground structures. Why did people use pit structures instead of other possible types of habitation? This question leads to an investigation of why pueblos generally replaced pit structures around A.D. 1000 in the Mimbres Valley. Gilman’s (1983, 1987a) research into the social and natural circumstances surrounding the worldwide use of pit structures determined that several general conditions encourage their use. Her investigation was based on a worldwide sample of pit structures (Murdock 1967) taken from the ethnographic and archaeological literature, but it did not include every documented use of pit structures. The analysis was only suggestive of the important factors surrounding pit structure use, and it may not have described how and why people used pit structures in the southwestern United States. Several factors suggest that pit structures have distinct advantages. Most pit structures in the northern hemisphere are above 32° latitude in areas that have cold winters. The exceptions to this statement are often in high-altitude

42

Chapter 2

regions with cooler winters than their surrounding areas. The thermal advantages of underground structures would be particularly beneficial in areas with cold winters, because underground structures are much more thermally efficient than aboveground structures in terms of minimizing heat loss and controlling daily and short-term temperature fluctuations (Farwell 1981; Underground Space Center 1979). Relatively low population densities are typical of communities that use pit structures. Murdock’s (1967) data suggested that fewer than 400 people occupy most pit structure villages, but an environmental region with a high carrying capacity might account for the occasional pit structure site that houses more than 400. Pit structure occupants are usually hunters and gatherers, although there are a few exceptions to this statement. Pit structures are generally associated with low levels of political complexity and no class stratification, except that based on wealth. People using pit structures are often seminomadic, spending much time away from a fixed settlement but returning each year. No fully sedentary pit structure group has been recorded. The amount of labor needed to build pit structures implies that they were occupied longer than those that were built by groups with extremely low populations (Diehl 1997). Whether these characteristics were true for the pit structure occupants in the Mimbres Valley remains to be demonstrated, but these general conditions at least provide a reasonable place to begin investigating the lifeways of the people who built and used pit structures in the ancient Southwest. Pit structures are best adapted to cold winters, low population densities, and winter sedentism. The thermal efficiency of pit structures makes them especially useful for winter occupation, especially where the occupants spend much time inside. In some parts of the world, particularly those with relatively cool summers and little rainfall, pit structures might be appropriate summer dwellings, but high levels of summer precipitation in the Southwest suggest that these structures were not summer houses. A pit structure should therefore be placed where the group expects to spend the winter and near resources that will be critical for surviving the winter, including water, firewood, or stored food. The latter would certainly be necessary to overwinter in most cold winter environments, and if people are dependent on such stores, few outside activities should be performed during the winter months. Thus, we have a picture of pit structures being used at winter sites as part of an annual round, with the occupants depending on stored food and with little outside work being performed. A common sense suggestion is that pit structures in the Southwest were also used as summer habitations, since underground structures would be cool in hot weather. Holes tend to fill with water during the southwestern summer rains, however, and the problem of making a seal between the roof of a pit structure and the ground surface

might be insurmountable. An exception may be in the desert Hohokam area of the Southwest, where people inhabited houses-in-pits that were shallow, rather than the deep pit structures of the Mogollon and Ancestral Pueblo areas, but the use of these during the summer is debatable. Ethnographic literature on pit structure use has only produced one example of summer pit structure use, the Koryak (Jochelson 1908), who lived along the rivers and seacoast of Siberia, and who historically used pit structures all year round. The summers are quite cool in the area, making the thermal efficiency of pit structures advantageous. As important, however, is that the Koryak placed their summer pit structures in different locales than their winter pit structures. In both places, resources were such that food had to be gathered in a very short period and stored for future use. The Koryak were essentially sedentary in their pit structures, both winter and summer, and lived from their stored materials. A final point about pit structure use is that people may not return to the same pit structure site every winter. Resource availability may vary from year to year, and so if sites are situated close to domestic or wild food that will be stored for the winter, or to water or firewood, then habitation may also vary. Changing availability would necessitate different winter locales. Unless an area is particularly rich in the necessary resources for overwintering, we should expect the same group to have different winter site locales, allowing them flexibility in the face of varying conditions. Oswald (1993:153–225) noted this kind of flexibility for Navajos who herd sheep, although the actual conditions that the Navajos confront are different than those of pit structure occupants.

Pit Structures Excavated by Nesbitt It is uncertain how many pit structures Nesbitt excavated at the Mattocks site, both because the extant excavation records are poor and because Nesbitt’s criteria for distinguishing pit structures from surface rooms are often ambiguous and overlapping. There are five possible pit structures (Rooms 11, 23, 27, 32, and 43; tables 2.1–2.3) and a structure that Nesbitt called a kiva (Room 48). We have no information about Rooms 27 and 32 except their locations and the fact that Nesbitt (1931) designated them pit structures on his site map. Nesbitt labeled Room 41 as a pit structure on his site map, but elsewhere he called it a Middle period structure (Nesbitt 1931:41). It is probably not a pit structure. Nesbitt (1931:33–39) distinguished three periods at the Mattocks site: Early, Middle, and Late. His Early period is the equivalent of the Pit Structure periods in current terminology. Nesbitt defined Early period pit structures as being relatively large with no stone walls above the ground surface, a floor dug between several inches to three feet into

43

Pit Structures Excavated by Nesbitt Table 2.1.  Nesbitt’s Excavated 1929 and 1930 Pit Structure Room and Floor Data. Room Number

Room Dimensions

Room Area (m2)

Floor Depth Below Surface

Floor Material

Nesbitt’s Period

Notes

11

n.d.

n.d.

3'2"

adobe

Early

two sterile walls; two slab walls; ramp in south wall; called pit room on Nesbitt’s site map

23

n.d.

“very large”

6'

n.d.

Early

lower walls sterile; upper walls masonry; ramp in south wall

27

3.72 m N-S ?*

n.d.

1.01 m?*

n.d.

Early

called pit room on Nesbitt’s site map

32

n.d.

n.d.

n.d.

n.d.

n.d.

called pit room on Nesbitt’s site map

43

17' × 18'?

28.6?

1'6"–2'5"

n.d.

Early

lower walls sterile; upper walls masonry; called pit room on Nesbitt’s site map

48

14'5" × 11'2"

15.2

6'

adobe

Middle

“kiva”; vent shaft three feet south of south wall; ledge along north wall; room somewhat isolated from others; trash in room fill; lower walls sterile; upper walls masonry

* From Mimbres Foundation’s Unit 70 excavation.

Table 2.2.  Nesbitt’s Excavated 1929 and 1930 Pit Structure Hearth Data. Room Number

Hearth Shape

Lining

Contents

Dimensions

Location

23

no hearth

43

n.d.

adobe, stone

n.d.

n.d.

south of center

48

rectangular

adobe, stone

ash

18" × 20"

in line with vent

culturally sterile soil, a shallow hole lined with adobe for the hearth, and isolation from other structures. Nesbitt did not provide data to ascertain that the pit structures he excavated were relatively large in comparison to the surface structures. His pit structures ranged from 14.5 to 18 feet long and 11 to 17 feet wide (table 2.1). The pit structure from Nesbitt’s excavations for which we have measurements is Room 43, and it was 17 by 18 feet (28.6 m2), a relatively large structure. Nesbitt also noted that Room 23 was a “very large” structure. The floors of pit structures should generally be deeper than the floors of surface structures, but some of Nesbitt’s possible pit structures were quite shallow. Nesbitt’s pit structure floor levels were between 1.5 and 6 ft deep (0.45 m and 1.8 m; table 2.1), with Rooms 11 and 43 having relatively shallow floors. We do not know whether Nesbitt measured floor depth from the ground surface or

from a datum. No measurements remain for the depth that the pit structure floors were dug into culturally sterile soil, and so we cannot assess Nesbitt’s criterion. The presence or absence of a hearth was only recorded for three possible pit structures (table 2.2). Room 23 had no hearth, while Rooms 43 and 48 had adobe and stone hearths. It is not clear from Nesbitt’s descriptions whether the hearths were rocks held together by adobe, or whether they were adobe with one rock on the hearth edge nearest the ramp, but the latter is most common for hearths in Mimbres Valley pit structures. Some of Nesbitt’s possible pit structures seem to have been isolated, but some were not. Room 27 appears to be contiguous with other rooms in Nesbitt’s Southeast Group (Nesbitt 1931:Site map). On his site map, Nesbitt showed Room 11 as isolated within his East Group, but Mimbres Foundation excavations suggest that it was contiguous

Table 2.3.  Nesbitt’s Excavated 1929 and 1930 Pit Structure Posthole, Burial, and Non-burial Artifact Data. Room Number

Posthole Data

Subfloor Burials

Intrusive Burials

Logan Museum Catalog Number

Artifact Type

Location

11

n.d.

zero or 22 burials

n.d.

16112

Middle Classic bowl covering seed jar

burial 42, cremation

16140

Middle Classic bowl

floor

16146

Reserve B/w? seed jar, 75%

vent shaft

16155

Early Classic bowl

fill

16178

Middle Classic seed jar

burial 42, cremation

16193

small obliterated corrugated jar

16194.2

white-slipped bowl

16195

Reserve Plain Corrugated bowl, smudged interior

16196.1

small clapboard corrugated jar, 80%

vent shaft

16246

mortar and pestle

floor

21991.1

Transitional bowl, 20%

burial 42, cremation

16128

Classic? or Reserve? effigy, 30%

n.d.

three cremations

16129

Transitional bowl, 50%

n.d.

along west wall

16153

Middle Classic flare rim bowl

floor

16154

Early Classic bowl, 80%

floor

16156.1

Late Transitional bowl

floor

16158

Middle Classic bowl

n.d.

16174

Classic seed jar

n.d.

16177

Middle Classic bowl, 50%

floor

16179

Middle Classic seed jar

cremation

16182

Transitional bowl, 50%

n.d.

23

n.d.

10 or 26 burials,

n.d.

burial 42, cremation

27

n.d.

three burials

n.d.

n.d.

32

n.d.

n.d.

n.d.

n.d.

43

n.d.

122,123,124,

none

n.d.

25 stone hoes

on stone ledge, east wall

127,128,129,

16275

Middle Classic bowl

burial 133

133

16278.1

Middle Classic bowl

n.d.

16278.2

Middle Classic bowl

n.d.

16289

Early Classic bowl

burial 123

16306

pottery ladle fragment

fill

16308

five worked sherds

fill

16342

Middle Classic polychrome bowl

burial 122

16355

clay tablet

fill

16305

two clay pipe fragments

n.d.

16304

clay object with three legs

fill

16314

two full grooved stone axes

fill

16322

seven flat disk stone scrapers

fill

16340

salamander shell pendant

fill

48

center east 158,159,160 wall

none

Pit Structures Excavated by Nesbitt with Unit 237 and that it was part of the 200s room block. Rooms 23, 32, and 43 all were drawn as isolated structures on Nesbitt’s site map. Room 48, Nesbitt’s kiva, was somewhat isolated on or near the northwest corner of his Southeast Group room block. This room fits Anyon and LeBlanc’s (1980:266– 268) semi-subterranean kiva definition, a kind of communal structure dating to the Classic period. Room 48 was semi-subterranean (table 2.1), had a vent shaft in the south wall, and was apparently located on the edge of a room block. Anyon and LeBlanc noted that semi-subterranean kivas can be contiguous with room blocks, in which case they are always on the edge of, or detached but close to, a room block. Because of their characteristics and the fact that there is only one per room block, Anyon and LeBlanc posited that semi-subterranean kivas served as communal structures for the people living in that room block. One other criterion, the presence of a ramp entry, distinguishes pit structures from surface rooms. Two of Nesbitt’s structures, Rooms 11 and 23, had ramp entries in their south walls. Based on extant data, we cannot ascertain whether Rooms 27 and 32 were pit structures. Room 27 was contiguous with a room block, and it was drawn as being larger than the other rooms Nesbitt excavated. We think that the Mimbres Foundation’s Unit 70 (appendix 3) was within Room 27, and our excavations suggested that it was indeed a pit structure. We exposed the east wall of the building, in which two to three masonry courses extended 55 cm below the present ground surface. The culturally sterile soil that perhaps indicated the floor level was 1.01 m below ground surface. The few courses of masonry laid above a wall of excavated dirt, along with the depth, suggested a pit structure. The room was 3.72 m north-south, within the range of either a pit structure or a surface room, but it was not larger than a surface room, as Nesbitt suggested pit structures should be. A wood sample with a cutting date of A.D. 1095vv was from the previously excavated fill of this room. If the sample truly was from Room 27, and not backfill from another provenience, then this would have been a Classic period pit structure, which would account for it being so closely associated with the room block. However, Room 27 is contiguous with other rooms in Nesbitt’s Southeast Group, which would have been unusual for a pit structure. Room 32 was apparently not contiguous with other rooms, and, based on this, it may have been a pit structure. Nesbitt’s Room 11 had a ramp entry and may have been contiguous with Unit 237, but it was probably a pit structure. Unit 23 also had a ramp entry, was quite deep, and was isolated from other buildings, and so it also is likely to have been a pit structure. Room 43 too was probably a pit structure because it was isolated from other buildings. Room 48 was a semi-subterranean kiva, according to Anyon and LeBlanc’s (1980) definition, although it simply may have been a pit structure. Thus, Nesbitt probably excavated five pit structures (Rooms 11, 23, 27, 32, and

45

43) at the Mattocks site, along with a possible communal room (Room 48). These numbers assume that Room 41 was not a pit structure and that no other rooms were incorrectly identified. The pit structures and the communal room were either constructed during the Classic period or their dates are not possible to determine. The only way to fully ascertain the dates would be with associated artifacts, either from floor contexts or burials, but no information is available regarding artifacts associated with Rooms 27 and 32. No temporally diagnostic artifacts were recorded from Room 48, although its architectural characteristics suggest that it dated to the Classic period. Room 11 had an associated cremation (Burial 42) with a Middle Classic Black-on-white bowl over the Middle Classic Black-on-white seed jar containing the cremation, a heavily worn white-slipped bowl, and about 20 percent of a Transitional Black-on-white bowl (table 2.3; chapters 6 and 7). There was a Middle Classic Black-on-white bowl on the floor, along with a white ware seed jar that was possibly Reserve Black-on-white, a small corrugated jar in the vent shaft, and an Early Classic Black-on-white bowl in the room fill. Another small corrugated jar and a Reserve Plain Corrugated bowl with a smudged interior were also associated with this room. Whether Room 11 was a pit structure or not, it dated to the Classic period. The presence of the Reserve Plain Corrugated bowl and the possible Reserve Black-on-white seed jar is unusual, and the Transitional bowl pieces associated with the cremation may have been the remains of a heritage item, especially since only a small part of it was present. Room 23 had a Middle Classic seed jar in a cremation associated with the room. On the floor were a Late Transitional bowl, 80 percent of an Early Classic bowl, and two Middle Classic bowls, one of which was a flare rim while only 50 percent of the other was present (table 2.3). This room also contained halves of two Transitional bowls, a Classic seed jar, a Middle Classic bowl, and 30 percent of an effigy vessel that was either Classic or Reserve Blackon-white. It is not clear whether these vessels were part of a floor assemblage, whether at least some were materials placed onto the floor before the roof collapsed, or whether some were burial goods for which the contexts are not extant. The temporal placement is also unclear, but if we assume that the Classic period vessels denoted the latest use of the room, then a Classic date is appropriate. The Transitional vessels may have been kept from earlier times, and their presence is thus interesting. Room 43 had three burials with one Classic bowl each—one Early and two Middle (table 2.3; chapters 6 and 7). One of the latter was polychrome. Two other Middle Classic bowls were associated with the structure. All five of these bowls were naturalistic, and four of the five had birds on them, one of the few instances of a “theme” painted on the vessels from a room. This pit structure clearly dated to the Classic period.

46

Chapter 2

Painted pottery and architectural characteristics thus suggest that these three pit structures (Rooms 11, 23, and 43) and the possible communal structure (Room 48) dated to the Classic period. As noted, no dates are available for Rooms 27 and 32. It is significant that Nesbitt recorded no Boldface Black-on-white vessels in his pit structures, implying that those buildings all were built after the Late Pit Structure period (Shafer and Brewington 1995:12–13). There was a small piece of a Transitional Black-on-white bowl in Room 11, and one Transitional bowl and two other halves in Room 23, but each room contained many more Classic vessels. Still, relative to the proportion of Transitional to Classic vessels across the site, this was a lot.

Pit Structures Excavated by the Mimbres Foundation A pit structure from the Early Pit Structure period (Unit 80b) represents the earliest known occupation at the Mattocks site. Although most such recorded pit structures are on high hills or ridges above the Mimbres River, Unit 80b and others from this period are on the first bench of the river. We do not know if this settlement pattern was used throughout the Early Pit Structure period or if it occurred only during the late part. We suspect the latter, since these pit structures are often at locales that would later become large pit structure and pueblo sites. Most Classic sites appear to have begun with Early Pit Structure period circular buildings. Five such pit structures were present at the Galaz site (Anyon and LeBlanc 1984:92), of the 45 excavated there, while one of the 24 such buildings at the NAN Ranch site (Shafer 1995:24– 25, 2003:21–54) was a circular pit structure. The Cameron Creek site had circular structures, although Bradfield (1931) did not give an actual count of those and the later rectangular varieties among the 58 pit structures he identified. Cosgrove and Cosgrove (1932) uncovered no circular houses at the Swarts site, but Shafer (personal communication, 1996) has observed that plain pottery and much lithic material was present all along the terrace on which the site is located. Shafer also expects that pit structures may have extended west beyond the room blocks at the Swarts site, a pattern also seen at the NAN Ranch and Galaz sites. There is thus a hint that sometime before A.D. 750 people were living on or near the locations that would later become large Classic sites. Moreover, the Mattocks and Galaz sites are directly across the river from other Early Pit Structure period sites; the one across from Galaz is unnamed and unexcavated. The McAnally site (LA12110; Diehl and LeBlanc 2001) is opposite the Mattocks site on the east side of the river, atop a high, steep knoll, and it is estimated to have had 12 pit structures dating from A.D. 200 to A.D. 550. Not all structures would have been occupied at the same time, and so the actual site population would have been quite low. If the

people who inhabited the McAnally site were the ancestors of those who moved onto the Mattocks site, then it is not surprising to locate only one pit structure of the Early Pit Structure period at the Mattocks site. We would expect the initial population of the Mattocks site to have been low, even if the first group did not come from the McAnally site. The Mimbres Foundation excavated no structures at the Mattocks site from the Middle Pit Structure period. These would have been rectangular pit structures that were characterized by Mogollon Red-on-brown and Three Circle Red-on-white ceramics. Galaz (Anyon and LeBlanc 1984:93) had five, however, and NAN Ranch (Shafer 1995:25, 2003:28–31) had four. Such structures likely existed among the many rectangular pit structures at the Swarts and Cameron Creek sites, but the original excavators did not temporally differentiate among the rectangular buildings. One pit structure at the Mattocks site (Unit 115b) could have dated to the Late and/or Late Late Pit Structure periods, one (Unit 286b) dated to the Late and Late Late Pit Structure periods, and the great kiva (Unit 213) dated to the Late Late Pit Structure period. Compared with other excavated Classic sites, such as the Galaz (27 pit structures spanning these periods; Anyon and LeBlanc 1984:84), NAN Ranch (24; Shafer 1995:24–26, 2003:21– 54), Swarts (47 rectangular pit structures; Cosgrove and Cosgrove 1932:6), and Cameron Creek sites (about 58 total pit structures; Bradfield 1931:site map), the Mattocks site had few such pit structures. Two Mattocks site pit structures excavated by the Mimbres Foundation dated to the Classic period (Gilman 2007). One of these (Unit 410) was perhaps what Shafer (1995:26–27) defined as a modified pit structure, in that it had a blocked entrance and a later vent, while the other (Unit 441) was never finished, even though it was directly adjacent to the 400s room block. These pit structures had the same rectangular form and layout as Middle, Late, and Late Late Pit Structure period buildings, but the chronological analysis (chapter 1) of Unit 410, the predominantly Classic Black-on-white sherds in both pit structures, and the position of the unfinished pit structure just outside the door of a late room in the 400s room block suggest a Classic period date for both. The pit structure to pueblo transition is therefore not an absolute change, and people continued to build and use pit structures where the conditions warranted (Gilman 2007).

Mimbres Foundation Pit Structure Descriptions A brief description of each excavated pit structure is included here. Tables 2.4–2.7 contain structure and intramural feature measurements and other information for each pit structure the Mimbres Foundation excavated. Figure 2.1 compares the depths of the Mimbres Foundation pit

Figure 2.1.  Comparative depths of Mattocks site pit structures and pueblo rooms.

48

Chapter 2

structures to the later pueblo rooms, showing that most— but not all—pit structures were deeper. Whole vessel data are in chapter 6, and burial information is in chapter 7.

Unit 80b The pit structure excavated as Unit 80b (figures 2.2 and 2.3) was constructed during the Early Pit Structure period, as evidenced by its round to oval shape. The structure was not burned, and so no charcoal samples are available for dating. Its date could only be inferred from the shape of the structure. Five sherds of San Francisco Red and 10 of scored pottery, both of which are characteristic of the late part of the Early Pit Structure period, were recovered from the fill above the pit structure floor and from the floor features. The fill and floor feature contexts also contained some Boldface and Transitional sherds (appendix 2), which postdated the pit structure, and large numbers of Classic and obliterated corrugated sherds that are associated with the Classic period. No Mogollon Red-onbrown or Three Circle Red-on-white sherds were present. Sherds associated with Unit 80b were not helpful in dating the structure, except insofar as the San Francisco Red and scored sherds were present. Unit 80b was directly below Unit 80a, a Classic period exterior work surface. The pit structure floor was 36–47 cm below the work surface, and the trash fill between the two surfaces contained the sherd types mentioned above. Neither Unit 80a nor 80b was discernable on the ground surface, and both were uncovered at the north end of Test Trench 8, a backhoe trench placed to illuminate the nature of the deposits in this area of the site. Unit 80b was the only Early Pit Structure period building excavated by either the Mimbres Foundation or Nesbitt at the Mattocks site. The pit structure was about 25 m southeast of the 100s room block, and it was apparently just west of several rooms that Nesbitt excavated in his Southeast Group. These Classic rooms had no relationship to the pit structure location, which was fairly near the edge of the first bench. This placement was not necessarily typical of the phase, since Early Pit Structure period houses at the Galaz site were scattered across the first bench (Anyon and LeBlanc 1984:32), and the pit structure of similar age at the NAN Ranch site (Shafer 1995:25) was not on the terrace edge. The single pit structure from the Early Pit Structure period and the lack of later Middle Pit Structure period houses at the Mattocks site were fewer than expected. Similarly, there is only a single Early Pit Structure period house at NAN Ranch, and because this site has been rather intensively excavated, it may indicate that it also had a small population during that period. In contrast, Haury (1936a:52) uncovered five Early and six Middle Pit Structure period domestic pit structures at the nearby Harris site in the quarter to a third of the site that he excavated.

Perhaps most people living in the vicinity of the Mattocks and Harris sites dwelled at the Harris site during the Pit Structure periods. The Unit 80b pit structure floor was slightly hemispherical in cross section, being higher along the edges and lower in the center. A ramp opened to the southeast and extended 2.2 m beyond the pit structure walls. It sloped directly up from the pit structure floor to a point just below the culturally sterile soil level. The unit had a hard-packed adobe floor, some of which was intact, and walls of culturally sterile soil (table 2.4). Hard-packed mud and small stones covered one wall section along the west side of the pit structure, which suggests that the entire wall may once have been finished in this way. Postholes that were probably associated with the pit structure were preserved both inside and outside the building. Within the structure there were 11 postholes (figures 2.2 and 2.3, table 2.5) and one pit or possible posthole (80b-6S-18PH #4). Two of the postholes were associated with the ramp while the remainder formed two general clusters, one on the east side of the pit structure and one on the west. These postholes did not form the regular pattern expected with pit structure construction. We removed an area about 1 m wide around the pit structure perimeter to the level of culturally sterile soil. This may not have exposed the complete posthole pattern for the pit structure, but several of the postholes (80b-2-14PH #1, #2, #4, #5, #7) that were uncovered seem to have been inset into the pit structure wall or their depths extended to or below its floor level. However, the bases of the three inset postholes were at or above the pit structure floor level, and any structural purpose is uncertain. Four pits were uncovered outside the Unit 80b pit structure. One of these (80-2-14PH #3) was possibly associated with it because its bottom elevation was lower than the pit structure floor level. This pit seemed a little large to be a posthole, but it did cut into the wall of the structure, and so this function cannot be discounted. A second pit (80b-2-15) was pear-shaped and approximately the size of a burial pit. No human bones or grave goods were present in the pit, and its function is unknown. The pit cannot have been associated with the final use of the Classic period exterior work area, since two corrugated jars (80b-2-4/33, 80b-2-4/34) were set on the pit fill, but it might have been associated with an earlier use of the exterior area or with Unit 80b itself. Two pits (80b-2-14PH #6, 80b-2-21P) were probably associated with the exterior work surface because their bottom elevations were at least 24 cm above the floor of the pit structure. Only half of 80b-2-21P was excavated because the other half was under a large cholla cactus, but this pit contained predominantly Classic Black-on-white sherds. We could not determine the functions of these pits. The hearth in Unit 80b was close to the ramp opening and was aligned with it (table 2.6). It was lined with

Figure 2.2.  Unit 80b plan and Units 80a and b profile.

50

Chapter 2

Figure 2.3.  Photo of Unit 80b excavated floor and floor pits.

culturally sterile soil and with a few stones on the side facing the ramp. All the burials in Unit 80b were Classic period interments that were intrusive into the pit structure fill, floor, and walls (table 2.7). They could be identified as Classic because of the Early or Middle Classic Blackon-white bowl that had been placed with each burial. As with the postholes and pits discussed above, it is not possible to ascertain when these burials were interred. They were certainly positioned when the pit structure was no longer occupied, but most of them could have been in place before, during, or after the use of the Classic exterior work area. Three burials (80b-1-1B, 80b-5F-12B, 80b-6S-17B) intruded through the pit structure fill and into the pit structure floor. Of these, 80b-5F-12B and 80b-6S-17B were covered by the artifacts or rock concentrations on the exterior work area surface, and so they must have been in place before the final use of that area. One burial (80b-2-10B) was intrusive into the pit structure fill only, and it also was covered by work area surface artifacts. No pit was discernible for this feature. Three burials (80b-3-11B #1, 80b-3-11B #2, 80b-220B) were predominantly outside the pit structure wall, but all three intruded into the wall or into the pit structure fill, wall, and floor. These burials were close to one another outside the northwest edge of the pit structure, and all were oriented in the same direction, with the crania to the south. Two of the burial pits (80b-3-11B #1 and 80b-3-11B #2) overlapped each other, but individual #2 was interred 32 cm lower than individual #1. It was not

possible to tell whether one body was interred before the other. Only 80b-3-11B #1 was covered by a concentration of rocks and an in situ artifact on the Classic exterior work surface, which means that it was definitely in place before the final use of this surface. An apparently in situ floor assemblage (table 2.7) was indicated by two indistinct artifact clusters in Unit 80b. On the northwest section of the floor were two complete, bifacial rhyolite manos (80b-5F-8/15, 80b-5F-8/16), a magnetite hammerstone (80b-5F-8/14), a piece of magnetite raw material (80b-5F-8/17), and a nearly complete plain pottery plate (80b-5F-8/13). The second “cluster” of artifacts was near the east wall of the pit structure and included about one-third of a plain jar (80b-5F-8/11), a modified basalt core that was also possibly a hammerstone (80b-5F-8/10), and a complete incised deer antler (80b5F-8/9). The complete condition of most of these artifacts suggests that they were an in situ assemblage rather than post-occupation items, but we do not know what activities might be represented here or whether the artifacts were deposited during a closing ceremony for the structure. Intrusive burials may have removed some artifacts from the pit structure floor surface. No roof fall was recovered from Unit 80b. A couple of reed fragments were present at the elevation where roof fall should have been, but there were no tree-ring specimens or adobe that would show that the roof had collapsed onto the structure floor. The roof must have been dismantled before it collapsed, perhaps for use in later structures nearby. Since the pit structure did not burn,

4.3 3.1

southwest

southeast

115b

3 3.8 3.3 3.6

west

south

east

3.9

east

north

3.3

south

* Measured from inside corners.

441

3.8

west

4

east 3.3

4.9

south

north

4.1

west

410

5

north

286b

2.85+

north

213

5.7 × 4.5

oval

80b

Wall Length* (m)

Wall

Unit Number

0.3

0.3

0.4

0.35

0.3

0.45

0.5

0.4

n.d.

0.32

n.d.

0.45

0.8 above bench

1.1 to bench

0.86 maximum

0.86 maximum

0.5

Height Remaining (m)

no

no

no

no

yes

no

no

no

no

no

no

yes

n.d.

yes?

yes

yes, southeast

Ramp?

Table 2.4.  Mimbres Foundation Excavated Pit Structure Wall and Floor Data.

no

no

no

no

no

no

yes

no

no

no

no

no

n.d.

no

no

no

Vent?

sterile

sterile, plaster

sterile, plaster

sterile, plaster

sterile, plaster

sterile

sterile

sterile

sterile, plaster

sterile, plaster

sterile, plaster

sterile, plaster, cobbles

cobbles, adobe

sterile, plaster

sterile, plaster

sterile, plaster

sterile

Wall Material

11.7

12.7

20.05

n.d.

13.3

20.4–25.7

Area (m2)

9.56–9.66

0.7–0.8

9.97

0.69

8.93–9.04

0.81–0.92

8.98

2.18

8.16–8.19

1.61–1.64

0.8–0.92 10.67–10.56

Depth Below Surface (m)

sterile, adobe

adobe

adobe

adobe

adobe

adobe

Floor Material

Table 2.5.  Mimbres Foundation Excavated Pit Structure Pit and Posthole Data. Unit Number

Provenience

Dimensions (m)

Type of Pit

Depth Below Floor (m)

Plastered Over at Floor Level

80b*

6S-18PH #1

0.25 × 0.25

ph

0.35

no

#2

0.50 × 0.35

ph

0.25

no

#3

0.40 × 0.50

ph

0.4

no

#4

0.60 × 0.35

p or ph

0.16

no

#5

0.50 × 0.60

ph

0.38

no

#6

0.35 × 0.35

ph

0.21

no

#7

0.40 × 0.35

ph

0.11

no

#8

0.25 × 0.30

ph

0.32

no

#9

0.40 × 0.60

ph

0.25

no

#10

0.30 × 0.30

ph

0.18

no

#11

0.30 × 0.40

ph

0.34

no

#12

0.20 × 0.25

ph

0.2

no

2-14PH #1

0.50 × 0.40

ph

0.4**

extramural

#2

0.60 × 0.50

ph

0.6**

extramural

#3

0.80 × 0.70

p or ph

0.62**

extramural

#4

0.40 × 0.60

ph

0.45**

extramural

#5

0.40 × 0.30

ph

0.35**

extramural

#6

0.80 × 0.50

p

0.15**

extramural

#7

0.20 × 0.40

ph

0.25**

extramural

2-15

0.99 × 1.20

p

0.3**

extramural

2-21P

1.60 × 1.00?

p

0.22**

extramural

5-7***

0.30 × 0.30

ph

0.18

probably associated with overlying pueblo room

6-18***

0.30 × 0.30

ph

0.61

probably associated with overlying pueblo room

213

10-8

0.26 × 0.20

ph

0.83+

no

286b

7F-11PH

0.42 × 0.42

ph

0.46

no

7F-12PH

0.52 × 0.52

ph

0.73

no

7F-13PH

0.60 × 0.60

ph

0.72

no

7F-14PH

0.20 × 0.20

ph

0.41

no

7F-16PH

0.26 × 0.26

ph

0.35

no

8S-21PH

0.20 × 0.20

ph

0.3

no

5S-8PH

0.20 × 0.20

ph

0.21

no

5S-9PH

0.20 × 0.20

ph

0.23

no

5S-12PH

0.50 × 0.40

p

0.14

no

5S-14PH

0.45 × 0.62

p

0.22

no

115b

410

Table 2.5.  (continued) Unit Number

Provenience

Dimensions (m)

Type of Pit

Depth Below Floor (m)

Plastered Over at Floor Level

410 (cont.)

5S-15PH

0.28 × 0.34

ph

0.35

no

5S-15PH

0.75 × 0.40

p

0.2

no

2-18PH

0.50 × 0.50

ph

0.5

extramural

5S-20P

0.28 × 0.58

p

0.55

yes

2-21PH

0.35 × 0.35

ph

0.24

extramural

2-22PH

0.40 × 0.40

ph

0.39

extramural

2-24PH

0.35 × 0.35

ph

0.21

extramural

2-26PH

0.30 × 0.20

ph

0.26

extramural

2-27PH

0.40 × 0.40

ph

0.53

extramural

2-29PH

0.30 × 0.30

ph

0.23

extramural

5S-30PH

0.45 × 0.80

ph

0.45

no

2-31PH

0.30 × 0.30

ph

0.2

extramural

2-32PH

0.40 × 0.56

ph

0.39

extramural

2-33PH

0.55 × 0.40

ph

0.35

extramural

2-34PH

0.55 × 0.45

ph

0.2

extramural

2-36PH

0.48 × 0.54

ph

0.38

extramural

2-37PH

0.36 × 0.54

ph?

0.16

extramural

2-39PH

0.50 × 0.50

ph

0.47

extramural

441

no postholes or pits

* Association with 80a or 80b unclear for all pits and postholes. ** Depth below sterile soil. ***Possibly associated with Unit 115b. ph = posthole; p = pit.

Table 2.6.  Mimbres Foundation Excavated Pit Structure Hearth Data. Unit Number

Provenience

Shape

Contents

Dimensions (m)

Depth Below Floor (m)

Lining

80b

5F-19H

circular

ash

0.50 × 0.44

0.26

sterile soil, rocks

rectangular

ash

0.41 × 0.35

0.15

slabs

circular

dirt

0.45 × 0.45

0.2

adobe, rocks

115b

10-26

213

none excavated

286b

7F-10H

410 441

5S-6H

circular

ash

0.40 × 0.40

0.3

adobe

5S-17H

oval

dirt, ash

0.75 x 0.45

0.11

adobe

none present

54

Chapter 2 Table 2.7.  Mimbres Foundation Excavated Pit Structure Artifact, Burial, and Room-Burning Data. Unit Number

In Situ Artifacts on Floor

In Situ Artifacts Above Floor

Below Floor Burial Number

Intrusive Burial Number

Room Burned?

80b

yes

none

none

1-1B

no

2-10B 3-11B/4 3-11B/5 5F-12B 6S-17B 2-20B 115b

none

none

10-28

10-25, 7-21

no

213

n.d.

n.d.

n.d.

n.d.

yes

286b

yes

none

8S-15B, 7F-17B

3-5B

yes

410

yes

none

5S-11B

none

partly

none

no

5S-13B 5S-16B 5S-25B 5S-28B 2-35B, outside pit structure 441

none

none

there was no obvious reason for the structure to have been abandoned. The post-occupation fill directly above the floor of Unit 80b was loose sandy silt with few rocks, and it was 16–27 cm thick. This matrix contained a high density of sherds, raw material fragments, chipped stone, and other small artifacts that may have been trash fill. Above this was a consolidated layer of ash and pebbles with some loose fill, which had a depth of about 20 cm. Much of the level on which the exterior work area lay was atop this matrix. As with the layer below it, the ash-pebble level contained a high density of sherds, chipped stone, fragments of raw material, ground stone, and miscellaneous small artifacts. Again, this may have been a trash deposit, given the presence of small patches of ash, and the rocks and pebbles may have been placed to form a stable surface for the Classic exterior work area. Sherds throughout the fill between the pit structure floor and the exterior work area surface were predominantly from the Classic period, although small percentages of Boldface and Transitional Black-on-white, San Francisco Red, and scored pottery were present. Many of

none

the Classic sherds may have been related to the intrusive Classic burials, but the pit structure also may have been mostly filled during the Classic period.

Unit 115b Unit 115b (figures 2.4 and 2.5; see figure 3.1) is a rectangular pit structure located below but not aligned with the surface room designated as Unit 115a. We excavated only the south half of the pit structure, including the southeast and southwest walls and the ramp in the center of the southwest wall. The remaining portions of the pit structure were to the north in an unexcavated area and small parts to the east under Units 106 and 116. Although Unit 115b was not burned and so no dating materials were recovered, the pit structure probably dated to the Late and/or Late Late Pit Structure periods based on the presence of a square corner, rather than the rounded corners characteristic of the Middle Pit Structure period and on its rectangular hearth. One of the worked sherds (11510-28/4) with the subfloor burial was red-slipped, but it was not the earlier San Francisco Red, while the other

Figure 2.4.  Unit 115a plan. Burial 10-28 was plastered at the floor surface.

Figure 2.5.  Photo of Unit 115b-10-26 excavated hearth.

56

Chapter 2

worked sherd (115-10-28/5) was probably Boldface Blackon-white. A Three Circle Neck Corrugated jar (115-1028/3) and both Boldface and Transitional Black-on-white sherds were also with the burial and in the burial pit. Both the pit structure walls exposed during excavation were cut into culturally sterile soil, and they were originally covered with a thin layer of adobe plaster. The walls began just below the floor of the surface room above. Only 3.5 m of the southwest wall was excavated, and so its length is approximate, but because ramps were generally placed close to the center of the wall into which they opened, we estimate that the southwest wall with the ramp was about 4.3 m long. The whole of the southeast wall was exposed, including the section below Unit 116, to a total length of 3.1 m. The pit structure area would have been about 13.3 m2, roughly the same area as an average Classic period masonry room. We uncovered the entire adobe-lined ramp below Unit 115a. The ramp began 44 cm above the pit structure floor, a considerable step, and along its length sloped up another 23 cm. The end of the ramp was about a meter below the present ground surface. The ramp entrance into the pit structure had been blocked with cobbles while the structure was in use, and it had been plastered over at its opening to present a smooth interior wall surface. A possible second ramp may have been in the southeast wall, given that the hearth was close to that wall rather than being in its expected alignment with the first ramp opening. We did not detect the second ramp due to lack of time and can only postulate its existence as the one in use after the first ramp was closed. The floor in Unit 115b was hard, level adobe laid on culturally sterile soil, and it was significantly lower than the floor levels of the later Classic period rooms in the 100s room block (figure 2.1). The floor adobe had been smoothed to blend with the adobe on the pit structure walls. No artifacts remained on the excavated portion of the floor surface. We may not have recorded all floor features present in the excavated part of this pit structure. Excavations continued in this unit until just prior to backfilling operations at the close of the season, and it is possible that not all postholes and burials were detected in time. No postholes were excavated that can be associated only with Unit 115b, but two postholes related to the masonry room above may have been part of the pit structure construction. The central post for Unit 115a (115-5-7) extended 18 cm below the pit structure floor. The post was of juniper, and rather than being removed from the pit structure, it subsequently may have been used in the masonry room. However the 18 cm depth of the posthole may not have been sufficient as the central support for the pit structure roof, and the height of the original pit structure post would not have been enough to support the roof of the surface room above the pit structure.

The evidence for the association of the post and posthole with the pit structure is therefore inconclusive. The second posthole (115-6-18) was positioned at the far end of the ramp from pit structure. It was definitely associated with the masonry room, but it may also have been a part of the pit structure ramp. A juniper post was also present in this posthole. A rectangular rock-lined hearth (115b-10-26; figure 2.5) was near the southeast pit structure wall, about 1.6 m from the southwest wall. Its rocks did not protrude above the floor level. The hearth was oriented with its long sides parallel to the southwest wall. As noted, a ramp may have been situated in line with this hearth in the southeast wall, but we did not ascertain this. One burial (115b-10-28) was interred below the floor of Unit 115b, and the pit was plastered at the floor level. A second possible burial under the pit structure floor extended beneath the north wall of the masonry room, although we did not excavate this. The burial that we did excavate was in the south corner of the pit structure in a conical pit about 90 cm deep. Both the pit shape and the number of grave goods in this burial were unusual. Three pottery vessels and two large worked sherds, one red-slipped (but not San Francisco Red; 115-10-28/4) and one probable Boldface Black-on-white (115-10-28/5), were with the burial (chapters 6 and 7). The pottery included a plain bowl (115-10-28/1), a bowl with a redslipped interior and a flare rim (115-10-28/2), and a Three Circle Neck Corrugated jar (115-10-28/3). The latter is certainly earlier than the Classic period, but the date of the rest of the pottery is ambiguous, especially given that the black-on-white sherd type cannot be identified with any certainty. However, the sherds in the burial pit fill included four San Francisco Red sherds (of 13 red-slipped sherds), one Boldface sherd, and eight Transitional Blackon-white sherds. The Transitional sherds are later than the other types, and so the burial must date to the Late Late Pit Structure period. The sequence of events that followed the pit structure going out of use is not clear. The pit structure was not burned, and there was no evidence of trash on the floor, indicating that people were unlikely to have used the structure as a dump area before the roof collapsed. Directly above the pit structure floor were 4 cm of hardpacked adobe flecked with charcoal. This material was unlike either the fill above or the pit structure floor surface below. If it was roof fall, then it was a much thinner layer than is normal for roof fall material. If it was not roof fall, then the pit structure roof must have been dismantled at some point because no other evidence of the pit structure roof was present. We cannot be certain how much time elapsed after the pit structure was no longer in use and the apparently purposeful filling of the structure began. The fill above the thin “roof fall” level and below the floor of the masonry room was homogeneous and

Mimbres Foundation Pit Structure Descriptions unstratified. It consisted of loose, fine gray soil with some adobe chunks and many discarded items, including sherds, chipped stone, animal bones, and human bones. The latter were those of a child of about five, an infant, and an adult, although none of the bones were from an actual burial. Much of this material may have been deposited all at one time to fill the depression left by the pit structure before the masonry room of Unit 115a was constructed. The fill was excavated in arbitrary levels (1156-17, 115-7-17, 115-8-17, 115-9-17). There were some differences between the sherd types in the fill and the material from the masonry room, and the bottom fill level showed a slight chronological difference with the upper fill levels. For example, the percentage of Mimbres Classic sherds dropped from 34 percent in Unit 115a, to 27 percent in the upper fill levels of Unit 115b, to 22 percent in the bottom fill level (appendix 2). The proportion of red-slipped pottery increased slightly from 1 percent in Unit 115a and the upper fill levels of Unit 115b to 2 percent in the lower level, and the percentage of scored and punctate incised sherds rose similarly. These relatively minor changes suggest that the pit structure may have initially been filled with a small amount of trash, followed by a major fill episode just before the masonry room was built. We suggest that the pit structure could not have been abandoned for long before it was filled, or natural deposits would have formed in the depression. Unit 115a, however, was constructed in the Late Classic period (table 1.9). Unit 114 directly west of Unit 115 did have an Early Classic component, and so perhaps the Unit 115b pit structure was filled when Unit 114 was built.

Unit 213 Unit 213 (see figure 3.3) was a large subterranean structure just west of the 200s room block. The large size of the depression, about 10 m in diameter, and the depth of the building, about 2.18 m, suggest that it was a communal structure, commonly called a great kiva. The ramp entrance may have been to the east, as the surface depression was lower in that area. Creel and Anyon (2003:74) have noted that most similar communal structures open to the east or southeast. Unit 213 is unusual because a room block was built over the pit structure ramp and the area onto which the structure opened. None of the burned roof timbers could be dated by tree-ring analysis, and there were no temporally diagnostic sherds in the roof fall. Sherds indicate that the post-occupation fill dated to the Late Late Pit Structure and Early Classic periods (see chapter 1, table 1.9), but the fact that the structure burned probably dates it to the former (Anyon and LeBlanc 1980:265–266). Comparison with other Mogollon communal structures (Anyon and LeBlanc 1980:263–266; Creel and Anyon 2003:86)

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suggests that buildings with mud plastered and some masonry walls that were destroyed by fire postdate A.D. 900. Unit 213 fulfills all these criteria. Testing in this unit began in the southwest quadrant in 1974. We abandoned the initial 1.75 by 1.10 m trench at about 55 cm (10.33 m) below the ground surface because of abundant material from the historic period and rodent activity. We again began testing in 1979, near what we hoped would be the northeast corner of the structure. A wall, roof fall, floor, and a post in a posthole were uncovered in this attempt, but artifacts from the historic period were present to a depth of about 40 cm (10.77 m) below the surface. The pit structure depression was probably used as a dump for trash and ashes by the occupants of the Mattocks Ranch, which is directly south of the site. We placed a third test trench near the southeastern edge of the depression, hoping to uncover the wall, but this could not be excavated to a sufficient depth before time ran out. About 2.85 m of the north wall of Unit 213 was uncovered, although only slightly more than one meter of the wall was excavated to floor level. Excavations were not extended far enough to determine whether the structure was circular or rectangular. The wall was simply mud plaster laid directly onto culturally sterile soil. This plaster remained for only 75 cm above the floor surface, above which it had apparently eroded away after the roof collapsed. At the natural upper level of culturally sterile soil (10.76 m or 46 cm below ground surface), a row of large unworked river cobbles had been set upright. These cobbles probably were the base of a masonry wall lining the upper part of the pit structure. It is not clear how high this masonry wall originally stood, but from the amount of wall fall encountered in the post-occupation fill of Unit 213, it probably had at least three or four courses, easily bringing it to the level of the present ground surface. About 90 cm (10.26 m) below the present ground surface was a horizontal bench, about 1 m wide, that had been cut into culturally sterile soil. This bench was one of the construction features of Unit 213, but at 1.28 m above the floor, it was probably too high to be used for seating. The pit structure floor was smooth adobe, and it joined the plaster of the wall in one continuous surface. Only a very small floor area was exposed during the Mimbres Foundation excavation, and we did not determine whether lower floors were present. One posthole, 213-10-8, was uncovered during the limited excavations of Unit 213. The post was set 23 cm into the side of the bench and was flush with the structure wall below the bench. The post mold in the wall was smoothly plastered so that the post would be a snug fit. There was a cobble lining along the west side of the post mold, flush with the structure wall and extending from the floor to a height of 60 cm (9.58 m). Below the floor, the posthole was lined with fist-sized rocks. The feature was

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at least 83 cm deep; excavation did not continue below this point, although the posthole did. Because the roof fall lay directly on the floor, and because of evidence of burned roof adobe and beams, it appears that fire either caused the structure to be abandoned or was a direct result of that abandonment. The roofing material was heavily burned, as was the upright post and the adobe of the post mold. However, the floor and wall did not show evidence of burning, and so the roof and upright supports probably burned and then extinguished themselves as they collapsed onto the floor. The roof fall was between 40 and 50 cm thick above the floor level, and the upper 20 cm contained several large rocks, perhaps material from the masonry wall near the ground surface. The artifact density in the meter of fill above the top of roof fall was quite low, suggesting that this large depression had not been used as a trash dump after the roof had burned and collapsed, even though it was next to a large Classic room block. However, this may not be a true reflection of the lower post-occupation fill, since only a small amount of that fill was excavated. After the structure roof collapsed, the bench and the wall above the roof fall layer were exposed to weathering and were eroded until they were covered by post-­ occupation fill. Traces of eroded, culturally sterile soil were uncovered just above roof fall, and wall fall that appears to have come from the masonry wall near the top of the structure was present, especially in the top meter or so of post-occupation fill. A higher density of artifacts occurred in the top meter of fill than in the lower, but there was no evidence of purposeful trash deposition. The top 40 cm of the depression had been used for dumping trash from the historic period, as evidenced by numerous artifacts and associated ash lenses. Much rodent activity was present in this area and may account for the few historic artifacts below the top 40 cm.

Unit 286b Unit 286b (figures 2.6 and 2.7; see figure 3.3) was a rectangular pit structure superimposed by a masonry room. Chronological evidence (chapter 1) from the two structures indicates that the pit structure dated to the Late and Late Late Pit Structure periods, and the Classic period masonry room (Unit 286a) was built very early, at least compared with other surface rooms at the site. The careful alignment of the masonry room over the east part of the pit structure (figure 2.6) is evidence that the builders of the later room knew the location of the pit structure, and they placed three of the four masonry walls beyond the pit structure walls to achieve better stability. Such careful placement may also suggest continuity of use, and possibly that the earlier structure was of special importance.

The pit structure walls were made from a thin adobe layer plastered over culturally sterile soil. This plaster extended 6 cm above the top of culturally sterile soil along the north wall, at which point one or two courses of cobbles formed a continuation of the wall. The masonry courses were not continuous along the north wall, but they probably formed its upper section. No evidence of masonry courses was observed along the tops of the other walls. A pit structure ramp extended north from the center of the north wall. The ramp was only 60 cm long, and the north wall of the masonry room was situated beyond the ramp. A step 34 cm high was present at the pit structure entrance, and so the ramp was as much a step as it was a ramp. The short ramp may have been necessitated by the fact that the ancient ground surface was relatively close to the pit structure floor, which was a shallow depression into culturally sterile soil. The plaster on the north wall of the pit structure was continuous with the ramp plaster, and the latter produced an archaeomagnetic date between A.D. 920 and A.D. 1025, which is consistent with the similarly early date from the hearth in this structure (see below and also chapter 1). The pit structure floor (figure 2.7) was a layer of adobe plastered over culturally sterile soil. Portions of the floor, especially the north-central and west parts, were burned orange and black from the fire that apparently destroyed the structure. The depth of the floor was about the same as that for Unit 213, the great kiva to the west, and both were considerably deeper than the later surface rooms in the 200s room block (figure 2.1). Three large postholes (286b-7-11, 286b-7-12, 286b7-13), set on an east-west axis across the center of the pit structure, formed the major roof supports. The middle of the three (286b-7-11) was in line with the hearth and ramp opening. Two other small postholes (286b-7-14, 286b-716) were offset slightly from this north-south alignment, and they may have held secondary roof supports. A further small posthole (286b-8-21) was inset into the north wall of the pit structure, near the northwest corner. The hearth in Unit 286b (286b-7F-10H; figure 2.8) was directly in line with the ramp opening, about 60 cm from it. The feature was lined with adobe, which produced an archaeomagnetic date of A.D. 925 to A.D. 1000, a relatively early date at the Mattocks site. A large cobble had been placed along the north side of the hearth, between it and the ramp opening. It was laid horizontally into the adobe of the hearth and did not protrude above the floor level, and so it could not have served as a deflector. Such rocks are common in Late and Late Late Pit Structure period hearths, and they perhaps acted to concentrate the heat. This hearth was filled with dirt, suggesting that it had been cleaned out after its last use. Three burials were on or under the pit structure floor, and each seems to relate to a different period during the building and occupation of the pit structure. The earliest

Figure 2.6.  Units 286a and b plans and profile.

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Figure 2.7.  Photo of Unit 286b-7F-6 excavated floor.

burial was probably 286b-8S-15B, a small pit that was plastered over by the adobe floor. The pit may have originally been larger, since all that remained of the burial was a mandible with a few miscellaneous bone fragments. It appears that this burial pit was cut by a posthole (286b-7F13PH) when the pit structure was built, and most of the skeleton and any possible grave goods were removed. The burial was probably in place before the pit structure was built. The second burial (286b-7F-17) was in a pit that was not plastered over with floor adobe, which may indicate that the burial was interred after the room was no longer used for habitation. This possibility is further supported by the large chunks of charcoal in the burial fill that appear to have been burned roof beams, and pottery sherds from a single early Boldface vessel that were both in the burial fill (286b-7F-17B/3) and in the roof fall level (286b-7F-10H/1). These materials might indicate that the burial was interred after the pit structure had burned, and therefore that it may not be associated with pit structure use. Given the early vessel style, it is also possible that the burial may have been disturbed after it was interred, which might account for the mixed fill in the burial pit. Such disturbance might have occurred when the west wall of the upper masonry room was being constructed. Part of the wall and part of the doorway in that wall were located over the burial pit, and adobe that was continuous with the doorway covered a small part of the pit structure floor

and part of the burial pit. Thus, the burial in 286b-7F-17B seems to have been placed after the pit structure burned but before the masonry room was constructed. The fact that some of the room adobe touched the burial may even indicate a desired connection between the two phases. The third burial (286b-3-5B) was in the fill and roof fall levels above the pit structure floor and was excavated 2 cm into the floor. This feature clearly postdated the burning of the pit structure. A plain bowl placed with the body provided no further information concerning the date of the burial. An actual pit was evident only along the north side of the burial. The skeleton was mostly intact, except that rodents had disturbed some of the leg bones. There were no artifacts on or anywhere near the floor in the west half of Unit 286b. Artifacts were present on the floor in the east part of the structure, but only two of these, manos (286b-7F-6/9 and 286b-7F-10) that were in the northeast corner of the building, were complete. They could have been associated with actual pit structure use, since one of them was fire blackened and therefore was probably in place when the structure burned. The roof fall was not continuous across the pit structure, and so it was not always possible to ascertain whether the artifacts in the east part of Unit 286b were associated with the floor or with the roof fall. The remainder of the artifacts on the floor or the roof fall were fragmentary and may represent artifacts thrown or placed into the room as closing items after the roof had collapsed. Among these artifacts were

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Figure 2.8.  Photo of Unit 286b-7F-10H excavated hearth.

pieces of several Boldface, Transitional, and Classic bowls and jars (286b-6RF-6/1, 286b-6RF-6/6, 286b-6RF-6/10, 286b-6RF-6/14, 286b-7F-6/1, 286b-7F-6/3, 286b-7F-6/4, 286b-7F-10H/1), several corrugated jars (286b-6RF-6/4, 286b-6RF-6/9, 286b-7F-6/6), and two pieces of magnetite (286b-6RF-6/16, 286b-7F-6/11). Because of the number of artifacts in the soil above the roof fall of Unit 286b but below the floor of Unit 286a, and because of the complete lack of such material on or near the floor of the west half of Unit 286b, fragmentary artifacts could have been trash that was thrown into the room to form a base for the floor of Unit 286a. The roof fall of the pit structure was not continuous, and so some of the incomplete artifacts were on the floor but may not have been in situ materials associated with the use of the pit structure. Alternatively, these pieces may have been items that ritually closed the structure before the upper room was built. Because of the presence of Boldface, Transitional, and Classic Black-on-white vessels, the latter is a viable hypothesis. If so, the pit structure might have been burned and closed in the Early Classic or even the Middle Classic period, as suggested by the presence of a pot from each of those two periods in this context (table 1.9). The inclusion of pottery vessel fragments from several time periods in some or all of the floor, roof fall, and fill contexts of Unit 286b is intriguing. It might relate to the importance of this structure to one of the founding households at the Mattocks site, perhaps the household that built and operated the great kiva.

As noted, roof fall material lay directly (if inconsistently) atop the floor of Unit 286b, and since both the floor and the roof were burned, the roof probably collapsed when the pit structure burned. The fire that destroyed the structure may have been deliberate or accidental, but the paucity of artifacts associated with pit structure use implies that it was no longer inhabited when it burned. The area north of the hearth, including the ramp, was the most heavily burned, and so the fire may have started there. Chronological analysis (chapter 1) suggests that this occurred sometime during the Late Late Pit Structure period. Several of the vessel fragments on the floor and roof fall were burned. They may have been trash thrown into the room to smother the fire, or they could have been burned before they were thrown into the room. The roof fall was only 5–10 cm thick. No burned beams or posts were in situ in the roof fall or in the postholes. The construction timbers may therefore have been removed to use in other structures before the room was burned. This would account for the thinness of the roof fall deposits. The nature of the trash above the pit structure roof fall was different in the east half of the structure than it was in the west half. While there was trash above the roof fall over the entire pit structure, that over the east half contained larger artifacts and portions of many ceramic vessels. This pattern suggests deliberate filling in a short period, perhaps to build the masonry room, which nonetheless may have included an element of ritual closing.

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It appears that no masonry room was built over the west half of Unit 286b. The Mimbres Foundation excavations were not extended far enough to ascertain the presence or absence of any north or west masonry walls in this area, but there was probably a masonry wall that formed the continuation of the south wall of Unit 286a, as evidenced by a row of cobbles along the south edge of Locus 18 (figure 2.6). However, there was no evidence of a floor above the roof fall in the west half of the pit structure, and it is unlikely that a surface room existed in this area.

Unit 410 Unit 410 (figure 2.9; see figure 3.4) was a rectangular pit structure 7.2 m north of the 400s room block. Although the shape of the structure suggests that it dates to the Middle, Late, or Late Late Pit Structure periods, chronological analysis (chapter 1; Gilman 2007) indicates that it was constructed in the Classic period. The fact that it was not deeper than the surface structures in the 400s room block (figure 2.1), unlike the pit structures of the Late and Late Late Pit Structure periods in the 100s and 200s room blocks, is consistent with this hypothesis. The pit structure appears to have been remodeled at some point because its ramp was blocked and a second hearth with a vent was constructed, possibly to replace the first hearth that associated with the ramp. Remodeling might indicate that the pit structure was built at the end of the Late Late Pit Structure period and used during the Classic period, but the sherd types in its construction contexts support the proposal that the structure was both built and used in the Classic period, perhaps concomitantly with parts of the nearby 400s room block. Unit 410 was not evident on the surface and was uncovered at the south end of Backhoe Trench 5. The structure showed no sign of recent disturbance. The walls of Unit 410 were culturally sterile soil, with plaster remaining only at the north end of the east wall. A short (50 cm) ramp defined by culturally sterile soil was in the center of the east wall. This ramp appears to have been associated with a hearth (410-5S-17H) about 60 cm to the west, inside the structure. The semicontinuous adobe on the floor of the ramp sloped upward to the top of culturally sterile soil; this adobe was above the room floor level and originally may have formed a step between the room and the ramp. Although the ramp was very short, we called it a ramp rather than a vent because of its sloping surface. The ramp had been filled with large rocks and broken worked stone slabs (410-2-19R/1, 410-2-19R/ 2, 410-219R/3, 410-2-19R/5). A second hearth (410-5S-6H) and an associated vent were uncovered along the west wall, having apparently replaced the hearth and ramp complex in the east wall of the pit structure. The vent was 50 cm long but was much narrower than the ramp. It had a level surface continuous

with the room floor, this being the major indication that the feature was a vent rather than another ramp. This feature instead might have functioned as a step into the pit structure, but roofing such a step would have been difficult, although adobe roofing material was present in the vent. Many worked stone slab fragments were in the vent, but their positions did not suggest that it had been deliberately filled. Only remnants of the adobe floor remained, partly because of the large number of pits opening onto the floor. The adobe of the floor sloped up over the walls in areas where the floor remained. As noted above, one hearth (410-5S-17H) was associated with the blocked ramp in the east wall. The hearth had not been plastered over at the floor level, and so it is possible that it was still in use when the structure was abandoned. It was outlined in parts with fire-hardened adobe, and rodents had disturbed its northeast corner. The bottom of the hearth was lined with culturally sterile soil and a few unshaped rocks. The second hearth (4105S-6H) was associated with the vent in the west wall, and it too was outlined by fire-hardened adobe. We obtained an archaeomagnetic date of A.D. 1015–1250 from this hearth (chapter 1), but although the date range suggests that Unit 410 was built in the Classic period, it is too broad to be useful. Postholes were uncovered both within and along the outside edge of the pit structure. A north-south row of three postholes (the north one unrecognized, the others being 410-5-30, 410-5-15) appears to have run through the center of the unit. The central posthole (410-5S-30PH) was the largest and deepest. The north posthole seems to have been within the large burial area in the northeast corner of the room, and it was not recognized as a posthole during excavation. Two small postholes (410-5S8PH, 410-5S-9PH) of similar size and depth to each other were parallel to the main set of supports in the northwest quadrant of the room. The postholes along the outside edge of Unit 410 were neither uniformly distributed, nor of uniform size and depth. Most exterior postholes were on the south and east sides of the structure, and they were at least 35 by 35 cm in diameter. The postholes on the south side were also relatively deep, all but one (410-2-27PH) being equal to or greater than 39 cm deep. Given the few postholes on the north and west sides of the structure, the south and east posts may not have been used as supports but instead may have been part of some outside structure that had been built on the protected sides of the room. Large postholes diagonally out from three pit structure corners (4102-27PH, 410-2-24PH, 410-2-18PH) suggest that at least some exterior posts would have structurally supported the pit structure. One exterior posthole (410-2-36PH) just south of the blocked ramp seems to have been started but abandoned when a huge boulder was encountered. A posthole farther

Figure 2.9.  Unit 410 plan.

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to the south (410-2-33PH) may have replaced this one as a structural support. Four pits were present within Unit 410. Two of these (410-5S-12P, 410-5S-14P) were quite large and shallow, and they may have been areas of rodent disturbance. The third pit (410-5S-20P) had been plastered over at the floor level of the room; the top of this pit began about 14 cm below the floor level. Cranium fragments from two infants (not in skeletal analysis) were noted in this pit, but there was no further sign of skeletal materials or grave goods. The fourth pit (410-5-15) surrounded the southernmost posthole in the structure, and it may have related to the construction of the posthole or the removal of the post. At least five individuals were buried under the floor of Unit 410, and another was buried to the northeast, in the area outside the pit structure. In the northeast corner of the structure was a large pit (410-5S-10P) that was evident at the floor level. Three bodies were within this pit, a young child (410-5S-11B) associated with a killed neck-banded jar (410-5S-11B/1), a second child (410-5S25B), and an elderly adult (410-5S-16B). No individual pits could be discerned for any of these skeletons, and all three were at nearly the same level below the floor. They all therefore may have been interred at the same time. To the southwest of this large pit area was another possible burial (410-5S-28B) that had been plastered over at the floor level. Few bones remained in this pit, and so it is possible that these remains were carried there from burials in the northeast corner by rodents. There were also scattered human bone fragments in the central posthole (410-5S-30PH; not in skeletal analysis), and in the pit that had been plastered over (410-5S-20P; not in skeletal analysis). The original context of these bones is not known. Two individuals—an adult and a newborn child—were in a burial pit (410-5S-13B) inside the southeast corner of the pit structure. The child was above and to the left of the adult’s shoulder. The only grave artifact, an Early Classic naturalistic bowl (410-5S-13/7), was associated with the adult. These burials may have been a parent and child, but the adult skeleton could not be sexed. One burial (410-2-35B) was outside the pit structure near the northeast corner. It is not clear whether this burial associated with the use of the pit structure. Two Middle Classic vessels (410-2-35B/1, 410-2-35B/2) were associated with the skeleton. Because the pit was not plastered over, and because of its close proximity to the pit structure, the burial may have been interred after the structure had been abandoned. The only artifacts on the floor of Unit 410 were four worked stone slab fragments (410-4F-5/19–22). These were near the blocked ramp in the east wall and were probably associated with that feature. The pit structure was cleared of all usable artifacts before it was abandoned. The roof fall in the room lay directly on the floor with no intervening trash or fill, indicating that the structure had not been used as a trash dump before the roof

collapsed. Although we took many tree-ring samples from the roof fall, especially in the central area of the northern third of the pit structure, there was little evidence that the entire roof burned in one fire. Rather, the roof either smoldered and collapsed, or only a portion of it burned before it collapsed. In either case, the roof apparently collapsed onto the floor a short time after the room ceased to be used. The post-occupation fill directly above the roof fall was apparently trash thrown into the pit after the roof had collapsed because it contained a high density of artifacts including sherds, lithics, animal bones, obsidian, raw materials, and ground stone. The density of artifacts decreased with distance above the roof fall, and the soil near the ground surface had probably washed in over the trash. The fill above the roof fall also contained numerous cobbles and large rocks, perhaps representing wall fall from masonry walls that extended above the ground surface and that are no longer extant. An attempt to locate an outside posthole beyond the northeast corner of the pit structure revealed an adobe surface (Locus 23) defined by culturally sterile soil on the south and west sides and by a poorly constructed cobble wall on the east side (figure 2.9). This surface was 43 cm below the ground surface (10.23), and it may have been constructed after the pit structure, obliterating the expected posthole outside the northeast corner in the process. However, if the outside postholes did not relate to the pit structure, but rather to an outside use area, there may never have been such a posthole, and the dating of the adobe surface is even more ambiguous. We did not ascertain the full extent of the adobe surface.

Unit 441 Unit 441 (figure 2.10; see figure 3.4) was a Classic period pit structure located immediately east of Unit 438. Although the walls and floor had been plastered with adobe, the lack of postholes and a hearth suggest that the structure was never roofed, and the pit structure was therefore never used for habitation. We assigned a Classic period date to Unit 441 because the soft fill of the pit structure was never plastered over during the occupation either of Unit 426, a Classic period ramada directly to the north, or of Unit 438, a Classic masonry room. In other words, had the pit structure been in place during the use of Units 426 and 438, people would have stepped out the door of Unit 438 or to the side of Unit 426 and been in the soft pit structure fill, suggesting that Units 426 and 438 were no longer in use when the construction of Unit 441 began. Moreover, the artifacts on the floor surface of the ramada did not extend over the pit structure fill, implying that the pit structure was cut through the ramada surface. Although there were several historic artifacts in the pit structure fill, no other evidence of modern disturbance was present. Most of the historic-period artifacts—including

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Figure 2.10.  Photo of Unit 441-4F-8 excavated floor and pit structure walls.

pieces of glass and metal, a mining core (441-3-7/5), and a glass bottle neck (441-4F-8/5)—were less than 35 cm above the pit structure floor. Many rodent burrows were noted during the excavation of this structure, perhaps accounting for the presence of the historic artifacts, although historic disturbance may instead account for their location. The pit structure walls showed evidence that adobe plaster had been placed over the culturally sterile soil that formed the walls. Much of this plaster had weathered away from the north, east, and south walls, so that an intact adobe face remained only on the west wall. No ramp or vent was present in Unit 441, which indicates either that the only opening was in the roof or that this aspect of room construction was never completed. An alcove was cut into the culturally sterile soil at the south end of the east wall, and it was filled with dark brown loamy soil and a few rocks. Its function was not obvious, and the feature may have been a rodent burrow. Culturally sterile soil defined most of the pit structure floor, although some remnants of level adobe floor remained in the northeast and northwest corners of the structure. The remains of the adobe floor sloped up to the remains of the wall plaster, indicating that the interior

of the structure was originally completely plastered with adobe. As noted, no floor features were present in Unit 441. The lack of pits, postholes, or hearths in the floor further suggests that the pit structure was never completed and the unit was never occupied. The lack of burials may not be meaningful, but it might imply that the structure was filled shortly after the walls and the floor were plastered and that the occupants of the Mattocks site never had an opportunity to use the floor level for burials. No intrusive burials were present in the pit structure fill. Only three artifacts were on the pit structure floor, and these were probably part of the trash used to fill the pit structure once construction had ceased. Two of the artifacts, a mano fragment (441-4F-8/11) and part of a stone mortar (441-4F-8/13), were broken, and the third was a piece of magnetite (441-4F-8/12). A few small adobe chunks were uncovered in the 35 cm of fill above the floor, but because of the lack of postholes, these chunks may not have been part of the pit structure roof. Instead, they are likely to have been included in the trash used to fill the pit. Several lines of evidence, including the lack of construction and habitation features such as postholes and a hearth, suggest that Unit 441 was abandoned during

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Chapter 2

construction and then deliberately filled to the ramada surface level. Much of the pit structure fill, especially near the floor in the west half of the structure, was redeposited culturally sterile soil containing no artifacts, as if the soil excavated from the structure had then been used to refill it. The remainder of the fill was light brown in color and had a low density of artifacts, the identifiable sherds of which were predominantly Classic, with one Boldface and three Transitional Black-on-white sherds. The level surface of the pit structure fill yielded no evidence that it had been used for outdoor activities, of the sort postulated for the adjacent ramada (Unit 426). A test trench (Unit 442) outside the south wall of Unit 438, in an area continuous with the top of the fill in Unit 441, revealed in situ artifacts on an exterior surface, and so the pit structure apparently cut through the original ramada surface, removing any in situ artifacts in the process. All evidence points to Unit 441 having been built after Units 426 and 438 were no longer used for habitation. This pit structure therefore clearly dates to the Classic period.

The Pit Structure Periods at the Mattocks Site The discussion above shows that very few pit structures were present at the Mattocks site before the Classic period (A.D. 1000–1130). The Mimbres Foundation excavated one pit structure (Unit 80b) from the Early Pit Structure period (A.D. 150–750), two (Units 115b and 286b) from either the Late or Late Late Pit Structure periods (A.D. 800/850–1020/1050) or both, and a great kiva (Unit 213) from the Late Late Pit Structure period (A.D. 880/950– 1020/1050). The pit structures that Nesbitt excavated either dated to the Classic period or were not dateable. The Mattocks site may contain more pit structures than those excavated by Nesbitt and the Mimbres Foundation. It seems unlikely that two different multiyear excavation projects would have missed a concentration of pit structures at the site, but it is possible that further pit structures exist in unexcavated areas. Although Nesbitt (1931:Site map) did not discuss any cases of structure superposition, it is also possible that he did not notice pit structures below surface rooms. We suspect that pit structures extended beyond the surface room blocks of the Mattocks site because this has been recorded at the Swarts (Cosgrove and Cosgrove 1932:plate 238; Harry Shafer personal communication, 1996), Galaz (Anyon and LeBlanc 1984:28), Cameron Creek (Bradfield 1931:13), and Wheaton-Smith (Anyon and LeBlanc n.d.) sites. The first three of these sites, at least, also had many pit structures below surface rooms. The fact that only two Late or Late Late Pit Structure period habitation buildings were present at the Mattocks site is unusual because far more were at other large

Mimbres sites. The relatively high Late and Late Late Pit Structure period population apparent at the Harris site (Haury 1936a), about a mile north of the Mattocks site, may be related to this. Harris has more than 100 pit structures, and it was not occupied during the Classic period. Its large size, its location on a large flat terrace some 20 m above the river, and its lack of Classic period use are atypical for the Mimbres Valley, and it is possible that people moved from the Harris site to the Mattocks and other sites at the end of the Late Late Pit Structure period or the beginning of the Classic period. However, relatively few Transitional Black-on-white sherds were present at either the Harris (Robert Stokes and Barbara Roth personal communication, 2014) or the Mattocks sites, suggesting that few people were living at either site during the time that Transitional Black-on-white pottery was made, or that they had moved from one site to the other. If the Mattocks site had few Late Late Pit Structure period pit structures, the presence of the large Late Late Pit Structure period great kiva (Unit 213) is noteworthy, given that such buildings also existed at the nearby Harris (Houses 10 and 23; Haury 1936a:62) and Galaz sites (Room 42A and Room 73; Anyon and LeBlanc 1984:121– 132). The masonry wall section in Unit 213, and the fact that the pit structure had burned, support the Late Late Pit Structure period date (Anyon and LeBlanc 1980:263– 266; Creel and Anyon 2003), as do other data presented in chapter 1. Anyon and LeBlanc (1980:265–266) noted that some of the great kivas that can be dated to this time were apparently used into the Early Classic period, but they generally were not burned. It is possible that the Mattocks great kiva served people living in pit structures scattered along the first bench of the river, or that there are numerous pit structures at the Mattocks site that have not been detected. Alternatively, we can envision that if the household in the 200s room block was one of the few (or the only) founding households at the Mattocks site, then they might have built the great kiva to signify their importance and status as an early landowning group in the area, perhaps negotiating their position in a society where egalitarianism was rather strictly enforced (Gilman and Stone 2013; Hegmon 2002). If that were the case, though, they built it, and people did not come. That is, there were not enough inhabitants at the Mattocks site during the Late Late Pit Structure period to warrant the presence of a great kiva for ritual presentations, and the presence of the great kiva failed to attract more. Rather, the Galaz site, just three miles to the south, had a relatively large population during the Late Late Pit Structure period, and it appears to have become the most important social and ritual center in the northern part of the Mimbres Valley during the Classic period (Creel 2006a; Creel and Anyon 2003:69; Powell 2000:208; Powell-Martí and James 2006). It would be interesting to know whether the Unit 286b pit structure

Classic Period Pit Structures burned at the same time as the great kiva, especially since Mimbres great kivas were usually deliberately burned (Creel and Anyon 2003; Gilman and Stone 2013). If this scenario is tenable, then the 200s room block household may have failed in their bid to become a leading group in the northern valley, but they continued to live at the Mattocks site, and they built the 200s room block that began in the Early Classic period. The low population at the Mattocks site in the Late and Late Late Pit Structure periods probably had little causative impact on the transition to surface pueblos at about A.D. 1000. Indeed, given the data we will present in the following two chapters on the sequence and dates of room block construction, it seems that the household using the pit structure in Unit 286b (who were probably responsible for Unit 213, the great kiva) closed it and almost immediately built Unit 286a, a pueblo room, atop the earlier building. It is possible that this household was the only one at the site because Unit 115b, the only other known pit structure that may date to this time, did not have an aligned pueblo room superimposed over it. There must be reasons other than high population numbers for the transition from pit structures to pueblos at the Mattocks site.

Classic Period Pit Structures Unusually for the Mimbres Valley, the Mattocks site had relatively few pit structures during the Late and Late Late Pit Structure periods, implying that the site was sparsely inhabited. Indeed, at least half of the 12 known pit structures at the Mattocks site can be dated with certainty to the Classic period. All the pit structures that Nesbitt excavated were of the Classic period, except for the two that cannot be dated. (We have dated Nesbitt’s pit structures

67

by their associated ceramics and by architectural form in the case of the communal structure.) Of the pit structures that the Mimbres Foundation excavated, Units 410 and 441 were Classic. We discuss the dating of Unit 410 in chapter 1, and Unit 441 was dated by the fact that it was an open hole in front of a Late Classic room door. Early Mimbres site excavators did not recognize that pit and surface structures were contemporary during the Classic period, but evidence from the Mattocks and Galaz (Anyon and LeBlanc 1984:84) sites suggests that, rather than there being a transition to pueblos, pit structures continued to be used even as pueblos were built. Lekson (1990:91–92) noted that surface structures were used before the Classic period in the Gila Valley to the west of the Mimbres Valley, and he suggested that Late and Late Late Pit Structure period surface structures might also have been present at Mimbres sites. Because the largest Mimbres Valley sites were used throughout the Late and Late Late Pit Structure and Classic periods, such surface structures might be difficult to detect. None have yet been noted at the Mattocks site. Rather than a simple transition from pit structures to surface structures in the Mimbres Valley, there appears to have been a change over time in the ratios of those structures, so that people less often used pit structures and more often used surface structures. The conditions that promoted the use of pit structure should still have been present during the Classic period, but these conditions would have come into play less often. A possible scenario might be that certain households, or the entire group living at the site, would find themselves in circumstances where increased seasonal mobility was advantageous, and they therefore would build pit structures and occupy them for short periods of time. When these circumstances no longer held, the households or the group would build and occupy more permanent surface room blocks.

CHAPTER 3

Pueblo Architecture at the Mattocks Site

The pueblo architecture at the Mattocks site is certainly its most prominent aspect today, and it represents the most significant occupation of the site in the past. Pueblo or surface masonry architecture is a hallmark of the Mimbres Classic period (A.D. 1000–1130), and it differs greatly from the pit structures characteristic of the preceding Pit Structure periods. As the previous chapter showed, pit structure use continued into the Classic period, just as surface structures may have been present at some Mimbres sites during the Late and Late Late Pit Structure periods. This chapter examines pueblo architecture in general, considers its utility wherever and whenever it is used, and provides the background for the Mattocks site pueblo rooms. We then describe the surface rooms excavated by Nesbitt and by the Mimbres Foundation in narrative and table form; the reader is referred to figure I.4, the Mattocks site map that shows the relationship between the Nesbitt and the Mimbres Foundation excavations. Appendix 3 details the test units and backhoe trenches that the Mimbres Foundation excavated on the Mattocks site. Classic period pueblo rooms were built together into room blocks. We examine the Mattocks site room blocks and the information they provide on construction sequences, room function and use, household suites, and room block abandonment in chapter 4, which essentially serves as the summary and conclusions to chapter 3. From the chapter 3 data, we derive estimates of Mattocks room block and site population sizes, and the likely social organization at the site during the Classic period. The Mattocks site is one of only three large Classic sites that have been scientifically excavated using modern methods, and so the data gathered there are especially pertinent to the development of a model of how Mimbres Classic society operated.

Pueblo Architecture in General Pueblo architecture is defined by three characteristics: (1) the floor level being on or close to the ground surface;

(2) the walls being constructed of adobe, stone, or masonry, with the latter two held together by adobe; and (3) a minimum of two contiguous rooms (Gilman 1987a:548). Pueblos are essentially surface rooms, although the floors may be excavated a little below the ground surface. The ancient ground surface is often difficult to determine in an archaeological setting, as is the relationship between the floor of the structure and that surface. Some structures within a set of pueblo room blocks might be made of jacal or brush, or be open-sided, but the majority of pueblo rooms are not. Pueblos cannot by definition be composed only of freestanding rooms; at least two of the rooms must be contiguous. Many pueblos have several blocks of contiguous rooms, and the blocks may consist of a few or many rooms. Gilman (1987a:548–552) has argued that similar factors promote the use of pueblos, regardless of where in the world they are present. These include a climate in which the thermal efficiency of contiguous rooms is beneficial, a biseasonal settlement system, and dependence on stored food during the seasons when the pueblo is occupied. These are probably not the only features that promote the use of pueblos, but they are necessary to that use. Pueblos are thermally efficient in warm, dry climates because of their building materials and the effects of their massed rooms. Although they are less thermally efficient than pit structures, the thick walls of pueblos provide an efficient heat sink that absorbs heat during the day and radiates it at night. The optimal shape for buildings in warm climates is one that promotes minimum heat gain in the summer and minimum heat loss in the winter. This requires minimum surface exposure to solar radiation. The massed rooms of a pueblo, with their contiguous walls, present minimal surfaces to radiation in a way that separate rooms cannot. The use of space within pueblos can be manipulated both daily and seasonally, allowing inhabitants to stay warm in cool conditions, and cool in warm ones (Hesch­ ong 1979). Based on the example of two-story pueblo structures around courtyards in Tunisia, a household

Surface Rooms Excavated by Nesbitt spends its days during the summer in the ground floor rooms, where the thermal mass of the building protects them from the sun, and summer nights on the open roof, which loses heat quickly. In the winter, the household passes the day on the roof warmed by sunlight and in the open gallery overlooking the courtyard, while winter nights are spent on the upper floor to take advantage of the heat rising from below. The likelihood that people used the space in and around pueblos differently, depending on the time of day and the season, is something that we should keep in mind. Archaeologists often assign a single function to each room, but room functions may change during the annual cycle. Although the Mattocks site had only single-story pueblo rooms, we expect that use of the rooms, their roofs, and the extramural spaces around them changed throughout the day and across the seasons. Ethnographically, pueblos are always associated with a biseasonal settlement system in which the pueblos themselves were occupied during the winter, and smaller, more ephemeral structures and sites were used in the spring and summer (Gilman 1987a). Warm weather sites would be near agricultural fields in regions with no aboriginal domesticated herd animals. The warm weather sites and structures need not be situated far from the pueblo, and indeed summer structures were often inside the pueblo compound. Even if warm weather structures were set apart, some of the people may have remained in the pueblo. Although ancient southwestern pueblos seem to represent sedentary populations, the ethnographic record suggests that many people in a pueblo may have lived elsewhere during the warm months. Some of the small pueblos or contemporary sites without apparent structures in the Mimbres Valley may have been the summer residences of people who inhabited the larger pueblos during the winter. Some individuals may have moved back and forth between pueblos and seasonal sites during the summer. We expect that some types of warm weather structure, such as ramadas, would have been present at large pueblo sites if people remained there during warm seasons, and ramadas are indeed present at the Mattocks site. Because pueblos are most fully occupied during winter months, it is reasonable to conclude that most of the food eaten by the inhabitants would have come from stores. People living in pueblos are somewhat more sedentary than those living in pit structures, and more stored foods would be necessary for the longer sedentary periods. Instead of storage facilities being the extramural underground pits associated with pit structures, they are generally small rooms contiguous with the larger rooms in pueblo room blocks. The shift in storage facilities is not only related to the increasing bulk of food to be stored but also to the increasing need to shelter that food throughout the year from the weather and from other people (Gilman 1987a:556–557). Contiguous surface structures would not

69

be as affected by rain as extramural pits, and they would offer privacy to protect stored food. Several factors, including population size, subsistence strategies, and class stratification, differ among examples of pueblos around the world. These factors do not seem to be causative, but variations occur within specific limits in pueblo societies (Gilman 1987a:551–552). The population sizes associated with ethnographic pueblos are always more than 100 people per site. Some pueblos have more than 1,000 people per site, and population density might increase if several pueblos are near each other. Ethnographic pueblos are accompanied by agricultural dependence, although agricultural products can vary between 36 and 45 percent to 80 or 90 percent of the diet. Aboriginal New World groups using pueblos consistently practiced hunting and gathering wild plants, but these were always a low proportion of the diet. Pueblo groups can be socially egalitarian, or they can be stratified by wealth distinctions that are not hereditary. Some pueblo social systems have two classes, with membership in a class being fixed and permanent. These limiting factors, while not determining the use of pueblos, are quantitatively different from those associated with the use of pit structures, and they can be used to form a baseline against which to frame a consideration of pueblo rooms at the Mattocks site. We discuss issues of population size, agricultural dependence, and social distinctions at the Mattocks site in chapters 4, 5, and 7, respectively.

Surface Rooms Excavated by Nesbitt We know that Nesbitt (1931) excavated 61 structures during his 1929 and 1930 field seasons because they are recorded on his site map. Of these, 6 are pit structures discussed in the previous chapter, and so 55 must have been surface structures. We do not know how many structures Nesbitt excavated during the 1931 field season, although the Logan Museum catalogue contains rooms numbered to 77. If Nesbitt averaged about 30 structures a year, perhaps he excavated as many as 90 total structures, or about half of the site, although perhaps he excavated only 77 structures. Nesbitt’s excavation strategy included trenching to find rooms for excavation (Nesbitt personal communication, 1983). We were unable to locate Nesbitt’s original field notes, and we only have notes written by a couple of the students (Frost 1930; Kirkpatrick or Parker 1930) who excavated at the Mattocks site in 1930. Their notes suggest that the strategy was often to excavate a test trench on the other side of a known room wall, in search of a contiguous room. Nesbitt also had the students excavate test trenches in areas of the site where there were no apparent rooms, but there are no extant site maps showing the trench locations.

70

Chapter 3

Tables 3.1 to 3.3 present the existing data on Nesbitt’s excavated surface structures. We have gathered these data from the field notes (Frost 1930; Kirkpatrick or Parker 1930), the site report for the first two seasons (Nesbitt 1931), and the Logan Museum catalogue (Logan Museum of Anthropology, Beloit College, accession files 110, 131, 134). The lack of data in any column means that no information exists for that item, but it does not mean that the item or the feature itself did not exist. Similarly, the fact that a room is not listed in these tables does not mean that it did not exist or that it was not excavated. It only means that we have no information on that room. Nesbitt divided his excavated structures into three time periods: Early, Middle, and Late. The Early period buildings are the pit structures discussed in chapter 2. Middle and Late period structures are grouped into room blocks and would probably be called surface or pueblo structures today. Because of overlapping and ambiguous criteria, and lack of recorded field data, it is difficult to replicate Nesbitt’s structure types. Although we discuss them, we do not use them analytically in this report. Unlike pit structures, Nesbitt’s (1931:35–37) Middle period rooms were contiguous and grouped together into room blocks, probably the most useful of his criteria for this period. Nesbitt (1931:35) called these rooms semi-subterranean since the floors were excavated into culturally sterile soil; some floors were a foot deep, while others were as deep as four feet. Nesbitt (1931:35) stated that these rooms could be deeper than pit structures. Available data from 14 Middle period rooms (table 3.1), including the pit structure called Room 48 that Nesbitt dated to his Middle period, indicate an average floor depth of 2.8 ft (0.85 m). Considering the mound of dirt and rubble that often form when a room block collapses, the range of depths composing this average is probably reasonable for “surface” rooms. Nesbitt (1931:35–36) also characterized Middle period rooms as having entrances in only the deepest rooms, frequent horizontally coursed walls only in the upper halves of rooms, and hearths of stone, adobe, or both near the room centers. The entrances into deep rooms seem like pit structure ramps, especially since they were described as being crude terraces from the floor level to the ground surface. Nesbitt did not describe any specific Middle period rooms as having this kind of entrance, but two of his pit structures had ramps in their southern walls (table 2.1). Middle period rooms had horizontally coursed walls, but the presence of masonry only in the upper halves of the walls was probably characteristic of a pit structure (table 2.1). The kinds of hearths that Nesbitt specified are not diagnostic to Mimbres surface rooms alone. Several characteristics that Nesbitt used to define Middle period structures appear to apply to both pit structures and Late period rooms. Perhaps some of his Middle period structures not already considered in chapter 2 were actually pit structures, but there is no way of determining

this. However, Middle and Late period rooms differ from Early period pit structures in that they were contiguous with other structures. Nesbitt (1931:37) defined Late period rooms as having floors close to the ground surface and on culturally sterile soil, coursed masonry, hearths with a range of characteristics, and no entrances, as well as being generally smaller than earlier structures. The floors were supposed to be within one foot to 18 inches of the ground surface, but two of the four possible Late period rooms for which data remain (table 3.1) have floor levels that are two or more feet below the ground surface. The presence of coursed masonry and various kinds of hearths are not diagnostic characteristics only of the Late period. The lack of entrances in these structures, as well as the absence of entrances in all but the deep Middle period rooms, may not be accurate, since the extant field notes contain references to connections between both Middle and Late period rooms (table 3.1). It is not clear whether Late period structures were smaller than earlier rooms, since the four possible Late period rooms for which data exist average 11.2 m2, while available measurements for Middle period rooms average 12.3 m2. Any apparent difference may be due to the small sample of Late period rooms. Although Late period rooms could be connected to Middle period rooms (table 3.1), Nesbitt’s Late period rooms may indeed have been constructed and used later. Nesbitt (1931:41–42) suggested that Late period rooms contained fewer burials than earlier rooms, a characteristic that we have also found useful in identifying the latest rooms in a room block. The shallower floors in Late period rooms hint that perhaps these rooms were along the edges of a room block and were the final ones to be built. Because of overlapping criteria and lack of extant data, however, we cannot be certain that Nesbitt correctly distinguished between earlier and later surface rooms at the Mattocks site.

Correspondence Between Nesbitt’s and the Mimbres Foundation Excavations Nesbitt (1931:Site map) divided his excavated surface rooms into four groups labeled “North,” “East,” “Southeast,” and “Southwest.” He (Nesbitt 1931:33–34) conceptualized these groups not as room blocks, but as independent groups of five to eight rooms clustered together in larger buildings. In other words, Nesbitt probably recognized the possibility that people simultaneously built and used several rooms within each group, but he may have thought that unrelated people lived next to each other in the same room block. Nesbitt’s rather stylized map does not correspond exactly with the Mimbres Foundation site map (figure I.4). We can generally approximate where we think Nesbitt

Table 3.1.  Nesbitt's Excavated 1929 and 1930 Surface Structure Room and Floor Data. Room Number

Room Dimensions

Room Area (m2)

1

12' × 12'4"

13.9

40

8' × 12'

9

41

17' × 12'

42

Floor Depth Below Surface

Floor Material

Nesbitt's Period

Notes

4'

adobe

Middle

3'

not well defined

n.d.

excavated by the Mattocks family

19.1

2'6"

adobe

Middle

called pit room on Nesbitt's site map, but not one

12' × 14'

15.7

2'

n.d.

n.d.

44

14'10" × 13'

18.1

1'11"–2'10"

adobe

Middle

45

10'2" × 10'4"

9.8

3'

adobe

Middle

connected to Room 44; excavated by Eisele

46

10' × 10'

9.4

2'

poor adobe

Late

connected to 44

47

9' × 8'6"

7.2

1'–1'6"

n.d.

n.d.

connected to Room 46

49

15'4" × 14'

20.1

1'4"–2'6"

n.d.

Middle

50

n.d.

fairly small

2'3"

n.d.

Middle

51

8'11'' × 13'

10.9

1'5"

poor

Late

52

9'2" × 13'7"

11.7

2'4"

poor

Late?

connected to Room 51; pothunted, glass on floor

53

11' × 12'

12.4

2'6"

good

Middle

connected to Room 50

54

10'6" × 11'

10.8

2'7"

traces of adobe

n.d.

connected to Room 19

55

11' × 12'4"

12.7

1'10"

adobe

Late

56

8' × 7'

5.6

2'3"

poor

Middle

said to be probably connected to Room 49, but not possible; no masonry in wall between Rooms 56 and 50; connected?

57

10' × 10'

9.4

2'

n.d.

Middle

connected to Room 55; much wall fall

58

11' × 9'

9.3

2'4"

adobe

Middle

three metates or fragments in walls

59

11' × 9'

9.3

2'

adobe

Middle

connected to Room 9

60

7' × 8'

5.2

3'

adobe

Middle

connected to Room 59

61

11' × 12'

12.4

3'

good

Middle

connected to Room 45; burned

said to be connected to Room 49, but not possible

average = 11.6 m2 Nesbitt's Period: Middle = Early/Middle Mimbres Classic period; Late = Middle/Late Mimbres Classic period.

72

Chapter 3

Table 3.2.  Nesbitt's Excavated 1929 and 1930 Surface Structure Hearth Data.* Room Number

Hearth Shape

Lining

Contents

Dimensions

Location

1

n.d.

stone

ash

n.d.

room center

44

square

adobe

ash

2' × 2' × 8"

room center; 2' from north wall; 3'6" from west wall

45

n.d.

adobe

n.d.

n.d.

6' from north wall; 3' from west wall

49

rectangular

adobe

ash

2' × 2'4" × 11"

3' from south wall; 5'6" from east wall

52

n.d.

stone, adobe

n.d.

20" × 18"

room center

53

square

n.d.

n.d.

2'2" × 2'3"

near north wall; in northwest corner?

58

n.d.

n.d.

n.d.

n.d.

east wall center

61

n.d.

adobe

ash

n.d.

room center

* These are the rooms for which hearth information exists; if a room is not listed, it does not necessarily mean it lacked a hearth.

excavated at the site, but sometimes we can only present options for his excavation locations. “Units” refer to surface structures or test trenches that the Mimbres Foundation excavated, while “Rooms” are surface structures that Nesbitt excavated. The Mimbres Foundation did only limited excavations within Nesbitt’s North Group (all rooms from 29–31 north), with Units 300, 301, and 302 probably being just south of Room 28. When the Mimbres Foundation project began in 1974, the north area of the site had a large number of pothunting holes, and we had heard of very recent pothunting activity in that area. The pothunting holes may have been in rooms that Nesbitt had previously excavated, but there was no way of knowing. We did not pursue excavations in this area. The relationships between the room clusters in Nesbitt’s East Group (Rooms 1–10, 12, 14, 33, 37–39, 55, 57–60) may not be accurate because we cannot precisely match Nesbitt’s excavations with our work in the 200s room block (figure I.4). We can account for most of Nesbitt’s clusters through our excavations and observations, but we propose that the cluster containing Nesbitt’s Rooms 12, 14, 37, 38, and 39 was east of the 200s room block instead of south. Nesbitt’s Rooms 8, 9, 59, and 60 all seem to lie on the east side of the “Great Wall,” a 14 m long, north-south row of rocks that formed the western edge of the 200s room block and was obvious on the surface in 1974. From the depressions along the east side of the Great Wall, it was clear that this area had been excavated or pothunted in the past. We placed two small test trenches, Units 200 and 211, in this area; Unit 200 was probably between Rooms 6 and 7, and Unit 211 was likely within Room 60. Room 11, a Classic period pit structure, seems to have been directly south of Unit 237 and may have been contiguous with it. Nesbitt’s Rooms 55 and 57 appear to be in an area south of

the central plaza in the Mimbres Foundation’s 200s room block, and there is a large depression in this area suggesting prior excavation. The rooms may have been part of a larger room block, but we did not excavate in the area to explore the possibility. Alternatively, Rooms 55, 56, 57, and 58 may be directly east of Room 48, the communal structure, as two sets of student field notes (Frost 1930; Kirkpatrick or Parker 1930) from 1930 suggest. There is other evidence in these field notes that rooms were perhaps renumbered after the 1930 field season, and it is thus unclear whether Rooms 55 and 57 are in the East Group, or whether Nesbitt even excavated rooms in this part of the East Group at all. The remaining two room clusters in the East Group are more difficult to place. The cluster containing Rooms 1, 2, 3, 4, 33, and 58 is probably directly north of Units 41 and 286 and in the vicinity of Units 220, 225, and the eastern part of Unit 226. The deposits in the latter units were almost completely disturbed. Alternatively, the rooms could be either slightly north of this location or to the east, near the terrace edge. The large depressions in these areas could be previously excavated rooms. We cannot confidently place the cluster containing Rooms 12, 14, 37, 38, and 39. If Nesbitt’s map is accurate, the cluster would be adjacent to and north of Unit 106 in the 100s room block. There is no surface indication that any rooms exist in this area, excavated or not. No rooms were detected in Unit 105, a test north of Unit 106, or in Backhoe Trench 4. Alternatively, these rooms might be indicated by a large depression near the terrace edge, east of the 200s room block. If so, according to Nesbitt’s map, this would put them in an inaccurate relationship with the room cluster discussed in the previous paragraph. A third possibility is that the cluster is in the vicinity of the small drainage channel now present south of the large depression on the terrace edge, and north of Units 128 and 129.

Posthole Data

n.d.

n.d.

n.d.

n.d.

n.d.

n.d.

n.d.

Room Number

1

5

6

7

12

13

15

n.d.

n.d.

n.d.

n.d.

n.d.

n.d.

two or three burials

Subfloor Burials

n.d.

n.d.

n.d.

n.d.

n.d.

n.d.

n.d.

Intrusive Burials

g seed jar Transitional n seed jar 11 quartz crystals gypsum sheet geode rattle quartz pendent

16173 16229 16230 16231 16239

g bowl, flare rim

16157.07

16172

g bowl

16157.06

g seed jar

g bowl, flare rim

16157.05

g bowl

g bowl, flare rim

16157.04

16171

g bowl

16157.1 or 2*

16167

g bowl, flare rim

16157.1 or 2*

n bowl

Transitional g bowl

16157.1 or 2*

16121

g bowl, flare rim

16147

plain jar with lugs

g bowl, 80%

16161 16197

g bowl

g bowl

16163.02 g bowl, 30%

g jar, 40%

16163.01

16151

g jar, 50%

16149

g bowl, 75%

16162

plain jar

n.d.

Artifact Type

16133

16193.09

n.d.

Logan Museum Catalog Number

inside 16172

inside 16172

inside 16172

inside 16172

below 16172

continued

below 16171 and above 16173

above 16172, 16173

floor

floor

below floor

below floor

below floor

below floor

n.d.

n.d.

n.d.

fill

fill

floor

floor

floor

n.d.

n.d.

n.d.

n.d.

n.d.

n.d.

Location

Table 3.3.  Nesbitt’s Excavated 1929, 1930, and 1931 Surface Structure Postholes, Burials, and Non-burial Artifacts. Burial artifacts are on tables 7.1, 7.3, and 7.4.

131, 132, 134, 137, 138

n.d.

n.d.

n.d.

n.d.

3' from south wall;

juniper

22

41

42

43

44

n.d.

47

none

149

146, 147

4' from west wall; juniper

3' from south wall; 3' from west wall

142, 144, 145,

n.d.

none

119, 120, 121

n.d.

n.d.

3' from south wall;

46

45

125, 126, 130,

n.d.

20

n.d.

n.d.

17

Subfloor Burials

Posthole Data

Room Number

Table 3.3.  (continued)

g bowl

16165.01

g bowl g bowl g bowl g bowl, flare rim, 80% g jar

16132 16150 16166 16166.01 16175

16302

none

none

n.d.

n.d.

ax

n.d.

n.d.

Boldface/Transitional g jar, 20%

n bowl, 40%

n bowl

16278.02 16282

n bowl

two manos

16278.01

n.d.

corrugated sherds

effigy

16127

n.d.

n bowl

16111

g bowl, flare rim

g bowl

16165 16148

n bowl, 80%

Artifact Type

16117

Logan Museum Catalog Number

139,140 and possi- n.d. bly 142, 144, 145

none?

n.d.

none

none

n.d.

n.d.

n.d.

Intrusive Burials

next to north wall; 3' from east wall

n.d.

n.d.

fill

n.d.

n.d.

n.d.

n.d.

below floor

floor

floor

floor

floor

floor

floor

floor

fill

floor

floor

floor

Location

n.d.

n.d.

n.d.

south central part of room; juniper beam fragment (16332)

n.d.

n.d.

n.d.

n.d.

three; two posts near

49

50

51

52

53

54

55

56

57

194, 195, 196, 197, 198, 199, 200, 201, 202

room center

1'6” from north wall

3' from east wall

5' deep

59

191, 192, 193

187

183, 184

189, 190

185, 186, 188,

none

180, 181, 182

177, 178, 179,

174, 175, 176,

171, 172, 173,

none

none

163

170, 161, 162,

167, 168, 169,

164, 165, 166,

none

none

none

none

none

none

none

none

none

none

g bowl, 33%

n.d.

16328

n.d.

n.d.

stone colander

three metates or frags

half stone cup

16327 n.d.

axe frag

n.d.

mano

metate frag

n.d. n.d.

mano,

more than half bowl

corrugated olla

glass

five manos

four metates

mano

metate

three ollas

Artifact Type

n.d.

n.d.

n.d.

n.d.

n.d.

n.d.

n.d.

n.d.

156, 157

n.d.

Logan Museum Catalog Number

n.d.

none

Intrusive Burials

153, 154, 155,

150, 151, 152,

Subfloor Burials

58

south wall

Posthole Data

Room Number

Table 3.3.  (continued)

fill

in walls

fill

n.d.

n.d.

n.d.

n.d.

n.d.

hearth

hearth

floor

n.d.

n.d.

n.d.

n.d.

n.d.

Location

continued

room center; 4' deep

3' north of hearth

n.d.

n.d.

n.d.

n.d.

n.d.

n.d.

n.d.

n.d.

n.d.

n.d.

n.d.

60

61

63

64

65

66

67

68

69

70

71

75

77

Artifact Type: g = geometric; n = naturalistic.

Posthole Data

Room Number

Table 3.3.  (continued)

n.d.

n.d.

n.d.

n.d.

n.d.

n.d.

n.d.

n.d.

n.d.

n.d.

n.d.

203, 204, 205

one, unnumbered

Subfloor Burials

n.d.

n.d.

n.d.

n.d.

n.d.

n.d.

n.d.

n.d.

n.d.

n.d.

n.d.

none

none

Intrusive Burials

scraper scraper stone knife white substance, ash? stone with cross hatching

21122 21127 21128 21130 21156

21115

21102

21126

21152

21106

bone point

sherds

core scraper

rubbing stone, oval

“chili seeds”

two bone points

21114

small metate

21155

olla handle

“late type” mano

21147 21100

bone awl

beveled top

animal leg bone with

21117

21118

sherd, decoration

sherds, mostly Classic with Chupadero, Playas Red Incised, El Paso

21105

21104

pottery smoother

manos, “late type”

Artifact Type

21103

21145

n.d.

n.d.

Logan Museum Catalog Number

below floor

fill

fill

fill

fourth depth

fill

n.d.

fill

fill

fill

fill

interior and exterior fill

fill

floor, from “lime pit”

below floor

below floor

floor

fill

below floor

fill

Location

Surface Rooms Excavated by the Mimbres Foundation The drainage may have formed after the rooms were excavated. If this third possibility is correct, then both of these difficult-to-place room clusters might be along the terrace edge, which would keep them in the correct relationship to each other, as shown on Nesbitt’s map. The relationship between Nesbitt’s East and Southeast Groups may not be accurate, but we feel we can place the room clusters in the Southeast Group. Rooms 44, 45, 61, 46, and 47 were probably Units 122, 125, 126, 134, and 136, respectively, although we noted none of the connections between these rooms that Nesbitt recorded (table 3.1). Unit 144 may have been within Room 13, but apparently the Mimbres Foundation excavated no part of Room 15. The configuration of Nesbitt’s room cluster fits well with what we think this portion of the 100s room block looks like. The Mimbres Foundation units all had been excavated previously, and so we are unable to suggest a location for Room 15. The second room cluster in the Southeast Group (Rooms 34–36, 50, 53, 56) seems to be just north and east of Unit 80, a pit structure dating to the Early Pit Structure period that is superimposed by a Classic period extramural activity area. If the placement of the second room cluster is correct, the activity area would be just south of, and protected by, the block of rooms. This situation would be reminiscent of the ramada (Unit 426) in the 400s room block. Unit 70, a test trench northeast of Unit 80, seems to have been just inside the easternmost wall of the room block and was probably in Room 27. Nesbitt called the latter a Pit Room (chapter 2), and Unit 70 (appendix 3) revealed culturally sterile soil 1.01 m below the current ground surface, with a two- to three-course cobble wall that extended only 55 cm below surface. Room 43, an isolated pit structure north of the room cluster, may be just east of Unit 128 and west of Unit 129-1-1. Rooms 40 and 42 in Nesbitt’s Southwest Group do not fit well with any location that the Mimbres Foundation excavated. The only room in the 400s room block that had been previously excavated was Unit 427; if Room 42 is Unit 427, Room 40 would be either Unit 433 or 435, neither of which had been previously excavated. Room 41, which is mislabeled on Nesbitt’s map as a pit structure, is northeast of the 400s room block and seems to have been one of the rooms in the cluster tested by Units 58, 68, and 69. All test trenches in this area uncovered previously excavated deposits, and so we cannot be sure which of the units was Room 41.

Surface Rooms Excavated by the Mimbres Foundation The Mimbres Foundation excavated either all or a large part of 30 surface rooms and two extramural activity areas (ramadas). The description of each excavation unit

77

includes its location, doors or connections, room and floor characteristics, postholes and pits, hearth, burials, floor assemblages, roof fall, and post-occupation fill (tables 3.4–3.7). We present room block maps of the 100s, 200s, and 400s room blocks (figures 3.1, 3.3, and 3.4), a photo of the 100s room block (figure 3.2), and a comparison of room depths (figure 2.1) so that the reader can see the relationships among the excavated rooms and other units. magnetic and tree-ring dates are discussed in Archaeo­ chapter 1, and there is more information on artifacts mentioned in the room descriptions in chapters 5 through 8. Backhoe trenches and test units that did not uncover significant portions of a structure are individually described in appendix 3. The Mimbres Foundation excavations did not record any examples of replastered floors, nor did we note any instances of plaster sloping from the walls to the floor center in any rooms.

Unit 41 Unit 41 (table 3.4) was a fairly large Classic room on the southeast corner of the 200s room block. It had two floors (Units 41a and 41b), the upper of which was of flagstones (figure 3.5). The northeast quadrant and the southwest corner had been pothunted through the flagstones, and a pit (Locus 7) had been dug through the flagstones in the southeast quadrant. Flagstones covered the remainder of the room floor. Below the flagstones were patches of adobe that appeared to be remnants of a lower floor (figure 3.6), except that these patches varied between 9.58 m and 9.09 m in depth, and so were not level. There also were several possible pits in the southeast quadrant that were difficult to define, and trash fill in the northwest area of the room. The most likely interpretation is that this unit originally had an adobe floor somewhere between 9.58 m and 9.38 m, the latter being the elevation of the adobe in the doorway, and that the floor was prehistorically destroyed. The room was then filled with trash and soil, and a second higher surface was constructed of flagstones. Unit 41 may have been a communal granary associated with a large storage room (Unit 286a) to the west; we develop these arguments in chapter 4. The four masonry walls of Unit 41 began above the flagstone surface and continued below that surface until they were between 10 cm and 29 cm above the lower adobe floor. The flagstone surface therefore was laid after the walls were built, which supports the interpretation that this was the upper floor. Because the bottoms of the walls did not articulate with the proposed lower floor level at 9.38 m, the lower floor originally may have been laid at the higher elevation (9.58 m), where adobe was first uncovered. Little wall fall was present in the unpothunted areas of the room, and so the walls may never have been more than three or four courses high. About a third of the south

113

112

111S

111N

?

two courses

0.7

1.98

2.1

1.98

2.1

n

w

s

e

0.7

0.7

0.55

0.65

0.65

0.6

1.6

2.4

s

e

0.7 0.6

1.6

2.4

n

w

0.6

4.1

2.3

s

e

two courses 0.7

3.6

2.4

n

w

0.6

3.6

2.3

s

e

0.5 0.7

3.2

2.4

n

w

0.45

2.1

2.35

s

e

0.5 0.6

2.1

2.1

n

w

0.55

106

3.72+

0.5

no walls

e

5.62

same walls as 41a

e

0.73

0.8

0.55

Wall Height (m)

80a

70

41b

5.86

3.48

w

s

3.62

n

41a

Wall Length (m)

Wall

Unit Number

n

n

door or vent

n

n

n

n

n

door or vent

n

n

y?

n

y?

n

n

n

y

n

n

n.d.

y

n

n

n

Door?

n

n

?

n

n

n

n

n

?

n

y

n

n

n

n

y

n

n

?

n

n.d.

n

n

n

n

Vent?

c, a

c, a

c, a

c, a

c, a

c, a

c, a

c, a

c, a

c, a

c, a

c, a

c, a

c, a

c, a

c, a

c, a

c, a

c, a

c, a

c, a, vf

c, a, vf

c, a

c, a

Wall Material

4.2

3.8

9.1

8

4.7

n.d.

n.d.

20.1

20.1

0.77 (9.04)

0.99 (8.86)

0.82–0.85 (9.00–9.03)

0.88–0.96 (8.90–8.98)

0.63–0.77 (8.87–9.01)

0.44 (11.03)

n.d.

0.37–0.57 (9.58–9.38)

0.30 (9.65)

Room Floor Depth Below Area (m2) Surface (m)

a

s

a

s

s

?, w

n.d.

a

f

Floor Material

probably Nesbitt’s Room 27

Notes

Table 3.4.  Mimbres Foundation Excavated Surface Structure Wall and Floor Data. No instances of floor replastering were noted, nor were examples of plaster sloping from walls to floor centers.

120

119

116S

116N one course

3

2.75

no wall

2.75

w

s

e

2.25

e

n

3

no wall

w

s

2

n

0.6

0.5

0.4

0.5

0.4

0.45

0.35

0.55

3.7

2.8

s

e

one course 0.55

0.7

3.1

n

w

0.55

0.7

1.8

s

e

0.6 0.55

2.5

2

n.d.

n

3.42

e

n.d.

n.d.

n.d.

n.d.

0.65

0.7

n.d.

Wall Height (m)

w

3.89

5.07

w

s

4.78

n

115a

3.5

earlier room floor or extramural work area

e

114b

3.5

3.7

w

s

3.7

n

114a

Wall Length (m)

Wall

Unit Number

Table 3.4.  (continued)

n?

n?

n?

n?

n

n

n

y

n

n

y

n

n

y

door or vent

n

n

door or vent

n.d.

y?

n.d.

n.d.

Door?

n?

n

n

n

n

n

n

n

n

n

n

n

n

n

?

y

y

?

n.d.

n

n.d.

n.d.

Vent?

c, a

c, a

c, a

c, a

c, a

c, a

c, a

c, a

c, a

c

c, a

c

c, a

c, a

c, a

c, a

c, a

c, a

c, a

c, a

c, a

c, a

Wall Material

6.2

6

10.7

4.8

16.5

n.d.

13

0.44? (9.42)

0.51? (9.35)

0.60–0.67 (9.06–9.13)

0.68–0.71 (8.99–9.02)

0.75–0.82 (8.98–9.05)

0.87–0.93 (8.81–8.87)

0.55–0.60 (9.19–9.14)

Room Floor Depth Below Area (m2) Surface (m)

a?

s?, a?

a

a, s

a

a

a

Floor Material

Notes

continued

231

137

127

126

125

123

122

2.6

3.85

3.25?

e

n.d.

3

4

s

e

3.15+

n.d.

n

w

0.4

n.d.

1

0.3

3

4.3

s

e

0.45 n.d.

3

4.3

n

w

0.35

0.75

4

0.6 0.4

w

3.8

3

e

0.5

n.d.

n.d.

0.45

n.d.

0.5

n.d.

n.d.

0.55

0.75

0.4

n.d.

n.d.

n.d.

0.6

one course

0.5

n.d.

Wall Height (m)

n

3.4

5.1

w

s

5.1

no wall remaining

n

3.12?

w

s

3

3

e

n

3.5?

4

w

s

4

e

n

4.1

5.25

w

s

5.25

e

n

2.6

4

w

s

4

n

121

Wall Length (m)

Wall

Unit Number

Table 3.4.  (continued)

n.d.

n.d.

n

n

n.d.

n

n

n

n

y

n?

n?

n

y

n

n

n.d.

n

n?

n

n

n

n.d.

n

y?

n

y

n

n

Door?

n.d.

n.d.

n

n

n.d.

n

n

n

n

n

n?

n?

n

n

n

n

n.d.

n

n?

n

y

n

n.d.

n

n

n

n

n

n

Vent?

c, a?

a? or c, a?

c, a

c, a

n.d.

c, a

c, a

c, a

c, a

c, a

c, a

c, a

c, a

c, a

c, a

c, a

c, a

c, a

c, a

c, a

c, a

c, a

c, a

c, a

c, a

c, a

c

c, a

c, a

Wall Material

12.9?

12.9?

12

18.4

9.7?

13

20.9

10.4?

1.24 (9.55)

pothunted

0.41–0.51 (9.05–9.15)

0.62–0.75 (8.98–9.11)

above 0.94 (8.93)

0.84 (9.04)

0.72–0.78 (9.04–9.10)

0.51–0.58 (9.12–9.19)

Room Floor Depth Below Area (m2) Surface (m)

a

n.d.

a

a?

n.d.

a

a

a

Floor Material

probably Nesbitt’s Room 61

probably Nesbitt’s Room 45

probably Nesbitt’s Room 44

Notes

5.87+

5.1

s

e

5.7

3.1

2

2.2

2

w

s

e

2.2

n

425

2.4

e

same walls as 423a

2.24

3.33

w

s

3.48

e

n

3.2

3

w

s

3.5

e

n

5.7

3.6

w

s

3.2

n.d.

w

n

1.45+

n.d.

n

e

423b

423a

325

286a

237

5.6?

n.d.

w

5.1?

n

233

s

not enough excavated

232

5.25?

2.45

Wall Length (m)

e

Wall

231 (cont.) s

Unit Number

Table 3.4.  (continued)

0.5

0.5

n.d.

0.5

0.42

0.53

0.43

0.5

0.35

0.4

n.d.

0.4

0.55

n.d.

0.3

0.55

0.7

0.6

0.45

1.1

0.9

1.4

1.15

Wall Height (m)

n

n

n

n

n

y

n

n

n

n

y

n

n

n

y

n

n

n

n

n

n

n

n?

Door?

n

n

n

n

n

n

n

n

n

n

n

n

n

n

n

n

n

n

n

n

n

n

n?

Vent?

c, a

c, a

c, a

c, a

c, a

c, a

c, a

c, a

c, a

c, a

c, a

c, a

c, a

c, a

c, a

c, a

c, a

c, a, vf

c, a

a?

c, a

c, a, vf

c, a

a

Wall Material

4.4

7.9

10.2

26.9?

n.d.

n.d.

0.52–0.56 (10.05–10.09)

0.46–0.52 (10.18–10.24)

0.34–0.38 (10.32–10.36)

0.56–0.66

0.38 (9.47)

0.67–0.81 (9.59–9.66)

0.99 (9.51)

0.94 (9.56)

Room Floor Depth Below Area (m2) Surface (m)

rough a

a

r, a

a, r

a

a

a

a

Floor Material

Notes

continued

0.6

0.95

4.09

same walls as 438a

e

0.65

0.67

0.87

0.65

y

n

y

n

n

n

y

y

y

n

n

n

n.d.

y

n

n

n?

y

n

y

Door?

n

n

n

n

y

n

y

n

y

n

n

n

n.d.

n

n

n

n

n

n

n

Vent?

Wall Material: c = cobbles; a = adobe; vf = vertical footings. Floor Material: f = flagstone; a = adobe; w = weathered; s = sterile soil; r = rocks.

438b

4.7

4.7

w

4.5

n

438a

s

ramada, same walls as 435a

0.65 0.65

3.2

4.9

s

e

0.75 0.85

3.9

4.38

n

w

0.95

3.9

4

s

e

0.96 1.03

3.55

3.96

n

w

n.d.

3.3

3.25

s

e

0.7 0.7

3.1

3.9

n

0.75

0.6

n.d.

0.7

Wall Height (m)

w

3.04

e

435b

435a

433

431

3.04

3.8

w

s

ramada, no walls

3.8

n

Wall Length (m)

427

Wall

426

Unit Number

Table 3.4.  (continued)

c, a

c, a

c, a

c, a

c, a

c, a

c, a

c, a

c, a

c, a

c, a

c, a

c, a

c, a, vf

c, a

c, a

c, a

c, a

c, a

c, a

Wall Material

20.2

20.2

n.d.

16.5

14.6

11.4

11.6

n.d.

1.03–1.10 (9.77–9.84)

0.80–0.90 (9.97–10.07)

0.96 (9.89)

0.74–0.85 (10.00–10.11)

1.10–1.13 (9.88–9.91)

0.78–0.84 (10.05–10.11)

0.78 (9.99)

0.45–0.57 (10.03–10.11)

Room Floor Depth Below Area (m2) Surface (m)

a

a

s

a

a

a

a

a, w

Floor Material

Notes

Table 3.5.  Mimbres Foundation Excavated Surface Structure Pit and Posthole Data. Unit Number

Provenience

Dimensions (m)

Type of Pit

Depth Below Floor (m)

Plastered Over at Floor Level

41a

Levels 3–5, Locus 7

0.80 × 1.45

p

1.05

n

4S-10P

0.80 × 0.75

p

0.97

y

41b

5S-24P

0.50 × 1.10

ph

0.31

n

5S-17PH

0.30 × 0.25

ph

0.66

n

5S-18PH

0.28 × 0.22

ph

0.88

n

5S-23PH

0.21 × 0.32

ph

0.64

n

70

no pits or postholes excavated

106

4-6

0.60 × 0.45

ph

0.38

n

4-4 #1

0.25 × 0.25

ph

0.18

n

111N

n.d.

5-14

0.28 × 0.36

ph

0.40

y

5-15

0.26 × 0.26

ph

0.24

n

111S

4-10

0.38 × 0.34

ph

0.65

n

4-13

0.30 × 0.35

ph

0.54

n

112

no pits or postholes excavated

113

5-6

n.d. 0.20 × 0.36

ph

0.23

n

5-7

0.20 × 0.23

p

0.06

n

5-8

0.40 × 0.40

ph

0.49

n

114a

in 4-5

0.30 × 0.25

ph

n.d.

in pothunted area

114b

no pits or postholes excavated

115a

5-7

116N

116S

119

n.d. 0.30 × 0.30

ph

1.02

n

5-9

0.30 × 0.30

ph

0.43

n

5-9

1.25 × 0.50

p

0.20

n

6-14

0.30 × 0.35

p

0.06

n

6-16

0.42 × 0.43

ph

0.21

n

6-18

0.30 × 0.30

ph

0.61

n

7-22

0.35 × 0.35

ph

0.31

maybe

7-27

0.35 × 0.29

ph

0.42

n

5-14

0.32 × 0.32

ph

0.41

n

5-15

0.30 × 0.30

ph

0.41

n

5-16

0.29 × 0.29

ph

0.22

n

5-8 #1

0.15 × 0.20

ph

n.d.

n

5-11

0.30 × 0.30

ph

0.46

n

5-12

0.30 × 0.30

ph

0.32

n

5-13

0.70 × 0.50

ph

n.d.

n

5-18

0.65 × 0.50

ph

0.74

y

5-20

0.30 × 0.15

?

0.17

y

4-3

0.46 × 0.43

ph

0.46

n

4-4

0.33 × 0.30

ph

0.20

n continued

Table 3.5.  (continued) Unit Number

Provenience

Dimensions (m)

Type of Pit

Depth Below Floor (m)

Plastered Over at Floor Level

120

5-6

0.37 × 0.35

ph

0.77+

n.d.; floor removed by pothunting

121

5-7 #2

0.25 × 0.25

?

0.26+

n.d.; floor removed by pothunting

5-7 #3

0.40 × 0.40

?

0.30+

n.d.; floor removed by pothunting

5-8

0.32 × 0.32

?

0.27+

n.d.; floor removed by pothunting

4-5

0.30 × 0.30

ph

0.20

y

3-6

0.30 × 0.30

ph

0.15

n

4-9

0.24 × 0.24

ph

0.27

y

4-10

0.50 × 0.50

p

0.10

y

4-11

0.50 × 0.70

p

0.25

y

122

5-4

0.55 × 0.55

ph

n.d.

in pothunted area

123

room too pothunted to detect pits or postholes

n.d.

125

room too pothunted to detect pits or postholes

n.d.

126

room too pothunted to detect pits or postholes

n.d.

127

5-3 #1

0.50 × 0.45

ph

0.27

y

4-3 #1

1.00 × 0.60

ph

0.87

n.d.; floor removed by pothunting

4-3 #3

0.25 × 0.25

ph

0.37

n.d.; floor removed by pothunting

137

room too pothunted to detect pits or postholes

n.d.

231

4-3

0.40 × 0.40

ph?

n.d.

y

4-3/1

0.60 × 0.70

p

0.11 below pit rim

y

232

room too pothunted to detect pits or postholes

233

1-2 5-6, Pit A

0.30 × 0.50

ph

0.19

n

237

8-10/1

0.40 × 0.35

ph

n.d.

n

9-11

0.30 × 0.30

p

0.13

y

286a 325

n.d. 0.56 × 0.47

ph

0.73

n

3F-8PH #1

0.33 × 0.33

ph

0.28

n

3F-8PH #2

0.25 × 0.25

ph

0.38

n

5-4

0.30 × 0.37

ph

0.46

n

5-4 #1

0.30 × 0.40

ph

0.36

n

6-5

0.35 × 0.35

ph

0.68

n

6-8

0.30 × 0.30

ph

0.67

n

6-9

0.35 × 0.40

ph

0.39

n

6-10

0.35 × 0.35

ph

0.44

n

423a

4F-5PH

0.30 × 0.40

ph

0.46

n

423b

5S-7P

0.65 × 0.70

p

0.23

y

5S-8PH A

0.15 × 0.15

ph

0.16

n

5S-8PH B

0.35 × 0.30

ph

0.30

n

5S-8PH C

0.43 × 0.43

ph

0.29

n

Table 3.5.  (continued) Unit Number

Provenience

Dimensions (m)

Type of Pit

Depth Below Floor (m)

Plastered Over at Floor Level

423b (cont.)

5S-8PH D

0.45 × 0.45

ph

0.61

n

5S-8PH E

0.25 × 0.25

ph

0.09

n

425

4-3 #1

0.20 × 0.20

ph

0.19

n

4-3 #2

0.23 × 0.23

ph

0.11

n

426

427

431

4-3 #3

0.15 × 0.15

ph

0.10

n

3-3 #1

0.70 × 0.60

p, possible mealing bin

0.16

n

4-3 #4

0.55 × 0.30

p

0.19

n

3F-9PH

0.35 × 0.35

ph

0.34

n

3F-10PH

0.50 × 0.40

ph

0.41

n

3F-11PH

0.40 × 0.40

ph

0.49

n

3F-12PH

0.30 × 0.30

ph

0.66

n

3F-12PH

0.25 × 0.25

ph

0.33

n

3F-13PH

0.40 × 0.30

ph

0.43

n

3F-15PH

0.35 × 0.50

ph

0.43

n

3F-16P

0.83 × 1.13

p

0.32

n

3F-16P

0.34 × 0.40

ph

0.59

n

3F-17PH

0.35 × 0.35

ph

0.42

n

3F-18PH

0.33 × 0.37

ph

0.34

n

3F-19PH

0.40 × 0.30

ph

0.28

n

3-20

0.40 × 0.30

ph

0.28

n

4S-22PH

0.30 × 0.30

ph

0.17

n

3F-24PH

0.25 × 0.30

ph

0.36

n

2-2 #1

0.30 × 0.30

ph

0.53

n

2-3 #1

0.25 × 0.25

ph

0.33

n

6-3 #1

0.20 × 0.20

ph

0.20

n

6-3 #2

0.50 × 0.50

ph or b

0.25

n

6-4

0.50 × 0.50

ph or b

0.27

n

6-5 #1

n.d.

ph

0.19

n

5-4 east

0.57 × 0.57

p or h

0.23

n

5-4 west

0.60 × 0.60

p

n.d.

n

5-4 west

0.32 × 0.32

ph

0.33

n

5-5

0.45 × 0.45

p or h

0.15

n

5-7

0.60 × 0.35

ph

0.28

n

5-9

0.20 × 0.20

ph

0.32

n

5-10

0.28 × 0.28

ph

0.39

n

5-11

0.25 × 0.25

ph

0.15

n

5-12

0.29 × 0.29

ph

0.50

n

5-13

0.40 × 0.45

p

0.06

n

5-13

0.13 × 0.25

ph

0.18

n

5-16

0.32 × 0.40

ph

0.28

y

5-17

0.55 × 0.45

ph

0.51

y continued

Table 3.5.  (continued) Unit Number

Provenience

Dimensions (m)

Type of Pit

Depth Below Floor (m)

Plastered Over at Floor Level

431 (cont.)

5-20 #2

0.24 × 0.24

ph

0.40

n

5-20 #3

0.26 × 0.26

ph

0.40

y

433

6S-6P

0.95 × 1.30

p

0.63

n

6S-6P

0.40 × 0.35

ph

0.87

n

6S-7P

0.90 × 2.05

p

0.72

n

435a

435b

6S-7P

0.50 × 0.40

ph

0.88

n

6S-8P

0.25 × 0.34

ph

0.20

n

6S-9P

0.20 × 0.20

ph

0.21

n

6S-11P

0.26 × 0.29

ph

0.35

n

6S-12P

1.55 × 1.80

p

0.48

n

6S-12P

0.30 × 0.40

ph

0.83

n

6S-12P

0.38 × 0.38

ph

0.37

n

6S-13PH

0.25 × 0.25

ph

0.42

n

6S-14PH

0.20 × 0.20

ph

0.14

n

6S-15PH

0.20 × 0.20

ph

0.26

n

6S-16PH

0.20 × 0.20

ph

0.14

n

6S-17P

0.50 × 0.50

p

0.52

n

4F-13P

0.65 × 0.50

t or wp

0.52

n

4F-5/4

0.40 × 0.45

ph

0.72

n

4F-5/5

0.26 × 0.37

ph

0.88

n

4F-7/11

0.60 × 0.50

ph

0.42

n

5S-8P/3P

0.15 × 0.20

ph

0.23

n

5S-8P/3P

0.85 × 0.50

p

0.25

n

5S-8/4PH

0.30 × 0.30

ph

0.23

n

5S-8/6PH

0.25 × 0.25

ph

0.31

n

5S-8/8PH

0.35 × 0.30

ph

0.37

n

5S-8/9PH

0.35 × 0.30

ph

0.10

n

438a

3S-7PH

0.30 × 0.30

ph

0.25

n

438a+b

3S-8PH

0.50 × 0.50

ph

1.22

n

3S-9PH

0.33 × 0.47

ph

0.97

n

438b

3S-10PH

0.15 × 0.15

ph

0.59

n

3S-14PH

0.35 × 0.35

ph

0.49

n

3S-15PH

0.11 × 0.11

ph

0.36

n

3S-16PH

0.52 × 0.52

ph

1.11

n

4S-18PH

0.16 × 0.16

ph

0.08

n

4S-24PH

0.20 × 0.20

ph

0.24

y

4S-25PH

0.10 × 0.10

ph

0.11

y

Type of Pit: p = pit; ph = posthole; b = burial; h = hearth; t = trash pit; wp = warming pit.

Table 3.6.  Mimbres Foundation Excavated Surface Structure Hearth Data. Unit Number

Provenience

Shape

Contents

Dimensions (m)

41a

no hearth

41b

no hearth

70

no hearth excavated

80a

no hearth excavated

106

no hearth

111N

no hearth

111S

Depth Below Floor (m)

Lining

4-9

circular

ash, c

0.44 × 0.50

rocks

4-12

circular

c

0.35 × 0.35

adobe

112

no hearth

113

5-9

square

ash

0.34 × 0.34

0.18

slabs

114a

4-4

square

ash

0.44 × 0.42

0.38

slabs

114b

no hearth

115a

6-12

circular

ash

0.40 × 0.40

0.37

adobe, rocks

6-20

circular

ash, s

0.34 × 0.34

0.22

dirt, rocks?

circular

ash, c

0.60 × 0.55

0.3

adobe

circular

s, c, ash

1.07 × 1.10

0.3

n.d.

0.50 × 0.50

0.27

116N

no hearth

116S

5-9H

119

too pothunted to detect hearth

120

too pothunted to detect hearth

121

3-8

122

too pothunted to detect hearth

123

too pothunted to detect hearth

125

too pothunted to detect hearth

126

too pothunted to detect hearth

127

4-3 #4

137

too pothunted to detect hearth

231

no hearth excavated

232

4-4

circular

ash

0.40 × 0.45

0.15?

adobe

4-5

circular

ash

0.35 × 0.35

0.15?

adobe

233

no hearth?

237

too pothunted to detect hearth

286a

no hearth

325

no hearth

423a

no hearth

423b

no hearth

425

no hearth

426

no hearth

427

too pothunted to detect hearth

pothunted

continued

Table 3.6.  (continued) Unit Number

Provenience

Shape

Contents

Dimensions (m)

Depth Below Floor (m)

Lining

431

5-4 east?

circular

dirt, ash

0.57 × 0.57

0.23

dirt

5-5?

circular

dirt, ash

0.45 × 0.45

0.15

dirt

433

no hearth? area disturbed in antiquity

435a

4F-9H

circular

ash

0.40 × 0.40

n.d.

adobe, two rocks

435b

5S-20H

oval

n.d.

0.50 × 0.40

0.12

n.d.

438a

no hearth

438b

3S-12H

rectangular

ash

0.40 × 0.33

0.18

slabs

3S-13H

rectangular

dirt, ash

0.39 × 0.27 × 0.27 × 0.46

0.34

slabs

Contents: c = charcoal; s = soil.

Table 3.7.  Mimbres Foundation Excavated Surface Structure Artifacts, Burials, and Room Burning. Unit Number

Floor Artifacts

Roof Artifacts

Subfloor Burials

Intrusive Burials

Room Burned?

41a

none

none

none

none

no

41b

none

none

none

none

no

70

room just tested

80a

yes

none

none

none

maybe

106

none

none

none

none

partly

111N

none

yes

none

none

no

111S

none

yes

none

none

no

112

none

none

none

none

no

113

yes?

yes

none

none

no

114a

none

yes

4-10B, 4-11B

none

no

none

no

maybe

4-5, 4-6, 4-7, 10-50 either with 114a or 114b 114b

none

n.a.

115a

none

yes

5-6, 7-21, 7-23, 7-24, 10-25

none

yes

116N

none

none

none

none

no

116S

yes

none

5-17, 5-21

none

no

119

too pothunted to determine

no

120

too pothunted to determine

no

121

yes

122

too pothunted to determine

none

5-9

none

none

no

Table 3.7.  (continued) Unit Number

Floor Artifacts

123

too pothunted to determine

125

too pothunted to determine

126

Roof Artifacts

Subfloor Burials

Intrusive Burials

Room Burned?

too pothunted to determine

2-5?, 5-9B

2-5?

maybe

127

too pothunted to determine

5-4

?

?

137

too pothunted to determine

231

none

none

none

maybe

232

too pothunted to determine

233

none

yes

5-7, 5-8

?

no

237

yes

yes?

too pothunted to determine

?

maybe

286a

none

none

4S-7B

none

no

325

none

none

5-7

none

no

423a

none

none

none

none

no

423b

none

none

none

none

no

425

none

none

none

none

no

426

yes

none

3F-8B, 3F-14B, 441-3S-3B

none

yes

427

too pothunted to determine

6-6

?

?

431

none

5-6, 5-8, 5-14, 5-15, 5-18B

none

no

none

yes

none

yes

none

no

maybe

none

maybe

none

5-19 433

yes

yes

6S-10B, 6S-18B, 6S-19B 6S-20B, 6S-21B, 6S-22B

435a

yes

none

5S-11B, 5S-12B individual 2 5S-14B, 5S-16B, 5S-18B 5S-19B

435b

none

n.d.

5S-10B, 5S-12B individual 1 5S-17B, 5S-21B, 5S-22B 5S-23B

438a

yes?

none

none

none

yes

438b

none

n.d.

4S-19B, 4S-20B, 4S-21B

none

no

4S-22B, 4S-23B

Figure 3.1.  Plan of the 100s room block.

Surface Rooms Excavated by the Mimbres Foundation

91

Figure 3.2.  Photo of the 100s room block.

wall adjacent to the southwest corner was missing, in part due to the potting activities in the corner, and in part due to Backhoe Trench 4, which went through the wall. Remnants of adobe plaster were on the west wall. The section of the east wall north of the door was double walled at the level of the flagstone surface (figure 3.5). This is not unprecedented, because double walls were characteristic of the NAN Ranch site south room block, which was the residence of an important lineage household (Shafer 2003:90–98). The wall consisted of one or two courses set onto vertical foundation stones. The doorway near the center of the east wall was about 80 cm wide and made it possible to move between the room and the area outside the room block. All of the wall corners in Unit 41 abutted (meaning that the rocks in the two walls were not interlaced at the corner and so could have been built at different times), except for the pothunted southwest corner, for which no determination could be made. Which wall abutted onto which was not recorded, and so we cannot ascertain the construction sequence of the walls. However, both the north and south walls of Unit 286a abutted the west wall of Unit 41, and so Unit 286 appears to have been built after Unit 41. As noted above, we could not accurately determine the elevation of the lower floor in Unit 41. All that remained of the floor were adobe patches at elevations ranging from 9.58 m in the north-central area of the room, to 9.09 m east and south of the central posthole (figure 3.6). The

higher and thicker adobe may represent both roof fall and floor material. There is no other evidence of roof fall above this floor level. There are two likely interpretations for the uneven nature of the floor. The first is that the highest level of adobe, at 9.58 m, is the actual floor level, and the adobe at lower elevations represents areas where a thick floor had been partly removed prehistorically. The second is that the floor surface originally was about 9.38 m, the elevation of the adobe in the doorway. Many of the adobe patches were close to this elevation, including areas in the northwest quadrant (9.29 m), around the north posthole (9.43 m), in the southwest quadrant (9.40 m), and in the southeast corner (9.36 m). The lowest adobe elevations would represent the remainder of a floor that had been removed, and the highest might be roof fall. However, it is possible that the adobe in the doorway was a step into the room, and thus would not represent the actual floor level. Ultimately, we can say little about the lower floor level except that it existed and that it had been mostly removed. One pit (41-5S-24P) opened onto a level (9.29 m) that might be interpreted as being associated with the lower floor. It was approximately the size and shape of a burial pit, but it contained no evidence of skeletal remains, and so its function is uncertain. It might have been a burial that, like the floor, had been removed prehistorically. Three postholes (table 3.5) seem to have been associated with the lower floor. However, the adobe “floor” surrounding each posthole was at different levels, and so

Figure 3.3.  Plan of the 200s room block.

Figure 3.4.  Plan of the 400s room block.

94

Chapter 3

Figure 3.5.  Photo of Unit 41a.

it is not possible to tell how far each extended below the original floor surface. The postholes were arranged in a north-south line through the center of the room, which is the Classic period posthole pattern. The fill between the two Unit 41 floors varied across the room. It was difficult to characterize, not least because it was not always possible to define the lower floor. There were many artifacts and large cobbles below the flagstone surface in the northwest corner of the room, compared to the fill between the floors in the remainder of the room. The artifacts included one complete metate (415S-20/2), nine mano fragments (41-4S-20/4, 41-4S-20/5, 41-4S-20/7, 41-4S-20/8, 41-5S-20/1, 41-5S-20/3, 41-5S20/7, 41-5S-20/11, 41-5S-20/12), two metate fragments (41-4S-20/2, 41-4S-20/3), a possible anvil (41-5S-20/10), several types of raw material (chrysocolla, red pigment, pillowstone), obsidian flakes, much faunal material, and charred beans. The northwest quadrant also contained the most adobe floor remnants, and these materials may represent trash thrown onto the earlier floor to bring it to the desired level before building the upper floor. The northeast quadrant of Unit 41 was completely pothunted to the level of culturally sterile soil (9.10 m or 85 cm below the present ground surface). The flagstone surface and any adobe at the lower levels were nonexistent here. Artifacts from the recent past were present from the surface to between 9.30 m and 9.10 m, and sherds from a naturalistic bowl (41-5S-21/14, 41-1-6/1) were scattered vertically and horizontally in the quadrant. The bowl was not standard Mimbres black-on-white, having a gray core, sherd temper, a white-slipped exterior, and

wavy lines paralleling the rim; perhaps it was a Reserve-­ Mimbres hybrid. Burned corn (5S-21/4) was also present in this area. The fill, containing many large rocks that may have been wall fall, was homogeneous throughout. The southeast quadrant was covered with flagstones, except for the oval pit (Locus 7; figure 3.5). The material below the flagstones was intact, but it was wholly unlike the fill in the northwest quadrant. Only one small remnant of adobe remained in the southeast area (at 9.36 m; figure 3.6). Several pits (41-4S-11P, 41-4S-12P, 41-4S13P, 41-4S-14P, 41-4S-15P) appeared to be outlined in culturally sterile soil just under the flagstone surface, but they proved difficult to define. Most seemed to be soft fill, either representing rodent holes or areas of different types of fill that had been deposited during the process of creating a level for the flagstone floor. Although there were many rodent holes in this quadrant, the latter interpretation seems best for the larger “pits.” Two of the “pits” (41-4S-11P, 41-4S-14P) were directly above the central and southern postholes, respectively, and they may have been areas through which the posts originally extended, and in which they decomposed. Two of the pits in the southeast quadrant extended below the level of culturally sterile soil (9.10 m) and may have been room features. One of these pits (levels 3–5 in Locus 7) was filled with flour-textured dirt, fist-sized stones, and redeposited culturally sterile soil. The first level of actual culturally sterile soil was at 9.08 m, but the pit continued to a depth of 8.60 m. The same fill and culturally sterile soil characterized the second pit (41-4S10P), just north of the first. The size, shape, and depth of

Figure 3.6.  Plan of Unit 41b (lower floor).

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these pits were similar to that of many burial pits, but no skeletal or artifact remains were present to support that interpretation. However, the fact that little of the lower adobe surface remained in this section probably indicates that the area had been destroyed before the flagstones were laid, and any burials might have been removed at that time. The southwest corner of Unit 41 had been pothunted, and much of the actual corner had been removed (figures 3.5, 3.6). We excavated a test trench just east of the corner that served to locate the room and to define the stratigraphy. The unpothunted areas of the upper floor consisted of large thin slabs of quartzite (figure 3.5) at a level of 9.65 m (30 cm below the present ground surface). The flagstone surface was chinked with smaller rocks of readily available material. Some adobe was present on and between the flagstones, but it was not clear whether this surface was originally covered with adobe. The only ancient break in the flagstone surface was Locus 7 in the southeast quadrant. If this pit was indeed a burial, the fact that it was present in the flagstone surface implies that it had been excavated and filled after the room was no longer being used for everyday activities. No other pits, postholes, or hearths disturbed the flagstone surface. Directly above the flagstone surface, with no intervening fill, was a 5 cm to 8 cm thick layer of undulating adobe. The adobe was orange to light brown in color and contained many charcoal flecks. Because of its undulating upper surface, we interpreted the layer as roof fall, even though it was quite thin. Alternatively, it might have been an adobe surface laid over the flagstones that had weathered unevenly. This would mean that the room was either not roofed or was covered only with a brush, ramada-type roof, no evidence of which was preserved. The lack of postholes in the flagstone surface makes it more likely that Unit 41 was not roofed and that the adobe above the flagstones was a floor surface. The upper surface of the adobe was only about 25 cm below the ground surface, and the post-occupation fill seems to have been material that had washed in. Few artifacts were present in this layer, and the room was apparently not used for trash deposition after it was abandoned. Unit 41 may be an example of what Shafer (2003:64, 88) has described as a granary shared by a co-residential corporate group with common economic interests. Shafer’s (2003:122) definition includes “thick adobe floors; reinforced subfloors, usually consisting of a layer of cobbles or slabs; vertical slabs placed around the wall, either on the inside, outside, or both; and quantities of burned corn on the cob.” They can also have “floors paved with slabs or cobbles and plastered over with thick layers of adobe. . . . Hearths were absent” (Shafer 2003:75–76). Unit 41 may have had a thick adobe floor, although it was below, rather than above, the pavement. There was also evidence of an adobe surface above the flagstones. Vertical foundation

slabs were present in the east wall, but they were not the extra buttressing against rodents that Shafer describes. No quantities of burned corn were present in Unit 41, although some was in the pothunted northeast quadrant. If the building was unroofed, then it cannot have been a granary, and in fact Anyon and LeBlanc (1980:271) have called it an unroofed plaza. Regardless of whether Unit 41 was a granary or a plaza, its special characteristics are consistent with the importance of the household that built and used the 200s room block.

Unit 80a Unit 80 consisted of a Classic period extramural work area (Unit 80a; figure 3.7) superimposed over an Early Pit Structure period pit structure (Unit 80b; see figure 2.2 for profile of Units 80a and 80b) discussed in chapter 2. Located about 25 m southeast of the 100s room block, the unit was apparently just southwest of several rooms that Nesbitt excavated as part of his Southeast Group. Unit 80 was probably immediately southwest of Nesbitt’s Room 27 and south of the room block, and the Classic period work area would have been sheltered by the buildings to the north, as expected for an outside work area at the Mattocks site. No evidence of Unit 80 was discernable on the ground surface. The unit was uncovered at the north end of Backhoe Trench 8. There was no recent disturbance in this unit. The upper, extramural work area was 44 cm below the present ground surface (11.03 m), while the pit structure floor was between 80 cm and 92 cm below the ground surface (36 cm to 47 cm below the work surface). The fill between the pit structure floor and the work surface was apparently trash and contained a mixture of Classic, Transitional, and Boldface Black-on-white sherds, along with San Francisco Red and scored pottery that probably relate to the pit structure of the Early Pit Structure period (appendix 2). The horizontal extent of the extramural work area was not ascertained because excavation focused on the underlying pit structure. The densest concentration of in situ artifacts on the work area floor was above the northern part of the pit structure, but other concentrations were present in the east and west quadrants (figure 3.7). The lack of artifacts in the southern quadrant may indicate either the boundary of the work area or that this part was regularly cleared of tools and debris. Although we did not delineate the full extent of the work area, we expect that the surface extended to the walls of Nesbitt’s Room 27 and perhaps other unexcavated rooms on the north, which is consistent with the unwalled extramural space in Unit 426, a ramada east of the 400s room block. The southern and western boundaries cannot be predicted. The work area surface was defined by the elevations of the in situ artifacts because little of the actual surface remained. There were a few chunks of adobe at this elevation. The excavators noted that the soil in the area with a

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Figure 3.7.  Plan of Unit 80a.

high concentration of in situ artifact was a fine sandy loam, while beyond the concentrations the surface was pebbly and consolidated. If a formal surface had ever been constructed for this work area, it had weathered away before the area was covered with post-occupation fill. Two connected linear rock alignments were apparent on the work surface, which seem to have separated the densest concentration of in situ artifacts from the other

artifacts on the surface (figure 3.7). The excavators felt that these rocks were placed in these alignments when people cleared the outside area for use, which is a plausible interpretation in that the surface was rocky beyond the densest concentration of artifacts. This interpretation, however, does not account for concentrations of in situ artifacts on the rocky surface beyond the rock alignment. It is possible that the rock alignments marked a boundary

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between different activities in the work area. This possibility is reflected to some degree by the in situ artifact distribution, in that most of the pottery remains were within the rock alignments, while most of the cores were outside them. They may, however, have been both boundaries and the result of cleaning. Three apparently in situ artifact clusters were on the work area surface (figure 3.7; all large artifacts between 11.15 m and 11.01 m were plotted). The densest concentration was within the rock alignments and consisted of one small (80a-2-4/33) and three larger (80a-2-4/34, 80a-2-4/41, 80a-2RF-6/4) corrugated jars, one Reserve Indented Corrugated bowl with a burnished interior (80a-2RF-6/3), one mano (80a-2-4/35), one smoothed cobble (80a-2-4/38), one mano fragment (80a-2-4/44), nine worked slab fragments (80a-2-4/39), and a core or hammerstone (80a-2-4/40). All of the vessels were virtually complete and are good evidence that this area was at least used for food storage and preparation. The remainder of the artifacts in this concentration cannot so easily be assigned a function, but the ground and worked stone associated with the core or hammerstone may indicate ground stone manufacturing or maintenance. The second artifact concentration was mainly south of the rock alignments and consisted of three mano fragments (80a-2-4/24, 80a-2-4/27, 80a-2-4/28), two basalt cores (80a-2-4/26, 80a-2-4/31), one core or hammerstone (80a-2-4/30), one pillowstone (80a-2-4/25), and a possible mano blank (80a-2-4-29). The association of ground stone, cores, and the core or hammerstone suggests ground stone manufacturing or maintenance, especially since all the cores or hammerstones (including that to the north of the aligned rocks) were of basalt, a dense material that is particularly useful for shaping ground stone (Hayden and Nelson 1981). A mano (80a-2-4/22), a mano fragment (80a-2-4/23), and half of a plain jar (80a-1-2/1, 80a-3-8/1) were the only artifacts west of the rock alignments. No features, including hearths or postholes, can confidently be associated with the extramural work surface. Two pits (80a-2-14 #6, 80a-2-21P), both separate from either of the largest artifact concentrations, may relate to the surface, but they might equally have been associated with the underlying pit structure. The smaller of the two pits (80a-2-14 #6) was outside the south wall of the pit structure and extended 15 cm below the top of culturally sterile soil. The pit was a little large to be a posthole, but no remains in the pit indicated its function. The second pit (80a-2-21P) was outside the west edge of the pit structure; only about half of this pit was excavated because the other half was beneath a large cholla cactus. The bottom of this pit was 22 cm below the top of culturally sterile soil, and it contained nothing that might indicate its function. No roof fall as such was encountered above the work area surface, and most of the tree-ring specimens recovered from this unit were either in burials or in the fill

immediately above the work surface (appendix 1). These burned samples indicate that at least part of the work area was roofed by a brush structure, but no other evidence of the roof remained. The density of small artifacts such as sherds and chipped stone was greater close to the work surface than it was near the present ground surface. The high densities near the work surface perhaps indicate trash fill. The lower densities near the ground surface may be part of Nesbitt’s back dirt from the rooms he excavated, but they may also include post-occupation fill deposited by natural processes.

Unit 106 Unit 106 (figures 3.1 and 3.8) was an unpothunted room on the northeast corner of the 100s room block, north of Unit 116. The room was quite small (table 3.4) and did not have the smooth adobe floor or a hearth that were common in the larger rooms on the Mattocks site. Small structures like Unit 106 are usually called storage rooms. All four walls of Unit 106 were built from unshaped cobbles and adobe mortar (table 3.4). There was a doorway in the south wall that connected this room with Unit 116 to the south, and the door had filled with wall fall after the rooms were no longer used. A possible vent in the east wall of Unit 115a should have been evident in the west wall of Unit 106. It would have been in the wall section within the bin in Unit 106, but no evidence of any vent was present. It might have been filled in from the east side when the bin was constructed. A row of rocks along the inside of the west wall was definitely not part of the wall itself. They might represent a wall buttress or, more likely given the rocks were at least 20 cm above the floor level, a course of masonry that had fallen from the top of the wall. The northeast, southeast, and southwest corners of the walls in Unit 106 were all bonded (meaning that the rocks from the intersecting walls interlaced with each other), while the north wall abutted onto the west wall. The pattern of bonded corners suggests that all four walls of this room were built simultaneously. The north wall of Unit 115a and the west wall of Unit 116 both bonded with the west wall of Unit 106, implying that all three rooms were built at the same time. The only problem with this interpretation is the opening in the east wall of Unit 115a. If this opening was a vent or a doorway, its placement next to the south wall of Unit 106 would be rather odd, in that wall openings are usually not in room corners. Therefore, the east wall of Unit 115a and its vent may have been constructed and used before Unit 106 was built. The floor of Unit 106 was between 63 cm and 77 cm below the present ground surface (8.87 m to 9.01 m) and was culturally sterile soil. There were a few patches of adobe on this floor, but these were so discontinuous as

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Figure 3.8.  Photo of Unit 106 with excavated floor, floor pits, and bin.

to be almost nonexistent. Many small cobbles were contained in the 15 cm level above the culturally sterile soil surface. We do not know if these were originally part of the floor construction, but a similar layer of cobbles was above the floor in Unit 425, another small room. There was no hearth in Unit 106, but there were two postholes (table 3.5) and a bin. The major roof support was a large juniper post (106-4-6/1) in the center of the room. A smaller, shallower posthole was northwest of the central support, and it probably acted as a secondary roof support. The bin (106-4-5; figures 3.1 and 3.8) measured 55 by 60 cm, and it was in the southwest corner of Unit 106. Stone slabs formed the north and east sides of the feature, while a row of cobbles supported the slabs on the north side. Medium-sized cobbles along the south and west walls of the room formed those sides of the bin, and set it slightly away from the walls. The bottom of the bin was culturally sterile soil. There were no internal soil changes inside the bin, and it contained no metate or other in situ artifacts. A small corner of the pit structure numbered Unit 115b was present below the southwest corner of the bin, having extended some 40 cm into Unit 106. This area was small, and the excavation here into the trash and fill above the pit structure floor was labeled Unit 106b. The unit above this level was therefore Unit 106a for analytic purposes.

Unit 106 seems to have at least partly burned because of the presence of charcoal pieces that probably came from the structure roof. The portion of the central post that extended above the floor was also burned. However, the burning event must have been minor because the adobe construction material in the room was not reddened. The room could not have stood empty long before the roof burned, because roof fall, a layer 22 cm to 36 cm thick, lay directly on the floor. Most of the tree-ring specimens were recovered from the roof fall layer. Three specimens yielded non-cutting dates of A.D. 1060vv, A.D. 1086vv, and A.D. 1105vv (appendix 1). These dates are not conclusive, but the latest date is within two years of cutting dates from Unit 115a. These, along with the position of the room on the outside edge of the room block, suggest a late construction date for Unit 106. Fill above roof fall in Unit 106 consisted of loose, fine sandy silt that may have been blown or washed in. The artifact density in this layer was fairly high. Part of an obliterated corrugated jar (106-1-2/4, 106-1-3/5, perhaps including sherds from 106-1-2 and 106-1-3) was recovered from this level, as were half of a Late Classic Blackon-white bowl (106-1-3/4, 106-2-4) and 75 percent of a Middle Classic flowerpot-shaped vessel (106-2-4). These

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sherds may have been resting on top of roof fall, but the fragmentary nature of the vessels indicates that they were probably trash thrown into the room after the roof had collapsed. The partial remains of two children (mistakenly labeled 116-1-1) were in the fill and roof fall of this unit. A sherd (106-1-1/1) on the top of the roof fall was part of the Classic flowerpot-shaped bowl that (115-4-5/49, 115-4-5/51, 115-4-5/53, 115-4-5/56) was recovered from the roof fall of the adjacent Unit 115a. It is possible that this sherd landed in Unit 106 as the roof of Unit 115a started to collapse. There are other possible explanations for the presence of this sherd in Unit 106, none of which can be confirmed.

Unit 111 Unit 111 (figures 3.9 and 3.10) was the northwest corner of the 100s room block, with the north and west walls apparently forming the outer walls of the room block. Units 112 and 113 bordered Unit 111 to the east, Unit 121 was directly south, and Unit 110 was to the west. Units 111, 112, 113, 119, 120, and 121 may have composed a habitation unit used simultaneously by one group of people, perhaps a household. Units 111, 112, and 113 may have originally been one large room. Unit 111 was divided into two halves (labeled 111N and 111S) by a low east-west wall running across the room center. The north half of the room was quite different from the south half, in that the north half had a floor of culturally sterile soil, no hearth, and no in situ artifacts, while the south half had a smooth adobe floor, hearths, and in situ artifacts on the roof fall. These differences may relate to the different functions of each half of the room. No evidence of recent disturbance or pothunting was present in any part of Unit 111. All four of the perimeter walls were formed of unshaped cobbles with mud mortar (table 3.4). The north and west walls contained vents lined with stone slabs. The opening in the west wall was directly west of both hearths in the southern half of the room, while the vent in the north wall was not associated with a hearth or any other feature. There may have been a vent or doorway in the east wall near its intersection with the south wall, but this could not be ascertained. The east-west wall dividing the room halves was also constructed of cobbles and mud, but it was only two courses high, probably the original height. There was likely an opening in this wall near its intersection with the west wall. The bonding patterns of the wall corners were not clear, but the north and south walls apparently bonded with the east and west walls, suggesting possible simultaneous construction. These walls probably bonded with the adjoining walls of Units 112, 113, and 121, implying that the rooms all were built as a planned unit. The east-west dividing wall in Unit 111 was continuous with the wall

separating Unit 112 from Unit 113 to the east; both halves of the east wall of Unit 111 abutted onto the dividing wall. The northern half of the room had a floor of culturally sterile soil at an elevation of between 88 cm and 96 cm below the present ground surface (8.90 m to 8.98 m). The floor of the southern half was hard, smooth adobe at an elevation of between 82 cm and 85 cm below the ground surface (9.00 m to 9.03 m). It appears that no adobe floor had ever been laid in the northern half of the room. There were two hearths (table 3.6) in the southern half, both of which were aligned with the vent in the west wall. The closest hearth (111-4-12) to the vent had been plastered over at the floor level and was probably the first to be used. Fill in this hearth consisted of rich black soil with large amounts of charcoal, but no ash was present. It is not clear whether this hearth was cleaned of its original material before it was refilled and plastered at the floor surface. The second hearth (111-4-9), just east of the hearth that had been plastered over, was obvious at the floor level and was filled with concentrations of ash and a small amount of charcoal. It was formed from eight rocks set on end around the perimeter, so that the rocks extended somewhat above the level of the floor. The soil below the rocks was brownish-red and fire hardened. This hearth was slightly larger than the earlier one. There were two postholes each in the northern and southern halves of the room (table 3.5; figure 3.9). In each half, one posthole (111-4-13 and 111-5-15, respectively) was near the center of the east wall of its area, while the second (111-4-10 and 111-5-14) was in line with the first, and closer to the west wall. In the south half of the room, the two postholes were in line with the hearths and the vent in the west wall. The posthole (111-4-10) closest to the hearths contained a juniper post (111-4-10/1). This posthole pattern is unusual for Classic rooms, in which three postholes generally run along the center axis. The division of the room into two parts may have produced this particular posthole pattern, but it is also possible that this room was once part of a larger structure that included the adjoining Units 112 and 113. In that case, there would have been three postholes across the central axis of each of the room halves. In the northern half of the room, there was a thin layer of fine-grained, gray dusty soil above the culturally sterile soil floor and below roof fall. This may have been material blown or eroded into the room before the roof collapsed. The roof fall in the southern half of the room lay directly on the floor surface. In both parts of the room, the roof fall layer was between 30 cm and 45 cm thick and composed of adobe chunks and many large rocks. The rocks appear to have been wall fall that dropped into the roof matrix after the roof had collapsed. Since there was little or no fill between the roof fall and floors, the room did not remain unused for long before the roof collapsed. The room did not burn, and there was no trash between the roof fall and the floors.

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Figure 3.9.  Plan of Unit 111.

Many artifacts were apparently in situ on the roof fall of the southern half of the room (figure 3.9), between 7 cm and 34 cm above the floor. Some of the artifacts were fragmentary and may have been trash thrown into the room after the roof had collapsed. Only a single artifact, a mano fragment (111-3-7/10), was atop the roof fall in the northern part of the room. Many artifacts were clustered on the roof fall in the southwest corner of the room. These included a large, complete corrugated jar (111-3-8/13), half of a Classic

Black-on-white bowl (111-3-8/12), two complete manos (111-3-8/21 and 111-3-8/22, 111-3-8/25), one metate fragment (111-3-8/23), and two worked stone slabs (1112-1/1, 111-3-8/24). There were also two complete manos (111-3-8/15, 111-3-8/16) near the center of the southern half of the room, and two worked stone slabs (111-3-8/17, 111-3-8/18) in the northwest area. Post-occupation fill in Unit 111 consisted of loose, dark soil that had a low artifact density and many disarticulated human bones of at least one adult. All but two of

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Figure 3.10.  Photo of Unit 111-3-8 with excavated floor, artifacts, and unexcavated hearth.

the tree-ring samples came from this matrix (appendix 1). About 40 cm below the present ground surface (9.46 m), we noted an increase in the number of large rocks, which probably represent wall fall. Some of these rocks were embedded in the roof fall in the northern half of the room. The only artifact concentration in the post-occupation level was in the northern half of the room, where a worked stone slab with red pigment (111-3-7/3), two mano fragments (111-3-7/4, 111-3-7/5), a metate fragment (1113-7/6), and a pecking stone (111-3-7/7) were uncovered between 4 cm and 13 cm above the top of roof fall. These artifacts may have been trash thrown into the room after the roof collapsed, in which case the mano fragment (1113-7/10) directly on the roof fall would be included in this group, or they may have been associated with the roof fall, as seems to have been the case for artifacts in the southern half of the room.

Unit 112 Unit 112 was a small room (figures 3.1 and 3.11) east of the north half of Unit 111. It was north of Unit 113, itself a room similar in size to Unit 112, and west of the north part of Unit 114. It may have formed a household suite together with Units 111, 113, 119, 120, and 121. A test trench (112-1-3) was placed to the east of the northeast

corner of Unit 112, but no continuation of its north or east walls was observed, suggesting that no other room had been constructed in that area. However, a layer of adobe resembling roof fall was present from 33 cm to 48 cm (9.50 to 9.35 m) below the ground surface in the test trench, and so some form of structure may have been present. This patchy adobe layer contained three complete manos (112-1-3/2, 112-1-3/3, 112-1-3/7) and two tree-ring samples, one of which dated to A.D. 1091vv (appendix 1). Regardless of whether there was a room to the east, Unit 112 was probably on the northern tier in the 100s room block. The north wall of Unit 112 was continuous with the north wall in Unit 111, and it abutted the east wall of Unit 112, suggesting that the north walls of the two units were built at the same time. The west wall of Unit 112 bonded with its north wall and abutted against its south wall, which was in turn continuous with the dividing wall in Unit 111. The south wall also abutted the east wall. The east wall in Unit 112 was continuous with that in Unit 113. It appears that the north, south, and east walls of Unit 112 were originally built to enclose more than this one small room, supporting the simultaneous construction and use of Units 111, 112, and 113. Floor level was defined by culturally sterile soil at 99 cm (8.86 m) below the present ground surface. This is close to

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Figure 3.11.  Photo of Unit 112-4-4 roof fall.

the level of the culturally sterile soil floor in the adjoining northern half of Unit 111. No artifacts were on the floor of Unit 112. There were no hearths, postholes, pits, or burials associated with the floor level. We interpreted a thick layer of adobe that lay directly on the culturally sterile soil floor as roof fall. The roof in Unit 112 must have collapsed soon after the room went out of use, since no naturally deposited material was present between the roof fall and the floor. The room was not used as a trash dump before the roof collapsed. The adobe roof fall layer extended upward from the floor level to 51 cm (9.35 m) below the present ground surface. The adobe was irregular and seemed to be mixed with wall fall, post-occupation trash, and post-occupation

fill to a depth between 9.18 and 9.08 m where the adobe was distributed over much of the room. A large pit was evident at approximately this depth, and it covered the northeast and east-central areas of the room. The pit did not extend below the culturally sterile soil level and was at least partly created by rodent disturbance. The nature of the pit was not clear. It may have been an ancient disturbance through roof fall, because the pit was partly superimposed by wall fall rocks, but it may also have been created more recently, with the rocks being deposited as a result of pothunting activities. We may have completely misinterpreted the nature of floor and roof fall in this unit. The level at which the adobe “roof fall” was continuous over much of the room

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Figure 3.12.  Photo of Unit 113-5-9 part of excavated floor, pits, and hearth.

(9.18–9.08 m) may instead have been a rough adobe floor, with the irregular adobe chunks above being actual roof fall. There would still be a question about the nature of the large pit, which in this scenario would have extended through the floor. Post-occupation fill above the roof fall in Unit 112 contained a complete adult left humerus, and a much higher density of artifacts than did the lower levels associated with the construction and use of the room. The room may have been used as a trash dump after the roof collapsed. Wall fall was particularly concentrated in the northwest and east central areas of the room, although the walls were not lower in these areas. The wall fall rocks alternatively may have been a result of possible recent potting activities.

Unit 113 Unit 113 (figures 3.1 and 3.12) was directly south of Unit 112 and east of the southern half of Unit 111. Unit 114 was to its east and Unit 122 to its south. As suggested above, Unit 113 may have been part of a household suite that included Units 111, 112, 119, 120, and 121. Unit 113 was undisturbed by earlier excavation or pothunting. Unit 113 was a small room (table 3.4), but it was unlike other small rooms at the Mattocks site. All other small

rooms had either a rough cobble or culturally sterile soil floor, with no hearth present. Unit 113 had a smooth adobe floor, with a slab-lined hearth near the west wall. The room originally may have been part of a larger room that included Unit 112 and both halves of Unit 111. If so, then a smooth adobe floor and a hearth would not be unexpected because they match the southern half of Unit 111, which had similar features. Unit 112 and the northern half of Unit 111 both lacked floor features, and both had culturally sterile soil floors. The east wall of Unit 113 was covered with adobe plaster over most of its courses. There was a possible vent or door in the west wall (table 3.4), adjacent to the hearth, but the actual nature of the opening was uncertain because of the jumbled aspect of the wall. However, the adobe floor continued unbroken from Unit 113 through the opening to Unit 111, indicating that a wall feature did exist. The feature was probably a vent because a doorway would have been untenable due to the presence of the hearth. Two stone slabs extended out from the floor level of the north wall at an angle of about 55 degrees, and their purpose is unknown. Unit 113 seems to have been associated with the construction of Units 111 and 112. The east wall of Unit 113 was continuous with the east wall of Unit 112. The north wall of Unit 113 abutted the east wall and was continuous

Surface Rooms Excavated by the Mimbres Foundation with the dividing wall in Unit 111. The west wall (if it was a wall) abutted the north wall, but its connection with the south wall could not be determined because the wall had been disturbed in that area. The south wall was continuous with that in Units 111 and 114, and the east wall abutted the south wall. The floor of Unit 113 was a hard, flat adobe surface at an elevation of 77 cm (9.04 m) below the present ground surface (table 3.4). The floor level was within one or two centimeters of the floor in the southern half of Unit 111. The hearth (table 3.6; 113-5-9) was about 20 cm from the west wall, adjacent to an apparent vent or door in that wall. It was near the southwest corner of the room, an unusual placement. There were two postholes and a pit (table 3.5) in the floor of Unit 113. One posthole (113-5-8) was in the center of the room and contained many wood chips, presumably from the original post. The second posthole (1135-6) was oval in shape and was slightly northeast of the first. The pit (113-5-7) was shallow, filled with ashy soil, and was a possible warming pit. It was southwest of the central posthole. The only artifact near the floor of Unit 113 was a metate fragment (113-4-1/13) that had been placed north of the hearth near the west wall. The metate was actually 4 cm above the floor, and so it may instead have been associated with the ground stone artifacts that were uncovered throughout the roof fall and post-occupation fill. Unburned adobe roof fall lay directly on the floor, demonstrating that no purposeful or natural filling activities occurred before the roof collapsed. Roof fall was at least 24 cm thick. Within it, at 9.17 m to 9.20 m, were adult human skeletal remains and several pieces of ground stone, including two manos (113-3-1/1, 113-3-1/2), a mano fragment (4-1/9), a metate fragment (113-4-1/12), and a worked slab fragment (113-4-1/10). These artifacts may represent an in situ roof assemblage imbedded into the roof matrix when the roof collapsed. Alternatively, they may be items that were thrown into the room after the roof collapsed, as there were also several ground stone artifacts in the post-occupation fill. Post-occupation fill was loose soil with many rocks (probably wall fall) near the present ground surface. Several worked stone slab fragments were near the southwest corner. Three manos (113-1-1/3, 113-2-1/1, 112-1-1/2), a mano fragment (112-1-1/4), and a metate fragment (1121-1/3) were uncovered in this layer, possibly indicating that some trash was thrown into the room after the roof collapsed.

Unit 114 Unit 114 (figures 3.13 and 3.14) was a room of average size (table 3.4) in the center of the northern tier of the 100s room block. The room was bordered by Units 112

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and 113 to the west, Units 122 and 125 to the south, and Unit 123 to the east. While there was probably no room to the north, the test trench outside the northeast corner of Unit 112 only determined that no walls continued away from the corner, and some form of structure may have been present. About half of Unit 114 had been pothunted. The pothunting included almost the entire north half of the room and north wall and, in the south half, the area along the east wall and a burial along the west wall. The northwest, northeast, and southeast corners had been pot­ hunted. There were two floor surfaces in Unit 114 (designated 114a and 114b), the lower of which may originally have been an outside work area because no features were on it. Its extent could not be determined because of pot­ hunting in this room and in the adjacent Units 122, 123, and 125. Most of the north wall had been removed by pothunting. The northern part of the west wall and the southern part of the east wall had been destroyed, probably also as a result of pothunting. There was a possible door near the center of the south wall, but its presence was not confirmed, and it may have been an area where the wall had collapsed or been pothunted. The “doorway” does align with the hearth on the upper floor of this room. We could not determine the bonding-abutting patterns of three of the four corners because of disturbance. In the fourth corner, the west wall abutted onto the south wall, which was continuous to the west along Units 113 and 111. The lower adobe surface (Unit 114b) was present only in the area of the room south of the hearth associated with the upper floor. The surface was hard and compact and had flecks of charcoal, small pebbles, and cobbles embedded in it. There were no floor features or artifacts associated with the surface, although one burial was definitely associated with it, and several more, including an unknown number in the pothunted area, may have been related to this surface. Whether the floor was the true first floor in the room or an extramural work surface that was in use before the room was built could not be ascertained due to pothunting. The burial that can definitely be associated with the lower surface (114b-5-9B) was an adult female and was in the lower floor just below the hearth in the upper floor. Hearth construction had disturbed much of the burial, especially at the east end, and bones from the burial were in the bottom of the hearth. The burial was apparently not plastered over at the lower floor level, and so it is likely that the pit was dug after the floor was no longer used, but before fill was deposited over the lower floor to form the base for the upper floor. An Early Transitional Black-onwhite bowl (114b-5-9B/1) was inverted over the cranium. This is significant because it is evidence of later Classic material (the hearth and the Classic Black-on-white bowls

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Figure 3.13.  Plan of Unit 114.

on the roof) being superimposed over a Transitional bowl, demonstrating that the Transitional style was earlier than the Classic style. This particular superposition was the first time that we were able to understand the relative ages of the two styles. The material between the lower and upper floors seems to have been a mixed trash deposit that formed the foundation of the upper surface. Alternatively, the material

could have been trash thrown into the room area between the two periods of use. The deposit was 27 cm to 38 cm thick and was composed of rich, dark soil, hard adobe chunks and, in some places, solid adobe. A relatively high density of sherds and chipped stone was in the fill along with numerous small artifacts such as bits of raw material, a quartz crystal (114-4-2/10), a worked sherd (1144-2/4), an obsidian projectile point (114-4-2/3; listed as

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Figure 3.14.  Photo of Unit 114-3-2 excavated floor and hearth.

114-3-2/3), two or three metate fragments (114-4-2, 1144-2/8), a mano fragment (114-4-2/14), and a complete mano (114-4-2/2). The upper floor (designated Unit 114a) was a smooth adobe surface (table 3.4) with charcoal flecks throughout. The only artifact that remained on the floor was a mano fragment (114-3-2/18) along the south edge of the pothunting hole bordering the east wall; the mano might be associated with the floor, the roof fall, or the pothunting hole. Several cobbles were embedded in the floor in front of the possible doorway in the south wall, perhaps indicating that the doorway instead may have been an area of collapsed or pothunted wall. Most of the floor in the northern half of the room, and in other areas previously mentioned, had been removed by pothunting. The hearth in the upper floor (114a-4-4; table 3.6; figures 3.13 and 3.14) was near the center of the southern half of the room. The ash in the hearth was chalky white and very compact, while its slabs had been burned to a deep orange. Only one possible posthole remained intact in Unit 114 (table 3.5). This feature was located within 1144-5, a pothunted burial near the center of the west wall. Because of the pothunting in this area, we could not ascertain whether the posthole was associated with the upper or lower floor. Four (114-4-5, 114-4-6, 114-4-7, 114-10-50) of the six burials discussed here also might have been associated with either the upper or the lower floors. The remaining

two (114-4-10B, 114-4-11B) were interred above the lower floor level, and so they had to be associated with the upper floor or the post-occupation period in the room. Three of the burials of questionable association were adults. One (114-4-5) was a pothunted burial pit along the west wall. Disarticulated infant and adult bones were present throughout the pit. Although pothunters may have removed a bowl from the burial, a turquoise pendant (1144-5/2), 13 whole and five fragmentary turquoise beads (114-4-5/3), an abalone shell pendant fragment (114-45/1), a pillowstone (114-4-5/4), and a fossil brachiopod (114-4-5) remained. The burial in 114-4-6 was plastered over at the surface of the upper floor, and the top of the burial pit began below the lower floor level. We do not know whether the pit was also plastered over at the lower floor level, and so it is uncertain whether the burial was associated with the lower or upper floor. Although the immature and adult bones were disarticulated, probably due to ancient disturbance or rodents, a Classic Black-on-white geometric bowl (114-4-6/1) was inverted at the north end of the pit. The third adult burial (114-4-7B) was either not plastered at the upper floor level, or the upper levels of the burial had been pothunted and its plaster removed. The burial was somewhat disarticulated in the upper levels but was generally undisturbed, as evidenced by a Middle Classic geometric bowl (114-4-7B/2) that was inver-ted over the cranium and a complete mano (114-47B/3) over the chest.

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One child burial (114-10–50) was of questionable association. The pit was in the northeast corner of the room, and the burial extended under the east wall. The interment was directly below burial 114-4–10B, which was associated with the upper floor. Burial 114-10–50 was completely below the level of the lower floor. Although the bones were disintegrated and scattered, Classic (114-1050/2) and Middle Classic (114-10-50/1) geometric bowls were inverted in the east end of the pit. Four turquoise pendants (114-10-50/5) were also present. Two burials (114-4-10B, 114-4-11B) can be associated with either the upper floor or the post-occupation period. Both of these were infants, a common characteristic of burials associated with the occupation of a room. The burial in 114-4-10B, an infant about two years old, was directly above 114-10-50, as noted above. A possibly Classic Black-on-white bowl fragment (114-4-10B/1) was inverted over the cranium and part of the body. The burial in 114-4-11B was an infant burial under the southwest corner of the room. A complete mano (114-4-11B/2) was over the cranium in this burial. The bottoms of five possible burial pits were in the pothunted northern area of the room, in culturally sterile soil. Although human bone was scattered throughout the pothunted fill in this part of the room, none of the pits still contained human bones or grave goods. If the pits do represent burials, then there would have been a total of 12 burials in Unit 114. The human bones collected from this pothunted deposit were minimally those of an adult female and those of a possibly female child less than 12 years old. No in situ artifacts were on either floor of this room, but a number were on the top of the roof fall, at elevations between 49 cm and 61 cm (9.19–9.31 m) below the present ground surface. The artifacts were clustered in the central and south-central area of the roof, particularly above the hearth. Roof artifacts may once have been situated in the pothunted areas of the room, but this cannot be confirmed. The roof assemblage included a worked slab fragment (114-3-2/10), two manos (114-3-2/11, 114-3-2/15), a mano fragment (114-3-2/14), 20 percent of a Middle Classic Black-on-white flare rim bowl (114-1-1, 114-3-2, 114-3-2/16, 114-4-4), 40 percent of a Late Classic naturalistic jar (114-3-2, 114-3-2/13), and 30 percent of a Classic jar (114-1-1, 114-2-2, 114-3-2, 114-3-2/13, 114-3-8, 114-4-2, 114-4-4). Thirty percent of another Middle Classic bowl (Mimbres Archive number 4782) was scattered through various levels. All of these partial vessels may have been related to pothunting or ancient trash deposition, rather than an in situ roof assemblage. The roof of Unit 114 fell directly onto the floor and, as with other units in this area, there were no intervening natural or trash deposits. Roof fall contained a large number of rocks, sherds, and animal bones, as if trash had been incorporated into the adobe roof matrix during

construction or use. Alternatively, trash may have been thrown into the room once the roof collapsed and then become embedded into the roof fall. Bones minimally from a possibly male adult and a child of less than 13 years were mixed into the roof fall and the post-occupation fill above it. Post-occupation fill was apparently naturally deposited. It was loose and fine grained, with some clumps of adobe and some rocks that were probably wall fall. A few infant bones were also in this fill.

Unit 115a Unit 115 (figure 3.1) was a relatively large masonry room (Unit 115a; figures 3.15 and 3.16) superimposed above almost half of a rectangular pit structure (Unit 115b). The masonry walls did not extend below the floor level, even in places where the walls were built on pit structure fill and thus might have required a firmer foundation. The masonry room was in the northernmost tier of rooms in the 100s room block. Unit 123 was directly to the south, Unit 116 surrounded the southeast corner, and Unit 106 was along the east wall. A test trench (Unit 105) north of Unit 106 indicated that no room had been built in this area, and it is unlikely that a room had existed north of Unit 115. We do not know whether there was a room west of Unit 115. All corners of Unit 115a other than the southeast one were intact. This corner had been removed by a pothunting hole that had also disturbed a burial (115-5-6). The hole extended a short distance into the adjoining Unit 116. There were openings in each of the four walls (table 3.4), all of which may have been vents, although the characteristics of the openings in the north and east walls were obscured by wall fall. A 30 cm-long slab formed the base of the opening in the north wall at an elevation of 9.05 m, about 3 cm above the floor. This opening probably provided ventilation for the hearth (115-6-12) about 1 m to the south. As the top was slumped, the feature might have been either a vent or a doorway, but the former is more likely because the north wall probably was external, and a door would have admitted too much cold wind during the winter months. The top of the opening in the east wall had also slumped, and an accurate measurement of the opening could not be obtained. The excavators estimated a width of 50 cm, and so it may have been a door. The base was about 7 cm above the floor (9.05 m). Immediately outside the opening was the bin in the adjoining Unit 106, which suggests that Unit 106 was used after the vent had ceased to function. The openings in both the south and west walls were vents, as evidenced by their intact tops, which were not high enough for the openings to have been doors. The feature in the south wall was 20 cm wide and 22 cm high,

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Figure 3.15.  Plan of Unit 115a.

and its base was at 9.13 m, or 11 cm above the floor. This vent was about 90 cm from a hearth (115-6-20) that had been plastered over at the floor level, and it probably provided ventilation for that feature. The opening in the west wall was 30 cm wide and 41 cm high, and the base was 21 cm above the floor (9.23 m). The top was formed by a stone slab, the upper surface of which was level with the uppermost course of wall masonry. The feature was a vent, but it may have originally been a door that had been remodeled into a vent; any evidence for this had long since been destroyed.

The bonding-abutting pattern of the wall corners was not particularly conclusive, although the north, west, and east walls may have been built at the same time. The northwest and northeast corners were both bonded, while the west wall abutted onto the south wall. Pothunting had removed the southeast corner. There is some evidence that Unit 106 to the east was built at the same time as Unit 115a, since the south wall of Unit 106 bonded with the east wall of Unit 115a, and the west wall of Unit 106 bonded into the northeast corner of Unit 115a. If these rooms were built at the same time, the slabs over the vent

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Figure 3.16.  Photo of Unit 115-4-5 excavated floor and pits.

opening into Unit 106 imply that the function of one or both of the rooms had changed over time. The floor of Unit 115a was a smooth, hard adobe surface (table 3.4). It was 82 cm to 86 cm above the Unit 115b pit structure floor and contained a single human tooth. There were two hearths in Unit 115a (table 3.6; figures 3.17 and 3.18). One (115-6-20) had been plastered over at the floor level and was apparently not functioning during the latest period of use in this room. This hearth may originally have had a few rocks on the upper surface. The feature contained both ash and soil, which may indicate that it had been cleaned out before it was plastered over. It may have been associated with a vent in the south wall. The second hearth (115-6-12) was the most recently used and was circular with an adobe lining and a couple of cobbles on its upper surface. The hearth was filled with ash and was apparently associated with the probable vent in the north wall. Six postholes were in the floor of Unit 115a (table 3.5). Three of these (115-6-18, 115-5-7, 115-6-16) formed a rough west-east line across the center of the room. The postholes in 115-6-18 and 115-5-7 may also have been associated with the pit structure below the room. The central posthole (115-5-7) was the deepest, extending into the floor of the Unit 115b pit structure; a juniper post (1154-5/11) remained in it. The posthole in 115-6-16 was par-

tially dug through soft pit structure fill, and its bottom was lined with flat rocks for support. The partial remains of a child of about six and another of less than six months old were present in this posthole. A shallow posthole (115-­­ 5-9) was southeast of the central one, while the remaining two (115-7-22, 115-7-27) were near each other along the south wall. The posthole in 115-7-22 may have been plastered over at the floor level, but we could not be certain since rain had soaked the area during excavation. If 115-722 had been plastered over, 115-7-27 might have replaced the earlier posthole. Two pits were associated with the floor of Unit 115a (table 3.5). The first (115-6-14) was shallow and lined with adobe. It contained no ash or artifacts that might suggest its function, but by its profile shape and size, it might have been a pot rest. The second pit (115-5-9) was oval with a shallow posthole (also called 115-5-9) at the southern end. Again, it contained no artifacts that might indicate its function. No human bones were present, and so it is unlikely that this was a burial. Although features such as this have been called foot drums, it seems that this designation is often selected because of the unusual shape and lack of other identifying features. Five burials probably associated with Unit 115a. Of these, three pits (115-7-21, 115-7-23, 115-7-24) were

Figure 3.17.  Photo of Unit 115-6-12 excavated hearth.

Figure 3.18.  Photo of Unit 115-6-20 excavated hearth.

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plastered over at the floor surface of the room, implying that the burials were interred while the room was still in use. A fourth burial (115-5-6) was not plastered at floor level, and it had apparently been pothunted during the episode of disturbance that destroyed the southeast corner of the room. This burial was of a newborn infant and contained no grave goods; the lack of grave goods and the rather large pit, as well as the question of plaster at the floor level, may be related to pothunting activities instead of the original condition of the burial. The fifth burial (115-10-25) was definitely not plastered at the floor level, and therefore it probably postdated the period when the room was used for habitation. This pit was intrusive into the pit structure floor, and it contained the remains of an adult male with a Middle Classic Black-on-white naturalistic bowl (115-10-25/2). Of the three burials with pits plastered at the floor level, one (115-7-21) intruded into the pit structure wall and floor, although most of the pit was outside the pit structure boundary. Although very close to the burial in 115-5-6, it was apparently unaffected by the pothunting activities, but sherds from two or three vessels were scattered around this area. The pots included an almost complete and heavily worn Middle Classic bowl (115-5-6, 115-6-13, 115-7-21, 115-7-21/3), one-fourth of a Middle Classic naturalistic bowl (115-7-21/2), and six sherds of a Classic bowl with a turkey feather design (115-7-17/2; this vessel may be the same one that provided some of the sherds in 115-5-6, 115-6-13, 115-7-21/3, and perhaps 115-7-21/2). All of these may have belonged to the burial in 115-7-21, an adult who was also interred with an Early Classic bowl (115-7-21/3). The burial in 115-7-24 was intrusive into the pit structure wall, although again most of the pit was outside the pit structure boundary. It was the burial of a child about five years old, who was accompanied by a Middle Classic naturalistic bowl (115-7-24/3) and two shell beads (115-7-24/1). The third burial (1157-23) was entirely dug into culturally sterile soil outside the pit structure walls. It contained a possibly male adult and a Classic geometric bowl (115-7-23/2). In addition to the formal burials, the scattered bones of a child about five years old and a few infant and adult bones were below the 115a floor in the northeast corner of the room (part of 115-6-17). The bones had been disturbed either in antiquity or by the rodents whose holes riddled the area. They were in the same area as a Middle Classic III flare rim bowl (115-6-17/5) and a small Classic jar with two lug handles (115-6-17/4). The vessels were 14 cm below the floor surface. No burial pit was evident, but if the bones and vessels represent a burial, then it would have been plastered over at the floor level. No obvious artifact assemblage remained in place on the floor of Unit 115a. There were artifacts, often broken or incomplete, on the floor, but they seem to either be trash that was thrown into the room before the roof

collapsed, or artifacts that were on the roof itself. We discuss these artifacts below. We cannot be certain whether any time passed between the time when this room was used for habitation and the burning and collapse of the roof. In some areas, roof fall, including charred roof beams, lay directly on the floor, while in other places there was a little loose, powdery fill between roof fall and floor. The fill, also present around the roof fall chunks, may represent small amounts of trash thrown into the room before the roof burned, part of the roof fall, or material from the roof surface that was scattered as the roof collapsed. In any event, there was little, if any, deposition between the roof fall and the floor, but the presence of the unplastered burial pit (115-10-25) implies that some time passed between the end of the room use for habitation and when the roof burned. Many artifacts were uncovered on the floor surface or just above it (figure 3.15), and most of these were either fragmentary or very small. The artifacts could be part of a small amount of trash between roof fall and floor, trash thrown onto the roof after it had collapsed, or artifacts on the roof surface when it collapsed. The latter is a good possibility since two artifact clusters suggest activity loci. The first cluster included two mano fragments (115-4-5/38, 115-4-10/19), two cores (115-4-10/16, 1154-10/17), a piece of magnetite (115-4-10/18), a projectile point (115-4-5/35), a shell bracelet fragment (1154-10/15), and part of a small obliterated corrugated jar (115-4-5/33). The jar, bracelet fragment, and projectile point may not have been related to the other artifacts, but the mano fragments, cores, and magnetite suggest a ground- or chipped-stone manufacturing area. The second artifact cluster, to the east of the first, may represent the same activities. In this group were seven mano fragments (115-4-5/17, 115-4-5/41, 115-4-5/42, 115-45/43, 115-4-5/44, 115-4-5/47, 115-4-10/13), two metate fragments (115-4-5/39, 115-4-5/40), a core (115-4-5/48), sherds from a Classic vessel (115-4-5/46), a three-quarter grooved ax (115-4-10/10), and several unworked rocks. The horizontal distribution of roof beams supports the suggestion that the artifacts on and slightly above the floor were on the roof when it collapsed. The beams were concentrated in an arc that ran from the center of the east wall toward the south wall, and on toward the center of the west wall. The artifacts were also concentrated in these areas. Further, sherds (115-4-5/49, 115-4-5/51, 1154-5/53, 115-4-5/56; 106-1-1/1) from a Classic flowerpot-­ shaped bowl were scattered in a line from the northeast corner diagonally toward the center of the room. Perhaps the roof began to collapse from the northeast corner and then continued outward in an arc from that point, spilling both roof beams and artifacts onto the floor. The tree-ring specimens from the roof fall yielded a series of dates (appendix 1) culminating in outside ring and bark dates of A.D. 1106 and A.D. 1107. Unit 115a was

Surface Rooms Excavated by the Mimbres Foundation almost certainly built in A.D. 1107, with some construction wood having been cut the previous year. The loose powdery fill that was intermixed with the upper layer of roof fall contained a significant amount of trash, in the form of small and broken artifacts. The artifacts may have been part of the materials on the roof when it collapsed, or they may have been trash thrown into the room depression on top of the roof fall. Within this layer were the partial remains of at least one adult, a child of about 12, and an infant. Above this layer were about 50 cm of dark brown humus soil, which seemed to be naturally deposited and developed. It contained fewer artifacts than the lower level.

Unit 116 Unit 116 (figures 3.19 and 3.20) was on the eastern edge of the 100s room block, south of Unit 106, east of Units 115 and 123, and north of Unit 126. The room was “L” shaped with the base of the “L” extending west around the southeast corner of Unit 115. The room was divided into two parts, the top (north) part of the “L” having a rough adobe floor and a small floor area, and the bottom (south) part of the “L” with a smooth adobe floor and a large floor area. A pothunting hole extended more than 2 m into Unit 116 from the southeast corner of Unit 115. The hole removed the walls and parts of the floor in this area, but it was the only evidence of disturbance in the room. The east wall of Unit 116 was particularly well built, being chinked with smaller rocks between the larger ones. There was an open doorway at the north end of the east wall (table 3.4) connecting Unit 116 with the area outside the room block. We excavated a test trench (116-3-2) 1.25 m beyond the door and confirmed that the north room wall did not continue to the east. An adobe surface at 9.13 m (about 13 cm above the floor level in the northern part of the room) remained in the doorway. At 9.29 m, just inside the door, was a complete worked slab (1163-2/1) that may have been a covering for the door. The slab was on or above roof fall. The coursing in the south wall was also particularly well-constructed of uniformly sized cobbles. A doorway, blocked with smaller cobbles, once connected Units 116 and 126 through the south wall (table 3.4). A third doorway was in the north wall, connecting Units 116 and 106; this opening was filled with wall fall but had not been intentionally blocked. There was a single course of five stones extending halfway into the room from the east wall at the point where the nature of the floors in the northern and southern parts of the room changed. These rocks might only represent wall fall, but they might also be the remains of a divider that separated the northern and southern sections of the room. The bonding and abutting patterns of the wall corners in Unit 116 indicate that this room and Units 126

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and 127 to the south may have been built simultaneously. The south and east walls of Unit 116 were bonded at the corner, and the south wall of Unit 116 bonded with the north wall of Unit 127 and with the wall that separated Units 126 and 127. The south wall of Unit 116 abutted against the west wall. The portion of the west wall that formed the “L” was pothunted, and so we could not determine the bonding and abutting patterns here. The north part of the west wall appeared to bond with the north wall of this room, but the area was complicated by a possible vent associated with Unit 115. The fact that the north wall bonded with the east wall in Unit 106 lends further support to the interpretation that these two rooms were built at the same time. The small part of the east wall north of the doorway abutted onto the north wall of the room. Thus, Units 106, 116, 126, and 127 may all have been constructed simultaneously along the east side of the 100s room block. The character of the floor differed between the northern and southern parts of Unit 116 (table 3.4). The floor in the northern part of the “L” was a thin layer of rough adobe that had been laid directly on culturally sterile soil. It was similar in construction and characteristics to the floors in most of the smaller rooms at the site (most notably the floor in Unit 106, directly adjacent to the northern part of the room) and to the floor in the northern half of Unit 111. The floor in the southern half of the room was smooth adobe between 5 cm and 20 cm thick. Rodent activity had destroyed much of the floor, but the surface remained intact around the hearth in the center of this part of the room, and to the east and west of the hearth. This floor was like those that we uncovered in the larger rooms at the Mattocks site. The hearth in Unit 116 (116-5-9H; table 3.6; figure 3.21) was slightly west of center in the southern part of the room. The feature had a dense concentration of ash and charcoal in its bottom 10 cm, and it produced an archaeo­ magnetic date of A.D. 1050–1160 (chapter 1), which is too broad for meaningful analysis. There was no hearth in the northern part of the room. The posthole pattern in the northern part of Unit 116 differed from that in the south. The postholes (116-5-14, 116-5-15, 116-5-16; table 3.5) ran north to south through the center of the northern part of the room, even though this area was relatively small. There were four postholes in the south part of the room (116-5-8 #1, 116-5-11, 1165-12, 116-5-13). These ran around the room edges, which was not the usual pattern for a medium to large Classic period room at the Mattocks site. There was also a large posthole (116-5-18) just to the east of the hearth that had been plastered over at the floor level, and so it was no longer in use during the final room occupation. East of the plastered posthole (116-5-18) and about 56 cm west of the east wall of Unit 116 was a rectangular

Figure 3.19.  Plan of Unit 116.

Figure 3.20.  Photo of Unit 116-4-8 excavated floor, hearth, and pits.

Figure 3.21.  Photo of Unit 116-5-9H excavated hearth.

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Figure 3.22.  Photo of Unit 116-5-20 rectangular subfloor feature.

outline of ash (116-5-20; figure 3.22) that measured 30 by 15 cm. The outline was not evident at the floor level of the room. It appears that some sort of rectangular organic container had been set between 1 cm and 4 cm into culturally sterile soil and then burned and plastered over at the floor level. The soil around the feature showed evidence of alteration by fire. The container was apparently made of flexible material, since a rock in the culturally sterile soil protruded into the bottom of the feature, and this would have been an unstable base for an inflexible object, such as a wooden box. The container was probably a basket. Within the feature were a 1 g piece of chrysocolla (116-5-20/1), a small piece of red iron ochre (116-5-20/2), and a matrix of sandy silt. The purpose of the feature is unknown. The two burial pits (116-5-17, 116-5-21) in Unit 116 were both plastered over at the floor level, and both were along the south wall of the room. Burial 116-5-17 contained one individual (no identification available) and a shell bead (116-5-17/2) that was a few centimeters above the skeleton. The second burial pit (116-5-21) contained two individuals, a child of seven and a fetus. This burial was badly disturbed by rodents, or by a possible posthole placed through the pit and then plastered over before the final use of the room floor. There were no grave goods in this burial. Only two artifacts remained on the floor of Unit 116. One of these was the base of a corrugated pot that may have been used as a scoop (116-4-8/2), and the other was about 10 percent of an obliterated corrugated jar (116-48/3). Both of these artifacts may be trash that was thrown

into the room after it was no longer inhabited. They are unlikely to be part of an in situ floor assemblage. The roof of Unit 116 apparently did not burn, although three dated tree-ring samples (116-3-7/4, 116-3-7/6, 116-3-­­ 7/9) lay on or just within the roof fall. None produced a cutting date (chapter 1), but they do suggest that the room was constructed in the late A.D. 1000s. The other tree-ring dates from this unit were from disturbed or uninformative contexts. The roof of Unit 116 collapsed directly onto the floor, indicating that very little trash had been deposited in the room after it was no longer used for habitation. Roof fall consisted of discontinuous adobe lumps beginning at least 10 cm above the floor (at 9.23 m). Although there was a worked slab fragment (116-3-3/1) and a complete mano (116-4-5/1) on the top of roof fall, the artifacts do not seem to form an in situ roof assemblage. They may have been associated with activities performed on the roof, or they may have been part of the trash thrown into the room after the roof collapsed. The post-occupation fill above the roof fall in Unit 116 was the usual loose sandy silt with numerous cobbles. The high density of ground stone in the fill was notable and perhaps represented artifacts thrown into the room as trash. The ground stone included 11 mano fragments (116-1-2/1, 116-1-2/2, 116-1-2, 116-1-3, 116-3-3, 116-17, 116-2-7, 116-3-7; some proveniences had more than one mano fragment), a complete mano (116-2-7/2), nine metate fragments (116-1-3, 116-2-3, 116-1-4, 116-1-7, 116-2-7; some proveniences had more than one metate fragment), half a mortar (116-3-7/10), and a possible

Surface Rooms Excavated by the Mimbres Foundation abrader blank (116-3-7/7). The latter two pieces were from the pothunted area at the corner of the “L.” The density of other artifacts in the post-occupation fill was not particularly high, although there was 75 percent of an obliterated corrugated jar (116-3-7). It is possible that the ground stone in this and other post-occupation fill is from the wall fall.

Unit 119 Unit 119 (figure 3.1) was a small room (table 3.4) on the probable western edge of the 100s room block. Excavation in Units 110 and 117, to the north and south respectively, demonstrated that there were no rooms on these sides of Unit 119. Unit 120 was the room to the east of Unit 119. We do not know if another room existed to the west. It was difficult to discern the extent of pothunting in Unit 119. A mixture of fill and culturally sterile soil was in the lowest 20 cm above culturally sterile soil in the southern meter of the room, especially in the southeast corner. The northern section of the west wall was a jumble of small rocks, unlike the remainder of the wall, which had regular-sized rocks laid in courses. These two areas had probably been pothunted, but the rest of the room may also have been disturbed. Room fill was homogeneous from the ground surface to culturally sterile soil, and the latter formed the floor surface in the room. This floor is characteristic of a small room, perhaps one with no roof, but it may also indicate pothunting. We recovered no historic artifacts from Unit 119, and so the question of pothunting remains open. As with Units 120 and 121, there was apparently no south wall for Unit 119. The remaining three walls were of cobble masonry (table 3.4), with a particularly high amount of mud mortar in the east wall. The west and north walls of the unit were bonded at the northwest corner, and the north wall was continuous with that of Unit 120, which suggests that this continuous wall and the west wall of Unit 119 were built at the same time. The east wall of Unit 119 abutted the north wall, and it may have been built after the north wall was constructed. Along the east wall and directly atop culturally sterile soil about 52 cm below the present ground surface (9.34 m), was a small (80 by 40 cm) area of compacted earth less than 1 cm thick. This surface may have been a floor. Culturally sterile soil at the same elevation may have formed the rest of the floor. Two probable postholes (table 3.5) were uncovered in the floor of Unit 119. The posthole in 119-4-3 was in the northwest quadrant of the unit, and 119-4-4 was in the northeast corner. Both features had stones lining their sides and bottoms. There was no evidence of roof fall in Unit 119. The fill in the unit was homogeneous between the present ground surface and the level of culturally sterile soil. A large,

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slightly obliterated corrugated jar (119-2-2/3) was in this fill at elevations between 22 cm and 48 cm below the present ground surface (9.64 m to 9.38 m). About 50 percent of the vessel was recovered with 50 percent of the locus screened. Although it was close to the level of culturally sterile soil, the pot was not resting on any surface. Parts of it had been crushed by a large rock. The vessel may have been placed in the room and later broken by wall fall.

Unit 120 Unit 120 (figure 3.1) was a small room to the west of Unit 121 and to the east of Unit 119. Excavations in Units 110 to the north and 130 to the south indicated that no structures were evident on these sides of Unit 120. The room had been completely pothunted. Only a small area of possible hard adobe floor was uncovered, in the southwest corner of the room about 60 cm below the ground surface (9.26 m). Further evidence of pothunting was a horseshoe (120-4-5/6) about 72 cm below the present ground surface (9.14 m). However, 80 percent of a Middle Classic seed jar (120-1-1) was near the southeast corner of the unit, albeit not on a floor. This area may have been pothunted, but the jar was not taken by the pothunters because it was incomplete. There was no discernable south wall for Unit 120, and so like Units 119 and 121, it was apparently open to the south. The remaining three walls were cobble masonry (table 3.4). The west section of the north wall and the south end of the west wall had possible pothunting holes in them. These disturbed areas might have been doorways instead of pothunting holes but, given the pothunted nature of the room, the presence of pothunting holes in the walls would not be unexpected. The north wall of Unit 120 was continuous with that of Unit 119, indicating that the wall was probably built as a single unit. The north wall abutted against the east wall, suggesting that both rooms might have been added onto the west of Unit 121 after that structure had been built. The west wall of Unit 120 also abutted onto the north wall, again suggesting that it was added after the latter wall was constructed. Four pits were present in culturally sterile soil below the level of pothunting, about 82 cm below the ground surface (9.04 m; table 3.5). One of these (120-5-6) was probably the central posthole for the structure, as it was deep and lined with rocks. The functions of the other three pits were less clear, although two adjoining pits (120-5-7 #2, 120-5-7 #3) in the northwest quadrant may also have been postholes. The fourth pit (120-5-8) was partially under the north wall of the structure. It is likely to have been in place before the room was built, and because infant bones were present, it may have been a pothunted burial pit. Unit 120 does not appear to have burned, and we collected no tree-ring samples from the fill. Because of the

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Figure 3.23.  Plan of Units 121, 130, and 131.

pothunting, nothing can be said about the nature of its roof fall or post-occupation fill.

Units 121, 130, and 131 Unit 121 (figures 3.1, 3.23, 3.24, and 3.25) was an unpot­ hunted room that had walls on only its north, east, and west sides. Two lines of rocks, one course high and one meter apart, may have formed boundaries for the south side of the structure, but there was no full-height south wall. Unit 121 was near the southwest corner of the 100s room block. Unit 120 was to the west, Unit 111 to the north, and Unit 122 to the east. No room or structure was built to the south of Unit 121, and the unit may have been a bounded plaza or extramural work area. The lack

of roof fall and the posthole pattern supports these possible functions. The amount and kinds of artifacts in situ on the floor suggest the activities that people performed in the area. Units 130 and 131, to the southwest and south of Unit 121 respectively, were arbitrarily defined excavations within the area of activity represented by Unit 121. We will discuss these units as one entity here. Unit 121 only had three walls (table 3.4). A row of rocks marked a south boundary for the area, 2.6 m from the north wall. The row was three courses high where it joined the east wall of the unit, but only a single course for most of its length. It did not fully extend across the south end of the structure, instead having a 1.2 m wide opening between the row and the west wall of the room.

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Figure 3.24.  Photo of Unit 121-2-3 excavated floor and artifacts.

A second single-course row of rocks was 1 m south of the first. Again, this row did not extend completely across the south part of Unit 121, being only 1.75 m long. Excavations (Unit 131, Locus 3) south of this did not reveal any further walls or rows of rock, but this excavation was quite small. The lack of a definite south boundary to Unit 121 makes it difficult to calculate the room size. On the premise that the first row of rocks marked the extent of the unit, the room would have been 10.4 m2. This row of rocks makes a reasonable south boundary because it was in line with the south extent of Units 119 and 120, to the west. The bonding and abutting patterns of the wall corners revealed that Unit 121 may have been constructed at the same time as Unit 111 to the north and Unit 122 to the east. The three walls of Unit 121 were all bonded, and its northwest corner was bonded with the west wall of Unit 111. While the west wall of Unit 121 ended 2.6 m south of the north wall, the east wall continued farther south and formed the bonded southwest corner of Unit 122. The bonding patterns suggest that all connected walls may have been built at the same time. The connection between the two rows of rocks on the south side of Unit 121 and the east wall of the unit is unknown. The floor in Unit 121 was a hard adobe surface 51 cm to 58 cm (9.12 to 9.19 m) below the present ground surface (figures 3.24 and 3.25). The floor extended south of the northernmost row of rocks at the south side of Unit 121, and it was present at 33 cm to 37 cm below ground surface (9.14 m to 9.18 m) between the two rows of rocks

in Unit 131. There was apparently a less formal floor south of the south row of rocks. Excavations in that area (Unit 131, Locus 3) only revealed uneven patchy adobe 33 cm to 38 cm below ground surface (9.08 m to 9.13 m). Excavations south of the opening into Unit 121 uncovered an adobe surface that extended at least 2.5 m to the south, and there was also a floor in Unit 130 at 35 cm to 40 cm below ground surface (9.21 to 9.26 m). The presence of floor surfaces beyond the rows of rocks that may have served as the southern boundaries of Unit 121 supports the idea that this was an extramural work area that was essentially unbounded on its south side. The hearth (121-3-8; table 3.6) in Unit 121 was in the northeast quadrant of the structure. The pit and the burned, ashy area around it measured 1.07 by 1.10 m, and the pit itself was 30 cm deep. The hearth was generally circular, but rodent activity had made it appear somewhat irregular. The soil in the hearth was loosely compacted and medium brown in color; it contained a high proportion of charcoal and ash. Only one (121-3-6) of the five postholes and pits in Unit 121 (table 3.5) was evident in the floor surface, while the remainder had been plastered over at the floor level. The one posthole in use during the final occupation of the unit was in the northwest quadrant. Two other postholes had been plastered over. One (121-4-5) was along the center of the east wall, and the other (121-4-9) was in the southwest corner. Even disregarding the fact that the postholes were probably used at different times, no combination of them resembled the Classic posthole pattern,

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Figure 3.25.  Photo of Unit 121-3-3 excavated floor and pits.

or even a pattern that could be expected to support a roof. Coupled with the apparent lack of roof fall in this structure, it seems probable that Unit 121 was not roofed. The postholes may have supported brush that provided shade over portions of the unit. Two pits were plastered over by floor adobe. One (1214-10) was shallow and circular, and it contained no diagnostic artifacts or fill. The excavators suggested that it was a warming pit because of its shallowness and large round shape. The other pit (121-4-11) was large, oval, and northeast of the first pit. Its function is unknown. Unit 121 was an unusual Classic period structure in that there were a number of complete in situ artifacts on the floor. If Unit 121 was an extramural work area, then it was functionally similar to Units 80a and 426, both of which were adjacent to, but outside, their respective room blocks, and both of which had in situ artifact assemblages on their floors. In situ assemblages seem to be outside, rather than inside, Classic period rooms. The floor assemblage of Unit 121 (figures 3.23 and 3.24) can be divided into two parts—a dense concentration of pottery and ground stone along the east wall of the structure, and ground stone and worked slabs in the western half of the unit. The eastern section contained parts of six or more corrugated jars, some of which had soot on the interior (121-2-3/21; 121-2-3/23, 121-2-3, 121-22; 121-2-2/3; 121-2-3/17, 121-2-3/31; 121-2-3/13, 1212-3/14, 121-2-3/17; 121-2-2/4, 121-2-3/31, 121-2-3/19, 121-2-3/11, 121-2-3/12, 121-2-3/20, 121-2-3/27, 121-1-2,

121-2-3; 121-2-2, 121-2-2/1, 121-2-1, 121-2-3/20, 121-22/4), part of a plain bowl with interior black burnishing (121-2-3/29), 75 percent of a Middle Classic Black-onwhite flare rim bowl (121-2-3/20), two complete manos (121-2-3/24, 121-2-3/25), a metate fragment (121-23/18), two complete worked stone slabs (121-2-3/15, 1212-3/16), an unworked stone slab (121-2-2/7), a worked sherd (121-2-2/2), a complete greenstone ax (121-2-3/28), and a bone awl fragment (121-2-3/30). These artifacts may be evidence of a food preparation and storage area in use before the unit was abandoned, but because most of the artifacts were broken or fragmentary, they may indicate instead that the area was a trash dump. Only five artifacts in this assemblage—two manos, two worked slabs, and an ax—were complete. The fragmentary nature of the vessels recovered from Unit 121 might suggest parts had been removed to be used elsewhere. A final possibility is that, because the deposits were not fully screened, the vessels appeared to be fragmentary but in fact were not. Artifacts on the floor in Unit 131, between the two rows of rocks that formed the southern boundary of Unit 121, may relate to those noted above. They included a mano fragment (131-2-4/2), a complete grinding slab (131-24/3), and about half of a corrugated mug (131-2-4/1). Artifacts on the floor in the western part of Unit 121 consisted only of ground stone and worked stone slabs. They included two complete metates (figures 3.23 and 3.24), one of which (121-2-2/6) was overturned, and one of which (121-2-1/2) was upright and contained a complete

Surface Rooms Excavated by the Mimbres Foundation mano (121-2-1/1). Additionally, there was a mano fragment (121-3-3/2), a cobble with slight metate-like wear (121-2-2/5), a piece of ground stone (121-2-1/4), and two worked stone slab fragments (121-2-3/4, 121-2-3/32). Two metates (130-1-1/1, 130-1-1/5), the former of which was fragmentary, on the floor of Unit 130 to the southwest may have been associated with this artifact assemblage from Unit 121. Because of the presence of the two complete metates, and the mano associated with one of them, the artifacts in the west area of Unit 121 were, at least in part, an in situ assemblage. Certain artifacts were left in place when Unit 121 was abandoned, possibly because people returned periodically to use them, even though no one inhabited this room block or the site year-round. The whole metates and manos might have been used in this way. People might have continued to use the vessels for their original functions, although as noted, whole vessels or parts may have been removed for other purposes. There was apparently no roof fall in Unit 121. The room did not burn before it was abandoned. The post-occupation fill above the floor was quite rocky, probably because of wall fall, and artifact density increased with depth from the ground surface. Several large artifacts were in this fill, including a complete mano (121-1-2/1), three mano fragments (121-1-3/3, 121-2-3/3, two fragments from different manos), a bone awl (121-23/1), and a piece of worked greenstone that was perhaps an incipient ax (130-2-4/4).

Unit 122 Unit 122 (figure 3.1) was a large room south of Units 113 and 114. To the west of this structure was Unit 121, and Unit 125 was to the east. Unit 122 was near the center of the room block. Only about 1 m of the western edge of the south wall of Unit 122 was present. These two walls were bonded, as were the west and north walls, and the north and east walls. No southeast corner was recorded. A possible blocked door was in the north wall, and it may once have connected the room with Unit 114. Unit 122 was almost completely pothunted or had perhaps already been excavated. This structure was probably Nesbitt’s Room 44. That room was 18.1 m2, close to the size of Unit 122 (table 3.4), although the lack of a south wall in Unit 122 makes this measurement uncertain. Only a small area of floor was uncovered in this room, in the southwest corner between 72 cm and 78 cm below present ground surface (9.04 m to 9.10 m). Pieces of glass and other recent material were scattered horizontally and vertically throughout this unit, culminating in the presence of a Prince Albert tobacco can at an elevation of 8.92 m, below where the floor should have been. Many rocks, charcoal chunks, ash lenses, and human bone fragments

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(of at least one adult female and a child of about two years) were also present throughout the fill. Some of the best stratigraphy seen at the Mattocks site was within this unit. Unfortunately, the stratigraphy represented redeposited materials such as floor adobe and chunks of roof fall adobe. One posthole (122-5-4; table 3.5) remained in the east-central area of the room.

Unit 123 Unit 123 (figure 3.1) was an average-sized room (table 3.4) south of Unit 115 near the northeast corner of the 100s room block. It was surrounded on all four sides by other rooms—Unit 114 to the west, Unit 115 to the north, Unit 116 to the east, and Units 125 and 126 to the south. The walls of Unit 123 were generally intact, with a small pothunting hole in the center of the north wall and evidence of pothunting that had removed the southwest and northeast corners. The bonding-abutting pattern cannot be conclusive, but the west wall and the north wall were bonded, while the south wall abutted the east wall. Unit 123 was almost completely pothunted. A little adobe floor surface remained in the northern half of the room at 84 cm below the present ground surface (9.04 m), but even this was riddled with rodent holes. No floor features or artifacts were uncovered on this surface. Above the floor level along the east wall of the room was an irregular adobe surface (at 9.09 m) that might have been roof fall. However, this “roof fall” covered an area where floor had been removed by pothunting, and so was probably redeposited floor or roof material. Human bones (123-1-1/4, a child’s tooth; 123-3-3/3, a femur; 123-4-3/2, which may belong with 3-3/3; 123-53/8, a tooth; 123-5-3/11, a long bone; 123-5-3/16, human bone) were scattered vertically and horizontally throughout Unit 123. Many pieces of ground stone and a small, complete jar were uncovered in the pothunted fill. The jar (123-4-3/10), which was plain, was apparently not worth anything to the pothunters. The same could be said of the ground stone artifacts, which included at least seven complete manos (123-1-1/1, 123-1-1/2, 123-1-1/3, 123-23/4, 123-4-3/1, 123-4-3/6, 123-4-3/8), six mano fragments (123-1-1, 123-1-3, 123-3-3, 123-4-3, 123-5-3/5, 123-53/7), one complete metate (123-6-3/2), three metate fragments (123-3-3/1, 123-3-3, 123-5-3/9), and four worked slab fragments (123-1-1 [two different pieces], 123-23/5, 123-4-3/3). At least seven of the ground stone pieces were concentrated near the west wall, as if they had been thrown into the room as a single event. Several pieces were also next to or part of the west, north, and south walls.

Unit 125 Unit 125 (figure 3.1) was a relatively small room near the center of the 100s room block. The room was either

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completely pothunted or had previously been excavated, and it was surrounded by rooms that also appear to have been investigated earlier by Nesbitt. Unit 123 and a corner of Unit 114 were to the north, Unit 126 was to the east, and Unit 122 was to the west. We only trenched the room (Unit 136) to the south, but it is likely that this structure was Nesbitt’s Room 47. If so, Unit 125 was probably Nesbitt’s Room 45, which would account for the thorough excavation of the room. Nesbitt’s Room 45 was 9.8 m2, very close in size to Unit 125 (table 3.4). Much of the north wall of Unit 125 had been removed by pothunting, while its south wall was never uncovered. The latter may have been farther south, but excavation was not continued in this direction because the room had been so completely investigated. Thus, no southeast or southwest wall corners were recorded. The west wall was bonded with the south wall of Unit 114, but the corner where the east wall of Unit 114 met the north wall of Unit 125 was pothunted. The east wall of Unit 125 abutted onto the north wall of the room. No floor surface remained in Unit 125, and the highest elevation of culturally sterile soil was encountered 94 cm below the present ground surface (at 8.93 m). The fill consisted of fine brown soil, interspersed with many large rocks and pockets of reddish dirt that probably were redeposited culturally sterile soil. There were historic materials throughout the vertical and horizontal extent of the room, usually metal and glass, along with much human bone (minimally an adult female, a possibly male adult, a child, and an infant). We collected numerous tree-ring specimens, and we obtained dates from several of them (appendix 1). The original provenience of these specimens cannot be ascertained, although they probably came from within the room block.

both sides of the east wall of Unit 123 and was abutted by the west wall of Unit 126 itself. The south wall of the room abutted its east wall. The construction sequence revealed by the bonding-abutting patterns is inconclusive, but Units 116, 126, and 127 may all have been built at the same time. Aside from a Prince Albert tobacco can near the redeposited hearth, we uncovered very few historic artifacts in the room. Although there was much human bone in the disturbed fill (minimally an adult, a child about fourand-a-half years old—perhaps the same as the one in 1262-5—and a newborn), human bones were concentrated in two places. Both concentrations seem to have been highly disturbed burials. One (126-2-5, a child of about five) had been redeposited above the possible floor level near the northeast corner of the room, and the other (126-5-9B, a child of about eight) was in a possible subfloor pit near the center of the north wall. A possible adobe floor remained over part of the north half of the room, at 62 cm to 75 cm below the present ground surface (8.98 m on the west side and 9.11 m on the east side). Like the rest of the fill in the room, this “floor” may have been redeposited floor or roof fall adobe. We collected many tree-ring specimens (appendix 1) from Unit 126, several of which dated. Since there is no guarantee that the room fill originally came from this room, the best that can be said is that these dates probably apply to the room block as a whole. Forty percent of a corrugated jar (126-4-8F/5) was present in the disturbed fill, presumably because it was of no interest to earlier excavators. A final item of interest from Unit 126 was a metate fragment (126-4-6/5), which fit with another fragment from the post-occupation fill of Unit 431 (431-3-3/7) to form a complete metate. This demonstrates the complexities of natural and cultural processes, both ancient and recent.

Unit 126

Unit 127

Unit 126 (figure 3.1) was near the center of the east edge of the 100s room block. To the north were Units 123 and 116, while Unit 125 was to the west and Unit 127 to the east. We did not excavate the room to the south, although we trenched along its south wall. Unit 126 had been excavated previously, and it was probably Nesbitt’s Room 61. If so, then Unit 126 would actually represent two rooms, because Room 61 was only 12.4 m2, much smaller than the 18.4 m2 of Unit 126 (table 3.4). Room 61 contained no hearth, and since we noted a redeposited hearth in Unit 126, either Unit 126 and Room 61 were not the same, or the disturbed fill in Unit 126 was not the original material from the room. Sections of the south, west, and east walls, as well as the southwest corner, were destroyed during previous excavations. The north wall of the room was bonded with the east wall and was continuous with the north wall of Unit 127 and the east wall of Unit 116. The north wall abutted

Unit 127 (figures 3.1 and 3.26) was an average-sized room (table 3.4) located on the apparent eastern edge of the 100s room block. Unit 126 was to the west of this room, and Unit 137 was to its south. We suspect that no room had been built to the north of Unit 127 because of an apparently unblocked doorway in the north wall. Doorways in Classic rooms often connected to the outside, at least when originally constructed. There was another door in the north part of the east wall of Unit 116 that perhaps opened to the outside, although it is possible that a room once existed south of this door and north of Unit 127. It is also possible that there was once a room east of Unit 127, but a test trench outside the southeast corner of Unit 137 had no evidence of one, and so it is unlikely that a room was east of Unit 127. The north wall of Unit 127 was bonded with both the east and west walls, suggesting that all three were built at the same time. The east wall abutted onto the south

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Figure 3.26.  Photo of Unit 127-5-3 excavated floor, pits, and potted area.

wall. A small pothunting hole had removed the south connection to the west wall, and we could not ascertain this relationship. About three quarters of Unit 127 had been pothunted, with floor only remaining along the north wall and the northern half of the east wall. Floor level was 41 cm to 51 cm below the present ground surface (9.05 to 9.15 m). The floor was a hard, undulating surface and was probably made of adobe. There was no evidence of roof fall above the floor, but there was a posthole (127-5-3 #1) near the center of the west wall that had been plastered over by floor material. There was also a burial (127-5-4) in the northwest corner, which had been similarly covered. The latter was that of an infant with a plain bowl (127-5-4/1) inverted over the cranium. A ceramic face (127-2-2/2) was on the floor in this unpothunted area. There was much human bone, minimally an adult and an infant, in the redeposited fill of the structure. Many small pits had been cut into culturally sterile soil in the pothunted area of Unit 127. We could not determine whether they were ancient or the result of enthusiastic pothunting, but several might have been ancient. The first (127-4-3 #1) was a rather large and deep pit that might have been the central posthole. To the west of this was a much smaller, shallower pit (127-4-3 #3) that might have been a posthole, being in line with both the central

posthole and the one against the east wall that had been plastered over at the floor level. Between the central posthole and the probable doorway in the north wall was a small pit (127-4-3 #4) that contained ash and that may represent the remnants of a hearth. The functions of the other pits in the pothunted area are not as obvious. Many tree-ring specimens, several of which dated (appendix 1), were recovered from the fill in Unit 127. Because of the pothunting, the original provenience of these specimens could not be ascertained, and the most that can be said is that the dates obtained from them probably apply to the room block.

Unit 137 Unit 137 (figure 3.1), an average-sized room (table 3.4), was directly south of Unit 127 and appears to have been the easternmost structure in this tier of rooms. A small test trench outside the southeast corner of Unit 137 revealed no continuing walls. Culturally sterile soil in this trench was less than 50 cm from the present ground surface (at 9.07 m), and so it is likely that there were no rooms east or south of this unit. There were probably two more tiers of rooms south of this one, but they did not extend this far east. Unit 136 bordered Unit 137 to the west. Part of the east portion of the former was excavated as Unit

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137 because pothunting had removed the wall between the two. Both the northwest and southwest corners had been pothunted, and so their bonding-abutting patterns could not be determined. The east wall bonded with the south wall and abutted onto the north wall, which suggests that at least the east and south walls were built at the same time. Unit 137 had been almost completely destroyed by pothunting. No floor or features remained, and the north half of the east wall, as well as the entire west wall, had been removed. The west wall had been replaced by a single row of rocks that extended 2 m south from the north wall. These rocks aligned with the west wall of Unit 127 and a single large rock that was positioned north of the south wall of Unit 137. Disarticulated human bones were uncovered under the row of rocks. These human bones, minimally an adult and an infant, appeared throughout the pothunted fill, along with sherds from about 20 percent of a Middle Classic Black-on-white geometric bowl (137-1-2/1) and the ubiquitous Prince Albert tobacco can. There were also a number of treering specimens (appendix 1) that at least provided dates for the room block.

Unit 231 Unit 231 (figure 3.3) was diagonally northwest of Unit 233 and appeared to be in or directly adjacent to the northernmost tier of rooms in the 200s room block. Although the floor surface of the excavated portion of this unit was intact, there was evidence that the area above the floor had been disturbed. The soil remained soft and powdery throughout the fill levels above the floor, and it contained numerous chunks of charcoal in no perceivable pattern, This random arrangement of probable roof beams suggests that they had been tossed into the room when it was backfilled after a previous excavation. There was also a large gap, which was probably a pothunting hole, in the south wall of the unit. The pothunters may have removed a north-south wall that would have divided Unit 231 in half, but no evidence of this postulated wall remained. Historical artifacts occurred to a depth of 57 cm below the present ground surface. The original excavation strategy for this unit was to uncover half of the room, since the extent of pothunting was not obvious, and we thus excavated a 2.45 by 2.85 m area to the subfloor level. We assumed this to be half of the room, but when wall trenches revealed the locations of the north and west walls, it became clear that either a wall had been previously removed by pothunting, or that the room had an unusual shape. Because of the apparently pot­hunted nature of the fill above the floor, we did not continue excavations to ascertain the actual extent of the room. The walls in Unit 231 were unusual in that two of them were either adobe, or masonry covered with a thick coat

of adobe (table 3.4). The walls that were uncovered indicate that the room was 2.45 by 5.25 m. The resulting room shape suggests that the unit may originally have been two small rooms, with a dividing wall that had been removed by previous digging. The north wall of Unit 231 was adobe, and it extended from slightly below the ground surface to the room floor. A test trench extending north along the east wall revealed a line of rocks about 25 cm behind the adobe north wall. This line may represent a masonry wall that had been faced with a thick layer of adobe. It is possible that the west wall was removed by pot­ hunting. Another possible west wall was uncovered 5.25 m from the east wall, and consisted of two horizontal rocks set on adobe. This wall was less than convincing, and the true nature of the room or rooms that were within Unit 231 remains unknown. The south wall was adobe along its remaining length, and there was no evidence of a masonry wall behind the adobe. A pothunting hole had removed a 1.90 m length, beginning 2.50 m from the east wall. This would have removed a postulated north-south wall that would have made Unit 231 into two small rooms of about 2.50 m along each side. A small test unit (231-1-2) was excavated in the pothunting hole to see if the wall turned a corner to the south, but no evidence of another wall, either behind the adobe or turning the corner, was uncovered. Sixty cm below the present ground surface (10.19 m), flanking the east wall on its west side and extending out from it to a width of about 50 cm, was a bench that had an adobe surface. Like the wall, the bench was made of cobbles and mud mortar. It alternatively may have been the east wall of Unit 231, but this would suggest that there had been two masonry walls between Units 231 and 230. The construction sequence of the room walls suggested by the bonding and abutting patterns of the corners was unclear, because we did not examine the northeast and southwest corners. In the southeast corner, the east wall bonded with the north wall of Unit 233, and the south corner apparently bonded with the west wall of Unit 233. The latter is questionable because the south wall of Unit 231 was adobe. The floor in Unit 231 was about 1.24 m below the ground surface (9.55 m), and it was formed of slightly irregular adobe that had been laid over culturally sterile soil. There were no floor features in the portion of the room that we excavated, which is an unusual situation for a Classic room with this amount of floor exposed. It is possible that this “floor surface” was the top of roof fall, with the top of culturally sterile soil being the actual floor of the room or rooms. We uncovered two features below the floor of Unit 231 (table 3.5). One was a possible posthole (231-4-3) near the east wall, and the other was a pit (231-4-3/1) that began 24 cm below the floor. Very few artifacts were

Surface Rooms Excavated by the Mimbres Foundation recovered from the culturally sterile soil itself, but a number were in the posthole and the pit. It is not clear whether these were originally floor features that had been plastered over at some time when the room was occupied, or whether they were associated with activities in the area before the room was constructed. Alternatively, if culturally sterile soil was the actual floor of the room, these features would not have been as far below the floor level as they appear. The fill above the irregular adobe surface was homogeneous, with no evidence of roof fall or other stratigraphic levels. The fill was uniformly fine and powdery, with many charcoal chunks. Many small sherds were in the fill, perhaps indicating that the material originally came from a trash deposit or that earlier excavators had collected the larger sherds. The lack of stratigraphy in the room fill, the fine powdery nature of the soil, and the random distribution of charcoal and artifacts throughout the fill indicate the level of disturbance in the room, and the intact floor or roof fall surface remains anomalous.

Unit 232 Unit 232 (figure 3.3) was an east-west test trench, which was placed in the room to the south of Unit 231 and west of Unit 233. We had mapped a depression that we interpreted as a pothunting hole within the room, and much of the room was indeed pothunted. The only intact areas remaining within the part of the room uncovered by the test trench were along the east and west walls. The information from this unit is therefore limited. Since the test trench was about 2 m south of the Unit 231 south wall, the only walls uncovered in Unit 232 were those to its east and west ends. Both were masonry, although the west wall was in poor shape, possibly because of pothunting in the area. The two walls were 4.5 m apart. An adobe bench extended along the east wall, about 30 cm into the room. Its top was 47 cm below the present ground surface (10.03 m). The bench may have had a similar function to the one along the east wall of Unit 231. Because the feature appeared in both rooms, and because the adjacent wall was still standing, it was unlikely to have been a partly collapsed wall. Floor remained in the test trench only along the walls, 94 cm below the ground surface (9.56 m). The adobe floor was best-preserved around the hearth (232-4-4), near the east wall, where heat from the hearth or from the burning roof had hardened the floor. The reddened adobe around the hearth suggested that the room burned. Two adobe-lined and ash-filled pits were uncovered in the test trench (table 3.6). One (232-4-4) was near the east wall, and the other (232-4-5) was next to the west wall. Because of its location, the latter may have been an ash pit rather than a hearth. Both pits were in apparently undisturbed areas of the room.

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Although we uncovered a possible roof fall level in part of the trench, some 73 cm below the ground surface (9.77 m), we could not distinguish between the undisturbed and pothunted fill in Unit 232. We recovered historic artifacts to a depth of at least 86 cm below the ground surface (9.64 m).

Unit 233 Unit 233 (figure 3.3) was either part of the middle row of rooms (from north to south) in the 200s room block, or it was within the roofed plaza enclosed on three sides by the room block. It was diagonally southeast of Unit 231. We excavated between a third and a half of Unit 233. Because of the disturbed nature of the area, our strategy was to excavate portions of rooms in order to obtain an adequate artifact sample. This precluded examining the patterns formed by the floor features in units that had apparently not been pothunted. Unit 233 was one of these structures. Although it is possible that parts of Unit 233 were disturbed, especially the areas around the northeast and southwest corners, the remainder of the excavated section, at least from the roof fall level down, was intact. The north wall of Unit 233 consisted of at least three rows of cobbles laid above a row of upright foundation stones. The wall was interrupted about 2 m from the northwest corner by a possible pothunting hole that had removed this section of the wall to the northeast corner. The north wall was bonded with the east wall of Unit 231, indicating that these walls were probably constructed at the same time. The west wall was unbroken by disturbance from pot­ hunting. In the northwest corner, it bonded with the south wall of Unit 231, and this bond abutted the corner formed by the east wall of Unit 231 and the north wall of Unit 233. A trench along the south part of the west wall did not uncover a south wall for Unit 233, at least to a distance of 6.40 m from the northwest corner. The west wall turned west at 5.60 m, apparently forming the south wall of the adjacent room (Unit 232). The south wall of Unit 233 had either been removed by pothunting in the area where we placed the wall trench, the trench did not extend far enough to reach the south wall (which is unlikely given the length of the west wall), or there was no south wall to the unit. The latter is the most likely interpretation, because Unit 233 was probably within the plaza of the 200s room block. Since the wall trench did not reach the level of the roof fall and floor surfaces, we do not know whether these continued to, or past, the point where the west wall turned to the west. A trench along the easternmost portion of the north wall revealed an adobe facing at 5.10 m from the northwest corner. The facing was interpreted as the east wall, but we did not determine whether the entire wall was adobe, or whether the adobe was the plastered front of

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the wall. If Unit 233 was within the plaza, this adobe may not have been a wall. The floor of Unit 233 was smooth adobe (table 3.4) that had been laid on culturally sterile soil 99 cm below the present ground surface (9.51 m). Several patches of ash up to 4 cm thick were on the floor, near what would have been the north-central area of a room. The patches were probably originally a continuous surface, but rodents had disturbed them. There was further evidence of rodents in the floor, including many tunnels and much rodent bone. Flotation (233-4-6/16) of one of the ash concentrations recovered many charred seeds, especially Cheno-Ams (see chapter 5). These ash concentrations probably represent trash dumped in the area after it was no longer used for its primary purpose. There were no artifacts on the floor that would indicate it was in use for the usual habitation activities, and the ash did not relate to any depressions that might have been hearths. Two postholes were present in the excavated part of Unit 233 (table 3.5). One (233-1-2) was very deep and had the remains of a juniper post in it (233-1-2/1, 233-12/2). Given its location near the center of the west wall, the posthole may have been the westernmost of three running east-west across the center of the area. The other posthole (233-5-6, Pit A) was in the northwest corner of the unit. It was shallow, and probably served as a secondary support for the roof. One adult burial (233-5-7; this burial also contained infant bones, and possibly bones from a second adult), and a pit (233-5-8) containing an articulated arm, were below the floor of Unit 233. The former was a male who was wrapped in woven material (233-5-7/1, 233-5-7/2), of which some fibers remained. The pit in which this burial was placed had been covered with adobe at floor level, and it may thus date to the room occupation. The second “burial” pit was most unusual, in that the only bones recovered were an articulated arm (radius, ulna, humerus) and scapula, along with a carpal bone, two phalanges, and a rib. The bones were in good condition, and so it unlikely that the rest of the skeleton had decomposed or been eaten by rodents. The remainder of the body must have been removed from the pit after the flesh had decomposed, since there is no other way the scapula could have remained articulated with the arm. Ash covered most of the plastered surface of the pit, and so the body must have been removed before the ash was thrown over the floor. Only one artifact, a piece of magnetite (233-4-6/22), remained on the floor in the excavated section. Given the lack of other materials on the floor, the presence of roof fall directly on the floor surface, and the numerous broken artifacts incorporated into the roof fall, it is possible that the magnetite was a roof fall artifact. There was little or no trash between the floor and the roof fall, and so apparently the area had not long been

abandoned before the roof collapsed. The roof fall itself was between 20 cm and 25 cm of charcoal-flecked, flaky adobe. It contained several small or broken artifacts and pieces of raw material, including a broken projectile point (233-4-6/12), a metate fragment (233-4-6/19), an almost complete mano (233-4-6/17), a whole miniature plain jar (233-1-5/1), and pieces of red ochre (233-4-6/6) and chrysocolla (233-1-5/2, 233-4-6/9). These artifacts may have been part of the roof fall, or they may have been part of the trash that was apparently thrown into the area after the roof had collapsed and that then became incorporated into the roof fall due to settling or rodent activity. Two artifacts were probably on the roof when it collapsed, a complete mortar (233-3-6/8) and a mano (233-3-6/9). Trash was thrown into Unit 233 after the roof had collapsed, as shown by the many broken artifacts and pieces of raw material in the fill above the roof fall. These included kaolin (233-2-6/1), worked sherds (233-2-6/4, 233-2-6/5, 233-2-6/9, 233-3-6/5, 233-1-1/6, 233-1-1/2, 233-1-4/2), red ochre (233-2-6/10), a bead from a fossil fragment (233-2- 6/12), an Olivella shell bead (233-3-6/2), a mano fragment (233-3-6/3), a shell bracelet fragment (233-3-6/12), a polished deer metapodial (233-1-3/1), an unfinished mortar (233-1-1/4), and two projectile points (233-3-6/10, 233-3-6/13). Several pieces of charcoal were used as tree-ring samples (appendix 1), and patches of adobe were interspersed through the fill and trash. The adobe appeared to have been unrelated to the roof fall material, which was continuous over a lower level, instead apparently being part of the trash that was thrown into the room after abandonment.

Unit 237 Unit 237 (figure 3.27) was a pothunted room along or near the south side of the 200s room block. The room was directly west of Unit 236 and was between 7 m and 8 m east of the “Great Wall.” A very large pothunting hole had removed the west wall and the center of the room, to a point below its floor level. Parts of the north wall, the northeast corner, and the south half of the east wall had also been removed or disturbed by pothunting activities. Few of the original room features remained, but roof fall and floor levels were intact along the north, east, and south sides of the room. The extensive pothunting made it difficult to interpret the original configuration of the room. At various times during the excavation of Unit 237, we thought that it might represent more than one room, because ephemeral lines of rocks running north-south and east-west through the unit might have been the remains of dividing walls. The locations of these rock alignments in pothunted areas ultimately made this interpretation unlikely. Although the west wall of the room was never uncovered, the increase in the amount of wall fall at the west end of the south wall may indicate that a wall once

Surface Rooms Excavated by the Mimbres Foundation

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Figure 3.27.  Plan of Unit 237.

existed in this area. The resulting “room” could be either one or two rooms (table 3.4). Pothunting had removed much of the walls of Unit 237 (table 3.4). Only 1.45 m of the north wall remained, beginning at a point 45 cm from the probable northeast corner. The wall may have originally extended at least as far as the west face of Unit 237. As noted, none of the west wall was uncovered, but the amount of rock that might represent wall fall increased as

we moved west along the south wall. We uncovered a possible alignment of wall stones at a point 4.80 m from the southeast corner, but the floor surface continued beneath these rocks. It was unclear whether this area had been pothunted, in which case the rocks were likely to be backfill rather than wall fall, or whether the area was undisturbed and the rocks actually were wall fall. The south wall of Unit 237 was intact for the entire 5.87 m exposed during excavation. Parts of the wall were

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composed of cobble masonry set in adobe mud, while other sections included a bottom course of large upright stones. The northern half of the east wall (south of the pot­ hunting hole in the northeast corner) was intact cobble and mud masonry, but the southern half was more jumbled. Since the floor adjacent to the southern part of the east wall was not disturbed, and if the southern part of the wall had been pothunted, the pothunting hole must relate to Unit 236. Because of the disturbed nature of the east wall near the southeast corner, we could not determine the bonding-abutting pattern of that corner. The lack of other corners precludes any discussion of the wall construction sequence in this unit. The intact floor along the north, east, and south edges of Unit 237 (figure 3.27) was a hard, homogeneous reddish-­ brown adobe. The entire center of the floor area had been removed by pothunters, a fact confirmed by the presence of chicken wire and part of a rusted toy pistol below the floor level, at about 94 cm below the present ground surface (9.39 m). Only one posthole (237-8-10/1; table 3.5) was uncovered, adjacent to the center of the east wall, and a large, unburned juniper post remained upright in the posthole. A small pit (237-9-11) was 37 cm below the floor level. Since the top of this pit was well below the floor, it was probably used before the room was constructed. Several artifacts were in place on the remaining areas of floor (figure 3.27; table 3.7). A quarter of a large, obliterated corrugated jar (237-6-4/7) and two possible pieces of ground stone (237-6-4/12) were on the floor in the northwest part of the unit, and a complete mano (237-6-4/17) and a full grooved greenstone ax (237-6-4/18) were along the south wall near southeast corner. The artifacts were generally whole rather than incomplete and were therefore probably still in use when the room was abandoned, rather than being trash. Several artifacts were on the upper surface of the roof fall at about 50 cm below the present ground surface (9.83 m), but it was not clear whether they were in situ when the roof collapsed, or whether they had been tossed into the area at a later date. These materials included an almost complete Escavada Black-on-white canteen (2371-1/2, 237-2–2), which was the only evidence at the Mattocks site for interaction with people possibly from the Chaco Canyon area to the north, about a third of a large corrugated jar (237-2-2/3, 237-1-1), a complete through trough metate (237-2-1/11), a metate fragment (237-21/5), and a possible metate fragment (237-2-2/14). Roof fall appeared to have lain directly over the floor surface, with no intervening washed- or blown-in soil. Given the complete artifacts on the floor, it is unlikely that the unit was used for trash disposal, and the roof probably collapsed directly onto artifacts that had been left in place. The room showed no signs of having burned, although quite a few tree-ring specimens were collected

from the unit (appendix 1). The large upright juniper post in the posthole was not burned nor were the floor, the roof fall, or the mud mortar in the walls. The roof may have collapsed due to natural causes such as the supports rotting away. Due to the extensive pothunting in Unit 237, and the nature of fill in general, it was not possible to separate disturbed post-occupation fill from undisturbed in the upper levels of this unit.

Unit 286a Located one tier of rooms in from the east side of the 200s room block, Unit 286 (figure 3.3; see figure 2.5) was actually two different buildings—the Classic room (286a) discussed here, superimposed over the earlier rectangular pit structure (286b) described in chapter 2. Chronometric evidence (chapter 1) from the two houses indicates that the pit structure dated to the Late and Late Late Pit Structure periods and that the Classic room was early when compared with other masonry rooms at the site. The careful placement of the Classic room over the east part of the pit structure is evidence that its builders knew the location of the pit structure and thus placed the north, east, and south Classic room walls beyond the pit structure walls to achieve better stability. That is, the pit structure fill would not have provided a solid foundation for the masonry walls, although the west wall was indeed placed over the pit structure fill. The surface room placement may also have been an act of remembering the pit structure and its occupants by the room builders. Unit 286a was quite long in comparison to its width, a characteristic shared with the adjoining Unit 41 to the east, and it seems likely that the latter unit was constructed to conform to Unit 286a. It is possible that Units 286a and 41 were not used for ordinary habitation. As discussed in chapter 4, Unit 286a may have been a communal storage building and used in conjunction with Unit 41, which may have been a communal granary. The lack of definitive remains precludes calling this a ceremonial precinct, but insofar as its original location was on the southeast corner of the room block, the rooms are reminiscent of other large, communal surface rooms that were constructed during the Classic period (Anyon and LeBlanc 1980:269– 271; Shafer 2003). There was no evidence of recent disturbance in either Unit 286a or 286b, in that no historic artifacts or pothunting holes were uncovered. However, the floor surface of 286a was quite irregular, and the contents of a burial pit in the floor (286-4S-7B) were highly disturbed, as was a burial pit (286-7F-17B) in the floor of the pit structure. Given the extensive remodeling of Units 286 and 41, it is most likely that these disturbances were ancient, and the unevenness of the floor may have been related to the room function.

Surface Rooms Excavated by the Mimbres Foundation The walls of Unit 286a were oriented in the same directions as the earlier pit structure walls, but three of the four were outside the latter rather than being located on the soft pit structure fill. The exception was the west wall, which crossed the pit structure fill and joined the north masonry wall just west of the pit structure ramp (figure 2.5). This might imply that Unit 286a was built as a unit, but the bonding and abutting patterns of the wall corners suggest an alternative. Both the north and south walls abutted onto the east wall, suggesting that the east wall may have been constructed first. Thus, the east wall may not have been placed to conform to the underlying pit structure, but the length of the masonry room may have been determined it. The east, north, and south walls of the masonry room may have been built as walls for surrounding rooms, before the west wall was constructed to form Unit 286a. The west wall abuts onto the north and south walls, and the one of its remaining courses was set into the floor adobe, a trait not shared by the other three walls. This indicates that the west wall was built simultaneously with the floor, although the other walls may not have been. In summary, the soft fill in the pit structure depression was probably avoided as a base for walls when possible, and the final wall that formed Unit 286a may have been a late addition to masonry room construction in this area of the room block. As noted, the west wall was set into the floor, while the floor adobe extended up to cover the bottom course of the north and east walls. The west wall was also plastered with adobe, and it contained a doorway near the southwest corner (table 3.4). The doorway was 60 cm wide and plastered with adobe. It apparently led into the possible open area above the western half of the earlier pit structure. The floor of Unit 286a was formed by laying about 30 cm of adobe over the fill above the pit structure roof fall (table 3.4). In the areas along the north, east, and south sides of the masonry room where the room extended past the pit structure walls, the floor was laid directly on top of culturally sterile soil. We at first thought that these areas might have functioned as benches for the pit structure, but further investigation showed that the adobe surface over the “bench” areas was probably part of the floor of Unit 286a, as it did not extend under the masonry walls of that structure. The floor surface was hard adobe, but it was quite uneven and irregular. This, and the fact that there was no hearth may indicate that the room was not used for regular habitation activities. A small adobe-lined depression was in the floor near the center of the room, and a stone feature forming a small bin was in the northeast corner (figure 2.5). A complete rhyolite pestle (286-3F-6/1) was on the floor, but it may have been part of the abundant trash that was intermixed with the roof fall. There were only two rather small postholes (286-3F8PH #1, 286-3F-8PH #2; table 3.5) in Unit 286a, rather

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than the usual three. The postholes were along the northsouth axis in the center of the room. Each posthole was constructed by placing small cobbles in a hole that extended to a point just above the pit structure roof fall. Adobe was then placed on top of these rocks and around the sides of the posthole, and the post was set in place. Only one burial (286-4S-7B) was associated with Unit 286a. It was in an irregular pit in the northeast corner of the room, and it was not plastered over by floor adobe. The skeletal remains were jumbled in the pit, and a Transitional Black-on-white rim sherd (286-4S-7B/6) that was part of a fragmentary bowl was uncovered near the room floor. The burial may have been interred after the room had been used for trash deposition, and the sherd might just be part of the general trash from the floor of the room used to fill the burial pit. However, human bones that might belong to the skeleton (286-1-3/12, 286-7F-6/8) were recorded in the uppermost fill level in the room, as well as near the pit structure floor below the room. Also, we noted burned beans in the burial pit, in the actual floor matrix of the masonry room, and in the fill between the pit structure roof fall and the masonry room floor. Thus, material probably associated with the burial was spread vertically throughout both structures in Unit 286, from the uppermost to the lowermost levels. The horizontal provenience of most of these materials is unknown, but if it was within the horizontal confines of the burial pit, then trash already in place in the rooms may have been used as pit fill. This would account for the apparent mixture of materials. The burial was also heavily disturbed by rodents, providing another possible cause of the mixing. It was not possible to tell whether any trash had been deposited on the floor surface of Unit 286a because trash was so interspersed with roof fall material. The upper surface of roof fall was 16 cm above the floor surface (9.63 cm). The matrix of the “roof fall” level was mixed fill and adobe chunks, with a relatively high density of sherds, chipped stone, animal bones, and broken ground stone. Some of the soft fill among the roof fall adobe pieces could be interpreted as evidence of rodent activity, but given the high density of artifacts it is possible that trash was thrown into the room before the roof collapsed, and when the roof did fall (without burning), it intermixed with the trash on the floor. About 36 cm of fill was deposited above the top surface of the roof fall. Like the fill interspersed with the roof fall material, this post-occupation fill contained a high density of sherds, chipped stone, animal bones, and ground stone fragments, and it may represent trash that was dumped into the room after the roof had collapsed.

Unit 325 Unit 325 (figure 3.28) was an isolated surface room about 8 m south of the apparent southern edge of the 300s room

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Figure 3.28.  Plan of Unit 325.

block. Trenching around the perimeter of the structure revealed no rooms contiguous with Unit 325, although there were concentrations of wall rocks outside the southwest and northwest corners. These rocks did not form walls, and they may instead have been wall fall from the room. There was an irregular adobe surface 71 cm below the present ground surface (11.02 m) along the outside of the east wall. This surface contained one small posthole (326-1-2 #1). We uncovered no other evidence of this surface or related features, although excavations around the southwest and southeast corners were not deep enough to determine its presence. A large pit (Locus 3) in the southwest corner of the room may be evidence of disturbance within the structure.

We recovered no historic artifacts from the pit, which extended through roof fall to the floor level, and so it is not possible to know whether this disturbance was ancient or recent. The east wall of Unit 325 (table 3.4) was predominantly built from large rocks about 45 cm long, while the south wall was somewhat collapsed at its west end. This disintegration may relate to the wall rocks outside the southwest corner. There was a meter-wide door at the north end of the west wall, with an adobe step in the opening at an elevation of 24 cm above floor level (11.41 m). No more than two courses of wall rocks remained on any wall, and fill inside the room did not contain enough rock to form full-height walls. Part of the walls may therefore

Surface Rooms Excavated by the Mimbres Foundation have been jacal, although such construction may not have been strong enough to support the adobe roof pack that certainly existed in the room. We did not record the bonding and abutting patterns of the wall corners. The floor, which extended across the whole room except for the pit area in the southwest corner, was constructed of small, fist-sized rocks intermixed with adobe. This floor was not made of culturally sterile soil, which in Unit 325 was 10 cm or more below the upper surface of the floor. At the bottom of the large pit we uncovered an adobe surface (11.19 to 11.13 m), which was definitely the floor, since below it the soil became progressively more culturally sterile soil. The room therefore contained no finished, smooth adobe floor, except in the southwest corner. Based on floor characteristics and the fairly small size of the room, one might suggest that it was a storage facility, perhaps a communal granary (Shafer and Taylor 1986:54), although there was little other evidence to support such a claim. No hearth was present in Unit 325. Six postholes were in the structure floor, but they formed no discernible pattern. Two of these postholes (325-5-4, 325-5-4 #1) were within the pit in the southwest corner, while the remainder were in the northeast and east-central parts of the room. Juniper posts remained in two postholes (325-5-4, 325-6-5). All of the postholes were relatively large and deep compared with similar features in other rooms. The large pit (Locus 3) in the southwest corner covered nearly the entire southwest quadrant. Although intact room floor was present at the bottom of the pit, the roof fall had been removed, and so the pit was dug sometime after the roof had collapsed. The pit fill was quite mixed and included pockets of culturally sterile soil and ash, small pieces of charcoal, general loamy fill, and many small rocks. The general artifact concentration in the pit was neither particularly high nor low compared to other pit fill. Two whole artifacts, a sandstone shaft straightener (325-3-3/1) and a rectangular unifacial vesicular basalt mano (325-33/2), were in the pit fill. One burial (325-5-7; table 3.7) was interred within Unit 325. The burial pit was unplastered at the floor level and was in the northwest corner of the room, just inside the door in the west wall. The lack of hard cover at floor level and the positioning of the pit both indicate that the pit was dug after the room was no longer actively used. The only grave goods with the burial were a shell bracelet fragment (325-5-7/12) and a projectile point (325-5-7/14). The skeleton was that of a male from 18 to 21 years old. There were no artifacts on the floor of this structure, and there was a relatively low density of artifacts in the roof fall above the floor as well. Roof fall was 13 to 16 cm thick and lay directly on the floor, indicating that trash was not thrown into the room after its initial use was discontinued. The room did not burn. The timing of the construction, use, and abandonment of this room cannot be determined other than by sherd seriation (see chapter 1).

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The fill above roof fall contained a higher density of sherds and chipped stone than any of the cultural levels associated with the construction and use of the room. It is not clear whether this density of materials represented trash thrown into the room after the roof collapsed, or whether it washed in. Ceramic analysis (chapters 1 and 6) shows that the upper fill of Unit 325 contained a significant amount of Late Classic pottery, as well as sherds of such later types as Ramos Polychrome and Gila Polychrome. The relative abundance of artiodactyl remains is much higher than that of any other deposit at the Mattocks site (Cannon 2001a:table 5.3; see Cannon’s section of chapter 5).

Unit 423 Unit 423 (figures 3.4, 3.29, and 3.30) was the northernmost room in the 400s room block, north of Unit 427. It was the only room in the tier and may have been added onto the room block sometime after Unit 427 to the south had been constructed. This unit was smaller than the type of room normally interpreted as having been used for habitation (table 3.4), but it was slightly larger than the room in this room block thought to have been used for storage (Unit 425). However, a storage function is indicated for this structure, since it had no hearth, and both floors were rough and either unfinished or constructed of fistsized rocks. Given its relatively large size and its apparent storage function, the room may have been a communal granary. The south wall of Unit 423 was extremely well constructed and was covered by 3 cm to 4 cm of adobe, which melded into the adobe of the lower floor. This wall had been built on culturally sterile soil. The doorway to Unit 427 was offset toward the southeast corner of the south wall and was not blocked, although it had been blocked with cobbles from the Unit 427 side. The door was built above the bottommost course of wall rocks, which had been set in culturally sterile soil, and it probably was initially associated with the lower floor. The west wall of the structure had been dug about 10 cm into culturally sterile soil, and it was made of cobbles of approximately equal size. The north wall contained numerous small rocks, and many of its cobbles were not laid flat. Both this wall and the east wall were set on 10 cm to 20 cm of fill above culturally sterile soil. The bonding and abutting pattern of the wall corners indicated that this room was added to the room block after Unit 427 had been built. The northeast and northwest corners of Unit 423 were both bonded, and so the west, north, and east walls were possibly constructed at the same time. Both the east and west walls abutted onto the south wall, which continued past the limits of Unit 423 to form the north wall of the larger Unit 427. Thus, Unit 423 was built as a single entity and attached to the room block, possibly to serve as a storage area for Unit

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Figure 3.29.  Photo of Unit 423-4F-3 excavated cobble floor.

427. The doorway between the two rooms further confirms their relationship. Unit 423 had two floors—an upper one (Unit 423a; figure 3.29) of cobbles and level adobe areas, and a lower adobe floor (Unit 423b; figure 3.30) that was laid directly on culturally sterile soil. The upper floor in the southern half of the structure was made of two layers of fist-sized cobbles set onto the lower floor. There was only a single layer of cobbles in the northwest corner of the room, and they had been placed on a small amount of fill between the two floors. Among the floor cobbles was a little soft fill, and the floor was chinked with sherds, small stone artifacts, and small pebbles. The floor cobbles themselves were often artifacts, including a metate fragment (4234F-4/6) and a rectangular, unifacial sandstone mano fragment (423-4F-4/8). The part of the upper floor that was

not composed of cobbles was a flat, smooth adobe surface laid on the soft fill. The upper floor had no in situ artifacts or features other than one posthole (423-4F-5PH) that was located near the center of the south wall. The remainder of the postholes in the room had been covered by the cobbles of the upper floor. The single posthole could not have offered much support for the roof, which must therefore have been supported by the walls or by posts outside the walls. This posthole may also have been associated with the lower floor, but there was no evidence to support or refute this claim. The lower floor was adobe placed on culturally sterile soil over the entire room area. There was a 15 cm rise in culturally sterile soil in the southwest corner of the room that this lower adobe floor also covered. The rise may have been the original level of culturally sterile soil, as the

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Figure 3.30.  Photo of Unit 423-5S-4 excavated adobe floor.

west wall was placed 10 cm into that culturally sterile soil. As with the upper floor, no in situ artifacts associated with this surface, although there were several postholes and a pit that opened onto it. Set at the level of this floor were several upright slabs along the north wall (figure 3.4). The slabs were also evident from the upper floor but were originally placed with respect to the lower surface. A large, nearly circular pit (423-5S-7P) near the center of the east wall was associated with the lower floor. The interior of the pit was smooth and lined with adobe. No artifacts or materials remained in the pit to suggest its function. Patches of the adobe from the lower floor covered the pit, as if adobe had once covered the entire pit but had deteriorated. Five postholes (423-5S-8PH A-E) were definitely associated with the lower floor. Postholes A, B, and C were built with reference to the north and south walls (figure 3.4), and posthole D was the center support for the room. Posthole E was very shallow, and it was unlikely to have functioned as a roof support. The number of large postholes was unusual for a room of this size, and their presence suggests a sturdy roof during this occupation of the room. While the construction of the upper floor was completely different from that of the lower floor, there was no indication that the function of the room changed, and the small amount of fill between only parts of the two

floors suggests that a brief time elapsed between the two uses of the room. The room was originally constructed as a small area without a hearth and may have functioned as a storage unit. The addition of the cobble floor may have served to make the room more rodent-proof, similar to granaries at the NAN Ranch site (Shafer and Taylor 1986:54), and in fact, the upright slabs associated with the lower floor may also indicate problems with rodents. The uneven cobble surface may have provided better air circulation around stored perishables than a flat adobe surface, and it would have been a good surface on which to place vessels with rounded bottoms. The flat adobe section in the upper floor may have served as an activity area related to storage. In this respect, the floor surface was similar to the one in Unit 325. It is not clear why the room was abandoned. No artifacts remained on the upper floor surface or on the roof, and so the room was cleaned out rather than being abandoned suddenly. Several large broken artifacts, such as two metate fragments (423-4F-4/3, 423-4F-4/2), a worked slab fragment (423-4F-4/13), and a mano fragment (423-3RF3/7), were in the post-occupational fill, indicating that people threw some trash into the room as the roof was in the slow process of collapse. It appears that the roof collapsed slowly, since the adobe roof chunks were intermixed with soft post-­occupation

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fill. The room did not burn, and no roof beams remained, although we collected several non-dating tree-ring samples.

Unit 425 This room (figure 3.4) was a small, unpothunted structure east of Unit 427. The ramada surface, represented by Unit 426, was just south of this room, and test trenches (Units 428 and 429) on the north and east sides of Unit 425 revealed no other rooms in these areas. We do not know whether the ramada surface continued around Unit 425 in these directions, although an adobe surface with postholes was present in Unit 430, outside the east wall of Unit 423. The north wall was in the poorest condition, consisting of two or three rather jumbled courses (table 3.4). The east wall was much better preserved, with three definite courses remaining. There was evidence of only two courses in the south wall. The west wall was not recorded in Unit 425, but when viewed from the east side in Unit 427, it was substantial and probably consisted of at least three courses. All four corners of this unit were bonded, and so the room was preplanned and built as an entity. The west wall extended north and south past the limits of Unit 425 to meet the north and south walls of Unit 427, and both of the latter walls abutted onto the extensions of the west wall of Unit 425. This pattern suggests that the east end of Unit 427 may have remained open for some time before Unit 425 was constructed, but given the nature of abutted walls (they could be built at the same time and only abutted rather than bonded), this may not be the case. The floor of Unit 425 was continuous over the entire surface, but it was uneven and flaky in some areas. Poor floor preparation, or none, was common in small rooms at the Mattocks site, for example in Units 106 and 112. The floor was laid directly on culturally sterile soil except along the east wall, where there was a small amount of loose, soft soil below the floor before culturally sterile soil was reached. The floor surface was broken by three postholes and two pits (table 3.5), one of which may have been a bin. Neither burials nor a hearth were present in this room. A concentration of hard ash, adobe, and charcoal was along the center of the north wall, extending from 12 cm above the floor down to the floor level. This concentration had no structure, and it was probably part of the trash thrown into the room after it had been abandoned. A single course wall was present in the northeast corner of Unit 425, beginning 60 cm west of the corner and extending south into the room for 70 cm. Upright flat stones, including a basalt mano fragment (425-3-3/4), formed a facing on the west side of the divider. No floor surface was within the space bounded by this wall, but there was a pit (425-3-3 #1) extending 16 cm below the level of the room floor within this space. The pit was empty, but

its size and shape suggest that it might have been used as a mealing bin. The metate associated with the bin would have been removed when the room was abandoned. There were three postholes in Unit 425. Two of these were opposite one other, with the first (425-4-3 #1) just east of center along the south wall and the second (425-4-3 #2) in a corresponding position along the north wall. The third posthole (425-4-3 #3), which was slightly smaller than the other two, was along the west wall, slightly north of the southwest corner. A small pit (425-4-3 #4), about the size and shape of a child’s burial, was near the central part of the south wall and extended 25 cm south, under the wall. The pit was empty, and so it was impossible to determine its function. There was a pothunted burial pit (427-6-6) in Unit 427 to the west, which extended under the wall between Units 427 and 425, but we saw no evidence of this pit in Unit 425. A basalt mano fragment (425-3-3/7) and a worked slab fragment (425-3-3/6) were the only artifacts that remained on the floor. Since both were broken, they were probably part of the trash that was thrown into the room after it was abandoned. Any in situ artifacts must have been removed from the floor before abandonment. The metate that appears to be missing from the mealing bin is an example of potential artifact removal. We noted no roof fall during the excavation of Unit 425. The room did not burn, and so no organic roofing material was preserved. About 25 to 30 cm above the floor was the top of a layer of small cobbles that covered the entire room area. A comparable layer of small cobbles was 15 cm above the floor of another small room, Unit 106, and it also is possible that the upper “floor” in Unit 423 (discussed earlier) and the cobble “floor” in Unit 425 were part of the same phenomenon. We can propose several explanations for the presence of such rocks, but there is little evidence to support any of them. Since the cobbles were at the expected level of roof fall, they may have been part of the roof structure. There was a small amount of trash interspersed with the cobbles, such as the broken artifacts on the floor and the ash and charcoal concentration along the north wall, which would have been thrown into the room before the rocks were in place. Another potential explanation would be that the cobbles were laid into the room as a second floor surface. No artifacts were on top of the cobble layer, but if this was a floor surface then it might have been cleaned before the unit was finally abandoned. The fill above the level of cobbles contained at least some material that was thrown in the room after the cobble layer was deposited. We uncovered a large concentration of burned adobe along the east wall, between 12 cm and 18 cm below the ground surface. Since there was no structure to the burned adobe, it may have been deliberate trash-filling of the room. We also collected two

Surface Rooms Excavated by the Mimbres Foundation tree-ring specimens from the post-occupation fill, one of which had a date of A.D. 1095v.

Unit 426 Located east of Unit 435 and south of Unit 425, Unit 426 (figures 3.4 and 3.31) was an area outside the room block that had been roofed with brush. We accordingly called this structure a ramada. The floor surface of the area was rough and unfinished, and evidence for the brush roof consisted of burned beams without an adobe roof pack. Many in situ artifacts were on the floor surface underneath the roof beams, and they represent several possible activities. Since Unit 426 was adjacent to Unit 435, and since both were destroyed by fire, it is possible that both structures were part of the same habitation unit and were used by a single small group of people. Unit 426 was bounded only by walls on the west and partly on the north sides. The east wall of Unit 435 formed the west edge of the ramada, and a vent in the middle of this wall allowed fresh air to flow into Unit 435. Part of the northern boundary of the ramada area was the south wall of Unit 425, but the ramada extended both east and north past this wall. The extent of the ramada remains unknown. The rough floor surface did continue south to the area east of Unit 438 (which included Unit 441), but there were no in situ artifacts in this area. The surface seemed to have ended at the north edge of Unit 441, an unfinished Classic period pit structure, although in situ artifacts were again present in a small test trench (Unit 442), which was placed east-west outside the south wall of Unit 438. The limits of excavation arbitrarily defined both the north and east edges of the ramada. The post-occupation fill above the roof fall at the east edge of the unit sloped away sharply to the east, and this was probably close to the east extent of the 400s room block mound and the east edge of the ramada. The floor in Unit 426 was an uneven, eroded adobe surface just above culturally sterile soil (table 3.4). The unfinished and weathered appearance of the floor surface was one of several pieces of evidence that this area was part of an extramural ramada, rather than a room. The floor was generally higher to the west, near the wall of Unit 435, than it was to the east. The level of the floor corresponded to the level of the upper adobe floor in Unit 435a. There were four ash lenses on the floor of Unit 426 (figure 3.31; 426-3F-7/44, 426-3F-7/45, 426-3F-7/46, 426-3F7/49). All were about 3 cm thick, and they were clustered south of three upright basalt slabs (426-3F-7/28, 426-3F7/29, 426-3F-7/30) at the north end of the unit. The three slabs may have served as a windbreak, protecting the area around the ash lenses from a north wind, but this does not provide clues to the function of the lenses. Warm ash may, for example, have been used to keep prepared food hot, or

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the lenses may simply have been trash deposits that bore no relation to the stone slabs. Another very small ash lens (426-2F-2/1) was on the ramada surface in Unit 441, the south extension of Unit 426. No artifacts associated with the floor were in this area, and so the function of this lens was also unclear. However, this ash was about 9 cm thick, which perhaps indicates a concentration of trash thrown onto the floor rather than a feature associated with the surface. One pit (426-3F-16P), with a posthole at its west end, was south of the stone slabs, near the center of the excavated ramada area. The pit extended 32 cm below the ramada surface, with the posthole extending 27 cm deeper than this. There was much ash in the east end of the pit, especially near the floor level. This ash was part of one of the ash lenses (426-3F-7/49) associated with the ramada floor, and its association with the pit may have been coincidental except that many animal bones were also in the area. None of the 16 postholes in the ramada surface had been plastered over with adobe at the floor level, and so they were all directly associated with the use of the ramada surface. Since we only excavated an arbitrarily defined part of the ramada, the posthole pattern was not complete. There are two obvious alternatives to explain the observed pattern. The first is that of a linear pattern, with three or possibly four lines of postholes that run east to west across the ramada area: The postholes in 426-3F-9PH, 426-3F16P, and 426-3F-19PH would have formed one line; 426-3F-20PH, 426-3F-10PH, and 426-3F-12PH formed a second line just north of the first; and 426-3F-24PH, 426-2-3 #1, and 426-3F-12PH would have formed a third. Given that four postholes were directly adjacent to the east wall of Unit 435, and three postholes were against the far east edge of Unit 426, it is possible to propose the existence of a fourth row of three east-west postholes composed of 426-3F-13PH and 426-3F-15PH, along with an unexcavated posthole to the east of Unit 426. These three or four alignments were not evenly spaced, but three could have supported the north end of the ramada. The second possible pattern is circular. Beginning with 426-3F-24PH at the northwest corner of the ramada, the postholes appear to form a rough arc to the east, and then south along the edge of excavation. The arc then turned west, to 426-3F-13PH, before being completed by the postholes outside the east wall of Unit 435. It is significant that we uncovered no postholes when we extended the ramada surface excavation to the south, in Unit 441, because it suggests that the ramada did not continue there. The only posthole (426-4S-22PH) that was not in the roughly circular pattern was quite shallow, and so perhaps it was not a posthole. Finally, all of the activities from which artifacts remained were being performed around the postholes, and therefore possibly near the edges of the covered ramada area.

Figure 3.31.  Plan of Unit 426.

Surface Rooms Excavated by the Mimbres Foundation Only two burials were in the area of the ramada encompassed by Unit 426, and only one was in the ramada area of Unit 441. One pit (426-3F-14B) was evident in the ramada surface, and because the ramada probably burned while it was in use, this burial must have been associated with the occupation of the ramada. The pit contained one child, but the condition of the skeleton was so poor that it was impossible to determine its orientation and position in the pit. There were no grave goods with the burial. The burial pit in 426-3F-8B was partly plastered with adobe at the level of the ramada surface, and so it is not clear whether the burial was interred while the area was being used or at a later date. Again, the single skeleton in the grave was in such poor condition that its orientation in the pit could not be determined, and there were no grave goods with the individual. The third burial, just north of the pit structure in Unit 441, was also partly plastered at the level of the ramada surface. The preservation of this adult female (about 20 years old) was quite good, and the skeleton was interred on its left side with its legs and arms partly flexed. A Middle Classic geometric bowl (426-3S-3B/2) was inverted over the cranium in the north end of the pit, and a vesicular basalt metate blank (426-3S-3B/4), which had been pecked but not ground, was placed over its rib area. There seemed to have been four clusters of artifacts on the ramada surface, which may represent four areas where different activities were performed. The in situ artifacts on the surface were all concentrated around the postholes and formed an arc out from the east wall of Unit 435. The area inside the arc of postholes was devoid of artifacts, and so it may have been used for activities that left few or no material remains (such as weaving). Alternatively, it may have been cleaned regularly, or all activities may have been done in sunlight, near the edges of the ramada. Centered around posthole 426-3F-15PH were a basalt core (426-3F-6/15), a complete greenstone ax blank (4263F-6/16), and three magnetite hammerstones (426-3F6/14, 426-3F-6/17, 426-3F-6/18 [fragment]). These artifacts imply an area near the edge of the ramada that was used for the manufacture of lithics. Somewhat northeast of this artifact concentration was a collection of in situ artifacts that may represent a food preparation area. Two usable sandstone metates (426-3F-6/19, 426-3F-6/20), and a whole vesicular basalt mano (426-3F-6/21) associated with one of the metates, were near the east edge of the excavated area. Just north of this ground stone were the sherds from perhaps two large corrugated jars (426-3F6/24, 426-3F-6/25). The proximity of these artifacts suggested that grain was taken from the large storage jars and ground on the metates. A third cluster of artifacts surrounded the east side of the upright slabs, in the northeast corner of excavation, and it consisted of three worked sherds (426-3F-7/33, 4263F-7/34, 426-3F-7/35) and two magnetite hammerstones

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(426-3F-7/12, 426-3F-7/32). These two artifacts types were definitely associated with one another, as one of the hammerstones had been placed on one of the worked sherds. However, the kind of activity that these artifacts might represent is not clear. A final possible group of artifacts was south of the south wall of Unit 425, near the posthole in 426-2-3 #1. Two magnetite hammerstones (426-3F-7/15, 426-3F-7/39) were discovered near two whole manos (426-3F-7/14, 426-3F-7/16) and a large corrugated jar (426-3F-7/37). Again, the activities that this cluster might represent were not clear. The cluster may have been a coincidental grouping of materials that were used for unrelated activities. There were a number of complete and broken artifacts on the floor of the ramada that did not seem to be associated with the artifact clusters. For example, about 20 percent of a large clapboard corrugated jar (426-1-4/13) was north of the vent in the east wall of Unit 435, separate from all other artifacts. Also, the many pieces of fragmentary ground stone would seem to be trash rather than in situ artifacts. However, the presence of trash within and around the activity areas is difficult to explain given that the area was probably still in use when the roof burned. Many of the fragments of burned roof beams lay directly on and somewhat above the ramada floor surface. The beams were concentrated in the northwest part of the ramada, outside the east wall of Unit 435. The evidence for burning lessened with increasing distance from this area, and so the fire may have spread from the roof of Unit 435 and only burned a section of the ramada roof. There was no fill between the roof fall and the floor. Accordingly, the roof of the structure probably burned while the area was being used. The presence of in situ artifacts and artifact clusters on the floor is quite unusual for the Mimbres Classic period occupation, and it is a further indication that the area was abandoned only because it had burned. The roof fall only showed evidence of burned roof beams and smaller branches, without reeds or adobe closing material. Based on this, the roof was probably only a brush structure that was built to provide shade for the ramada area, rather than a thick, adobe-covered pueblo room roof. Although the roof burned and most of the tree-ring specimens recovered were pinyon pine (which could have dated), the tree-ring dates from Unit 426 were inconclusive. The only cutting date was A.D. 1095r (426-1-4/6), but most of the other, less certain dates were later than this year. It is possible that the beams and roof supports were replaced frequently, since this roof was not protected by an adobe roof pack, and such replacement may account for the discrepancy in tree-ring dates. All of the dates from Unit 426 were 16 to 30 years later than the dates from Unit 433, which fits the proposed room use-and­­­ abandonment sequence for Units 433, 435, and 426. Post-occupation fill washed onto the area after the roof of the ramada burned and collapsed. The fill sloped

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gradually to the east, probably indicating that the edge of the ramada was close to the edge of the excavation. The west side of the ramada floor surface was 57 cm below the present ground surface, while the east side of the floor was only 38 cm below the ground surface.

Unit 427 Unit 427 (figure 3.4) was the only room in the 400s room block that showed significant evidence of disturbance. This might be Nesbitt’s Room 42, and so perhaps he excavated the room. Previous excavation or pothunting had removed about 80 percent of the room floor, and the poor quality of the northern section of the west wall might also be attributed to that disturbance. Several pieces of aluminum foil, some glass, and a metal button also demonstrated the recent disturbance in the northwest area of the room. Unit 427 was bordered on all four sides by other rooms in the room block. It was the size of a typical habitation room (table 3.4), but its actual function could not be determined because so little remained. Units 423 and 425, both of which were probably used for storage, were respectively to the north and east of Unit 427. Units 431 and 435, which bordered this room to the west and south, were probably used for habitation as evidenced by their larger size than the rooms used for storage. The north wall of Unit 427 contained four or five courses of cobbles with some smaller rocks used as chinking. There was a doorway in the north wall that joined Units 427 and 423, but it had been blocked by three courses of cobbles interspersed with some flat slabs. The cobbles in the east wall were generally smaller than in the other walls, although there was an area near the center of the wall that was thought to be a blocked doorway that was constructed of large cobbles. However, no corresponding doorway was seen in the west wall of Unit 425, and so this section of large cobbles may have been an integral part of the east wall. Large cobbles were again used to build the south wall, and no smaller cobbles or chinking were present. A blocked doorway in the south wall was seen in the north wall of Unit 435 as a step, although the doorway itself was not evident. The west wall was definite along the south half but was quite irregular in the north, probably as a result of pothunting. The bonding and abutting patterns of the corners of Unit 427 were not easy to interpret. The south wall of the room was continuous with the south wall of Unit 431, and so this entire wall was obviously built as a single event. The west wall abutted onto both the north and the south walls, and both the north and south walls abutted the east wall. Considering that Unit 425, which adjoins Unit 427 to the east, was constructed as part of the east wall of Unit 427, it is possible that the latter room was left open to the east for some time before Unit 425 was added. Alternatively, Units

425 and 427 may have been built simultaneously, although further evidence of the relationship between them, in the form of a doorway, is inconclusive. The only floor remaining in Unit 427 after pothunting was a narrow strip along the western part of the north wall and an area that extended toward the center of the room from the south wall. The remaining sections of floor were level, smoothed adobe. Two small postholes (427-6-3 #1, 427-6-5 #1; table 3.5) were seen as breaks in the floor along the south wall. Because of the pothunting, it is not clear how these postholes fit into the roof support pattern of the room. A pothunted burial pit (427-6-6) extended under the east wall of Unit 427. The floor above and around this pit had been chopped away by pothunters, and the only remains in the pit were several bone fragments from an adult who was between 18 and 22 years old. Two pits (427-6-4, 427-6-3 #2) were adjacent to the floor that remained in the south part of this unit. One pit, 427-6-4, was 50 cm in diameter, and it may have been either a posthole or a burial. No human bones were recovered from the pit, and since it was in line with the central north-south axis of the room, it is most likely to have been a posthole. The other feature, 427-6-3 #2, a pit near the southwest corner of the room, may also have been either a posthole or a burial. Again, there were no human bones in the pit, and its location against the south wall also suggests that it might have been a posthole. Because of the pothunted nature of this room, we could discern no roof fall, even above the small amount of floor that remained. No in situ artifacts were on the floor of the unit, but it is uncertain whether this was due to pothunting or to the nature of the room abandonment. Several treering samples were taken from this room, four of which dated, with the latest date being A.D. 1080vv (appendix 1). Analysis of the post-occupation fill was deemed unproductive, because it was not clear how much of the material above the floor had been disturbed.

Unit 431 Unit 431 (figures 3.4, 3.32, and 3.33) was a rectangular masonry room in the 400s room block. Located north of Unit 433 and west of Unit 427, it was detected during trenching operations outside the southwest corner of Unit 427. Although the size of the room (table 3.4) suggests that it was used for habitation, only ephemeral evidence of a hearth existed, and there was no floor assemblage that might have pointed more clearly to the function of the room. Pothunters had removed the northeast corner of Unit 431, along with the adjacent half of the north wall. The northern half of the east wall was of poor quality, but it is uncertain whether this was a result of the pothunting. The fill above the floor in this corner consisted of laminated

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Figure 3.32.  Plan of Unit 431.

mud and lenses of sand, indicating a natural filling process after the pothunting hole had been opened. The floor under this fill was intact. The southwest corner of the room may also have been pothunted, since that corner and the adjacent sections of the south and west walls were a jumble of rocks. We placed a test trench (Unit 432) outside this southwest

corner in the unexcavated room to the west, and there was no west wall in Unit 431 as seen from Unit 432. We did not explore this area further to determine why this might be. The poor condition of this corner might be the result of pothunting or, alternatively, the result of ancient structural difficulties. We present this possibility in the following discussion of postholes.

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Figure 3.33.  Photo of Unit 431-4-3 excavated floor and pits.

The south wall of Unit 431 was unusual in that its lowest course was made of upright stones, with two courses of cobbles laid horizontally on them. There was a possible blocked doorway in the south wall, the western side of which began 90 cm from the southwest corner. The door itself was 60 cm wide. No foundation stones were present in the doorway, but rocks had been laid in the opening as if to block it. The west wall consisted of three or four carefully selected courses of rocks, as did the intact section of the north wall. We did not record details of the east wall during excavation. We noted that all of the walls in this unit were characterized by the careful selection of rocks of a particular size and shape, and by meticulous construction. Such is not typical of Classic period walls. Although the southwest corner of Unit 431was disturbed, it appeared that the south and west walls were bonded at the corner, along with the west wall of Unit 433. A three-way connection was thus formed, indicating that the west walls of Unit 431 and 433 and the south wall of Unit 431 were built at the same time. The south wall

of Unit 431 also continued east to form the south wall of Unit 427. The presence of bonded corners means that the corresponding walls were probably built at the same time, and so the simultaneous construction of these walls formed at least three rooms: Units 427, 431, and 433. The north wall of Unit 431 abutted onto its west wall, and the east wall may have abutted onto both the north and south walls. These abutments do not necessarily indicate that the walls were constructed at different times, although they may have been. The abutting patterns of Unit 431 indicate that the north and east sides might have been left open for some time before the walls were built, but there was no evidence for this in the room itself. We conclude that the four walls of Unit 431 were probably constructed as a unit. The floor of Unit 431 was level, hard-packed adobe laid directly over culturally sterile soil, and broken in places by pits and postholes. Just above the floor along the west wall was a row of rocks. Since there was a layer of fill between these rocks and the floor, the rocks probably

Surface Rooms Excavated by the Mimbres Foundation were a course that had slumped from the wall, rather than a support for the wall or a bench. Floor features in Unit 431 included two pits that may have been hearths (table 3.6). Both of these (431-5-5 and the east pit of 431-5-4) were wider and shallower than the postholes, and both contained ash at the level of the floor. However, the ash did not extend far below the floor. Neither pit had any formal structure, such as slabs or adobe lining, although 431-5-5 did show evidence of burning along its east and south edges. These pits may have been used simply as convenient places to dump ash, or they may have been hearths that were not used enough to burn the sides of the pits. The major roof supports were probably the three postholes (431-5-20 #2, 431-5-12, 431-5-17; table 3.5) that ran north to south through the center of the room. There was an in situ juniper post in the central posthole. Two postholes (431-5-7, 431-5-9) along the west wall may have been secondary supports. The remainder of the postholes (the west pit of 431-5-4, 431-5-10, 431-5-11, 431-513, 431-5-16, 431-5-20 #3) formed no discernable pattern and seemed to have been used as supports to shore up a sagging roof. One posthole (431-5-10), just south of one of the major roof supports (431-5-17) may have been a replacement for it, because the latter posthole had been covered by the adobe floor. The cluster of six postholes in the southwest corner of the room may be related to the disintegration of the masonry walls in this corner. If the walls in this area were unstable in antiquity, then the inhabitants would certainly have had trouble with the roof, and additional posts might have been needed to support it. Nearby postholes probably replaced the two plastered postholes (431-5-16, 4315-20 #3) in this corner, and they might thus be evidence for ongoing roof disintegration in the area. Two of the burial pits (431-5-6, 431-5-15) below the floor in this unit were not plastered over with adobe at the floor level, two (431-5-8, 431-5-14) were partly plastered at floor level, and two (431-5-18, 431-5-19) were completely plastered. The unplastered pits contained a child and an infant, respectively. The cranium in 431-5-6 was at the northeast end of the pit, although all that remained were a few teeth. A Classic naturalistic bowl (431-5-6/2) was inverted over the cranium area. The cranium of an infant of about six months was present in 431-5-15, in the east end of the pit, and a Classic geometric bowl (431-515/5) was inverted atop it. Because both these burials were open at the floor level, they may have been placed in the room after it had been abandoned. An adult male was in 431-5-8, which was partly plastered at the floor level. The skeleton was flexed on the left side with its cranium at the east end of the pit. The burial was unusual in that the grave goods were of an earlier style than the Classic period, and they were positioned over the pelvic area, rather than over the head. Artifacts associated

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with the burial included a neck-banded mammiform jar (431-5-8/7) and a punctate incised jar (431-5-8/8), both of which were placed inside an upright Late Transitional bowl (431-5-8/10). Perhaps the fact that the pit was partially covered by the adobe floor indicates that the burial was interred while the room was in use or earlier. This appears to be a pre-Classic burial. The second burial that was partly plastered at the floor level, 431-5-14, contained five individuals, at least one of whom was buried before the room was built. The sequence of burials in the pit began with a newborn (4315-14/17), who was interred under the wall between Units 431 and 427. The Classic geometric bowl (431-5-14/20) inverted over the newborn’s skeleton had been disturbed when the wall was constructed. An adult (431-5-14/16) may have been placed in the pit earlier than the newborn, since it was at a slightly lower level—69 cm below the floor as opposed to 57 cm. However, the adult skeleton was within the walls of the room, which may indicate a later burial. It is also possible that the newborn and the adult were interred together. The bones of the latter individual were quite fragmentary, but it appeared that the body was oriented north-south. There were no grave goods associated with this skeleton. Based on the elevation within the pit (44 cm below the floor), the next burial (431-5-14/6) was that of a child, who was placed in the pit with its cranium to the east. The bowl (431-5-14/3) inverted over the cranium was probably one of the finest pieces of Mimbres Classic art at the Mattocks site. The Early Classic naturalistic design on the interior of the bowl depicts a man’s head interlocking with a crane. The next burial in this pit was an infant (431-5-14/15), who was 38 cm below the floor. The orientation along the spine was probably northwest to southeast, and an inverted Transitional/Classic (Style II/III as defined by Shafer and Brewington 1995:17) geometric bowl (431-514/14) covered most of its bones. Two turquoise pendants may have also been part of the grave goods. One (431-514/12) was definitely in context with the burial, although the other (431-5-14/7) may have associated with the preceding burial. The final interment in this pit was probably a fetus (431-5-14/8) buried at an elevation of 26 cm below the floor. The cranium was to the northeast in the pit, and the body was extended on its stomach or its right side. No grave goods were present. Above all of the burials in 431-5-14, but below the floor, was a lens of ash that seemed to be in a separate pit from the burials. The ash (431-5-14/2), which contained charcoal, many reeds, and charred Portulaca, Amaranthus, grass, and Chenopodium seeds, may have been associated with the burial pit as trash, which along with redeposited culturally sterile soil was used to fill the pit. Alternatively, it may have been placed there to level the floor, or it may

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have been a feature, such as a hearth, that was disturbed by the burials and then plastered over at the floor level. However, the presence of reeds, usually found in roofing material, and weeds, which may have been growing on roofs at the site, suggest that this was trash fill, perhaps from a disassembled roof rather than a hearth. The two burial pits that had been completely plastered over at floor level were both deeper than the others, and they may have been interred either before the room was built or during the period when the room was occupied. Burial 431-5-18B contained one adult who had been placed in a flexed position, with the cranium to the northeast in the pit. A heavily worn, Early Classic bowl (431-5-18B/2) was inverted over the head, and nine turquoise pendants (431-5-18B/18) were in the pit fill. Burial 431-5-19 contained one middle-aged male adult. The cranium was in the east end of the pit and was covered by a Classic geometric bowl (431-5-19/3). This bowl was upright, rather than inverted, which is not typical for Classic burials. It is often possible to tell when a burial was placed in a room, relative to the occupation and abandonment of the room, by observing whether the pit was plastered at the floor level. It seems unlikely that a pit would have been left unplastered while people lived in the room, as they would always be stepping into the soft fill of the pit. Accordingly, the unplastered pits (431-5-6, 431-5-15) were probably placed in the room after it was no longer used for habitation, while plastered pits (431-5-18B, 4315-19) might have either predated the room construction or been placed while the room was occupied. The association of the partly plastered pits (431-5-8, 431-5-14) was uncertain, but at least one burial, in 431-5-14, predated the room. The only artifacts remaining on the floor of Unit 431 were a complete mano (431-4-3/8), a mano fragment (431-4-3/10), and a worked basalt slab fragment (431-43/13). The ground stone on the floor was probably trash thrown into the room. The reason for the abandonment of this room for habitation was not clear. The apparently random pattern of many of its postholes may indicate that it was structurally unsound, and people may have abandoned it for that reason. However, since two of the burial pits were unplastered at the floor level, the room was probably used for post-occupation burials, meaning that the roof would not have collapsed until sometime after the room was abandoned. Roof fall, characterized by lighter, lumpy soil and charcoal, was above the floor for about 30 cm. The room did not burn (table 3.7), although we collected a few tree-ring samples, one of which (431-5-14/21) had a non-­ cutting date of A.D. 1041vv. The fill above the roof fall in this unit consisted of dark, loamy soil containing much wall fall. The density of artifacts was light, increasing as the roof fall level was reached. The artifacts above the roof fall were probably

washed-in trash from the Classic period, since the density would have been higher had the room been used as a trash dump after the roof collapsed.

Unit 433 Located south of Unit 431 and west of Unit 435, Unit 433 (figures 3.4, 3.34, and 3.35) was a square cobble masonry room in the 400s room block. Like most Classic rooms of this size (table 3.4), it would probably have been used for habitation, but no in situ artifact assemblage remained to support this proposition. The floor of Unit 433 was disturbed in large areas around the three major north-south postholes. The immediate interpretation was that this room had been pot­ hunted, but reevaluation of the stratigraphy, and other factors to be discussed below, led to the conclusion that the floor had been disturbed in prehistory. Other than these three areas, only the southwest corner of the room had been damaged, by a modern fencepost. The north wall of the structure was not built on the surface of culturally sterile soil, as in most Classic rooms, but it instead was cut 10 cm deep into the culturally sterile soil. The wall was made of cobbles and was chinked with adobe and small rocks. Although there appeared to have been a blocked doorway in the south wall of adjoining Unit 431, no such doorway was evident on the Unit 433 side of that wall. It may therefore be that this wall was two courses thick and that the north wall of Unit 433 covered the doorway that had been built in the south wall of Unit 431. Alternatively, the area in the south wall of Unit 431 that seemed to have been a doorway may simply have been an anomalous part of the wall itself. Because the upright stones that formed the bottom course of the south wall in Unit 431 were not evident in the north wall of Unit 433, this wall was most likely two courses thick. The west wall of Unit 433 was also cut 10 cm into the culturally sterile soil. It was built with cobbles that were covered on the interior of the room by a layer of adobe that contained small pebbles, which in turn was overlain by adobe plaster. The south wall, like the west wall, was made of cobbles and covered by an adobe facing mixed with small pebbles. Part of this facing included two large rocks located 110 cm to 170 cm west of the east wall, which were not part of the structural wall, but rather were in the adobe facing. Unlike the other walls of the room, the south wall was not dug into culturally sterile soil. The east wall of Unit 433, which cut 10 cm into culturally sterile soil, was constructed of cobbles that were faced with adobe that was up to 10 cm thick. There was a layer of adobe plaster over the facing. Near the center of the east wall was a doorway that had been blocked with cobbles and adobe. Excavation of the doorway revealed that it had probably been remodeled twice, once from the original doorway into a vent, and a second time from

Figure  3.34. Plan of Unit 433.

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Figure 3.35.  Photo of Unit 433 excavated floor and pits.

the vent into a small doorway. The original door between Units 433 and 435 was about 60 cm wide, and its base was flush with the level of the floor in Unit 433. The plaster on the east wall of Unit 433 curved around the north edge of the doorway, and so the doorway was associated with the use of Unit 433. As noted, at some point during the use of the room, the doorway was changed into a vent by placing two vertical slabs, one 20 cm from the north side of the door and the other 10 cm from its south side, within the door opening to form the sides of the vent. Presumably, a lintel was placed on top of these upright slabs to complete the vent, but it was not recovered because the vent had subsequently been changed back to a doorway. The second remodeling of the opening in the east wall of Unit 433, from the vent to a doorway, probably occurred after Unit 435 had been built. The floor level of the latter unit was higher than the floor in Unit 433, and so the base of the door was built up 25 cm to correspond to the level of the floor in Unit 435. Two pecked slabs were placed horizontally above the rock and adobe fill in the doorway to achieve this. One of the vertical slabs from the vent was retained, making the remodeled doorway narrower than the original. The only evidence of the other vertical vent slab was the presence of the groove

that had held it in place, which was seen in the adobe step of the original doorway. This final doorway was eventually blocked with cobbles and adobe; the fill was plastered with adobe on the Unit 435 side but was not plastered on the side of Unit 433, which probably indicates that Unit 433 was not being used for habitation at the time the doorway was blocked. Both the northwest and the southwest wall corners of Unit 433 bonded, indicating that the north, west, and south walls probably were built simultaneously. The east wall abutted onto both the north and south walls. Although the east wall may also have been constructed at the same time as the other three walls, it may have been built considerably later, and Unit 433 might have remained open to the east for a period. However, unlike Unit 435, there was no further evidence, such as a ramada surface below the room floor, that Unit 433 was ever left open on one side. Much of the floor of Unit 433 was missing due to postholes, burial pits, and extensive areas of ancient disturbance (figures 3.34 and 3.35), and the parts of the floor that remained were patchy in nature. The surface consisted of up to 5 cm of adobe laid over culturally sterile soil. At the intersection of the floor and the walls, the

Surface Rooms Excavated by the Mimbres Foundation floor adobe curved up slightly to join the adobe facing on the walls. No hearth remained in Unit 433, probably due to the ancient disturbance around the central posthole, and between this posthole and the door in the east wall. To the north of this disturbed area (433-6S-7P) was a small, shallow ashy pocket that may have been the remnant of a hearth. There were no shaped slabs or adobe around the ash, but it was close to the usual location for a hearth in a Classic room, between the central posthole and an opening in a wall. The three deepest postholes (433-6S-6P, 433-6S-7P, 433-6S-12P; table 3.5) were in a north-south line through the center of the room. There appeared to be no pattern to the other eight postholes in the room, although most were in its west side. Around the three main postholes were areas of disturbance characterized by fine, light brown fill containing pebbles and cobbles. We at first thought that these areas were modern pothunting holes, but we can now make several arguments against this. First, it would have been remarkable if the only pothunting holes in the room had centered on the three major postholes, without disturbing the corners and walls of the room. Second, a large Classic naturalistic sherd (433-6S-6P/1) was located at about floor level in the northernmost disturbed pit, and it belonged to the same bowl as sherds from the fill of an unpothunted burial in Unit 435 (435–5S-18B) to the east. Finally, there was no evidence of modern pothunting above the floor of Unit 433. The burned roof fall of the room formed an almost continuous layer above the fill between the floor and the roof fall. If these large areas were disturbed in antiquity, what was the reason for that disturbance? No artifacts that might indicate a function remained in the pits, but the structure of the pits was such that there may have been burials in these areas. Disregarding the parts that were obviously postholes (all three postholes were basically intact and contained unburned wood), each pit included an area that was about the size and shape of a burial pit and that was deeper than the rest of the pit. No human bones were recovered during excavation, and so if bodies had been removed, then it must have been before the flesh had decomposed. If so, then the shallower areas of each pit could be explained as exploratory digging by the ancient people seeking the bodies. No purpose was evident for the proposed removal of bodies from the room. Another pit (433-6S-17P; table 3.5) was against the north wall of Unit 433, directly west of 433-6S-6P. At floor level atop this pit was a possible sitting stone (4335F-4/73), directly under which was an inverted Middle Classic geometric bowl (433-6S-17P/1), which was itself encased in the adobe of the floor. Beneath the bowl were two rectangular unshaped rocks, one on top of the other. Culturally sterile soil was below the lowest of these. The

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bowl might have been associated with the burial in 4336S-21B to the west, but the cranium in that burial was in the west end of the pit, opposite the bowl. Alternatively, the bowl might have associated with a possible burial removed from 433-6S-6P. If so, it is curious that the bowl was set on two rocks, as if it had deliberately been left behind. Only one possible burial (433-6S-10) in Unit 433 was not covered with adobe at floor level. It was in the northeast corner of the room, and we assumed it was a burial pit because an inverted bowl (433-6S-10B/3) was in the southeast end of the pit, under the east wall of the room, but the only skeletal remains in the pit consisted of a human tooth. It is not possible to tell whether the burial was in place before the room was built, or after it had been inhabited. On the one hand, the pit extended under the east wall, and the bowl associated with it was Early Classic, indicating that the burial might have predated room construction. On the other hand, the pit was unplastered at the floor level, and it is hard to believe that the inhabitants of the room would have walked daily upon the soft fill of a grave. The remaining five burials in Unit 433 were all plastered with adobe at the level of the floor, and they were filled with rocky, culturally sterile soil. We suggest that because these pits were solid at the floor level, the burials in them had been interred during or before the room was occupied and not after it had gone out of use. Burial 6S-18B contained one adult skeleton that had been placed on its back in the pit, with the right arm extended along its side and the left arm folded over its stomach. The individual’s legs tightly flexed over its chest, and an Early Classic geometric bowl (433-6S-18B/9) was inverted over its cranium. Two bowls were in the burial of an infant in 433-6S-19B. Although the skeleton was poorly preserved, the cranium was probably in the northeast end of the pit. A Middle Classic naturalistic bowl (433-6S-19B/3) was inverted over the cranium, and a Middle Classic geometric bowl (433-6S19B/2) was inverted on top of the lower bowl. A tightly flexed burial was in 433-6S-20B, in the southwest part of the room. The skeleton was that of an elderly adult male and was on its right side with its legs drawn up to the chest. The left arm was also flexed. The cranium and the cervical vertebrae were beneath an inverted Middle Classic geometric bowl (433-6S-20B/2). In the northwest corner of Unit 433 was a small plastered pit that contained an infant burial (433-6S-21B). Most of the skeletal bones were missing, but the body seems to have been on its right side, with its cranium in the west end of the pit. No grave goods were associated with the individual. The fifth burial pit that was plastered with adobe at the room floor level was 433-6S-22B. There was the skeleton of a child in the pit, but preservation was poor, and the

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position of the body was not evident. The cranium was in the south end of the pit, and an Early Classic naturalistic bowl (433-6S-22B/1) was inverted above it. Below the rim of the bowl were two turquoise pendants (433-6S-22B/2) that may have formed a necklace. Few artifacts remained on or near the floor of Unit 433, and most seem to have been trash. These included five worked slab fragments (433-5F-4/60, 433-5F-4/62, 433-5F4/63, 433-5F-4/68, 433-5F-4/69), a basin metate fragment (433-5F-4/59), 40 percent of a Middle Classic jar (433-5F4/66), and a possible piece of ground stone (433-5F-4/74), but since these artifacts were all broken they were probably thrown into the unit as trash after the room was abandoned. One third of a large corrugated jar (433-5F-4/70), a worked basalt slab fragment with chrysocolla ground into it (433-5F-4/58), two magnetite hammer­stones (433-5F4/64, 433-5F-4/72), a quartzite core/­hammerstone (4335F-4/65), and a possible sitting stone (433-5F-4/73) were in place on the floor. The corrugated vessel was in the southeast corner of the room, and it seemed to have been built into the adobe facing of the wall, because when the sherds against the corner were removed, the walls curved at the same angle as the jar exterior. The corner above the jar was angled rather than curved. The worked stone slab with chrysocolla was on its edge and resting against the north wall, as if this location was where the artifact was normally stored. It is not clear from the array of artifacts whether the materials on the floor were in use when the room was abandoned. The large corrugated jar could have been used for storage, the chrysocolla grinding slab for pigment preparation, and the hammerstones and core-hammerstone for chipped or ground stone manufacture. However, other than the jar, all of these could have been discarded, and even the jar might have been left in place because it could not easily be separated from the wall. The reason for the abandonment was not evident from the archaeological remains in the room. However, once the structure was no longer being used for habitation, its interior began to fill with fine, loose dirt, which was probably wind-blown. The roof was still standing at this point, and it was probably being used as an outside work area by the inhabitants of neighboring rooms. Many more artifacts were on the roof than were on the floor, including two or three large corrugated vessels (433-5F-4/71), two worked slab fragments (433-5F-4/67, 433-5F-4/29), a complete rhyolite stone bowl (433-5F-4/30), worked bone (433-4R-2/6, 433-5F-4/11), a complete three-­quarter grooved greenstone ax (433-4R-2/35), a Glycymeris shell bracelet fragment (433-4R-2/42), a worked sherd fragment (433-4R-2/8), and several projectile points or fragments (433-4R-2/41, 433-4R-3/19, 433-5F-4/10, 433-5F4/31). These materials might alternately be interpreted as trash, either lost in the room or thrown onto the roof after it had collapsed.

Sometime after the abandonment of the room, the roof caught fire and collapsed, falling generally away from the southeast corner of the room. Roof fall was characterized by patchy, hardened adobe and many pieces of burned beams. The burned wood was mainly pinyon and juniper, with one specimen of Ponderosa pine. From tree-ring dates (appendix 1), the roof of Unit 433 was constructed in A.D. 1079. Only two samples dated after A.D. 1079, and they may represent replacement beams. After the roof burned and collapsed, it appears that trash from other areas at the site was deliberately thrown into the room. Sherds from a Classic flare rim bowl (4333-2/12) that matched pieces of a bowl in the roof fall of Unit 435 to the east were recovered from the fill above the roof fall. This suggests that the roof of Unit 433 collapsed while the roof of Unit 435 was still being used and that trash was thrown from the latter room into the former. The post-occupation fill of Unit 433 consisted of alluvial deposits with Classic trash that had washed into the room. As the room was filling, the standing walls slowly collapsed onto the roof fall level.

Unit 435 Unit 435 was an unpothunted, rectangular masonry room on the east edge of the 400s room block (figures 3.4 and 3.36–3.42). The room was bordered to the north by Unit 427, to the west by Unit 433, to the south by Unit 438, and to the east by Unit 426, which was a ramada. There were two surfaces in the structure. The lower one (435b; figure 3.36) was probably a ramada associated with the floor of Unit 433, while the upper (Unit 435a; figure 3.37) was the actual adobe floor of Unit 435. All of the walls in Unit 435 were constructed from large cobbles set in mud mortar (table 3.4). Smaller rocks were used as chinking, and adobe covered the interior faces of all but the south wall. The walls continued below the upper adobe floor of the room to the lower ramada surface, indicating that the walls were built while the ramada was being used, and the upper floor was added later, after the area was no longer being used for its original purpose. A step protruded from the north wall, but it does not seem to correspond to an opening in the wall. It was however in the same position as the blocked doorway evident in the south wall of Unit 427. The wall was therefore probably double-coursed, and the step originally was associated with the doorway before it was blocked. The step was constructed of adobe with one flat cobble set into the vertical face and one stone slab (435-4F-5/9) nearly covering the horizontal surface. The slab was reused, because it was ground on one surface. The top of the step was 18 cm above the upper adobe floor and 57 cm above the ramada surface. The north wall probably formed the boundary of the ramada area, as evidenced by the lack of a similar ramada surface in Unit 427, and so the step and doorway

Figure 3.36.  Plan of Unit 435b. Burials 5-17 and 6-23 could have predated this ramada surface.

Figure 3.37.  Plan of Unit 435a. Both burials in 5-10 and Individual 1 in 5-12 probably associated with the ramada surface (Unit 435b).

Figure 3.38.  Photo of Unit 435 west wall opening showing grooves for two vertical slabs that formed vent.

Figure 3.39.  Photo of Unit 435 east wall vent.

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Figure 3.40.  Photo of Unit 435 west wall doorway.

must have been used with the ramada and may also have been used with the room floor, depending on when the doorway was blocked. The west wall was heavily plastered with adobe and had a doorway (figures 3.38 and 3.40) blocked with adobe and cobbles. The remodeling sequence for this opening, from doorway to vent to smaller doorway, was described as part of the earlier east wall discussion of Unit 433. We should note that the base of the original doorway was flush with the floor in Unit 433 as well as with the lower surface, the ramada, in Unit 435b (96 cm below the ground surface). The vent was then built into the doorway at this same level and was probably also associated with these two surfaces. The second doorway was made narrower by using the north slab of the vent as facing for the new door, and 25 cm was subtracted from its height when adobe and two rock slabs were placed in the lower portion of the opening. The final doorway was probably constructed when the upper adobe floor in Unit 435a was laid, about 80 cm below the present ground surface. At some later time, the door was blocked deliberately. The south wall of Unit 435 was a typical Classic wall, in that it was constructed with large cobbles but with no chinking and no adobe facing. It was also considerably shorter than the other three walls, and so the room had a distinctly trapezoidal shape.

The east wall was chinked with small stones and was faced with adobe along its south portion. There was a vent (figure 3.39) that was 25 cm square in the center of the east wall. The vent was 13 cm above the level of the upper adobe floor and was probably associated with the hearth in this floor, which was directly in front of the vent. The sides and top of the vent were lined with stone slabs (4354F-7/12), but the base of the opening was left as adobe. Because the vent had not been blocked, the hearth and therefore the room were both probably still in use when the area was abandoned. The bonding and abutting pattern of the wall corners suggests that Unit 435a was built after Unit 433. Although we could not determine it conclusively, the south wall of Unit 435 probably abutted onto the south wall of Unit 433. The west wall abutted both the north and south walls, while the east wall abutted the north wall, but was abutted by the south wall. The north wall was probably constructed at the same time as the north wall of Unit 433. Thus, both the south and east walls could have been added after Units 433 and 427 were built, and Unit 435 could have been an outside, brush-roofed ramada before it became a room. Culturally sterile soil defined the ramada floor (Unit 435b; figure 3.36), and it was at the same elevation as the floor in Unit 433. We called this lower surface a ramada

Surface Rooms Excavated by the Mimbres Foundation

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Figure 3.41.  Photo of Unit 435a-4F-4 to 7 excavated floor and hearth.

because the floor was unfinished, but the area was roofed, as evidenced by the postholes associated with the surface. The bonding and abutting patterns also indicate that the area may have been open on one or two sides for some period before the final walls were built. The hearth and the central posthole in the upper floor cut into the hearth (435-5S-20H; table 3.6) that was associated with the lower ramada surface. The two hearths were thus in approximately the same location in their respective floor surfaces. The hearth associated with the ramada was oval and fairly shallow. One shallow pit (435-5S-8/3P; table 3.5) was along the west wall of the ramada surface. The function of the pit was not apparent, except that it contained a smaller circular area that probably was a posthole. Five postholes (435-5S-8/4PH, 435-5S-8/6PH, 4355S-8/8PH, 435-5S-8/9PH), including the one noted above, were associated with the ramada surface. The postholes

were along the west, south, and east walls, forming a different pattern to the postholes in most Classic masonry rooms. The posthole near the south wall was quite shallow, but the other four posts may have been the major supports for the roof. As we note below in the discussion of the postholes associated with the upper adobe floor, the burials interred near the north and south postholes in that floor probably dated to the use of the ramada surface. Both pits were covered with adobe at the level of the upper floor, and both were detectable only near the ramada surface. Burial 435-5S-10B, near the north posthole, contained two individuals, one of which (Individual 2) was disturbed by the placement of the post. This child of about five years was buried with a Middle Classic geometric bowl (435-5S10B/3), which was inverted over the skeleton and two turquoise pendants (435-5S-10B/6, 435-5S-10B/9) that may have been parts of a necklace. Individual 1, a younger

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Figure 3.42.  Photo of Unit 435-4F-9H excavated hearth.

child, was east of the post and was associated with an Early and a Middle Classic naturalistic bowl (435-5S-10B/4, 435-5S-10B/5), both of which were inverted. This skeleton was so poorly preserved that we could not determine the location of the bowls in relation to the body. There were two burials associated with the burial in 435-5S-12B, but only one was near the south posthole. The other (Individual 2), which we discuss later in this section, seemed to have been in a separate pit that could only be detected at a level above the ramada surface (9.97 m), and so the burial probably was interred during the period when the masonry room was occupied. Because of the poor condition of the skeleton, it was not possible to determine whether the post in the south posthole had disturbed Individual 1, a child of about two. There were also adult and infant bones present in this burial pit, along with three shell beads, nine steatite beads (435-5S12B/7), a Middle Classic geometric bowl (435-5S-12B/3), a Middle Classic naturalistic bowl (435-5S-12B/4), and 20 percent of a Middle Classic geometric bowl (435-5S12B/19). The placement of the grave goods in relation to the body was unclear. The separation between the pit in which Individual 2 (435-5S-12B) was interred, and the pit in which the individual in 435-5S-17B was interred, was not obvious.

However, the latter pit could be detected only below the level of the ramada surface, and so it was probably associated with, or predated, that surface rather than the upper floor. A Middle Classic geometric bowl (435-5S-17B/5) was inverted over the cranium of the adult in 435-5S-17B, and one of two turquoise pendants (435-5S-17B/7, 4355S-17B/8) in the pit was under that bowl. There was a redslipped bowl (435-5S-17B/4) north of the cranium and a metate with one side and an end missing (435-5S-17B/1) over the skeleton. Located near the north wall, 435-5S-21B was defined in the ramada surface and was associated with that level, rather than the upper adobe floor. The skeleton was that of an infant and was entirely under an inverted Middle Classic geometric bowl (435-5S-21B/1). Also associated with the ramada surface, 435-5S-22B contained an adult and a child of about four years. The adult was interred about 40 cm above the child. Only a few scattered bones remained of this individual, and no grave goods were associated with the skeleton. A Middle Classic geometric bowl (435-5S-22B/3) was inverted over the cranium of the child, the legs of which were somewhat flexed. There was 13 cm of heavily compacted, culturally sterile soil between the individual in 435-5S-23B and the

Surface Rooms Excavated by the Mimbres Foundation ramada surface, and it was possible that this burial predated the use even of that surface. The burial was that of a child of five to six years, and the left side of the body was burned. The fact that the burning included only the left part of the pelvis and lumbar vertebrae and the left arm suggests that it might have occurred while the child was alive or before it was buried. The skeleton was on its back with the legs flexed to one side of the chest. A Middle Classic naturalistic bowl (435-5S-23B/1) was inverted over the cranium of the child. No artifacts remained on the lower ramada surface. This would be expected if the ramada surface had been intentionally covered with fill to construct the upper adobe floor. In such a case, people would have retrieved all artifacts of continuing utility before they covered the surface. There was 11 cm to 22 cm of loose fill (435-5S-8) between the lower ramada surface and the upper adobe floor. Relatively few sherds and chipped stone artifacts were in this fill, and it is not clear how it accumulated. All of the identifiable painted sherds were Classic Black-onwhite, and so the ceramics showed no evidence that the fill accumulated over a long period of time. Considering the construction and use sequence of Units 433, 435, and 426, it is most likely that this area between the floors was deliberately filled when the function of Unit 435 changed from a ramada to an enclosed habitation room. The fill would have served to make the upper floor of the room approximately the same level as the ramada surface in Unit 426. The upper floor (Unit 435a; figures 3.37 and 3.41) was hard, level adobe and was probably built when the area was enclosed to form a room. A hearth (435-4F-9H; figure 3.42; table 3.6) was in the upper floor just to the west of the vent in the east wall. It was filled with ash, the lower levels of which were compacted into hard lumps. Two unshaped stones were near the edge of the hearth. One was round and 10 cm in diameter, while the other was 22 cm long. The stones may have been either fire dogs or pot supports. Between the vent in the east wall and the hearth in the floor of Unit 435a was an adobe-lined, somewhat oval pit (435-4F-13P; table 3.5). Within its uppermost centimeters were several chunks of floor adobe, as if part of the floor had been plastered over sections of the pit. Below this, the fill was intermixed with ash, broken pottery, chipped stone, and small pieces of charcoal. The pit may have been used for trash, but it may have had a second function. The trash, if mixed with warm ash, would hold the heat, and the pit could therefore have served to keep food warm. The proximity of the pit to the hearth supports this suggestion, although cold air from the vent would constantly have been flowing over the pit. As is characteristic of most Classic masonry rooms, the floor of Unit 435a had three postholes (435-4F-5/4, 435-4F-5/5, 435-4F-7/11) that ran north to south through the center of the room. No other postholes were around the periphery of the structure, perhaps indicating that the

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room was constructed late during the occupation of the room block, and the roof did not have time to develop structural difficulties. The three postholes were unusual, as mentioned earlier, in that at least one burial seemed to be associated with each posthole. In the case of 435-4F-5/4, the posthole disturbed one individual (435-5-10B, Individual 2), who had clearly been interred before the room was built, but another individual in the same pit (435-5S-10B, Individual 1) was not disturbed. There was a burial (435-5S-11B) just west of the central posthole (435-4F-5/5). The cranium of this individual was in the side of the posthole, but the post did not disturb the burial. Because of the fragmentary nature of the skeleton, we could not determine whether or not the burial (435-5S-12B, Individual 1) associated with the south-central posthole (435-4F-7/11) had been disturbed when the post was set. It is significant to note that all of these burial pits were covered with adobe at the level of the upper floor, and so they were probably used for interments before the room was constructed, or during the habitation of the structure. Only in 435-5S-11B could the pit be detected at a level above the lower ramada surface, and so this pit postdated the use of the ramada. The burials in 435-5S-10B and 435-5S-12B were probably associated with the ramada surface, and the burials in these pits were therefore interred before the room was constructed. Of the 12 burial loci within Unit 435, six seem to have been associated with the use of the upper adobe floor of the room or the post-occupation period, and the other six were probably associated with the lower ramada surface. In some cases, the association is not clear, as was noted in the discussion of the burials near the three postholes in the upper floor. However, using the nature of the pit at the floor level, the depth at which the pit began, and the disturbance of the skeleton, we present the burials that were probably associated with the upper room floor in the following paragraphs. The burial in 435-5S-11B just west of the central posthole seemed to have been interred while Unit 435 was used as a habitation room. The pit was plastered with adobe at the floor surface of 435a, it began just below the floor level, and the posthole did not disturb the body. Indeed, the cranium was apparent in the west side of the central posthole. Thus, the individual was probably placed in the pit after the posthole had been constructed but, because of the adobe seal, during the occupation of the room. The child of seven or eight years was flexed on its back, and a Middle Classic flare rim bowl (435-5S-11B/3) was inverted over its cranium in the east end of the pit. Individual 2 in 435-5S-12B was buried in a different pit from that around the south-central posthole and was probably associated with the use of the room floor. The pit was plastered with adobe at the level of the upper floor, and it could be discerned about 7 cm above the ramada surface.

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Two Middle Classic geometric bowls (435-5S-12B/10, 435-5S-12B/11), half of a plain bowl (435-5S-12B/9), and a turquoise pendant (435-5S-12B/8) were with this child, but the relationship between the body and the artifacts could not be determined because the skeleton was poorly preserved. There were two burial pits in 435-5S-14B, one of which was plastered with adobe at the floor level (Individual 1), and the other of which was evident in the floor (Individual 2). We normally would think that the plastered pit was used for a burial during the occupation of the room, and the pit was plastered so that its inhabitants would not step into the soft fill of the burial pit. The pit that was not covered with adobe plaster would, therefore, have dated to the time after the room was abandoned. However, this burial is anomalous in that the placement of Individual 1 in the plastered pit disturbed the cranium and bowl of Individual 2, in the unplastered pit. The right arm of Individual 1 was resting on several sherds of the Middle Classic flare rim bowl (435-5S-14B/13) that had been inverted over the cranium of Individual 2. Since it is unlikely that the pit in which Individual 2 was interred would have remained uncovered at floor level while the room was in use, we can only conclude that both of these burials postdated its occupation. Both skeletons in 435-5S-14B were flexed, with Individual 1 on its back and Individual 2 on its left side. As noted above, there was a Middle Classic flare rim bowl inverted over the cranium of Individual 2. Individual 1, an adult male, also had a Middle Classic geometric bowl (435-5S-14B/12) inverted over his cranium, and a trough metate (435-5S-14B/5) was also in the burial pit. Partly plastered with adobe at the floor level, 435-5S16B was evident in the room floor in the northwest corner of the room. This burial may have been associated with either the use of the upper floor or with the post-­ occupation period. Only two teeth remained of the skeleton, but two Middle Classic naturalistic bowls (435-5S16B/11, 435-5S-16B/12) were present in the burial pit. Two individuals were interred in 435-5S-18B, a pit that was evident in the floor of the room, and both burials probably postdated the occupation of the room. Individual 1 was the poorly preserved skeleton of a child with a Middle Classic naturalistic bowl (435-5S-18B/1) inverted probably over its cranium at the south end of the pit. The remains of Individual 2 were somewhat better preserved; the skeleton was that of an adult with a Middle Classic geometric bowl (435-5S-18B/4) inverted over its cranium at the north end of the pit. Burial 435-5S-19B was plastered with adobe at floor level, and the pit began just below the floor. The burial most likely associated with the use of the structure. The one adult in the grave was flexed on its left side and had a half of a Middle Classic geometric bowl (435-5S-19B/2) inverted over its cranium in the northwest end of the pit.

Unlike most Classic rooms, many artifacts were left in situ on the upper floor of Unit 435. These artifacts included parts of several large corrugated jars (435-4F4/18, 435-4F-5/2, 435-4F-6/3, 435-4F-7/6, 435-4F-7/8), a quarter of a Middle Classic jar (435-4F-6/4), a complete bifacially chipped basalt hoe (435-4F-6/1), two core preparation flakes (435-4F-4/20, 435-4F-6/2), a worked sherd (435-4F-7/1), and several pieces of ground stone including a complete basalt slab with chrysocolla ground onto it (435-4F-4/19), a mano (435-4F-5/7), a mano fragment (435-4F-7/3), a worked slab fragment (435-4F-7/4), a pecked rock or anvil (435-4F-7/5), and three worked slab fragments (435-4F-6/5), one of which had chrysocolla crushed on it, near the doorway in the west wall. Some of this material, such as the mano fragment, the core preparation flakes, and the worked sherd, either may have been misplaced on the room floor or may have been part of the trash thrown into the room after abandonment, while the three slabs near the door may have been associated with that opening. The other artifacts were probably an assemblage left on the floor when the room was abandoned, and they therefore represent the activities normally performed in the room. The major function of most of the jars was probably storage, either for water or food, and the location of the vessels in the center of the room and generally west of the hearth would have been ideal for food preparation. The whole mano on the surface of the warming pit may have also aided in food preparation or may have served as a support for pots warming in the pit. The two slabs with chrysocolla may indicate that the inhabitants of the structure were preparing pigments in this area. The presence of the hoe seemed to have no relationship to the activities occurring in the other areas of the room. It appeared that Unit 435a did not remain intact for long after the room was abandoned, as only a thin (less than 1 cm) layer of apparently aeolian sand was deposited between the roof fall and the floor. No trash or washed-in artifacts were present in the fill, and so the roof must have collapsed shortly after the room was abandoned. The fact that the roof burned, and there was an in situ assemblage of artifacts on the room floor, may indicate that the room was abandoned only because it had burned. The sand between the roof fall and the floor therefore may not have been aeolian, instead being placed there as a floor covering by the inhabitants of the room. Roof fall consisted of discontinuous chunks of adobe lying close to the room floor level. This adobe was partially burned in the east half of the room and was most heavily concentrated in the southern part of the structure. There were some burned roof beams in the roof fall. These were mostly pinyon with a few examples of juniper and non-coniferous species (appendix 1). The dates from the tree-ring samples taken from the roof fall level were not conclusive, but some of the specimens dated at least to the A.D. 1070s.

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Figure 3.43.  Plan of Unit 438b.

After the roof collapsed, surface trash washed into the room, and portions of the walls began to collapse. The room was probably not used as a trash dump because of the low density of sherds, chipped stone, and animal bone in the fill.

Unit 438 Unit 438 (figures 3.4 and 3.43–3.46) appears to have been the southeasternmost room in the 400s room block, as well as the largest Classic room exposed during our excavations at the Mattocks site (table 3.4). Since the north wall of Unit 438 was 4.5 m long, both Units 433 and 435 bounded the room to the north. The pit structure that was part of Unit 441 was just outside the doorway in the east wall of Unit 438, and the southern extent of

the ramada surface, which was part of Unit 441, bordered Unit 438 outside the northeast corner. A test trench designated Unit 442 revealed that no room walls were present beyond the southeast corner of Unit 438, although there was an assemblage of in situ artifacts on this probable ramada surface. The floor surface of this room exhibited no evidence of pothunting, but one area of the south wall appeared to have been disturbed. This section was near the southwest corner, and the disturbance may have been the result of a modern fence post, rather than pothunting. The walls of Unit 438 were all constructed of unshaped cobbles, with much mortar and some chinking. The adobe plaster remained only on the west wall below the doorway and on the east wall where it sloped down to meet the floor.

Figure 3.44.  Plan of Unit 438a.

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Figure 3.45.  Photo of Unit 438-3F-4 excavated floor, pits, and artifacts.

There were doorways in both the east and west walls of Unit 438. The one in the center of the east wall was probably associated with the use of both the upper and lower floors of the room. The construction of the door was an integral part of the east wall, and so the door was definitely used at the same time as the lower floor. Since there was no evidence of the doorway having been blocked, it was probably also in use when the room was remodeled to include an upper floor. The doorway near the southwest corner was also built during the construction of the west wall, and so it was associated with the lower floor. At some point, this opening was blocked from the west, leaving a door-shaped niche in the west wall of Unit 438. There was no evidence that might indicate when the doorway was blocked, but this may have occurred when the upper floor surface in Unit 438 was in use. A worked stone slab (438-2RF-4/42) served as the bottom surface of this doorway, and another worked slab (438-2RF-4/43) appeared to be a step in front of the opening within Unit 438. We can say little about the wall construction sequence of this room from the bonding and abutting patterns of the corners. In the northeast corner, the east wall may have abutted the north wall. Evidence from Unit 435 indicated

that the south wall of that room abutted the east wall shared by both Units 435 and 438, suggesting that the south and east walls of Unit 435 were built as an entity and that the east wall of Unit 438 was later abutted onto the corner. The south wall of Unit 438 abutted onto the east wall and was abutted by the west wall. Previous backfilling operations and test trenching operations in this area destroyed the walls adjoining at the northwest corner. Clearly, we are unable to say whether any two of the walls in Unit 438 were built at the same time, although there was no evidence that the four walls were not constructed as a unit. There were two floors in Unit 438 (table 3.4). The lower floor (Unit 438b; figures 3.43 and 3.4) was hard, smooth adobe laid atop culturally sterile soil. This surface averaged 5 cm thick and sloped up to meet the walls. All of the burial pits within the room were associated with the lower floor, as were the two hearths. There were nonburial adult bones below this floor. Most of the postholes within the room were used during the occupations of both floors. The presence of the hearths, the association with burial pits, and the level, finished character of the lower floor indicated that this surface was used for habitation.

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Figure 3.46.  Photos of Unit 438-3F-13H two excavated hearths.

There were two slab-lined hearths (438-3S-12H, 4383S-13H; figure 3.46; table 3.6) in the lower floor, both directly west of the doorway in the east wall. The earlier, 438-3S-13H, was closest to the doorway and had been plastered over with floor adobe. Below the adobe were three worked stone slabs (438-3F-13H/1, 438-3F-13H/5, 438-3F-13H/6) that covered the top of this hearth. Only a very small lens of ash remained within the hearth, and the rest of the fill was brown, loamy soil with several firecracked rocks in the bottom of the feature. That 438-3S-13H had been covered with slabs and adobe floor material indicated that 438-3S-12H, a hearth located 24 cm west of the former, probably replaced it. The later hearth was double-lined with stone slabs on all sides except the west, where the floor adobe came to the

edge of the hearth. There was adobe between the slabs on the other three sides. Excavation did not reveal whether the double lining of this hearth was part of the original construction, or whether the hearth had been remodeled and made smaller. Below the top 15 cm of brown loamy fill in this feature was a solid ash deposit. Rocks lined part of the bottom of the hearth. Six postholes (table 3.5) were associated with both floors. Juniper posts in three large postholes (438-3S-16PH, 438-3S-8PH, 438-3S-9PH) that ran north to south through the center of the room formed the primary roof support. The central of these postholes, 438-3S-8PH, had been remodeled, probably when the upper floor was put into use. Remains of a post extended 70 cm below the upper surface, at which point there were two layers of fist-sized

Surface Rooms Excavated by the Mimbres Foundation stones. Below these stones were more fill and the remains of another, earlier post. It appeared that the lower post was associated with the lower floor. This post was not adequate for continued roof support and was therefore replaced by the upper post, which was supported by the rocks that were placed between the two posts. Adobe had been laid from the floors up to the posts on both room surfaces. The other postholes associated with both floors were near the west wall. Two of these, 438-3S-10PH and 438-3S-15PH, were 15 cm and 11 cm in diameter, respectively, which is very small for postholes, although neither was correspondingly shallow. The sixth posthole (438-3S-14PH) was in the northwest corner of the room and extended through both floors. One posthole, 438-4S-18PH, associated only with the lower floor. It was the same size as and adjacent to 438-3S-10PH, which may have been its replacement. Two small postholes, 438-4S-24PH and 438-4S-25PH, were below the floor in the north part of the room. Both had been filled and completely plastered over at the level of the lower floor. These postholes may predate the construction of Unit 438. Four of the five burial pits below the lower floor were partly covered with floor adobe. It is not clear whether these burials were interred during or after the use of the lower floor, but the fact that the pits were almost completely covered with adobe probably indicates that they associated with the occupation of the lower floor. The fifth burial (438-4S-23B) was completely covered with adobe at the lower floor level and therefore was most likely in place during room occupation. There was one adult in 438-4S-19B, probably placed on its right side with its legs flexed and cranium toward the east. This burial had three bowls that served as grave goods, which is unusual in that few Classic burials had more than one. A Middle Classic geometric bowl (438-4S-19B/5) was inverted over the cranium, while an Early Classic bowl (438-4S-19B/3) was inverted over the lower leg bones and feet. A complete Middle Classic flare rim bowl (438-4S19B/4) was broken above the center of the skeleton. A Middle Classic flare rim bowl (438-4S-20B/4) covered the cranium of the single adult who was buried in 438-4S-20B. This skeleton was also flexed on its right side with its cranium in the east end of the pit. Another Middle Classic flare rim bowl was above the cranium in 438-4S21B. This adult was possibly interred on its left side with its legs flexed and its cranium to the east. Although the burial pit represented by 438-4S-22B was the same general size as a pit containing one individual, this grave contained the skeletons of four children. The lowermost individual (438-4S-22B/8) was near the bottom of the pit and had a Late Classic naturalistic bowl (4384S-22B/6) inverted over the skeleton. Directly above this was 438-4S-22B/3, also with a Middle Classic naturalistic bowl (438-4S-22B/5) inverted over the child’s body. At

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the same elevation, but slightly to the south, was the third individual (438-4S-22B/2), who was interred on its back with its cranium toward the east, and who was associated with a Late Classic naturalistic bowl (438-4S-22B/4). The burial of the child closest to the lower floor surface (4384S-22B/1) had no grave goods. There was no indication within the pit whether all of these individuals were buried at the same time, but the direct superposition of skeleton 438-4S-22B/3 above the lowermost body (438-4S-22B/8) probably indicated that these two, at least, were interred simultaneously. The burial pit (438-4S-23B) that was completely covered by floor adobe contained two individuals. The uppermost interment was that of a child (438-4S-23B/4) about one year old, who was placed in soft brown fill at about the same elevation as the highest individual in 438-4S-22B. An Early Classic flowerpot-shaped geometric vessel (438-4S23B/3) was inverted over the cranium and upper part of the body. Because this individual was placed close to the west edge of the adjoining 438-4S-22B, and because it was much higher and in different soil than the adult lower in the pit, it might have been buried more with regard to the four children in 438-4S-22B than to the adult in this burial. The second individual (438-4S-23B/7), the adult, was near the bottom of the pit and had been placed in consolidated, redeposited, culturally sterile soil. The skeleton was flexed on its left side with its cranium toward the east end of the pit. A Middle Classic geometric bowl (438-4S23B/11) was inverted over the cranium. Like the artifacts that remained on the upper floor, the assemblage on the lower floor seemed to consist mainly of broken and incomplete materials. For example, there were sherds from a Middle Classic flare rim bowl (438-3F-4/12), but only a quarter of the vessel was present. Likewise, sherds from a Late Classic bowl (438-3F-4/24) represented only one-sixth of the whole, and sherds from a corrugated (438-3F-4/13) and a plain (438-3F-4/14) vessel were only 20 percent and 10 percent complete, respectively. Also on the lower floor surface were three worked stone slab fragments (438-3F-4/21, 438-3F-4/23, 438-3F-4/30), a vesicular basalt mano fragment (438-3F-4/22), a whole circular sandstone mano (438-3F-4/29) and, notably, a complete paint grinding slab (438-3F-4/28) with red coloring on it. The fact that most of these artifacts were broken, and that there were many similar artifacts in the fill between the two floors, probably indicates that these were part of the trash fill rather than being an in situ floor assemblage. The fill between the two floors varied between 13 cm and 30 cm thick. Due to the high density of sherds and chipped stone, this fill was probably trash thrown into the room when the first floor fell into disuse, or it was deposited purposefully on the floor in preparation for the construction of the upper floor. Most of the fill was loosely consolidated and light brown, although there was redeposited culturally sterile soil in the northeast corner of the

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room. Remains from a possible dismantled hearth, including burned adobe and charcoal but no ash, were scattered in the southwest corner. Perhaps this hearth was associated with the doorway in that corner. The upper floor (Unit 438a; figure 3.44) was quite level in the northern half of the room, but the floor in the remainder of the room was uneven and discontinuous. Large rocks protruded through the adobe surface in some places. The thickness of the upper floor also varied, with 10 cm of adobe laid on more than 5 cm of fill near the west wall and 4 cm of floor above 13 cm of fill next to the east wall. It appeared that an effort had been made during construction of the upper floor to ensure a level surface above differing amounts of fill between the two floors. The function of the upper floor was not clear. The uneven, discontinuous surface with its lack of a hearth and associated burials seemed to indicate only temporary use. Perhaps a portion of the roof had collapsed by this time, and the lower floor had been covered with trash. Therefore, the upper surface may have been rather informal and only used for certain activities, no evidence for which has remained. The only features in the upper floor of Unit 438 were seven postholes, six of which were associated with both floors. The one posthole (438-3S-7PH) that was associated only with the upper floor was near the middle of the west wall, between 438-3-10 and 438-3-15. Only four scattered artifacts remained on the upper floor surface. A whole metate (438-2RF-4/37) was near the east door, and there was a vesicular basalt mano blank (438-2RF-4/41) next to the west wall. The other artifacts were a ground stone blank fragment (438-2RF-4-40) and some articulated animal bone (438-2RF-4/39). The materials may have been in use at the time the roof burned, or

when the room was finally abandoned, or they may have been part of the trash deposit that was thrown onto the upper floor. It appears that part of the roof burned and collapsed sometime during or after the use of the upper floor, while the rest of the roof remained standing for a short period. Burned roof beams had dropped directly onto the upper floor in the northern part of the room, thus preserving the upper floor surface in that area. One of these roof beams (438-2-1/9) had a tree-ring cutting date of A.D. 1117, the latest such date at the site (appendix 1). Two other A.D. 1117 dates were from roof fall or the fill between the floors, but these were not cutting dates, and so the actual construction of Unit 438 may have postdated A.D. 1117 by a year or more. The roof probably remained intact in the southern portion of the unit, as fill ranging from 1 cm to 5 cm in thickness was between the upper floor and roof fall. That the entire roof did not burn probably indicates a slow burning or an easily controlled fire, perhaps related to the fire that destroyed the roofs of Units 433 and 435. Whether Unit 438 was abandoned before the northern section of the roof burned and collapsed was not clear from the evidence. There were no burials associated with the upper floor, although there were scattered bones from a child in the roof fall, and so the room may not have been abandoned long enough for the inhabitants of the room block to have used the area for interments. The room began to fill with wind-blown soil and washed-in material after the entire roof had collapsed. The east wall appeared to have deteriorated faster than the other walls, as this wall fall covered most of the eastern half of the room. There was no evidence of continued use at this stage of the room destruction.

CHAPTER 4

Social Contexts of the Mattocks Site Room Blocks A Summary and Discussion of the Architectural and Dating Patterns

In this chapter, we analyze the data provided in the previous chapters to determine how people built, used, and abandoned the Classic period room blocks at the Mattocks site. We reach the unexpected conclusion, at least to us, that a single household may well have constructed and inhabited each room block and that the rooms present in each room block formed suites that the household used sequentially. We define a household as a fluid, task-­ oriented residence group that might include kin and nonkin (Varien 2012:50–51), and we use this term because it denotes behavior, whereas “family” suggests kinship (Doug­lass and Gonlin 2012:3), the latter being notoriously difficult to determine in the archaeological record. Because of the relatively small size of the room blocks, especially if people inhabited suites of rooms within them sequentially, we do not think that house societies that are corporate organizations or lineages are appropriate units of analysis for the Mattocks site. We suggest that only the household that built the 200s room block continued at the site from a Late Late Pit Structure period pit structure. That household could have been a founding one at the site, especially since the only obvious communal structure at the site, the Late Late Pit Structure period great kiva (Unit 213), was associated with the 200s room block. The equally large 300s room block north of the 200s also could have held a founding household, but our excavations in the area were minimal, and we cannot confirm this possibility. The 100s and the 400s room blocks generally began late in the Classic period, after A.D. 1079, and were perhaps used for as little as two generations, although there were small numbers of Transitional and Boldface Black-on-white sherds in both room blocks. Although other Mimbres Classic pueblos such as the NAN Ranch site do not seem to follow the pattern of one

household per room block, few people on-site at any time, and relatively late construction and limited use of several room blocks, the Mattocks site data have implications for the construction, use, and abandonment of Mimbres pueblos in general. If each pueblo had a different pattern, as implied by a comparison of the Mattocks and the NAN Ranch sites (Gilman and Shafer 2003), then archaeologists would need to account for those differences. We first discuss the pit structure to pueblo transition at the site because the initial construction and habitation of the pueblo room blocks may relate to the pit structures of the preceding Late Late Pit Structure period and how people used them. We then consider the dates of the room blocks followed by an examination of the building, use, and abandonment sequence within each of the three room blocks that the Mimbres Foundation excavated intensively. We end the chapter by arguing that each room block would have been occupied by a single household, and we discuss the implications of that for the numbers of people who lived at the Mattocks site and for Mimbres archaeology in general. The interpretations presented in this chapter are predicated on the dating and architectural data presented in chapters 1 through 3. The reader may find it useful to refer to those chapters while reading this one.

The Pit Structure to Pueblo Transition at the Mattocks Site The pit structures of the Late Late Pit Structure period directly preceded and may have overlapped the initial use of surface rooms in the Mimbres region. Shafer (1995:25; 2003:40–54) has suggested that there was a series of

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changes in house form, hearth design, entrance type, storage, burial practices, and ceramics between the standard extended entrance pit structures of the Pit Structure periods and the surface pueblos of the early A.D. 1000s. He posited that the transition from pit structures to pueblos occurred over a period of about 100 years, beginning in the early or middle A.D. 900s. Shafer (1995:23–27; 2003:41–43) recorded the presence of modified pit structures at the NAN Ranch site that dated to the early to middle A.D. 900s. These buildings had blocked, extended ramp entries, newly built vent shafts, and roof entries. The ceramics associated with them were Transitional Black-on-white. Shafer suggested that rooms with sunken floors and cobble-adobe walls followed the modified pit structures in the middle A.D. 900s. The sunken floors in these rooms were either shallow excavations or leveled culturally sterile soil. Sunken floor rooms did not have extended entries, although one had a vent shaft. Such rooms at the NAN Ranch site were stratigraphically above pit structures with extended ramp entries and below Classic period rooms. Transitional Black-on-white pottery was also associated with sunken floor rooms. In Shafer’s architectural sequence at the NAN Ranch site, Classic period surface room blocks began between A.D. 1000 and A.D. 1025 with room additions to some of the modified pit structures, sunken floor rooms, and early surface rooms already at the site. Some of the earlier structures might thus have been the core rooms in Classic period room blocks. Shafer (1995:23) stated that not all structures in the A.D. 900s were modified pit structures or sunken floor rooms but that the presence of these kinds of building modifications, along with the other changes mentioned above, suggests that Mimbres society was in flux. Gilman (1987a) had previously argued that population increase and to a lesser degree subsistence intensification drove the change from pit structures to pueblos, but Shafer (1995) proposed that the change also might have correlated with a new symbolism for a changing cosmology. There is scant evidence for Shafer’s architectural sequence at the Mattocks site, perhaps because of the few pit structures and concomitantly few people at the beginning of the transition. Units 115b and 286b were certainly extended entry pit structures, and both may have dated to the Late Late Pit Structure period. Unit 115b had a slab-lined rectangular hearth and a blocked ramp, and so it was possibly a modified pit structure. Since we did not excavate the entire building, we are not certain whether it had a second ramp entry or a vent. There were two other possible modified pit structures at the Mattocks site—Unit 410 and Nesbitt’s Room 48. Unit 410 had a blocked ramp entry and a more recently built vent. However, much evidence suggests that it dated to the Classic period (chapter 1; Gilman 2007), and Anyon and LeBlanc (1980:268–269) have labeled it a

Classic period semi-subterranean kiva. Nesbitt’s Room 48 had a vent in its south wall, but we do not know whether the vent postdated an extended entry. This room also had a rectangular, stone (not slab) and adobe-lined hearth. The Mattocks site had no example of a room with sunken floor and cobble-adobe walls that was above an extended entry pit structure, but below a Classic surface room. Both Units 115a and 286a were above extended entry (or perhaps modified, in the case of 115b) pit structures, but neither was superimposed by another room. Unit 286a dated early in the Classic period, and it was built in relation to the earlier pit structure (Unit 286b) below it, but Unit 115a, which had a tree-ring cutting date of A.D. 1107+rB, was not built in relation to 115b. The lack of support for Shafer’s architectural sequence at the Mattocks site may have more to do with its distinctive nature than with Shafer’s sequence, which is well supported at the NAN Ranch site and appears to be present at the Cameron Creek and Swarts sites (Shafer 1995:24). The low population at the Mattocks site during the Pit Structure periods suggests that there would have been little need for transitional structures. If, as Shafer states, not all structures in the transitional period were modified pit structures or sunken floor rooms, then there may indeed have been transitional structures at the Mattocks site. The implication of the low population size at the Mattocks site in the Late Late Pit Structure period and during the transition to surface rooms is that the change to pueblos was not driven by population density, at least not at this site. It remains possible that the population around the site was large enough to prompt the move to surface pueblos. Because of Shafer’s (2003) intensive excavations, the NAN Ranch site provides the best data on the role of pit and transitional structures in the change to surface buildings. While there was one pit structure dating to the Early Pit Structure period (what Shafer called Georgetown phase) and five dating to the Middle Pit Structure period (San Francisco phase) at the site, the numbers of people using the site apparently increased considerably during the Late and Late Late Pit Structure periods, given the presence of 22 pit structures that date to those periods. Two of the Late Late Pit Structure period pit structures used for habitation at NAN Ranch were modified, and 14 habitation rooms at the site had sunken floors. Even without counting other contemporary structures at the site, the 14 rooms suggest that the population increased during a period that may have been less than 100 years (A.D. 950– 1025). The NAN Ranch data thus show that the number of people using the site increased before and during the transition period. This may be relevant to the surface room blocks that were present during the Classic period. There was, however, no clear population increase in the corresponding period at the Mattocks site. As noted in chapter 2, people might have moved from Harris, a large

Pueblo Room Blocks at the Mattocks Site pit structure site with little or no Classic occupation, to the Mattocks site at the end of the Late Late Pit Structure period or the beginning of the Classic period. The relatively little Transitional Black-on-white pottery at Harris (Robert Stokes and Barbara Roth personal communication, 2014), however, suggests that there were relatively few people at the site at that point. The other possible source for people moving onto the Mattocks and other Classic sites, and perhaps prompting the change to surface pueblos, would be other drainages, such as the Gila Valley to the west. Nelson and Anyon (1996:288–291) and Sedig (2013) have discussed the intense use of that region during the Mangas phase, the transition between the Late Late Pit Structure and the Early Classic periods, and the apparent lack of habitation in the Mimbres Valley during the same time.

Pueblo Room Blocks at the Mattocks Site Dating Surface Rooms at the Mattocks Site The first question to address here is when the use of surface structures began at the Mattocks site, so that we can then consider how long the room blocks were inhabited, and how many people lived in a room block at any given time. Chronometric dates (chapter 1; table 1.9) suggest that most surface room building began relatively late at the site and lasted only a brief time. The first tree-ring cutting date was A.D. 1079r from Units 114 and 433. There were many “vv” dates (non-cutting dates, with an unknown number of outer rings missing) from the site, beginning at A.D. 936vv in Unit 286b, but no clusters of these non-­ cutting earlier dates exist to suggest that pueblo construction began earlier than A.D. 1079. After A.D. 1079, there were cutting dates at A.D. 1084r (Unit 232), A.D. 1089+rB (Unit 125), A.D. 1095r (Units 237 and 426), A.D. 1105r (Unit 115a), A.D. 1106+r (Unit 115a), A.D. 1107+rB (Unit 115a), and A.D. 1117r (Unit 438), implying relatively continuous construction for rooms with treering cutting dates. The difference between the first and last cutting dates, however, is only 38 years, a surprisingly brief span for pueblo construction at the site. The length of time spanned by the cutting dates does not necessarily indicate the length of time that people used surface rooms, or even the length of time that people lived in those pueblo rooms. We have relevant data from only three of the eight room blocks at the site, and those three may have been relatively late. As noted above, it is possible that rooms at the Mattocks site were built between the construction of Units 115b, 213, and 286b, all of which were Late Late Pit Structure buildings, and the A.D. 1079 cutting date, especially given the Transitional Black-on-white sherds present, although in low numbers,

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in each room block. However, the fact that neither Nesbitt nor the Mimbres Foundation recorded any transitional rooms suggests that they were either rare or nonexistent at the Mattocks site. All available chronometric evidence, including ceramics (chapter 1) and the fact that there were no cutting dates before A.D. 1079, suggests that the site was sparsely occupied before A.D. 1079, a surprising point. By way of comparison, 9 of the 50 tree-ring dates from the NAN Ranch site were cutting dates before A.D. 1079 (Shafer 2003:18). The final tree-ring cutting date at the Mattocks site was A.D. 1117, the construction date for Unit 438, but the room was almost certainly occupied after that year. Although Unit 441, the pit structure outside the door of Unit 438, was never finished, it at least demonstrates a level of activity after Unit 438 was occupied, as does the small amount of Late or Postclassic pottery at the site. The limited pit structure occupation, the meager presence of pre-Classic painted pottery, and the lack of Early Classic tree-ring cutting dates all suggest that the major period of pueblo building and use at the Mattocks site began relatively late in the Classic period and was quite brief. The closeness of the cutting dates late in the Classic period hints that room suites within the room blocks were built in rapid sequence. People built room blocks at the site, used them for a generation or two, and then abandoned the site.

The Construction, Use, and Abandonment Sequence within Room Blocks In this section, we address the construction, use, and abandonment sequence of each of the three room blocks for which we have data. Our purpose is to demonstrate that the room blocks were built by accretion, and not as units. From this analysis, we suggest that a single household lived in each room block at any given time, an interpretation that has implications for the number of people in the Mimbres Valley during the Classic period, and for the transition from pit structures that held one household each to pueblo room blocks that also held one household each, at least at the Mattocks site. We summarize the wall corner bonding and abutting patterns as possible indicators of construction sequences. The bonding and abutting patterns used in this analysis, however, may have as much to do with engineering constraints as with simultaneous or non-simultaneous wall building. Walls can be bonded into existing walls where more structural strength is needed. On the other hand, such bonding might have entailed much additional work, and while we cannot unambiguously deduce contemporary building episodes from bonding patterns, they may suggest contemporaneity in conjunction with other data. Except for those between habitation and storage rooms, most of the unblocked doorways that the Mimbres

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Foundation excavated seemed to have connected a room on the edge of the room block with the area outside that room block, implying that many doorways were for access to the outside, and not to other rooms. Therefore, we can suggest that blocked doorways within a room block may have originally connected a room to the outside. We can also postulate that vents in room walls likewise connected a room to the outside. We do not know how common this pattern was at other Classic sites. We argue for the presence of suites containing rooms of different functions, which were probably built and used simultaneously (also see Hegmon et al. 2006). Specifically, there were habitation and storage rooms, along with the occasional ramada, communal granary, and ceremonial or communal room (also see Shafer 1982, 1995, 2003; and Shafer and Taylor 1986:54–55 for descriptions of these kinds of rooms). Habitation rooms were generally larger than storage rooms, and they had prepared adobe floors with hearths. Storage rooms were small, with no hearths and with unprepared floors that were usually culturally sterile soil, and they often had bins in the corners. Doorways between some storage and habitation rooms suggest that these kinds of rooms were often associated with one another, and corroborating evidence from the bonding and abutting patterns suggests that they were often built at the same time. Combinations of these rooms were sometimes associated with a partly walled area or an extramural ramada. There were also buildings that may have been associated more with the continued use of a room block than with a specific room suite. Anyon and LeBlanc (1980) defined three kinds of Classic ceremonial structures— large surface rooms, semi-subterranean kivas, and plazas—of which the latter two were probably present at the Mattocks site, although their semi-subterranean kivas may instead have been Classic period pit structures (Gilman 2007). Shafer (1987, 2003:122; Shafer and Murry 1978; Shafer et al. 1979; Shafer and Taylor 1986:54) noted the presence of communal granaries at the NAN Ranch site, and Unit 41 in the 200s room block may have been such a structure. We consider the presence of floor and roof artifact assemblages as measures of the most recent use of rooms. There were often many incomplete artifacts on the floor or roof of a structure, but these were more likely to have been trash thrown into a room or closing offerings rather than an in situ assemblage that represented the final activities in the structure. In situ assemblages were more often composed of complete artifacts and perhaps some incomplete ones that people may have been saving for later use. In occasional instances, such assemblages may have been composed of many incomplete artifacts that point to an activity beyond trash deposition. Complete artifacts may also have been site furniture, that is, artifacts that were left in rooms for potential later use but that were not actively

in use when the room or the site was abandoned for the purposes of habitation. In terms of room abandonment, burned rooms would clearly have been abandoned, whether the burning was deliberate or accidental. The presence of burials placed below a room floor but unplastered at floor level is evidence for a room that was no longer being used for habitation, its people no longer needing to plaster the tops of the burials at the floor level. Shafer (1995) has suggested that rooms with many burials were core rooms that were no longer inhabited but instead used as “shrine” rooms to the ancestors. The presence of such rooms can be used to support the building, use, and abandonment sequence present in a room block.

The 100s Room Block The 100s room block is in the south-central area of the Mattocks site, and it contains between 20 and 25 rooms. Either Nesbitt or pothunters had dug most of the southern three tiers of rooms, but we were able to retrieve information from the rooms in the northern tiers. The earliest tree-ring date from the room block was A.D. 1079r, from Unit 114, and the latest was A.D. 1107+rB, from Unit 115. We make a case here that there were at least three, and probably four, building episodes in the 100s room block, beginning in A.D. 1079 and ending in A.D. 1107. The pueblo rooms were not built to conform to the outline of Unit 115b, a pit structure dating to either the Late or Late Late Pit Structure period or both. This unit had a square, slab-lined hearth, a form dated to the Late Late Pit Structure period and through much of the Classic period (Shafer 1995:26–29, 2003:43, 59–61). The only other square, slab hearths in the 100s room block were in Units 113 and 114a. The latter contained a burial below the hearth with an Early Transitional Black-on-white bowl, and there was a possible extramural work area (Unit 114b) below the floor of the pueblo room (Unit 114a). This work area dated to the Early Classic period, and it was situated near the entrance to Unit 115b. Perhaps the people living in Unit 115b used Unit 114b as a work area and then built Unit 114a over it. Unit 114a may have been the first pueblo room built in the 100s room block. Units 111, 112, and 113 were built simultaneously, or at least this entire area was enclosed at the same time. The west wall of Unit 111 was bonded with the north and south walls of that unit, with the north wall of Unit 112, and with the west wall of Unit 121, which suggests that the latter, an open-sided structure, was also part of this building episode. There is evidence that Unit 112 was originally separated from Unit 111, in that its west wall bonded into the north wall of the two rooms. The central dividing wall that separated Units 112 and 113 and divided the two halves of Unit 111 was built at one time. Both it and the north wall of Unit 112 abutted onto the west wall of Unit 114, which may indicate that Units

Pueblo Room Blocks at the Mattocks Site 111, 112, and 113 were built after Unit 114 had been constructed. We concluded that Unit 112 had an Early Classic date based on the sherd proportions in it (table 1.9), and there was a tree-ring date of A.D. 991+vv date from Unit 111, providing slight evidence that Units 111, 112, and 113 were built relatively early in the room suite sequence of the 100s room block. However, we also dated Unit 111 to the Late Classic period because of its two circular hearths, and Unit 113 could have dated to the Middle Classic period based on its rectangular hearth. It is possible that Units 112 and 113 were originally associated with the core rooms in Units 114 and 123, although the architectural patterns do not support either this reconstruction or the Early Classic date for Unit 112. The bonding and abutting patterns suggest that Units 106, 115a, 116, and perhaps 126 (Nesbitt’s Room 61) and 127, were built simultaneously. All of these rooms dated to the Late Classic period (table 1.9). The west and north walls of Unit 115a were bonded, and the north wall of Unit 115a was bonded into the west wall of Unit 106. The north and east walls of 106 were bonded, and its east wall was also bonded into the north wall of Unit 116. The east wall of Unit 116 was bonded into the north wall of Unit 127, which was itself continuous with the north wall of Unit 126. The south wall of Unit 116 abutted onto the east wall of Unit 123, the west wall of Unit 115a abutted onto the north wall of Units 114 and 123, and the west wall of Unit 126 abutted onto the south wall of Unit 123. This suggests that Units 106, 115a, 116, 126, and 127 were built later than a core of rooms composed minimally of Units 114 and 123. There was a blocked doorway between Units 116 and 126 (figure 3.1), implying that one or the other was originally on the edge of the room block, and acting as a counter to the bonding-and-abutting pattern that implies these two rooms were built simultaneously. The second blocked doorway in the room block was between Units 114 and 122, which suggests that one of these rooms was also originally on the edge of the room block. This doorway was only blocked from within Unit 122. Given wind and heating problems with large openings on the north sides of rooms, the doorways suggest that Units 116 and 114 were built before Units 126 and 122, respectively. However, other data support simultaneous construction. The idea that vents were originally in exterior walls need not be universally true (figure 3.1), for example, in the case of the vent in the wall between Units 111 and 113, which we propose were built at the same time. This vent may have provided air circulation for the hearth in Unit 113, a rather strange occurrence itself in such a small room. The vent between Units 115a and 123 suggests that one of these rooms was built before the other. In this case, Unit 123 would have been constructed first, such that the vent would have been in an outside wall. A similar situation occurred with the vent between Units 115a and 106,

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but in this case the bonding and abutting patterns implied that these rooms were built at the same time. After an assessment of room dates, bonding-abutting patterns, and doorways and vents, we suggest that there were at least two room suites in the 100s room block. Units 106, 115a, 116, and perhaps 126 and 127 comprised an eastern suite. Unit 115a was tree-ring dated to A.D. 1107, and there were non-cutting dates of A.D. 1105 for Unit 106, A.D. 1095 for Unit 116, and A.D. 1087 for Unit 127. The western room suite is represented by Units 111, 112, 113, 121, 130, and 131. Dates are not available for this suite, but it would probably have been constructed after A.D. 1079. Both of these suites were attached to a core of earlier rooms, Units 114 and 123, with Unit 114 having an early tree-ring cutting date of A.D. 1079 and a later date of A.D. 1088vv, which suggests that the room had been rebuilt. Each of the two room suites included generally larger habitation rooms with hearths and prepared adobe floors, and typically smaller storage rooms with rough floors made of the culturally sterile soil. In the eastern room suite, Units 115a, the southern part of Unit 116, and Units 126 and 127 were probably used for habitation, while Unit 106 and the northern part of Unit 116 were storage rooms or areas. The western room suite was somewhat different, in that the northern half of Unit 111 had an unprepared floor and no hearth, while the southern half had a prepared floor and a hearth. The northern area of Unit 111 was perhaps too large to be a storage room while Unit 113, with its adobe floor and its hearth, was small to be a habitation room. This western suite included Units 121, 130, and 131, which together form a three-walled room that was open to the south. It may also include Units 119 and 120, small storage rooms that were probably built simultaneously, as evidenced by their bonded west and north walls, and the continuous north wall that abutted the west wall of Units 111 and 121. In the eastern room suite, only Unit 115a had a roof assemblage. In the western suite, Unit 111S had a roof assemblage, and Unit 121/131 had a floor assemblage. Unit 114a, one of the core rooms of the 100s room block, also had a roof assemblage. These patterns combine in an interesting way with the rooms that were burned and that contained unplastered burials. Unit 115a had burned, and Unit 106 had partly burned, as if the fire had started in Unit 115a and spread to Unit 106. Unit 115a also contained two unplastered burials, suggesting that the room was no longer being used for habitation when the burials were placed there. In contrast, the western room suite had no burned rooms, there were no burials, and it had the only floor assemblage in the 100s room block. The lack of burials and the presence of a floor assemblage in the western suite indicate that was where the final inhabitants of the 100s room block lived. It appears that Unit 115a was no longer in use for habitation, although

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we cannot demonstrate that other rooms in this suite had fallen into disuse. However, there were no floor assemblages in this suite, supporting the idea that it was not being used for habitation. The roof assemblages in both suites and in Unit 114, one of the core rooms, suggest that the roofs were used throughout the life of the room block, regardless of whether the room below was inhabited. A supportable scenario for the rooms with reasonable data in the 100s room block is that Units 114 and 123 were at least part of the original suite of rooms. The early treering date, the presence of two floors (the only such case in this room block), the bonding-and-abutting patterns, and the presence of several burials (although it was not possible to tell if most of them were plastered or unplastered at the floor level) all confirm that Unit 114, at least, was early. Because we did not know whether the Unit 114 burials containing four Middle and one Late Classic Black-on-white vessels dated to the use of the room or later, we used the tree-ring cutting date to place the room in time. The hearth in the upper floor disturbed the burial of an adult woman, perhaps an ancestor, in the lower floor. Although the architectural patterns did not support this possibility, Unit 112, with its Early Classic pottery (chapter 1), and Unit 113, with its slab hearth, may originally have been associated with Unit 114. The eastern suite may have been the next to be constructed, and it may have fallen into disuse by the time that the western suite was built and used. The western suite was probably still being used when the room block was abandoned. There were, however, more room suites represented in the previously excavated or pothunted areas of the 100s room block. The A.D. 1089 cutting date and A.D. 1097 non-cutting date from Unit 125 suggest there may have been a room suite in this area postdating the one composed of Units 114 and 123, but predating the eastern room suite by at least 10 years. We have not accounted for a number of rooms in this scenario: two rooms in the middle tier, Units 122 and 125 (Nesbitt’s Rooms 44 and 45, respectively); the rooms in the next tier to the south, Units 134 (Nesbitt’s Room 46), 135 (the west part of Unit 136; Nesbitt’s Room 47), 136, and 137; or the rooms in the southernmost tier, Nesbitt’s Rooms 13 (Unit 144) and 15. If the tree-ring dates from Unit 125 indicate another building episode, then perhaps Unit 122 or a room or rooms in the southern tiers might have been associated with it. Nesbitt (table 3.3) reported burials but no floor assemblages from both Rooms 44 and 45, which suggests that they would have been associated with the earlier use of the room block. Nesbitt’s Rooms 46 and 47 had only one burial, in Room 46, and no recorded floor assemblages (table 3.3) or hearths (table 3.2), and so they may not have been used for habitation. Data from the field notes (table 3.1) specified that Nesbitt’s Room 45 connected with Room 44, although we saw no such connection in the wall between the two rooms. The notes also stated that Room 46 connected with Room 44, and Room

47 with Room 46. If these connections were correctly recorded, then Rooms 44, 45, 46, and 47 (Units 122, 125, 134, and 136) may have formed a room suite that was used after the core suite, but before the eastern suite. Alternatively, the types of whole vessels in Rooms 13 and 15 in the southernmost tier, which span Transitional through Late Classic (chapter 1), would fit with Shafer’s (2003:95) definition of a lineage cemetery and would suggest that these were some of the oldest rooms in the block. There is thus the possibility that the room block began with a north-south tier of rooms that included Rooms 13 and 15 and Unit 134, the west side of Unit 136, and Units 114, 122, 123, and 125. This is a large set of rooms, and we suspect that we could divide it into two or more suites if we had appropriate data. The activities of a single household could account for the building, use, and abandonment of all of the suites in the 100s room block, given the apparent sequential movement from one room suite to the next, although this is not the only possibility. Minimally, however, the room block may not have contained more than two households at any one time. If a household consisted of between 5 and 10 people (that is, 5 people per habitation room), then the room block would have contained a maximum of 20 people at any time, but between 5 and 10 might have been as likely. As an aside, some of the apparent room suites do seem to have more than one habitation room, and perhaps more than one adult woman in the household could account for this. In regard to the 100s room block, it is interesting that, although there were two floors only in Unit 114, one of the proposed core rooms, there were features plastered over at the floor level in both the eastern and western room suites. These included plastered hearths in Unit 115a and the south of Unit 111, a plastered posthole and feature in Unit 116, plastered postholes in Unit 127 and the north of Unit 111, and two plastered postholes and two plastered pits in Unit 121 (table 3.5). A second floor might indicate long-term use, but plastered features may occur in even the most recently used rooms. People doubtless adjusted the feature types, numbers, and positions as needed, and on a regular basis.

The 200s Room Block The 200s room block is in the center of the Mattocks site, and it had 28 or more rooms, making it the largest of the three room blocks that we intensively investigated. The room block appeared to have been horseshoe-shaped, with its opening to the south. On the southeast corner of the room block was a flagstone-floored room that may have been a granary. The room block had been heavily pot­ hunted, and Nesbitt had also excavated several of its rooms; we are thus unable to discuss the area in complete detail. The room block contained a pit structure from the Late and Late Late Pit Structure periods (Unit 286b), and a great kiva (Unit 213) from the Late Late Pit Structure period.

Pueblo Room Blocks at the Mattocks Site Construction may have begun earlier than the 100s and 400s room blocks, in that the pit structure was overlain by a masonry room (Unit 286a) that was built to correspond to the layout of the earlier house. Supporting this is the fact that a granary (Room 76) at the NAN Ranch site (Shafer 1987:14) similar to Unit 41 adjoining Unit 286a, had a tree-ring cutting date of A.D. 1008. Shafer called this a transitional room between pit and surface structures. Room 7 at NAN Ranch, another flagstone-­floored granary, was similarly transitional. Based on this slight evidence from another site, Units 41 and 286a could have been among the earliest surface buildings at the Mattocks site. The only tree-ring date that supports this contention suggests that Unit 286b dated after A.D. 936 (table 1.9). Otherwise, the dates for the 200s were similar to those of the other two room blocks. The earliest cutting date was A.D. 1084r from Unit 232, the latest was A.D. 1095r from Unit 237, and there were no clusters of non-cutting dates that might suggest earlier construction in the room block. Because of the extensive disturbance in this room block, the bonding-and-abutting patterns, even when considered with the tree-ring dates, were not particularly informative. The east wall of Unit 231 was bonded with the north wall of Unit 233, and at the same corner the south wall of Unit 231 bonded with the west wall of Unit 233. If tree-ring dates actually associated with the pothunted rooms, Unit 232, to the south and west, had a cutting date of A.D. 1084r and a non-cutting, perhaps remodeling, date of A.D. 1088vv, while Unit 231 had a non-cutting date of A.D. 1096+vv. If Unit 233 was part of the plaza within the room block, then Unit 232 appeared to have been built first and faced onto the plaza from the west, followed perhaps by Unit 231, which faced the plaza from the north. Data only lightly support this scenario, and the early construction at the southeast corner of the room block may negate a west to east construction sequence for this room block. The southeast corner was interesting because of a pit structure (Unit 286b) dating to the Late and Late Late Pit Structure periods and a flagstone-floored room (Unit 41a) with an earlier floor (Unit 41b) that had been disassembled in antiquity. As noted, Unit 286a, a masonry room, was constructed to correspond to Unit 286b, in that the north, east, and south walls of 286a were built just beyond the walls of 286b, perhaps to avoid the soft fill in the pit structure. Only the west masonry wall superimposed the fill of 286b. This construction sequence implies that Unit 286a was built quite early, perhaps in the early A.D. 1000s. If this is the correct sequence, then Unit 41, the flagstone-floored room, may have been added onto Unit 286a, or at least built to correspond to it, since both rooms had the same long, narrow shape. Alternatively, both the north and south walls of Unit 286a abutted onto its east wall (which was also the west wall of Unit 41), hinting that Unit 41 was the first to be

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built. The fact that the lowest course of the west wall of Unit 286a was set into the floor adobe shows that the wall was built at the same time as the room floor, while the remaining three walls may have been built to enclose other rooms before Unit 286a was constructed. The construction sequence in the southeast corner of the room block is thus not at all clear. There are some indications that this southeast corner was not used for ordinary habitation. Although Unit 286a was the size of a typical habitation room, the hard adobe floor was uneven and irregular, and there was no hearth, although there was a small bin in the northeast corner. Other than size, all of these are characteristic of storage rooms. Shafer (1987; Shafer and Murry 1978; Shafer et al. 1979; Shafer and Taylor 1986:54) noted several flagstone-floored rooms (Rooms 7, 75b/75c, 76, and 81) at the NAN Ranch site, and he suggested that they were communal granaries. If so, Unit 286a may have been a storage room associated with a communal granary. Anyon and LeBlanc (1980:271) called Unit 41 a walled plaza, recognizing its likely communal function, but although it was somewhat larger than most Classic rooms it was certainly not the largest, and it was more likely to have been a room than a plaza. We could not ascertain the presence of room suites in the 200s room block due to the level of disturbance. We excavated nothing that could be construed as a small storage room, although it is possible that Unit 231 was really two such rooms. The small storage rooms in the 100s and 400s tended to be on the north sides of the room blocks, the same position of the storage rooms postulated for Unit 231. The other area that may have been associated with room suites is the possible plaza within the room block that opened to the south. The lack of a south wall in the area suggests that Unit 233 may have been at the north end of the plaza, and the doorway in the west wall of Unit 286a may have opened onto the area. Adobe roof fall was present, at least in this northern area, and the plaza would have been at least 5.1 m, and probably closer to 7 m, from east to west. We placed several test trenches in the possible plaza area, but we excavated only Units 285 and 2861-2 in a way that demonstrated that this area was a plaza. Culturally sterile soil was 37 cm below the ground surface in Unit 285 and 45 cm below ground surface in Unit 286-1-2, approximately the natural level of soil across the site, and there was a rough adobe surface above culturally sterile soil in both tests. The only known communal pit structure at the site was in close proximity to the 200s room block. Unit 213 was a burned Late Late Pit Structure period great kiva that had a suggestion of masonry walls. It use most likely ended before the room block was built (chapter 1). If its entry ramp was to the east, then the west wall of the room block probably superimposed that ramp. Since there were so few contemporary pit structures at the Mattocks site, it is not clear what community Unit 213 served.

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Although the room was heavily disturbed, it appears that Unit 237 had both a floor and a roof assemblage. If Unit 237 was one of the last-used rooms in the room block, then perhaps the building, use, and abandonment sequence moved west from initial construction in the southeast corner. Because of the heavy disturbance, it was not always possible to tell whether a room had burned. That is, a room may have contained tree-ring samples from burned roof beams, but there was no guarantee that those beams originally came from that room. Thus, Units 231, 232, 233, 237, and many test trenches had tree-ring samples, but it was not clear whether these rooms had ever burned. Indeed, the unburned juniper post, floor, roof fall, and mud mortar in the walls of Unit 237, for example, all suggest that it did not burn. The pit structure in Unit 286b definitely burned, but it is uncertain whether this was deliberate or by accident. The disturbance also precludes any in-depth discussion of unplastered burials that would indicate rooms abandoned for habitation but still in use as burial chambers. Unit 286a had one unplastered burial pit, while its underlying Unit 286b also had an unplastered pit that was probably cut after the pit structure roof had burned. Another burial in 286b was in the fill and roof fall levels and was also placed after the building had burned. The sequence here was that Unit 286b was abandoned for habitation use, then it burned, and finally two burials were placed through the burned roof fall. Unit 286a was built above Unit 286b after an unknown period. There were two plastered burial pits in the internal plaza area represented by Unit 233, showing that, as with the ramada in the 400s room block, people could be buried in these areas as well as in enclosed rooms. We can thus say little about the abandonment of the room block in terms of burning or unplastered burial pits. The southeast corner of the 200s room block contained an area that had been disturbed in antiquity, similar perhaps to the ancient burial removals in Unit 433. In Unit 286a, parts of the same bowl, human bones, and burned beans were scattered through the burial pit, floor, roof fall, and fill. Given the lack of pothunting in the area, this suggests ancient disturbance. The case for such disturbance in Unit 41b was even stronger. The lower floor in this room had been destroyed in antiquity, and it appeared that several possible burials were exhumed in the process. A possible burial pit that opened onto the upper, flagstone floor was also empty. The reasons for these ancient disturbances are, of course, unknown, but the unplastered burial pit in Unit 286a suggests that the area was no longer being used for habitation. Other than Room 41, no excavated room in the 200s room block had more than one floor. Two rooms had nonburial pits that had been plastered at floor level. Unit 231 had a plastered posthole and a pit, and Unit 237 had a

plastered pit (table 3.5). Given the amount of disturbance in the room block, it is not surprising that evidence for more than one floor or for plastered features is lacking. Because of the heavy disturbance, we cannot say much about the use of the rooms in the 200s room block. Our argument is that perhaps only one household occupied the 100s and 400s room blocks, which had 20 to 25 and 10 to 15 rooms, respectively, and so the 28 or more rooms in the 200s would suggest that either one or two households used this area. There are no recorded small storage rooms, and so we cannot delineate suites of storage and habitation rooms. We can, however, note the presence of an enclosed plaza opening to the south and the flagstone-floored granary with an associated large room that might have been used for storage. We have observed the similarity of the granary floor construction to that of several NAN Ranch site granaries. Although these were smaller than Unit 41 (table 3.4; Room 76 at NAN Ranch was 7.5 m2), at least one (also Room 76) had a high floor like that in Unit 41a, and its earlier floor was also apparently destroyed in antiquity (Shafer 1987:12–14). The 200s room block differed from the 100s and 400s room block in several ways. First, the 200s room block was begun early in the Classic period from a Late Late Pit Structure period base and was used through the Late Classic. The other room blocks at the Mattocks site did not have such a long period of building and use. The pattern of construction wood species selection (chapter 5) supported this Early Classic period start for the room block. Second, the room block was not only near the communal great kiva (Unit 213), but the southeast corner of the room block represented by Units 41 and 286a appeared to have been a communal granary and storage area. Third, the room block was horseshoe-shaped, like only one other at the site—the 300s room block—and the possible presence of a small plaza within the block may represent a continuation of great kiva communal activities. Finally, an Escavada Black-on-white canteen was on the roof fall of Unit 237, possibly the only example from any Mimbres room block of a Chacoan Ancestral Puebloan pottery type, which was contemporary with Classic Black-onwhite pottery. It is possible that the household in the 200s room block had social relationships with people far to the north, again emphasizing its separateness from other households at the Mattocks site and elsewhere.

The 400s Room Block The 400s room block is in the southwestern part of the Mattocks site. It probably contained 10 to 15 rooms, including two Classic period pit structures (Units 410 and 441) that were likely associated with the room block, and a ramada (Unit 426) with an in situ floor assemblage east and possibly south of the room block. The only pothunting was near the north end of the room block in Unit 427. As with the 100s room block, the earliest tree-ring cutting

Pueblo Room Blocks at the Mattocks Site date from the 400s was A.D. 1079r in Unit 433, while its latest cutting date, A.D. 1117r from Unit 438, was also the latest chronometric date from the site. There was also a cutting date of A.D. 1095r from Unit 426, suggesting an intermediate building episode. When used in conjunction with the early tree-ring date, the bonding and abutting patterns suggested that Units 433, 431, and 427 were all built simultaneously. The west walls of Unit 433 and 431 were continuous, and they were bonded with the wall that divided these two rooms. This wall was continuous with the south wall of Unit 427, and it was bonded with the wall dividing Units 431 and 427. It also appeared that the north walls of Units 431 and 427 were continuous, and although there was a pothunting hole in the northeastern part of this wall in Unit 431, the corner was intact. The east and west walls of Unit 423 abutted onto the north wall of Unit 427, and it could have been built at any time while Unit 427 was being used. However, the doorway between the two units was blocked from the Unit 427 side, suggesting that Unit 423 went out of use while Unit 427 was still occupied. It is likely that Unit 425 was constructed at the same time as Unit 427. Even though the north and south walls of Unit 427 abutted onto the east wall of that room, the latter wall not only formed the west wall of Unit 425, but it also extended to form the entire east wall of 427. Thus, Units 433, 431, 427, 425, and probably 423 may have been constructed at one time. The presence of one Late Transitional, one Transitional/­ Classic, and two Early Classic Black-on-white bowls in Unit 431, however, hints that this room was built and used before any others in the room block. There were Early Classic bowls in all of the rooms with burials in this room block, though, and so the pattern of Early Classic whole vessels means that the initial construction of this room block is unclear. There was a date of 1095v from Unit 425, which is remarkably close to the cutting date of A.D. 1095r in Unit 426; the “v” of the former represents a subjective judgment that, although there is no direct evidence for the outside ring on the specimen, the date is within a very few years of the cutting date and can be considered a cutting date. There was also an A.D. 1080vv non-cutting date from Unit 427, and an A.D. 1100vv date from Unit 433. The latter suggests that Unit 433 may have been remodeled after A.D. 1100, but whether for habitation or other purposes is unclear. Unlike the adjoining Units 435 and 438, Unit 433 did not have two floors, which suggests that any remodeling was not extensive. The A.D. 1080vv and A.D. 1095v dates mentioned above could also have represented remodeling, but in these cases, there were no dates that suggested the original construction of the rooms. The alternative to Units 433, 431, 427, and 425 all having been built at once was that, based on the tree-ring dates, Unit 425 and perhaps Unit 427 were constructed

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after the rest of these rooms. Unit 425, in particular, may have been built in conjunction with Unit 426, the ramada to the south. Unit 435 may have begun as a ramada outlined by walls on its north and west sides associated with Units 427 and 433. The final two walls, along with an adobe floor, would have been added later; the south wall abutted onto the south wall of Unit 433, while the east wall abutted onto the east wall of Unit 427. A non-cutting date of A.D. 1092vv from Unit 435 hints at a construction date later than that for the initial construction of Unit 433. The doorway between Units 433 and 435 was blocked at some point, suggesting that the earlier Unit 433 was no longer being used for habitation. The doorway between Units 435 and 426 remained open, however, implying that these two areas were used simultaneously. A cutting date of A.D. 1095r from Unit 426, along with a later non-cutting date of A.D. 1109vv, support the late construction, and perhaps repair or rebuilding of the ramada. Unit 438 was the latest chronometrically documented room excavated by the Mimbres Foundation. Its east wall abutted onto the east wall of Unit 435, and a cutting date of A.D. 1117r supports this late conclusion, as does the facts that the only two Late Classic bowls in the 400s room block were in Unit 438 and that there were no unplastered burial pits in the room. That is, there was no one at the site to bury people in Unit 438 after it was abandoned. The doorway in the east wall of Unit 438 remained open onto what was probably initially the ramada surface, but the final construction in this room block was Unit 441, an unfinished pit structure that was just outside the door of Unit 438. Unit 438 must not have been used for habitation when the pit for Unit 441 was dug, or else its occupants would have stepped out the eastern doorway into a deep hole. The uneven, discontinuous upper floor of Unit 438 was perhaps not used for habitation. By this time, the doorway in the west wall of Unit 438 was blocked, but Unit 441 must not yet have been excavated. There were two pit structures associated with the 400s room block, both dating to the Classic period (chapter 2). Anyon and LeBlanc (1980:266–270) called Unit 410, which was associated with the other rooms only by proximity, a Classic period semi-subterranean kiva. To judge from its size, it would have served the members of this room block and perhaps the occasional guest. Alternatively, this pit structure could have been a habitation room during cold winter months (Gilman 2007). As noted, Unit 441 was the final structure to be built in the room block, and it was never finished. It may have been intended to replace Unit 410 or, alternatively, to be a short-term winter structure. Suites containing habitation and storage rooms, and perhaps outside work areas, were not as clear as those in the 100s room block. It is possible that the original core of habitation rooms included Units 433, 431, and 427,

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perhaps associated with Units 425 and 423 as storage rooms. It is also possible that both of the latter rooms were added after the core rooms had already been occupied, which would mean that no known storage rooms can be identified for the early room block. Given that Units 425 and 423 were on the north side of the room block, buffering the other rooms from cold north winds, and given that Unit 423 was larger than the usual storage room, these units may have been storage areas for all of the room block’s inhabitants and for the whole period when the block was inhabited. The first set of habitation rooms appeared to have been associated with the ramada surface represented by the lower floor in Unit 435; the original extent of this ramada is unknown. Once Unit 435 was completely walled, the ramada was moved to Unit 426, and Unit 433 seemed to have fallen into disuse for habitation, although the A.D. 1100vv non-cutting date from Unit 433 suggested that it was remodeled after Unit 426 was built. Again, and with the final use of the room block being in Unit 438, there were no obvious storage rooms in association, although either or both in Units 425 and 423 may still have been used for that purpose. The only parts of the 400s room block that had floor assemblages were Units 435a and the adjoining ramada, Unit 426. Unit 433 had a roof assemblage, and both Units 433 and 438a had artifacts on the floors that could best be interpreted as site furniture. That is, there were few of them, and they were large, complete items that appeared to have been stored for future use. In Unit 433, these included a large corrugated jar plastered into the wall, and a worked stone slab with chrysocolla ground into it that was leaning against a wall. The site furniture in Unit 438a consisted of a whole metate near the east door and a mano blank next to the west wall. The floor and roof assemblage data thus suggested that the floors of Units 435a and 426, and the roof of Unit 433, were among the final parts of the room block in use. The immediate cause of the 400s room block abandonment may have been the burning that damaged the rooms that were likely still being used. From the number of burned roof beams, it is clear that Units 426, 433, 435a, and 438a were all burned, and indeed the few treering samples from the fill of rooms to the north may have been from burning roofs collapsing and spreading charcoal. This burning may have been deliberate or not. That Units 426 and 435a still contained useful artifacts suggested that the fire was accidental, but cultural factors may have prompted a deliberate fire. No burials were associated with Unit 438a, the upper floor of that room, hinting that it was in use for such a short time that no burials were necessary. All the other unpothunted habitation rooms and the ramada contained burial pits that had not been plastered at floor level, which strongly suggested that they were placed after the

rooms were no longer used for habitation. This is not the expected pattern, in that the in situ floor assemblages in Units 426 and 435a would indicate that these areas were still in use. Either unplastered burial pits did associate with the ongoing habitation of a room, or something else was occurring in this room block. One of the unusual features of Unit 433 was the five burials that had been removed from the room in antiquity, and we speculate that this removal may have precipitated, or been precipitated by, the unplastered burial pits in rooms that were still being used, as well as the fire that destroyed these rooms. The presence of more than one floor, and pits other than burials that were plastered over at floor level, indicate repairs that accompany ordinary room use. Units 423, 435, and 438 each had two floors. In each of these rooms, the nature of the floor changed from the lower to the upper, although in Unit 423 this did not appear to indicate an obvious change in the function of the area. In Unit 435, the function probably changed from a ramada to a habitation room, while in Unit 438 it went from a habitation room to an enclosed area that was perhaps only used on a temporary basis. The presence of two floors did not seem to indicate that rooms were used longer than those with a single floor. The only plastered non-burial pits in the 400s room block were postholes in Unit 431 and 438b (table 3.5), and a pit in Unit 423b. The three plastered postholes in the southwest corner of Unit 431 may have been related to a weak wall in that area. Perhaps once the wall was repaired, the utility of the posts diminished, and they were removed. In Unit 438b, the lower habitation surface of the room, there were also two plastered postholes that may have been related to repair or remodeling of the room. The building, use, and abandonment sequence was not as clear for the 400s room block as for the 100s room block. It seems probable that the original rooms were Units 427, 431, and 433, perhaps with Units 423 and 425 and that construction began in A.D. 1079. One burial in Unit 431 with a Late Transitional vessel and burials with Early Classic vessels in Units 431 and 433 suggested that the area was used relatively early, although it should be noted that all rooms with burials in this block had Early Classic bowls. The two rooms most likely to have been used for storage, Units 423 and 425, were associated by proximity and a doorway between Units 423 and 427 with this original core, but a tree-ring date from Unit 425 indicated that it may also, or instead, have been associated with Unit 426, the ramada. The latter was constructed in A.D. 1095, and it probably replaced the ramada represented by the first use of Unit 435. Although Unit 438 was built in A.D. 1117, the floor assemblages associated with Units 435a and 426 implied that these latter areas were also among the last ones used in the room block. The fire that destroyed the most recently built rooms and the rooms in use in the room block (Units 426, 433, 435,

Households and the Mattocks Site Room Blocks and 438) and the ancient excavation of burials in Unit 433 suggested a confounding factor that might account for the confusing signals sent by the late construction date of Unit 438, the floor assemblages in Units 435 and 426, and the unplastered burial pits in the latter. In other words, Units 435 and 426 may still have been in use when Unit 438 was built and used, but by the time of the fire, people would have temporarily been using the upper, irregular floor in Unit 438, perhaps while the Unit 441 pit structure was being built. The latter was never finished, however, ending all use of the 400s room block. As with the 100s room block, we can make a case that one household built and used the 400s room block. The initial core of two rooms, or even three habitation and two storage rooms, could have housed only one household. The household might have used three habitation rooms with hearths if there were different groups within that household who prepared their own food. When Unit 433 was abandoned for habitation purposes and the ramada represented by Unit 435b was enclosed to form the replacement room, a single household would have been the most reasonable size. That household would have been using the ramada in Unit 426 at the same time. Unit 438 was built later than the ramada, and the unfinished pit structure was probably started only when the last-used pueblo rooms had burned. One household could easily account for this sequence, and indeed the number of people implied by two or more households would have been unwieldy in this building and use sequence. As with the 100s room block, however, this model cannot account for any unexcavated rooms in this room block, and so it is possible that more than one household was present in the 400s room block.

Households and the Mattocks Site Room Blocks In summary, the room blocks for which we have the best dates, the 100s and 400s, were started at about the same time and may have held one household each. If a generation was about 20 years long, then the 100s and 400s were occupied for two generations. The 200s room block may have begun earlier, and it held one or two households. If this room block was started earlier than the other two, a single household could easily account for its approximately 30 rooms. Architecture and artifact evidence have suggested that one (or perhaps two) households began each room block and added onto it over generations, as needs changed. If a household only inhabited one room suite at a time, then there were likely to have been between 5 and 10 people in a room block at any point, although a household could have been larger than 10 people. There were eight room blocks at the site: the three discussed here, one to

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the southeast of the 100s, one east of the 200s, and three north of the 200s. All but the 300s, which was directly north of the 200s, appeared to have been about the size of the 100s and 400s room blocks, and so we can suggest that one household built and used each of these as well. The 300s room block was horseshoe-shaped, and it was apparently larger than the 200s. It may actually have been two room blocks rather than one, but either way it could have had more than one household. Alternatively, like the 200s room block, it might have been one of the early room blocks, and a single household could have built and used it over a relatively long period. Being conservative, and counting the 300s as two room blocks, if one household occupied each room block and all were occupied simultaneously, then there would have been between 45 and a maximum of 90 people living at the Mattocks site at any one time. If the room blocks were not occupied simultaneously, the population would have been lower. These are surprisingly small numbers, although even fewer people would have lived at the site during the Late and Late Late Pit Structure periods. The numbers of people who lived at the Mattocks site are fewer than, although perhaps approaching, the 100 people regarded as the lowest population level for ethnographic pueblos, as mentioned in chapter 3. They are far below the more than 1,000 people that have been recorded for some ethnographic pueblos. There are two data sources that might either support or refute these numbers—the nature of the communal activity areas, and the number of burials in excavated rooms. Anyon and LeBlanc (1980:266–272) noted that there were three types of Classic period communal areas: semi-­subterranean kivas, large surface rooms, and plazas. They identified Unit 410 at the Mattocks site as a kiva, but Gilman (2007) has suggested that it was simply a Classic period pit structure, because its small size could never have held all of the people who lived at the site. Anyon and LeBlanc also identified Unit 41 as a walled plaza, while here we have suggested that it was a granary, although perhaps a communal one. No large surface rooms are known at the site, which leaves only unwalled plazas as possible communal gathering areas. There were certainly large open spaces between the room blocks, but our limited excavations in these areas revealed no characteristics that would support their use for such gatherings. Constructed architecture that could have been used for large gatherings may have existed, but no one has yet uncovered it. The numbers of burials in each room block might suggest the numbers of people who died there while some of the rooms were still occupied. There is considerable variation among the numbers of burials that were in the three room blocks discussed above, most likely related to the amount of previous disturbance. The 200s had the fewest burials—six, of which four could have dated to the Late or Late Late Pit Structure periods—but this was

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the most heavily pothunted area. The 100s block, which was the next most disturbed, had 18 Classic period burials, while the minimally disturbed 400s room block had 51 burials. Taking the latter as an indication of the potential number of burials in other room blocks, there would have been an average of 1.3 burials per year for each of the 38 years covered by the tree-ring dates in the 400s room block. The average would be closer to one death per year if the block was occupied after its last tree-ring cutting date. While this number seems small, 51 burials in two generations are a lot of deaths for a single household. Many of these burials were of infants, which is characteristic of non-industrialized societies. Another possibility is that some members of the household lived for much or all of the year in small, outlying sites, and when a person at one of these sites died, they were buried in their family’s “household plot” at their related large site. However, Stokes (2003:278–279) has noted the presence of burials at the largest peripheral sites in the Mimbres River side drainages and that some people may therefore have considered these sites to be home. The burials, therefore, do not tell us conclusively about the numbers of people who lived in a room block, in part because the architectural and burial data still need to be reconciled. Comparison with data from other sites would be useful in this endeavor. In general, the evidence suggests, but does not fully support, the contention that a single household built and used each Mattocks room block over time and that relatively few people occupied the Mattocks site at any one time. This pattern belies the notion that pueblo room blocks always held several households and many people. The evidence also hints that not all room blocks were built and occupied simultaneously, at least at the Mattocks site. Not only were there relatively few people involved

in the building and habitation of Mattocks room blocks, but they apparently did not inhabit them for very long, perhaps only two generations. The chronometric dates are supported here by the observation that there was relatively little repair, replastering, or remodeling of Mattocks pueblo rooms. A few floor features had been plastered over, and a few posts added in some rooms, but we saw no evidence that worn floors had been replastered. Instead, a few rooms had two floors separated by fill, although the lower floor was often that of an extramural area. Mattocks residents chose to build new rooms every few years rather than repair old ones. We do not know whether the limited repair and remodeling at Mattocks is typical or atypical of Classic sites, but the lack of repair is not surprising given the low numbers of people who may have lived at the site. Although Mimbres Classic sites are each different from one another, the results of this analysis of Mattocks data suggest that archaeologists might re-examine other Classic sites to see whether they too had relatively few people. It ought to be noted, however, that other Classic sites, including Galaz, Swarts, NAN Ranch, and Cameron Creek in the Mimbres drainage, and Woodrow (Sedig 2015) in the Gila Valley to the west, had many more pit structures of the Late and Late Late Pit Structure periods than the Mattocks site, and they had much more superposition of pueblo rooms than does Mattocks. These sites were thus more heavily populated earlier in time, and the descendants of those people transitioned from pit structures to pueblos and then continued to build pueblo rooms superimposed on earlier rooms. This pattern further supports the uniqueness of Mattocks among other Classic sites. The implications of few versus many people at any Classic site, as well as the possibility that at least the Mattocks site had few while other sites had many people, are important for Mimbres archaeology.

CHAPTER 5

Hunting, Gathering, Harvesting, and Preparing Food at the Mattocks Site WITH A CONTRIBUTION BY MICHAEL D. CANNON

In this chapter, we present information about the fauna, flora, pollen, chipped stone, and ground stone that we recovered from the Mattocks site. We provide a considerable amount of raw data that we and others can use to address a variety of questions, but we focus on three interrelated issues—what people at the site ate, what tools they used to obtain and process their food, and how their subsistence strategies changed over time. We collected these data in a research program that focused on sites from different time periods in multiple geographic settings. The research on some of the other sites has already been published (Anyon and LeBlanc 1984; Diehl and LeBlanc 2001; Nelson and LeBlanc 1986; Minnis 1985), and it too focuses on many of the issues discussed in this chapter. The general model, which we developed from a number of data sets, is that there was a major diachronic subsistence change in the Mimbres Valley (Anyon and LeBlanc 1984; Diehl and LeBlanc 2001; Minnis 1985; Nelson and LeBlanc 1986). Cultivation intensified from the Early Pit Structure through the Classic periods, with then likely some decrease, terminating in the Cliff phase. Although people practiced some agriculture during the Early Pit Structure period and the Cliff phase, people living during the Classic period were farming more intensively. Our general model suggests that these changes may be related to increases and decreases in the valley-wide population. The population grew perhaps five- to tenfold over the interval of A.D. 200 to A.D. 1100, and then it declined to around its original size by the late 1300s. We derived these relative population estimates from valley-wide surveys independent of the ecofacts and artifacts discussed here (Blake et al. 1986; Blake and Narod 1977). Lekson (1992) has included our data in an overall synthesis of all subsequent survey data for the Mimbres region, and he has confirmed the general trends in relative population sizes that we determined for the valley.

The model posits that as the population grew, people increasingly began to farm more marginal land. They would concurrently have used the valley floodplain more intensively, presumably with more complex irrigation systems, and the continuous and increasing removal of the riverine tree canopy. A higher population would have resulted in more hunting pressure, with concomitant changes in the mix of species and probably in the amount of game that could be procured. Changes in land use would have also impacted the species mix. More intensive use of building materials and firewood would have affected the number of plants on hill slopes. Even local grass and weed cover seems to have increased because of the presence of more people, perhaps simply because more people were walking in the vicinity of villages. The results were significant changes in the valley’s habitat by the end of the Mimbres Classic period (Minnis 1985:88–93). The data from the Mattocks and other sites presented here help to refine this model, especially the timing of the changes.

The Environmental Setting The perennial Mimbres River that rises to the northeast in the Black Range waters the Mimbres Valley and disappears into the desert sands near Deming, New Mexico (figures I.2 and 5.1). As the river flows south, the floodplain broadens to include ever-increasing amounts of potential farm land. Large cottonwood trees and other riparian species line the river banks, and native fish, including the endangered Chihuahua chub, inhabit the river (see Minnis 1985:70–98 and Shafer 2003:2–4 for more environmental information). The Black Range rises abruptly to the east of the Mimbres Valley, separating it from the Rio Grande Valley. These mountains are more than 3,050 m (10,000 feet) high and contain a variety of altitudinal zones. At lower elevations

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Figure 5.1.  Photo of the Mimbres River and Valley.

are scatters of oak, juniper, and pinyon pine, while Ponderosa pine, spruce, and fir characterize higher altitudes. The variety of economic plants and animals in these mountains no doubt provided important wild foods for ancient people in the Mimbres Valley. During at least the Classic period, people attempted dry farming in non-­floodplain settings, such as the high-altitude open parks along ephemeral water courses (Minnis 1985:129–131). The Black Range continues north as part of the huge area covered by the Gila Mountains, much of which remains as wilderness today. Parts of the Gilas form the northern and western (called the Pinos Altos Mountains) boundaries of the Mimbres Valley, although at a much lower elevation than the Black Range. Huge modern copper mines are present west of the Mimbres Valley, and this area may have provided the turquoise and other copper minerals that were often present in Mimbres sites. One likely source for Mimbres greenstone (green schist) axes is the area along the western edge of the valley, west of the Galaz site. To the south, the Mimbres River flows into the Chihuahuan Desert around Deming. This area also contains Mimbres sites, but in a very different environmental setting to that of the Mimbres Valley. The desert is part of the basin and range province characterized by isolated mountain

ranges and large, flat, alluvium-filled basins between them. Although the relationship between the “desert” Mimbres and the “mountain” Mimbres is not clear, the desert may have provided resources that were not available in the higher-altitude area of the Mimbres Valley. However, from the Late Archaic period on, the desert also had its own resident populations. While the Mimbres Valley and its environs do not seem to have changed drastically since ancient times, the distribution of certain plant types has, primarily because of human activities. For example, during the Classic period, the riparian vegetation had disappeared from the floodplain, apparently due to intensive farming on that land (Minnis 1985:88–90). The vegetative distribution returned to its previous state when factors such as high population densities and intensive agriculture were removed. The Mattocks site is on the west side of the river, in the north end of the Mimbres Valley. It is on the edge of the first bench above the floodplain, and it was therefore situated to take advantage of prime agricultural land. Its location in the northern part of the valley, closer to the mountains, meant that certain wild plants and animals were more readily available than they would have been for sites in the southern part of the valley. There is a fairly large, unnamed tributary on the other side of the

Evidence for Human Impacts by Michael D. Cannon river from the site that drains high in the Black Range, but it only runs after heavy rains. The Mattocks site is in an environmentally complex setting in the Mimbres River valley. It is situated in the middle Upper Chihuahuan zone, and it is surrounded by foothills that lead into mountains. The river valley has a gallery forest of cottonwood, willows, walnuts, sycamores, and other riparian trees and shrubs. Swampy areas along the floodplain, which would have been more common in the past, have dense stands of plants such as cattails and sedges. The hills are covered with woodlands dominated by junipers, oaks, and pinyon pines. Drier, south-facing slopes have agaves, sotols, and various cacti. Forests of large pines, most commonly Ponderosa pine, and oaks with spruce and firs in the highest elevations cover the mountains. To the south, the river descends into a vast desert and semidesert plains, which are now characterized by creosote bush, mesquite, and grasses. While the topography of the Mimbres Valley area forms the background for ancient adaptations, the climate was much more critical for these adaptations. Although climatic variables, such as rainfall and its seasonality, temperature, and the number of frost-free days, would be important to hunter-gatherers using wild foods, these variables together dictate whether agriculture will be successful in any given location and in any given year. As elevation increases, rainfall also increases, but temperature and the number of frost-free days decrease. Thus, ideal agricultural loci will take the conjunction of these variables into account. The elevation of the Mattocks site is 1802 m (5915 feet), and it has an average number of 181 frost-free days (Tuan et al. 1973), which is more than enough for corn agriculture. The average annual rainfall at Silver City, 29 km (18 miles) west of the Mimbres Valley but at the same elevation, is 39 cm (15.4 in), but this figure can vary as much as 15 cm (6 in) each year. Climatic conditions would promote successful agriculture in most years, but conditions in others would not. The temperature range and the seasonality of rainfall each play a role in agricultural success. Temperatures in the Mimbres area can range from −29°C (−20°F) in the winter to 38°C (100°F) in the summer, although these extremes are rare. More important than the annual temperature range is the diurnal range during the spring and fall, which determines the number of frost-free days each year. Lack of moisture during May and June, the driest months in the Mimbres area, can also adversely affect agricultural success. Most rainfall occurs as thunderstorms between July and September, and as gentler storms between November and February. Successful agriculture in any particular location would therefore depend on a number of factors, such as frost-free days, the amount and timing of rainfall, and diurnal temperature range. These factors are not readily predictable, which promotes the use of many different types of agriculture in many varying locales.

175

Faunal Remains from the Mattocks Site The Mattocks site has produced one of the largest samples of faunal remains from any site in the Mimbres area. We recovered 5,342 bones, of which the taxa of 1,789 could be identified. The vast majority of these bones were from Classic period contexts, although a small number came from Late and Late Late Pit Structure period contexts. Paul Langenwalter made the faunal identifications in the mid-1970s (Langenwalter 1979; Powell 1977). Michael Cannon (2000, 2001a, 2003) re-analyzed some of this material to look particularly at the human impact on the faunal resources in the Mimbres Valley. His focus was on large mammals and lagomorphs, and he summarizes his research in the following section. We note that Cannon used an earlier version of the Mimbres chronology, such that our Early Pit Structure period includes his Georgetown phase, our Middle Pit Structure is his San Francisco phase and thus part of his Late Pithouse period, and his Late Pithouse period also includes our Late and Late Late Pit Structure periods. Cannon’s Three Circle phase also includes the latter two periods. We follow Cannon’s discussion with a consideration of the Mattocks site faunal material that was not part of his analysis. As with all of the other Mimbres Foundation artifacts, the faunal material is curated at the Maxwell Museum of Anthropology, University of New Mexico, Albuquerque.

Evidence for Human Impacts on Large Mammal Populations at the Mattocks and Other Mimbres Sites, by Michael D. Cannon Archaeologists studying assemblages of animal bones from archaeological sites in the Mimbres Valley have commonly addressed the effects that its human inhabitants may have had on local populations of large mammals, such as deer and pronghorn. Faunal data from the Mattocks site are relevant to this issue, and these data are most informative when considered together with data from other sites in the region. This section presents faunal data from Mattocks and other Mimbres sites to accomplish two goals— to reevaluate evidence that might support the hypothesis that people in the valley reduced the availability of large mammals on the landscape, and to reevaluate the timing of such a reduction if, in fact, it did occur. I also discuss the implications of the evidence pertaining to human impacts on large mammal populations for our understanding of important issues in Mimbres archaeology, including the increasing use of agriculture well before the transition from pit structures to pueblos and the concomitant likely reduction in residential mobility. Others (Langenwalter 1979; Powell 1977) had previously analyzed animal bone assemblages from Mattocks

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Chapter 5

and the other sites discussed in this section. However, most of the results presented here come from a recent reanalysis that assigned faunal samples to time periods that are shorter than those used in earlier studies (Cannon 2001a; see also Cannon 2003). Due in large part to the finer chronological resolution that can now be obtained, it appears that previous conclusions about the effects of human activities on large mammal populations in the Mimbres region must be revised somewhat, particularly with regard to the timing of those effects.

Background: Resource Depression in the Mimbres Valley and Beyond Many archaeologists have used assemblages of animal bones from archaeological sites to document cases of resource depression (Charnov et al. 1976), or reductions in the prey capture rates of human foragers that were the result of their own harvesting of those prey (see overviews in Broughton 2002; Cannon 2003; Grayson 2001; Grayson and Cannon 1999; Ugan and Bright 2001). These studies have important implications for our understanding of the ways in which people have structured our planet’s ecosystems, particularly through their effects on populations of large-bodied vertebrates (e.g., Broughton 2002; Grayson 2001; Kay 1994). Most previous studies on archaeological resource depression have drawn explicitly on models from foraging theory, which show that, given certain assumptions, the most energy-efficient foraging strategy is to pursue resources that provide high rates of caloric return whenever they are encountered, and to pursue lower-return resources only when high-return resources are encountered infrequently (see Broughton 1994, 1997; Cannon 2003; Kaplan and Hill 1992; Stephens and Krebs 1986). Since caloric return rate is positively correlated with body size among most vertebrate prey, it follows that ancient hunters should have pursued large-bodied vertebrates whenever they encountered them and that they should have pursued smaller prey only during periods when they rarely found large prey (e.g., Bayham 1979; Broughton 1994, 1997; Broughton and Bayham 2003; Cannon 2003; Szuter and Bayham 1989). Based on this logic, it is possible to use the abundance of large-bodied taxa relative to smaller-bodied taxa in archaeo­ faunal assemblages to track changes in the availability of the larger prey. For example, a decline over time in the relative abundance of a large-bodied taxon would indicate a reduction in the rate at which human hunters encountered that taxon, which would suggest, in turn, that it was becoming scarcer on the landscape. Assuming that other causes of reductions in encounter rates, such as climate change, can be ruled out (see Grayson and Cannon 1999), the decline in the relative abundance of the large-bodied taxon would indicate that hunters experienced depression of this taxon, or a reduction in capture rates that resulted from the effects of their own predation on it.

Several researchers working in the Mimbres region have addressed the issue of human impacts on large mammal populations by considering temporal changes in the relative abundances of large mammal taxa in archaeo­faunal assemblages (see summaries in Cannon 2000, 2003; Sanchez 1996; see also Anyon and LeBlanc 1984; LeBlanc 1989; Nelson and LeBlanc 1986; Shaffer 1991). Nelson and LeBlanc (1986:table 13.4), for example, have provided relative abundance values for large mammals in samples from sites in the Mimbres Valley that have been attributed to the Late Pithouse, Classic, and Cliff phase periods. They found that relative abundances declined between the Late Pithouse and the Classic periods and rebounded during the Cliff phase to levels even higher than those of the Late Pithouse period. Noting a negative correlation through time between large mammal relative abundance and estimates of the size of the human population in the Mimbres Valley (e.g., Blake et al. 1986), they argued that the presence of larger human communities reduced the size of large mammal populations in the valley during the Classic period. Sanchez (1996) has also examined temporal trends in large mammal relative abundance at sites in the Mimbres Valley. She considered only the Late Pithouse and Classic periods, but she included faunal assemblages from a greater number of sites in her analysis than did Nelson and LeBlanc (1986). Because she discovered few statistically significant declines in large mammal relative abundance in the samples that she considered, she concluded, contrary to Nelson and LeBlanc (1986), that there was no evidence of a valley-wide decline in large mammal relative abundance between the Late Pithouse and Classic periods (see also Shaffer 1991). Given the discrepancy between the results of these studies, it is worthwhile to revisit the relevant faunal data and to try new approaches to the analysis of these data. Doing this was the goal of the reanalysis of Mimbres faunal remains that I discuss here, in which the depositional contexts of faunal samples were carefully vetted and in which greater effort was devoted to dating samples of bones from individual deposits. Based on this analysis, it appears that there is faunal evidence to support the hypothesis that abundances of large mammals declined over time on the landscape of the Mimbres Valley and the surrounding region as a result of human predation. However, it also appears that this occurred much earlier than has previously been suggested. I present the evidence that supports these conclusions after briefly discussing the procedures that I followed in the analysis that leads to them.

Analytical Methods I have analyzed the faunal assemblages from Mattocks and three other Mimbres Valley sites—McAnally, Galaz, and Old Town. To ensure an accurate and precise picture of changes over time in taxonomic relative abundance at these sites, the data that I present here only come from

Evidence for Human Impacts by Michael D. Cannon undisturbed, well-dated deposits that were screened through quarter-inch mesh during excavation (see Cannon 2001a for further details). Given the degree to which nearly all Mimbres sites have been looted, it is crucial that faunal samples from contexts that have obviously been disturbed be excluded from analyses such as the one that I present here. In addition, there are systematic biases in artiodactyl relative abundance among different kinds of depositional contexts at these sites. For example, floor assemblages contain very low percentages of large mammal bones compared to trash fill deposits, and to control for the effects of such biases, I consider here only samples from intra-room trash fill contexts, from which the largest samples of bones come (see Cannon 2001a:162–168; an exception to this is made in the case of McAnally due to the small size of the faunal sample from this site). Along with data from the four sites noted above, I also discuss data from two sites in the region whose faunal assemblages have been analyzed by others—NAN Ranch (Shaffer 1991) and Wind Mountain (Woosley and McIntyre 1996). Data from these sites do not allow taphonomic factors to be controlled in the way that they can be for the assemblages I have analyzed, but the patterns are generally consistent, as I discuss below. I employed a variety of methods to date deposits at the Mattocks, McAnally, Galaz, and Old Town sites (see Cannon 2001a:75–142), the most useful of which involved quantitative analyses of ceramic content. Changes in ceramic design styles can be dated with reasonable precision in the Mimbres region, and the ceramic types present can thus allow deposits to be dated, from the middle of the Late Pithouse period (the San Francisco phase, with the first painted pottery) onward (e.g., Shafer and Brewington 1995; Stokes 2000). I have assigned individual depositional units at the Mattocks, Galaz, and Old Town sites to time periods based on their ceramic content (Cannon 2001a:100–140), and the results of this ceramic dating procedure are entirely consistent with all of the stratigraphic relationships that exist among the deposits, and with all of the chronometric dates that are available for them. Deposits at the McAnally site appear to date exclusively to the Early Pithouse period (e.g., Cannon 2001a:140–142; Diehl and LeBlanc 2001). I discuss here only those taxa that are most useful for answering the research question that I am addressing about large mammal resource depression: deer (Odocoileus sp.), pronghorn (Antilocapra americana), jackrabbits (Lepus sp.), and cottontails (Sylvilagus sp.). Deer and pronghorn are among the largest-bodied vertebrates that currently occur in the Mimbres Valley, and the extreme rarity of such larger-bodied taxa as elk (Cervus elaphus) and bison (Bison bison) in archaeological assemblages from the valley suggests that people encountered these animals very infrequently during the periods considered here. For this reason, I focus on deer and pronghorn in this research. To determine how rates of encounter with these artiodactyls

177

changed over time in the Mimbres Valley, I examine their abundance in faunal samples relative to the abundance of smaller-bodied jackrabbits and cottontails. Bones of these leporids dominate most faunal assemblages from the valley, and these two genera are the only small-bodied vertebrate taxa common in the assemblages that can also be shown to have been deposited after people had caught and eaten them. A discussion of identification procedures and detailed information about faunal specimens from the four sites can be found elsewhere (Cannon 2001a). For reasons outlined by Grayson (1984), the measure of taxonomic relative abundance that I use is based on numbers of identified specimens (NISP). The degree to which bones have been fragmented can of course greatly affect NISP (e.g., Grayson 1984; Marshall and Pilgram 1993; see also Cannon 1999), and this might interfere with their utility for measuring changes in relative abundance. I do not present the relevant data here, but I have conducted analyses designed to evaluate how extensively the bones have been fragmented and took steps at the outset of this study that were designed to reduce the potential effects of differential fragmentation on it (see Cannon 2001a). Moreover, I have conducted analyses to evaluate the effects of differences among samples to determine the degree to which they have undergone density-mediated attrition (Cannon 2001a; see also Lyman 1984). The overall patterns in artiodactyl relative abundance observed at the sites analyzed here cannot readily be explained by taphonomic factors such as differential fragmentation and density-mediated attrition, except perhaps in regard to a single late sample from the Mattocks site, which I discuss below.

Temporal Changes in Artiodactyl Relative Abundance at Mimbres Sites Numbers of identified artiodactyl and leporid specimens from undisturbed, well-dated, and screened room fill deposits at the Mattocks, McAnally, Galaz, and Old Town sites are presented in tables 5.1, 5.2, and 5.3.* As discussed above, if Mimbres hunters experienced a reduction in the rate at which they captured artiodactyls, then the abundance of artiodactyl bones relative to leporid bones in faunal samples from these sites should decline over time.

* In addition to the taxa listed in tables 5.1, 5.2, and 5.3, very small numbers of specimens from other artiodactyl taxa have been recovered at these sites, from proveniences that I do not include in the analyses presented here. At Old Town, one such specimen is from an elk, and two are from bighorn sheep (Ovis canadensis). There is one bison specimen present at Galaz (a humerus shaft displaying a cut mark), as well as one rib shaft fragment from a large bison- or elk-sized artiodactyl. The assemblage from McAnally includes one specimen that is not identifiable but that must be from a bison- or elk-sized artiodactyl. As noted above, the sample from McAnally used here is not limited to bones from room fill contexts.

Classic

Classic

Three Circle

Classic

Classic

Three Circle

Classic

Classic

Classic

Classic

Term. Classic

Classic

Term. Classic

Classic

114a

114b

115a

115b

116

119

121 / 130

121 / 131 upper

121 / 131 lower

225

233

237

286a

Three Circle

111

Classic

Classic

106

112

Three Circle

80b

113

Phase

Unit

Classic

Term. Classic

Classic

Term. Classic

Classic

Classic

Classic

Classic

Transitional

Classic

Classic

Transitional

Classic

Classic

Classic

Transitional

Classic

Boldface

Ceramic Age

3

8

24

3

1

1

1

1

3

4

5

3

5

Artiodactyla

2

6

2

3

1

1

1

1

5

Odocoileus sp.

1

1

1

1

1

Antilocapra americana

3

Bison/Large Artiodactyl a

1

3

5

2

5

1

1

1

4

1

1

Leporidae

2

10

45

13

4

4

37

1

3

3

12

1

13

Sylvilagus sp.

13

10

20

14

6

3

14

23

4

1

1

1

3

8

2

12

Lepus sp.

Table 5.1.  Numbers of Identified Specimens of Artiodactyl and Leporid Taxa in the Proveniences from the Mattocks Site Included in This Analysis.

23

34

100

34

14

1

4

1

30

66

5

1

2

4

13

29

5

37

Total

Classic

Classic

Classic

Classic

435a lower

438a

Classic

Classic

92

2

1

4

1

1

1

1

10

6

3

Artiodactyla

34

1

2

1

5

1

2

Odocoileus sp.

7

2

Antilocapra americana

4

1

Bison/Large Artiodactyl a

31

1

1

2

1

1

Leporidae

186

1

2

2

2

5

2

1

2

6

5

7

Sylvilagus sp.

187

2

1

1

4

4

6

5

10

3

3

1

1

1

2

6

2

Lepus sp.

These specimens include a juvenile bison (Bison bison), the second phalanx and two lumbar vertebra fragments from a bison- or elk-size artiodactyl in the fill of unit 286a, and a first phalanx fragment from a large bovid (probably bison, but not osteologically distinguishable from domestic cow [Bos taurus]) in the upper fill of unit 435a. These specimens are not included in the analyses in this chapter, the focus of which is on deer and pronghorn.

a

Total

441

Classic

Classic

435a upper

Classic

Classic

Boldface

Classic

Three Circle

431 lower

Boldface

Classic

Three Circle

431 upper

Classic

433 upper

Classic

426

Classic

Classic

Black Mt. / Cliff

Boldface

433 lower

Classic

425

Classic

Classic

Classic

Classic

325 lower

410

Black Mt. / Cliff

325 upper

423a

Classic

Three Circle

286b east

Boldface

Three Circle

286b west

Ceramic Age

Phase

Unit

Table 5.1.  (continued)

541

4

1

4

9

6

9

7

16

6

7

3

3

4

23

21

15

Total

Three Circle

Early Pithouse

Galaz 27b D

McAnally 24

10

2

5

3

4

Artiodactyla

14

6

1

2

2

3

Odocoileus sp.

2

1

1

Antilocapra americana

12

7

2

1

1

1

Leporidae

22

1

1

7

2

2

1

8

Sylvilagus sp.

Three Circle

Three Circle

Early Pithouse / Georgetown

B10

B11

C17

Total

Three Circle

Three Circle

B6

Three Circle

Three Circle

B4

B8

Three Circle

B2

B9

Three Circle

Three Circle

A5 W levels 2–5

Terminal Classic

Three Circle

A5

A5 W levels 6–9

Terminal Classic

A2

A7

Phase

Room

Transitional

Transitional

Transitional

Transitional

Boldface

Boldface

Boldface

Boldface

Transitional

Ceramic Age

64

2

3

1

5

10

7

36

Artiodactyla

1

1

Odocoileus sp.

50

1

4

8

37

Antilocapra americana

312

3

5

1

8

1

29

1

20

35

52

157

Leporidae

140

1

1

3

12

15

24

25

59

Sylvilagus sp.

57

5

32

11

9

Lepus sp.

931

13

2

8

2

30

2

80

2

43

111

186

450

2

Lepus sp.

Table 5.3.  Numbers of Identified Specimens of Artiodactyl and Leporid Taxa in the Proveniences from the Old Town Site Included in This Analysis.

Total

Three Circle

Georgetown / San Francisco

Galaz 8 D

Classic

Georgetown / San Francisco

Galaz 8 C

Galaz 18 D

Three Circle

Galaz 1 E

Galaz 18 E

Phase

Analytic Unit

Table 5.2.  Numbers of Identified Specimens of Artiodactyl and Leporid Taxa in the Proveniences from the Galaz and McAnally Sites Included in This Analysis.

1498

18

2

14

4

44

3

122

3

84

184

278

740

2

Total

131

18

8

53

17

8

2

25

Total

181

Evidence for Human Impacts by Michael D. Cannon

Table 5.4.  Numbers of Identified Specimens of Pronghorn (Antilocapra americana) and Deer (Odocoileus sp.) from Mimbres Valley Sites. Antilocapra

Odocoileus

Mattocks

9

50

59

0.153

McAnally

1

6

7

0.143

Galaz

1

12

13

0.077

Old Town

56

2

58

0.966

Total

67

70

137

0.489

Site

Total

Pronghorn Index

Note: The “Pronghorn Index” is calculated from the number of pronghorn specimens in a sample, divided by the total number of pronghorn plus deer specimens in that sample. Unlike the other tables in this chapter, which include specimens from room fill contexts only, this table includes specimens from all depositional contexts.

Before considering how the relative abundance of artiodactyls changed over time at these sites, however, I first point out some differences in taxonomic relative abundance among them that are easily explained as the result of geographic variability (table 5.4). In the samples used here, all of the artiodactyl specimens that could be identified to the taxonomic level of genus are from deer or pronghorn, and all of the specimens that could be identified only to the level of order are from deer- or pronghorn-sized artiodactyls. At Old Town, which is in the relatively dry and open lower valley, nearly all of the artiodactyl specimens that could be identified to genus are from pronghorn. This is not surprising given that the surrounding area currently provides a good habitat for these animals (e.g., Kitchen and O’Gara 1982), and probably provided an even better habitat for them prior to European settlement, when forbs and grasses were more abundant relative to shrubs than is the case today (e.g., Humphrey 1987; Van Devender 1995). At the other three sites, which are in the northern portion of the Mimbres Valley, the majority of artiodactyl specimens identifiable to genus are from deer, which tend to be more common in hilly and wooded habitats such as those that characterize this part of the valley (e.g., Mackie et al. 1982; Smith 1991). Because this difference between Old Town and the three northern sites is highly significant (Old Town versus the combined sample from the other three sites: χ 2 = 91.38, p < 0.001), it seems clear that hunters from different sites in the Mimbres Valley tended to procure different artiodactyl taxa depending on what they were most likely to encounter in the areas immediately around their residences. For this reason, and because the overall abundance of artiodactyls relative to leporids is also much lower at Old Town than it is at the three northern valley sites (tables 5.1, 5.2 and 5.3), I treat this site separately from the other three in the analyses that follow. There are, however, no significant differences among the three northern sites either in the abundance of pronghorn relative to deer

( χ 2 = 0.51, p = 0.775) or, when the temporal dimension is controlled, in the abundance of all artiodactyls relative to leporids (e.g., Cannon 2001a:table 5.5), and so I combine the samples from these three sites. Table 5.5 presents numbers of identified artiodactyl and leporid specimens from the Mattocks site grouped by “ceramic ages,” which are the result of the ceramic dating procedure discussed above. The three earliest of these age groups incorporate deposits that contained greater than expected amounts of Mimbres Boldface, Transitional, and Classic Black-on-white, respectively. (Boldface dates to the latter part of the San Francisco phase and the early part of the Three Circle phase, while Transitional dates primarily to the Three Circle phase, and Classic dates mainly to the Classic period; see Shafer and Brewington 1995.)* The “Terminal Classic” group incorporates deposits that contained significant numbers of sherds from pottery types dating to the Terminal Classic period (e.g., Hegmon et al. 1999:154). The “Black Mountain and Cliff” group consists of a single deposit—from the upper fill of Unit 325 (Gilman and LeBlanc note that this is a Classic period room and that the upper fill is post-occupational)—that contained a significant amount of Terminal Classic pottery, as well as sherds of such later types as Ramos Polychrome and Gila Polychrome. The presence of these types suggests that this deposit contains material that dates to both the Black Mountain and Cliff phases (e.g., Hegmon et al. 1999:156–157). Table 5.5 also provides “Artiodactyl Index” values (e.g., Szuter and Bayham 1989), calculated as the ratio of all artiodactyl specimens relative to all artiodactyl specimens plus all leporid specimens. These Artiodactyl Index values show that artiodactyl relative abundance at the Mattocks site changed little across the Boldface through Terminal * The ceramic analyses excluded sherds identified as “Boldface/­ Transitional” or “Transitional/Classic” and were conducted at the level of the “style” rather than the “microstyle” (i.e., “early Transitional,” etc.).

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Chapter 5 Table 5.5.  Numbers of Identified Artiodactyl and Leporid Specimens by Period from the Mattocks Site. Ceramic Age

Artiodactyls

Leporids

Total

Artiodactyl Index

Black Mountain / Cliff

15

8

23

0.652

Terminal Classic

16

52

68

0.235

Classic

68

222

290

0.234

9

51

60

0.150

25

71

96

0.260

133

404

537

Transitional Boldface Total

Classic samples, or across samples that date to the period from the early Three Circle phase, if not the late San Francisco phase, through the Terminal Classic (Boldface through Terminal Classic samples: χ 2 = 2.72, p = 0.437; none of the adjusted standardized residuals from this test fall beyond two standard deviations). However, artiodactyl relative abundance is much higher in the deposit that contains the Black Mountain and Cliff phase pottery types, and significantly so (Black Mountain and Cliff phase sample versus the rest of the samples combined: χ 2 = 21.10, p < 0.001).* Indeed, this late deposit has a higher relative abundance of artiodactyls than does any other deposit at Mattocks that contains more than a few specimens (Cannon 2001a:table 5.3). The high Artiodactyl Index value for this late Mattocks sample is consistent with the high relative abundance of artiodactyls at other sites in the Mimbres Valley that date to the Cliff phase (Nelson and LeBlanc 1986). These high relative abundances may reflect a rebound in local artiodactyl populations following human-induced declines, as Nelson and LeBlanc (1986) have suggested for their resource depression argument. However, it is also possible that the high Artiodactyl Index value observed in the late sample from Mattocks is the result of other taphonomic factors than an increase in the availability of artiodactyls on the landscape (Cannon 2001a:214–224). The artiodactyl bones in this deposit have evidently experienced less fragmentation and less density-mediated attrition than have those in any other sample I have analyzed from the Mimbres Valley, while the leporid bones in this deposit seem to have experienced a fairly high degree of destruction. These two facts could easily explain why artiodactyl bones are so abundant relative to leporid bones in this sample. The unique taphonomic characteristics of this sample themselves require an explanation, and they may be the result of * A χ 2 test that includes all five of the samples in table 5.5 produces a value of 23.68 ( p < 0.001). In this test, the adjusted standardized residual for the Black Mountain and Cliff phase sample, which has a value of 4.59, is the only one that falls beyond two standard deviations, although the adjusted standardized residual for the Transitional sample is −1.86.

0.248

a change in the way that people in the Mimbres Valley processed carcasses that occurred after the Terminal Classic. This possibility, and the possibility that artiodactyl populations rebounded after A.D. 1200 or so in the Mimbres region, should be further evaluated through taphonomic analysis of other late faunal samples from the region. Although the cause of the high Artiodactyl Index value in the late sample from Mattocks is unclear, there are no substantial differences in artiodactyl relative abundance among the samples from this site that span the period between the Three Circle phase and the Terminal Classic. These samples are quite uniform in their taphonomic characteristics (Cannon 2001a). In other words, there is no evidence that hunters from Mattocks experienced declines in the rates at which they captured large mammals during this period. Given the fairly low Artiodactyl Index values observed in these samples, however, it is reasonable to ask whether they might have experienced such declines earlier. This possibility can be evaluated by extending the faunal sequence back in time, and this can be done by combining the data from Mattocks with data from the McAnally and Galaz sites. In addition to faunal samples that date to the Three Circle phase and the Classic period, the Galaz assemblage includes two samples from room fill deposits that contain material dating to either the Georgetown or San Francisco phases or both (Cannon 2001a:123–129). The material from McAnally, as mentioned above, dates exclusively to the Early Pithouse period. The combined data from these sites are provided in table 5.6, in which faunal samples are aggregated by phase.† Because the samples from Galaz that date to the Three Circle phase and the Classic period contain relative abundances of artiodactyls that are quite similar to those observed in coeval samples from Mattocks, combining the data from these two sites does not greatly change the Artiodactyl Index values for these periods. However, it is immediately clear that the earlier samples from Galaz and McAnally contain †  The deposits in the Mattocks “Boldface” and “Transitional” ceramic age groups are incorporated into the Three Circle phase sample used in table 5.6.

183

Evidence for Human Impacts by Michael D. Cannon Table 5.6.  Numbers of Identified Artiodactyl and Leporid Specimens by Period in the Combined Samples from the Mattocks, McAnally, and Galaz Sites. Period or Phase

Artiodactyls

Black Mountain / Cliff

15

Terminal Classic

16

Classic

75 45 5

a

Three Circle 

Georgetown / San Francisco Early Pithouse Total

Leporids

8

Total

Artiodactyl Index

23

0.652

52

68

0.235

268

343

0.219

161

206

0.218

5

10

0.500

17

1

18

0.944

173

495

668

0.259

a

Most of the material in this sample likely dates to the Three Circle phase, although a small portion may date to the Classic period as well (see Cannon 2001a).

much higher relative abundances of artiodactyls than do the samples from Mattocks and Galaz that date to the Three Circle phase through the Terminal Classic. A chi-square test shows that the differences in artiodactyl relative abundance observed in the samples from table 5.6 that date to the Early Pithouse period through the Terminal Classic are highly significant ( χ 2 = 53.23, p < 0.001).‡ Moreover, the adjusted residual from this test for the Early Pithouse period sample falls at 7.00 standard deviations, which indicates that artiodactyl remains compose a percentage of the bones in this deposit that is much higher than expected. (None of the other adjusted residuals fall beyond two standard deviations, although the one for the Georgetown/San Francisco sample falls at 1.89.) In addition, Cochran’s test of linear trend (Cannon 2001b) shows that there is a highly significant decline in artiodactyl relative abundance among the Early Pithouse through Terminal Classic samples (χ 2 trend = 19.28, p < 0.001), although Artiodactyl Index values differ little among the samples that date to the period from the Three Circle phase through the Terminal Classic. It thus appears that faunal samples from well-dated, undisturbed, and screened deposits at sites in the northern Mimbres Valley show a decline in artiodactyl relative abundance between the Early Pithouse period and approximately the beginning of the Three Circle phase, followed by no substantial changes from the Three Circle phase through the Terminal Classic. It would be possible to place greater confidence in this pattern if similar patterns were seen at other sites in the Mimbres region. The assemblage from one such site, Old ‡  This test excludes the problematic late sample from Mattocks. A chi-square test that includes all six of the samples in table 5.6 produces a chi-square value of 70.49 ( p < 0.001). In this test, the adjusted standardized residuals for the Early Pithouse period, the Black Mountain and Cliff phase, and the Classic period samples are, respectively, 6.73, 4.38, and −2.44, while none of the other adjusted residuals falls beyond two standard deviations.

Town (table 5.7), includes a large sample of bones that date to the Three Circle phase, as well as smaller samples dating to the Terminal Classic, and to the Early Pithouse period or the Georgetown phase. However, no bones from this site come from undisturbed room fill contexts that date to the Classic period proper, and there are none that date to the time between the Early Pithouse/Georgetown and Three Circle phases (see table 5.7). Artiodactyl relative abundance at the Old Town site declines by about 30 percent between the earliest samples and the Three Circle phase, while it is nearly identical in the Three Circle and Terminal Classic samples. Due to the small sizes of the earliest and the latest samples, none of the differences in artiodactyl relative abundance are statistically significant ( χ 2 = 0.36, p = 0.836), nor is the declining trend that occurs here ( χ 2 trend = 0.21, p = 0.648). However, despite the lack of statistical significance, the pattern that occurs at Old Town is fully consistent with the significant pattern that occurs in the assemblages from the three northern valley sites. In each case, there is a decline in artiodactyl relative abundance leading up to the Three Circle phase, and there are no further substantial changes between the Three Circle phase and Terminal Classic. Some of the Three Circle phase deposits at Old Town can be assigned to shorter time periods within this phase because of the ceramics that they contain (table 5.8). The early sample here consists of bones from deposits dominated by Boldface Black-on-white pottery, while the later one has bones from deposits dominated by sherds of Transitional Black-on-white. Artiodactyl relative abundance is virtually identical in these two samples (  χ 2 = 0.07, p = 0.790), and this is consistent with the absence of a statistically significant difference between the faunal samples in deposits dominated by Boldface and Transitional ceramics from the Mattocks site (table 5.5; if only the Boldface and Transitional samples from Mattocks are considered, χ 2 = 2.64, p = 0.104).

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Chapter 5 Table 5.7.  Numbers of Identified Artiodactyl and Leporid Specimens by Period from the Old Town Site. Phase

Terminal Classic Three Circle Early Pithouse / Georgetown Total

Artiodactyls

Leporids

Total

Artiodactyl Index

6

80

86

0.070

107

1287

1394

0.077

2

16

18

0.111

115

1383

1498

0.077

Table 5.8.  Numbers of Identified Artiodactyl and Leporid Specimens from Deposits at Old Town That Can Be Assigned to Shorter Periods within the Three Circle Phase. Ceramic Age

Artiodactyls

Leporids

Total

Artiodactyl Index

Transitional

18

324

342

0.053

Boldface

15

297

312

0.048

Total

33

621

654

0.050

Shaffer (1991) has analyzed a large faunal assemblage from the NAN Ranch site in the Mimbres Valley, which is about midway between the Old Town site and the three north valley sites considered here. The quantities of identified artiodactyl and leporid specimens per period from this site, reproduced from Shaffer (1991:table 5.9), are presented in table 5.9.* These data span the period from approximately the beginning of the Three Circle phase, which is roughly where the faunal record from the Mattocks site starts, through the Classic period. There are significant differences in artiodactyl relative abundance among the samples from this site ( χ 2 = 23.11, p < 0.001), but there is no significant trend across them (  χ 2 trend = 2.00, p = 0.157). Rather, artiodactyl relative abundance simply fluctuates. It thus seems that Shaffer (1991:108) was correct to suggest that “artiodactyl exploitation was fairly stable through time” at this site, and I point out that this is consistent with the pattern that occurs across the faunal samples from Mattocks that are contemporary with those from NAN Ranch. Wind Mountain, which is in the Burro Mountains to the west of the Mimbres Valley, is the final site in the Mimbres region for which data from a large faunal assemblage (table 5.10) are available (Woosley and McIntyre 1996). The bone counts used here are derived from tables provided in Woosley and McIntyre (1996), and * Due to typographical errors, incorrect numbers of identified specimens were published in Cannon (2000:table 6) for the “transitional San Francisco/early Three Circle” sample from NAN Ranch and for the San Francisco phase sample from Wind Mountain (discussed later). The correct NISP values are provided here.

the assignment of faunal samples to phases is discussed elsewhere (Cannon 2000, 2001a:460). Wind Mountain is unique among excavated Mimbres sites in that it provides a faunal record that spans the entire time span, from the Early Pithouse through the Classic period. It also provides samples that are much larger than those available from the earliest sites in the Mimbres Valley. As is the case with the faunal assemblage from McAnally, the Early Pithouse period sample from Wind Mountain contains a very high abundance of artiodactyls relative to leporids. This is followed by samples from the three phases of the Late Pithouse period in which artiodactyl relative abundance is moderately high, and these are followed in turn by a sample from structures assigned to the Mangas phase (Lekson 1988) and a sample of Classic period material, both of which contain lower relative abundances of artiodactyls. The differences in artiodactyl relative abundance that are observed among these samples are highly significant ( χ 2 = 510.86, p < 0.001), as is the declining trend that occurs across them (  χ 2` trend = 297.76, p < 0.001). It is not clear whether screens were used in the excavation of Wind Mountain.† However, whether they were used or not, if collection methods remained constant during the excavation of this site, then the temporal changes in artiodactyl relative abundance observed here would be accurate on an ordinal scale, so long as differences in rates of †

 Woosley and McIntyre (1996) do not mention whether screens were used. The faunal data from the NAN Ranch site that I use are derived only from samples from deposits that were screened through quarter-inch mesh (see Shaffer 1991).

185

Evidence for Human Impacts by Michael D. Cannon Table 5.9.  Numbers of Identified Artiodactyl and Leporid Specimens by Period from the NAN Ranch Site. Data are from Shaffer (1991:table 5.9). Phase

Artiodactyls

Leporids

Total

Artiodactyl Index

Classic

42

627

669

0.063

Transitional Late Three Circle / Classic

13

328

341

0.038

Late Three Circle

76

634

710

0.107

Three Circle

39

594

633

0.062

Early Three Circle

5

32

37

0.135

Transitional San Francisco / Early Three Circle

0

6

6

0.000

175

2221

2396

Total

0.073

Table 5.10.  Numbers of Identified Artiodactyl and Leporid Specimens by Period from the Wind Mountain Site. Data are from Woosley and McIntyre (1996; also see Cannon 2001a:appendix E). Period or Phase

Classic a

Mangas

Artiodactyls

Leporids

Total

Artiodactyl Index

6

19

25

0.240

161

861

1022

0.158

Three Circle

869

619

1488

0.584

San Francisco

117

125

242

0.483

Georgetown

22

22

44

0.500

Early Pithouse

68

16

84

0.810

1243

1662

2905

Total

0.428

a

Woosley and McIntyre (1996) used a date range of A.D. 950–1050 for the Mangas phase, which they considered to be transitional between the Three Circle phase and the Classic period.

fragmentation among samples are not too great (Cannon 1999). If it can be assumed that differences in fragmentation rates are not an issue in this assemblage, then the evident decline in artiodactyl relative abundance between the Early and Late Pithouse periods at Wind Mountain can be considered to replicate the decline observed at contemporary sites in the Mimbres Valley. From the beginning of the Late Pithouse period on, however, patterns in artiodactyl relative abundance at Wind Mountain differ somewhat from those in the Mimbres Valley. Artiodactyl relative abundance remains moderately high at Wind Mountain through the Three Circle phase, and then declines in the Mangas phase and the Classic period, while in the Mimbres Valley it declines by the beginning of Three Circle phase and then remains steadily low through the Terminal Classic. In other words, it appears that artiodactyl relative abundance reaches its nadir about 100 to 150 years later at Wind Mountain than it does at sites in the Mimbres Valley.

To summarize, artiodactyl relative abundance declines dramatically, in both the Mimbres Valley and at Wind Mountain, immediately following the Early Pithouse period. Artiodactyl relative abundance reaches its lowest point at Wind Mountain by A.D. 950 or so, but this occurs earlier, by perhaps A.D. 800, at every site in the Mimbres Valley for which data are available. There are no substantial changes in artiodactyl relative abundance at Mimbres Valley sites during the period represented by the Three Circle phase, the Classic period, and the Terminal Classic. As I discuss elsewhere (Cannon 2001a:207–256), the declines in artiodactyl relative abundance that occur at these sites are unlikely to be explained by a reduction in rates of encounter with artiodactyls caused by a change in climate or by changes in the technologies or the strategies that Mimbres hunters used to procure artiodactyl and leporid prey, such as increasing the frequency of rabbit drives (e.g., Schmidt 1999; Shaffer and Gardner 1995; see also Grayson and Cannon 1999) or increases in the prevalence

186

Chapter 5

of “garden hunting” (e.g., Linares 1976; Szuter 1991). This leaves resource depression, or a reduction in prey capture rates caused by hunters’ own activities, as the best explanation for these declines. As stated above, the latest sample from Mattocks may reflect a rebound in artiodactyl populations following this episode of resource depression.

artiodactyl relative abundance across the transition from the Late Pithouse to the Classic period (e.g., table 5.6). Such a decline does, however, occur around the beginning of the Late Pithouse period.

Comparisons with Previous Research

Changes over time in the relative abundances of artiodactyls to leporids, in archaeofaunal assemblages from the Mimbres Valley, suggest that numbers of deer and pronghorn declined between some point in the Early Pithouse period and the beginning of the Three Circle phase, and then remained low through the Terminal Classic. The best explanation for the lower availability of large mammals is human predation. This conclusion adds to the body of work that suggests the ancient inhabitants of the Mimbres Valley played a substantial role in structuring the natural environment in which they lived (e.g., Minnis 1985), and it has at least two other specific implications for our understanding of the course of human history in the valley. First, reductions in rates of encounter with high-­return prey may be useful as a proxy indicator of human population growth (e.g., Stiner and Munro 2002; Stiner et al. 1999). Accordingly, then, the patterns in artiodactyl relative abundance at sites in the Mimbres Valley would suggest that the human population of the valley was fairly large by the beginning of the Three Circle phase, perhaps larger than is suggested by available structure floor area estimates (e.g., Blake et al. 1986). Since floor area estimates for the Early and Late Pithouse periods may be biased downward because most Mimbres pit structures underlie later pueblo structures, it would perhaps not be surprising if population estimates based on those floor area estimates are similarly biased. Second, it appears that agriculture began to become a substantial part of the subsistence economy in the Mimbres region long before the transition to pueblo architecture that marks the beginning of the Classic period. Indeed, it likely became more important early in the Late Pit Structure period (e.g., Cannon 2001a; Diehl 1996). This increase in the importance of agriculture requires an explanation, and such an explanation might be found in the reduction in large mammal capture rates that began around the same time (Cannon 2001a). A consideration of the economics of small-scale corn farming suggests that if individuals increase the amount of time that they allocate to tasks related to agriculture, then they will do so during periods in which they experience a reduction in the rates at which they can harvest high-return wild resources (Barlow 1997, 2002; see also Gremillion 1996; Winterhalder and Goland 1997). Thus, given that the inhabitants of the Mimbres Valley during the early part of the Late Pithouse period evidently experienced a decline in the rates at which they captured large mammals, which were almost certainly the highest-return wild resources

As noted earlier, some researchers have argued that Mimbres Valley hunters experienced depression of large mammal resources based on an apparent decline in artiodactyl relative abundance between the Late Pithouse and Classic periods (e.g., Anyon and LeBlanc 1984; LeBlanc 1989; Nelson and LeBlanc 1986). The analysis presented here, however, indicates that there is little difference in artiodactyl relative abundance among samples from the valley that lie on either side of the “transition” between the Three Circle phase, which is the last phase within the Late Pithouse period, and the Classic period. Rather, it appears that hunters experienced resource depression much earlier, sometime between the Early Pithouse period and the beginning of the Three Circle phase. There are probably two factors that play a role in these different conclusions. First, the earlier conclusion was based on analyses that treated the entire Late Pithouse period as a monolithic block of time, so that changes that occurred early in the Late Pithouse period might appear to have taken place at its end. Second, the earlier conclusion was based on analyses that attributed the complete faunal assemblages from individual sites to single time periods. For example, in their consideration of changes in artiodactyl relative abundance in the north portion of the Mimbres Valley, Nelson and LeBlanc (1986:233) used the entire sample from the Galaz site to represent the Late Pithouse period, while they used the entire sample from the Mattocks site to represent the Classic period. These authors found that the assemblage from Mattocks contained a lower abundance of artiodactyl bones relative to leporid bones than the one from Galaz did, and they used this difference between sites to support the argument that hunters captured artiodactyls less frequently during the Classic period than during the Late Pithouse period. A consideration of the ceramics recovered from the deposits at these two sites, however, indicates that much of the faunal material recovered from Galaz likely dates to the Classic period, while some of the material from Mattocks dates to the Three Circle phase and some to the Terminal Classic (see appendix 1.2; Anyon and LeBlanc 1984:table 9.3; also see Cannon 2001a). When faunal samples from individual deposits at these sites are assigned to the time periods to which they truly date, and when an attempt is made to control for such factors as recovery method, depositional context, and differential rates of bone preservation, there is no decline in

Conclusions

Further Aspects of the Mattocks Site Faunal Remains available to them (e.g., Simms 1987), it is to be expected that they would have consequently devoted more of their time to agriculture. Major changes, such as aggregation into large pueblos, occurred in Mimbres societies during the Classic period and the time leading immediately up to it, as has long been thought. Other trends, however, such as the intensification of agricultural production and a reduction in residential mobility, now appear to have commenced much earlier (e.g., Cannon 2001a; Diehl 1996, 1997; Diehl and LeBlanc 2001). A reduction in the rates at which hunters captured large mammal prey can be added to this list of early changes, a reduction that most likely resulted from their own predation on these animals and that may have contributed the intensification of agriculture.

Acknowledgments My study of the faunal material discussed here was made possible by the generous assistance of Roger Anyon, Darrell Creel, Patricia Gilman, and Steven LeBlanc. Also invaluable was the help of the staff of the Maxwell Museum of Anthropology at the University of New Mexico, particularly Bruce Huckell, Mary Ann Jaffe, Dorothy Larson, and Michael Lewis. This research was supported by National Science Foundation Dissertation Improvement Grant BCS-9909339 and by fellowships from the Department of Anthropology and the Graduate School at the University of Washington.

Further Aspects of the Mattocks Site Faunal Remains In this section, we provide a general overview of the Mattocks site fauna and interpretations based on species other than those described above by Cannon and on the processing patterns of faunal remains from the Mattocks and other sites. The faunal counts for the site as a whole are provided in table 5.11. Some of these counts may differ from those presented by Cannon in the previous section, but his counts provide the most accurate values for proportions of artiodactyls and lagomorphs for the most analytically usable Classic and Late Pithouse period samples at the Mattocks site. No in situ faunal assemblages that seemed to represent bone processed at a single point in time were on floors, in pits, or in hearths at the Mattocks site. The vast majority of the bone was from Classic period trash deposits that had undergone the randomizing effects of deposition. There were too few samples with good contexts to make any meaningful comparisons between room blocks. Other researchers (Anyon and LeBlanc 1984; Nelson and LeBlanc 1986; Powell 1977) have contrasted fauna from the Mattocks site with that from other Mimbres

187

Valley sites excavated by the Mimbres Foundation. These comparisons are especially valid because the bone was collected in the same manner at all sites and was identified by the same analysts. Comparisons have also been made with Classic and Late Pithouse samples from the NAN Ranch site (Sanchez 1992, 1996; Shaffer 1991) and Late Pithouse fauna from the Old Town site (Cannon 2001 and this chapter; Sanchez 1992, 1996).

General Considerations of the Species Present The most common faunal remains at the Mattocks site that could be identified beyond undifferentiated vertebrates, mammals, and other similar categories (table 5.11) were jackrabbits (Lepus sp.), followed by cottontails (Sylvilagus sp.). Pocket gophers (Thomomys sp.) were the next most common, although we do not know if people ate these or if we recovered the remains of naturally occurring rodents. Deer were more common among species of big game than antelopes, but both were present in very small numbers. The 25 genera present (5,342 total bones; table 5.11) at the Mattocks site is about the same number as the 23 at the Galaz site (3,266 total bones; Anyon and LeBlanc 1984:216), and the 23 from the NAN Ranch site (11,636 NISP; Shafer 2003:127). The Wind Mountain site had twice as many present, at 43 genera (13,501 total bones; Olsen and Olsen 1996:390–392). The sample sizes are much larger for NAN Ranch and Wind Mountain, suggesting that a different environmental or social setting at Wind Mountain, which is west of the Mimbres Valley, may account for the many more genera there. The level of genera diversity suggests that behaviors at the Mattocks site did not differ significantly from those at other large Classic sites in the Mimbres Valley. Turkey bones (21 examples) were relatively well represented at Mattocks compared with other sites, such as Galaz, which had none (Anyon and LeBlanc 1984:216), and all Mimbres Foundation excavated Cliff phase sites, which had three among them (Nelson and LeBlanc 1986:235). However, they were not common enough to suggest that people kept turkeys at the Mattocks site, although they were regularly depicted on Classic Blackon-white bowls. Today, turkeys are present throughout the Mimbres area where enough water is present. There was a paucity of bird, fish, and reptile bones from the Mattocks site, accounting for only 54 of 5,342 bones. Screen size and differential preservation are probably not the full explanation for this paucity, and so it is possible that there was no significant use of these animals for food, or as sources of feathers or rattlesnake rattles. This differs from the observation by Shaffer (1991; also see Shafer 2003:126–128) that the frequency of bones from small chubs, suckers, and minnow-size fishes in a NAN Ranch site flotation control unit equaled that of

Table 5.11.  Mimbres Foundation Faunal Counts for the Mattocks Site. Family—Genus—Species

Common Name

Meleagrididae—Meleagris sp.

turkey

Phasianidae—Lophortyx sp.

quail

1

Accipitridae—Buteo sp.

hawk

5

undifferentiated

passerine bird

1

undifferentiated

bird

12

undifferentiated

fish

1

undifferentiated

snake

1

undifferentiated

reptile

12

Muridae—Neotoma sp.

wood or mountain rat

17

Peromyscus sp.

wood, deer, vesper, or white-footed mouse

9

Microtus sp.

meadow or field mouse, vole

2

Ondatra sp.

muskrat

Geomyidae—Thomomys sp.

pocket gopher

undifferentiated

gopher

1

Heteromyidae—Dipodomys sp.

kangaroo rat

2

Perognathus sp.

pocket mouse

2

Sciuridae—Eutamias sp.

western chipmunk

1

Sciurus sp.

squirrel

3

Ammospermophilus sp.

antelope chipmunk

1

Citellus sp.

ground squirrel

Spermophilus sp.

rock, spotted ground, or golden mantled squirrel

Cynomys sp.

prairie dog

10

undifferentiated

squirrel, chipmunk, prairie dog

10

undifferentiated

rodent

Leporidae—Lepus sp.

jackrabbit

Sylvilagus audubonii

desert cottontail

1

Sylvilagus floridanus

eastern cottontail

1

Sylvilagus sp.

cottontail

448

undifferentiated

rabbit

181

undifferentiated

insectivore (mole or shrew)

4

Felidae—Felis sp.

cat

1

Ursidae—Ursus sp.

bear

6

Canidae—Canis familiaris

dog

2

Canis sp.

dog, wolf, or coyote

Mustelidae—Mephitis sp.

skunk

1

Taxidea taxus

American badger

3

undifferentiated

carnivore

Cervidae—Odocoileus sp.

deer

Antilocapridae—Antilocapra sp.

antelope

undifferentiated

even-toed ungulate

undifferentiated

mammal

undifferentiated

vertebrates

Total

Count

21

1 142

11 4

31 593

19

1 38 11 178 617 2936 5342

189

Further Aspects of the Mattocks Site Faunal Remains Table 5.12.  Proportions of Unidentifiable Animal Bone. The percentage of unidentifiable bone is the number of Vertebrata and Mammalia bones that could not be identified beyond Mammalia (undifferentiated), divided by the total bone count. Site, Time Period

Total Bone Count

Late Pithouse Period Average Mitchell, Classic Wheaton-Smith, Classic Mattocks, Classic

Percent of Unidentifiable Bone

1177

64

512

57

613

52

5342

67

Classic Period Average

6467

64

Black Mountain Phase Average

3893

68

Cliff Phase Salado Average

4405

76

cottontail rabbits. There are apparently few bird and reptile bones from the site, though. We collected a fairly wide range of carnivore bones at the Mattocks site, including Canis, bear, cat, skunk, and badger. Despite the number of species present, the absolute number of bones was once again very low (33 of 5,342). Again, there is little evidence that these animals were being procured in a systematic way for food, and their skins do not seem to have been a major source of clothing. Langenwalter (1979) has interpreted the occurrence of muskrat (Ondatra zibethicus) at the Mattocks site to indicate that the river flowed slower than it does today. The presence of muskrat at the NAN Ranch site (Shaffer 1991:87) shows that this would have been the case over much of the length of the valley. The absence of muskrat from the very large Wind Mountain faunal sample (Olsen and Olsen 1996:394–396), where the stream is much smaller than the Mimbres River, supports the idea that the Mimbres River was a substantial watercourse in prehistory.

Evidence for Animal Processing We can glean some information about how animals were processed at the Mattocks site from the proportion of unidentifiable bone, from carcass portions present at the site, and from evidence of bone charring and calcination. Almost no evidence of butchering, in terms of cut marks, was noted. The large proportion of the bone that could not be identified more specifically than “mammals” or “vertebrates” (table 5.11) suggested that much of the bone from the site had been heavily processed. The presumption is that the more intensely carcasses were processed, the more the bone would have been broken, to the point that it could not be identified to the taxon. Some breakage would have been due to taphonomic processes and not deliberate processing for food, but we assume that this

would have been relatively constant over time, and therefore that temporal differences should reflect changing processing behavior. This ratio thus provides an index of processing intensity. Langenwalter identified bones from the Mattocks site over a number of years, and he gained increasing classification skills, so that he could identify bones as being from mammals rather than simply as vertebrates. In this regard, these two categories are not comparable with other site samples, where differentiation was not so complete, and we have therefore combined the mammal and vertebrate categories for analysis. Table 5.12 provides the ratios of unidentifiable bones (the number of vertebrate and mammal bones that could not be identified beyond Mammalia [undifferentiated] divided by the total bone count) for sites and periods. The ratios for the four periods ranged from 52 to 76 percent. The Mattocks site with 67 percent unidentifiable bone is very much like the Late Pithouse period and Black Mountain phase averages of 64 percent and 68 percent, respectively. However, smaller Classic sites, such as the Mitchell and Wheaton-Smith sites, had lower percentages (57 percent and 52 percent), hinting that people at such sites did not process bone as much as people at the Mattocks site. The proportions suggest similar amounts of processing from the Late Pithouse period through the Black Mountain phase, which supports the patterns that Cannon found for decreased availability of large animals from at least in the Late Pithouse and Classic periods, and then greater amounts of processing in the Cliff phase. The portions of carcasses that reached a site can also provide useful insights into animal processing. Bone frequencies can depend on how the carcasses were processed at the kill location. When meat was reasonably abundant, or when the kill was far from the site, the parts of a carcass that held little caloric value (non-meaty parts) might not be brought to the site because they were not worth the effort. If meat was scarce, however, people might have brought the entire animal to the site for complete processing. Once

190

Chapter 5 Table 5.13.  The Number of Ungulate Bones for Each Carcass Portion at the Mattocks Site. Carcass Portion

NMF NMH

Deer

Antelope

1

0

Undifferentiated Ungulates

1

0

0

6

11

1

44

MF

5

2

18

MH

10

2

16

NM undifferentiated

T

0

0

21

H

5

0

9

Non-meaty foreparts (NMF): Metacarpal, cuneiform, carpal, naviculocubiod, uciform, lunar, scaphoid, cuboid. Non-meaty hindparts (NMH): Tarsal, calcaneus, metatarsal, astragalus. Non-meaty hind or foreparts (NM undifferentiated): Phalanx, metapodial. Meaty foreparts (MF): Scapula, humerus, ulna, radius. Meaty hindparts (MH): Patella, metatarsal, femur, tibia, innominate, ilium, sacrum, ischium. Meaty trunk (T): Rib, thoracic vertebra, lumbar vertebra, sternum, sternebra, manubrium. Head and neck (H)*: Skull, mandible, teeth, antler, maxilla. * We could not decide whether the head and neck should be meaty or not meaty, and so we did not use these numbers in our calculations. We present them here for others to use.

at the site, some bones would more likely have been broken up for cooking or to extract marrow, depending on how scarce meat was at the time. Another factor affecting the presence of bones at a site could have been the distribution of meat to people who did not live at the site or hamlet where a carcass was initially processed. For example, people typically living in mountainous areas could have hunted deer and transferred only the meaty parts to large sites in the main valley. Such behavior would presumably result in people at the large sites having more meaty parts and the bones associated with them than people at the small sites away from the valley. We undertook analysis of ungulate bones, including deer, antelopes, and undifferentiated (table 5.11). We combined the bone elements into several broad carcass portions to have sample sizes that were large enough for analysis. We classified bones into several non-meaty and meaty portions of the carcass (table 5.13), but even these groups resulted in small sample sizes, and so we then classified the bones as from just meaty or non-meaty portions of the entire carcass. In spite of the possibility that deer and antelope carcasses were processed differently from each other, we had to combine the bone from all ungulates to obtain even minimal sample sizes for analysis. We present the separated data (table 5.14) for several sites including Mattocks. While there are significant differences in the frequency of bones from non-meaty and meaty carcass parts from different sites and time periods, interpreting these

differences is not straightforward. The Late Pithouse period Beauregard site, although earlier than Mattocks, is situated in a location with closer mountain access, but it yielded the highest non-meaty ratio (78 percent). Food stress might account for the use of non-meaty bones. This ratio might also be explained by the people initially processing carcasses at the Beauregard site, and then taking the meaty parts to other sites, but neither of these explanations fits with the relatively small proportions of nonmeaty bones at the Classic period Wheaton-Smith and Mitchell sites (29 percent and 26 percent). The Mitchell site is closer to mountainous terrain than Mattocks, and the Wheaton-Smith is on a tributary draining into the Mimbres River. All three of these samples were relatively small, and so the resulting ratio may not be conclusive, but the pattern does fit with the relatively low proportions of unidentifiable bone noted for the small Classic sites in the previous analysis. Perhaps people brought whole carcasses to these sites but did not process the bones further. The Mattocks site had a medium proportion of non-meaty body parts, at 46 percent. In this regard, it had about the same proportion as the Cliff phase, and somewhat more than the Black Mountain phase sites. It may be possible to pursue this class of information more fruitfully in the future, if larger sample sizes become available. A final piece of evidence regarding food preparation consists of bones that were charred or calcined, presumably during cooking. Of the 5,342 bones recovered at the Mattocks site, 589 (11 percent; table 5.15) had evidence

191

Further Aspects of the Mattocks Site Faunal Remains Table 5.14.  The Relative Frequencies of Bones from Non-meaty Compared to All Carcass Portions. Non-meaty bone is divided by the sum of non-meaty plus meaty bone. Meaty parts include MF, MH, and T, and non-meaty parts are NMF, NMH, and NM undifferentiated as in table 5.13. H was not used in the calculations. The total number of non-meaty and meaty bones from table 5.13 for the Mattocks site is in parentheses. Site and Period or Phase

Deer

Antelope

Undifferentiated Ungulates

Total

Beauregard, Late Pithouse

0.69 (30)

(0)

0.67 (6)

0.78 (36)

Mattocks, Classic

0.44 (27)

0.20 (5)

0.48 (106)

0.46 (138)

Wheaton-Smith, Classic

0.50 (2)

0.50 (4)

0.25 (28)

0.29 (34)

Mitchell, Classic

0.21 (33)

(0)

0.31 (29)

0.26 (62)

Black Mountain Phase

0.81 (16)

0.72 (25)

0.25 (162)

0.35 (203)

Cliff Phase Salado

0.70 (67)

0.68 (19)

0.37 (170)

0.48 (256)

Table 5.15.  Comparison of Calcined (cal) and Charred (char) Bones. Site and Period Sylvilagus or Phase sp.

Lepus sp.

Birds

Other

Beauregard, Late Pithouse Mattocks, Classic

7 cal, 8 char

5 cal, 9 char

2 char

Small Sites,* Classic

7 cal, 5 char

1 char

1 char

Walsh, Black Mountain

4 cal, 2 char

1 cal, 11 char

1 char

Montoya, Black Mountain

7 cal, 2 char

1 cal, 5 char

2 cal

Rodents Mammalia / Vertebrata

Artiodactyls

Percentage char or cal

Total char or cal

1 char

42 cal, 15 char

1 cal

17

59

1 char

362 cal, 178 char

5 cal, 12 char

11

589

1 char

62 cal, 33 char

3 cal, 5 char

8

118

500 cal, 278 char

27 cal, 24 char

31

850

122 cal, 44 char

1 cal, 11 char

16

193

* Bradsby (sample size = 9), Montezuma (8), Wheaton-Smith (88), Mitchell (13).

of either charring or calcination, but most of those could only be identified as mammals or vertebrates. Other, smaller Classic sites had a somewhat lower percentage of charred and calcined bone (8 percent), but the sample sizes were small. Nonetheless, this pattern supports those from analyses above that suggested less bone processing at small Classic sites. In comparison to all other sites and time periods, the Walsh site, a Black Mountain phase site in the southern Mimbres Valley, had almost double the number of charred and calcined bones. In summary, we know surprisingly little about how animals were processed at the Mattocks or other sites in the Mimbres region. It is not known whether animals were cut into pieces and boiled, because no one has yet investigated pot polishing on bones. In general, bones were often processed for marrow, or otherwise broken into small pieces, and some bone was processed enough to have been charred or calcined. There was apparently somewhat less

animal bone processing at smaller Classic sites than at the Mattocks site and other large sites in this sample, and this pattern is worth pursuing with larger sample sizes because it suggests that people processed bones differently at small sites than at large ones.

Summary People at the Mattocks site were generally eating jackrabbits, cottontails, and perhaps some rodents, with small amounts of deer and antelope. The number of animal genera present was similar to that from other large Classic sites in the Mimbres Valley. People at the Mattocks site smashed a higher proportion of the bone to extract the marrow, or to produce grease by boiling the bone fragments, than did those who dwelt at smaller Classic sites. Cannon’s analysis shows that artiodactyl relative abundance did not decrease from the Late Pithouse to

192

Chapter 5

the Classic period, as previously proposed. Instead, that decline occurred after the Early Pithouse period and near the beginning of the Late Pithouse period, probably because of increased human predation. We might have expected a slight rebound in large animal availability, given the proposed low population at the Mattocks site during both the Pit Structure and the Classic periods. The Mattocks, however, was embedded in a network of large and small sites in the Mimbres Valley, with the large Galaz site being only about five kilometers (three miles) to the south. Therefore, any resource depression and environmental impacts of hunting large game would probably apply to the valley as a whole rather than to a single site.

Paleoethnobotanical Remains In this section we discuss the propagule (seeds and their associated parts, generally, meaning seeds or fruits) and wood remains from the Mattocks site. Paul Minnis (1985) identified all samples.

Propagule Remains Most of the analyzed propagule remains (table 5.16) from the Mattocks site were taken from flotation samples, although occasionally excavators collected macroscopic materials such as nut hulls and reeds for identification. Since nearly all of the remains were tiny and were sampled from various proveniences including hearths, roof fall, burial pits, and postholes, most were probably charred food remains that were part of the general trash in rooms and features. Some of the propagules from burned rooms were likely from weedy plants growing in the roof pack or in the room after abandonment (Minnis 1981:145). The most common propagules across all proveniences (table 5.16) were Chenopodium (goosefoot) seeds, followed in order by Cheno-Ams (goosefoot-pigweed), Zea mays (corn), and Portulaca (purslane). The next highest frequency of identifiable propagules after the 116 Portulaca seeds were 15 Amaranthus seeds. Minnis (1985:105–107) noted that maize cob fragments, Chenopodium seeds, and Portulaca seeds were ubiquitous in flotation samples taken from Late Pithouse period (Late and Late Late Pit Structure periods) contexts and later. All but Zea mays are wild plants that could have been growing on and around structures at the site. People may have taken advantage of these plants, or the seeds may simply represent the weedy background noise at the site. People may also have gathered these plants off-site for food. It is interesting that the four kinds of plants noted here were the vast majority of the propagule remains from the site. Including cupules, kernels, rachis flaps, and general remains, the third most common propagule was Zea mays (table 5.16). Of the 31 flotation samples analyzed from

the site that had plant remains, 22 (71 percent) contained corn. These samples were spread among different kinds of proveniences. The ubiquity of corn was high enough that it must have been a major component of the diet. The only other remains of domesticated plants were beans recovered from the hearth (286-7F-10H/2) in a pit structure dating to the Late and Late Late Pit Structure period pit structure and in a burial pit, roof fall, fill between floors, and the floor matrix of the upper surface room in Unit 286, as well as in the trashy fill between floors in Unit 41 (chapter 3). We examined the flotation samples from the 12 hearths, one ash pit, and one possible warming pit separately from other proveniences, most of which were roof fall and disturbed fill, that is, not hearth fill. The flotation samples were quite different in that the hearth samples had no Amaranthus, Bouteloua, Cheno-Ams, Descurania, or Helianthus, and only a few Chenopodium and Portulaca compared to the non-hearth samples. The propagules from weedy plants were thus much more likely to be in roof fall and fill than in hearth contexts, suggesting that they were not being prepared as food. The pattern for Zea propagules was not clear, with 45 corn remains in hearths and 99 in non-hearth proveniences. Data for any changes in the amount of agriculture over time at the Mattocks site are ambiguous. The ubiquity of Zea remains (table 5.16) is such that four of the six (67 percent) samples that dated to the Late Pithouse period (Late and Late Late Pit Structure periods) or that are mixed Late Pithouse and Classic periods contained corn. Eighteen of the 25 Classic period samples (72 percent) contained corn, showing an increase over the Late Pithouse period samples. However, there were relatively few flotation samples from this period, partly because of the limited occupation at the site, and most of these were from mixed proveniences. Another measure, the proportion of corn remains to all other paleoethnobotanical propagules from these periods at the Mattocks site, showed an even smaller increase through time. In the Late Pithouse and mixed samples, there were 25 Zea remains of the 175 total propagules (14 percent), while there were 100 Zea remains of 615 total propagules (16 percent) in Classic period samples. Minnis (1985:106) noted that the paleoethnobotanical evidence showed similar proportional use of plants, including corn, during both the Late Pithouse and Classic periods. He (Minnis 1985:112) stated that maize was probably the most important plant staple that people in the Mimbres region ate from the Late Pithouse period until the valley was abandoned by pueblo farmers.

Wood Remains Wood identifications came from two sources—those made while assessing tree-ring samples, and identifications of wood from flotation samples. The former samples were

C

C

fill above floor

subfloor

lower floor

floor

floor

floor

in situ roof fall

floor

upper floor

in situ roof fall

upper floor

upper floor

pot­hunted

80b-4-8/3

80b-5F-19H/1

80b-6S-18PH/ 1 #3

111-4-9/2

111-4-9/2

111-4-12/1

113-4-1/8

113-5-9/11

114-4-4/1

115a-4-5/27

115a-6-12/1

115a-6-20/2

220-2-1/3

Period

C

C

C

C

C

C

C

C

L

L

EP, LP, LLP, C

C

burial

C

pot­hunted

Provenience

80a-5F-12B/9

Context

41-5S-21/16

Feature Type disturbed; ash lens

hearth; dirt, rocks?

hearth; adobe, rocks

roof fall

hearth; slab

hearth; slab

roof fall

hearth; adobe

hearth; rocks, sterile

hearth; rocks, sterile

posthole

hearth; rocks, sterile

fill above floor

intrusive burial

disturbed

Amaranthus 1

Atriplex 1

Cheno-Am 1

Chenopodium

Convolvulaceae

Eragrostis

Gramineae

Juglans

Juniperus 1

Lepidium 1

Opuntia

Helianthus

27

7

13

6

2

4

2

1

1

2

7

3

1

Oryzopsis

3

Phaseolus

4

1

Portulaca 15

Setaria

5

1

1

Yucca baccata

2

1

Zea mays 1

1

Descurania 1

Zea mays cupules

2

3

75

Echinocereus

Cactaceae

Bouteloua

Table 5.16.  Propagule Remains from the Mattocks Site. Samples without remains are not listed.

Zea mays kernels 1

1

Zea mays rachis flaps 4

Unidentifiable

7

1

6

12

2

1

1

7

9

11

4

17

1

29

98

continued

1

1

1

Total

fill, pothunted

pothunted

floor

roof fall

roof fall

trash, roof fall

trash

231-3-3/11

232-4-5/1

233-4-6/8

233-4-6/16

286a-2RF-6/5

286b-5-6/13

Period

burial

upper floor

upper floor

431-5-14/2

435-4F-9H/2

435-4F-13P/1

C

C

C

warming pit?

hearth; adobe, rocks

burial pit

Amaranthus 15

4

10

Atriplex 3

2

Bouteloua 10

10

Cactaceae 1

1

201

200

Cheno-Am

Period: EP = Early Pithouse; LP = Late Pithouse; LLP = Late Late Pithouse; C = Classic.

Total

floor

431-5-5/1

hearth? dirt

ash on floor

C roof fall, in situ fill above floor

426-3F-7/44

C

hearth; adobe

C

floor

extramural trash, ash lens

410-5S-17H/1

C

hearth; adobe, rock

trash

trash, roof fall

roof fall

roof fall

ash pit

disturbed

fill; disturbed

disturbed

extra­mural trash

LP and LLP

LP and LLP

LP and LLP, C

C

C

C

C

C

C

Feature Type

290-5-3/1

286b-7F-10H/2 lower floor

pot­hunted

226-1-2/8

Provenience

220-3-3/4

Context

Table 5.16.  (continued)

1

Chenopodium 260

20

4

32

9

88

3

10

Convolvulaceae 1

Descurania 6

4

1

Echinocereus 1

1

Eragrostis 1

Gramineae 8

2

3

1

Helianthus 4

1

2

1

Juglans 3

2

Juniperus 6

1

1

2

1

Lepidium 1

Opuntia 3

1

1

1

Oryzopsis 2

2

Phaseolus 3

3

Portulaca 116

4

14

17

20

2

3

4

Setaria 2

2

Yucca baccata 1

1

Zea mays 9

2

Zea mays cupules 100

1

40

9

1

3

7

5

Zea mays kernels 4

2

Zea mays rachis flaps 12

2

3

3

Unidentifiable

2

6

43

7

1

1

83

14

14

125

237

2

5

9

22

13

17 790

1

5

3

2

2

1

Total

Pollen Studies most likely to have been roof beams, since Mimbres Foundation personnel only sent samples to the Laboratory of Tree-Ring Research at the University of Arizona if we could identify at least 25 rings. Wood from flotation samples was generally quite small and most likely represents what was burned in hearths for heat, light, or cooking, or fragments of roof fall wood, depending on its provenience. The two data sets reveal that people living at the Mattocks site used a specific suite of woods for roof beams and a much larger selection of woods for burning in their hearths (appendix 1, table 5.17). The former consists of, in descending order of frequency, pinyon, juniper, Ponderosa pine, and non-coniferous woods. The clear majority was pinyon. Woods burned in hearths include, in descending order, wood from the Rosaceae family, such as mountain mahogany (Cercocarpus) and Apache plume (Fallugia), juniper, pinyon, oak, and occasional other woods. No Ponderosa pine was among the 208 pieces of wood identified from hearths. Minnis (1985:88–90) noted a similarity in wood use during the Early Pithouse and Classic periods in the Mimbres Valley. People used relatively little wood from the floodplain for either fuel or construction in these periods. He attributed the Early Pithouse pattern to the fact that these sites are on steep hills, away the floodplain, and the inhabitants burned wood from sources nearer the site, probably on the hill slopes themselves. Minnis related the Classic period pattern to the large number of people practicing agriculture in the valley, and therefore cutting riparian trees to increase the acreage of the best farm land. A change through time in the wood used for roof beams at the Mattocks site may reflect this process. The earlier rooms and room blocks at the site had a higher proportion of non-coniferous wood and Ponderosa pine than did other, later rooms and room blocks (appendix 1), although the proportion of non-coniferous wood was low, as noted above. Of the 11 non-coniferous wood samples, which are mostly likely riparian woods such as cottonwood, willow, maple, sycamore, or walnut (although some could be oak), seven were from the 200s room block (Unit 220 = 6, Unit 237 = 1). Using other data, discussed in previous chapters, we have proposed that the 200s room block was the earliest of the three that the Mimbres Foundation excavated intensively and that people probably began building at least one structure here in the Late Pit Structure period. The other four non-coniferous wood samples were from the 400s room, with three being from Unit 435 (one from Locus 9H and two from Locus 14B) and one from Unit 426, the ramada. Of the 37 Ponderosa pine samples, 32 were from the 200s room block, an even stronger pattern than that exhibited by the non-­coniferous woods. Only one was from the 100s room block, two were from the 400s room block, and two were from Unit 69, a masonry room between the 100s and the 400s room blocks. Several of the Ponderosa pine samples were from the roof fall and adjoining analytic units in Unit 286b, a pit structure

195

probably dating to the A.D. 900s. Only one Ponderosa pine sample (237-6-4/20) provided a non-cutting tree-ring date of A.D. 1060+vv. Because people living in Mimbres Valley pit structures and pueblos made several kinds of hearths, including ones lined with adobe, rocks, dirt, and slabs, it may be that they used different types of hearth constructions for different functions as represented by the use of different kinds of firewood. Diehl (2001:41–43) related some differences in hearth construction to the likelihood that people put more effort into the later hearths, so that maintenance and cleaning would be easier. Thus, people changed from building on-floor hearths to basin hearths, which were plastered with adobe and sometimes rock or slab lined. The latter would have the highest construction costs but the lowest maintenance. It is also possible that people burned different types of wood in these different types of hearths. They may also have changed the types of firewood they burned over time, paralleling changes in availability. The Mattocks flotation samples for each kind of hearth and for the Pit Structure periods were too small to evaluate in this way, but they might be combined with other Mimbres Valley samples to address these issues in future research.

Summary The paleoethnobotanical remains show that people at the Mattocks site ate a lot of corn and that weedy annuals such as Cheno-Ams and Portulaca were present in relatively large numbers in roof fall and room fill. There is no evidence from the site for a change in propagule consumption between the Late Late Pit Structure and the Classic periods, but the limited number of Late Late Pit Structure samples makes this difficult to determine. The wood for roof beams did change through time away from non-­ coniferous woods and Ponderosa pine to more pinyon and juniper, and people used different woods for their roof beams than they burned in their hearths.

Pollen Studies We collected pollen samples to provide information on the local environmental setting and how it changed through time, to gather data on economic plant and room use, and to establish a line of evidence that was independent from the paleoethnobotanical and artifact data on plant use. Consequently, we took many pollen samples from a wide variety of depositional contexts at the Mattocks site and all other sites excavated by the Mimbres Foundation, but we focused our analyses on floor and metate samples. We also collected a number of modern control samples. We employed sample collection methods that were typical in the mid-1970s, which Nelson and LeBlanc (1986:221) have described elsewhere. We processed and

Context

pothunted

fill, fill above floor, in situ fill above floor

floor

intrusive burial

fill above floor

fill above floor

pit or burial

in situ fill above floor

intrusive burial

subfloor

posthole

posthole

pothunted

pothunted

floor

floor

floor

upper floor

trash, in situ roof fall

in situ roof fall

upper floor

Provenience

41-5S-21/16

80a and b-1-5/2

80a-2RF-6/2

80a-2-10B

80b-3-7/2

80b-3-8/7

80a or b-3-15/2

80b-5F-8/6

80a-5F-17P

80b-5F-19H/1

80b-6S-18PH/1 #3

80b-6S-18PH/1 #3

100-3-2/1

100-3-2/2

111-4-9/2

111-4-12/1

113-5-9/11

114-4-4/1

115a-3-5

115a-4-5/27

115a-6-12/1

C

C

C

C

C

C

C

C

C

C

L

L

L

C

EP, LP, LLP, C

C; EP, LP, LLP, C

LP, LLP, C

LP, LLP, C

hearth; adobe, rocks

roof fall

roof beams

hearth; slab

hearth; slab

hearth; adobe

hearth; rocks, sterile

disturbed

disturbed

posthole

posthole

hearth; rocks, sterile

intrusive burial

fill above floor

pit

fill above floor

fill above floor

intrusive burial

on ramada surface

fill above floor

C

disturbed

Period C; EP, LP, LLP, C

Feature Type

C

Acer 2

1

1

1

1

Cercocarpus 20

10

8

11

6

3

1

1

4

1

2

3

4

1

Ephedra

Table 5.17.  Wood Remains from the Mattocks Site. Samples without remains are not listed.

Juniperus 4

5

1

6

1

13

1

6

10

1

6

1

1

7

4

5

Phragmites p

p

p

Pinus edulis 5

11

1

2

2

2

7

2

3

1

5

1

Ponderosa 5

1

Populus/Salix 1

1

5

Quercus 1

1

1

1

3

1

Unidentifiable 3

1

2

1

1

2

1

30

21

2

23

12

29

8

8

18

8

3

20

5

4

2

14

9

11

Total

Platanus

Monocot

Juglans

Fallugia

pothunted

fill, pothunted

pothunted

floor

floor

floor

trash, roof fall

intrusive burial

upper floor

lower floor

extramural trash C

floor

floor

burial

floor

roof fall, in situ fill above floor

floor

burial

upper floor

220-3-3/4

226-1-2/8

231-3-3/11

232-4-5/1

232-4-5/2

232-4-5/3

286a-2RF-6/5

286b-3-5B

286a-4-6/1

286b-7F-10H/2

290-5-3/1

410-2-18PH/1

410-4F-6/1

410-5S-10PH

410-5S-17H/1

426-3F-7/44

431-5-5/1

431-5-14/2

435-4F-13P/2

C

C

C

C

C

C

C

C

LP and LLP

C

LP and LLP, C

LP and LLP, C

C

C

C

C

C

C

C

warming pit?

burial pit

hearth? dirt

ash on floor

hearth; adobe

unplastered burials

hearth; adobe

posthole

extramural trash

hearth; adobe, rock

floor

intrusive burial

trash, roof fall

ash pit

ash pit

ash pit

disturbed

fill; disturbed

disturbed

disturbed; ash lens

fill

hearth; dirt, rocks?

Feature Type

Period: EP = Early Pithouse; LP = Late Pithouse; LLP = Late Late Pithouse; C = Classic. Phragmites: p = present.

Total

pothunted

220-2-1/3

Period LLP or C and H

fill

213-1-2

C

upper floor

Context

115a-6-20/2

Provenience

Table 5.17.  (continued)

Acer

7

1

Cercocarpus

154

10

14

12

3

2

2

7

1

3

4

12

1

4

5

Ephedra

1

Fallugia

3

3

Juglans

7

7

Juniperus

124

1

1

2

8

2

2

4

3

4

2

1

4

7

5

1

5

Monocot

1

1

Phragmites p

p

Pinus edulis

135

6

5

2

5

1

2

8

2

1

8

12

5

2

13

5

2

3

11

Platanus

2

2

Ponderosa

13

1

2

4

Populus/Salix

8

1

Quercus

60

2

2

5

2

2

1

2

19

11

6

Unidentifiable

25

1

1

4

3

1

1

2

1

540

20

20

19

16

5

3

12

2

20

20

20

7

8

1

1

21

20

20

20

24

4

30

Total

198

Chapter 5

analyzed a limited number of our many samples, and the rest are curated at the Maxwell Museum of Anthropology, University of New Mexico. Several factors affected the pollen analyses we could effectively employ. We worked on sites representing a number of time periods, and so intersite comparisons were possible, but we often excavated only a limited number of rooms and features at each site, and thus intrasite comparisons and room function analyses were limited. Many of the deposits we encountered were disturbed, and while we could make use of some of the information from such deposits, we could not use pollen because of the possibility of contamination. We therefore focused our pollen analyses on variations in vegetation through time, comparing sites of different time periods, and we also focused on economic pollen. We investigated the pollen present on metates to determine the plants people were grinding on them. When we analyzed our samples, palynologists had not yet recognized the value of recording clumps of pollen to determine how particular pollen types were deposited (e.g., Gish 1982), and so we were not able to use this powerful interpretive tool. In hindsight, although we collected multiple samples per room in many cases, we did not process enough of them. Pollen analysis for the Mattocks site closely followed those undertaken for the Galaz site (Anyon and LeBlanc 1984:201–213), the Cliff phase sites (Nelson and LeBlanc 1986:219–231), the Early Pithouse period sites (Diehl and LeBlanc 2001:55–56), and the Black Mountain phase and smaller Classic sites (Anyon and LeBlanc n.d.). Our basic premise was that, even though many factors can influence pollen rain, by comparing samples collected from similar contexts, such as floors and metates, these factors would be relatively constant among the sites we investigated. In addition, by considering the temporal, spatial, and size differences among the sites, we could control for and then study the effects of time, space, and site size differences on the recovered pollen samples.

The Mattocks Site Pollen Samples Carl Halbirt extracted and analyzed 15 pollen samples from Mattocks site room floors (table 5.18) under the supervision of Richard Hevly at Northern Arizona University. Because of the limited number of samples that we could analyze, we felt that floor samples were both the most interpretable and the most comparable to samples from other Mimbres Foundation sites. We generally collected pollen from multiple locations in each room floor, sometimes from each room quadrant, and sometimes from across the room floor. When we had quadrant samples, we ran the analysis on one of the four (table 5.18). We should therefore not expect these samples to produce evidence for activities that took place in localized areas of rooms.

We also extracted pollen from metates. This pioneering attempt resulted in 10 pollen wash samples from the Mattocks site. A master’s thesis by Halbirt (1985) resulted from this research. We did not undertake column sampling or the collection of samples from room fill, because we could not see a useful way of analyzing them. Since we did relatively little work in extramural areas that had good activity surfaces, they are represented by only one analyzed Mattocks sample (Unit 80a). We excavated few pits that could have been used for storage or processing, and given the small sample, we could not develop interpretations for this kind of deposit. Eighty-five percent (3,304 of 3,895 pollen grains counted) of the Mattocks site pollen from the 15 floor samples was from weedy plants (Cheno-Ams, long and short spine composites) and grasses (Gramineae), of which most were Cheno-Ams (2,559 grains; table 5.18). Seven percent (287 grains) was tree and shrub pollen, and 8 percent (304 grains) was economic and other pollen. Other than Cheno-Ams, Gramineae, and short spine composites, only two plants, juniper and legumes, had more than 100 pollen grains, and both had only 129 grains each. There were 89 grains of pine pollen, and all other plants had fewer than 50, with most having far fewer.

Variation in Vegetation through Time Using Pollen Ratios We, and others, have determined that several pollen ratios ­—including the pine/juniper, grass/Cheno-Am, long spine/ short spine Compositae, and arboreal/nonarboreal ratios —are useful for examining variation in on-site and nearsite vegetation through time, especially when compared with modern samples. We have discussed these measures in the Early Pithouse period (Diehl and LeBlanc 2001:55), Galaz (Anyon and LeBlanc 1984:201–209), and Cliff phase (Nelson and LeBlanc 1986:221–228) reports, and we summarize the results here. Our analyses have shown that the size of a site will affect nearby plant communities. Relatively low proportions of disturbance plants characterize Early Pithouse period and Cliff phase sites, both of which tend to be small, while relatively high proportions of such plants are present in pollen samples from Late Pithouse (Late and Late Late Pit Structure) and Classic period sites, which are generally larger. If larger sites housed more people, were occupied longer, or both, then people at these sites would logically have impacted their environments more heavily than did people at smaller sites. Weed pollen dominates all of our pollen spectra taken from archaeological contexts, in sharp contrast to the modern pollen samples, suggesting that the vegetation in the Mimbres Valley was far more disturbed by people in the past than it was in the 1970s.

n.d.

5-20/13

41b

4

Quercus

33

18

2

Gramineae

Compositae, Short Spine

Compositae, Long Spine

2

1

Artemisia (sagebrush)

Ambrosia (ragweed)

Economic and Other Pollen

190

Cheno-Am

Weed and Grass Pollen

Salix

Sambucus

1

Alnus

Picea

Acer

4

1

2

20

18

202

1

9

10

18

183

2

3

5

17

22

148

6

1

1

8

4

3

2

11

24

182

1

4

9

4

floor, ne quad

5-17/4

115a

6

4

23

27

126

8

1

1

13

15

floor

9-17/4

115b (LP and LLP)

1

4

15

23

171

3

1

8

4

floor

6-4/21

237

floor

3

14

26

47

176

1

6

1

8

6

7-6/12

286b (LP and LLP)

1

3

8

18

44

150

4

11

3

floor

4-5/18

410

13

8

14

16

170

1

5

3

upper floor

4-4/1

423a

15

2

8

11

19

160

1

2

8

2

lower floor

5-4/a

423b

7

20

26

189

3

1

2

3

floor

3-3/8

425

2

1

5

11

14

146

1

8

23

floor

4-3/16

431

14

6

floor

4-5/3

435a

3

28

34

142

1

2

1

2

1

5

3

floor, ne quad

4-1/19

113

Populus

1

2

floor, quad 3

3-8/27

111

1

9

Juniperus

ramada surface beneath artifact

2-4/37

80a

Pseudotsuga

2

Pinus

Tree and Shrub Pollen

Context

Provenience

Unit

Table 5.18.  Mattocks Site Pollen Sample Counts. All samples are from room floors, and all date to the Classic period except the two designated LP, for Late Pithouse, and LLP, for Late Late Pithouse.

1

4

13

40

224

3

2

20

9

floor

3-4/32

438b

continued

36

26

85

255

405

2559

3

1

49

1

1

3

10

1

129

89

Total

n.d.

5-20/13

41b

ramada surface beneath artifact

2-4/37

80a

1

8

floor

4-5/18

410

upper floor

4-4/1

423a

Total Grain Counts

292

275

4

1

Cleome

Other (includes unknowns)

1

Lemna

244

1

1 2

Typha latifolia

Eriogonum

Helianthus

229

2

260

3

1

1

228

2

234

311

265

253

5

1

1

11

250

2

2

15

268

6

1

1

1

1

14

CarexCyperaceae

8

1 2

1

1

Sphagnum

13

3

5

floor

3-3/8

425

1

7

1

1

1

lower floor

5-4/a

423b

Cucurbita

2 14

Ephedra

Legume

2

1

1

3

11

floor

7-6/12

286b (LP and LLP)

Opuntia

1

floor

6-4/21

237

1

8

1

floor

9-17/4

115b (LP and LLP)

2 2

floor, ne quad

5-17/4

115a

Zea 2

1

floor, ne quad

4-1/19

113

1

30

floor, quad 3

3-8/27

111

Rosaceae

Nyctaganaceae

Sphaeralcea

Malvastrum

Economic and Other Pollen (cont.)

Context

Provenience

Unit

Table 5.18.  (continued)

222

2

2

5

2

floor

4-3/16

431

237

1

2

floor

4-5/3

435a

327

1

7

1

1

1

floor

3-4/32

438b

3895

17

12

4

4

4

4

4

1

1

129

3

19

23

2

1

13

1

Total

Pollen Studies Economic Pollen While pollen ratios can be used to evaluate changes in vegetation over time, we can also interpret economic pollen from plants used for food, medicine, fiber, or the like. Possible economic plants at the Mattocks site that have more than single digit pollen counts include legumes (129 grains), corn (Zea; 23 grains), cactus (Opuntia; 19 grains), and beeweed (Cleome; 13 grains). Other possible economic pollen was so rare that use, if any, did not result in significant pollen deposition on the floors. The chapters on pollen in Anyon and LeBlanc (1984:212–213) and Nelson and LeBlanc (1986:230) graphically present the comparative frequencies of some economic pollen—Zea, Opuntia, Typha (cattail), and legumes—through time. Rather than repeat that information, the focus here is at the Mattocks site, and on comparisons with other sites and periods. The most obvious economic pollen is corn. Seven of 15 samples from Mattocks had corn pollen, although only two samples contained more than two grains. This level of ubiquity is lower than for other Late Pithouse and Classic sites, and it is somewhat unexpected given that 71 percent of the paleoethnobotanical samples contained corn. Every sample from the Beauregard (two samples), Montezuma (one), and Mitchell (two) sites had corn pollen present, as did two of the four samples from the Wheaton-Smith site, and nine of 13 samples from the Galaz site. The only exception was the Bradsby site, where there was no corn pollen in any of its three samples. Corn was present in 57 percent of the Late and Late Late Pit Structure and Classic period pollen samples, and it was noticeably less common (47 percent) in the Mattocks site samples. Sixty percent of 10 Black Mountain samples had corn, a proportion like that of the Late and Late Late Pit Structure and Classic periods, as did eight of 16 Cliff phase samples. Opuntia was more ubiquitous than corn, with 10 of the 15 Mattocks samples having this pollen, although there were fewer total pollen grains. None of the modern samples produced Opuntia pollen, and so human activity probably introduced the Opuntia pollen onto the room floors. Eleven of 13 Galaz samples had Opuntia. The one Montezuma and two Beauregard samples contained Opuntia, as did two of the four Wheaton-Smith samples, although the two from the Mitchell site did not. As with corn, none of the three samples from the Bradsby site had Opuntia. Overall, the other Late and Late Late Pit Structure and Classic sites had 65 percent Opuntia ubiquity, which is similar to the 67 percent from the Mattocks site. The later Black Mountain sites had an Opuntia ubiquity of 60 percent, again similar to the Late and Late Late Pit Structure and Classic ubiquity, and again the Cliff phase ubiquity was lower, at 19 percent (three of 16 samples). One could argue that the larger Late and Late Late Pit Structure and Classic period sites, such as Galaz and Mattocks, had higher Opuntia ubiquities (75 percent) than the smaller sites from those periods (42 percent), or that the

201

lower elevation sites had more Opuntia than the higher ones. The site with the highest elevation, Bradsby, had no Opuntia, and the much lower Galaz site had a ubiquity of 85 percent. The moderate levels at the Black Mountain sites and the very low levels at the Cliff phase sites would seem to refute either scenario as a sole explanation, in that the former are at lower elevations and the latter are higher, and so a combination of the site elevation and size may best explain the variability in the amount of Opuntia pollen present. The 67 percent ubiquity of samples containing Opuntia pollen for the Mattocks site seems appropriate for a large site at around 1,800 m (6,000 feet). Legume pollen was quite ubiquitous at the Mattocks site. Eleven of the 15 samples (73 percent) had legume pollen, and five of these contained 5 percent or more. The archaeological samples had much higher quantities of legume pollen than did the modern ones. Of 18 modern samples, only 10 had any legume pollen at all, and of these, only one sample had more than 1 percent. The Mattocks samples had more legume pollen than most of the other Late and Late Late Pit Structure and Classic sites. The Galaz site had seven of 13 samples that contained legume pollen, and only two samples had more than 2 percent. Only one of two Beauregard samples, two of four Wheaton-Smith, and none of the Mitchell or Montezuma samples had legume pollen. In contrast, the Bradsby had much legume pollen with the three samples all having more than 10 percent. Six of 10 Black Mountain and 10 of 16 Cliff phase samples had legume pollen. For the latter, two samples had 2 percent or more legume pollen. Except for the Bradsby site, Mattocks had more legume pollen than other sites, contemporary or not. The legume pollen might have been from mesquite or domesticated common beans. Given that sites in lower elevations, where mesquite would have been more common, did not have particularly high legume pollen counts, we suspect that the pollen was from common beans. It is not obvious why the Mattocks site should have more bean pollen than others. The Mattocks was one of the largest sites at the time the valley’s population was at its peak, and so it is possible that beans at least partly replaced meat as a protein source when the population reached its peak, especially at large sites, which would have been more likely to have depleted the nearby game. Typha pollen was present in four of the 15 Mattocks samples, although there was only one grain in each. Eight of 13 Galaz samples had Typha pollen, including three that had 1 percent or more. The remainder of the Late and Late Late Pit Structure and Classic sites had only five of 12 samples with trace amounts of Typha. For the later periods, five of 16 Cliff phase samples contained Typha, with three of these having over 1 percent, but only three of 10 Black Mountain samples had any Typha. It was also rare in the modern samples with only three of 18 samples having even trace amounts. Therefore, the Mattocks site had somewhat less Typha ubiquity than its contemporaries, and

202

Chapter 5

only slightly more than the modern outdoor pollen rain. Nevertheless, the Typha pollen was probably an intentional introduction, because it does not naturally travel far in the air (Suzanne K. Fish personal communication, 2011). However, there could have been Typha along the Mimbres River just below the site. The many uses of Typha include edible lower stems, edible pollen that is sometimes used for yellow body paint, and stalks for roofing, wall, and matting material.

Individual Room Analysis Although the focus of our pollen studies was not on room activities or room function, we expected to see some situations where room function affected the overall pollen counts for a room. There were few such examples at the Mattocks site, and few for any of the other sites, which was somewhat unexpected. We cannot determine whether this lack is because we sampled floors too deeply, thereby underrepresenting activity-introduced pollen, whether we would have had to analyze multiple samples per floor to see such patterns, or whether looking for pollen clumps would have helped show plant use. Alternatively, perhaps most activities simply did not introduce enough pollen into rooms, and the background pollen swamped any activity-related pollen. Despite the above, a few rooms had pollen samples that were anomalous in that there was substantially more of a specific type than in any other unit. The Late and Late Late Pit Structure period floor in Unit 286b had 11 grains of corn pollen, more than twice that of any other sample. The upper floor in Unit 423 had high Artemisia (13 grains), and the lower floor had high Ambrosia (15 grains). Unit 431 had the largest amount of pine pollen (23 grains), while Unit 438b had the most juniper pollen (20 grains). The only other anomaly was the high amount of legume pollen (30 grains) from Unit 41b, more than twice any other sample. As previously discussed, legume pollen is relatively common at the Mattocks site, with 11 of 15 samples having it. Unit 41 had 10 percent legume pollen, but four other rooms had more than 5 percent. Whether Unit 41 was exceptional or just the end of the frequency distribution is unclear, but it also had charred beans in the fill between the two floors (chapter 3). We have proposed (chapter 3) that both Units 41 and 423 were communal granaries, perhaps accounting for their relatively high proportions of plants with potential economic use.

Ground Stone Pollen Wash Study We undertook an analysis of pollen recovered from the use surfaces of metates. Halbirt (1985:34–36) described the methods we employed in detail, and they were similar to those of McLaughlin and Miksicek (1977). Briefly, ground stone artifacts that were to be sent for pollen wash were placed in sealed plastic bags while still in the

field. They were left uncleaned so that the working surfaces were not exposed to modern pollen rain. The artifacts were then brushed clean in a closed room, which presumably minimized the chance of contamination by modern pollen; the stone was brushed until only a small amount of soil remained. The working surface was then washed with distilled water from which pollen was later extracted. There is a fine line between doing too much initial cleaning, thereby removing all the pollen, and doing too little cleaning, resulting primarily in the recovery of post-­occupational pollen. The difficulties of the extraction process mean that the absence of pollen, or the lack of any deviation from surrounding fill pollen, is more likely to be due to pollen recovery methods than to ground stone use that did not leave pollen residue. Although the limitations of the pollen wash method are significant, we recovered a number of samples that may reflect metate use. Halbirt (1985) undertook a comparison of pollen wash samples from Mimbres Foundation excavations. Because we decided to do pollen wash analysis only after the field project was underway, some ground stone specimens had already been cleaned or left exposed and could not be used. Moreover, some ground stone artifacts were from contexts that one would not have expected pollen from the use of the object to have survived, and so we did not include them in the sample. Thus, the number of specimens washed for pollen was far smaller than the number of specimens recovered. The results from these samples are intriguing, but the sample is simply too small, especially for comparative purposes, for much meaningful interpretation. Halbirt (1985:42–47) interpreted the pollen by comparing pollen counts from the washes with the floor sample from the room where the metate was collected, and with a composite site sample. The high frequency of a particular pollen type that deviated from the room floor average was taken to mean that people were processing a particular kind of plant on that piece of ground stone, although it is also possible that the plant was processed very near the metate. It is also conceivable the differences between the floor and wash counts were merely sampling noise. To deal with the latter issue, Halbirt (1985:51–53) defined two levels of confidence based on a series of binomial tests—a high likelihood of being significant (Rank A), and a lower but still significant level of reliability (Rank B). Pollen types associated with Rank A have a relatively high level of certainty that they were actually processed on the metate; Rank B pollen types were probably processed. Overall, Halbirt found that the majority of ground stone samples had pollen that attained at least his lower significance level. We have added a third level of plant use evidence to those that Halbirt defined. While not statistically significant in terms of Halbirt’s methodology, we found some pollen frequencies were deviant enough from the overall pollen counts that they were likely indicators of plant use.

Chipped Stone Halbirt’s levels of reliability (table 5.19) show that only a few plants were almost certainly ground on these particular Mattocks site metates. Two samples had Rank A levels of reliability—one for juniper (41b-5-20/2) and one for corn (435b-5-17/5). It may be important that the latter was in a burial. Four samples had Rank B levels of reliability—one for juniper (426-3-6/19), two for corn (41-4-21/4, 433-3-3/9), and one for cactus (Opuntia; 41-421/4). Five samples had our third level of evidence—one for Gramineae (435b-5-17/5), one for ragweed (Ambrosia; also 435b-5-17/5), one for legumes (41-4-21/2), one for sunflower (41-4-21/4), and one for Lemna (286a-2-6/2). Thus, seven of the 10 Mattocks specimens showed some evidence for plant use, although two of these had only the weak evidence that we included after Halbirt’s analysis. Some possible patterns are evident. Two metates of different forms and one mortar had evidence for corn processing. (A mortar from another site also had evidence for corn processing, and so this unexpected anomaly was not an isolated example.) Two metates of different forms had juniper pollen. As Halbirt (1985:54–60) emphasized, specific kinds of pollen do not associate with specific metate forms. There was low reliability evidence for grass, ragweed, cactus, legume, sunflower, and Lemna pollen from four metates, with two of those having two of these pollen types. A metate blank (41-4-21/2) from Unit 41 that had some legume pollen is suspect because the floor count for legume pollen from this room was also high. This may mean that the metate was contaminated by the room pollen or, alternatively, that the room pollen contained a great deal of legume pollen because it had been processed on a metate in that room. Two metates had more than one kind of pollen each, in both cases three kinds. One (41-4-21/4) had corn, cactus, and sunflower, and the other (435b-5-17/5) had corn, grass, and ragweed. While there was nothing exceptional about the first metate, the second was with a relatively rich adult burial that also had two bowls and two turquoise pendants (see chapter 7).

Summary Much of the pollen present in Mattocks site floor samples seems to have been the result of extensive human-induced disturbance of the background plant community. This is not unexpected because Mattocks was one of the larger sites in the valley, and it was occupied when the population of the valley was at its peak. The amount of economic pollen in both the floor and metate wash samples, especially corn pollen, was lower than paleoethnobotanical results would suggest, although this was perhaps due to the process of pollen deposition rather than corn use. We did find relatively more legume pollen at the Mattocks site than for the sites in the valley overall. A few rooms showed raised levels of particular pollen types, but the counts were quite low. Because there is relatively little pit structure period occupation at the Mattocks site, and because we analyzed

203

few of the pollen samples that we obtained, we cannot discuss changes in pollen frequencies between the Late Late Pit Structure and Classic periods at the site.

Chipped Stone Geology of the Northern Mimbres Valley The geology of a region determines the availability of chipped and ground stone raw materials, and the building stones that were most readily accessible to the ancient inhabitants. The following discussion focuses on the geology of the upper Mimbres Valley north of the town of Sherman (Elston 1957; Jicha 1954; Jones et al. 1967; Kuellmer 1954). The west side of the north Mimbres Valley is bounded by a wooded cliff that rises abruptly about 300 m (1,000 feet) above the valley floor. The cliff is the upthrown side of the Mimbres Fault, which was active during the Tertiary period, exposing Precambrian and Paleozoic marine sediments. These sediments outcrop locally, from the Galaz site north to the Mattocks site, and include sources for Precambrian greenstone in the lowest strata, cherts that formed as nodules or lenses in the Paleozoic limestones, and quartzite in some of the marine formations. Copper porphyry deposits west of the Mimbres Fault are associated with plutons formed during the Cenozoic Era. These may have been the sources of the copper minerals, such as chrysocolla and malachite, that have been recovered in cultural contexts on Mimbres sites, and they are the locations of many copper mines today. The Black Range to the east rises around 1,200 m (4,000 feet) above the Mimbres Valley, and it is the dominant geological feature in the area. Formations 8 km or more (about 5 or 6 miles) east of the Mimbres River are covered with alluvium, the source of which is the Tertiary volcanic material exposed at the top of the Black Range. Chalcedony is available because these rocks have weathered, and the alluvium is the source of rhyolite, tuff, latite, and basalt used both as building material and for chipped and ground stone. Most of the earlier Paleozoic sediments exposed in the Black Range are on the east side of the mountains, although there are a few in some of the canyons on the west side. The geology of the northern Mimbres provides the vast majority of the materials that people at the Mattocks site used for chipped stone (table 5.20; Nelson 1981:107– 108). These materials, including basalt, chalcedony, rhyolite, quartzite, chert, greenstone, and jasper, are not only in the outcrops and alluvium, but many of them are doubtless present in the cobbles and gravels in the Mimbres River and its terraces. In other words, people at the Mattocks site could obtain most of these materials simply by walking a few steps to the river bank or the river bottom just east of the site.

vesicular basalt

through trough

complete metate blank

pothunted

Classic

Material

Metate Form

Completeness

Context

Period

27

Juniperus

237 35 7 14

Cheno-Am

Gramineae

Compositae, Short Spine

Compositae, Long Spine

Weed and Grass Pollen

7 (45)

8 (37)

20

210

10 (32)

6 (11)

46

157

3 (6)

1 (1)

1

10 (12)

22

51

240

13

17

41

167

9 (24)

10 (24)

37

143

1 (4)

0 (1)

2 (4)

0 (2)

38 (89) (B)

10 (26)

Classic

floor

whole metate

“through trough”

sandstone

426-3-6/19

1 (5)

1 (4)

5 (19)

3 (16)

Classic

upside down on roof fall

complete

seed jar

tuff or rhyolite

433-3-3/9

1 (17)

2 (3)

1 (2)

11 (29)

7 (27)

Classic

burial

metate fragment

trough/basin

basalt

435-5-12/2

0 (1)

8 (12)

3 (7)

Classic

burial

metate fragment

trough

vesicular basalt

435b-5-17/1

5 (31)

11

26

149

6 (18)

13

32

138

7 (13)

19 (26)

60 (C)

123

0 (4)

2 (7)

1

15

10

LP and LLP

floor

complete mano

rectangular, turtleback

vesicular basalt

286b-7-6/10

Quercus 2

1 (1)

1 (1)

22 (27)

11 (13)

LP and LLP, Classic

roof fall

2/3 metate

“through trough”

diorite

286a-2-6/2

1 (1)

0 (2)

1 (1)

2 (5)

52 (104) (A)

6 (19)

1 (1)

Classic

fill above floor

complete metate

slab

rhyolite

41b-5-20/2

Salix

Alnus

Celtis 0 (1)

Populus

Sambucus

0 (2) 1 (3)

Juglans 1

8 (33)

4

Pinus 9 (43)

1 (1)

Classic

pothunted

complete metate

slab

vesicular basalt

41-4-21/4

Acer

Tree and Shrub Pollen

41-4-21/2

Pollen Type

20

25

56

271

3

1

22

8

1

Classic

floor

whole metate

?

vesicular basalt

438a-2-4/37

Table 5.19.  Pollen Counts from Mattocks Site Ground Stone Washes. The numbers in parentheses are a second count that Carl Halbirt undertook for the same slide. He did not calculate the results because of possible recounting, although he tried to count a different part of the slide each time.

1 (3)

10

2 (2)

2 (3)

1 (3)

1 (4)

1 (1)

0 (2)

337

5

287 (325)

My

1 (1)

314 (245)

3 (3)

401 (87)

5 (18)

0 (1)

260 (195)

My

0 (1)

Period: LP = Late Pithouse; LLP = Late Late Pithouse. (A) = Rank A, Halbirt strong association; (B) = Rank B, Halbirt weaker association; (C) = our assessment of a likely association. My = Myctaginaceae.

Total Grain Counts

Trace Amounts

Other (includes unknowns)

Sphaeralcea

Polemoniaceae (phlox)

1 (1)

1

Cleome 1 (2)

0 (1) 1 (2)

3

Lemna

280

2

3

1

4

4

1

Typha latifolia 2 (10)

0 (12) (C)

Helianthus

13

3 (3)

5 (7)

1 (1)

4

1 (1)

1 (1)

0 (1)

Euphorbia

1 (1)

14 (39)

1 (2)

1 (1)

1 (1)

6 (9)

2 (5)

Eriogonum

0 (1)

Kallestroemia

Cyperaceae

Polygonaceae

6 (48)

Legume

25 (C)

3 (35) (B)

Opuntia

5 (24) (B)

0 (1)

Ephedra 1

2 (13)

Ambrosia

Zea

1 (4)

Artemisia

Economic and Other Pollen

Table 5.19.  (continued)

212 (127)

0 (9)

0 (1)

1

0 (1)

3

2 (8)

3 (25) (B)

0 (3)

2

0 (6)

220 (122)

0 (6)

0 (1)

0 (1)

1

8

0 (1)

2 (7)

0 (10)

291 (205)

0 (2)

2 (5)

1 (1)

12 (21)

1 (5)

31 (57) (A)

21 (44) (C)

2 (6)

449

1

3

1

17

5

3

6

6

4

1

1

0

1

0

0

0

0

0

0

0

17 652 38

Rhyolite

Quartzite

Chert

Jasper

Greenstone

Obsidian

Unidenti­ fiable

Glassy Rhyolite

Dolomite

Magnetite

Siliceous Siltstone

Total

0

0

1

0

1

0

0

0

0

6

6

10

* 3S-8PH, 9PH, 3F-14PH, 16PH.

0

3

2

9

2

6

15

14

21

49

120

92

14

Chalcedony

319

10

106

Basalt

80 a

41 a

Raw Material

12

0

0

0

0

0

0

0

0

1

0

2

2

7

110

478

0

0

4

1

8

1

20

10

21

23

69

95

226

111

59

0

0

0

0

1

2

1

2

4

0

10

17

22

113

990

1

0

0

3

15

3

0

8

32

22

173

241

492

115 a

248

1

0

0

1

2

5

0

6

11

7

47

51

117

121 a

8

0

0

0

0

0

1

0

0

0

1

2

0

4

121 b

0

3

2

2

3

3

7

11

13

16

40

68

186

423 a

119 354

0

0

0

1

0

1

0

3

9

7

20

21

57

325

21

0

0

0

0

1

2

1

0

0

1

2

2

12

423 b

36

0

0

0

0

0

0

0

0

1

1

6

6

22

425

425

0

0

4

1

1

7

5

7

19

18

59

101

203

426

202

0

0

0

0

1

12

0

3

4

2

19

88

73

431

Table 5.20.  Mattocks Site Unmodified and Modified Flake Materials. Nelson (1981:381–384) defined the materials.

777

1

3

7

19

8

5

23

24

25

52

125

180

305

433

284

0

1

2

4

3

3

5

10

17

10

39

62

128

435 a

41

0

1

0

0

0

0

1

1

5

0

5

10

18

435 b

447

0

1

2

0

4

6

19

11

14

42

87

65

196

438 a

271

0

0

2

3

2

1

14

4

6

16

35

38

150

438 b

26

0

0

0

0

0

2

0

1

3

2

2

7

9

438 c*

5505

3

12

26

44

52

60

111

116

206

276

869

1160

2570

Total

—

—

—

1

1

1

2

2

4

5

16

21

47

Percent of All Materials

Chipped Stone The one chipped stone material that we know is not available in the outcrops and alluvium of the northern Mimbres Valley is obsidian. The closest obsidian source to the Mimbres Valley is Mule Creek, 96 km (60 miles) to the west. Because of its relative proximity, we assumed that the vast majority of the obsidian in the Mimbres Valley was from this source. Using recent sourcing studies, Talia­ ferro et al. (2010) determined that obsidian from sites in the mountains of the Mimbres region, including the Mimbres Valley, is indeed generally from Mule Creek, with small amounts of Cow Canyon, Gwynn Canyon, and Red Hill obsidian, all of which are sources to the northwest of the valley. In contrast, much of the obsidian at sites in the Cedar and Florida Mountains to the south of the Mimbres Valley is from sources just to the south in Chihuahua— Antelope Wells (the second closest source to the Mimbres Valley at 175 km or 109 miles distance), Sierra Fresnal, and Los Jagüeyes—although these sites also have northern obsidian. Taliaferro et al. found little change through time in the obsidian sources used in each region. The three pieces of obsidian that they include from the Mattocks site are all from Mule Creek.

The Chipped Stone Sample and Analysis Methodology Excavations at the Mattocks site produced a considerable sample of chipped stone. Because the available sample had more than 11,000 chipped stone items, we selected contexts that were not disturbed or mixed to analyze in detail. The following analysis is based on 5,505 pieces of chipped stone. It does not include projectile points, which are considered separately. The sample came from 21 rooms or room portions from all of the room blocks in which we excavated, although the 100s and 400s room blocks are most represented. Thus, the sample (tables 5.20 and 5.21) is quite characteristic of the Classic period occupation of the site as a whole. The Late Pithouse period sample, which includes our Middle, Late, and Late Late Pit Structure periods, was so small that we did not use it in this analysis. The sample considered here was all recovered by quarter-­ inch screening. Only screened samples were quantified, but others were scanned for projectile points and other tools. Very small flakes could pass through the quarter-inch screen, but as all samples used in the analyses were recovered by quarter-inch screening, they are all comparable. Nelson (1981) analyzed the chipped stone artifacts from the Mimbres Foundation excavations, and virtually all of the following analyses and interpretations derive directly from her research. She tested three propositions regarding how chipped stone artifacts reflect the subsistence tasks for which they were made and used. Nelson based the first part of her analysis on the idea that tools with durable edges were more efficient for procuring and

207

processing plants than animals, while sharp tools should be associated with butchering. She used raw materials, flake size, production edge angle, and cortex reinforcement to measure the proportion of durable- to brittle edges. Second, Nelson suggested that a wide range of tool-edge contour shapes was used to process plants, but a more limited range dominated by straight and slightly convex edges was used on animal carcasses. Third, Nelson proposed that projectile points would have been used more often for hunting large rather than small animals, and used the proportion of biface thinning flakes as a proxy for projectile points in her analysis. Nelson sorted the chipped stone into several artifact classes: flake debitage (nonutilized flakes), unshaped flake tools (utilized flakes including marginally retouched flakes), shaped flake tools, and cores. She examined each flake edge through a 10× magnification hand lens, and she then sorted the flakes into those with unmodified versus modified (including marginal retouch) edges, based on usewear evidence (table 5.21). Unmodified flakes, also called flake debitage, were not used or retouched to the extent that scarring was continuous along the edge and extended far enough onto the face that it was clearly not from post-­ depositional damage. Nelson further divided the debitage into core preparation flakes, biface thinning flakes, and all other flakes (table 5.21). She more intensively analyzed a sample of modified flakes. Modified flakes, also called unshaped flake tools, were utilized or retouched to the extent that scarring was continuous along the edge and extended far enough onto the face that it was clearly not from post-depositional damage. Shaped tools were those with more than marginal retouch, that is, retouch that extended over more than a third of the flake face. Nelson also sorted the chipped stone artifacts by their raw material (table 5.20), and she grouped them into fine- and coarse-grained raw materials (table 5.21). Coarse-grained materials are crystalline rocks including basalt, rhyolite, quartzite, and greenstone. The crystalline structure of coarse-grained materials provides for edge toughness during use but produces blockier flakes than non-crystalline materials (Lawn and Marshall 1979). Fine-grained materials are cryptocrystallines and include chalcedony, chert, jasper, siliceous siltstone, obsidian, and glassy rhyolite. These materials are brittle but may be flaked to form tools with sharp edges. Dolomite could not be classified as either coarse- or fine-grained. Nelson (1981, 1984, 1986) suggested that coarse-grained raw materials were heavily used for processing plants. Another means of determining whether chipped stone was used for plant or animal processing is the flake size index (average flake weight). Produced by dividing the total weight of unmodified and modified flakes by the total count in each group analyzed, it is the mean flake weight. Nelson (1986:146) posited that tasks such as plant processing, which require durable flake edges, used large flakes with thick, blocky edges and enough mass to withstand

10

100

47

4

1149

438a

438b

438c

Total

2

266

24

13

2

10

16

9

12

1

24

6

1

15

30

CP Fine Unmodified

362

1

6

15

4

12

47

36

30

1

12

8

13

116

7

29

2

23

6

CP Fine Modified

67

1

6

9

4

10

1

4

2

7

2

2

6

6

1

CP Other Unmodified

27

2

1

4

6

2

1

4

1

5

1

CP Other Modified

1

1

Other Coarse Unmodified

2139

7

131

202

10

118

309

58

164

15

12

131

46

3

98

387

19

170

5

11

236

7

Other Coarse Modified

323

2

13

28

7

23

2

16

6

1

71

8

1

6

18

4

34

3

5

72

3

896

9

23

54

10

74

176

60

91

5

2

20

18

56

149

12

68

3

4

61

1

Other Fine Unmodified

213

2

17

19

2

6

20

5

9

1

18

7

4

19

4

24

2

51

3

CP = core preparation flakes; BT = biface thinning flakes; nm = not meaningful, sample size too small.

12

94

426

435b

8

425

47

2

423b

435a

62

423a

31

24

325

158

3

121b

433

52

121a

431

10

251

115a

33

101

111

113

1

110

2

64

131

80

106

CP Coarse Unmodified

1

CP Coarse Modified

2

Unit

41

Other Fine Modified

Table 5.21.  Mattocks Site Unmodified and Modified Flakes and Cores by Material Texture.

5

Other Other Unmodified

48

3

4

1

8

3

4

9

1

9

1

Other Other Modified

11

1

1

1

4

1

1

2

Cores Coarse

1

1

BT Coarse Unmodified

1

1

BT Fine Unmodified

1

1

Total

5505

26

271

447

41

284

777

202

425

36

21

354

119

8

248

990

59

478

12

38

652

17

Coarse Flake Size Index

10.4

nm

13.6

9.6

6.4

5.4

7.6

13.2

8.3

7.7

nm

11.5

9.0

nm

12.0

11.5

9.0

8.4

nm

22.8

10.8

nm

4.3

nm

4.3

4.2

3.4

4.8

5.6

3.9

2.4

4.6

nm

4.6

6.0

nm

3.8

5.5

4.6

4.5

nm

2.5

4.4

nm

Fine Flake Size Index

Chipped Stone pounding activities. Smaller flakes with thin, brittle edges may have been more suitable for hunting and meat processing. To avoid biasing this value because of differences in the amount of coarse- and fine-grained material used (they produce different sized flakes), the flake size index was computed separately for each material. The production edge angle is another variable that measures the durability of working edges, in that the steeper the edge the more durable it is and therefore the more suitable for plant processing (Nelson 1981:162– 168). Nelson (1981:168–172) analyzed edge angles in two ways. First, she determined the average minimum and maximum edge angles for each flake. However, since averages from different sites could be similar while masking significant variability, she also considered the range of the maximum edge angles. Because measuring flake edge angles takes a considerable amount of time, only a relatively small sample was selected from each unit and then averaged to determine a site mean (Nelson 1984:tables 16.7 and 16.8, 1986:tables 8.8 and 8.9). Cortex reinforcement augments edge durability because it strengthens an edge, and it is similar to the use of coarse raw materials, large flakes, and steep edge angles for plant processing activities. Nelson (1981:135) devised two measures of cortex reinforcement, one based on the presence of cortex on the flake, and the other for cortex being present on the utilized edge. As these are not independent variables, and because their patterns were roughly the same, we present only the latter here (see Nelson 1981:133–149 for both). Nelson (1981:209–211) argued that straight and slightly convex flake edges were useful butchering tools and that concave edges, which were suitable for plant processing, were not as useful. She (Nelson 1981:211–214) developed a nominal variable to describe the degree of edge curvature—convex, slightly convex, straight, and concave. Only a sample of Mattocks site flakes was analyzed for edge shape. The proportion of biface thinning flakes—products of retouching, which strengthens an edge by increasing the edge angle and so providing a more durable edge— can inform on projectile point production, and therefore large game hunting (Nelson 1981:235–250). Biface thinning flakes can result from projectile point manufacture, and they are a better measure of this aspect of the lithic industry than the quantity of points themselves, as many of the latter will have been lost off-site. Moreover, projectile points were always rare, and so even a few additional finds could skew their frequency considerably.

Coarse Versus Fine Raw Materials Basalt comprised 47 percent of the Mattocks site chipped stone assemblage (table 5.20), and it was clearly the material of choice for many activities. Chalcedony was the next

209

most common material, at 21 percent, followed by rhyolite at 16 percent. The percentage of other material was in the single digits, and obsidian, the only known non-­local material, was 1 percent of the assemblage. Combining basalt, rhyolite, quartzite, and greenstone, 70 percent of the assemblage was coarse-grained materials, and this proportion suggests that plant processing was an important function of the Mattocks site chipped stone assemblage. Nelson (1984:228, 1986:145) has provided comparative coarse- and fine-grained material frequencies for other Mimbres Valley sites, from various periods. Because obsidian was obtained from sources beyond the valley, we made a special effort to analyze the obsidian artifacts. The obsidian artifacts considered here (table 5.22 and appendix 4) probably comprise most of those from the Mattocks site. The total of 595 artifacts differs greatly from the 60 obsidian artifacts used in Nelson’s analysis (table 5.20), because the latter is from only a sample of Mattocks site rooms and excavation units. Most of the obsidian artifacts from the Mattocks site (table 5.22) were either core preparation flakes (30 percent) or “other” (non-core preparation and non-biface thinning) flakes (49 percent). Projectile points comprised only 14 percent of all obsidian artifacts, and the proportions of all other obsidian artifact types were in the single digits. These proportions suggest that obsidian was being chipped into flakes and tools at the Mattocks site, which differs from the analysis that Taliaferro (2004:121–124) performed on obsidian artifacts from the Old Town site. Southwestern obsidian is generally in the form of small nodules (Apache tears), which would be easy to carry from the sources. The fact that only one nodule and eight cores (table 5.22 and appendix 4) were present in the Mattocks site obsidian may not be significant because the nodules were often reduced using a bipolar technique in which the nodule was simply smashed between two rocks. People would then use the resulting flakes for their sharp edges or to modify into tools. The large number of obsidian projectile points (83) is inconsistent with the presence of only five biface thinning flakes, but obsidian projectile points were generally quite small, and the associated thinning flakes might well have fallen through our quarter-­ inch screens.

Chipped Stone Form Analyses Flake Size Index (Average Flake Weight) The average coarse-grained material flake weight for all rooms analyzed from the Mattocks site was 10.4 g, and the average fine-grained flake weight was 4.3 g (table 5.21). Coarse- and fine-grained flake weights varied among Mattocks site rooms, and there was no apparent pattern to the room averages. Nelson (1984:table 16.6, 1986:table 8.7) has presented the average weights of coarse- and fine-grained flakes for

210

Chapter 5

Table 5.22.  Mattocks Site Obsidian Artifacts. Artifact Type

Number

Percent

Projectile Points

83*

14

Biface Fragments

16

3

Biface Thinning Flakes

5

1

Punch / Drill

1

0

Cores

8

1

Core Preparation Flakes

181

30

Other Flakes

292

49

Nodule

1

0

Type Unknown

8

1

Total Artifacts

595

* Three from obsidian artifact analysis, plus 80 from projectile point analysis.

the Mattocks site compared to other selected Mimbres Valley sites. For the sites as a whole, the average flake weights, for both coarse- and fine-grained flakes, increased from the Early Pithouse period to the Late Pithouse (our Middle, Late, and Late Late Pit Structure periods) and Classic periods as the valley population increased, and presumably as the amount of agriculture and therefore plant processing increased. The Mattocks sample fits this pattern.

Mean Production Edge Angle (Flake Tool Edge Angle) The average minimum edge angle for all sites in all periods was remarkably consistent, at 40° to 43° (Nelson 1984:table 16.7, 1986:table 8.8). The average maximum edge angle had a somewhat greater range. The Late Pithouse and Classic period sites in the middle valley, including the Mattocks site, each had 60° mean edge angles, while the Early Pithouse period and Cliff phase averaged 55° and 53°, respectively. Nelson (1981:168) suggested that the greater use of obtuse edge angles is evidence for more plant processing. Nelson also detected this trend by examining variability within edge angles and not just the mean for each site (Nelson 1984:table 16.8, 1986:table 8.9). For this purpose, the measurements of maximum production edge angles were divided into three categories—19° to 40° (acute), 41° to 60° (medium), and 60° to 90° (steep). Both the Early Pithouse and Cliff phase samples had a higher proportion of acute angle edges, and a lower proportion of obtuse edge angles, than did the Late Pithouse and Classic samples. Specifically, the McAnally site had 20 percent acute edge angles, and the Cliff phase Stailey site had 23 percent, which contrasted with the Late Pithouse Galaz site (12 percent), and the Classic Mattocks site (10 percent). The proportion of medium angles was remarkably consistent

for all periods, at 42 to 48 percent. That is, the change in the mean edge angle resulted from changes in steep and acute edge angles, with medium edge angles being equally common in all periods. Once again, the Early Pithouse period more closely resembled the Cliff phase than the Late Pithouse or Classic periods, and again the Mattocks site fit well with the valley-wide pattern of a higher proportion of obtuse edge angles during the Classic period.

Cortex Reinforcement The chipped stone assemblage from the Mattocks site had an overall 23 percent of cortex reinforcement on 629 utilized tool edges (Nelson 1986:table 8.6). In comparison, the Early Pithouse period McAnally site had 16 percent, and the proportion in the two Cliff phase assemblages was 8 percent and 19 percent. These proportions overlapped with the 18–25 percent and 16–23 percent in the Late Pithouse and Classic period assemblages, respectively, showing that there were no clear patterns in these data. The northern Mimbres Valley samples had, at 14 percent, lower frequencies of cortex reinforcement on utilized tool edges than did middle Mimbres Valley samples at 21 percent (Nelson 1986:table 8.6). That is, at a place where we think hunting was relatively more important, the frequency of cortex reinforcement was relatively low. The Mattocks site is part of the middle valley sample, and it had one of the two highest proportions of cortex reinforcement, suggesting greater reliance on plants. Flake Tool Edge Shape Mimbres data did not support Nelson’s (1981:230–234) idea that tool edge shape varied according to whether plants or animals were being processed. Given the result of the Mattocks analysis, she proposed that edge curvature may instead be a useful measure of whether edges were for specialized tasks (extremely curved) or were multipurpose (less curved). Biface Thinning Flakes Biface thinning flakes were rare in all periods and at all sites that the Mimbres Foundation excavated (Nelson 1984:table 16.10, 1986:table 8.11), but their abundance did appear to change over time. They were most common during the Early Pithouse period and the Cliff phase, but also at the Classic period Mitchell and Galaz sites. They were exceptionally rare at the Mattocks site at 0.1 percent of the chipped stone assemblage. This low frequency supported the idea that hunting had become much less prevalent than when the valley population was lower, but the lack of any consistent patterns in these data did not allow for much confidence in this statement.

Summary of Nelson’s Chipped Stone Analysis Portions of Nelson’s comparative study have been published for the Early Pithouse period (Diehl and LeBlanc

Chipped Stone 2001), Galaz (Nelson 1984), and Cliff phase sites (Nelson 1986). Her results have shown that there was greater emphasis on plant exploitation in what she called the middle Mimbres Valley, which includes the Mattocks site, than in the more northern part of the valley in all three periods sampled—the Late Pithouse, the Classic, and the Cliff phase. The middle valley sites had more durable tools, with more coarse-grained materials being used, more edges reinforced by cortex, and more obtuse edge angles. In turn, as evidenced by higher proportions of biface thinning flakes, there was greater reliance on hunting large game in the northern valley than in the middle valley during the Classic period and the Cliff phase, although the reliance was the same in both areas during the Late Pithouse period. Nelson (1981:103) also found that there was no significant variation in durable versus brittle tool edges, either in the middle or northern valley, for Late Pithouse and Classic period samples, which suggests that the proportion of plant processing did not change between these two periods.

Chipped Stone at the Mattocks Site The chipped stone assemblage from the Mattocks site is dominated by unmodified flake debitage, although it does contain many modified flakes (table 5.21). This pattern is typical of the Mogollon and the Southwest in general (e.g., Fitting 1972; Goodyear 1975; Martin et al. 1967). Flakes were produced by a simple blow to a prepared or unprepared core. Little, if any, further shaping by retouch was performed, and the production of these tools required little time investment. Chipped stone assemblages composed primarily of unmodified and modified flakes can be characterized as an expedient (or discard) industry, in that flakes were expediently produced, and they were not likely to have been stored and maintained between uses but were instead discarded immediately after use. The implications are that most of the modified flakes at the Mattocks site represent the performance of tasks using chipped stone that was obtained near the site and used at the site. Projectile points might be the exception to this. Only a small number of formally prepared tools occurred in any of the assemblages from any period in the Mimbres Valley, including the Mattocks site. The Mattocks assemblage was 83 percent unmodified flakes (debitage), a proportion similar to those observed at other Mimbres Valley sites, which ranged from 80 percent to 87 percent (Nelson 1984:227, 1986:143). The 15 percent of the Mattocks site assemblage that was of modified flakes was likewise similar to that from other sites in the area. Shaped tools, which were almost all projectile points, represented only 2 percent of the Mattocks chipped stone sample, and again this is similar to samples such as the 1 percent for both the Late Pithouse and Classic components of the Galaz site (Nelson 1984:227), and 1 percent to 2 percent from the three Cliff phase sites (Nelson 1986:143).

211

Chipped Stone Distribution within the Mattocks Site Most of the chipped stone analyzed for this report was from room contexts, and room floors and roofs were areas where people might have chipped stone. However, people would probably have periodically cleaned their floors and roofs, thereby removing discarded tools and debitage. Small flakes and tools, however, could easily have become embedded in work surfaces. On activity surfaces where regular sweeping would have removed most large pieces of debris, biface thinning flakes should be most abundant, and the size index of both coarse- and fine-grained material should be the smallest. However, our analyses (based on tables 5.20 and 5.21) showed that differences in these measures were never great and that habitation rooms, storage rooms, and extramural activity areas did not reveal different patterns. We think that the periodic cleaning and post-occupation depositional factors lessened any major differences that might have once existed among the units. The Mattocks site non-tool chipped stone assemblage tells us little about intrasite activities.

Projectile Points, Drills, and Bifaces The Mimbres Foundation recovered 202 projectile points, drills, and bifaces (appendix 5) from the Mattocks site (Nelson 1981, 1986), of which 130 were complete enough to warrant illustration (figures 5.2–5.7). Nesbitt (1931:84– 85) noted only 15 complete points along with many fragments, and he showed 11 of these in his report. His much lower number is almost certainly because he did not screen during his excavation. Mimbres sites have also yielded a few possible drills and bifaces, which were generally the only chipped stone tools other than projectile points, and we expect that a focused search for both bifaces and drills in the chipped stone assemblage would result in far more examples than we have recorded here. Nesbitt (1931) did not identify any drills or bifaces, nor did he illustrate any in his report.

Drills The Mattocks site yielded seven possible drills. These were scattered across the site, but two were in Unit 80 (appendix 5). Determining whether these and other tools were actually drills would require a use-wear analysis. Five of the Mattocks site tools were chalcedony, and all but one were from floors, roof fall, or the fill above floors. Excavators usually recovered such small artifacts during screening, however, and so it is unclear whether these possible drills were in situ. Bifaces Bifaces are often associated with the Archaic period (pre-A.D. 200), and the 13 identified bifaces at the Mattocks site may be related to the Archaic points also present

Figure 5.2.  Obsidian projectile point photos.

Figure 5.3.  Archaic projectile point photos.

Figure 5.4.  Projectile point photos.

Figure 5.5. Projectile point photos.

Figure 5.6.  Chalcedony projectile point photos.

Figure 5.7.  Chalcedony projectile point photos.

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there (discussed below). Nine bifaces were chalcedony. Importantly, all but three bifaces were fragmentary, and not surprisingly therefore, we recovered at least six from intramural or extramural fill or trash. The two fragments from burials were identified during analysis, and so they were probably not part of the grave goods. People may have used some of the biface and projectile point edges as knives, but determining this would require a use-wear analysis.

Projectile Points In terms of the representativeness of our projectile point sample, it is important to note that a large number of arrows that seemed to date to the Classic period were present in dry caves in the Gila region, to the north and northwest of the Mimbres Valley (Cosgrove 1947; Hibben 1938). Wooden points dominated these collections, and stone tips were relatively rare. Earlier atlatl darts, however, seemed to be consistently tipped with stone points. Nelson (1986:156–176) presented an extended, val­­ ley­ wide comparison of projectile points. Information on Early Pithouse period points is in Diehl and LeBlanc (2001:87–89), data on the Galaz site points are in Anyon and LeBlanc (1984:236–246), material on other Mimbres and Black Mountain sites is in Anyon and LeBlanc (n.d.), and information on points from Cliff phase sites is in Nelson and LeBlanc (1986:156–176). There have also been other studies of southwestern New Mexico projectile points, not­ably Fitting (1972), Dockall (1991), and Talia­ ferro (2004). Here, we focus at the Mattocks site points. Mattocks Site Projectile Point Contexts There were quite a few projectile points in what might be primary contexts at the Mattocks site (appendix 5), including floor (one example from screening), floor pits and postholes (four examples), in situ fill above floor (five examples from screening), in situ roof (10, all from screening except for 111-3-8/19, which was in the area of jar fill), intrusive burials (two, from screening), pit structure floor (one, from screening), plastered burials (three, from screen or pit fill), ramada floor (six, two that were point plotted and four from screening), roof fall (three, from screening), roof fall and in situ fill above floor (six, from screening or fill), and an unplastered burial (one, under right femur). Although we recovered most of these projectile points during screening, people at the site may have included them as dedicatory, or more likely termination, items (Creel and Anyon 2003:77–78) in floor pits or postholes, in burials, or in the roof pack. Some may also have been associated with room, ramada, and pit structure floors, or in activity areas on roofs. Of particular note is the projectile point that was clearly associated with a burial (325-57/14), because its position under the right femur hints that it could have been embedded in muscle and thus might not have been a grave offering.

Projectile Point Materials The materials from which projectile points were made (appendix 5) include obsidian (44 percent), chalcedony (39 percent), jasper (7 percent), rhyolite (5 percent), glassy rhyolite (3 percent), and chert (2 percent). All of these materials are very fine-grained, cryptocrystalline, or homogeneous, except for rhyolite, which can have a glassy texture and which comprised only a small proportion of the assemblage. Obsidian was the most common material for points, even though only about 1 percent of the chipped stone assemblage at the Mattocks site was obsidian. Chalcedony was also more common for points than in the chipped stone assemblage in general. Conversely, basalt was the most common chipped stone material, but there were no basalt points, and there was a lower proportion of rhyolite points than rhyolite in the chipped stone assemblage. Clearly, people selected specific materials to make projectile points. Only 10 proveniences containing projectile points (appendix 5) might date to the Late or Late Late Pit Structure periods, and those could have been mixed with Classic deposits and artifacts. We therefore cannot discuss changes in projectile point material types through time at the Mattocks site. Projectile Point Types Archaic dart points are determined both by their size, which tends to be larger than post-Archaic arrow points, and their style. (See Roth et al. 2011 for a method that distinguishes dart from arrow points based on metric attributes.) Unlike later points, there are named types of Archaic points that are commonly accepted. At the Mattocks site (appendix 5), these include a possible Middle Archaic San Jose/Pinto point (Sliva 2009, 3500–1500 B.C.; Justice 2002:142–146, 6000/5000–3000 B.C.), one reworked Middle Archaic Calf Creek (Bell variety) point from the southern Plains, at least 12 Late Archaic sidenotched San Pedro points (Mabry et al. 1995; Sayles and Antevs 1941; Sliva 2009; Stevens and Sliva 2002, 1200 B.C.–A.D. 500), at least 10 Late Archaic corner-notched Cienega points (Huckell 1988, 1995:51–54; Sliva 1999; Stevens and Sliva 2002, 800 B.C.–A.D. 50), one Late Archaic Tularosa Basal Notched (Justice 2002:226–229), one large eccentric, and five Archaic points that either cannot be typed because the diagnostic base area is missing, or because the type is non-standard. In terms of the unusual Calf Creek point, and based on extensive data, Don Wyckoff (personal communication, 2012) has noted that these points are well-documented from the Llano Estacado, east through southwestern Kansas to southwestern Missouri, and south through Oklahoma back to the Rio Grande. The uncorrected radiocarbon dates for this type cluster between 3400 B.C. and 2800 B.C. We suggest that the number of Archaic points in our assemblage is a minimum amount, because we lack infor-

Chipped Stone mation on many of the large points that might also be Archaic. We note that there is a size overlap in Archaic and post-Archaic points between 21 mm to about 29 mm in length, with most points longer than 29 mm being Archaic. An exception is 237-0-0/B, which is a post-­ Archaic Hinton point. Some of the other relatively large points with smaller notches may date to the Early Pit Structure period. These Archaic artifacts were probably dart points, intended for use with atlatls. It is possible that these points were made to be used either as knives or ritual items, that they were picked up elsewhere and brought back to the Mattocks site by its residents, or that there is an undetected Archaic component at the Mattocks site. The bow and arrow were introduced into the Mimbres region by about A.D. 500–600 (Roth et al. 2011), and although it is possible that the atlatl continued to be used 500 years later during the Classic period, this would be surprising. No Mimbres bowls show atlatls, but some depict bows, arrows, or both. Atlatls were no longer in use in the Southwest at the time of Spanish contact. Other large Mimbres sites also have a fair number of Archaic points (Anyon and LeBlanc 1984:240–241; Cosgrove and Cosgrove 1932:plates 48–51; Shafer 2003:196– 198). Taliaferro (2004:61–66) analyzed dart points from the Old Town site, and Dockall (1991:232–236) did the same for the NAN Ranch site. Dockall argued from the nature of the debitage that large points were not being made at the site. While we present no evidence on this topic, we concur that such points were probably being collected, either as items that could later be reshaped into smaller points or as objects to be curated, perhaps because they were recognized as ancient. Nelson (1986:156) felt that no clear post-Archaic point types could be defined in the Mimbres Foundation sample, but Dockall (1991:222–228) has named several point types based primarily on the NAN Ranch sample, and using published pictures of points from other Mimbres sites. Although no complete, comparative study of such points has been undertaken, and any interpretation of point type distributions is premature, the potential for such studies is intriguing. There are few classes of Mimbres artifacts other than bowls that lend themselves to stylistic analysis. Projectile points and palettes (de Quevedo 2004) are the obvious exceptions, and there are far more points than palettes. Dockall (1991:222–224, 226–228) defined one Late or Late Late Pit Structure period point type (Mimbres) and three Classic types that seem to have been present at the Mattocks site. The latter are the Hinton, Swarts, and Cosgrove types, with manufacture and use perhaps starting in the Late Pithouse period (Taliaferro 2004:76). The Hinton type is perhaps the most distinctive, with side notches and relatively large, straight-sided stems. Most Hinton points are narrow and have deeply concave

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bases. Taliaferro (2004:76) has suggested that Hinton points were first produced in the Terminal Classic period, in agreement with Creel (1999), who also thought that these are a late point form. The presence of 11 Hinton points at the Mattocks site is one of many indicators that this was a relatively late Classic period site. Swarts points also have side notches, but with convex or straight bases. Cosgrove points have side notches with straight or convex bases, and they also have multiple notches along one or both blade edges. What Dockall termed a Cosgrove point (and possibly Swarts points) are the same as what Brook (1972) called a Temporal point, which is the name Justice (2002:255–257) has used for them. While Brook’s publication is quite obscure, the term “Temporal” still has precedence. Dockall also defined a corner-notched Mimbres point, which he (and Taliaferro 2004:74) suggested dates to the Late or Late Late Pit Structure period. No clear example came from our excavations at the Mattocks site, although Nesbitt (1931:figure 37N) illustrated a probable one. This paucity may be due to the few Late and Late Late Pit Structure period deposits at the Mattocks site. It is not clear how typologically distinct these points are, or how much they are just idealized types with broad and overlapping ranges of variation. In particular, the Temporal points (Cosgrove and Swarts points) may not be two types (in the sense of possessing a non-random association of attributes) but a single type in which some have a supplementary attribute—additional notches (the “Cosgrove” type). This is conceptually parallel to Mimbres Classic bowls that have different numbers of rim bands, in that we would not assign bowls to different types based on the number of rim bands. Hinton points seem to be more distinctive, but again, no one has studied the range of variation. There are two points from the Mattocks site (41-11/5, 438-2-4/25) that look like Hinton points, in that they have concave bases, but they too have extra notches, like the “Cosgrove” points. It is not clear whether these are atypical Hinton or atypical Cosgrove points. The points from the NAN Ranch site that were used to establish these definitions have not been depicted or tabulated, and so it is difficult to evaluate and use Dockall’s typology. While the types that he has proposed may indeed be stylistically distinct point types, we need a truly regional study that goes beyond single sites and even valleys before we can make verifiable interpretations. There is another major aspect to these point types that has yet to be considered. As Justice (2002:256–257) and Sliva (1997:52–56) have amply demonstrated, the types mentioned here are not confined to the Mimbres region. Justice placed the Temporal type into his Chaco Cluster of point types, which spans most of the Mogollon and the southeast part of the Ancestral Puebloan areas. Swarts points are also quite similar to Sedentary Side-Notched points (Sliva 1997:53) from the Hohokam region. As another example of such similarities, point 438-2-1/6

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from the Mattocks site, which might be a drill but which Taliaferro (2004:136) called a Cosgrove point, is quite similar to Justice’s (2002:279, 285–287) Snaketown Triangular Concave Base type. Thus, these point types may be evidence for long-distance relationships, or they may have been made over such broad areas that they are not diagnostic of a regional identity. They may not even be temporally diagnostic, since there were at least 10 Hinton points at later Cliff phase sites in the Mimbres Valley (Nelson and LeBlanc 1986:158–165). Eight of the 11 Mimbres Foundation Hinton points from the Mattocks site were from the 200s room block (appendix 5), and Nesbitt (1931:plate 37M) illustrated another. No Hinton points are shown in the reports for the Galaz site (Anyon and LeBlanc 1984) or the Swarts site (Cosgrove and Cosgrove 1932), but at least four were present at the Saige-McFarland site on the Gila River, to the west of the Mimbres Valley (Lekson 1990:64). Hinton points thus were present only at some sites, and at the Mattocks site they were most common in the 200s room block. This evidence suggests that either there is a temporal difference between the Hinton and other Classic period point types, or that only some households or groups made these points. There were at least 13 Swarts points (appendix 5) and 27 Cosgrove points at the Mattocks site, excluding 4382-1/6. Nesbitt (1931:figure 37M) recorded an additional Swarts point. The percentage of these two types (20 percent) is much lower than the 39 percent for both types at NAN Ranch (129 of 327 NAN Ranch points; Dockall 1991:221–228) and 40 percent (52 of 128 points) from Old Town (Taliaferro 2004:51–59). Taliaferro (2004) undertook source analysis of obsidian points from several sites in the Mimbres Valley. With only one exception, from Antelope Wells southwest of the Mimbres Valley, all were made from obsidian that came from the Mule Creek, Gwynn Canyon, and Cow Canyon sources to the northwest. Based on evidence from Old Town, Taliaferro argued that obsidian nodules may have been brought into Mimbres Valley sites during the Late Pithouse period and that the points were made on-site but that during the Classic period most points were imported. Evidence cited in the previous section on obsidian does not support this pattern for the Mattocks site.

Stone Hoes Stone “hoes” (figure 5.8) are bifacially flaked tools that are between 8.9 cm and 35.6 cm long (appendix 6), 5.0 cm to 6.3 cm wide at the base, tapering toward the tip, and 0.6 cm to 1.5 cm thick. All edges are percussion flaked. That the largest can be four times the length of the smallest might indicate that the smaller ones were reduced in length through use and then resharpened. The term “hoe” is used here because it has been in the literature

for some time, and Dockall (1991:252-253) has discussed how people might have used them in the Mimbres region (see below). Shafer (2003:201) favored tchamahia, because microscopic use-wear examination on NAN Ranch specimens was not consistent with their use as hoes. Shafer (2003:201) noted that all hoes but one from the NAN Ranch site were made from a tabular rhyolite that is found in the Gila Wilderness, north of the Mimbres Valley. The exception was made from a siliceous banded mudstone from the Morrison Formation, near the Four Corners, which Shafer thought was evidence of exchange with people in the Chaco region. All of the hoes that the Mimbres Foundation excavated at the Mattocks site could well be made of the same tabular rhyolite, given the difficulty of identifying the raw materials used for tools. Cosgrove and Cosgrove (1932:45) described this material as olivine andesite, and Nesbitt (1931:82) called it felsite, but all appear to be the same material. The Mattocks site has produced the largest collection of stone hoes from any Mimbres site. Nesbitt excavated between 92 and 101 of them (appendix 6). He recorded 47 hoes in Burial 151 in the probably Classic Room 49 (appendix 19), and 25 from an additional cache in Room 43, on a stone ledge along the east wall about 60 cm (2 feet) above the floor (Nesbitt 1931:21–23, 80–82). Although Nesbitt called it a pit room, Room 43 (see chapter 2) was apparently an isolated, large (28.6 m2) Classic period room with a relatively shallow floor. Thus, both caches likely dated to the Classic period, and 72 of Nesbitt’s at least 92 hoes came from two caches. Nesbitt (appendix 19) also recorded one hoe from Burial 127 in Room 43, and two from Burial 194 in Room 59, and he (Nesbitt 1931:82) noted that single specimens “were found here and there in the fill and on the floors of rooms.” The Mimbres Foundation added between seven and 11 stone hoes (appendix 6), all from Classic contexts. They were in trash, roof fall, the fill above floor, and extramural fill. While there were no caches as such, three complete hoes were present in Unit 210 within a meter of each other horizontally and six centimeters vertically. Unit 210 (appendix 3) was just outside the west wall of the 200s room block, an area that was apparently used for trash disposal but that also contained a cache and a number of whole artifacts. Archaeologists have excavated hoes at all of the large Classic sites for which there has been a reported excavation. These include 36 hoes from the Galaz site (Anyon and LeBlanc 1984:280), including two caches, one with 23 hoes and one with four. Excluding three broken examples, there were only six hoes that were not from these caches. Cosgrove and Cosgrove (1932:45–46, plate 44) recovered 24 hoes from the Swarts site, and they noted that the hoes came from pit structures and Classic rooms, and from room fill, floors, and caches below floors. Of the 24, only 10 were reasonably complete (catalog information and

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Figure 5.8.  Some Mattocks site stone hoes excavated by the Mimbres Foundation.

photographs available at http://pmem.unix.fas.harvard .edu:8080/peabody/, by searching for Swarts Ranch and hoes). There were no caches at the Swarts site, although five hoes were on the floor of Room H, which was a pit structure. Two hoes were lying on top of one other in the southeast corner, one was along the south wall, and two were in the northwest corner. Another hoe was on the floor of Pithouse J (Cosgrove and Cosgrove field notes on file at the Peabody Museum of Archaeology and

Ethnology, Harvard University). Bradfield (1931:119, plate XCIV) reported four hoes at the Cameron Creek site, two of which were from Pit-room 114, which dated to the Late or Late Late Pit Structure period. As of 1991, seven hoes had been recovered from the NAN Ranch site (Dockall 1991:208–213; Shafer 2003:201), three relatively complete examples, three distal fragments, and one medial fragment. Four were from below the floors of surface rooms (Classic and Transitional contexts), one

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was from pit structure fill (Late or Late Late Pit Structure period context), one was from midden, and one was from the site surface. None were apparently excavated at Wind Mountain (Woosley and McIntyre 1996), or at the Saige-McFarland site (Lekson 1990) to the west of the Mimbres Valley. Along with those noted above, there were hoes from other Middle, Late, and Late Late Pit Structure period sites, although none were in caches, and there were certainly not as many as in Classic contexts. Haury (1936a:36–37) recorded two at Mogollon village, but none at the Harris site. Lucas (1996:80–82) noted two sets of stone hoes at the Old Town site, in pit structures B2 and B11. The pit structures were both built in the late A.D. 800s or early A.D. 900s and were abandoned or destroyed by the midA.D. 900s. Pit structure B2 had three stone hoes in fill, and B11 had four on the upper floor. The Mattocks site had the greatest number of stone hoes, followed by Galaz. Swarts had fewer, which is curious considering how much of it was excavated, NAN Ranch and Cameron Creek had but a handful each, and several sites had either none, one, two. The hoes were therefore concentrated at two large sites, Mattocks and Galaz, in the north part of the Mimbres Valley. At those sites, 99 of a maximum of 139 hoes (71 percent) were in caches. Dockall (1991:252–253) has provided the best discussion of stone hoe function to date. He noted that all of the NAN Ranch specimens had some degree of use-wear, which suggests their likely use was as digging implements: “The edges of specimens are battered to varying degrees and some exhibit polish and striations that may indicate soil wear. Breakage patterns described for this category above are evidence that these implements may have broken during use in a task that placed considerable bending stresses across the blade” (Dockall 1991:253). Dockall also stated that the lateral edges were proximally dulled, probably for hafting, and he suggested that the lack of notches indicated that hoes were probably hafted with the long axis parallel to the handle. He proposed that the hoes were used in a thrusting motion, as digging sticks are used. No one, however, has noted polish that might indicate the movement of the blade within the binding. This, and the bluntness of the edges, may be more in keeping with their use as hand-held digging tools, more like a trowel than a hoe. In any case, the wear patterns, shape, and rather substantial weight suggest that people used these tools to dig planting holes. We propose the following as a possible scenario to account for the patterns that we and others have observed. Given that the specific source of hoe material is north of the Mimbres Valley, perhaps just households with relationships to the north could have obtained the material or the hoes. Indeed, the only households that had hoe caches lived on sites at the north end of the valley (Mattocks and Galaz). Nesbitt (1931:82) suggested that hoes were personal property because of the cache with Burial 151 at the

Mattocks site, which supports our proposal, although this cache and the hoes in the other two burials that he excavated suggest that hoes could have been more than utilitarian tools. Households or individuals could have stockpiled hoes for use in following seasons or for trading. The caches were thus in anticipation of future, perhaps seasonal, use. If hoes were digging implements, people would have used them off-site, and when a hoe broke, it was likely to have been discarded at that location, with only the occasional fragment making it back to the site. People may have brought their hoes home every day, which would perhaps account for some of the single hoes recovered from archaeological sites. Although archaeologists often call unusual and uncommon artifacts “ceremonial,” there is no specific evidence, such as proveniences in kivas or special rooms, for hoes being used this fashion. They are problematic as the equivalent of the tchamahias from the Four Corners area, as Shafer (2003:201) has proposed. While tchamahias were roughly the same size and shape as Mimbres hoes, they were very carefully and beautifully made from visually appealing stones, while Mimbres hoes are quite rough and made from a tabular rhyolite. Moreover, there is no evidence that the tchamahias from the Four Corners were ceremonial when originally made; their ceremonial use among the historic Pueblos seems to be related to them being ancient objects. We do not know what the original function of the tchamahias was.

Chipped Stone Summary and Discussion Blake et al. (1986) summarized survey data showing that the human population in the valley grew from the Early Pithouse through the Classic periods and then declined to a low point in the late A.D. 1300s, after which the valley was abandoned by sedentary farmers until well into the historic period. In general, the people responded to changes in population size by adjusting their use of plant and animal resources, and in turn their use of chipped stone materials and forms. Nelson’s analysis of the Mimbres Foundation chipped stone assemblage, summarized above, shows diachronic change in subsistence toward increased reliance on plant remains from the Early Pithouse to the Classic period. She derived evidence for this from the ratio of coarse- to fine-grained raw materials, the flake size index, the frequencies of different edge angles on utilized flakes, the number of biface thinning flakes, and the number of utilized flakes with cortex reinforcement. All of these indices show trends toward an increased emphasis on processing plant foods, and less emphasis on animal procurement when compared with other periods in the Mimbres Valley, when the population was lower. The Classic period Mattocks site chipped stone assemblage fits well into this larger pattern. Nelson’s analyses also show more emphasis on plant processing in the middle Mimbres Valley, which includes

Ground Stone the Mattocks site, than in the upper valley during the Late Pithouse period (our Middle, Late, and Late Late Pit Structure periods), Classic period, and Cliff phase. However, reliance on hunting large game did not differ between these two areas in the Late Pithouse period, and the proportion of plant processing did not change between the Late Pithouse and Classic periods in either area. The latter points support Cannon’s contention that the change to greater reliance on agriculture occurred before the end of the Late Pithouse period. Dockall (1991:260) did not find the same pattern at the NAN Ranch site between the Late Pithouse and Classic period samples, and he suggested that all variation in raw material use was simply a reflection of what was available locally. Differences between periods would thus only reflect differences in site location. This is not consistent with Mimbres Foundation analyses. First, it is unlikely that so many different indices would have the same trends if they were based solely on minor differences in raw material availability. Second, there are several sites from various time periods within our overall data set where access to raw materials would have been the same. The Early Pit Structure period McAnally site is within a few hundred meters of the Mattocks site, with its Late and Late Late Pit Structure and Classic components, and is near the Galaz site, which has similar dates. The overall trends in raw material use are broadly similar for these sites, and while the correlations are not perfect, they are certainly not as random as we would expect if no trends existed. Instead, it is likely that intensification of agriculture and the reduction of available fauna had already occurred by the Middle or Late Pit Structure period in the lower valley, and so Dockall found no significant differences within the relatively short temporal span at the NAN Ranch site. His lack of differences fits well with Cannon’s conclusion that the proportion of big game dropped at the end of the Early Pithouse period, rather than at the end of the Late Late Pit Structure period, suggesting that agriculture was intensified during the former period. We recovered a large sample of chipped stone from the Mattocks site. Like chipped stone assemblages from elsewhere in the Southwest, it was dominated by debitage (83 percent of the assemblage) and utilized flakes (15 percent). Shaped tools were rare (2 percent) and these were almost entirely projectile points. Coarse-grained materials useful for plant processing comprised 70 percent of the assemblage, with basalt being the most common material. Obsidian was the only material known to be from beyond the immediate environs of the site, and it was probably gathered as nodules from sources to the west and northwest of the Mimbres Valley, brought to the Mattocks site, and worked there. The identification of intrasite variation in activities was not possible probably because of the periodic sweeping of activity areas and post-depositional factors. The chipped stone tools were mostly projectile points, with a few drills and bifaces. Most (83 percent) projectile

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points were made of obsidian or chalcedony, and a number could have been in situ. Archaic points were present at the Mattocks site, but we think it most likely that people at the site collected them to rework or because they were ancient. Of the post-Archaic point types, there was only one Late or Late Late Pit Structure period Mimbres point but several Late Classic Hinton points, supporting other late dates for the site. The Mattocks site had more chipped stone hoes than any other Mimbres site, and the Mattocks and Galaz sites together had the majority of hoes recovered in the region. Most of these hoes, at both sites, were in caches. Hoes from all sites seem to have been made from the same material, perhaps a tabular rhyolite. Hoes were present in Late and Late Late Pit Structure period contexts, but they were fewer than those in Classic contexts and not in caches. Mimbres hoes appear to have been used for digging planting holes, and they may or may not have been hafted.

Ground Stone Mimbres Valley Ground Stone The manos and metates from Mimbres Foundation excavations were the subject of a pioneering study by Lancaster (1983, 1984, 1986). Using sites from the Early Pithouse period through the Cliff phase, Lancaster examined the sizes and shapes of grinding implements and concluded that there was a long-term trend in the increasing efficiency of these tools, probably in response to a greater reliance on corn. This was especially evident during the Classic period, which saw the increased use of multiple metates for coarse and then fine grinding. Metate grinding areas also increased in size over time. Using data from industrial grinding experiments, Lancaster argued that this improved grinding efficiency.

Mattocks Site Ground Stone Ground stone artifacts from the Mattocks site that relate to subsistence include metates, manos, mortars, stone bowls, pestles, worked slabs, axes and mauls, and arrow shaft straighteners. All but the last are discussed here. Only two definite (both of sandstone) and one possible shaft straighteners were excavated at Mattocks (appendix 9; figure 5.13), and so further consideration is not possible. Some of the worked slabs were probably used as architectural elements, such as hatch covers over roof entrances or vent covers, but some were used as work surfaces. Ground stone palettes are considered in chapter 8 because they are more likely to have been ritual objects. We list the whole and fragmentary pieces of ground stone that we analyzed in appendices 7, 8, and 9, but many fragmentary pieces are not listed because they were so small. We could determine that they were originally from

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manos or metates, but little else. Of the 351 manos and mano fragments that we analyzed (appendix 7) from the Mattocks site, there were at least 111 complete manos. We are not certain of the exact numbers since we did not always record how complete ground stone artifacts were. There were 185 metates and fragments (appendix 8), of which at least 21 were complete. Many complete manos and metates were probably taken elsewhere when the Mattocks site was abandoned for habitation, and so the assemblage we recovered is likely incomplete. We did not find evidence for the specialized production of grinding tools, such as the specialized manufacture of metates from the later Paquimé site, to the south in Chihuahua (McKay 2005; VanPool and Leonard 2002). People did not use exotic materials that we could identify. We identified no specialized grinding rooms, and only slight evidence for possible grinding bins—in Units 106 and 425, both small Classic period rooms, and in Unit 286a, a large Early Classic room (see chapter 3 for descriptions). If these bins ever contained metates, then they were removed in antiquity. Only the bin in Unit 425 contained an indentation, 16 cm deep, in the floor of the bin, which might indicate the presence of a metate. Mattocks bins were built into the corners of rooms, which would make it difficult to grind using the standard posture of pushing against a wall with one’s feet. Some Mattocks rooms and excavation units contained several complete manos, although these were often spread among fill, roof fall, floor, and burial contexts (see appendix 7 and the text in chapter 3 for information on the complete manos from a given unit). Whole manos may have been discarded when they were too worn to be useful, which would explain their varying contexts. Only Units 121 and 426, semi-exterior and exterior work areas, respectively, had concentrations of complete manos and metates together (chapter 3). In other places with whole manos still in use, either the metates had been removed, or manos were stored separately from metates. Therefore, concentrations of complete manos do not necessarily represent where grinding took place. Concomitantly, all other reasonably complete metates were not found with complete manos. The concentration of 17 complete manos and mano blanks in Unit 450 (1976; appendix 7) is unique at the Mattocks site (appendix 3). Because it is south of the 400s room block and was uncovered in a backhoe trench, neither its context nor date is known. It is likely to have been ancient, but it could be associated with earlier excavations at the site.

Ground Stone Raw Materials Vesicular basalt was by far the most commonly used material for manos (table 5.23; appendix 7). We identified the material of 94 percent (331 of 351) of Mattocks manos, and 47 percent were of vesicular basalt. This is

more than twice the next most frequent materials, basalt and sandstone, with 17 percent each. Rhyolite followed, at 12 percent, with only occasional examples of other materials. The percentages of materials for metates were quite similar to those of the manos, and the rank order of the four most common materials was virtually the same (table 5.23; appendix 8). Of the 94 percent (174 of 185) of metates for which the material could be identified, 48 percent were of vesicular basalt, 25 percent were of basalt, 11 percent were of sandstone, and 8 percent were of rhyolite. There were no granite or quartzite metates, although a few manos were made of these materials. There were four kinds of “miscellaneous” ground stone that occurred in any numbers—bowls, mortars, pestles, and worked slabs (appendix 9). They were made from a variety of materials, although only one object, a pestle, was of vesicular basalt. No particular patterns could be detected in the materials used for bowls, mortars, or pestles, perhaps because of the small sample sizes. Of the eight stone bowls, including a seed jar, two were of tuff, two were of rhyolite, one was of basalt, and three were not identified. There were 10 mortars, which were generally larger than bowls and used for grinding, with three of tuff, one of tuff or quartzite, two of rhyolite, one of basalt, one of dolomite, and two that were not identified. The five pestles and one possible pestle included three of rhyolite, two of basalt, and one of vesicular basalt. Most of the 137 worked stone slabs were some kind of basalt, perhaps selected for its fine grain or its capacity to form slabs. Forty percent (55 of 137) of the worked slabs with material identified were basalt (perhaps porphrytic basalt), with 29 percent (39 of 137) being rhyolitic basalt, and 14 percent (19 of 137) being andesitic basalt. Other materials were present in small amounts (two andesite, one granite, seven limestone, one rhyolite, two sandstone, three sandstone or andesite or basalt, two tuff, and six tuff or rhyolite). The material for 19 worked slabs was not identified.

Ground Stone Manos and Metates Of the 229 manos and mano fragments with identified plan shapes, 84 percent (193 of 229) were rectangular-­tosquare (table 5.24; appendix 7; figures 5.9 and 5.10). Ten percent (24 of 229) were oval-to-circular, 5 percent (11 of 229) were oval-to-irregular, and 1 percent (2 of 229) was irregular. Some archaeologists (see Adams 2002:120–127 for this discussion) have noted that earlier manos tended to be circular or ovoid, while later manos tended to be rectilinear, and they have attributed this change to increased grinding stone design efficiency, perhaps due to the addition of large amounts of corn to the diet. Adams (2002:121) has argued, however, that specific mano shapes were used with specific kinds of metates and that the varying designs might have related to changing recipes and the ways that

225

Ground Stone Table 5.23.  Mattocks Site Mano and Metate Materials. Materials*

Andesite

Mano Frequency

Mano Percent

Metate Frequency

Metate Percent

Total

7

2

7

4

14

Basalt

56

17

44

25

100

Diorite

4

1

4

2

8

Granite

4

1

0

0

4

Quartzite

2

1

0

0

2

Rhyolite

40

12

13

8

53

Sandstone

55

17

19

11

74

4

1

2

1

6

Trace Materials**

2

1

2

1

4

Vesicular Basalt

Tuff

157

47

83

48

240

Total

331

174

505

* The categories below include all related materials in appendices 5.4 and 5.5. For example, “Basalt” includes b, b?, fg b, p b, and fg p b. ** Includes basalt or greenstone, latite porphry, quartz monzonite, vesicular basalt or rhyolite, meta-granular, and rhyolite or andesite.

Table 5.24.  Mattocks Site Mano Forms. Mano Plan Shape

Tabular*

Irregular

Turtleback*

Wedge*

Irregular*

1

n.d.*

Total

1

2

8

23

Oval / circular

6

4

5

Oval / irregular

4

6

1

Rectangular / square

52

74

28

2

37

193

Total

62

85

34

2

46

229

11

* Cross-section.

foods were processed. For example, if corn needed to be ground into flour, then much more grinding would be required. Adams emphasized that corn was not necessarily an addition to the diet, since it had been present during the Late Archaic period when circular manos were more common. Instead, it was the form that the corn must take to make the recipe at hand. That both circular and rectangular manos were present in the Classic period assemblage at the Mattocks site suggests that people were doing more than one kind of grinding. This is supported by the different average lengths for 26 oval (including oval-to-­circular and oval-to-irregular) and 104 rectilinear-to-square manos, which are 16.5 cm and 20.8 cm, respectively. Two further aspects of mano forms are their profile shapes and “comfort features.” The oval manos had a variety of profile shapes with no particular patterns (table 5.24). The highest proportion of rectangular manos were

“turtleback” (38 percent, or 74 of 193 manos), a shape that Adams (2002:99) described as a comfort feature suitable to long grinding sessions. According to Adams, finger grooves were also a comfort feature, but they were only present on only 9 percent of Mattocks manos (17 of 196 examples). We analyzed 185 metates and fragments, and 11 percent of these were complete. Of the 21 metates that were definitely complete, nine were “through troughs” (open at both ends; also called “open troughs”; Adams 2002:110), three were troughs (closed at one end), five were slabs, one was a basin metate, one was either a basin or a slab, and the shapes of two were not recorded (appendix 8; figures 5.11, 5.12). Since all of the whole metates were from Classic contexts, as far as we could tell given that some were in pothunted contexts and one was from an unknown context, these varied metate forms suggest that people used them for different kinds of grinding.

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Figure 5.9.  M  ano photos.

Most of the whole metates (11 of 21, or 52 percent) were from contexts that included fill directly above floor on which there was an in situ artifact assemblage, floor, and roof fall (appendix 8), which suggests that these artifacts were in the places where they were used. These metates were present in Units 41, 121 (two metates), 130 (part of Unit 121), 131 (part of Unit 121), 237, 426, 435a, 438a,

438b, and 441. Three complete metates were in room fill but well above the roof fall and floor levels, six were in pothunted contexts, one was from a burial of unknown association, and one had an unknown context. This sums to 22 metates because the two parts of a single complete metate were recovered from 126-4-6/5 (pothunted context) and 431-3-3/7 (fill context). We cannot account for

Ground Stone

227

Figure 5.10.  Mano photos.

the distribution of these two pieces. The unit summaries in chapter 3 provide more detail on the contexts of these complete metates. Of the 119 metate fragments for which a form could be identified, most were trough metates (77, or 65 percent). Some of these may have been through trough metates, but we could not be certain because they were broken.

There were many fewer basin (22, or 18 percent), slab (12, or 10 percent), and through trough (8, or 8 percent) metate fragments. Only 19 metates were complete enough to estimate the size of the grinding surface. Fourteen of these were complete. The grinding surface areas ranged from 141 cm2 to 1,375 cm2, with an average of 1,105 cm2.

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Figure 5.11.  Ground stone photos.

Some of these surfaces appeared to have a significant amount of their use lives remaining, given the shallow depth (one or two centimeters) of the grinding surface compared to the overall height of the stone (appendix 8). This suggests that people had stored these metates at the site for possible future use. Other metates may not have been worth moving because their remaining use lives were short.

In summary, rectangular manos, many of which were turtleback in profile and made of vesicular basalt, dominated the mano assemblage at the Mattocks site. Metates were usually made of vesicular basalt. Through trough metates were most common among those that were complete, although trough metates outnumbered other forms among the fragments, probably because fragments do not generally allow the determination of through trough. A

Ground Stone

229

Figure 5.12.  Metate, mortar, and worked slab photos.

few metates seemed to have been left in the places where they were used, either because people thought they might return, or because they did not want to carry them.

Miscellaneous Ground Stone We recovered many stone slabs and fragments (appendix 9). For the most part, these were probably architectural pieces, either hatch or vent covers, or they were used

as work surfaces. We described whether unifacial or bifacial flaking formed the worked slab edges, and whether there had been any grinding to shape the slabs. Flaking was not intricate, and stone slabs would not have taken long to make. We also examined whether the surface had been prepared or worked in any way, or used in terms of fire blackening or striations. As almost all the specimens were fragmentary, these observations may well be

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Figure 5.13.  Axes, mauls, and shaft straighteners.

incomplete in the sense that an overall slab might have shown such features, but its fragment did not. Eighteen percent (28 of 152) of the worked slabs had recorded surface use, as seen from grinding marks, striations, fire blackening, or mineral staining. The fire blackened slabs did not have the very smooth, greasy surfaces seen on Ancestral Puebloan comals of later periods. Indeed, none showed intensive preparation or use.

Axes and Mauls We recovered 16 whole or fragmentary axes, mauls, and unfinished or unused specimens (blanks) from the Mattocks site (appendix 10; figure 5.13), all of which were from Classic contexts. Alexa Roberts initially studied all of the Mimbres Foundation axes, and we draw on her unpublished work here. Examining the used ends of the axes and mauls (two artifacts had two used ends each), there were

Conclusions four axes or ax fragments, one ax that had been reused as a maul, two ax blanks, one tiny ax, four mauls, one ax or maul fragment, one blank reused as a maul, four blanks and blank fragments, and one fragment. The tools came from a variety of proveniences, including a burial, in situ roof and floor assemblages, and post-occupation fill. They did not seem to have been cached or otherwise curated. The axes and mauls were both full- and three-­quarter grooved. Of the five axes that were complete enough to determine whether they were full- or three-quarter grooved, three were the latter. If groove type correlates with differences in hafting technology, then people were using several technologies. All axes and mauls, except the tiny ax and perhaps the ax reused as a maul, were made from “greenstone.” This material has also been called greenstone schist or hornblende-­ chlorite schist (Elston 1957:4); the Cosgroves (1932:41) used the term “diabase.” Dockall (1991:90) noted that Baltosser (1970) referred to this material as diabase, while Woodward (1970) called it uralitized diabase. The material may actually be amphiolite, a medium- to coarse-grained hornblende-plagioclase rock of metamorphic origin. It outcrops along the west side of the valley in the vicinity of the Galaz and Mattocks sites, although there are other potential sources in the region that no one has examined. Axes were apparently first chipped into a rough shape and then pecked and ground into the final form. We recovered blanks and blank fragments (appendix 10), along with flakes of greenstone that may have been products of the reduction process. The latter were not common, comprising only 2 percent of all flakes at the site (table 5.20), but they support the possibility that Mattocks was a locus of ax production, a suggestion also proposed for the Galaz site (Anyon and LeBlanc 1984:276; see this reference for the evidence against this proposition). Both are the nearest large sites to what is likely the source of material for almost all axes and mauls. In contrast, there is little evidence from the NAN Ranch site for greenstone flakes that might have come from ax manufacture, and Shafer (2003:200–201) has suggested that axes were brought to the site in finished form (and that they were prestige, as well as practical, items). However, we found no evidence of production loci at the Mattocks site, nor any concentrations of axes or mauls, which parallels the evidence from the Galaz site. It is thus possible that axes were made at the Mattocks site, and they may have been made for exchange, but there do not appear to have been specialists, or intensive axe and maul production. Nesbitt’s (1931:78–80) excavations at the Mattocks site recovered seven complete and eight fragmentary axes, and at least two mauls. Probably all of the early excavators did not assiduously collect all fragmentary artifacts, and so these numbers may underestimate the fragments. Excavations at the Galaz site (Anyon and LeBlanc 1984:276) produced 56 whole or fragmentary axes and mauls. The Mitchell site (LA12076) excavations (Anyon and LeBlanc

231

n.d.) in the upper end of the valley produced four axes from a far smaller excavated area than at the Mattocks site. The Swarts site (Cosgrove and Cosgrove 1932:41) had 33 axes, of which only three were fragments. There were 14 complete axes from the NAN Ranch site (Shafer 2003:200–201). It is thus not clear that axes were more common on sites in the upper valley, which are nearer the raw material source, than at sites like NAN Ranch and Swarts farther south in the valley.

Conclusions We conclude this chapter with discussions of three topics—a summary of what people at the Mattocks site ate and the tools with which they processed their foods, whether we see changes in those foods and other plant materials such as wood through time, and other important results that do not fit into these two categories. The discussion of changes through time includes data from other sites since relatively little information was available from the Mattocks site. The other important results focus on the rare and unusual fauna, contextual differences in plant use at the site, the Mattocks site as a production and distribution location for chipped stone hoes, axes, and mauls, and projectile points as temporal indicators. Non-archaeologists often wonder what people at a site ate. At the Mattocks site, the paleoethnobotanical propagules suggest that people ate corn and perhaps Cheno-­ Ams, Chenopodium, and Portulaca, if the latter three were not part of the background seed rain at the site. The only evidence for a domesticate other than corn was for beans, which were present in two units. The great majority of the non-tree pollen came from Cheno-Ams, with some from grasses and composites, but again we do not know how much of these were part of the natural pollen rain. Most of the economic pollen was from legumes, which could have either been wild or domestic, with lesser amounts from ragweed, sagebrush, and corn, but the first two may also have come from the natural pollen rain. The paleo­ ethnobotanical and pollen data thus support the presence of Cheno-Ams, corn, and beans. People also ate jackrabbits and cottontails, with more of the former than the latter, a few deer, and the occasional antelope. Several indices suggest that people used much of the chipped stone assemblage, especially unmodified and modified flakes and hoes, to obtain plant foods, either domestic or wild. Indicative of use for harvesting or processing plants, 70 percent of the chipped stone raw material was coarse- and not fine-grained, and the coarsegrained flakes were also heavier and so therefore probably larger than the fine-grained flakes. More flakes had steep, obtuse edge angles in the Classic period than earlier in time throughout the Mimbres Valley, another indicator of increasing plant harvesting. The Mattocks site had one of the two high percentages of utilized edges with cortex

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reinforcement, and these flakes would have been particularly useful for plant processing. It had a very low proportion of biface thinning flakes, which should have been present if people were focused on making bifaces and projectile points for hunting. People also used ground stone, especially metates and manos, to process plant foods. Almost half of the metates and manos were made of vesicular basalt, which is an excellent material for breaking up dried corn kernels and other hard items. Most of the manos were rectangular and were generally used with trough or through trough metates, and which could suggest the processing of much plant food, especially corn. These particular ground stone tools also could mean that people ground corn into flour instead of into grits, implying a different recipe and cooking process than was common earlier in time. People used circular or ovoid manos at the Mattocks site, however, suggesting that perhaps there was more than one recipe and cooking process for corn and other plant foods. They could also have used such manos to grind non-organic materials. The preponderance of trough and through trough metates, along with the rectangular manos, supports the idea that people were processing much plant food and were using more efficient nether stones than basin and slab metates and circular manos with which to do it. As with manos, though, different kinds of metates were present, indicating different kinds of plant processing. The pollen washes on metates show that corn was ground on different kinds of metates, though, supporting the idea of different recipes and different kinds of grinding. People would have used some of the chipped stone assemblage that did not have characteristics useful for plant processing to hunt and process wild game. Certainly, they used the projectile points to hunt animals. The 30 percent of flakes that were made of fine-grained material were generally lighter and smaller than the coarse-grained flakes and had sharper edge angles and less cortex reinforcement. They were probably useful for cutting meat and hide. As noted in chapter 3, people living in ethnographic pueblos were agriculturally dependent, although that dependence varied from between 36–45 percent to between 80–90 percent agriculture. They also consistently practiced hunting and gathered wild plants, but these were a low proportion of the diet. The analyses in this chapter are consistent with these statements, in that there was less big game hunting and more agriculture after the Early Pit Structure period. The ubiquity of corn in flotation samples suggests that this was a major component of diet, although we are unable to say exactly how dependent people were on agriculture. We can, however, state that they were more dependent after the Early Pit Structure period than before, and this is a more nuanced understanding than we had previously. Although the Mattocks site had relatively little pit structure period occupation, we can still consider change through time, one of the Mimbres Foundation’s research

concentrations. We felt this was an important focus, in part because of the common model that links population growth with increasing agriculture, and in part because of the obvious change from pit structures in the Late Late Pit Structure period to Classic period pueblos in the Mimbres and Mogollon regions. Our analyses of the sites that we surveyed and excavated from various time periods have shown that numbers of people (Blake et al. 1986), and use of agriculture increased from the Early Pit Structure through the Classic periods (Anyon and LeBlanc 1984:263–268; Minnis 1985). There was not much evidence for this at the Mattocks site itself, not only because of the general lack of Late Late Pit Structure period remains, but also because our analyses suggested that the big change to much-increased agriculture happened at the end of the Early Pit Structure period, or at least before the Late Late Pit Structure period. In his section of this chapter, Cannon noted the lack of change in the relative abundance of artiodactyls between the Late Pithouse (our Middle, Late, and Late Late Pit Structure) and Classic periods. Rather, he suggested that the change occurred earlier, at end of Early Pit Structure or the beginning of Middle Pit Structure period, and he related the increasing importance of agriculture to the reduction in large animal capture that began about this time. That is, people had negatively impacted the numbers of large mammals available in the Mimbres Valley region, and they turned to agriculture to make up the difference. We note that no population increase is necessary for this change to occur, although the number of people may well have been growing, especially during the Early Pit Structure period, a subject that archaeologists have not examined. By the Classic period, when the Mattocks site had its greatest number of inhabitants, people would have been relatively heavily dependent on agriculture, and there would have been relatively few large mammals to hunt. The animal bone at the Mattocks site was heavily processed, making much of it unidentifiable and suggesting that people were getting as much nutrition as they could from the fauna they captured. There was no change in the proportion of unidentifiable bone from Late Pithouse through the Classic to the Black Mountain phase, and therefore no apparent change in meat and bone processing. As with faunal remains, there is little evidence for changes in propagules from the Late Pithouse to the Classic period, although there are few Late and Late Late Pit Structure period samples from the Mattocks site. However, Minnis (1985), in his more inclusive study of Mimbres Valley sites through time, also found no evidence for changes in paleoethnobotanical remains from the Late Pithouse to the Classic period. However, the wood used for roof beams apparently did change through time at the Mattocks site. Earlier Classic rooms, especially in the early 200s room block, had more non-coniferous woods and Ponderosa pine than did

Conclusions later rooms, which had more pinyon and juniper. This may be part of the process that Minnis (1985) noted of people denuding the floodplain of non-coniferous wood and of clearing the floodplain for farming. It is interesting that this process was occurring as late as the Early Classic period. The changes in pollen frequencies through time appear to have been the result of human disturbance around the larger Late and Late Late Pit Structure and Classic period sites, which presumably had more people and were occupied longer. There was less human disturbance around the smaller Early Pit Structure and Postclassic sites and so less pollen from disturbance plants. In this way, the similar pollen frequencies between the Late and Late Late Pit Structure and Classic periods fit that pattern we have been explicating. There were too few Late and Late Late Pit Structure period pollen samples from the Mattocks site for us examine changes in the economic plant pollen between this and the Classic period. While the Late and Late Late Pit Structure period chipped stone sample at the Mattocks site was too small to analyze, Nelson has noted, in her more inclusive chipped stone analyses, a diachronic change toward increased reliance on plant remains from the Early Pit Structure to the Classic periods. Her indices all show a trend that fits with increased emphasis on processing plant foods and decreased emphasis on animal procurement through time. The chipped stone assemblage from the Classic period at the Mattocks site fits well into Nelson’s pattern. Nelson’s analyses also support those of Cannon, in that the change to more agricultural reliance occurred before the pit structure to pueblo transition at the interface between the Late Late Pit Structure and Classic periods. She noted that the proportion of plant processing did not change between these periods in either the north or the middle Mimbres Valley and that the reliance on hunting large game did not differ between these two areas in the Middle to Late Late Pit Structure periods. Both points suggest that increased reliance on agriculture happened earlier in the pit structure period or at the end of the Early Pit Structure period. Ground stone analyses have also suggested changes through time (Lancaster 1983, 1984:252–257). Through trough metates have the largest grinding areas, implying the need for more grinding, and there are more of these metates through time. The big increases in through trough metates were from the Middle, Late, and Late Late Pit Structure to the Classic period, and then into the Black Mountain phase. Although the sample size is small, the presence of more complete through trough metates than any other type at the Mattocks site supports this trend. A multistage grinding process, with more than one set of metates and manos, also appears to be present in the Classic period, implying that people were grinding corn and other plants into finer states, which may in turn indicate changes in recipes and cooking methods.

233

The changes through time in the artifact categories examined in this chapter did not happen simultaneously, although the fauna, paleoethnobotanical seed remains, and chipped stone may all have changed near the end of the Early Pit Structure period or in the Middle to Late Pit Structure period. The changes in the tree species used for wood beams seem to have occurred in the Early Classic period at the Mattocks site, a pattern also suggested by relatively higher proportions of riparian wood in the Late and Late Late Pit Structure periods than Classic period at the Galaz site (Minnis 1984:195). Greatly increased proportions of through trough metates, and the presence multistage grinding sets of metates and manos, also occur in the Classic period in the Mimbres Valley. Other archaeologists working in the Mogollon region have determined that agricultural intensification began earlier than the transition between pit structures and pueblos at about A.D. 1000. That is, they have detected no increase in agricultural dependence between the Late Late Pit Structure and Classic periods. For example, Mauldin (1993), using mean mano grinding area and the percentage of trough and through trough metates from the Pine Lawn region to the northwest of the Mimbres Valley, noted an increase in agricultural plant processing from the Early to the Late Pithouse period, and then a decrease in the Early Pueblo period. Only during the Late Pueblo period, which was after our Classic period, was there substantial agricultural dependence. Similarly, Diehl (1996) used increases in mano surface area, in the trough-to-­ basin metate ratio, and in charred maize ubiquity to show that, although the dietary importance of maize remained low and stable through about A.D. 700 in the upland Mogollon region, it subsequently increased through A.D. 1000. More recently, Swanson et al. (2012) summarized significant changes in the A.D. 700s that support increased agricultural intensification. There are several other important results of the analyses in this chapter, including the presence of rare or unusual fauna. The four possible bison bones at the Mattocks site are part of a light but consistent presence of bison at sites in the Southwest (http://faunaz.asu.edu; Mead and Johnson 2004). The same is true of the six bear bones and the 21 dog or canid bones. One might expect many more of the latter, given the assumed presence of domestic dogs at southwestern sites. Langenwalter (1979) has commented on the presence of muskrat at the Mattocks site as being an indicator of slower-moving water in the Mimbres River near the site. The turkey and hawk bones are also noteworthy, because they may have had symbolic value to the Mattocks inhabitants (Pitezel 2011:154–156). Different kinds of propagules were present in hearth versus non-hearth contexts, as well as the wood that was used in hearths versus roof beams. The non-hearth contexts, that is roof fall and room fill, contained many weedy annuals including mostly Chenopodium, Cheno-Ams, and Portulaca that may have been part of the natural seed rain,

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especially from plants growing on the roofs, although people may have taken advantage of these weeds for food. Corn was also present in these contexts. The hearths had many fewer propagules in general, perhaps because of regular cleaning, and most of those were corn, Chenopodium, and Portulaca. However, perhaps because of smaller sample sizes, the hearth samples did not include several of the plants that were in non-hearth contexts. This is worth investigating further because, if these differences are real, then non-hearth contexts might be appropriate environmental indicators. People at the Mattocks site also used specific woods for their roof beams, and many more kinds of woods to burn in their hearths. The most common hearth woods were brushy shrubs like mountain mahogany and Apache plume. They did not burn Ponderosa pine, which they may have transported from higher elevations and which they used for roof beams. Perhaps because of its location, the Mattocks site may have been a focus of chipped stone hoe, ax, and maul production. The source of the raw materials for both is relatively close, with the rhyolite that people used for the hoes from north of the site in the Gila Wilderness and the greenstone for the axes and mauls from the cliffs on the west side of the valley near the site. The Mattocks site had more hoes than any other known site, with the Galaz site just to the south having the second highest number. The Mattocks site also had evidence, in the form of greenstone flakes, that people produced axes and mauls there, as opposed to other sites that had no such data. More information about hoes, axes, and mauls from sites in the north end of the valley compared to those items from farther south, would clarify the patterns and the possible role of the Mattocks site in the production and distribution of these artifacts. Finally, one aspect of projectile points, their type, does not relate to food procurement or processing. If Taliaferro

and Creel are correct that Hinton points date to the Late Classic period, then their presence at the Mattocks site supports the proposal that it was used relatively late and was little occupied in the Late and Late Late Pit Structure periods and perhaps even in the Early Classic period. The single Mimbres point that was at the Mattocks site, from the Late and Late Late Pit Structure periods, is consistent with this. No Hinton points are illustrated for either the Galaz or Swarts sites, hinting that they did not have the same life histories as Mattocks. Most of the Hinton points came from the 200s room block, the earliest one that the Mimbres Foundation excavated at the Mattocks site. Thus, it is alternatively possible that only certain households or small groups made Hinton points, although their wide distribution across the southern Southwest under different type names makes this scenario less likely. A major Mimbres Foundation focus was using multiple, independent lines of evidence to examine our hypotheses. The analyses presented in this chapter are an example of this. Not all of the separate lines of evidence are convincing by themselves, but the cumulative total of indices is substantial. For example, the fauna, propagules, pollen, and chipped stone analyses all suggest that the change to more intensive agriculture occurred before the end of the Late Late Pit Structure period. While the lack of much pit structure period occupation means that the Mattocks site does not greatly contribute to an examination of this change, the main occupation at the site broadly coincided with the population peak in the valley and an environment changed from hundreds of years of relatively intensive farming. As such, it provides an excellent baseline for continued examination of the foods that people collected, processed, and ate during the Classic period at the upper end of the Mimbres Valley, and, in comparison with data from other sites, how those foods and their accompanying tools changed through time.

CHAPTER 6

Mattocks Site Ceramics

The Mimbres black-on-white ceramic series is justifiably famous for the naturalistic, representational designs that occur on Mimbres Classic Black-on-white pottery. The Mimbres Classic period (A.D. 1000–1130), the time of the densest occupation at the Mattocks site, had other pottery types, including beautifully executed geometric designs on Classic Black-on-white pottery and relatively large corrugated jars. The Mattocks site also had painted and plain ceramics from the earlier Late and Late Late Pit Structure periods, although in lesser amounts. The site is also where the Mimbres Foundation first defined Transitional Black-on-white (Style II) as intermediate between the earlier Boldface Black-on-white (Style I) and Classic Black-on-white (Style III). In this chapter, we describe the Mattocks site ceramics, both sherds and whole and partial vessels, from several perspectives, and we often compare the patterns that we see with those from other Classic sites in the Mimbres region. This kind of basic description is important because, except for Shafer’s (2003) volume, there is little ceramic information using screened samples from Mimbres sites that were excavated using modern techniques. We also relate some of the patterns to the social milieu of the Classic period as it was expressed at the Mattocks site. While the question of social differentiation accompanying pueblo architecture is most appropriately addressed using grave goods in the chapter on burials (chapter 7), the sherds and vessels do lend themselves to considerations of other aspects of social life. This chapter is divided into sections on the Mimbres Foundation ceramic typology, the sherds, the whole and partial vessels, compositional analyses, the non-­Mimbres pottery, and the worked sherds from the Mattocks site. The typology is basically that defined by Cosgrove and Cosgrove (1932) and Haury (1936b), with the addition of Transitional Black-on-white and some tinkering with the dates. In the whole and partial vessel section, we have incorporated new information and new interpretations of Nesbitt’s whole vessel collection from the site. We then discuss compositional analyses of Mimbres

vessels, especially those that included Mattocks site pottery. There is surprisingly little non-Mimbres pottery from Classic sites, and the Mattocks site is no exception to this pattern. Many of the non-Mimbres types were made in the Late Classic period or the subsequent Black Mountain phase of the Animas period, and they may indicate a further, limited use of the Mattocks site. Although little is known about Mimbres worked sherds and their functions, the Mattocks site sample is large enough that we present some initial pattern recognition analyses. There are excavation biases involved in the ceramic samples from the Mattocks site. The Mimbres Foundation concentrated its investigations within surface rooms and pit structures at the site, and therefore we obtained relatively small samples from the sheet trash across the site and from extramural burials. We have very large samples from post-occupation fill in structures (which may be equivalent to extramural sheet trash), roof fall and floor levels, and burials beneath room floors. Given the limited Late and Late Late Pit Structure period occupations at the Mattocks site, the ceramic sample from that time is correspondingly small. We screened most of the material excavated at the Mattocks site through quarter-inch screens, and we collected all sherds, regardless of size. Occasional level-loci were not screened (see the introduction to this book for a discussion of the screening strategy), but we collected diagnostic sherds as they were seen. These sherds are generally not included in the analyses presented in this chapter. Nesbitt (personal communication, 1983) began by screening the Mattocks site deposits but abandoned the procedure because he felt that it yielded too little information. We consider only the whole or partial vessels from Nesbitt’s project because there is virtually no extant information on the sherds he observed or collected. Both the sherds and the whole and partial vessels from the Mimbres Foundation excavations at the Mattocks site are curated at the Maxwell Museum of Anthropology, University of New Mexico, Albuquerque. Most of Nesbitt’s Mattocks site collection is at the Logan Museum,

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Beloit College, Beloit, Wisconsin, but more than 50 whole vessels are at the Laboratory of Anthropology, Museum of Indian Arts and Culture, Santa Fe, and one is at the Field Museum in Chicago.

Typology As noted, the ceramic typology that the Mimbres Foundation used to describe the sherds and the whole and partial vessels is essentially that first defined by Cosgrove and Cosgrove (1932) and Haury (1936b). In the late 1920s, the Cosgroves excavated the pit structure and Classic period Swarts site in the Mimbres Valley, and they recorded the differences between Boldface and Classic Black-on-white, as well as various types of corrugated and plain vessels. As part of a Gila Pueblo project on the extent of Hohokam remains, Haury (1936a, 1936b) excavated two pit structure period sites, the Mogollon village on the San Francisco River to the northwest of the Mimbres Valley, and the Harris site on the Mimbres River. He noted that the archaeological remains in this region were different from those in the Hohokam heartland, and he named the area the Mogollon (also see Gladwin and Gladwin 1935:221–225). Haury’s ceramic type definitions by necessity focused on the pre-Classic periods, and his basic ceramic sequence remains valid today. The Mimbres Foundation used the ceramic types that Haury and the Cosgroves defined, with the addition of Transitional Black-on-white to the painted sequence and some temporal additions and changes. Anyon and LeBlanc (1984:151–153) have detailed our criteria for sorting ceramics. Anyon typed virtually all Mimbres Foundation excavation sherds at the Mattocks site, and so typological consistency should be quite high. LeBlanc classified the whole and partial vessels from both Nesbitt’s and the Mimbres Foundation excavations at the site. Because the Mimbres Foundation ceramic typology is presented elsewhere, we will simply summarize our conception of the ceramics types here. (See Shafer 2003:181–187 for an additional discussion of Mimbres ceramic types.) The use of pottery in the Mimbres region began about A.D. 200, with plain vessels that are often called the Alma Plain series. A fugitive red slip was added to a few vessels sometime before A.D. 550 (Anyon and LeBlanc 1984:151), and San Francisco Red became part of the ceramic repertoire sometime after A.D. 550 (Anyon and LeBlanc 1984:158; Anyon et al. 1981:214–216). The Mimbres Foundation differentiated between San Francisco Red that has a highly polished slip and a dimpled exterior, and Other Red that does not have either of these characteristics. Haury’s definition (1936b:28–31) of San Francisco Red, however, covered both kinds of red-slipped pottery. The highly polished slip and the dimpled exterior do seem to be temporally diagnostic, because Other Red

replaced San Francisco Red over time. The production of red-slipped pottery continued through the Classic period, although in much diminished proportions. The “Sherds” section of this chapter details the proportional changes in this and other ceramic types at the Mattocks site. Two painted pottery types, Mogollon Red-on-brown and Three Circle Red-on-white, were introduced in rapid succession into the Mimbres ceramic assemblage, beginning about A.D. 740 (Gilman 1987b, 2010:124). The types began the evolution of painted pottery that culminated in Mimbres Classic Black-on-white (Anyon and LeBlanc 1984:151–152; Haury 1936b:20). Alma Neck Banded, generally in the form of plain brown jars with wide neck bands, was added to the ceramic repertoire at about the time of these earliest painted types (Wasley 1960). Because of the general paucity of pit structures at the Mattocks site, these early painted and corrugated types are rare. The Mimbres black-on-white types followed Three Circle Red-on-white after about A.D. 800/850 (Gilman 2010:124). These types are commonly called Boldface (Mangas) Black-on-white, Transitional Black-on-white, and Classic Black-on-white. Anyon and LeBlanc (1984:151– 152), however, suggested that the three types are actually the same pottery type in three sequential styles, and they called them Styles I, II, and III, respectively. We use the original nomenclature here because it follows traditional southwestern pottery naming procedures. Although the technology of the three styles is macroscopically the same, no one has done a study to demonstrate the point. Boldface Black-on-white was probably most commonly made between A.D. 800/850 and A.D. 900/950 (Gilman 1987b, 2010:124; Shafer and Brewington 1995:12). Three Circle Neck Corrugated was approximately concurrent with Boldface. These corrugated vessels are generally small jars with single handles and thin corrugations around the necks. Other plain ceramics were larger, but less likely to have corrugated necks. Probably made between A.D. 880/950 and A.D. 1020/ 1050 (Shafer and Brewington 1995:13), Transitional Black-on-white was first stratigraphically placed at the Mattocks site. A burial (114-5-9B) superimposed and cut by the hearth in Unit 114, a Classic period surface room, contained a Transitional bowl (114-5-9B/1). There was a tree-ring cutting date of A.D. 1079r (114-3-8/2), unfortunately from the pothunted north half of the room, that presumably dated the upper floor and its hearth. Scott (1983), along with Anyon and LeBlanc (1984:151–152), initially defined Transitional Black-on-white. Shafer and Taylor (1986) used this type definition and provided further examples. Shafer and Brewington (1995:13–17) discussed temporal microstylistic variations in Transitional pottery at the NAN Ranch site, distinguishing between Early and Late Transitional designs. The famous Classic Black-on-white pottery was made between A.D. 1010/1050 and A.D. 1130. Shafer and

Sherds Brewington (1995:17–22) divided Classic pottery into Early, Middle, and Late based on temporal information from the NAN Ranch site, and these categories appear to work at other sites as well. By the Classic period, unpainted jars were corrugated from the rim to the shoulder or over the entire pot. The small Three Circle Neck Corrugated jars were no longer used, and although unpainted jars were of all sizes, there were larger jars, and more jars in the large sizes, than in earlier periods. Several non-Mimbres ceramic types are regularly recovered from Classic sites, representing the Classic and Late Classic periods and Postclassic use of the sites. At the Mattocks site, these types included Playas Red, El Paso Polychrome, El Paso Brown, Chupadero Black-on-white, Escavada Black-on-white, other Cibola White Wares, White Mountain Red Wares, Gila Polychrome, Ramos Polychrome, Three Rivers Red-on-terracotta, and Reserve Corrugated. We discuss these types in the non-Mimbres pottery part of this chapter as well as in chapter 1.

Sherds Sherd Analysis Techniques Using a standardized analysis form, we counted the number of sherds from each level-locus by type and vessel shape. The painted, red-slipped, and corrugated types were divided into bowls or jars. The Mimbres painted series and the red-slipped pottery also had a further category of indeterminate form, and we also used that for plain sherds that were not rims. Rim sherds were noted, as were flare rims, naturalistic designs, the polychrome color scheme on Classic Black-on-white sherds, black burnishing, and sooting. We recorded other, rarer characteristics as seen. No one has yet undertaken a rim study of the Mimbres Foundation sherds to determine vessel sizes, and sherd rim diameters have not yet been described. The painted types included Mogollon Red-on-brown, Three Circle Red-on-white, and Boldface, Transitional, and Classic Black-on-white. Painted sherds often lacked the diagnostic attributes that would allow that sherd to be typed, but they may have had attributes that allowed an analyst to place them into either of two temporally adjacent types. For example, we might have been able to determine that a sherd was either Transitional or Classic, but we could not be certain of the type. To overcome this, we included indeterminate categories between the painted types. Thus, a sherd might be indeterminate between Transitional and Classic, while another sherd might be indeterminate between Boldface and Transitional. In this way, we obtained temporal information from sherds that would otherwise not have yielded such data. This does not mean that the indeterminate types are transitional between the two adjacent types but that we could not

237

determine which of the two types a sherd might be. A final indeterminate type is truly indeterminate, in that a black-on-white or a white-slipped sherd could not be further classified. In terms of the undecorated pottery, the red-slipped sherds were divided into San Francisco Red and Other Red, as noted above. Corrugated types included clapboard corrugated jars, indented corrugated jars, and corrugated bowls. We further classified these types as having obliterated or non-obliterated corrugations. Early in the Mimbres Foundation sherd analysis, we divided plain sherds into jars and bowls, and plain versus burnished, but these categories were too difficult to distinguish, and their meaning was not readily apparent. For example, plain sherds might have been the bottom portions of corrugated vessels. For these reasons, we stopped making these distinctions and eventually called all such sherds “plain.” We did not distinguish plain bowls and jars unless the sherd was a rim, and all non-rim sherds were indeterminate in form. Non-Mimbres pottery was typed on the sherd count forms, and other uncommon types were also noted. The sherd counts are presented by analytic unit, within the excavation units listed in appendix 2. Sherd proportions used for dating purposes are discussed in chapter 1.

Painted Sherds, Room Function, and Fill Differentiation We wondered whether various functions of Mattocks site rooms could be distinguished, in part, by the proportion of painted sherds on or near the floor. Hypothetically, storage rooms should have had fewer painted sherds, because most of the vessels in such rooms would have been plain or corrugated storage jars. Habitation rooms should have had more painted pottery, because these were the places that people most likely used the painted serving vessels. Similarly, deposits within rooms, such as post-occupation fill and the roof fall/floor complex, might be distinguished based on the proportions of painted pottery. The deposition of non-Mimbres sherds at the Mattocks site might also show distinctive patterns. We used data from appendix 2 in this analysis, and we eliminated samples of less than 200 sherds to control the effect of small sample sizes. Some mixed and odd proven­ iences were also not used, and there were not enough proveniences from trash deposits outside rooms for comparative purposes. Our analysis shows that painted sherds counts and percentages were not useful for determining the functions of small rooms versus larger ones. None of the five relatively small rooms (Units 106a, 112, 113, 423a, 425) had more than 200 painted sherds on or near the floor, or in the post-occupation fill, for that matter. Perhaps because these rooms simply had fewer sherds in them because they were small. Low painted sherd counts could, however,

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indicate that these rooms had a function different from the larger rooms. The percent of painted sherds might distinguish between post-occupation room fill and the material related to room construction and use. This aspect of the study is simply one of pattern recognition, in that no one has previously proposed or demonstrated what proportion of painted sherds can be expected from these different contexts. A possible scenario is that the proveniences associated with the construction and use of a room might contain more painted sherds because of the use of painted pottery in these contexts, and the post-occupation fill might contain proportionally fewer painted sherds than the lower levels. Examining only analytic units with more than 200 painted sherds, and, using proveniences in which there were paired habitation (construction and use) and post-­ occupation analytic units (table 6.1), the distributions of the painted sherd percentages proved to be surprisingly similar. The range of painted sherd percentages was between 24 and 38 percent, and comparisons of post-occupation to habitation analytic units revealed no consistent differences. The sherds in both kinds of analytic units might represent trash, making distinctions between the two more difficult to detect. Naturally deposited fill and human deposited trash are both represented in post-occupation analytic units. Most of the material associated with room construction and use may also have been trash. For example, people may have taken the roof pack soil that we call roof fall from trash deposits at the site, and the fill above the floor that is not roof fall might have been trash that was washed in or deposited by people. Trash could also form the fill in floor pits and burials below floors. Thus, we may not be able to distinguish between post-­occupation fill and that associated with the construction and use of rooms using the painted sherd percentages, because any of these proveniences might contain trash that was deposited by a variety of means. Such distinctions should be pursued using other data sets because in the field the difference between post-occupation fill and roof fall is not always clear.

Vessel Shapes as Represented by Sherds Vessel shape should parallel vessel function in a general way. In the Mimbres region, vessel shapes also correspond with the presence or absence of slip or paint. That is, most of the pots in these categories are generally one shape. If shapes and the kinds of pottery correspond to a large degree, we should be able to make statements about the varying functions of different ceramics used in the Mimbres region. There are essentially only two vessel forms recognizable in any numbers within Mimbres sherd collections— bowls and jars. Differences exist in the proportions of

bowls versus jars among the categories of painted, redslipped, corrugated, and plain pottery, and these variations suggest that the different kinds of pottery were used for relatively different functions. In the category of painted sherds, the percentage of jar sherds to all sherds within a type ranged between 6 and 15 percent (appendix 2). Classic Black-on-white had 9 percent jars, as did the indeterminate between Classic and Transitional. Eight percent of Transitional sherds were jars, and 6 percent were indeterminate between Transitional and Boldface. Boldface jars formed 9 percent of the assemblage, while 15 percent were truly indeterminate. Jars may have been present in smaller proportions because less of their surfaces were painted with designs, and so there may have a been higher proportion of truly indeterminate sherds from jars than from other categories. The numbers of Three Circle Redon-white and Mogollon Red-on-brown were so low at the Mattocks site that the proportions of jars and bowls were not representative. The proportion of jars in all painted pottery categories, except truly indeterminate, was consistently less than 10 percent. At the Wind Mountain site in the Gila River drainage, the proportion of painted jars to all painted ceramics was very low, with jars only being 4 percent (24 or 25 pots) of painted whole vessels (Gilman 1987b). In this case, whole vessels were used to examine the jar-to-bowl ratio rather than sherds. Although the whole painted vessels were almost certainly used in habitation, burial, and trash contexts, the proportions of jars and bowls might vary depending on whether whole vessels or sherds are considered, and the apparent paucity of painted jars at the Wind Mountain site may be due to the examination of whole vessels rather than sherds. The proportion of red-slipped jars to bowls in the Mattocks site sherd assemblage was higher than that for painted pottery. San Francisco Red jars comprised 28 percent of all San Francisco Red sherds, and Other Red jars were 29 percent. The sample sizes for these artifacts were quite low, however, with red-slipped sherds composing only 0.6 percent (325 sherds) of all sherds at the Mattocks site. The proportion of red-slipped jar sherds at the Mattocks site was considerably higher than the proportion of whole red-slipped jars reported from the Wind Mountain site (Gilman 1987b). At the latter site, virtually all the whole, red-slipped vessels were bowls (25 of 27, or 93 percent). Seventy percent of the red-slipped pots were associated with burials, a much higher proportion than the whole painted vessels at the site. The proportional differences between the Mattocks and the Wind Mountain sites could have been due to the use of whole vessels versus sherds to determine red-slipped percentages. The whole vessels may predominantly have been burial goods, while the sherds may have been from vessels used in any number of contexts. The small Mattocks site red-slipped sample

239

Whole and Partial Vessels Table 6.1.  Comparison of Painted Sherd Proportions in Post-occupation and Room Use Contexts. Provenience

Context

Context Type

Number of Painted Sherds*

Percent of Painted Sherds**

111C

fill

post-occupation

659

32

111C

fill, in situ roof fall, fill above floor, floor pits, subfloor

habitation

534

31

a114C

fill, in situ roof fall

post-occupation

330

27

a114C

in situ roof fall, floor pits, burials

habitation

227

24

a115C

fill, trash, in situ roof fall

post-occupation

791

30

a115C

trash, in situ roof fall, floor pits, burials, subfloor

habitation

1090

38

a286C, LP and LLP

fill, trash

post-occupation

500

32

a286C, LP and LLP

trash, roof fall, floor, floor pits, burials

habitation

618

31

b286C, LP and LLP

fill

post-occupation

275

31

b286C, LP and LLP

trash, roof fall, floor, floor pits

habitation

394

27

433C

fill

post-occupation

272

29

433C

roof fall, in situ fill above floor, floor pits, burials

habitation

534

32

* Includes all Mimbres black-on-white sherds but no red-slipped or non-Mimbres painted types. ** Percent of painted sherds to all sherds from the analytic unit (see Appendix 2 for latter figures). Provenience: C = Classic; LP = Late Pit Structure; LLP = Late Late Pit Structure.

size and the fact that the main use of the Wind Mountain site was during the height of red-slipped vessel manufacture may affect the jar-to-bowl ratios at the two sites. While there were relatively few painted and redslipped jars at the Mattocks site, most of the corrugated and plain sherds were jars, emphasizing the likely functional distinctions between slipped and unslipped vessels. Within the corrugated pottery, only 0.5 percent were bowls, while 7 percent of the plain sherds were bowls. Again, these proportions were different to those from the whole vessels at the Wind Mountain site (Gilman 1987b), where 29 percent of the plain ceramics (in this case, both corrugated and plain vessels combined) were bowls, 64 percent were jars, and 7 percent were miniature ladles (25, 55, and 6 pots, respectively). The variation in the proportions of bowls and jars between whole vessels and sherds remains unresolved. It is clear that a higher proportion of corrugated and plain vessels were jars, rather than bowls, and the reverse is true for red-slipped and painted pottery. Although we can generally state that unslipped pottery had a different function or set of functions than slipped ceramics, this statement

does not account for the functions of the few unslipped bowls and slipped jars.

Whole and Partial Vessels Nesbitt’s excavations at the Mattocks site produced slightly more than 300 whole or partial vessels, while the Mimbres Foundation research yielded almost 200. Not all partial vessels have been recorded in the data and analyses presented here. There are about 100 bowls from the Nesbitt excavations that we have never been able to associate with a particular room or burials, and although we have tried many techniques, we have been unable to solve this problem. Information on the recorded vessels is covered in four appendices (appendices 11–14). Appendices 11 and 12 contain the data on painted and unpainted pots from Nesbitt’s excavations, and appendices 13 and 14 have the information on the Mimbres Foundation painted and unpainted vessels. Painted pots include black-on-whites, whiteslipped vessels that are unidentifiable to type, and painted

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Table 6.2.  Proportions of Sherd Types Versus Whole Vessel Types. Ceramic Type

Number of Sherds— Mimbres Foundation*

Percent

Number of Vessels— Nesbitt**

Percent

Number of Percent Vessels— Mimbres Foundation***

Classic B/w

7806

11

201

67

90

48

Transitional / Classic Indeterminate

2020

3

7

2

1

t

3

Transitional B/w

649

1

9

Boldface / Transitional Indeterminate

227

t

0

Boldface B/w

339

t

1

Three Circle R/w and Mogollon R/br

t

5

3

2

1

2

1

28

t

0

Other Painted

10993

15

16

5

5

3

Non-Mimbres

530

1

1

t

1

t

Red-slipped

479

3

1

3

2

Plain

35697

49

31

10

18

9

Corrugated / textured

14648

20

33

11

62

33

Grand Total****

73416

Total Painted

22062

Total Non-Mimbres Total Not Painted

0.6

0

302 30

234

189 77

105

56

530

1

1

t

1

t

50824

69

67

22

83

44

* From appendix 2. ** From appendices 11 and 12. *** From appendices 13 and 14. **** Total does not include handles and “other” sherds from appendix 2. t = trace.

non-Mimbres pottery. There are no whole or partial Three Circle Red-on-white or Mogollon Red-on-brown vessels from any Mattocks site excavations. The unpainted pot appendices include red-slipped, plain, and corrugated or other textured vessels. Appendix 15 contains photographs of all reasonably complete painted vessels, the fragmentary vessels on which the layout of the painted designs is obvious, and some of the unpainted pots. All appendices include both complete and partial vessels. If the partial vessels were at least 75 percent complete, one could make an argument that the remainder of the pot was present but missed during excavation. Vessels that were less than 75 percent complete were more likely to have been partial in the context of recovery, but they still contain useful information about Mimbres ceramics.

Proportions of Sherd Types to Whole Vessel Types Since sherds are derived from whole vessels, one might expect the proportions of sherd types in a collection to parallel the proportions of whole vessel types. This was

not true for Mattocks site material, perhaps because broken and partial unpainted vessels were not collected as rigorously as painted pots. Most of the sherds collected by the Mimbres Foundation were plain, followed by painted sherds and non-­ Mimbres types (table 6.2). Of the plain pottery, 0.6 percent were red-slipped, and the rest were plain, textured, or corrugated. The painted sherds for which a type could be determined were generally Classic Black-on-white, with minor amounts of Transitional, Boldface, Three Circle Red-on-white, and Mogollon Red-on-brown. The whole vessels from both the Nesbitt and Mimbres Foundation excavations show different proportions of painted and plain types, as well as the types of painted pottery, to the proportions of types in the Mimbres Foundation sherd assemblage (table 6.2). Nesbitt’s whole vessels were heavily weighted toward painted pottery, with 77 percent of his whole vessels being painted. In contrast, 56 percent of the Mimbres Foundation whole vessels were painted, underscoring the probable collection differences between the two projects. Most of the painted vessels from both excavations were Classic. The red-slipped

241

Whole and Partial Vessels Table 6.3.  Whole Vessel Contexts. Context

Burial Room Floor

Nesbitt’s Painted Vessels

Mimbres Foundation Painted Vessels

Mimbres Foundation Plain Vessels

134 (56%)

73 (69%)

6 (7%)

18 (8%)

2 (2%)

8 (9%)

Roof Fall

0

5 (5%)

2 (2%)

Roof Fall, Pit

0

1 (1%)

0

Room Fill

3 (1%)

9 (8%)

0

Room Fill, Floor

0

1 (1%)

0

Room Fill, Roof Fall

0

6 (6%)

0

Trash

0

0

1 (1%)

Subfloor

5 (2%)

3 (3%)

1 (1%)

0

Pit

3 (3%)

0

General Room

18 (8%)

0

0

Unknown

59 (25%)

3 (3%)

Pothunted Total

0 237

proportion in the sherd collection was about the same as the proportions of whole red-slipped vessels from both the Nesbitt and Mimbres Foundation excavations, possibly because the numbers and proportions of red-slipped vessels and sherds were low in both cases. The low proportions of plain vessels recovered during both the Mimbres Foundation and Nesbitt’s assemblages were probably related to the high proportions of painted vessels. The proportions of whole vessel types at the Mattocks site do not parallel the proportions of the types in the excavated sherd collection. Excavation and collection biases may account for part of the differences, but the vessel contexts may also be relevant. Whole vessels may be more common in certain contexts, especially burials, and those contexts may contain only certain kinds of pottery.

Whole Vessel Contexts The contexts from which the whole vessels were recovered support the idea that whole vessels were most common only in certain contexts and rare in others (table 6.3). Nesbitt did not record contexts for the plain whole vessels that he excavated, and so they are not part of this analysis. Most of the painted vessels from both Nesbitt’s and the Mimbres Foundation excavations were from burials. Indeed, 69 percent (73 vessels) of the Mimbres Foundation vessels were from burials, and it is likely that some of the vessels recorded as being from below floor, pit, and unknown contexts were also from burials. Only 22 percent (23 vessels) of the whole Mimbres Foundation painted

0 106

69 (78%) 1 (1%) 88

vessels were from definite non-burial contexts. Fifty-six percent (134 vessels) of the whole painted vessels from Nesbitt’s excavations were from burials, but many from below floor, general room, and unknown contexts were probably also from burials. Although many painted Mimbres vessels were employed in activities that produced usewear on the pottery (Bray 1982), their final location was generally in burials unless the vessels were broken before they could be placed in burials. There were 88 plain (unpainted) vessels from the Mimbres Foundation excavations at the Mattocks site. The 18 pots with definite contexts were almost equally divided between likely burials (seven) and rooms or trash (11). Although the sample size is small, the distribution of these vessels appeared to be different from that of painted pots, in that more plain vessels were left in their original place of use. Nevertheless, plain vessels, like painted ones, were recovered from both utilitarian and burial contexts, even though the proportions from each context varied. The plain vessels that ended their use lives in burials were from the smaller end of the plain vessel size range, while the entire range of painted vessel sizes was represented in utilitarian contexts.

Vessel Shapes as Represented by Whole and Partial Vessels As noted for the sherds, vessel shapes corresponded to a large degree with the presence or absence of painted designs. That is, painted vessels were most likely to

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Table 6.4.  Whole Vessel Shapes. Vessel Form

Nesbitt Painted

Nesbitt Plain

Mimbres Foundation Painted

Mimbres Foundation Plain

Swarts Painted

Swarts Plain

Wind Mountain Painted

Wind Mountain Plain

214 (91%)

27 (40%)

95 (90%)

9 (11%)

635 (95%)

56 (39%)

24 (96%)

25 (31%)

Jar

9 (4%)

37 (55%)

4 (4%)

67 (81%)

15 (2%)

82 (57%)

1 (4%)

55 (69%)

Seed Jar

9 (4%)

2 (3%)

4 (4%)

0

13 (2%)

6 (4%)

0

0

Plate

0

0

0

1 (1%)

0

0

0

0

Effigy Jar

2 (1%)

0

0

0

4 (1%)

0

0

0

Mug

0

0

0

1 (1%)

0

0

0

0

Unknown

0

1 (2%)

2 (2%)

5 (6%)

0

0

0

0

667

144

25

80

Bowl

Total

234

67

105

83

have been hemispherical bowls, while unpainted (plain) vessels were more likely to have been jars, although both could have been other shapes (table 6.4). We did not use non-Mimbres vessels in this analysis. Ninety-one percent of Nesbitt’s whole and partial vessels from the Mattocks site were bowls, 4 percent were jars, 4 percent were seed jars, and 2 percent were effigy jars (table 6.4). These proportions compared well with the whole and partial vessels recovered by the Mimbres Foundation, in that 95 percent of those painted pots were bowls, 4 percent were jars, and 4 percent were seed jars. The vast majority of the painted vessels from the Mattocks site were bowls, and a few percent were other shapes, which means that the latter might have had distinctive utilitarian and social functions. The proportions of painted vessel shapes at the Mattocks site were similar to those from other Mimbres sites, where such data are available (table 6.4). At the Swarts site (Cosgrove and Cosgrove 1932:72–75), 95 percent of the painted vessels were bowls, 2 percent were jars, and 2 percent were seed jars. The Swarts sample size was much larger than those from either the Nesbitt or Mimbres Foundation excavations, and it thus supports the vessel-form proportions from the Mattocks site. The pattern of painted vessel shapes may have predated the Classic period, as evidenced at the Wind Mountain site, on the Gila River drainage west of the Mimbres Valley (Gilman 1987b). Most of the remains from Wind Mountain date to the Pit Structure periods. Of the painted vessels from that site, 96 percent were bowls, and 4 percent were jars. The patterns of plain (without painted designs) vessel shapes are not as consistent as those of painted vessel shapes (table 6.4), probably because collection strategies have varied so much. Nesbitt recovered almost similar proportions of plain bowls and jars (40 percent and 55 percent, respectively), with 3 percent seed jars.

In contrast, the Mimbres Foundation recorded 11 percent plain bowls, 81 percent jars, and no seed jars. At the Swarts site, 39 percent were bowls, 57 percent were jars, and 4 percent were seed jars (Cosgrove and Cosgrove 1932:79–85), which is more comparable to Nesbitt’s proportions than to those of the Mimbres Foundation. Also comparable, although representing a generally earlier period, the Wind Mountain plain vessels were 31 percent bowls and 69 percent jars. Plain jars outnumbered plain bowls in all of these collections, but the actual proportions varied so widely that we are hesitant to say what the actual percentages of plain bowls and jars might have been. As with painted vessels, seed jars and other forms composed only small percentages of all plain pots. In addition to the common hemispherical painted bowl shape, there are two others—flare rims and flowerpot-­ shaped bowls. The rims of the former flare out to varying degrees, and the design rules are different from those of regular bowls (LeBlanc and Khalil 1976). Flowerpot bowls have flat bases, nearly straight sides (Cosgrove and Cosgrove 1932:73), and exterior painted designs that are rarely present on other bowl shapes (LeBlanc and Khalil 1976:292). Flare rim bowls are consistently represented in the whole vessel assemblage at 12 percent of all painted vessels from Nesbitt’s collection (28 of 234) and 12 percent of those from the Mimbres Foundation excavations (13 of 105). Flowerpot bowls formed a much smaller percentage of all painted vessels. Nesbitt recovered four (2 percent), and the Mimbres Foundation also recorded four (4 percent). Thirteen flowerpot bowls were excavated from the Swarts site (Cosgrove and Cosgrove 1932:72), which was 2 percent of all painted vessels. The lower percentages of flare rims and flowerpots suggest that the functions, and perhaps the social uses, of these vessel shapes may be different from the more ordinary hemispherical bowls.

Whole and Partial Vessels

243

Figure 6.1.  Relationship of bowl height to diameter.

Whole and Partial Bowl Sizes An examination of bowl sizes further shows the variation between painted and plain bowls, and among different kinds of painted bowls. We analyzed only plain and Classic bowls from the Mattocks site, since they form the great majority of the whole and partial vessel collection. Jars, seed jars, and flowerpots were not included, nor were non-Mimbres pottery and vessels for which the painted design was not recorded. Specifically, we used plain (no painted designs), naturalistic painted, geometric painted, and geometric painted flare rim vessels. The few naturalistic flare rims were included in the naturalistic painted category. If a bowl was asymmetrical, either in height or diameter, then the range of measurements was averaged. As bowl diameter increased, so generally did height (figure 6.1). Examination of these two measurements shows differences among the four bowl categories (table 6.5). Plain bowls were the smallest in both diameter and height, which was consistent with analyses at the Wind Mountain site in the Gila River drainage (Gilman 1987b). Next in size were naturalistic painted bowls. Geometric painted bowls were the largest in both diameter and height and were on average considerably larger than naturalistic bowls. Flare rim bowls with geometric painted designs were virtually the same average height as

hemispherical geometric bowls, but they are smaller in diameter, having almost the same average diameter as naturalistic bowls. Clearly, the people who made these vessels had ideas about appropriate sizes for the different kinds of bowls, and perhaps these differences in sizes relates to the bowl functions or to the best sizes of the areas for the designs painted on them. Since most of the painted bowls ended their use lives as grave goods, neither a given size nor design category (geometric or naturalistic) was exclusively associated with burial contexts. In other words, most of the painted vessels, along with some of the plain vessels, were from burial contexts, and the fact that some bowls were generally smaller and had naturalistic designs while some were larger and had geometric designs must be explained by other factors. Perhaps many naturalistic designs were conceived as requiring a smaller area for the design than many geometrics, although the size ranges certainly overlapped to such a degree that either design style could be used on almost any size.

Whole Miniature Vessels At the smaller end of vessel sizes, miniature vessels may form a group that had a different function to the larger pots. Anyon and LeBlanc (1984:287) had an implied

244

Chapter 6 Table 6.5.  Average Bowl Heights and Diameters.  All measurements are in centimeters. Bowl Type

Number of Bowls

Average Height

Range

Average Diameter

Range

Plain (no painted design)

33

8.1

3–13.5

17.2

5–30.7

Naturalistic

71

9.5

5–16.0

21.3

9.5–29.7

Geometric

139

11.2

5.5–22

24.8

35

11

4.5–16

21.2

278

10.6

Geometric Flare Rim All Bowls

10.2–34 9.5–26.8

23

Figure 6.2.  Miniature vessels.  A. TT4(6), jar fragment; B. 41-4-16/5, half a plain jar, blackened interior and exterior, 3 cm high; C. 290-1-1/A, vessel fragment, 6.2 cm long.

definition of miniature vessels as those that are six centimeters or less in diameter. However, at the Wind Mountain site, where miniatures were analyzed along with the other whole pots, the smaller and larger sizes formed a continuous distribution, and there was no obvious point at which to distinguish miniatures from other pots (Gilman 1987b). Any cutoff for the size of miniatures is probably arbitrary. The Mattocks whole vessel assemblage, from both Nesbitt’s and the Mimbres Foundation excavations, contained very few miniature vessels, three of which are pictured in figure 6.2 (also see appendix 14). The collection from the Wind Mountain site, in contrast, suggested that there may have been more “miniature” vessels than larger ones (Gilman 1987b), further emphasizing their lack in the Mattocks collections. The smallest painted bowls from Nesbitt’s excavation were both 9.5 cm in diameter (appendix 11), although his collection did include some smaller plain bowls and jars (appendix 12). The Mimbres Foundation vessel assemblage included a painted bowl that was 9 cm in diameter (appendix 13) and a plain bowl with a diameter of 14 cm (appendix 14).

Whole Vessel Designs As noted, the great majority of painted pots from the Mattocks site were Classic, along with a few of the earlier Boldface and Transitional Black-on-whites. Within the Classic type are different kinds of designs and design layouts, including naturalistics, geometrics, flare rims (LeBlanc and Khalil 1976), and polychromes. Each bowl was painted with a virtually unique design, although LeBlanc (2006) has suggested that some designs were similar enough that individual painters or schools of painters can be detected. LeBlanc and Khalil (1976) have noted that flare rim bowls, all of which are Classic, have design layouts that differ from those of the more common hemispherical bowls. At the Mattocks site, flare rim bowls formed about 12 percent of the painted vessel assemblage (41 of 339). The flare rim shape, which may have necessitated the different design layout, and the size difference from other geometric and naturalistic bowls noted above suggest that the utilitarian or social function of these bowls differed from that of the hemispherical ones.

245

Whole and Partial Vessels Table 6.6.  Naturalistic and Geometric Bowls by Room Block or Site Area.* Design Style

50s Units

Unit 80

100s Room Block

200s Room Block (Plus Unit 41)

Room Block East of 200s

300s Room Block

400s Room Block

Mimbres Foundation Naturalistic

0

2

4

2

0

0

16

Nesbitt** Naturalistic

0

0

4

4

2

5

1

Total Naturalistic

0

2 (29%)

8 (18%)

6 (19%)

2 (20%)

5 (36%)

17 (30%)

Mimbres Foundation Geometric

3

5

23

10

0

0

39

Nesbitt Geometric

0

0

14

16

8

9

0

Total Geometric

3

5 (71%)

37 (82%)

26 (81%)

8 (80%)

9 (64%)

Total Vessels

3

7

45

32

10

14

39 (70%) 56

* Vessels without provenience and non-Mimbres vessels are not included. ** Nesbitt vessels used if from known provenience.

Classic bowls painted in the polychrome style have a tan color used as solid filler in the place of black design elements on both naturalistic and geometric bowls (Cosgrove and Cosgrove 1932:79). Mimbres polychromes are quite rare. The Cosgroves (1932:72, plate 192) noted only six examples at the Swarts site among 635 complete Classic bowls. Nesbitt excavated two polychrome bowls at the Mattocks site (appendix 11), both with burials, while the Mimbres Foundation excavated none. Occasional polychrome sherds emphasize the rarity of this design style. Of the whole and partial bowls that can be identified as either naturalistic or geometric (we thank Sabrina M. Chase for the initial analyses of these vessels), 28 percent (66 of 237) of Nesbitt’s vessels were naturalistic (appendix 11), as were 22 percent (24 of 107) of the Mimbres Foundation bowls (appendix 13). We also examined the bowls with naturalistic designs further to determine whether certain room blocks or areas of the site had higher proportions of them. Of the three areas that contained more than 30 vessels (table 6.6), 30 percent of the bowls from the 400s room block were naturalistic, as opposed to only 18 percent and 19 percent, respectively, from the 100s and 200s room blocks. The sample sizes were small, however, and the Mimbres Foundation did more excavation in the 400s room block than in any other areas of the site that had not previously been excavated. We would need samples from other sites to ascertain whether people in some room blocks, households perhaps, produced more naturalistic bowls than others, or whether the preliminary pattern noted here simply represents differential sampling. Lee (2005) has noted that naturalistic bowls were more frequently placed with the burials of children at

the Mattocks site, although children did not exclusively receive naturalistics, and nor did adults exclusively receive geometrics. Seventy percent of the Mimbres Foundation naturalistic vessels were buried with children, and about 50 percent of the bowls buried with children were naturalistics, as opposed to 15 percent of the bowls buried with adults. Children buried at the Galaz site were also more likely to receive naturalistics, although at the NAN Ranch site children and adults were equally likely to have had bowls with these designs. The distribution of naturalistic and geometric designs may suggest social relationships. Anyon and LeBlanc (1984:table 11.8) noted several instances at the Galaz site where bowls from the same burial, room, or adjacent rooms had similar designs. We examined the Mimbres Foundation whole and partial bowls for such design similarities, but we found only one possibility. Two geometric bowls (MimPIDD numbers 4226 and 4782; appendix 13) from Unit 114 were similar. One was from a burial, and the other was a partial bowl from various levels in the room. Another partial bowl (MimPIDD number 4256) from Unit 106, two rooms away from Unit 114 in the same room block, had a similar design. The same person or household could have made these three bowls, in that the design similarity suggests some sort of social proximity. No other bowls from the Mimbres Foundation excavations at the Mattocks site had this same design. The lack of other design similarities at the Mattocks site may be because the sample size was smaller than that obtained from the Galaz site. The actual animal and human figures portrayed on the Classic period naturalistic bowls could parallel social

246

Chapter 6

relationships, but the distributions of the various kinds of figures (rabbits, turtles, insects, humans, and so forth) have been notoriously difficult to discern. C. LeBlanc (1977) performed an analysis on Classic naturalistic designs, and she suggested that certain animal motifs were more frequently associated with certain sites. For example, she considered the motifs from several large Mimbres Valley sites and found that as the distance between the sites increased, the design similarity decreased. She suggested that animal motifs did not associate so much with social segments, such as clans, as they did with the sites themselves. This pattern may reflect the social organization within the valley rather than within individual sites. Powell-Martí and James (2006; Powell 2000) have also examined the distribution of specific naturalistic designs among four Classic sites—Galaz, NAN Ranch, Old Town, and Cameron Creek. The prominent icons from all sites were birds, fish, humans, insects, and mammals, together comprising 72 percent (257 bowls) of their sample. However, while birds formed 44 percent of the Early Classic period (A.D. 970–1060) motifs at Cameron Creek and 38 percent from Old Town, the proportions of each icon at other sites were considerably lower, in the 17–22 percent range for this period. During the Middle Classic period (A.D. 1060–1110), birds were again predominant at all four sites, followed by fish, again at all four sites. Birds and fish together were more than 45 percent of these major icons. As at the Mattocks site, no one naturalistic motif dominated the rest in either period, and at the Mattocks site, no one motif dominated within a given room block. Future analysis should focus on the social contexts of Classic naturalistic and geometric designs.

Compositional Analyses Compositional analyses of ceramics have become increasingly common in southwestern archaeology and in Mimbres research (Chandler 2000; Creel and Speakman 2012; Dahlin 2003; Gilman et al. 1994; James et al. 1995; Rugge 1976; Powell 2000; Powell-Martí and James 2006). These analyses ideally determine from which clay source (neutron activation analysis) or temper source (petrographic analysis) a vessel was made, and therefore they suggest where vessels were manufactured. In reality, it is rare that enough raw materials are sampled to produce sources for the clays and tempers. Instead, vessels with mineralogically similar clays or tempers are included in a compositional group, and the compositional group with the largest number of members from a site is considered to have been manufactured at that site. Compositional analyses on Mimbres ceramics have produced a large array of manufacturing locales, and the most recent investigation (Creel and Speakman 2012; Speakman 2013) has suggested that pottery production occurred at many sites, although

people were not manufacturing pottery in the south part of the Mimbres Valley during the Classic period. Several compositional studies have used sherds from the Mattocks site, including a petrographic investigation (Rugge 1976) and several neutron activation studies (Creel and Speakman 2012; Gilman et al. 1994; Speakman 2013). Rugge (1976) used petrographic analysis of pottery temper, including samples from the Mattocks site, to show that either some temper or some pottery was being moved within the Mimbres Valley. He examined sherd samples from north to south along the Mimbres River, and he ascertained that all of the painted pottery was tempered with volcanic stream sand, which is abundantly available throughout the Mimbres Valley. Large corrugated vessels, however, were tempered either with volcanic or plutonic rock, the latter only being available at the north end of the Cookes Range, near the south end of the Mimbres Valley. The plutonic rock source is more than 32 kilometers (20 miles) from the Mattocks site. Rugge determined that the proportion of large corrugated vessels with plutonic temper decreased with distance from the source. Fifteen percent of the 20 corrugated sherds sampled from the Mattocks site had plutonic temper. A site to the north of the Mattocks site, the Mitchell site (LA12076), had no sherds with plutonic temper, while the Galaz site (LA635) to the south of Mattocks had 38 percent. This pattern suggested that people were either moving plutonic temper materials or large corrugated vessels made from the temper throughout the valley and that the proportion of pots with this temper decreased with distance from the source. Gilman et al. (1994) attempted to ascertain whether Mimbres pottery was only made in the Mimbres Valley, the apparent heartland of the culture, and therefore whether people at Mimbres sites beyond the valley were under the control of those living in the valley. Twenty-six of the 117 total sherds in this instrumental neutron activation analysis (INAA) were from the Mattocks site, with the rest from three other sites in the Mimbres Valley (Galaz, NAN Ranch, and Old Town), from Cameron Creek on a tributary of the Mimbres River, and from Powers Ranch, a site with predominantly Mimbres pottery on the Gila River just across the border in Arizona. Somewhat more than 50 percent (14 sherds) from the Mattocks site were in the Central Mimbres compositional group, a similar proportion to the sherds from NAN Ranch and Cameron Creek; the small sample size at Galaz made conclusions difficult. Four Mattocks sherds were in the Valley Variant 1 compositional group, but the seven total sherds in that group were too few to detect any patterns. No Mattocks sherds were in the Valley Variant 2, the Old Town, or the Powers Ranch compositional groups. This early compositional analysis was the beginning of INAA in the Mimbres region, with there now being about 2600 samples of Mimbres painted pottery and about

Non-Mimbres Pottery 5000 total analyzed samples (Creel and Speakman 2012; Creel et al. 2014; Speakman 2013). INAA of pottery from Mimbres Valley sites has suggested that only people at the NAN Ranch and sites to its north, including the Mattocks site, were producing pottery during the Classic period. This INAA research includes 34 sherds excavated from the Mattocks site but no whole vessels. Sherds recovered from the Mattocks site were made at various places in the Mimbres Valley, including the Mattocks site itself (the Mimbres-08 compositional group), as well as in the Eastern Mimbres region across the Black Range, and in the Western Mimbres area, both of which are beyond the Mimbres Valley. Pottery made at the Mattocks site is present at 27 other sites, both in the Mimbres Valley and beyond (Creel and Speakman 2012; Speakman 2013:130–131). Compositional analyses (Powell 2000; Powell-Martí and James 2006) that did not include the Mattocks site have suggested that alliances formed between pairs of sites during the Early Classic period (A.D. 970–1060), resulting in two alliance groups—Galaz-NAN Ranch-Cameron Creek and Galaz-NAN Ranch-Old Town. By the Middle Classic period (A.D. 1060–1110), alliances were focused on the Galaz site, from which vessels were exported to the other sites but to which none were imported. Creel and Speakman’s (2012) analysis also has suggested that the Galaz site was the major producer of Classic pottery. The people at the Saige-McFarland site, in the Gila Valley to the west of the Mimbres, were never involved to any extent in mutual vessel exchange with people from the other four sites, all of which are in the Mimbres Valley or a tributary of it. Given that Mattocks is one of the pottery-­producing sites during the Classic period, more compositional analyses of Mattocks sherds and whole vessels should better show the production locales and the distribution of Classic pottery, as well as the social networks that the pottery might indicate.

Non-Mimbres Pottery The non-Mimbres pottery at the Mattocks and other large Classic sites represents Classic, Late Classic, and Postclassic period use of the sites. Non-Mimbres sherds include, in descending order of frequency, Playas Red, El Paso Black-on-red (more correctly called El Paso Polychrome; Michael Whalen personal communication, 1997), El Paso Brown, Chupadero Black-on-white, Cibola White Wares, White Mountain Red Wares, Gila Polychrome, and Ramos Polychrome. Corrugated pottery from the Reserve area, to the northwest of the Mimbres Valley, is also present on Mimbres pueblo sites. In terms of painted non-Mimbres whole vessels, Nesbitt (1931:97) recovered a Three Rivers Red-on-terracotta bowl (MimPIDD 3714; appendix 11; thanks to Meade Kemrer for ascertaining this identification) from Burial 2,

247

but it was not associated with other vessels. The Three Rivers bowl was probably originally from the Lincoln County area, east of the Rio Grande, and the type first appeared in the early A.D. 1100s (Meade Kemrer personal communication, 2005; also see Stewart 1983:45). Nesbitt (1931:99) pictured a Dinwiddie Polychrome bowl (Logan Museum catalogue number 16176; identified by Patrick Lyons, 2009), dating between A.D. 1390 and A.D. 1450, as being from the Mattocks site, but it was probably from the Gonzales site. This is presumably the site of that name in the Mimbres Valley, which Nesbitt excavated, probably during one of his Mattocks field seasons. (Thanks to Nicolette Meister, Curator of Collections, Logan Museum, for clarifying this, 2005.) The Mimbres Foundation excavated an 80 percent complete Escavada Black-on-white canteen from just below the ground surface in Unit 237 (appendix 13). (Thanks to David Phillips for this identification, 2005.) This pottery type was common in the San Juan Basin in northwest New Mexico from A.D. 925 to A.D. 1125 (Goetze and Mills 1993). Although Escavada Blackon-white is a Cibola White Ware, Mimbres archaeologists have previously assumed that all of the Cibola White Wares present on Mimbres sites were from the Reserve area, just northwest of the Mimbres Valley. This is one of the very few artifacts in the Mimbres Valley that supports any sort of relationship with people in or near the Chaco region. The origin of unpainted and unslipped vessels is more difficult to determine than that for painted ceramics. However, Reserve Corrugated bowls, often with black burnished (also called smudged) interiors were occasionally present in Mimbres pueblo assemblages. Nesbitt recovered five of them (two Reserve Plain Corrugated, two Reserve Punched Corrugated, and one Reserve Indented Corrugated; appendix 12), while the Mimbres Foundation excavated one (Reserve Indented Corrugated; appendix 14). As the names suggest, these types are most common in the Reserve area to the northwest of the Mimbres Valley, contemporary with Reserve Black-on-white (Rinaldo and Bluhm 1956), and the whole vessels and sherds at the Mattocks site may have come from that region. Various types of Reserve textured pottery are more common at Mimbres sites to the north of the Mimbres Valley than they are in the valley itself (Brewington 1992). Non-Mimbres pottery types contemporary with the Classic period before A.D. 1100 at the Mattocks site included Cibola White Wares (probably Reserve Black-onwhite), the one Escavada Black-on-white vessel, Reserve Corrugated bowls of various types, and El Paso Brown. This assemblage therefore contains remarkably few non-­ Mimbres types dating before A.D. 1100; our sense is that the assemblage from the pit structure periods follows the same pattern. The most common Classic period non-Mimbres whole vessels were bowls with Reserve Corrugated exteriors

248

Chapter 6

and black burnished interiors. Mimbres Foundation sherd counts did not include this specific type, but it is likely that some were included in the counts for Non-­Obliterated Corrugated bowls (appendix 2). (We also had a category for plain burnished bowls, but they were lumped with other plain bowls in appendix 2. We also noted actual black burnishing on our sherd counts sheets.) Although we did not type the Cibola White Wares, some of the sherds may have been Reserve Black-onwhite, the painted type contemporary with the Reserve Corrugated bowls in the Reserve region and with the Classic period in the Mimbres area. Hegmon et al. (1998:152– 153) have noted that a few painted sherds in the Eastern Mimbres area, east of the Mimbres Valley, had characteristics of both Mimbres black-on-white and Cibola White Ware pottery, often with a Mimbres-like paste and a Cibola-­like finish, and sometimes with Cibola sherd temper rather than Mimbres sand temper. In the Eastern Mimbres, the proportion of these ceramics increased from less than 1 percent during the Classic period to 10 percent in the Postclassic. Again, the Mimbres Foundation did not note this combination of the two technological styles in our sherd counts, although we commented informally on such sherds on the analysis forms. While different types of Cibola White Wares, especially the combined Cibola-­ Mimbres, could have been made in or near the Mimbres Valley, they also indicate some sort of relationship with people living in the Reserve region. Another region from which there were Classic period non-Mimbres sherds at the Mattocks site was around El Paso to the southeast of the Mimbres Valley. El Paso Brown (called El Paso Temper in appendix 2, because of its large, white, “popcorn” temper) was contemporary with the Classic period. Because the distinctive temper is most common in the El Paso region, this type was probably made there. The Galaz (Anyon and LeBlanc 1984:153) and Swarts (Cosgrove and Cosgrove 1932:92–99) sites both had the same non-Mimbres Classic period types as the Mattocks site. Reserve/Tularosa Corrugated types, Cibola White Ware (generally Reserve Black-on-white), El Paso Blackon-red/El Paso Polychrome, and El Paso Temper have all been noted at the Galaz site. The Cosgroves reported Corrugated “Tularosa” pottery, Little Colorado/Tularosa black-on-whites, and a plain El Paso pot at the Swarts site. The few non-Mimbres sherds and vessels recovered from the Mattocks and other Classic period sites suggest some limited movement of ceramics between the Mimbres Valley and adjacent regions to the northwest and southeast. Mimbres Classic Black-on-white has been noted in these regions, as well as to the southwest in the San Simon Basin of southeastern Arizona (Gilman 1997). Some Classic pottery may have been taken from the Mimbres Valley especially into the El Paso area (Brewington and Shafer 1999), but Mimbres sherds in the San Simon region were

probably locally made copies (Smith 2005). The color of the paint and the design layouts often differed considerably from the black-on-white that is so common in the Mimbres Valley, although the types are clearly Mimbres black-on-white. Many of the non-Mimbres types that appear to postdate the Classic period may actually date to the Late Classic period after A.D. 1100. They may be part of the transition to the Black Mountain phase (Creel 1999; Creel et al. 2002), which is characterized by adobe pueblos and these same pottery types. Such pottery at the Mattocks site includes Playas Red, early El Paso Black-on-red/El Paso Polychrome, Chupadero Black-on-white, White Mountain Red Wares, and Three Rivers Red-on-­terracotta. At other sites, these types are often associated with rooms that had circular hearths, indicating Late Classic or Black Mountain structures. Most pueblo rooms at the Mattocks site had circular hearths, and so if proveniences with more than one non-Mimbres sherd present are considered (chapter 1), then these types had a higher frequency in the upper post-occupation fill of the rooms (note the Black Mountain and Cliff designation that Cannon assigns to the upper fill of Unit 325 in the previous chapter). Accordingly, such deposits are more likely to date to the Late or Terminal (about A.D. 1130 and later; Hegmon et al. 1999) Classic period. There is a Postclassic, probably late Animas period (A.D. 1175–1300), room block along with evidence of an immediate Postclassic occupation at the Galaz site (Anyon and LeBlanc 1984:143–148) and other Black Mountain Animas sites farther south in the valley (Blake et al. 1986:461), which probably relate to the Late Classic/ Black Mountain use of the Mattocks site. Chandler (2000) and Creel (1999; Creel et al. 2002) have both determined that at least some of the Playas Red present in the Mimbres Valley was made there. The Chupadero sherds came from east of the Rio Grande (Stewart et al. 1990; Warren 1981), while the White Mountain Red Wares were from the region of New Mexico and Arizona northwest of the Mimbres, perhaps continuing the relationships with people in that area. The presence of El Paso Black-on-red/ El Paso Polychrome, which dates from A.D. 1100 to A.D. 1300, suggests ongoing relationships with people in the El Paso area to the southeast. Creel has proposed that there was much more circulation of pottery in the Late Classic and the Black Mountain phase than during most of the Classic period, possibly paralleling increased interactions with people over a wide area. Gila and Ramos (tentative identification) Polychromes were rare at the Mattocks site, and both date well after the Classic period. Gila Polychrome was made in many locales around the Southwest (Crown and Bishop 1994:30–31) and dates from after A.D. 1300 and into the A.D. 1400s (Crown 1994:19). Whether the Ramos Polychrome identification is correct or not, these sherds are certainly from

249

Non-Mimbres Pottery Table 6.7.  Reserve Area Sherds at the Mattocks Site. Room Block

Plain Black Burnished

Percent

Textured Black Burnished

Percent

Total Black Burnished

Percent of All Black Burnished

Cibola White Ware

100s

203

41

117

58

320

46

14

200s

163

33

74

37

237

34

25

400s

129

26

12

5

141

20

5

Total

495

100

203

100

698

100

44

the Casas Grandes area of Chihuahua, Mexico, to the south and date from A.D. 1200 to A.D. 1450 (Whalen and Minnis 2001:41). There are a few Cliff phase Salado sites in the Mimbres Valley dating to this time (Nelson and LeBlanc 1986), and these sherd types may indicate minor and light use of the Mattocks site in this late period.

Social Implications of Non-Mimbres Pottery at the Mattocks Site One unexpected result of the Mattocks site sherd analysis is that certain non-Mimbres types were associated more frequently with specific room blocks (table 6.7). The best example of this is that the proportion of black burnished bowl sherds, likely from the Reserve region, was far greater in the 100s room block than in the 400s, with an intermediate proportion present in the 200s room block. Differing amounts of excavation in the three room blocks could account for the variations in the numbers of this kind of pottery, but we excavated much in all three room blocks. Not all black burnished bowl types were contemporary with the middle Classic period, during which most of the pueblo rooms were occupied, but some were. Given that the 100s room block did not contain an overwhelming amount of Late Classic period non-Mimbres types, as the 200s room block did (appendix 2), it is likely that at least some of the black burnished sherds in the 100s room block were a result of relationships between people in this room block and people who lived to the north or northwest of the valley. The household of the 100s room block may have come from that area before they moved to the site, they may have moved back and forth between the two areas, they may have maintained an ongoing relationship with people from the north, or they may have done more than one of these. Whatever the relationship, it was not shared to the same extent by the households of the 200s or 400s room blocks at the Mattocks site. Reserve Black-on-white, from the same area to the northwest of the Mimbres Valley as the black burnished bowls, is the only painted non-Mimbres pottery type that

might be contemporary with the middle Classic occupation of the pueblo rooms and was included in our analysis with Cibola White Ware. Because there are also later Cibola White Ware types, we cannot use this designation to assess any possible Middle Classic relationships with the areas north and northwest of the Mimbres Valley. However, it is interesting to note that, although there were several hundred sherds with black burnished interiors from the Mattocks site, there were only 44 Cibola White Ware sherds (table 6.7). This pattern suggests that there are previously unrecognized temporal differences between Cibola White Wares and the unpainted but textured pottery from northwest of the Mimbres Valley, that the Cibola White Wares and the unpainted ceramics were actually made in different regions with only one being imported regularly into the Mimbres Valley, or that there was simply a low proportion of Cibola White Wares to textured pottery in the original ceramic assemblage (6 percent, according to the proportions at the Mattocks site). It is also possible that we did not consistently recognize Cibola White Wares, in part because there may be combinations of Mimbres designs on Cibola White Ware vessels and Cibola designs on Mimbres vessels (Hegmon et al. 1998). The distributions of the black burnished bowls and the Cibola White Wares among the room blocks correspond somewhat, with the 400s room block having the least and the 200s room block having the most Cibola White Wares. As noted in chapter 1, the overall numbers of non-­ Mimbres pottery were greater in the 200s and 300s room blocks than in the 100s room block (table 1.7). Most of these types suggest Late Classic period use, and indeed most of the sherds of these types were in the post-­ occupation room fill. The fact that many of the types were probably not locally made suggests that the inhabitants of the site during the Late Classic period had connections with people outside the valley. For example, there were far more El Paso Black-on-red/El Paso Polychrome sherds in the 200s room block (appendix 2), far fewer in the 300s room block, and the 400s room block had no sherds of this type.

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Worked Sherds The Mimbres Foundation analyzed 116 worked sherds from the Mattocks site (appendix 16). They fall into several broad categories: perforated disks (29), disks (39), rectangular with rounded corners (5), and irregular sherds (43). The latter were all fragments for which we could not determine the original shape. Each of these categories probably represents a different tool type, and although these tools were all made from sherds, they might not otherwise have been functionally related. Nesbitt (1931:89–91) noted that they recovered no more than a dozen worked sherds. His excavators probably only kept complete examples, such as those that Nesbitt (1931:90) illustrated, and they probably missed many others because they did not screen. The perforated disks are often called spindle whorls, and they had fairly standard dimensions. The 27 perforated disks that were complete enough to measure had an average radius of 2.6 cm, and a range between 1.4 cm and 3.9 cm, with a standard deviation of 0.6 cm. Although there is a relatively smooth distribution of radius sizes within the range, the largest disks were more than twice the size of the smallest. If perforated disks were used for spinning thread, the different sizes may represent different kinds of fiber, such as cotton and yucca. None seem large enough to have been fly wheels for pump drills, which might have been used to drill holes in beads. The unperforated disks do not appear to have been blanks for perforated disks. Based on fragmentary examples of the latter, holes were drilled in pieces before their edges were finely ground, presumably because drilling often broke the sherd. There were several fragments where the hole was not completed, and in these examples the sherd was not very round or highly ground. Small unperforated disks and rectangular worked sherds are often called gaming pieces. Larger disks and rectangular worked sherds might have been used in pottery-making kits. A set of six disks and rectangular worked sherds was present in a Three Circle phase (Late or Late Late Pit Structure period) burial at the NAN Ranch site, and Shafer (1985, 2003:151) interpreted the burial as that of a female potter. In terms of possible sets of worked sherds at the Mattocks site, four disks and two possible disks were present in the fill of Unit 233; three or possibly four perforated disks were in the fill, some of which was pothunted, of Unit 237; and five whole or fragmentary disks were in the fill above the lower floor in Unit 41. One fill locus, 115-2-5, also had a possible set of disks, but they were fragmentary. None of these associations seems to have formed a set of worked sherds, and indeed the NAN Ranch site potter’s burial is unique in the Mimbres area. Most of the worked sherds (59 percent; 69 of 118) were made from painted pottery. Including the six white-slipped

sherds that were probably from painted vessels, 75 of 118 (64 percent) worked sherds were from painted pots. The rest (36 percent; 43 of 118) were made from unpainted pottery, including one San Francisco Red and two Other Red sherds. Almost 60 percent (69 of 116) of the worked sherds were made from Mimbres black-on-white pottery, including white-slipped sherds, while only 6 percent (seven examples) were made from corrugated sherds. There was thus a wide selection of sherd types for worked sherds. Non-Mimbres worked sherds included eight plain sherds with black burnished interiors, likely from the Reserve region to the northwest of the Mimbres Valley, and sherds of Chupadero Black-on-white (one example), Cibola Black-on-white (one, or possibly two, examples), Cibola White Ware (one), El Paso Polychrome (one), and Tularosa or Pinedale Black-on-white (one). The Wind Mountain site (Gilman 1987b; Woosley and McIntyre 1996:197) is the only other site for which Mimbres worked sherd data have been published. This site had more worked sherds made on plain pottery (55 percent; 914 of 1,675) than on painted pottery (45 percent; 761 of 1,675). Wind Mountain mostly dates to the Pit Structure periods, when people made less painted pottery, and this may account for the fact that its proportions were reversed compared to the Mattocks site. There were also only six worked sherds made from non-Mimbres pottery at Wind Mountain and only 27 from corrugated pottery.

Conclusions In this chapter, we have provided basic descriptions of the sherd and whole vessel assemblages from both Nesbitt’s and the Mimbres Foundation excavations at the Mattocks site. Appendices to this chapter and to chapter 1 contain the raw data for sherds and whole vessels to encourage future analyses. Several of the preliminary analyses that we present here hint at the social relationships of those living at the Mattocks site or in the Mimbres Valley during the Classic period. For example, painted jars, and plain, flare rim, and flowerpot bowls, are rare enough that they may have had some special functions, related to specific social groups or to specific duties or rituals. Most whole painted vessels ended their use lives in burials, even though many show signs of wear, as if they were also used in everyday life. In contrast, although some smaller plain vessels were also present in burials, unpainted whole pots were often left in the places where they were used. Painted bowls appear to have had special importance in the death ritual (Crown 1994:221–222), but on current evidence we do not know what that was, or how the painted designs, each of which is essentially unique, related to the people who were buried with those bowls. Although initial analyses have found few patterns in the distributions of

Conclusions similar designs (naturalistic designs that depict rabbits, for example, or geometric designs that appear to be broadly similar), more in-depth investigations of the varying proportions of naturalistics versus geometrics (Lee 2005), and the search for individual potters (LeBlanc 2006), could be interesting research avenues for future investigators. There have been many recent compositional analyses of Mimbres pottery, especially Mimbres Classic Black-onwhite. Initial indications are that there were many different clays used in their manufacture, suggesting perhaps that people at many sites made these bowls. However, at each Classic pueblo, there were pots made from many clay sources, which implies that bowls were regularly, and in relatively large quantities, exchanged with or given to people at other sites, or that people regularly moved from site to site, taking some of their ceramics with them. A clearer correlation between clay sources and the ultimate disposition of a pot would build on Powell-Martí and James’ (2006) patterns of relationship among people at sites in the Mimbres region. Before A.D. 1100, there was little non-Mimbres pottery at the Mattocks site or indeed at any other Classic pueblos. This suggests either that people in the Mimbres

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Valley had few relationships with people beyond the region who made non-Mimbres pottery, or that pottery did not mark those relationships. Nonetheless, the small amount of non-Mimbres pottery during this period hints at relationships with people in the Reserve area to the northwest and the El Paso area to the southeast of the Mimbres Valley. The 100s room block had more black burnished pottery, which was probably from the Reserve area, than the 200s or 400s room blocks, and this may indicate that the household in the 100s room block had relatively strong relationships with people in the Reserve area. There were more non-Mimbres pottery types in the 200s and 300s room blocks than in the others, but most of these dated to the Late Classic period, after A.D. 1100, and most were in the post-occupation room fill. Since the household in the 200s room block was perhaps a founding one at the site, it may not be coincidence that this room block was also used latest in time as well. The relatively large proportion of El Paso Black-on-red/El Paso Polychrome sherds from the 200s room block, compared to the other room blocks, implies relationships with people to the southeast in the El Paso region.

CHAPTER 7

Mattocks Site Burials

The superb painting on Classic Black-on-white vessels might suggest that Mimbres society included a class of elites for or by whom such pottery was designed. The burial data from the Mattocks and other Mimbres pueblos show exactly the opposite. That is, most individuals were buried with a single Classic Black-on-white bowl, usually inverted over the person’s head and often with a “kill hole” punched into the bottom of the vessel. Burials provide a glimpse of ancient people that is not as completely represented in any other data set. Although the skeletal preservation of most Mimbres burials was not very good, basic age and sometimes sex data can often be obtained, along with skeletal health indicators and the characteristics of body placement in the burial pit, the pit itself, and grave goods. All of these attributes can be used to examine social differences or similarities among different ages, sexes, and various groups of people in the Mimbres region. The Mimbres Foundation excavated 91 burials at the Mattocks site, while Nesbitt’s earlier excavations (1931; n.d.) uncovered between 239 and 267 burials and two cremations during three seasons at the site. Neither of these projects undertook much excavation outside structure walls, although the little they did showed that extramural burials were present. Because Mimbres Classic burials are commonly characterized as being beneath room floors, the Mimbres Foundation, and probably Nesbitt, carefully removed room floors. The lack of extramural excavation, however, means that the Mattocks site burial data are not representative of the site as a whole. Although the burial records from Nesbitt’s project are relatively incomplete, the Mattocks site burials form a dataset that can be analyzed and compared with burial populations from other Mimbres sites, such as Galaz (Anyon and LeBlanc 1984), Swarts (Cosgrove and Cosgrove 1924– 1927, 1932), Cameron Creek (Bradfield 1931), and NAN Ranch (Shafer 1987, 2003; Shafer and Taylor 1986). The Mattocks and NAN Ranch sites are most comparable, since both have been excavated using modern techniques, but

burial data from all Mimbres site excavations are appropriate for some kinds of analyses.

Previous Studies of Mimbres Burial Populations Previous studies of Mimbres burial populations include those designed to detect subtle social differences in an apparently egalitarian society, as well as a few that examined health and diet. We offer this brief synthesis of recent Mimbres burial studies in order to compare the Mattocks site data with the current understanding of Mimbres burials. The reader can obtain more detail, especially on some unpublished studies, in Shafer (2003:135–173).

Social Differences Initial analysis (Gilman 1989, 1990) of Mattocks site burial data showed that a few burials were richer than the vast majority in the number of vessels or in the presence of exotic or rare items. Gilman initially interpreted this to mean that some families or kin groups were set apart from others by their nonhereditary wealth. A subsequent investigation (Gilman 2006) suggested a more nuanced interpretation, in that the burial goods did not denote even subtle status differences among the households in each room block at the Mattocks site. That is, rich burials were distributed among the room blocks, with each major room block having at least one such burial. The only obvious social differentiation at the Mattocks site, then, was within households, and not among households. We provide more detail on Gilman’s analyses of Mattocks site burials below, in a section entitled “Interpretation of Mattocks Site Burials.” Creel (1989, 2006a), and Creel and Anyon (2003), have also looked for individuals set apart from others in death and burial. In examining Mimbres cremations, of which there were very few, Creel (1989) suggested that,

Previous Studies of Mimbres Burial Populations beginning in the A.D. 800s and continuing through the Classic period, a small number of people were distinguished by being cremated rather than buried after death, in the placement of those cremations in special site areas, and in the type and number of grave goods that accompanied their cremations. Creel and Anyon (2003) went on to show other intracommunity mortuary differences, especially in the association of unusual burials with Late and Late Late Pit Structure period communal pit structures, with adjacent large plazas onto which the communal structures opened, or with large Classic rooms. For example, two unusual inhumations were buried in contact with long-demolished communal pit structures in a precinct that had several such structures at the Old Town site (see Creel 2006a:38–39; Creel and Anyon 2003:82–83 for descriptions of these), which is at the south end of the Mimbres Valley. There were also cremation burials in the plazas fronting the communal pit structures at the NAN Ranch and Swarts sites. The NAN Ranch cremation cemetery almost certainly reflected “the specialized mortuary use of this public space over several generations” (Creel 2006a:38). Combining these analyses, Creel (2006a) used variability in mortuary remains and communal pit structures, and the presence of intracommunity social groups, to suggest that the Old Town site had evidence of social differentiation during the Late and Late Late Pit Structure and Classic periods. The cremations and unique burials hint that certain individuals had special responsibilities. Creel and Anyon (2003:74–75) suggested that the narrow range in communal pit structure orientations may reflect the importance of monitoring astronomical events, especially those related to the agricultural cycle. They noted that each historic pueblo in more recent periods had an individual who not only monitored the skies but who also scheduled important ceremonies. Creel (2006a:40–41) posited that the cremations and burials associated with communal structures were those of religious leaders who, like their recent counterparts, were not marked in life by a noticeably higher standard of living, but whose status was denoted in death. We do not know if there was a ceremonial precinct at the Mattocks site. Unit 213, on the west side of the site (see discussion in chapter 2), is a large Late Late Pit Structure period great kiva just west of the 200s room block, with the latter probably being one of the first to be built at the site. We would need more excavation to determine whether other communal buildings are present, and whether cremations or special burials were associated with this area. Based on his long-term excavation at the NAN Ranch site, Shafer (2003:135–162) has provided a detailed discussion of the NAN Ranch site burials, Mimbres burials in general—both contemporary ones and through time—and previous Mimbres burial studies. Like earlier researchers,

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he noted that certain individuals in the Mimbres Valley were afforded special treatment in death. Shafer (1985) has described a Late Pit Structure period potter’s burial (Burial 86 in Room 14) at the NAN Ranch site, which had Boldface Black-on-white bowls containing red paint pigment, seven worked sherds, two polished pebbles, at least three unfired red painted Boldface Black-on-white jars, and one or two baskets. Shafer (1999:102) felt, however, that this was not evidence of craft specialization. Shafer (2006:27) also mentioned a Middle Pit Structure period burial of an adult male (Burial 127), which was seated in a crypt in the north wall of pit structure Room 86 at the NAN Ranch site. This man was buried with a tubular cloud blower pipe, a quartz crystal, a turtle plastron, two Olivella shell beads, and one or two small projectile points, but no pottery. Shafer (2003:162) suggested that the man was a shaman or an oracle. Burial 175 was the only primary cremation in the Mimbres region, and it was placed just north of the west-facing entryway to the same pit structure during the Late or Late Late Pit Structure period. Shafer presented these burials as examples of special treatment after death, and it is noteworthy that they all predate the Classic period. One of Shafer’s (2006:27) most interesting ideas is that the bowls inverted over the faces of the interred might have served as masks. He posited that this act transformed the dead into supernatural beings, and perhaps even oracles who could advise the living about such critical matters as scheduling and orchestrating ceremonies to bring rain. Restricted access to them in corporate cemeteries, as discussed in the next paragraph, would reinforce the secrecy that Shafer suggested surrounded corporate ritual behavior. Perhaps Shafer’s (2003:153–159, 2006:18–28) most important contribution to Mimbres burial studies is his discussion of Classic period corporate cemeteries at the NAN Ranch site. He based the idea of corporate or lineage group formation on the presence of such cemeteries, which correlated with the demise of the great kivas near the end of the Late Late Pit Structure period, and he proposed that secret corporate group ceremonies replaced great kiva functions. Each corporate group would have had its own smaller kiva and ancestor shrine. Shafer has suggested that restricted-access lineage cemeteries, with people of both sexes and all ages, were established beneath the floors of habitation rooms during the Late or Late Late Pit Structure period. These rooms often became the core units in some Classic room suites, and they could be entered only through a ceiling hatchway, restricting the access. Shafer (2006:20–21) called such rooms corporate kivas and observed that they often have special associated features, such as the underlying cemeteries, floor vaults (the feature common to all), wall niches, benches, and wall shelves. There are no clear lineage cemeteries, ancestor shrines, or corporate kivas at the Mattocks site, and Gilman and

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Shafer (Gilman 2006:73; Gilman and Shafer 2003; Shafer 2006) differ in their views of who inhabited the room blocks, and who therefore contributed to the burials beneath the room floors. Gilman suggested that one household lived in each room block at the Mattocks site, while Shafer saw a corporate lineage group in each NAN Ranch room block. Since nothing fitting Shafer’s definitions of corporate cemeteries or kivas is evident at the Mattocks site, the differences emphasize that the people at Classic sites may have varied from each other in their intrasite social organization, an interesting point for future research.

Health and Diet Perhaps because of the poor preservation of Mimbres skeletal remains, only a few studies have used human bones to examine health and diet issues. For example, Holliday (1996) has compared the diet and health of Late and Late Late Pit Structure and Classic period individuals buried in two room blocks and in middens at the NAN Ranch site. She found no marked skeletal variations among people buried in these different contexts, and so she was unable to demonstrate differential access to resources. More recently, Gruber (2007) examined human skeletal remains to detect possible changes in health between the Late and Late Late Pit Structure, Classic, and Postclassic periods in the Mimbres Valley. While there was some evidence of change, especially in the teeth, few skeletal indicators showed statistically significant differences through time. Holliday (1996) suggested that people living in the contemporary east and south room blocks at the NAN Ranch site might have had differential access to food because the architecture of the south room block was more substantial than that of the east room block, and because there was a high concentration of burials, often with multiple associated vessels, beneath the floors of two Classic rooms in the south room block. She also compared the human remains from these room blocks to those of people buried in the middens. To characterize diet, Holliday (1996:84–112) undertook a stable isotope analysis, but only 7 of 73 skeletons had sufficient collagen for a reliable examination. This is, however, the first such analysis of Mimbres skeletal remains. Not surprisingly, the results indicated a heavy reliance on C-4 plants, which would have included much maize. Holliday’s results also hint that the individuals buried in the middens were not as dependent on C-4 plants as those in the room blocks, although C-4 plants dominated their diets as well. Holliday (1996:113–257) assessed health using growth rates and size achieved, dental health, frequencies of anemia and infection, and rates of trauma and degenerative changes. The only statistically significant differences were in the adult females from the south room block and in

a higher incidence of mild subadult anemia in the east room block. Holliday (1996:ii) noted that the variations among the women were difficult to interpret in terms of actual behavior, and at this point they suggest only that these women were somehow different. Although about 22 percent of the NAN Ranch sample exhibited at least one bone fracture, especially of the ribs and vertebrae, there were no statistical differences among the groups and no strong evidence for interpersonal violence. In a second study of human remains, Gruber (2007) analyzed those excavated by the Mimbres Foundation, including from the Mattocks site, to address the question of whether there were changes in health between the Late and Late Late Pit Structure and the Classic periods, and the Classic and Postclassic periods. She proposed that such changes should relate to the addition of increasing amounts of agricultural foods to the diet. Gruber examined remains from these three time periods for infections (ectocranial porosity, general infection, and endocranial porosity), occupational stresses (enthesopathy, osteophytic lipping, and osteoarthritis), and tooth decay and wear (carious lesions, alveolar resorption, incisor and canine wear, and premolar and molar wear), and she ranked each as slight, moderate, or severe. Gruber (2007:61) noted a statistically significant decrease in the severe category of endocranial porosity between the Late and Late Late Pit Structure and Classic periods, but there were only two pre-Classic samples. Between the Classic and Postclassic periods, there was a significant decrease in the severe category of ectocranial porosity (Gruber 2007:54–55) and increases in the slight category for enthesopathies and osteoarthritis (Gruber 2007:65, 74–75). As Gruber stated, these results are not particularly edifying, although they might be when used in combination with other samples. Gruber’s (2007:85–86) tooth analysis produced the most statistically significant results. There was a significant increase in moderate and severe tooth wear for all kinds of teeth between the Late and Late Late Pit Structure and Classic periods. Between the Classic and Postclassic periods, there was a significant increase in the slight category for incisors and canines, an increase in the moderate category for premolars and molars, and a decrease in the severe category for all teeth. Tooth wear is perhaps most directly related to the amount of grit ingested from food prepared on ground stone implements, and the results therefore suggest that people were grinding more food, presumably corn, in the Classic than in pre-Classic periods. The data for the changes between the Classic and Postclassic periods were less clear, but the decrease in severe wear on all teeth hints that people were eating less ground corn. Gruber (2007:76–78) also presented data on trauma and congenital conditions. There were two inconclusive cases of trauma, both possible head injuries, one of which

The Mattocks Site Burial Data was a Classic subadult burial (435-5S-11; appendix 20) from the Mattocks site. The three skeletons with congenital conditions, one case of metopism and two of spina bifida, were not from the Mattocks site.

The Mattocks Site Burial Data This section provides data and interpretations for the Mattocks site human skeletons, burial pits, and grave goods from the Nesbitt and Mimbres Foundation excavations. Like interments from other Classic sites, burials from the Mattocks site had few associated grave goods. We make the case that the Mattocks burial data do not show the hierarchical distinctions of a socially stratified society, nor do they show the age-sex differences often associated with more egalitarian burial sets. There were one or more burials in each room block at the Mattocks site that contained numerous grave goods, and because each room block had such burials, we cannot say that the household in one room block was richer than those in other room blocks. As noted in the discussion above, these rich burials therefore may denote individuals who had special roles or would have had they lived to adulthood. The pattern implies that each household had at least one of these individuals.

Nesbitt’s Burial Data Nesbitt (1931, n.d.) recovered between 239 and 267 burials and two cremations (appendix 11; Creel 1989:318) during his three years of excavation, but his data are of variable quality. We have assembled Nesbitt’s data from field notes, the Logan Museum (Beloit College) catalog, an examination of the Logan Museum collections, and the publication that Nesbitt (1931) produced at the end of his second year of excavation. The extant data from Nesbitt’s 1929 excavation season include burial numbers, rare associated room numbers, Logan Museum catalog numbers, and descriptions of the associated burial vessels. All the information that we were able to gather on these burials is provided in appendices 11 and 12. From the 1929 excavation, there are no records of burials that did not include whole vessels, and the only provenienced grave goods other than pottery are materials associated with one of the cremations (Burial 41; appendix 11). While other non-ceramic grave goods must have existed in these and perhaps other burials, there are no catalog cards for these artifacts, nor were the artifacts provenienced in the Logan Museum collections. No skeletal or burial pit information exists for the 1929 burials. We only have information on the approximately 42 burials with ceramic grave goods for Nesbitt’s 1929 excavation season. On the Logan Museum catalog cards, Nesbitt used 101 numbers for burials in 1929, although the 1931 publication stated that either 113 or 129 burials were

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excavated. If there were only 101 burials excavated that year, there were possibly 59 burials, or 58 percent of the total 101, without ceramic grave goods. This percentage is very high when compared to later Nesbitt excavations and with other Mimbres burial sets. The only statement that we can make with certainty about the 1929 burials is that at least 42 were excavated that year. As noted, Nesbitt also excavated the two cremations in 1929 (appendix 11; Creel 1989:318), and these are the only ones recorded at the Mattocks site. Much more information exists for the burials that Nesbitt excavated in 1930. Each burial has a record of its burial number, associated room number, burial location within the room, the burial depth, the fill in the pit, and the presence, number, and type of grave goods, as well as its Logan Museum catalog number for those grave goods (appendices 17 and 18). Although some data from appendices 11 and 12 are repeated, we include all burial artifacts in appendices 17 and 18 so that the reader can see all grave goods from each burial in a single place. Some burials also have information on the pit covering, the position of the skeleton within the pit, and the age and sex of the skeleton. However, few skeletons were assigned ages, and even fewer were sexed, perhaps because of the generally poor preservation of most Mimbres skeletons. Nesbitt excavated 90 burials during the 1930 season. Of these, 69, or 77 percent, had grave goods, a percentage that is similar to the 79 percent of Mattocks site Classic burials with grave goods that the Mimbres Foundation excavated. The 1930 excavation thus provides data that are comparable to those collected by the Mimbres Foundation and are therefore usable in the burial analysis. Nesbitt excavated 21 infants and children (40 percent; table 7.1) and 32 adults (60 percent) in 1930. These proportions, however, are rather different from those of the Mimbres Foundation, which recovered 42 infants and children (55 percent) and 34 adults (45 percent) from Classic period contexts (table 7.2). The low proportion of infants and children to adults may be the result of excavation bias, in which smaller skeletal remains were unrecorded. Bone preservation is poor in the Mimbres region, and this may have been a factor. Although at least five of the burials that Nesbitt uncovered were extramural (those east of Room 43; appendix 17), we do not know how many other extramural burials Nesbitt might have excavated. At least two of Nesbitt’s burials were intrusive in the fill above the structure floor (appendix 17; Room 45). Table 7.3 presents the minimum number of burials per room excavated by Nesbitt for all three of his excavation seasons (appendices 11, 17, and 19). Of course, this table presents data only for burials that have extant room associations, and not every burial from each room may be listed. The average number of burials per room with burials excavated by Nesbitt is 4.3, while the average number of burials per room with burials

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Table 7.1.  Nesbitt’s 1930 Burials by Age. Age

Number

Infant, 0–2 years*

14

Child, 2–8 years*

5

Child or Infant

2

Adult

32

Unknown

37

* Nesbitt (1931:45).

excavated by the Mimbres Foundation is 5.5. The lower average and mode for Nesbitt’s data suggest that not every burial from these rooms is represented in the extant data presented on table 7.3. Nesbitt’s 1931 excavations, which are not reported in his 1931 volume, included 28 burials with grave goods (appendix 19). However, Nesbitt used 48 burial numbers in 1931, beginning again at burial number 1 as in 1929, and so there may be 20 burials, or 42 percent, that did not have grave goods. This percentage is rather high compared to Mimbres Foundation figures, and it suggests that some burial records for this year are missing. Material from the Logan Museum catalog and collections yields information about burial numbers, associated room numbers, Museum catalog numbers, the type of burial artifact for each interment, and some notes on those artifacts (appendix 19). Unlike the data for the 1929 burials, burial artifacts other than ceramics were recorded on the Museum catalog cards for 1931, but we cannot be sure that all such artifacts were recorded. Although some data from appendices 11 and 12 are repeated, we include all burial artifacts in appendix 19 so that the reader can see all grave goods from each burial

in a single place. No information exists on the skeletal or burial pit data from the 1931 excavations. One unusual burial excavated in the 1931 season is worthy of note. Burial 6 in Room 64 is recorded at the Logan Museum as having five crinoids, a small chert biface with a perforation, and two historic glass beads. Dr. William Billeck (personal communication, 2015) has said the following about the beads: “Glass beads are uncommon in the Southwest. . . . Both are wound beads and postdate 1700. I see these commonly in 1700–1750 contexts and not earlier. Similar beads are present after 1750. The opaque white bead (WIb2) I have seen in the time range of 1700 to 1850, and the ‘clear’ grayish from 1700 to 1775. It is WIb5 (alabaster and translucent).” These type designations are from the standard Kidd and Kidd (1970) typology. William Green (personal communication, 2015), Director of the Logan Museum at Beloit College, examined the hole in the biface and noted the following: “The hole in the little biface does go all the way through. I do not see any evidence of drilling, and so I suspect it was entirely natural, but this is not definitive. Some areas appear to be polished and a small part of the outer margin of the biface that is nearest to the hole appears to be flattened as well as polished. Whether deliberate or not I cannot tell (it might have been a naturally flat surface), but it could have helped prevent severing of any lacing that might have gone through the piece.” The central holes in the crinoids go all the way through, and Green noted that they do not look drilled but that he could not tell whether they were entirely natural or partly enhanced. It is possible that the three kinds of artifacts formed a necklace or a bracelet. While this may have been an historic burial, especially since it did not include a Classic Blackon-white bowl, the date of the beads is quite early for Euro-­Americans in this part of the Southwest. We think it conceivable that these beads, and perhaps the other

Table 7.2.  Mimbres Foundation Burials by Period and Age. Age

Classic

Percent

Fetus

3

4

Newborn, 0–0.5 years

9

11

Infant, 0.6–2 years

6

8

24

30

2

3

Child, 2–3 through 8 years Adolescent Adult, including 18–21

Classic, Late Late, or Late Pit Structure

29

36

2

3

4

2

No Data

4

5

80

Unknown

1

Elderly Total

Late and/or Late Late Pit Structure

4

1

3 2

2

5

257

The Mattocks Site Burial Data Table 7.3.  Minimum Number of Burials per Room Excavated by Nesbitt. Provenience

Minimum Number of Burials

Equivalent Mimbres Foundation Room Block

North Group Room 49

8

East Group Room 11

1

Room 14

1

200

Room 55

5

Room 57

1

Room 58

3

Room 59

9

200

Room 60

1

200

Southeast Group Room 41

7 (B132 deleted)

Room 43

5

Room 44

7

100

Room 45

7 (2 above floor)

100

Room 46

1

100

Room 48

3

southeast of 100

Room 50

10

southeast of 100

Room 53

12

southeast of 100

Room 56

2

100

Room 61

3

100

Isolated

3

East of Room 43 Not on Nesbitt’s 1931 Map (excavated in 1931) Room 63

5 (plus 5 or 3)

Room 64

2

Room 65

2

Room 77

3

Room 78?

1?

artifacts, were accidently given the burial context at the Logan Museum sometime since 1931. Nesbitt’s burial excavations are presently most useful for information on the pottery associated with some burials. Most of these vessels were recorded in the Logan Museum catalog. Nesbitt’s burial data are not generally comparable to those of the Mimbres Foundation, but certain kinds of analysis can be done using the data, as presented in a subsequent section.

The Mimbres Foundation Burial Data During four seasons of excavation at the Mattocks site, the Mimbres Foundation recovered 91 burials. Eighty were from the Classic period, one was from the Late or Late Late Pit Structure period or both, one was from the Late Late Pit Structure period, four were either Late or Late Late Pit Structure or Classic, and the time period of five is unknown (appendix 20). We dated the burials

258

Chapter 7 Table 7.4.  Mimbres Foundation Burials by Period and Sex. Sex

Classic

Male

9

Male?

2

Classic, Late Late or Late Pit Structure

Late and/or Late Late Pit Structure

Unknown

1

1

1

Female

6

1

Female?

5

1

2

No Data

58

1

1

2

Total

80

4

2

5

Table 7.5.  Mimbres Foundation Intramural and Extramural Burials by Period. Period

Extramural

Intramural, Intrusive

Intramural, Below Floor

Intramural, Potted

Total

Classic*

2

6

70

1

79

Classic, Late Late, or Late Pit Structure

0

1

3

0

4

Late and/or Late Late Pit Structure

1

0

1

0

2

Unknown

5

0

0

0

5

Total

8

7

74

1

90

* Burial 80-2-20 not included in Classic total.

either by their association with a dated room, or by pottery styles of a known period. Gruber (2007) reanalyzed some of the Mimbres Foundation skeletal remains now at the Maxwell Museum of Anthropology, University of New Mexico. Her comments on the Mattocks burials that she reanalyzed are in appendices 20 and 22. Appendix 20 presents the burial pit and skeletal data for the Mimbres Foundation burials, including burial provenience, location of the burial (intramural, extramural), burial pit dimensions, the lowest elevation of the pit, pit fill, matrix, covering, and date. In terms of the skeleton, the appendix details the top bone elevation, the skeleton position, the orientation of the vertebrae, the cranium direction, and the skeleton age and sex. As noted earlier, the Mimbres Foundation recovered more Classic period subadults than adults (table 7.2). Table 7.4 presents the Mimbres Foundation burials by time period and sex, but most of the skeletons were so poorly preserved that the sex could not be determined. The great majority of the Mimbres Foundation burials (74) were interred below the floors of structures, although seven burials were intrusive into structure fill, eight were extramural, and one burial within a room was so potted that its association was not certain (table 7.5). One burial (80-2-20) was not counted because it superimposed a pit structure wall, and its context could not be classified. We do not know the proportion of extramural burials,

because we did not strip large areas outside structures. At the Galaz site, where early investigators did much exterior excavation, at least 25 percent of all burials were extramural (Anyon and LeBlanc 1984:174). Table 7.6 shows the number of intramural, sub-floor burials (individuals) per room and per room block at the Mattocks site. Some of these rooms were partially or completely pothunted or had been excavated by Nesbitt’s team, and so these numbers do not necessarily represent the total burials that the structures originally contained. Of the rooms with burials, there was an average of 5.5 burials per room. Because the sex of so few burials could be verified, we could not determine whether there were burial clusters of the same sex, although there were possible burial clusters for people of the same approximate age (appendix 20). Using only the contexts or structures that had more than five burials, all seven of the extramural burials were adults, as were all but two of the seven burials in the fill of Unit 80. Since our exterior excavations were so limited, excavation bias may account for the presence of adult extramural burials only. The same is true of burials in the fill of pit structures like Unit 80 in that we excavated relatively few pit structures, and the presence of mostly adults intrusive into Unit 80 may reflect an excavation bias. Both of these possible patterns could be examined with further excavations, or in the case of intrusive burials, perhaps using data from previous projects.

259

The Mattocks Site Burial Data Table 7.6.  Mimbres Foundation Intramural Below Floor Burials (Individuals) per Room Block. 100s Room Block Room Number

Number of Burials

200s Room Block Room Number

Number of Burials

300s Room Block Room Number

Number of Burials

0

233

2

410

6

109

0

286a

1

423

0

111

0

286b

3

425

0

112

0

426

113

0

427

?

114

7

431

10

115a

5

433

6

115b

1

435

16

116

3

438

9

126

2?

127

1? Total = 2 Classic

1 Late and/or Late Late Pit Structure

4 Classic, Late Late, or Late Pit Structure

In terms of burials below the floors of structures, most rooms had more or less equal numbers of subadults and adults. Unit 435, however, had 10 children and 5 adults; this room also had the highest proportion of burials with multiple ceramic vessels, a point that we will discuss later in this chapter. Table 7.7 shows the number of individuals per burial by period. The great majority of burials contained only one individual. Only Classic period burials had more than one skeleton in this sample, but this may be due to the small number of pre-Classic burials. Children were as likely to be associated with other children in the multiple burials as they were with adults (table 7.8). No data are available on the sex of the adults in the multiple burials. Appendix 21 provides information about the artifacts, including ceramics, associated with the Mattocks site burials that the Mimbres Foundation excavated. Although some data from appendices 13 and 14 are repeated, we include all burial artifacts in appendix 21 so that the reader can see all grave goods from each burial in a single place. This appendix lists the artifact provenience, the number assigned to the artifact, the type of artifact, the number of that type with the burial, the artifact condition, the artifact location, and the position of any whole vessels within the burial. Twenty-one percent or 17 of 80 individual Classic burials had no associated artifacts. There are too few burials known to be from other time periods to analyze.

1

Number of Burials

106

Total = 18 Classic

325

400s Room Block Room Number

Total = 1 Classic

3 (including Unit 441)

Total = 50 Classic

Table 7.7.  Individuals per Mimbres Foundation Burial Pit by Period. Period

Classic

One Two Three

72

Classic, Late Late, or Late Pit Structure

4

Late and/or Late Late Pit Structure

2

Unknown

5

6

Four Five

0

1

1

Table 7.8.  Age of Individuals in Mimbres Foundation Multiple Burials. Age of Individuals

Number of Burials

Fetus, Child

1

Newborn, Adult

1

Infant, Adult

1

Child, Child

2

Child, Adult

1

Four Children

1

Fetus, Two Newborns, Child, Adult

1

260

Chapter 7

Interpretation of Mattocks Site Burials Gilman (1989, 1990) has previously argued that the Mimbres Valley data, including information on the spatial organization of pottery production, the distribution of ceramic vessels over the landscape, the possibility of full-time pottery painters, population estimates per site, and burial data, contain no evidence of hierarchical suprahousehold organization or full-time craft specialists. For her burial analyses, which focused specifically on the Mattocks site, she framed her investigations on the suggestions by Saxe (1970) and Braun (1979), who argued that vertical social distinctions can be separated from wealth distinctions by qualitative differences in burial goods. That is, social roles that function vertically in a group can be distinguished by certain emblems of office in the highest of the vertical distinctions. The elite are set apart from the rest by badges or emblems that all members of the society recognize. While the actual form of these emblems varies from group to group, their distinctive quality, in terms of exotic materials, high labor input, and visual attraction should make them recognizable, even in an archaeological context. Most of the following analyses are based on Gilman (1990). Mimbres burials contain several kinds of items, including pottery, ground stone, jewelry made from shell, turquoise and stone, and very rarely projectile points, other chipped stone artifacts, copper bells, or worked bone artifacts (appendices 11, 18, 19, and 21). Only the shell from the Gulf of California, the copper bells from the west coast of Mexico (Vargas 1995), and possibly the turquoise jewelry were made from nonlocal materials. No manufacturing debris exists to suggest that any of these items were made at Classic sites. None of the ornaments, however, would have required much labor to manufacture, and none was large enough to have been visually distinctive as expected of elite insignia. Virtually all of the pottery recovered from Mimbres sites appears to have been made in the Mimbres region (see chapter 6), and so one cannot argue that these pots came from exotic sources and were therefore elite goods. Since the labor input for each vessel seems to have been about the same, the number of pots per burial may symbolize wealth rather than social stratification. Thus, the pottery, like the turquoise, shell, and copper artifacts, does not suggest vertical differentiation in Mimbres social organization. Bray (1982:146– 147), however, has noted that higher proportions of finely painted Classic bowls than poorly executed bowls showed no signs of use-wear, and she suggested that the former may have been status items. The majority of even the well-executed vessels, however, showed use-wear. Given the apparent lack of vertical distinctions in Classic period Mimbres society, Gilman (1989, 1990) then argued that the burial materials should be an ideal data set for examining non-hereditary, horizontal social distinctions. These distinctions might be based on age and

sex roles, achieved wealth, or social responsibilities. Many archaeologists have used age and sex roles as ways in which egalitarian societies are divided. In this kind of analysis, one would expect that certain age or sex categories would be associated with specific kinds of grave goods (Roths­ child 1979, 1983), or with different burial treatments. For example, older adult males might be consistently buried with specific kinds of artifact that would denote the achievement of reaching old age and gaining the knowledge associated with elderly men. These artifacts should not be associated with other age or sex groups. Because the sex of so few burials, either from Nesbitt’s or the Mimbres Foundation excavations, could be determined, this portion of the burial analysis focuses on the association of specific kinds of artifacts by age group. Some age groups might have been buried with pottery or nonceramic artifacts, while others might not. Both Nesbitt’s (table 7.9) and the Mimbres Foundation data (table 7.10) show that proportionally more infants and children were buried without pottery than adults. Forty-three percent of Nesbitt’s subadults and 33 percent of the Mimbres Foundation subadults had no pottery, compared to 25 percent and 18 percent of the adults, respectively. The fact that most infants and children were associated with pottery, however, refutes the premise that the presence of pottery in a burial denotes a particular age set. The Mattocks data do not show that burials with multiple vessels were likely to be subadults, as Anyon and LeBlanc (1984:175) have suggested for the Galaz site. Pottery was common in Mimbres burials (73 percent of the burials excavated by the Mimbres Foundation at the Mattocks site, for example, had ceramics), and so age differences might instead have been denoted by nonceramic artifacts. Such artifacts in Classic period burials at the Mattocks site were relatively rare (tables 7.11 and 7.12), but, as with ceramics, there are no clear associations of specific nonceramic artifacts with any given age set. The Mimbres Foundation data (table 7.12) demonstrate that each category of nonceramic artifacts occurred in both subadult and adult burials. This pattern is again unlike that at the Galaz site, where Classic period subadult burials had more shell and turquoise jewelry than did those of adults (Anyon and LeBlanc 1984:179). A different means of determining age set distinctions other than associated grave goods might be the orientation of the grave, or of the body within the grave. Table 7.13 shows the cranium orientation (and so the lengthwise position of the burial pit) by age for Classic period burials excavated by the Mimbres Foundation. Because cranium orientation could not be determined for half of the subadult burials, any comparison between subadult and adult cranial orientations is not very useful. However, adult burials were oriented in all four cardinal directions, and some in intermediate directions, and subadult burials virtually mirrored that pattern.

261

The Mattocks Site Burial Data Table 7.9.  Numbers of Burial Vessels per Age Group (Nesbitt 1930). Fifteen percent have more than one vessel. Percentages of individuals in each age group with (columns labeled “One” through “Unknown Number”) or without (column labeled “None”) burial vessels are provided in parentheses. Percentage calculated by dividing the number of individuals per category of burial vessels by the total number of individuals per age group. Age

None

One

Two

Infant

6 (43%)

7 (50%)

1 (7%)

Child

2 (40%)

2 (40%)

1 (20%)

Child or Infant

1 (50%)

Adult

8 (25%)

17 (53%)

5 (16%)

Unknown Age

10 (27%)

15 (40%)

4 (11%)

Total

27

41

Three

Four

1 (3%)

1 (3%)

Unknown Number

1 (50%)

12

8 (22%) 1

1

8

Table 7.10.  Number of Classic Burial Vessels per Age Group, Mimbres Foundation. Fifteen percent have more than one vessel. Percentages of individuals in each age group with (columns labeled “One” through “Three”) or without (column labeled “None”) burial vessels are provided in parentheses. Percentage calculated by dividing the number of individuals per category of burial vessels by the total number of individuals per age group. Age

None

One

Two

5 (56%)

1 (11%) 1 (17%)

Fetus

3 (100%)

Newborn

3 (33%)

Infant

1 (17%)

4 (67%)

Child

7 (29%)

13 (54%)

Adolescent

2 (8%)

2 (8%), one may have four pots

2 (7%)

3 (10%)

2 (100%)

Adult

5 (17%)

19 (66%)

Elderly

1 (33%)

2 (67%)

No Data

2 (50%)

1 (25%)

Total

Three

22

46

The position of the body in a burial pit might differentiate age groups (table 7.14). Almost all burials for which position in the grave could be recorded were flexed (41 of 43 burials, or 95 percent), including fully flexed, flexed, knees flexed, partly flexed, and flexed and sitting or on its side. Only two burials, one of a fetus and one of an infant, were respectively extended or sitting. Both adults and subadults were buried on either their right or left sides, or on their backs. The position of almost half of the burials (37 of 80, or 46 percent) could not be determined. It is noteworthy that the sitting (sitting or flexed sitting or on its side) category contained only infants under the age of two, as is the fact that only one of the nine partly flexed burials was of an adult. Smaller body sizes may have allowed for burials that were less flexed or sitting.

1 (25%) 7

5

None of these categories—grave goods, burial orientation, or burial position—reveals patterns to suggest that different age sets in Classic period society were mirrored in burials. The fact that many graves contained artifacts, however, implies that the artifacts themselves had meaning to the people involved in the burial ceremonies. Perhaps the quantitative distinctions, especially in the presence and number of pots or other artifacts placed with a burial, are indicative of the relative wealth of the household whose member was interred. The genetic relationships of Mattocks site skeletal material have not been measured, but people, regardless of age, whose burials contained more than one vessel and who were buried near one other could be interpreted as being from the same, relatively wealthy, social unit.

262

Chapter 7 Table 7.11.  Burials with Non-ceramic Artifacts by Age Group (Nesbitt 1930). Age

Ground Stone

Infant

1

Child

1

Shell

Turquoise

Hoe

Bone Point

Copper Bell

Hammerstone

1

Child or Infant

1

Adult

1

Unknown Age

1

Total

4

2

1

2

3

2

2

1

2

6

3

2

1

1

Table 7.12.  Classic Burials with Non-ceramic Artifacts by Age Group, Mimbres Foundation. Percentages of individuals in each age group with non-ceramic artifacts are provided in parentheses. Percentage calculated by dividing number of each artifact type by number of individuals per age group (table 7.2). Age

Ground Stone

Fetus Newborn

Shell

Turquoise

Miscellaneous, non-ceramic

1 (33%) 1 (11%)

1 (11%)

Infant Child Adolescent

1 (50%)

Adult

3 (10%)

2 (8%)

5 (21%)

1 (4%)

3 (10%)

3* (10%)

3* (10%)

Elderly No Data Total

1 (25%) 5

6

9

5

* Two artifact types in one burial.

Many of the burials with multiple vessels were in Unit 435, in the 400s room block (appendix 21). Five of the 15 burials in this room had more than one vessel, a larger proportion than other rooms where burials had multiple vessels. Of the five burials, three were of children, one was an of adult, and one could not be identified. As throughout the site, multiple vessels were associated with both adults and subadults in Unit 435. This room might have been the burial space for a relatively wealthy social group, but if that was the case, then it is curious that the adjoining Units 433 and 438, which also had large numbers of burials and which were probably connected with Unit 435 in terms of social group use, did not also have high proportions of burials with multiple vessels. None of the rooms that Nesbitt excavated in 1930 had the Unit 435 pattern of burials and goods (appendix 18).

Another potential measure of wealth would be the presence of nonceramic artifacts, but even those Mattocks site burials with nonceramic artifacts had few of them (appendices 18, 19, and 21). However, six of the 13 burials with artifacts in the 100s room block had non-ceramic grave goods, while only 11 of 40 burials with artifacts in the 400s room block had some. However, six of the 14 burials with artifacts in Unit 435 had nonceramic grave goods, a much higher proportion than any other room at the Mattocks site. This parallels the high proportion of burials with multiple vessels in that room and suggests that the burial remains in this room were quantitatively and qualitatively different than those in other rooms excavated by the Mimbres Foundation. Again, none of Nesbitt’s rooms excavated in 1930 had high proportions of burials with non-ceramic grave goods (appendix 18).

5 (6%)

19%

Total

Galaz Site*

5 (6%)

1

1

1

32%

24 (30%)

13

1

8

1

1

Fetus

Total

No Data

Elderly 3

1

Adult, includes 18–21 years

3

1

1

1 2

Adolescent, 8–18 years

On Left Side

1

1

On Right Side

Child, 2–8 years

Infant, 0.6–2 years

Newborn, 0–0.5 years

On Back 5

4

1

Flexed

5

5

On Left Side

Fully Flexed

1

1

On Right Side

Age

Flexed

1 (1%)

1

Table 7.14.  Positions of Mimbres Foundation Classic Burials in Pits.

* Galaz = Minnesota excavation burials (Anyon and LeBlanc 1984:180).

1

1

Elderly

3

No Data

Adult

Adolescent

Child

Infant

1 1

1

1

Knees Flexed 1

1

Knees Flexed

17%

10 (13%)

1

2

1

4

1

1

2

1

1

On Left Side

Fetus

2

1

1

On Right Side

Newborn

On Back

0

Southwest

7

6

1

1

1

Partly Flexed

South

On Back

Southeast

2 (3%)

6 (7%)

Partly Flexed

17%

2

2

1

1

Northwest

4

2

West

On Left Side

East

2

2

On Right Side

Northeast

4

2

1

1

On Back

North

1

1

Sitting

Age

Sitting

27 (34%)

2

4

11

3

6

1

No Data

1

1

Extended; Right Side or on Stomach

Table 7.13.  Mimbres Foundation Classic Period Burial Cranium Orientation by Age.

1

1

Flexed; Sitting or on Side 37

5

6

17

2

6

1

No Data

716

80

4

3

29

2

24

6

9

3

Total

264

Chapter 7

Aside from the relatively rich burials in Unit 435, several individual burials were also rich in the number and diversity of the accompanying artifacts. Nesbitt excavated two such burials in widely separated rooms during his 1930 season. Burial 137, in the 100s room block (appendix 18), contained an incomplete bowl, 595 shell and stone beads, two turquoise pendants, and a greenstone bird fetish. Burial 152 in Nesbitt’s North Group (appendix 18) had a bowl, three shell bracelets, two turquoise pendants, a bone awl, and a copper bell. In the 100s room block, the burial in 114-4-5 (appendix 21) was accompanied by several nonceramic and unusual artifacts, including a fossil brachiopod, a shell pendant fragment, a turquoise pendant, 18 turquoise beads, and a pillowstone. Unit 114, the room in which this burial had been placed, was partly pothunted, and because evidence of pothunting is often difficult to detect in Mimbres rooms, pothunters may have disturbed some of the burial and removed a bowl. If the burial lacked a bowl, then it would be unique at the site in having no ceramics but such a variety of other grave goods. There were no similar burials in Nesbitt’s 1930 or 1931 excavations (appendices 18 and 19). Recently, Gilman (2006) has reconsidered the Mattocks site burial data to see whether some individuals or room blocks, each of which was a household, within this egalitarian society were trying to out-compete others. She found no evidence for this. Instead, she noted that each room block had at least one rich burial and that rare and exotic non-burial goods were not concentrated in only one or two room blocks. Rich burials did not denote specialists, since some children as well as adults had such burials. Gilman (2006:70–81) suggested that perhaps the rich burials were people who had important or specific roles within households, either those that they had already filled, or that they would have filled had they lived to adulthood.

Mattocks Site and Mimbres Valley Classic Period Burials Burials from three excavated Classic sites with appropriate data form a useful comparison with the Mattocks site burial data. This analysis is based on Gilman (1990:464– 466), but updated with more recent information. Nesbitt’s 1930 material and the Mimbres Foundation burial data are examined both separately and together and then compared with material from the NAN Ranch site excavations (Shafer 1987, 2003; Shafer and Taylor 1986) and with earlier excavations at the Galaz site (by the University of Minnesota; Anyon and LeBlanc 1984) and the Cameron Creek site (Bradfield 1931). The proportion of Classic burials with no grave goods (table 7.15) was considerably higher at the NAN Ranch site than at either excavation at the Mattocks site, even though both are large pueblo sites that contained at least 100 rooms. Lee (2005) noted that Mattocks and NAN

Ranch sites also differ in that naturalistic bowls were more frequently buried with children than with adults at the Mattocks site, while children and adults were equally likely to have naturalistic bowls at the NAN Ranch site. Neither the Galaz nor the Cameron Creek sites have comparable data available, and so it remains speculative whether people at sites in the north (Mattocks) and south (NAN Ranch) parts of the valley had different burial practices, or whether such practices varied on a site-by-site basis. The proportion of Classic burials with whole vessels (table 7.15) was highest at the Mattocks site as compared with other sites. In terms of burials with more than one vessel, the Mattocks and Galaz sites had similar percentages, while the NAN Ranch site had a lower proportion. NAN Ranch also had a lower percentage of burials with pottery but no jewelry than the Mattocks site. An examination of ceramic burial goods thus shows that the NAN Ranch site had a lower proportion of burials with whole vessels, regardless of how this is measured, and of burials with grave goods than the Mattocks site. Compared with the Mattocks site, however, NAN Ranch had a higher proportion of burials with jewelry but no pottery (table 7.15). When the presence of jewelry and pottery are examined together, NAN Ranch had about the same proportion as Mattocks. The differences between the two sites suggest that there might be variation among other Classic sites, perhaps reflecting the social units at each site. Alternatively, intersite burial patterns may reflect site location in the valley. There is also variation within Classic period Mimbres Valley sites in the number of vessels per burial and per burial with pottery (table 7.16). When the total number of burial vessels is divided by the total number of Classic burials from the site, the Galaz site had the most vessels per burial (0.98) and the NAN Ranch site the fewest (0.79). The NAN Ranch figure reflects the comparatively fewer ceramic grave goods at that site compared to other sites examined. However, when the total number of burial vessels is divided by the number of burials with pottery, the resulting figures for the NAN Ranch and the Mattocks sites are similar (table 7.16). The figures for the Galaz site are greater, showing that Galaz burials had more vessels per burial than either of the other two sites. Creel and Anyon (2003; Creel 2006a:42–43) and Powell-­­Martí and James (2006:169–170) have suggested that the Galaz site at the north end and the Old Town site at the south end were the two most important Classic period sites in the Mimbres Valley in terms of ceremonial precincts containing communal pit structures with sipapus, floor grooves, subfloor burials, and relatively high densities of unusual artifacts. Ritual leaders may have used these precincts to perform ceremonies that were important to people beyond just the Galaz and Old Town sites. Both sites also apparently had religious specialists, denoted by cremations and special burials. The social importance of the Galaz site could account for the greater proportions

265

Conclusions

With More Than One Vessel

With Pottery; No Jewelry

With Jewelry; No Pottery

With Other Artifacts; No Jewelry or Pottery

With Artifacts, Type Unknown

23%

61%**

15%

58%

1%

7%

1%

10%

80

21%

73%

15%

59%

3%

14%

4%

0%

Mattocks, Nesbitt and Mimbres Foundation, Total

170

22%

66%

15%

58%

2%

10%

2%

5%

118 [167]

35%

58% [55%]

9% [11%]

46%

6%

12%

1%

0%

Galaz (Anyon and LeBlanc 1984: table 11.2)

447

?

57%

16%

?

?

?

?

?

Cameron Creek, All Periods (Bradfield 1931)

475

?

52%

?

?

?

?

?

?

NAN Ranch (Shafer 1987:27–28, [2003:150]; Shafer and Taylor 1986)

With Pottery and Jewelry

With Pottery*

90

Mattocks, Mimbres Foundation

Total Burials

Mattocks, Nesbitt (1930)

Site

With No Burial Goods

Table 7.15.  Mimbres Valley Classic Period Grave Goods Analysis.

* Whole vessels only. ** Eight burials were not included in this calculation because it is not known whether these vessels were present. The figure would be 70 percent if the vessels were present.

Table 7.16.  Mimbres Valley Classic Period Vessels per Burial. Site

Total Burial Vessels

Vessels per Burial*

Vessels per Burial with Pottery

Mattocks, Nesbitt (1930)

72

0.8

1.3

Mattocks, Mimbres Foundation

75

0.94

1.3

Mattocks, Nesbitt and Mimbres Foundation Total

147

0.86

1.3

NAN Ranch (Shafer 2003:150)

132

0.79

1.4

Galaz (Anyon and LeBlanc 1984:table 11.2)

440

0.98

1.7

* Total Classic burials.

of burials with pottery, although there is a much larger sample of burials from the Galaz site than from the others examined here.

Conclusions We suggest that burial populations that show little or no vertical differentiation, such as those in the Mimbres Valley, might make ideal case studies for the examination of subtle horizontal social differentiation. The usual

expectations for groups without hierarchies are that burial distinctions are likely to occur along age and sex lines. That is, social identity is based on a person’s age and sex, and the grave goods associated with a person could reflect that individual’s age and sex. Therefore, different kinds of grave goods could accompany various age and sex sets. Mimbres burial analyses, including the one presented here based on Mattocks site data, all suggest a fairly consistent picture of Mimbres society. Analysis of the Mattocks site burials from the Nesbitt and Mimbres Foundation excavations shows a lack of clear vertical social

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differentiation. Neither the burial goods nor the positions of skeletons in their burial pits varied according to the age of the individual at death. The sex of most individuals could not be determined because of poor skeletal preservation. Mimbres health and diet studies support the conclusion that most people had the same status in life as in death. This matches the point made in chapter 3 that pueblo groups can be socially egalitarian. We did not note evidence from the Mattocks site for two classes of group membership that characterize some pueblo groups. Some patterns exist, however, in the location of burials with more than one vessel and with nonceramic artifacts at the Mattocks site. Unit 435 contained a higher proportion of these burials than any other room documented. This might be due to social differences, perhaps in terms of wealth, between the people buried in this room versus those buried in other rooms. Other burials that were rich in the number and diversity of grave goods also suggest possible social differences. These burials are

not concentrated into any other room or room block. Instead, each room block had one, or a few, people in that household buried with more than one pottery vessel, with nonceramic goods, or both, perhaps delineating the social roles that person had or would have had. All households at the Mattocks site therefore had at least one person with a “special” social role. Cremations may also indicate the presence of people with special social roles. Comparison with other Classic period sites suggests that burial practices varied, both in the presence of pottery and jewelry as grave goods, and in who was buried with naturalistic bowls, which suggests subtle social differences among the sites. If the Galaz and Old Town sites were indeed the most important sites at the north and south ends of the Mimbres Valley, these intersite differences may also reflect a north to south pattern, or they could instead be site specific. Since the architectural layouts of Classic sites also vary considerably, there is much here for future analyses.

CHAPTER 8

Mattocks Site Unusual Artifacts

Artifacts that occur in small numbers present both opportunities and difficulties. The fact that they represent different activities and independent styles from common items like ceramics should generate independent lines of evidence for research questions. Conversely, the small numbers of some artifact types from any one field project makes studying them difficult. When we began our studies of unusual artifacts many years ago, there was little comparative material from the Mimbres region because earlier archaeologists had been so selective in what they had retained, and many small artifacts were not collected because of a lack of screening. Comparisons were inherently biased and the ability to quantify almost nonexistent. However, in the intervening years, enough new work has been undertaken that cross-project studies are now more likely to be fruitful. Thus, we feel that, in this chapter, a compromise in reporting and analysis is in order. We make some attempts to analyze and compare materials, but we suggest that a much better job can be done with a detailed, comparative study of all extant examples, as for example in de Quevedo’s (2004) recent study of Mimbres palettes.

Palettes The Mimbres Foundation recovered one complete palette and nine fragments from the Mattocks site (appendix 23; figure 8.1). Six of these dated to the Classic period, while the other four could have dated either to the Late or Late Late Pit Structure or the Classic periods. Most of the palettes, including the complete one, could have been in fill contexts, as if they had been discarded, but many could also have been in or on roof fall or floor. One fragment (426-3F-19PH/4) was in the fill of a ramada posthole. Although all of the Mimbres Foundation palettes were made of stone, Paul Nesbitt (1931:89–91) reported a ceramic artifact from Room 43 that looks much like a palette. It was about 4.5 by 3.25 inches (11.5 by 8.25 cm) with a depression on one flat side surrounded by a raised border. There were four parallel lines of small holes in the border, and the clay was a highly polished brown.

De Quevedo (2004) analyzed the Mimbres Foundation palettes, including some of those from the Mattocks site (appendix 23). One of her goals was to compare Mimbres palettes with those from the Hohokam region to the west, where palettes were far more common. Her research dispelled several notions about Mimbres palettes, including that they were not present in the Classic period, that they represented Hohokam trade items, and that they were mostly in burials. De Quevedo argued that Mimbres palettes were made from local materials and were used differently than those in the Hohokam region. Compared to the Hohokam region, Mimbres palettes were rare, but de Quevedo (2004:39–41; see also Anyon and LeBlanc 1984:269) found that Mimbres palettes dated to both the pre-Classic and Classic periods, suggesting that, even though ties were not as strong between the Mimbres and Hohokam regions during the Classic, people in the Mimbres region continued to use palettes. De Quevedo (2004:44) also determined that all of the raw materials from which people made Mimbres palettes were available in the region. The palettes were thus probably not imported from the Hohokam region but were instead produced locally. She noted that relatively few Mimbres palettes were in burials, a contrast with Hohokam palettes. Mimbres palettes also differed from Hohokam palettes in that the former had much simpler decorations (de Quevedo 2004:72–73). More than half of the Mimbres palettes had borders, most of those borders were separated from the faces of the palettes by incised lines, and slightly more than half of the palettes had notches around the outer edges. Although some other Mimbres palettes had additional ornamentation, none of the Mattocks palettes that de Quevedo analyzed had knobs or scallops, or additional decoration such as border designs, pedestal feet, or effigy forms, and only 433-4R-2/39 had pigment on a surface. Creel and Anyon (2003:70–72) have suggested that palettes were among the dedicatory items that were placed in the floors or roof adobe, generally above the central floor features, of great kivas. Such dedicatory items were usually deliberately broken before being placed in the building fabric. Given the fragmentary nature of all but one of the Mattocks site palettes and given their deposition in

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Chapter 8

Figure 8.1.  Mattocks site palettes.

possible roof fall and floor contexts of habitation rooms and ramadas, we wonder if palette fragments at the Mattocks site were dedicatory objects placed during the construction of ordinary rooms and work places.

Bone Tools Forty-seven Mattocks site bone artifacts were worked or used enough to be included in this analysis (appendix 24; figures 8.2 and 8.3). Susan Sapone began a detailed study

of the Mimbres Foundation bone tools, including those from the Mattocks site, and we thank her for her efforts. Of the 35 awls and punches for which we have length measurements, only 13 were whole. Most of the bone tools in this collection therefore were probably discards. We have defined the sharp-tipped items as awls and the blunter ones as punches. The vast majority (41 or 87 percent) of the Mattocks site bone artifacts were in one or the other of these categories. All of the awls or punches were made from artiodactyl or other large mammal bones where that could be determined. Sapone felt

Figure 8.2.  Mattocks site bone awls and punches.

Figure 8.3.  Mattocks site bone awls, punches, and modified antlers.

Pipes that 410-1-6/5 was used for weaving, based on wear analysis. None of the awls or punches had decoratively carved distal ends, as was sometimes the case for hair pins. Some examples are known from other Mimbres sites, such as Swarts (Cosgrove and Cosgrove 1932:55–57), but they were rare. The remaining bone tools were four modified antlers (9 percent of the assemblage), a gaming piece (2 percent), and a possible spatulate tool (2 percent). The antlers often had smoothed and blunted tips, with regularly spaced incisions perpendicular to the length of the antler shaft. There were several bone tool associations that may have represented tool kits, although the fact that many were fragmentary suggests that they did not. Two complete awls were in the roof fall of Unit 111. In Unit 121, one complete and two incomplete awls were in the fill above floor, and an incomplete punch was on the floor. Three awls in Unit 410 were in roof fall or fill above floor context, and two of these were fragmentary.

Pipes The Mimbres Foundation recovered one complete and 53 fragmentary pipes, or fragments that were probably pipes, from the Mattocks site (appendix 25; figures 8.4 and 8.5), of which 52 were ceramic, and two were stone. The one complete pipe was tubular and of stone, and it was one of the few that might date to the pre-Classic period, in this case the Early Pit Structure period. Nesbitt (1931:82–84) also recovered one complete tubular stone pipe and two fragmentary clay pipes from the site, this low figure probably being due to a lack of screening. The Mattocks site excavations produced ceramic conical pipes, stone tubular pipes, and ceramic pipes for which the shape could not be determined. Maria Mercer performed much of the initial Mimbres Foundation pipe analysis and report. Her definitions and descriptions of pipes followed Switzer’s (1969:16–18) classification of southwestern pipe forms, which she modified to accommodate the specific forms present in the Mimbres Valley. Anyon and LeBlanc (1984:288) discussed these definitions. The Mattocks site pipes comprised 54 of 89 examples (61 percent; table 8.1) that the Mimbres Foundation recovered. Conical pipes have walls that taper from the lip to the mouthpiece (figures 8.4B-D and 8.5), they may be oval or round in cross section, and they are usually ceramic. Twelve of the 26 (46 percent) ceramic pipes for which rim shape could be determined had direct rims, while seven (27 percent) had everted rims, and seven (27 percent) had inverted rims. All three of the ceramic pipes that could have dated to the Late and Late Late Pit Structure periods had inverted rims. The diameter of five complete mouth pieces ranged from 0.7 cm to 1.12 cm. Nineteen (38

271

percent) of the 50 conical ceramic pipes were burnished, with the degree of burnishing varying from a partial or slightly smooth surface to one that was uniformly smooth. Other than the burnishing and two pipes with scoring or incisions (appendix 25), there were no decorations. Instead of tapering, tubular pipe walls are straight throughout the whole of their length (figure 8.4A; Nesbitt 1931:83), and they are either circular or oval in cross section. The Mimbres Foundation excavated only two such pipes from the Mattocks site (appendix 25), and Nesbitt (1931:82–84; see this citation for a complete description) excavated one. Both Mimbres Foundation tubular pipes were made from tuff, both had direct rims, and one was fragmentary while the other was whole. Nesbitt’s pipe was complete and made of hard limestone. Stone pipes were far more common than clay pipes in earlier Mimbres excavations compared with Mimbres Foundation excavations, probably because the former lacked screening and saw broken clay pipes as sherds. It is clear from our excavations that conical pipes were almost always ceramic and fragmentary when uncovered. Tubular pipes were usually stone. They were more carefully made and would have required more work, while the conical clay pipes seemed to be more expediently made. Stone pipes were sometimes painted (Anyon and LeBlanc 1984:288; Cosgrove 1947:140; Cosgrove and Cosgrove 1932:50–51). While the one complete Mattocks site tubular stone pipe was 4.2 cm long, 10 tubular stone pipes from the Galaz site averaged 15 cm in length (table 8.1; Anyon and LeBlanc 1984:284, 288). Five stone pipes from the Galaz site were unfinished (Anyon and LeBlanc 1984:288) There was only a 0.2 cm difference in mouth piece diameter between the two pipe types at the Mattocks site, but there was a much larger difference among those from the Galaz site, perhaps because of the generally larger tubular pipes there (table 8.1). Conical pipes may not always have been smoked by placing the smaller end in the mouth. The Hopi are reported to place the larger end in the mouth, blowing smoke through the smaller end (McGuire 1899). Both kinds of pipes may have been “cloud blowers,” because a person can create a cloud of smoke by blowing out through the pipe. Although there was no evidence of burned tobacco on any of these pipes, burned material was present in tubular pipes and cane cigarettes from rock shelter sites in southwestern New Mexico (Cosgrove 1947:121–122, 140). Four of the Mattocks site pipes dated to either the pre-Classic or the Classic period (appendix 25), while the rest dated to the Classic period, a pattern that is supported by the other Mimbres Foundation excavations (table 8.2). We recovered one tubular stone pipe from the McAnally site (LA12110) dating to the Early Pit Structure period. Eighteen percent (16 of 91 examples) of the Mimbres Foundation pipes were from pre-Classic or mixed pre-Classic and Classic contexts (table 8.2). Although this

Figure 8.4.  Mattocks site pipes.

Pipes

273

Figure 8.5.  Mattocks site pipes.

is relatively low compared to the number from the Classic period, we note that at least 25 ceramic pipes were from either the Late or Late Late Pit Structure period or both at the Wind Mountain site, to the west in the Gila River drainage (Woosley and McIntyre 1996:248–249). At least 83 percent of the pipes were from Classic contexts. Pipes were absent in the subsequent Black Mountain phase excavations, perhaps due to the small sample sizes from these sites, but there was one tubular stone pipe, possibly a fragment, in a Cliff phase context at the Janss site (LA12077). Nine Mattocks site pipes were recovered from extramural fill, 13 were from pothunted deposits, and the rest

were from rooms (appendix 25). Within the latter, pipes were in all contexts from fill and trash, through roof fall and fill above floor to floor pits. The highest number from any of these contexts were 12 pipes in fill and trash above roof fall. Any or all of these contexts could have contained dedicatory or room decommissioning artifacts, but this was not a research question when we undertook our excavations, and so we did not consider it. The two stone pipes were in roof fall or in situ fill above floor. Pipes were sometimes recovered from special contexts at other Mimbres sites. For example, three pipes at the Galaz site were in a subfloor cache of stone hoes, and

Table 8.1.  Mimbres Foundation Pipe Attributes. Pipe Characteristics

Mattocks Site

Total Number

Galaz Site

Wheaton-Smith Site

Other Late and Late Late Pit Structure and Classic Sites*

52

24

6

4

2

11

—

—

Pipe Form Tubular Conical

28

8

5

2

No Data

22

5

1

2

50 (19 burnished)

7 (2 burnished)

6 (2 burnished)

4 (2 burnished)

Material Clay Stone

2

14

—

—

Tubular

4.2

15.0

—

—

Conical

4.9

5.6

n.d.

n.d.

Tubular

1.2

0.4

—

—

Conical

0.8

0.9

0.6

0.7

Average Length (cm)

Average Thickness (cm)

Average Rim Diameter (cm) Tubular

3.0

4.6

—

—

Conical

5.3

4.5

3.6

3.5

Average Mouth Piece Diameter (cm) Tubular

n.d.

1.7

—

—

Conical

0.9

0.7

0.9

1.0

* Beauregard (Z:1:27), Montezuma (Z:1:30), and Mitchell (LA12076).

Table 8.2.  Mimbres Foundation Pipe Dates. Site

Early Pit Structure

Late / Late Late Pit Structure

Late / Late Late Pit Structure / Classic

Classic

Cliff Phase, Salado

Unknown

Mattocks

1*

0

3

48

0

2

Galaz

0

6

2

16

0

0

Wheaton-Smith

0

0

1

5

0

0

Other Sites

1

2

0

3

1

0

Total

2

8

6

72

1

2

* Could be Classic.

Shell Artifacts four were on the floor of Great Kiva 42A (Anyon and LeBlanc 1984:289). At the NAN Ranch site, two tubular stone pipes were in the roof fall or on the floor of the very large Room 45 (Burden 2001:150–151; Shafer 2003:80). One of these was deliberately broken and may have been part of a dedicatory offering. There was also a conical stone pipe in an Early or Middle Pit Structure period burial (Shafer 2003:30–31) at the NAN Ranch site. Pipes have also been recovered from rock shelter sites in the Mimbres region (Cosgrove 1947:140–141). In summary, people in the Mimbres Valley may have used three types of artifacts for smoking or cloud blowing—stone tubular pipes, conical ceramic and occasionally stone pipes, and perhaps cane cigarettes although these are known only from rock shelter sites. Pipes were most common in the Classic period. At other sites, some stone pipes were associated with special contexts, but those from the Mattocks site showed no clear associations with specific contexts. The clay pipes appear to be more expediently made than the stone pipes.

Shell Artifacts We recovered 50 marine shell artifacts (appendix 26, figure 8.6) and six artifacts of Anodonta, a freshwater clam, from the Mattocks site. Two unidentified pieces of shell are listed on appendix 29, as are two possibly modern snail shells. Sharon Urban studied the shells from Mimbres Foundation excavations, and the following draws from her report. Cassandra Burns assembled the first draft of appendix 29. The species from which the Mattocks site shell artifacts were made include 34 Glycymeris, six Anodonta, three Olivella, one each of Laevicardium, Conus, and Spondylus, and 10 artifacts that could not be identified beyond being marine shells. The marine shells probably all came from the Gulf of California (Vokes and Gregory 2007:332), while the Anodonta may have been locally available in the Mimbres River. Other Mimbres sites (Anyon and LeBlanc 1984:294–307; Cosgrove and Cosgrove 1932:64–66; Shafer 2003:206–207; Woosley and McIntyre 1996:261–266) had shell artifacts made from such species as Haliotis, Nassarius (formerly called Alectrion), Pecten, Strombus, Pleurotomella, and Turritella, but there was much variation among sites in terms of which kinds of shell they had and how much of them. All of these shell genera are from the Gulf of California except Haliotis, which is from cold water off the California coast (Vokes and Gregory 2007:332). None of them was present in our Mattocks excavations, perhaps because of the small sample size of shell from the site. Shell artifacts came in a number of forms, including 30 bracelet fragments, one whole bracelet, one possible bracelet fragment, 13 beads, two pendants, one pendant fragment, one pendant or tinkler fragment, one zoomor-

275

phic figure, three pieces of worked shell, one piece of unworked shell, one shell fragment, and one unidentified form. Bracelets were by far the most common form of shell ornament, and all were of Glycymeris. The bracelets ranged from 0.2 cm to 1.1 cm wide. Beads were the next most common shell artifacts. Eight circular disc beads were made of an unknown kind of shell, as was an oblong disc bead. The three barrel beads were made of Olivella shells with both the spire and canal ends removed by grinding. A single tubular bead was made of Spondylus. There were four pendants or pendant fragments, each made from a different shell genus. A specimen of Anodonta was zoomorphic and was cut and ground to shape. Two pieces of worked shell were Glycymeris, and two were Anodonta, while one piece of unworked shell was Anodonta. There was also a fragment that was unidentifiable and may not have even been shell. Nesbitt (1931:93–95) excavated 40 complete or almost complete Glycymeris bracelets, including 15 from an infant burial. He also recovered shell beads, both flat discs and flat figure eights. Eight of the latter and 20 of the former composed a necklace associated with an intramural burial. Nesbitt excavated at least two shell rings and at least three zoomorphic shell pendants—one highly polished thunderbird, one lizard, and one unidentifiable form. Of the contexts with shell that could be dated, all were Classic period, except for two that could have been either Late and Late Late Pit Structure or Classic. This likely relates to the paucity of pre-Classic contexts at the Mattocks site rather than any lack of shell during that period. The most common context for Mattocks site shell artifacts was in burials. One burial had three disc beads, while eight other burials had a bracelet fragment, a pendant fragment, a barrel bead, or a disc bead. The shell species were diverse. One of the reasons that there may be relatively few shell artifacts at the Mattocks site is that neither the Mimbres Foundation nor Nesbitt excavated burials that contained strings of shell beads, although such burials were present at other Classic sites (Anyon and LeBlanc 1984:294–307; Cosgrove and Cosgrove 1932:64–66, plates 70–76). Eighteen shell artifacts were in roof fall and the fill above floor contexts, which could indicate they were dedicatory artifacts for their rooms. One oblong disc bead was in a cache with beads of other materials, and one barrel bead was in a hearth. The Mattocks site had far less shell than other Mimbres sites. The Galaz site had more than 7,000 shell artifacts, including more than 6,000 beads, of which at least 900 were bilobed and 400 were Olivella. There were also about 250 complete or almost complete Glycymeris bracelets at Galaz, not counting small fragments that were not collected (Anyon and LeBlanc 1984:294–307). One hundred complete Glycymeris bracelets and more than 125 fragments were recorded at the Swarts site, among other shell artifacts (Cosgrove and Cosgrove 1932:62–64, plates

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Figure 8.6.  Mattocks site shell artifacts.

70–76). At the Wind Mountain site (Woosley and McIntyre 1996:261–266), there were 74 Glycymeris bracelets and fragments and at least 1,192 shell disc beads, although these were generally in pre-Classic contexts. At the NAN Ranch site (Shafer 2003:206–207), the only other Classic site where the excavators conducted the same level of screening as at Mattocks, there were 879 artifacts made from marine shell. The 60 at the Mattocks were only about 15 percent of this number. While more excavation was undertaken at the NAN Ranch site than at the Mattocks site, it was not nearly seven times as extensive. The 41 complete bracelets from the Nesbitt and Mimbres Foundation excavations were also a small number compared to the 225–250 at the Swarts and Galaz sites, and they were

even fewer than the 74 at the Wind Mountain site. The three Olivella artifacts from the Mattocks site were minimal compared to the more than 400 from the Galaz site. These discrepancies may partly be due to sampling, as a few caches or burials containing a lot of shell could greatly change the frequencies. It would nevertheless appear that, for some reason, Mattocks was “out of the loop” regarding the presence and use of shell.

Turquoise, Stone, and Ceramic Jewelry The 103 ornaments that were not made of shell were turquoise, other stone, and ceramics. There were 73 turquoise

Turquoise, Stone, and Ceramic Jewelry

277

Figure 8.7.  Mattocks site figurines and turquoise pendants.

artifacts, 28 stone ones, including two fossils and 11 made of steatite, and two ceramic pieces of jewelry (appendix 27; figure 8.7). The fossils were made into beads, and there were nine steatite beads from one burial, another steatite ring or bead, and a steatite piece that was partly drilled. The two ceramic artifacts included a bead and a possible bracelet fragment. Of the turquoise artifacts, 21 were pendants, one was a possible pendant, 15 were pendants or beads, 34 were beads, and two had forms that could not be determined. One pair of pendants (210-2-2/3g, 210-2-2/3h; figure 8.7C) had been remade from a large pendant. Fifty-six percent (41 of 73) of the turquoise ornaments were from burials, and four of the 12 burials with turquoise had more than one piece. There were 13 turquoise beads, six turquoise pendants, a possible turquoise pendant, and

an oblong disc shell bead in one cache (210-2-2/1-3). The artifacts were in a small, plain jar covered by a Classic Black-on-white flare rim bowl. The cache was two meters west of the west wall of the 200s room block, and it was imbedded in culturally sterile soil (appendix 4.1). One turquoise artifact was from an unknown provenience, two were from the ground surface, and three were from pothunted areas. The remaining eight pieces of turquoise were from various contexts including fill, fill or trash, fill above floor, in situ roof fall, and roof fall and in situ fill above floor. The artifacts in the latter three proveniences could have been dedicatory (Creel and Anyon 2003:70, 75, 78) in that they could have been placed in the roofing materials when the rooms were built. Of the stone jewelry artifacts that were not turquoise, steatite, or fossils, 12 were beads, three were pendants,

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and one was a ring or a bracelet. Unlike turquoise jewelry, no such artifacts made of other stone were present in excavated burials, except for nine steatite beads. There were four stone beads from two different hearths. Some of these stone beads could also have been from dedicatory contexts.

Copper Bells Nesbitt recorded two copper bells from burials at the Mattocks site. One was near the head of Burial 152 in Room 49, which was excavated in 1930 (Nesbitt 1931:28, 90–91), and the other (figure 8.8) was from Burial 6 in Room 64, excavated in 1931. Both of these burials were relatively rich (appendices 18 and 19). Along with the copper bell, the first also had a geometric bowl, three shell bracelets, two turquoise pendants, and a bone awl, and it may have been the burial associated with 47 chipped stone hoes. In a 1984 letter to Gilman, Robert Parker, a student on Nesbitt’s project in 1930 (see the introduction to this book), noted that the copper bell was part of a necklace. The second burial had a geometric flowerpot vessel, a naturalistic bowl, stone beads, and three shell bracelets along with the copper bell. Vargas (1995:17–20) has shown that copper bells in the Southwest were made in the west coast of Mexico.

Other Artifacts Other artifacts are those that are too few to treat separately (appendix 28; figure 8.7), and they are those of stone, wood, or clay that appeared to be worked but for which no shape or function could be determined. We included in this category a well-made black stone owl effigy (figure 8.7A), three ceramic animal effigies, including a fish made on a black-on-white sherd (figure 8.7B) and a second fragment with two back legs and a tail, five polishing stones, two culturally modified pillowstones, a fossil crinoid stem, a stone spindle whorl fragment, a possible stone gaming piece, and two tabular knife fragments.

Raw Materials We recovered many stone items that had clearly been brought to the site for later use (appendix 29). Minerals related to copper comprised 43 percent of these (165 of 380 examples), most of which were chrysocolla with a few pieces of azurite. Together, the copper specimens had a total weight of about 770 grams, and even if one extrapolated this amount to the site as a whole, at most there would have been only a few kilograms of these minerals present. There were 215 (57 percent of 380) non-copper related minerals, the most common of which was muscovite (some 82 pieces), followed by 48 pieces of ochre, 19

Figure 8.8.  Mattocks site copper bell. Photo by William Green.

pieces of steatite, 16 pieces of quartz and quartz crystals, and 15 pieces of chalcedony. Other non-copper artifact materials were in the single digits. The copper minerals and the red and yellow ochres were probably intended to be ground into pigments. Some metates and grinding slabs had traces of such grinding (appendix 8), as did a few sherds. As these materials would have been destroyed when they were ground and used, what we recovered was probably what had been lost or discarded, not what had been used. The frequency and wide distribution across the site and in many different contexts, suggest these minerals were very common. As no one has yet reported such material with any consistency at other sites, it is not easy to determine whether the Mattocks site was in any way exceptional in the amount present. While we have presented these specimens by provenience (appendix 29), we find little evidence of patterns. Many of the materials discussed in this section could have been parts of dedicatory or room closing offerings, and the proveniences could be analyzed for such patterns.

Conclusions From the items discussed here and an analysis of unusual burial artifacts (Gilman 2006) at the Mattocks site, there is little evidence that some parts of the site had more valuable or rare items than others, and the site did not seem to have

Conclusions had the same level of valuable items as Galaz. If, as Creel and Anyon (2003; Creel 2006a:42–43) and Powell-Martí and James (2006:169–170) have proposed, some Mimbres sites, specifically Galaz and Old Town, were more important or controlled more valuable resources than others, Mattocks was apparently not such a site. While it was relatively large, it was not exceptional in terms of artifacts. A question that future research might address is whether the people at various sites had social networks that allowed them to obtain unusual artifacts differentially. For example, the Mattocks site had relatively little shell, and perhaps the people there did not have the social contacts to obtain that material in greater quantity. Alternatively, they may not have needed the shell for ceremonies or other ritual activities. Either scenario suggests that people at the Mattocks site did not have the social or ritual importance that at least some people at other sites seem to have had.

279

The unusual artifacts also provided little evidence for the presence of specialists who might have made such artifacts. While it is likely that the techniques for grinding an ax or drilling a bead needed to be learned and not everyone knew them, none seem to have required the levels of proficiency that full-time production would generate, nor was much artistry represented in any of these items. Based on the skills and levels of effort needed, and the quantities observed, all these classes of materials could have been produced by the occasional efforts of a few people who knew how to make them (axes, beads), or expediently by almost anyone in the community (bone tools, ceramic pipes). Given the lack of raw materials or the presence of artifacts broken during manufacture, it appears that both the shell and turquoise objects were not local products but were imported as finished items from outside the Mimbres region.

CHAPTER 9

The Mattocks Site

The Mattocks site is 1 of 13 pueblos in the Mimbres Valley of more than a hundred rooms. It is also one of the very few such sites that have been excavated using modern archaeological techniques. These excavations have provided researchers with screened samples of artifacts, along with faunal, paleoethnobotanical, and pollen samples and have allowed the creation of a more comprehensive map of the site. There appear to have been quite a few pit structures at the site, and most seem to date to the Classic period and to have been contemporary with the pueblo rooms, rather than dating to the earlier Pit Structure periods. Concomitant with this is the general lack of superposition between Transitional to Classic and Classic period rooms that is common at other large Classic sites. Indeed, there appears to have been very little occupation of the site during the earlier periods, which differs from other Classic sites that saw greater use during the Late Late Pit Structure period. The data and analyses do not support the possibility that the Mattocks was a ritually important site, as were the Galaz and Old Town sites. Although we might think of it as an “ordinary” site, it is different than other large Mimbres pueblos both in its lack of Pit Structure period houses and in the fact that most of the Mattocks pueblo rooms were built and used in the Middle and Late Classic periods. In this chapter, we summarize what we have learned about the Mattocks site from the Mimbres Foundation excavations and from our reanalysis of Nesbitt’s earlier excavations. While the Mattocks site is firmly within the Mimbres tradition, it differs from other large Classic sites in numerous ways, and here we discuss these similarities and differences. We endeavor to place Mattocks within its Mimbres context, and to indicate what we have learned about the people who lived both at the site and in the general Mimbres region.

Dating the Mattocks Site and the Classic Period The circular form of one pit structure (Unit 80b) and the ceramics associated with three others (Units 115b, 213, and 286b) date them to the Early Pit Structure and Late or

Late Late Pit Structure periods, or both, respectively. The Mattocks site, though, has remarkably little Pit Structure period pottery, which supports our contention that relatively few people lived at the site at that time. Although the Mattocks site was where the Mimbres Foundation first defined Transitional Black-on-white pottery as being situated between Boldface and Classic Blackon-white, both stylistically and stratigraphically, there was relatively little of this type at the site, likely because it dates to the Late Late Pit Structure period, and there is little evidence for habitation in that period. Indeed, the transition from a pit structure to a later surface room is only demonstrable in Unit 286 in the 200s room block, because the Unit 286b pit structure is partly superimposed by the Unit 286a Classic room. Early Classic Black-on-white bowls were present in all room blocks at the Mattocks site, but most occupation occurred relatively late in the Classic period, probably after A.D. 1060/1079 during the Middle and Late Classic periods (Shafer and Brewington 1995:20–22). The earliest tree-ring cutting date from the site is A.D. 1079. Also supporting a relatively late date for most of the Classic site occupation is the ceramic seriation analysis, the presence of Hinton projectile points, which were made late in the Classic period, and only one Late or Late Late Pit Structure period point. Further, most of the room hearths were circular, a Late Classic characteristic, rather than the earlier Classic rectangular, slab-lined hearths. This dating underscores the importance of the households who lived in the 200s and maybe the 300s room blocks. These room blocks may have been built first and used longer and were consequently larger and may have contained more burials. The 200s room block had the most Boldface and Transitional Black-on-white sherds, which demonstrates that this household was present at the site before those who built the other room blocks. The superimposed pit structure and surface room (Units 286a and 286b) show that the people who built the latter were aware of the pit structure, and they made the transition at the exact site where they had been living. The great kiva was also associated with the 200s room block and was thus probably built by members of this early household. The proportions of later, non-Mimbres sherds suggest that the

The Transition from Pit Structures to Pueblos

200s and perhaps the 300s room blocks were also inhabited later in time than the others. In terms of the Classic period throughout the Mimbres region, the Mattocks site dating shows that great numbers of people did not use this particular large Classic site through the Pit Structure periods and into the Classic period. This limited use in the Pit Structure periods has implications for the population of the Mimbres region, and it shows that not all large sites had the same trajectory. The fact that at least the Mattocks site was probably built and used after A.D. 1079 to perhaps A.D. 1130, a period of about 50 years, suggests rapid building and use over just two or three generations.

Nature of the Pit Structure Occupation Although the Mattocks site had many fewer pit structures than other known Classic sites, and although most of those pit structures dated to the Classic period, also unlike other Classic sites, people did live there during the Pit Structure periods. That use of the site was discontinuous, however. As noted above, there was one Early Pit Structure house, Unit 80b, at the site. In this, the Mattocks may have been like other large sites, which all seem to have had one or more circular Early Pit Structure period pit structures. Such houses were located on the river terraces that would be used for later pit structures and pueblos. They may post-date the pit structures from the Early Pit Structure period that were typically built on the tops of the knolls and ridges, but we have no evidence for this. A gap in site use during the Middle Pit Structure period seems to follow Unit 80b, after which two additional pit structures (Units 115b and 286b) were built in the Late or Late Late Pit Structure periods, or both. The great kiva (Unit 213) was added in the Late Late Pit Structure period. We noted in chapter 1 that our evidence allows for only two households, perhaps a dozen people living in the two pit structures, at the Mattocks site during the Late Late Pit Structure period, but there is no evidence that people used both of these houses at the same time. Even if the number of pit structures was doubled or tripled, there would have been only two or three dozen people at the site during the Late Late Pit Structure period. The presence of the great kiva (Unit 213), just west of the 200s room block, might suggest a higher population during the Late Late Pit Structure period. Gilman (2010), however, has proposed that few people lived at Mimbres pit structure sites, perhaps just a single household. In that case, the great kiva at each site would have served to integrate people from other sites and perhaps demonstrate the ritual power of the household performing ceremonies within it. Gilman and Stone (2013) have noted that the details of each Mogollon great kiva differed from all others, even though great kivas generally followed a construction and architecture template. They argued that

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people may have manipulated the template to reflect their individual decisions about what was appropriate for the design and for ritual efficacy and therefore ritual and social power. In the case of the Mattocks great kiva, the fact that it apparently did not attract many new residents to the site may mean that the bid for power failed. This, then, could be a reason that few people lived at the Mattocks site in the Late Late Pit Structure and Early Classic periods. The association of the great kiva with the 200s room block nevertheless emphasizes the primacy of that room block, at least among those for which we have interpretable data. The pit structure in Unit 286b was likely closed and burned, in much the same way a great kiva would have been in the Late Late Pit Structure period. Among the closing offerings were Boldface, Transitional, and Early and Middle Classic vessel fragments, suggesting that people symbolized their long-term connection with this building and the founding household. The presence of a Middle Classic bowl fragment seems to be out of place, temporally, but perhaps this item was placed later, after the surface room had been built, again to emphasize a connection with the past. The surface room now called Unit 286a was carefully positioned above the 286b pit structure, which again underscores the importance of the earlier room. The founding household of the 200s room block may have built and used both of these rooms, and Unit 286a would have formed the core of the 200s room block. The ethnographic record, which shows pit structures were used almost solely as winter habitations, is consistent with the possibility that there were relatively few people in the Mimbres Valley during the Pit Structure periods. People would probably have practiced seasonal mobility, and population densities in a region would have been relatively low. There was not much large game hunting in the Mimbres Valley after the Early Pit Structure period. Increasing human predation, perhaps due to a growing population, had made such game scarce. Although the Early Pit Structure period population in the valley may have been relatively low, environmental impacts can accumulate from even a small, seasonally mobile population. The use of agriculture also increased in the Pit Structure periods, and residential mobility would thus have been reduced. Although we have few Pit Structure period samples from the Mattocks site, people were probably eating a lot of corn. The chipped stone data show that there was greater plant exploitation in the middle Mimbres Valley, which includes the Mattocks site, than in the northern valley.

The Transition from Pit Structures to Pueblos The transition from underground, non-contiguous pit structures to contiguous surface rooms formed into pueblos occurred sometime during the Late Late Pit Structure (A.D.

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880/950–1020/1050) or Early Classic (A.D. 1010–1080) periods. Data from the Mattocks site show that people continued to use pit structures during the Classic period, probably as conditions warranted. In terms of pit structures, then, there was no transition, but simply a change in proportions. There is no evidence that any surface rooms at the Mattocks site dated to the Pit Structure periods, as would be the case if Mangas phase structures (small sets of pueblo rooms contemporary with pit structures) were present, although such transitional buildings, often superimposed by later Classic rooms, are located on some other Mimbres sites. For example, Shafer (1995:24–27, 2003:41– 45) has shown that there was a sequence of transitional rooms at the NAN Ranch site, from extended ramp pit structures, to modified pit structures with vent shafts, to sunken floor rooms with cobble-adobe walls, and finally to surface rooms. There is no Mattocks site evidence for such a sequence. Transitional Black-on-white pottery is associated with modified pit structures and sunken floor rooms, and there was little such pottery at the Mattocks site. The pit structure to pueblo transition was a major one, both in the kind of house that people built and used, and in the likely symbolism of the two kinds of buildings (Shafer 1995). Shafer (1995:25, 2003:40–54) has suggested that there was a series of parallel changes during the transition, including house form, hearth design, entrance type, storage, burial practices, and ceramics. Earlier discussions of the transition in the Southwest focused on increasing populations, because of increasing dependence on agriculture, and the advantages of surface buildings for storing large amounts of agricultural food, such as corn (Gilman 1987a). Shafer (1995:40–44) later emphasized the symbolic changes that must have occurred with the transition to pueblos. For example, he linked ceiling hatchways, slab-lined hearths, and subfloor burials with a multilayered universe and passage to the Otherworld. Evidence from the Mattocks site shows that population growth, changes in diet, variations in household structure or size, or changes in social differentiation did not directly precede or accompany the first use of pueblos. Instead, just one or two households lived at the Mattocks site in the Late Late Pit Structure period, and they may not have lived there simultaneously. The subsequent Early Classic period population at the site was similarly low. It may have been slightly larger than earlier, though, in that each room block had some Transitional Black-on-white pottery but not all of them had a pit structure from the Late Late Pit Structure period. The population did peak in the Middle Classic period, but after the change to surface pueblos. Gilman (1977) earlier suggested that people from the Harris site, a pit structure site about 1.6 km (a mile) to the north, moved to Mattocks at the beginning of the Classic period. However, relatively little Transitional Blackon-white was present at the Harris site compared to the amount of Boldface, and most of the Transitional was early, rather than late (Robert Stokes and Barbara Roth

personal communication, 2014). The ceramics indicate that people were leaving Harris by A.D. 960 to A.D. 970, for the site has very little material after that. Given that little Transitional pottery was present at the Mattocks site, it is unclear whether people were routinely living at either Harris or Mattocks during the period that Transitional Black-on-white pottery was made, although it is possible that two or three households made the move from Harris to the Mattocks site. Another possible source of people might have been the Gila Valley to the west. Nelson and Anyon (1996:288–291) and Sedig (2013) have noted the intense use of that region during the Mangas phase, which was transitional and included aspects of the Late Late Pit Structure and the Early Classic periods. In terms of subsistence changes that might have prompted the transition from pit structures to pueblos, there is no change in the amount of large game at the Mattocks site around this time. Instead, Cannon has shown that such a change likely happened between the Early and Late Pit Structure periods. The plant evidence is less clear, but Minnis has seen no clear evidence for changes in agricultural products at the time of the transition. The chipped stone assemblage shows no evidence for changes in agriculture between the Pit Structure and Classic periods, in that the proportion of plant processing did not change then either. Thus, changes in amount of agriculture or large game hunting seem to have happened earlier than the pit structure to pueblo transition and were not causative to it. The one thing that certainly changed about the time of the pit structure to pueblo transition, as it had been doing since the advent of farming, was the environment. Over time, agriculture changed both soil structure and chemical composition, such that field soils were more compacted and contained less organic matter, nitrogen, and phosphorus than soils that had not been farmed (Minnis and Sandor 2010:87–88). These changes persist into the present. The wood used for roof beams also changed, from non-coniferous trees and Ponderosa pines to more pinyon and juniper, in the Early Classic. That is, people had used the non-coniferous floodplain trees and the nearby Ponderosa pines and, based on evidence from the wood identified in the 200s room block, then had to change to less ideal but nearby pinyons and junipers during the Late Late Pit Structure or Early Classic period. As with the soils, this was a human-caused change probably from denuding the floodplain of trees useful for construction and firewood, and it likely changed the environment for at least a hundred years. The advantage of the Mattocks site excavations is that we can see the changes in architecture, from pit structures to pueblos, at the household level. The household that built and used the pit structure in Unit 286b closed it, and then almost immediately built Unit 286a, the Early Classic pueblo room carefully aligned above it. If the household that built and used the pit structure in Unit 115b

Nature of the Classic Period Occupation continued living in the 100s room block after use of that pit structure, then they built their earliest pueblo rooms just west of it, with Unit 114, and then built south through Unit 122 (Room 44), and perhaps into Unit 134 (Room 46) and Rooms 13 and 15. We did not uncover a Pit Structure period building in the 400s room block, but Unit 431 is in the suite of earliest rooms with more Transitional and Boldface sherds than other rooms in the room block. No Middle or Late Classic vessels were present in Unit 431, but it did have Late Transitional, Transitional/Classic, and two Early Classic pots. If, as we have argued, one household built and used each room block, then the histories of the room blocks and the transitions from pit structures were different in each case. The actual household structure did not seem to change across the pit structure to pueblo transition. The general size of Pit Structure period houses suggests that one group of four to six people lived in each pit structure, and this could have been a household. As we will discuss below, there was apparently a small group of rooms first built in each room block, implying a group of similar size. Thus, we do not see households changing from nuclear to extended, for example, with the move to surface pueblos, and there is no evidence that people organized into corporate groups during the Classic period at the Mattocks site, as Shafer (2003:219–220, 2006) has described for the NAN Ranch site, and Creel (2006a) has discussed for the end of the Pit Structure period at the Old Town site.

Nature of the Classic Period Occupation Lekson (1993:49) has noted that the Mimbres region had the largest pueblos in the southwestern United States at this time, other than those in Chaco Canyon. The Mattocks site had about 180 rooms, which makes it one of the largest Classic sites. Additionally, at least six of the 12 pit structures (which include Nesbitt’s Room 48, a possible communal structure, and the great kiva) at the site date to the Classic period, including the four that Nesbitt described that can be dated, and two from the Mimbres Foundation excavations. If people using pit structures as part of their housing repertoire were relatively mobile, this suggests a relatively high level of residential mobility for the Mattocks households who built and used Classic pit structures, compared to those living in surface pueblos at the same time. Perhaps the pit structures were temporary housing, or their households were only at the site for short periods of time. Ethnographic pueblos from around the world provide a baseline for considering how people at the Mattocks site might have lived. People in such pueblos were always biseasonal, moving between the winter pueblos and more ephemeral summer houses. In the case of people in the Mimbres Valley, the summer sites may have

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been small pueblos or sites with no apparent structures near agricultural fields. Sometimes pueblo dwellers simply built summer structures such as ramadas near their winter pueblo rooms. Units 80a and 426 at the Mattocks site were ramadas, and they may have been such structures. Pueblo inhabitants used the rooms, roofs, and outside areas differently, depending on the time of day and year. As well, not all inhabitants would necessarily have left the winter pueblo at the same time. Any or all of these factors may have been present at the Mattocks site. Ethnographic pueblos have more than a hundred people per site, but the Mattocks site may differ in that regard, as we discuss below. The Mattocks site does mirror ethnographic pueblos in that the people there were dependent on agriculture and were socially egalitarian or distinguished by wealth. In terms of dating the puebloan use of the Mattocks site, tree-ring cutting dates span only 38 years from A.D. 1079r (Units 114 and 433) to A.D. 1117r (Unit 438). There are no Early Classic cutting dates, which as discussed above suggests limited use of the site before the Middle Classic period. Transitional and Early Classic Black-on-white pottery, however, was present in all room blocks that the Mimbres Foundation excavated, and so there may have been at least some use of each room block area before the Middle Classic. The site was certainly used after A.D. 1117, given that Unit 441, the unfinished pit structure, was built directly outside the door of Unit 438, a pueblo room. Thus, A.D. 1130 is a reasonable end date for pueblo occupation at the site. All evidence supports the contention that most of the Mattocks site occupation began in the Middle Classic and the Late Classic period, about 50 years from A.D. 1079 to A.D. 1130. The Mattocks tree-ring cutting dates are relatively close to one another, implying that people built most rooms and room suites in rapid succession, used them for a generation or two, and then left the site. The exception to this is the 200s room block, which was started in the Early Classic period from a Late Late Pit Structure period base. It is possible that the 300s room block has a similar history, given that it is also large. In the following parts of this section, we discuss the construction and use of each room block that the Mimbres Foundation excavated, and the households who inhabited them. We also summarize Classic period food and related artifacts, wood use, pottery, burials, and unusual artifacts at the Mattocks site.

Households and Room Block Construction and Use The construction, use, and abandonment histories of each room block show that people built rooms, and room suites within room blocks, in sequence rather than simultaneously. That is, there is a temporal component to the rooms and room suites in each room block. The details of the room block histories suggest that perhaps just one or two

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households lived in each room block, and each room suite represents that household’s changing needs in terms of space and kinds of room construction.

The 100s Room Block The room suites in the 100s room block represent three or four building episodes between A.D. 1079 and A.D. 1107, for a total of 20 to 25 rooms. Surface room construction probably began with Unit 114, and perhaps Units 122 or 123 or both, in the center of the northern two tiers of rooms. Unit 114 was the only one in the room block with two floors, which, along with its early tree-ring date, the bonding and abutting patterns of its wall corners, and its several burials, supports the contention that the room was early in the room construction sequence. Hegmon et al. (2006:51–54) have suggested that Units 114 and 122 formed a duplex—two connected habitation rooms used at the same time. It is possible that this original room suite was then extended south, through Unit 134 and Nesbitt’s Rooms 13 and 15, but because Nesbitt excavated all of these rooms, we have no data with which to address this. Room suites were then attached to the west and the east sides of the early rooms. Units 111, 112, 113, 121, 131, and perhaps 119 and 120 were one room suite just west and southwest of Unit 114. Hegmon et al. (2006:51–54) recognized Units 111 and 113 and Units 121 and 131 as flats (connected habitation and storage rooms), but given the evidence we present, we see these rooms as one suite. This suite likely dated after A.D. 1079, and several lines of evidence suggest that it was the final suite in the room block. Units 115a, 106, 116, and perhaps 126 and 127 were another room suite east and northeast of Unit 114 that dated to the Late Classic period given the tree-ring cutting date of A.D. 1107. Hegmon et al. saw Units 106 and 116 as a flat, but again we see more associated rooms here. There were probably additional room suites in the parts of the 100s room block that Nesbitt excavated. For example, Units 122, 125, 134, and 136 could have been a suite built after the core rooms but before the eastern suite. Given that we have accounted for 21 rooms in our analyses, we do not think that there could be more than one additional suite, if that. Our analyses suggest that one household, or at most two households, could account for the sequential construction and use of the room suites in the 100s room block. Since a household would probably have had between five and 10 people, this would suggest that a maximum of 20 people, but more likely around 10, would have lived in the 100s block at any time. The 200s Room Block The 200s room block had at least 28 rooms, making it, with the 300s room block, one of the two largest at the Mattocks site. The room block appears to have been horseshoe-shaped, with a partly enclosed small plaza opening to the south. Because of previous excavations

and disturbance in this room block, we were not able to determine the presence or number of room suites, a room abandonment sequence based on burning, or exact numbers and kinds of burials. Its 28 rooms could, however, have accommodated one or two households at any time. If this room block housed a founding household, it may have been larger than the other households at the site. As previously noted, this room block began in the Early Classic period when the people who had used the Late Late Pit Structure period pit structure in Unit 286b closed that building and built Unit 286a, a surface room, directly over the east half of Unit 286b. Because of the early date, we have posited that this construction sequence could represent a founding household at the Mattocks site. That the area of this pit structure and room block also associates with the Late Late Pit Structure period great kiva (Unit 213) supports the presence of a founding household, as does the possible presence of a small plaza within the block. The room block location may reference the great kiva in that the west wall of the room block seems to superimpose the ramp entry of the kiva. Unit 41, a flagstone-floored possible granary directly east of 286a, could be part of the 286a construction. Given the unique characteristics of Units 286a and 41, it is possible that this southeast corner of the 200s room block was used for communal, and not habitation, purposes. There were more non-Mimbres sherds in the 200s and 300s room blocks than in any other, which suggests that they were used after A.D. 1100 into Late Classic period. Their households thus likely used them longer than did the households in other room blocks, and so the social power and status of these founding households continued perhaps from the Late Late Pit Structure through the Late Classic periods.

The 400s Room Block The 400s room block contained 10 to 15 rooms, including two Classic period pit structures, Units 410 and 441. There was also a ramada, Unit 426, just east and perhaps south of the room block. As with the 100s room block, the earliest tree-ring cutting date was A.D. 1079r. The latest was A.D. 1117r, which was also the latest at the site, and there was an intermediate cutting date of A.D. 1095r from the ramada, suggesting an intermediate building episode. There was a Transitional bowl from a burial in Unit 431 and Early Classic bowls from burials in all other rooms with burials, and so evidence for the initial construction of the room block is unclear. The data suggest that Units 423, 425 (both storage rooms), 427, 431, and 433 (all habitation rooms) could have been built simultaneously. Unit 438 was the latest surface room, while Unit 441, the unfinished pit structure, postdated that. The room suites in the 400s room block were not as easily delineated as those in the 100s room block. The five rooms noted here could have formed a suite, although Units 423 and 425 could have been added

Nature of the Classic Period Occupation later to the three habitation rooms. Units 435a and 426, the roof of Unit 433, and Unit 438 may have been among the final parts of the room block that were used for habitation. Hegmon et al. (2006:51–52, 58) defined Units 423, 427, 431, 433, and 435 as a large suite with four to six interconnected rooms, and this interpretation agrees with ours, except for the temporal placement of Unit 435. Again, we propose that one household built and used the 400s room block. The initial construction of three habitation rooms, perhaps with two storage rooms, would have housed that household. The household could then have moved to Unit 435 with its attached ramada, and then to Unit 438. More than one household would not fit into this construction and use sequence, and if the room block was only 10 rooms then a single household could easily account for all of them. Even with 15 rooms, there may have been a construction episode unrecognizable in the rooms we excavated.

Households and Room Blocks The Mimbres Foundation excavated three Mattocks site room blocks extensively, and our analyses show that each was probably home to a single household, although it is possible that two households occupied the 100s and 200s room blocks at the same time. We have demonstrated that people built rooms simultaneously to form suites and that the suites within each block were probably built and occupied sequentially. Our analyses also suggest that household size and structure did not change over the pit structure to pueblo transition and that the founding household in the 200s room block moved directly from a pit structure into a surface room. The same could have been true for the household in the 100s room block, but tree-ring dates and construction data suggest that the household who built and inhabited the 400s room block came to the site later in time, perhaps about A.D. 1079, to build its pueblo rooms. Unlike the corporate lineages that Shafer (1995, 2003) has posited for NAN Ranch and that Creel (2006a) has suggested for Old Town at end of Late Late Pit Structure period, we found no evidence for any groups larger than households at the Mattocks site. There were no corporate cemeteries, ancestor shrines, or corporate kivas that would suggest corporate lineages. Archaeologists often refer to surface pueblos like those in the Mimbres region as representing the process of aggregation. However, if there was only one household per room block at the Mattocks site, and if only one household lived in each pit structure earlier in time, then the change to surface structures was not aggregation, at least to any great degree and at least at the Mattocks site. The rooms in each room block eventually appear aggregated, but the use of room suites in each room block was sequential. Our interpretation of room block construction and use has implications for the number of people at the Mattocks

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site at any given time, and for the number of people in the Mimbres Valley during the Classic period. If there were five people per room block and there are eight room blocks at the site, then there would have been around 40 people living at the site at any point in time. If there were 10 people per room block, then there would have been around 80 people at the site. These numbers would increase somewhat if the 300s was actually two room blocks. This is many fewer than if people were using all or a higher percent of the rooms at once. The total numbers through time are quite low if the 100s and 400s room blocks were only occupied for 38 years or about two generations. We have emphasized that all large Classic pueblos in the Mimbres Valley were not the same, and indeed Shafer’s (2003, 2006) analyses of the NAN Ranch site have suggested a different form of social organization consisting of corporate groups there. Other sites may thus have had more people. However, we suggest that they would not have had too many more people and that if population sizes for various points during the Pit Structure and Classic periods were recalculated, the results would be much lower than the figures that Blake et al. (1986:449–454) present. Although we noted above that household structure and size did not change from the Pit Structure to the Classic periods, there is considerable variation in the Classic period rooms and suites, which implies variations in Classic period household organization. Hegmon et al. (2006) showed that there were various kinds of room suites at Classic sites in the Mimbres Valley and the Eastern Mimbres region, and we have been able to interpret the Mattocks room suites in an even more fine-grained manner. Nevertheless, our analyses and those of Hegmon et al. and Shafer show that a detailed consideration of multiple lines of evidence allows us to discern small groups of people and their social organizations to better interpret those and population sizes.

Food and Related Artifacts We have evidence that people ate jackrabbits, cottontails, and corn, with smaller amounts of deer, antelope, and beans at the Mattocks site and during both the Pit Structure and Classic periods in the Mimbres Valley. They may also have eaten pocket gophers, goosefoot, goosefoot/­ pigweed, and purslane, but these might have been background animals and plants at the site. As Cannon points out in chapter 5, whether people captured deer or antelope depended on whether they lived in the north or south part of the Mimbres Valley, respectively. At the Mattocks site in the north end of the valley, the primary large game was deer. The faunal, paleoethnobotanical, pollen, chipped stone, and ground stone evidence from the Mattocks site allows us to present a more nuanced analysis of what people ate, especially in terms of changes through time.

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There was never much large game in the archaeological record, except during the Early Pit Structure and Postclassic periods, and at the Mattocks site there was no change in artiodactyl relative abundance from the Late Pit Structure through the Terminal Classic periods. Large game abundance did decrease over time, because of human predation, though, but that change was earlier than we had previously thought. Instead of being during the pit structure to pueblo transition, it was between the Early and the Late Pit Structure periods, perhaps about A.D. 800, at all sites that Cannon examined and compared within the Mimbres Valley. The inhabitants of the valley played a major role in structuring their environment and, as large game became less available, they may have increased the amount of agriculture they practiced and thus reduced their residential mobility. As noted, people at the Mattocks site mostly ate corn, with some beans and perhaps wild plants including goosefoot, pigweed, and purslane. However, propagules from weedy plants were much less likely to be in flotation samples from hearths than in those from roof fall and fill contexts, which suggests that they were not being prepared as food. If people ate squash, it was not preserved. In terms of change through time, the data are ambiguous, but Minnis (1985:106) noted that ethnobotanical remains are proportionally similar from the Late Pit Structure through the Classic periods. Unmodified flakes were 83 percent of the Mattocks site chipped stone assemblage, and people probably used many or most of them for plant processing. Evidence for this includes the high percentage (70 percent) of coarseversus fine-grained materials, the relatively high average flake weight and mean flake tool edge angle, and the relatively high proportion (23 percent) of flakes with cortex reinforcement. There was greater emphasis on plant exploitation in the part of the valley where the Mattocks site is located than at sites farther north, and the proportion of durable flake edges at Mattocks and nearby sites remained constant over the Late Pithouse and Classic periods, which suggests that plant processing did not change. Basalt was the most common chipped stone material (47 percent) at the Mattocks site, followed by chalcedony (21 percent) and rhyolite (16 percent). The percentages of all other materials were in the single digits. Obsidian was the only non-local material, and most of it originated from the Mule Creek source to the west. Evidence suggests that it was chipped into flakes and tools at the Mattocks site. Chipped stone tools formed 2 percent of the Mattocks site chipped stone assemblage. Most of the tools were projectile points, with a few drills and bifaces. The projectile points were most often made of obsidian (44 percent) or chalcedony (39 percent), with the percentages of all other materials being in the single digits. Archaic points were present at the Mattocks site, including a Calf Creek point from the southern Plains. People may have collected these early points from other sites, or there may

be an undetected Archaic component at Mattocks. The variation in point types and dates suggests the former. The Mattocks site had more chipped stone hoes than any other Mimbres site, and it and the Galaz site had the majority of the stone hoes in the region. Most of the hoes from these two sites were in caches. The source of the raw material from which the hoes were made, probably a tabular rhyolite, is to the north in the Gila drainage, and it is possible that the hoes were made at the Mattocks site. There were no workshops at the Mattocks or Galaz sites to suggest that specialists made these hoes, but their concentration at the two sites does hint that the inhabitants controlled the production and distribution of hoes. People probably used most of the ground stone at the Mattocks site to grind and prepare vegetal foods for cooking. Vesicular basalt was the most common metate and mano material (48 percent and 47 percent, respectively), followed by basalt, sandstone, and rhyolite for both metates and manos. Most of the manos were rectangular or square, and thus useful in trough and through trough metates, the most common forms, with 65 percent being at least trough metates. The metate and mano forms suggest that people were doing much grinding, probably including a lot of corn.

Wood Remains People at the Mattocks site used specific woods for roof beams and a much larger selection of woods for burning in their hearths. The great majority of the roof beams were pinyon, followed in descending order by juniper, Ponderosa pine, and non-coniferous trees. Woods burned in hearths included, again in descending order, brushy shrubs from the Rosaceae family such as mountain mahogany (Cercocarpus) and Apache plume (Fallugia), juniper, pinyon, oak, and occasional other woods. No Ponderosa pine was present in hearths. There was a change through time in wood use at the Mattocks site, such that earlier rooms and room blocks, specifically Unit 286 and the 200s room block, had more non-coniferous (most likely riparian) and Ponderosa pine wood than did later rooms. This pattern is probably part of the change that Minnis (1985:88–90) noted toward the increasing use of non-riparian wood during the Classic period, and it suggests that people denuded the floodplain in their quest for wood and good farm land, an example of people modifying the environment to fit their needs.

Axes and Mauls All but two of the 16 axes and mauls at the Mattocks site were made from greenstone, which is available in the escarpment on the west side of the Mimbres Valley near the Mattocks and Galaz sites. Proximity to the source and greenstone flakes at Mattocks suggest that axes and mauls might have been produced at the site and then distributed

Nature of the Classic Period Occupation to people elsewhere. Mattocks does not appear to have had a proportionately greater number of greenstone axes and mauls than other large or small Classic sites, however, and as with the stone hoes, there was no evidence of workshops that suggest specialists making these artifacts. The axes and mauls were all from Classic contexts, ranging from a burial to post-occupation fill, and they were not in caches.

Pottery The vast majority of Mimbres pottery vessels had one of two shapes—bowls or jars. Most of the bowls were painted, and most of the jars were corrugated or plain, although there were exceptions. These differences emphasize a clear functional distinction between the bowls, which people probably used as serving dishes and in burials, and jars, which were likely for cooking and food and water storage. Vessels placed in burials were generally painted bowls, and there were far more painted than plain or corrugated vessels in burials. As expected in the constrained space of burials, the plain and corrugated vessels placed in them were small, as compared to the presence of all sizes in utilitarian contexts. Nesbitt and the Mimbres Foundation excavated more than 500 whole or partial vessels from the Mattocks site. At least 69 percent of the Mimbres Foundation whole vessels were from burials, and only 22 percent of the Mimbres Foundation painted vessels were from non-burial contexts. In terms of bowls, plain bowls were on average the smallest, followed by bowls with naturalistic designs. Bowls with geometric designs were considerably larger than other bowls. At the Mattocks site, children were more likely to have had bowls with naturalistic designs accompany them in death, but this pattern does not hold at all Mimbres Classic sites. No particular animal motif characterized the Mattocks site or room blocks within the site in that no motif dominated the rest. Compositional analyses show that people produced pottery during the Classic period only from the NAN Ranch site north in the Mimbres Valley, including the Mattocks site. People at sites south of NAN Ranch did not produce pottery. Although only 34 Mattocks sherds have been analyzed, they were made at the site itself, at other sites in the Mimbres Valley, and at sites in the Eastern and Western Mimbres regions beyond the valley. Sherds and whole vessels made at Mattocks have been excavated at other sites in the Mimbres Valley and beyond. People were clearly moving pottery around, both within the valley and in the Mimbres region as a whole. Very few non-Mimbres sherds or vessels that were made before A.D. 1100 are present in the Mimbres region. Most of these were Reserve Corrugated sherds and bowls of various types, often with smudged interiors. Some black-on-white sherds had a Reserve Black-on-whitelike finish. Some El Paso Brown sherds were present at

287

Mattocks and can be identified by their popcorn temper. The Reserve sherds and bowls suggest movement of pottery from the northwest, and the El Paso sherds show it from the southeast, but there was very little such movement, and so any social relationships represented by this pottery would also have been limited. There were several post-A.D. 1100 pottery types at Mimbres Classic sites, including the Mattocks site, that seem to be part of the transition to the subsequent Black Mountain phase. These types were Playas Red, early El Paso Black-on-red/El Paso Polychrome, Chupadero Blackon-white, White Mountain Red Wares, and Three Rivers Red-on-terracotta. Although rare, they had higher frequencies in the upper post-occupation fill of rooms than other contexts, which supports their somewhat later date. The variety of types from numerous places around the Mimbres region suggests that pottery was moving in greater quantities at the end of, and just after, the Classic period. Some specific non-Mimbres types were associated with certain Mattocks room blocks. There was, for example, a higher proportion of black burnished bowl sherds in the 100s room block than in others, which may indicate that the household there had stronger relationships with people in the Reserve area. The non-Mimbres pottery in the 200s and 300s room blocks was mostly Late Classic (after A.D. 1100), signifying relationships with people from various places beyond the Mimbres region. The highest proportion of El Paso Polychrome was in the 200s room block, hinting at social relationships with people to the southeast. The 400s room block consistently had the lowest proportions of non-Mimbres pottery. The Mattocks site had an assemblage of 116 analyzed worked sherds, 59 percent of which were made on painted pottery, most of which was Mimbres black-onwhite. Most worked sherds were irregular (mostly fragments for which we could not determine a shape), disks, or perforated disks.

Burials Although the elaborate paintings on Classic Black-onwhite bowls and the presence of these bowls in Mimbres Classic burials might hint at the presence of elites, the burial data demonstrate instead that most people, instead of just a few, received a Classic bowl at death. The burial data show a clear lack of vertical social differentiation during the Classic period at the Mattocks and other sites in the Mimbres Valley. At the Mattocks site, most burials dated to the Classic period and were interred below room floors. However, neither the Mimbres Foundation nor Nesbitt conducted much extramural excavation to determine the burial patterns outside of rooms. There were also two cremations from the Mattocks site (Nesbitt 1931:44–45). Seventy-three percent of the Classic Mattocks burials had pottery, while

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21 percent had no associated artifacts. Ninety-five percent of the Mattocks burials were flexed in some way. In terms of social differentiation, one or more burials with many grave goods were present in each Mattocks site room block. If there was one household per room block, then no household was wealthier or more powerful than the others in terms of rich burials because each household had at least one person with many grave goods. This pattern suggests that there were social differences among the people within each household and that there might have been special statuses for a few people at the Mattocks site. Moreover, rare and exotic non-burial goods did not concentrate in specific room blocks, suggesting that wealth in terms of such items was relatively the same for each household. If each household had people important to the power structure of the society, and if no one household controlled either positions of power or exotic goods that might denote such power, then leadership roles may have been distributed among all households. A comparison of burial practices among Classic sites in the Mimbres Valley shows that they varied widely. For example, the NAN Ranch site had lineage cemeteries, while the Mattocks site did not. The building and use of the room blocks by corporate groups at NAN Ranch versus households at Mattocks may account for this difference. NAN Ranch also had a higher proportion of burials with no grave goods than did Mattocks, even though the sites are of similar size. Children at the Mattocks site were more likely to receive naturalistic bowls at death, while adults and children were equally likely to have received such bowls at NAN Ranch. Mattocks had the highest proportion of burials with whole vessels of any Classic Mimbres Valley site, and Mattocks and Galaz had similarly high proportions of burials with multiple vessels compared to those at NAN Ranch. The Galaz site had the most vessels per burial of any Classic site. Such intersite variation may reflect particular social units at each site or location, for example, north or south in the valley.

De Quevedo (2004) determined that Mimbres palettes in general were made from local materials. She argued that Mimbres palettes were different than those from the Hohokam region, where they were more common. Mimbres palettes had simpler designs, were rarely used in burials, and were more common later in time during the Classic period, although they were also used in the Late and Late Late Pit Structure periods. Bone tools were rare at the Mattocks site, and at Mimbres sites in general. The Mimbres Foundation recorded 47 bone tools, 87 percent of which were awls or punches. Most of these were made from artiodactyl or other large mammal bones. Mimbres Foundation excavations at the Mattocks site recovered one complete tubular stone pipe, one fragmentary tubular stone pipe, and 52 fragmentary ceramic pipes that were conical or for which the shape could not be determined. Unlike most of the other pipes that date to the Classic period, the whole pipe may date to the Early Pit Structure period. Nesbitt recorded one complete tubular stone pipe and two ceramic pipe fragments. The latter number is probably low because of his lack of screening. The stone pipes were more carefully made and would have required more work than the ceramic pipes. It is possible that people used pipes for ritual purposes, especially for smoking or cloud blowing. At the Mattocks site, many were recorded in contexts that could have been dedicatory or room decommissioning. The category of raw materials included many stone items that people clearly brought to the site. Most were copper-related minerals, notably chrysocolla, muscovite, and red and yellow ochre. People probably used the chrysocolla and the ochres as pigments, and their remains were occasionally present on metates and grinding slabs. Many of the raw materials could have been dedicatory or room-closing offerings.

Unusual Artifacts—Palettes, Bone Tools, Pipes, and Raw Materials

The shell sample from the Mattocks site—60 shell artifacts from Mimbres Foundation excavations and perhaps an equal number from those by Nesbitt—was relatively small compared to other Mimbres sites. Of the Mimbres Foundation sample, 50 were marine shells, six were freshwater shells, two were unidentifiable, and two may have been modern snail shells. Most of the marine shells were Glycymeris, and the freshwater shells were all Anodonta. The marine shells were likely all from the Gulf of California, while the Anodonta could have been from the Mimbres River. Glycymeris bracelets, all fragments except for one whole artifact, were the most common shell ornaments. All but two possibly earlier artifacts dated to the Classic period. Burials were the most common contexts for shell artifacts, but some of those not in burials may have been in room dedication contexts.

The Mimbres Foundation recorded one complete stone palette and nine fragments, and Nesbitt noted a ceramic artifact that was much like a palette. There is no evidence that specialists at the Mattocks site made these artifacts. The Mimbres Foundation palettes likely all dated to the Classic period, although four could have dated to the Late or Late Late Pit Structure periods. The palettes were apparently in discard locations in fill, or perhaps on the roof fall or the floor of a room. Creel and Anyon (2003) have suggested that such palettes were broken and then placed in dedicatory contexts in floors or roof adobe of great kivas, and perhaps those at the Mattocks site were in similar contexts in habitation rooms and ramadas.

Jewelry

Importance of the Mattocks Site Among Mimbres sites, there was much variation in how much shell was present and the kinds of shell. The relatively small amount from the Mattocks site might reflect the fact that no burials had strings of shell beads. However, people at Mattocks may not have had the connections, or the need, to obtain shell. There were 103 ornaments made of turquoise, other stone, and pottery. Seventy-three of these were turquoise, and most of them were beads and pendants. More than half of the turquoise jewelry was in burials, and some of the remainder could have been in room dedication contexts. Nesbitt excavated two copper bells, both from burials, and both burials were relatively rich in grave goods. The copper bells originally came from the west coast of Mexico. The jewelry from the Mattocks site provided no evidence for specialists or social differentiation, and no part of the site had more rare items or jewelry than others. In fact, the Mattocks site did not have the same level of these artifacts as the Galaz site, which supports the idea that it did not have the same role in the ritual system as Galaz. The fact that Mattocks had relatively little shell suggests that the people living there might have had different social networks in terms of obtaining shell than did those at other sites. Given the lack of raw materials and artifacts broken during manufacture, the shell and turquoise jewelry may have been made outside the Mimbres Valley and then imported into it.

Importance of the Mattocks Site The data, analyses, and interpretations presented in this book provide much that is new and relevant. During our study, we have learned a great deal about the Mattocks site and the people who lived there, about people in the Mimbres region and the southwestern United States, and about larger questions of social context and change. In this final section, we will discuss each of these topics in turn.

The Unique History of the Mattocks Site Our detailed study of the archaeology emphasizes the unique history of the Mattocks site and has allowed us to show how it differs from other large Mimbres Classic sites, in terms of the site life history and perhaps the “cultural,” or at least the social, diversity that the various room blocks represent. Its unique history also illuminates the major architectural transition between pit structures and pueblos and shows that the transition did not necessarily carry over into changes in household size and structure, subsistence, or perhaps initial population size at large Mimbres pueblos. Its unique history also suggests that, while the Mimbres region may appear to be an example of early aggregation in the southwestern United States and northwestern Mexico, this apparent aggregation may

289

simply be the result of room suites being added sequentially over time to form what now appear as room blocks. If a single household lived in each preceding pit structure and subsequently in each room block, then aggregation is apparent but not real, at least at the Mattocks site. These points demonstrate that not all large Mimbres Classic sites had the same development histories and are therefore likely not to have had the same social milieus. While the Mattocks site certainly appears to be a typical Mimbres Classic period pueblo in its room block construction, its Classic Black-on-white pottery, and its Classic burials under the room floors, excavations show that it had a history that was different from those of other large Classic pueblos. Mattocks was certainly different than the Galaz and Old Town sites, both of which seem to have been important ritual centers with ceremonial complexes that endured through time, more macaws than other sites, and, at Old Town, a road that entered the site at the ceremonial complex, which also contained special burials. The similarity of Mattocks to other large Classic sites is also more apparent than real in terms of the site history. That is, at other pueblos in the Mimbres Valley, many pit structures preceded the Classic period room blocks. The Mattocks site, in contrast, had only four pit structures including a great kiva that definitely dated before the Classic period, and of the 12 known pit structures at the site, at least half dated to the Classic period. These later pit structures were unlike any recorded at other sites. The Harris site, a mile north of Mattocks, was a long-lived pit structure site with no superimposing pueblo. While it is possible that people moving from the Harris site in the Late Late Pit Structure period were early inhabitants of the Mattocks site, in fact there was an Early Pit Structure period pit structure on Mattocks as well as Late and Late Late Pit Structure period buildings, including the great kiva. A few people thus lived at the Mattocks site on and off during the pit structure periods, and a household or two were there at the same time as people would have been leaving the Harris site. Depopulation of the latter does not fully account for the early history of the Mattocks site, and indeed, if most settlement occurred at Mattocks after the earliest tree-ring cutting date, A.D. 1079, then no one may have been at Harris at this time. As well, there was little Transitional Black-on-white pottery on either site. The few Late and Late Late Pit Structure period houses at the Mattocks site illuminate the transition from pit structures to pueblos, as noted earlier in this chapter. Units 286a and 286b in the 200s room block show a pit structure (Unit 286b) directly superimposed, such that the walls align, by an Early Classic room (Unit 286a). We have suggested that this sequence and subsequent room block represent one of the founding households at the site. Our data also imply that there may have been no increases in agriculture or population, variations in

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household structure or size, or changes in social differentiation during or immediately after the transition. We have presented evidence that one household may have built and occupied each room block and that a founding household built and used the 200s room block, based on the presence of the nearby great kiva and a pit structure directly underlying a pueblo room. The 300s room block was also large enough that it might have housed another founding household. These one or two households seem to have inhabited the site for several generations at least from the Late Late Pit Structure into the Classic period until the households who built other room blocks joined them perhaps after A.D. 1079. Most of the habitation use of the site occurred in the Middle and Late Classic periods, minimally after A.D. 1060. This period of settlement differs from the pattern seen at other Classic sites. Shafer and Creel have argued for the presence of corporate groups at the NAN Ranch and Old Town sites, respectively, but we found no evidence for such groups at the Mattocks site. Unfortunately, lack of data from other Classic sites precludes knowing whether one household per room block and no corporate groups are yet other unique characteristics of the Mattocks site. At the end of its use for habitation, the Mattocks site had eight room blocks, more than any other Classic site in the Mimbres Valley. This does not approach the numbers of room blocks on Classic sites in the Gila Valley to the west, however, and the difference in room block numbers at sites in the two drainages suggests varying kinds of social organization. Habitation at the Mattocks site seems to have ended about A.D. 1130, as at other Classic sites. Some of the latter have small, later occupations during the following Black Mountain phase, but there is no evidence of this at the Mattocks site. The latest pottery types present in any numbers are all from the Late Classic period. Our analyses of the architecture and artifacts have allowed us to detect the presence of households and the impacts of individuals at the Mattocks site. We can see how the household in each room block built and used the rooms throughout the duration of the household and the room block. Each household also had different social relationships with others based on the varying amounts of non-Mimbres pottery and shell in each room block. As well, each household had at least one person with a special role or power, as shown by richer burial goods.

The Mattocks Site and People Living in Mimbres Region and the Southwestern United States/Northwestern Mexico Our interpretations of Mattocks site data have implications for how we understand the lives of people who lived at other sites in the Mimbres region. Although the

Mattocks site shows many differences from other Mimbres pit structure and pueblo sites, that variation was part of the experience people had living during that time and in that place. Such differences were part of what it was to be Mimbres. That is, people living at various sites had different social contexts and different experiences, and yet all of those were “Mimbres.” “Mimbres” was thus Mimbres only in certain ways, and there was much variation within the overarching cultural umbrella. People at the Mattocks site may have had unique and specific roles within the wider Mimbres region. For example, we have presented evidence that they used greenstone from the nearby source as a raw material for axes, and perhaps they made axes for themselves and others. Because stone hoes were more common at the Mattocks than at any other site, its inhabitants may also have been involved in the production and distribution of these items. People at the Mattocks site were also included in the larger Mimbres social sphere in other ways. That is, they had painted pottery with human and all kinds of animal designs, and they had painted pottery both that they manufactured and that people from other sites made. The Mimbres region was one of the two earliest pueblo manifestations in the southwestern United States and northwestern Mexico, and the Mattocks site was part of that. The rigorous tree-ring dating that we and other Mimbres archaeologists have undertaken provides evidence for both of these statements. Mimbres Classic pueblos were contemporary with the Great Houses in Chaco Canyon to the north, the other early pueblo expression, and with Sedentary period Hohokam ballcourt sites to the west, although direct physical connections among these three entities were rare.

The Mattocks Site and Larger Questions of Social Context and Change Sites such as the Mattocks are ideal for examining data that relate to the transition to a more sedentary farming life and society and to social power differentials in “egalitarian” societies. Given what we have learned from the Mattocks data, we suggest that each large Classic site was different. Therefore, the social contexts for the transition were different, depending on the history of each site, especially in terms of demographics, subsistence, household size and structure, and household relationships with others within and beyond the local area. We need to view each of these factors and each site separately to understand the intricacies of the lives of such people and the transition to sedentary farming. In terms of social power differentials, the Mattocks site appears to have only had a few households, and archaeologists have never characterized Mimbres society as anything but egalitarian. However, as with social contexts, the relationships among people at the Mattocks site, and within the Mimbres Valley and region,

Importance of the Mattocks Site were complicated, and some people clearly had different roles that gave them more social power than others. The change from smaller, more mobile groups to larger, more settled societies was a major one in human history. Larger populations became dependent on reliable resources that could be stored through the non-growing season, which implies residential sedentism and the concept of land ownership. There may only have been one or two households at the Mattocks site before about A.D. 1060–1079, but several more joined them during the Middle and Late Classic periods, and the population would have been at its height at this time. The households had rooms in which to store food over the winter, and they were sedentary in the sense that they may have buried their dead in the same room block over three or more generations. The larger Mimbres region and time scale provide the appropriate data with which to examine this change in minute detail, and the Mattocks site data are a part of that. Although egalitarian societies are defined as those in which no one person has the power of life and death over anyone else, there are still social power differentials in egalitarian societies, which are often based on age or sex. At the Mattocks and other Mimbres Classic sites, some people were separated from others by the wealth that accompanied their burials. These burials were not

291

concentrated in specific room suites, room blocks, or parts of the Mattocks site, but instead each room block had at least one wealthy burial. We do not know why a few children and adults were so designated, but they are strong evidence for social differences in this so-called egalitarian society. As well, at the Galaz and Old Town sites, some people who might have been ritual specialists were distinguished from others in death. The Mattocks site and the Mimbres region are ideal places to investigate such social differences within otherwise “egalitarian” societies.

Finale We hope that the data, analyses, and interpretations that we present in this book will provide materials to improve our understanding of people living at the Mattocks site, in the Mimbres region, and in the southwestern United States and northwestern Mexico for generations to come. We also hope that these materials will help illuminate questions about social contexts and transitions in so-called egalitarian societies. Our analyses show the importance of detailed analyses and close readings of the results. That it was possible to do this at a site that had been excavated and looted is an endorsement of all of the archaeologists, past and present, who worked at the site and on these analyses.

Mattocks Site Tree-Ring Species and Dates

APPENDIX 1

Provenience

Species

69-1-1/1 69-1-1/2

Date*

Provenience

Species

jn

232-2-1/13

pn

pp

232-2-1/14

jn

69-1-1/3

pp

232-2-1/17

pn

70-1-1/1

pn

232-2-1/18

pn

70-1-1/10

same as 70-1-1/15

232-2-1/2

pn

1085vv

70-1-1/11

pn

232-2-1/21

pn

1084r

70-1-1/12

pn

232-2-1/22

pn

70-1-1/13

pn

232-2-1/23

pn

70-1-1/15

pn

232-2-1/24

pn

70-1-1/16

pn

232-2-1/25

pn

70-1-1/17

pn

232-2-1/26

jn

70-1-1/18

pn

232-2-1/28

pn

70-1-1/19

pn

232-2-1/3

jn

70-1-1/2

pn

232-2-1/30

pn

70-1-1/20

pn

232-2-1/31

jn

70-1-1/21

pn

232-2-1/32

pn

1002vv

70-1-1/22

pn

232-2-1/34

pn

1055+vv

70-1-1/3

pn

232-2-1/4

pn

1024vv

70-1-1/4

pn

232-2-1/5

pn

70-1-1/5

pn

232-2-1/6

jn

70-1-1/6

pn

232-2-1/9

jn

70-1-1/7

jn

232-3-1/1

pn

70-1-1/8

pn

232-3-1/11

pn

70-1-1/9

pn

232-3-1/12

pn, pp

80-1-14/3

pn

232-3-1/14

pn

80-2-10B/1

pn

232-3-1/2

pn

80-2-15/1

pn

232-3-1/3

pp

80-2-20B/1

?

232-3-1/4

pn

80-2-20B/2

pn

232-3-1/5

pn

80-2-20B/3

same as 80-2-20B/2

232-3-1/6

pn

80-2-4/19

pn

232-3-1/7

pn

80-2-4/2

jn

232-3-1/8

pn

1000+vv

80-2-4/3

pn

232-3-1/9

pn

1043vv

80-2-4/6

pn

232-3-1/b

pn

1070vv

80-2-4/8

pn

232-3-1/c

pn

1011vv

80-4-8/9

jn

232-3-1/d

pn

90-1-1/1

jn

232-3-1/e

pn

TT8/1

pn

232-3-1/f

pn

100-1-1/3

pn

232-3-1/g

jn

100-1-1/4

pn

232-3-1/h

pn

100-1-1/5

jn

232-3-1/i

pn

100-1-1/6

jn

232-3-1/j

pn

1095vv

1110vv

Date*

1041+vv

1055vv 1083v

1065vv

1046vv

1072vv

1040vv 1050vv 1016vv

294

Appendix 1

Provenience

Species

100-1-1/7

Date*

Provenience

Species

jn

232-3-1/k

pn

100-1-3/2

jn

233-1-2/1

jn

100-2-1/2

pn

233-1-2/2

same as 233-1-2/1

100-2-3/2

jn

233-1-4/1

pn

100-2-3/3

jn

233-1-4/3

jn

100-3-3/2

jn

233-1-6/6

pn

100-3-3/3

pn

233-2-6/11

jn

100-3-3/4

jn

233-2-6/14

pn

100-3-3/5

pn

233-2-6/3

pn

100-5-5/3

jn

233-2-6/7

pn

100-5-5/4

jn

233-3-6/1

jn

100-5-5/5

jn

233-4-6/11

jn

106-1-2/3

?

233-4-6/13

jn

106-1-3/3

jn

233-4-6/20

jn

106-1-3/7

jn

233-5-6/3

jn

106-2-4/1

pn

233-5-6/4

jn

106-2-4/3

pn

233-5-6/9

pn

106-2-4/6

jn

235-1-4/4

pn

106-2-4/7

pn

1086vv

236-1-1/3?

jn

106-2-4/7

pn

1105vv

236-2-3/3

pp

106-3-4/1

pn

1060vv

237-1-1/18

jn

106-4-4/1

jn

237-1-1/3

?

106-4-6/1

jn

237-1-3/1

jn

111-1-4/2

pp

237-1-3/2

jn

111-1-4/3

pn

237-1-3/6

?

111-2-3/2

jn

237-2-1/1

jn

111-2-5/1

jn

237-2-1/13

jn

111-2-6/1

jn

237-2-1/21

jn

111-3-8/10

pn

237-2-2/15

pn

111-4-10/1

jn

237-2-2/2

pn

112-1-1/7

jn

237-2-2/4

jn

112-1-1/8

jn

237-2-2/9

jn

112-1-3/5

pn

237-2-3/1

jn

112-1-3/6 (TT north of 114)

pn

237-3-3/3

pn

237-4-3/7

pp

112-1-4/4

jn

237-5-4/1

jn

112-1-5/1

jn

237-5-4/10

?

113-4-1/1

pn

237-5-4/5

jn

113-4-1/4

pn

237-6-4/1

pp

114-1-1/1

pn

237-6-4/10

non-con

114-2-2/2

pn

237-6-4/11

jn

114-2-2/6

pn

237-6-4/14

jn

114-2-2/7

?

1048vv

991+vv

1091vv

1076vv

Date*

1051vv

1020vv

1046vv

1095r

1021vv

295

Mattocks Site Tree-Ring Species and Dates

Provenience

Species

Date*

Provenience

Species

114-2-2/8

pn

1088vv

237-6-4/15

jn

114-3-2/1

pn

237-6-4/20

pp

1060+vv

114-3-2/2

?

237-6-4/3

pn

1010+vv

114-3-2/3

pn

237-6-4/4

jn

114-3-2/5

pn

237-6-4/5

jn

114-3-2/9

pn

237-6-4/6

jn

114-3-8/2

pn

237-6-4/8

pp

114-4-2/7

pn

237-6-4/9

pp

114-5-8/a

pn

237-7-4/2

pp

114-5-8/a (/1?)

pn

237-7-4/3

pp

115-10-17/2

?

237-7-7/3

jn

115-1-1/10

?

237-7-7/4

jn

115-1-1/11

?

237-7-7/6

jn

115-1-1/12

pn

237-8-10/1

jn

115-1-1/13

?

286-1-1/1

?

115-1-1/5

pn

286-1-3/5

pn

115-1-1/6

?

286-1-4/3

?

115-1-1/7

?

286-2-1/1

?

115-1-1/8

pn

1107+r

286-2-3/1

pp

115-1-1/9

pn

1106+r

286-2-4/1

same as 286-5-6/11

115-1-3/8

pn

1095vv

286-2-4/12

115-1-3/9

pn

same as 286-6RF-6/15

115-1-4/2

jn

286-2-4/3

pn, pp

115-1-4/5

?

286-2-4/5

jn

286-2-4/6

pn

286-2-6/6

jn

286-3-5B/3

jn

286-3F-8PH/1

jn

286-3F-8PH/3

jn

286-3RF-4/1

pn

286-3RF-4/2

pn

286-3RF-4/3

pn

286-3RF-4/5

pn

286-3RF-4/6

pn

286-3RF-4/7

pn

286-4-9R/1

pn

286-4-9R/2

pn

286-4F-4/2

pn

286-4S-6/5

pp

286-4S-6/6

pp

286-4S-6/7

pp

286-4S-7B/1

pn

286-4S-7B/5

?

1079r

1079v

1059vv 1095vv

115-2-10/10

pn

115-2-10/12

pn

942vv

115-2-10/13

pn

979vv

115-2-10/7 115-2-10/9

same as 115-2-10/13 same as 115-2-10/13

115-2-5/2

pn

1096vv

115-2-5/3

pn

115-2-5/4

pn

115-2-5/5

pn

115-2-5/6

pn

115-3-10/1

pn

1075vv

115-3-10/2

pn

1099vv

115-3-5/1

pn

1106+r

115-3-5/10

pn

115-3-5/11

pn

115-3-5/13

pn

115-3-5/14

pn

1095vv

Date*

936vv

296

Appendix 1

Provenience

Species

Date*

Provenience

Species

115-3-5/15

pn

1106+r

286-5-6/1

pp

115-3-5/16

pn

1096vv

286-5-6/11

pp

115-3-5/17

pn

1086vv

286-5-6/12

pn

115-3-5/18

pn

1107+rB

286-5-6/13

pn

115-3-5/19

pn

1105vv

286-5-6/14

pn

115-3-5/21

pn

286-5-6/15

pn

115-3-5/23

jn

286-5-6/17

pn

115-3-5/24

pn

286-5-6/19

same as 286-5-6/13

115-3-5/25

pn

286-5-6/2

pp

115-3-5/27

jn

286-5-6/20

pn

115-3-5/3

pn

1085vv

286-5-6/21

pn

115-3-5/31

pn

1088vv

286-5-6/22

pn

115-3-5/32

pn

286-5-6/23

pn

115-3-5/35

same as 115-3-5/31

286-5-6/24

pn

115-3-5/37

pn

286-5-6/25

pn

115-3-5/38

same as 115-3-5/31

286-5-6/26

pn

115-3-5/4

pn

286-5-6/8

same as 286-5-6/13

115-3-5/41

pn

286-6RF-6/1

pp

115-3-5/42

?

286-6RF-6/11

pn

115-3-5/44

pn

1107+v

286-6RF-6/15

pn

115-3-5/5

pn

1057vv

286-6RF-6/2

pp

115-3-5/6

pn

286-6RF-6/3

pn

115-3-5/7

pn

286-6RF-6/7

pn

115-3-5/8

pn

286-6RF-6/8

pp

115-4-10/12

pn

1101vv

286-6RF-6/9

pn

115-4-10/2

pn

1107+r

286-7F-17B/1

?

115-4-10/4

pn

1106+r

286-7F-17B/2

pn

115-4-10/6

pn

1105r

300-1-2/4

jn

115-4-10/7

pn

300-3-1/3

pn

992vv

115-4-10/8

pn

300-5-1/3

pn

1022vv

115-4-5/10

pn

300-6-1/4

pn

115-4-5/11

jn

300-6-1/5

pn

115-4-5/12

pn

1086vv

300-7-1/1

pn

115-4-5/13

pn

1056vv

325-2-2/1

pn

115-4-5/14

pn

1107+v

325-5-4/1

jn

115-4-5/15

pn

1087vv

325-5-4/2

jn

115-4-5/16

pn

1106+r

325-5-4/3

jn

115-4-5/19

pn

1107+r

325-6-5/1

jn

115-4-5/20

pn

1061vv

350-1-1/1

pn

115-4-5/21

pn

1107+r

350-1-1/2

pn

115-4-5/22

pn

1106vv

350-1-1/3

pn

115-4-5/23

pn

1071vv

350-1-1/4

pn

115-4-5/24

?

350-1-1/5

pn

1082vv

1100vv

1107+v

1102vv

Date*

1015vv

1045vv

1048vv

297

Mattocks Site Tree-Ring Species and Dates

Provenience

Species

115-4-5/25

pn

115-4-5/26

pn

115-4-5/29

pn

115-4-5/37 115-4-5/5 115-4-5/50

pn

115-4-5/54 115-4-5/6 115-4-5/8

Provenience

Species

350-1-1/6

pn

1099+vv

400-1-1/1

jn

1076vv

410-2-4/4

pn

?

410-3RF-5/12

pn

pn

410-3RF-5/14

pn

1104+v

410-3RF-5/18

pn

pn

1107+v

410-3RF-5/2

pn

1106+r

same as 410-3RF-5/4

pn

1106+v

410-3RF-5/21

jn

410-3RF-5/23

pn

410-3RF-5/26

pn

410-3RF-5/27

pn

410-3RF-5/3

pn

410-3RF-5/30

pn

410-3RF-5/31

pn

410-3RF-5/32

pn

410-3RF-5/33

pn

410-3RF-5/34

pn

410-3RF-5/35

pn

410-3RF-5/36

pn

410-3RF-5/4

pn

1020+vv

410-3RF-5/5

pn

984vv

410-3RF-5/6

same as 410-3RF-5/4

410-3RF-5/7

pn

410-3RF-5/8

same as 410-3RF-5/4

115-6-18/1

pn

115-6-18/2

jn

115-6-19/2

pn

Date*

1101+vv 1098vv

115-8-17/2

jn

116-3-7/4

pn

1087vv

116-3-7/6

pn

1073vv

116-3-7/9

pn

1085vv

116-5-10/1

pn

1045vv

116-5-19/1

jn

116-5-19/1

pn

1095vv

116-5-8/4

pn

1053vv

121-2-3/5

pn

122-1-1/2

jn

122-1-1/7

jn

122-2-2/1

pn

122-2-2/4

pn

122-2-3/3

pn

122-2-3/5

pn

410-4F-5/17

pn

122-3-2/2

pn

410-4F-5/6

jn

122-4-3/4

pn

410-4F-5/7

pn

122-4-3/8

pn

410-4F-6H/2

pn

122-4-4/2

pn

410-5S(4F)-6H/2

pn

122-5-4/2

pn

410-5S-13B/5

jn

123-4-3/5

pn

410-5S-30PH/1

pp

123-4-3/7

jn

423-2-3/4

pn

123-5-3/13

pn

423-2-3/5

pn

123-5-3/6

pn

423-3RF-3/6

pn

125-1-1/1

jn

125-1-1/10

pn

125-1-1/11

1028vv

423-4F-5PH/1

jn

423-5S-6P/1

pn

jn

423-5S-6P/2

pn

125-1-1/12

pn

423-5S-6P/3

pn

125-1-1/13

pn

423-5S-8PH/2

jn

125-1-1/14

pn

425-1-2/4

pn

125-1-1/15

?

425-2-3/4

pn

1047vv

Date*

989vv

963vv

1095v

298

Appendix 1

Provenience

Species

125-1-1/16

Date*

Provenience

Species

pn

426-1-1/1

jn

125-1-1/16

pn

426-1-1/3?

pn

125-1-1/17

pn

426-1-1/4?

pn

125-1-1/18

pn

426-1-1/5

jn

125-1-1/18

pn

426-1-4/1

pn

125-1-1/19

pn

426-1-4/10

pn

1066vv

125-1-1/2

pn

426-1-4/11

pn

1109vv

125-1-1/3

pn

426-1-4/12

pn

1103vv

125-1-1/5

pn

426-1-4/2

pn

1100vv

125-1-1/6

pn

426-1-4/3

pn

125-1-1/7

pn

426-1-4/5

pn

125-1-1/8

pn

426-1-4/6

pn

125-1-1/9

?

426-1-4/8

jn

125-1-2/1

jn

426-1-4/9

pn

125-1-2/11

pn

426-1-5/4

non-con

125-1-2/12

pn

426-2-2/2

pn

125-1-2/2

jn

426-2-3/1

jn

125-1-2/3

jn

426-2-3/4

pn

1001vv

125-1-2/4

pn

426-2-3/5

pn

1108+vv

125-1-2/5

jn

426-2-3/6

pn

125-1-2/6

pn

426-2-6/11

pn

125-1-2/8

pn

426-2-6/2

pn

125-1-4/1

jn

426-2-6/8

pn

125-1-4/2

jn

426-2-6/9

pn

125-2-2/1

pn

426-2-7/3

jn

125-2-2/11

jn

426-3-3/5

pn

125-2-2/2

pn

426-3F-10PH/1

pn

125-2-2/4

pn

426-3F-19PH/3

jn

125-2-2/7

pn

426-3F-20PH/1

pn

125-2-2/8

pn

426-3F-6/2

pn

125-2-4/1

jn

426-3F-7/10

pn

125-2-4/2

jn

426-3F-7/11

pn

125-2-4/4

jn

426-3F-7/13

jn

125-2-4/6

jn

426-3F-7/2

pn

125-2-4/7

pn

426-3F-7/3

pn

125-3-3/11

jn

426-3F-7/38

jn

125-3-3/12

jn

426-3F-7/40

jn

125-3-3/13

pn

426-3F-7/41

jn

125-3-3/15

jn

426-3F-7/5

pn

125-3-3/17

pn

426-3F-7/7

pn

125-3-3/18

pn

426-3F-7/8

pn

125-3-3/2

pn

426-3F-7/9

pn

125-3-3/3

pn

427-1-1/2

pn

1089v

1089+rB 1058vv

1072vv 1082vv

1097vv

1076vv

Date*

1095r

1107+vv

1103vv

299

Mattocks Site Tree-Ring Species and Dates

Provenience

Species

125-3-3/4

Date*

Provenience

Species

Date*

pn

427-3-3/7

pn

1065vv

125-3-3/5

jn

427-4-3/3

pn

1080vv

125-3-3/6

?

427-4-3/5

pn

1066vv

125-3-3/7

jn

427-5-3/6

pn

1077vv

125-3-3/8

jn

427-6-3/3

pn

125-3-3/9

jn

428-1-1/2

pn

125-3-5/1

jn

430-1-1/1

pn

1056vv

125-3-5/3

pn

430-1-1/2

pn

1063vv

125-3-5/6

jn

430-1-1/3

pn

125-4-3/1

?

430-1-1/5

pn

125-4-3/10

pn

430-1-1/6

pn

125-4-3/11

jn

430-1-1/7

pn

1047vv

125-4-3/13

pn

430-1-1/8

pn

1020vv

125-4-3/15

pn

430-1-2/1

pn

125-4-3/16

pn

430-1-2/2

pn

125-4-3/17

pn

430-2S-4PH/1

jn

125-4-3/18

pn

430-2S-4PH/2

125-4-3/19

pn

same as 430-2S-4PH/1

125-4-3/2

pn

430-2S-4PH/3

jn

125-4-3/21

pn

431-3-3/5

jn

125-4-3/23

pn

431-3-3/6

pn

431-3-3/9

pn

431-5-12/1

jn

431-5-14/21 (listed as 431-5-2/1)

pn

431-5-18/1

jn

431-5-8/1

jn

433-1-1/1

pn

1079r

433-1-1/3

pn

1065vv

433-1-1/8

pn

1076vv

433-1-5/4

pn

1061vv

433-3-2/5

pn

1076vv

433-3-2/9

pn

1071vv

433-3-3/14

jn

433-3-3/15

pn

433-3-3/16

pp

433-3-3/17

pn

433-3-3/18

pn

433-3-3/19

pn

433-3-3/22

pn

433-3-3/23

same as 433-4R-3/29

433-3-3/24

pn

433-3-3/25

pn

1088+vv

1074vv

125-4-3/24

pn

125-4-3/25

pn

125-4-3/26

pn

125-4-3/27

pn

125-4-3/28

pn

125-4-3/29

jn

125-4-3/30

pn

125-4-3/31

pn

125-4-3/32

pn

125-4-3/4

jn

126-1-1/2

pn

1059vv

126-1-1/3

pn

1095v

126-1-1/4

pn

126-1-1/5

?

126-1-1/8

pn

1057vv

126-1-1/9

pn

1059vv

126-1-1/A

pn

126-1-2/1

jn

126-1-2/2

pn

126-1-2/4

pn

1072vv

126-1-2/5

pn

1045vv

126-1-2/6

pn

1015vv

1041vv

1065vv

1079v

300

Appendix 1

Provenience

Species

126-1-2/7

?

126-1-2/8

pn

126-1-3/2

Provenience

Species

433-3-3/26

jn

433-4-2/3

pn

1079vv

jn

433-4R-2/1

pn

1068vv

126-1-3/3

?

433-4R-2/10

pn

1066vv

126-1-3/5

?

433-4R-2/17

pn

1078vv

126-1-3/6

pn

433-4R-2/22

pn

126-1-3/7

jn, pn

433-4R-2/23

pn

1049vv

126-1-4/1

pn

433-4R-2/31

pn

1062vv

126-1-4/2

pn

433-4R-2/37

pn

1063vv

126-1-4/3

pn

433-4R-2/49

pn

1076vv

126-1-7/2

jn

433-4R-2/55

pn

1074vv

126-1-7/3

pn

433-4R-2/9

pn

1061vv

126-2-4/1

pn

433-4R-3/1

pn

126-2-4/2

?

433-4R-3/10

pn

126-2-4/3

pn

433-4R-3/11

pn

126-2-4/4

jn

433-4R-3/13

pn

126-2-7/1

jn

433-4R-3/14

pn

126-2-7/2

pn

433-4R-3/15

pn

126-2-7/4

pn

433-4R-3/16

126-2-7/6

pn

same as 433-5F-4/20

126-3-3/10

pn

433-4R-3/17

pn

433-4R-3/18

pn

1070vv

433-4R-3/18

pn

1075vv

433-4R-3/2

jn

433-4R-3/20

pn

433-4R-3/21

same as 433-5F-4/20

433-4R-3/22

same as 433-4R-2/17

126-3-3/12

pn

126-3-3/3

pn

126-3-3/6

pn

Date*

1075vv

1077vv

1057vv 1084vv

1035+vv

1054+vv

Date*

1038vv

126-3-3/9

pn

126-3-4/1

pn

126-3-4/3

?

126-3-4/5

pn

126-3-4/7

pn

1040vv

433-4R-3/23

pn

126-3-4/8

pn

1023vv

433-4R-3/24

jn

126-3-4/9

pn

1017vv

433-4R-3/25

126-3-4/A

pn

1026vv

same as 433-4R-2/33

126-4-3/1

pn

1072vv

433-4R-3/27

pn

126-4-3/4

jn

433-4R-3/28

pn

126-4-6/2

pn

433-4R-3/29

pn

126-4-6/3

pn

433-4R-3/3

jn

126-4-6/4

pn

433-4R-3/5

pn

126-5-8/10

pn

433-4R-3/6

126-5-8/14

pn

same as 433-4R-3/29

126-5-8/15

pn

433-4R-3/7

jn

126-5-8/16

pn

1053vv

433-4R-3/8

pn

126-5-8/20

pn

1013vv

433-4R-3/9

pn

1063vv

433-5F-4/1

pn

1079vv

1059vv

1065vv

1079r 1079r

301

Mattocks Site Tree-Ring Species and Dates

Provenience

Species

Date*

Provenience

Species

126-5-8/21

pn

1068vv

433-5F-4/13

pn

126-5-8/22

jn

433-5F-4/14

pn

1076+vv

126-5-8/23

pn

433-5F-4/15

pn

1077vv

126-5-8/3

pn

433-5F-4/16

pn

126-5-8/9

pn

433-5F-4/17

pn

126-5-9B/1

pn

433-5F-4/18

pn

126-5-9B/3

pn

433-5F-4/19

pn

126-5-9B/4

pn

433-5F-4/2

pn

127-1-1/1

pn

433-5F-4/20

pn

127-2-1/1

pn

433-5F-4/21

same as 433-3-2/5

127-2-1/2

pn

1054vv

433-5F-4/22

pn

127-2-3/14

pn

1077vv

433-5F-4/23

pn

127-2-3/2

jn

433-5F-4/24

same as 433-3-2/5

127-2-3/4

?

433-5F-4/25

pn

127-2-3/5

pn

1050vv

433-5F-4/26

pn

127-2-3/5

pn

1087vv

433-5F-4/27

pn

127-2-3/8

pn

433-5F-4/28

same as 433-3-2/5

127-2-3/9

pn

433-5F-4/3

pn

127-4-3/5

?

433-5F-4/32

pn

127-4-3/7

pn

1054vv

433-5F-4/33

pn

127-4-3/7

pn

1077vv

433-5F-4/34

same as 433-3-2/5

127-4-3/9

pn

433-5F-4/35

same as 433-3-2/5

127-5-3/1

pn

433-5F-4/36

134-1-1/1

pn

same as 433-4R-2/17

136-1-1/2,3

pn

433-5F-4/37

pn

137-1-1/1

pn

433-5F-4/38

jn

137-1-3/6

pn

433-5F-4/4

pn

433-5F-4/40

same as 433-4R-2/17

433-5F-4/42

pn

433-5F-4/43

pn

433-5F-4/47

same as 433-1-1/1

433-5F-4/48

jn

433-5F-4/50

pn

433-5F-4/51

pn

433-5F-4/52

pn

433-5F-4/53

pn

433-5F-4/54

same as 433-5F-4/52

1088vv

433-5F-4/55

same as 433-5F-4/52

1068vv

433-5F-4/56

same as 433-5F-4/52

1049vv

1061vv

137-1-3/7

pn

137-1-3/8

pn

1050vv

137-1-3/9

pn

1054vv

137-1-4/1

pn

1090+vv

137-1-4/3

pn

137-2-4/1

pn

137-3-5/1

pn

137-3-5/10

pn

137-3-5/11

pn

137-3-5/12

pn

137-3-5/13

pn

137-3-5/15

pn

137-3-5/2

pn

137-3-5/3

pn

137-3-5/4

pn

1060vv

Date*

1079v

1079r

1064vv

1100vv

1068vv

1068vv

302

Appendix 1

Provenience

Species

Date*

Provenience

Species

Date*

137-3-5/5

pn

1089vv

433-5F-4/6

pn

1100vv

137-3-5/6

pn

1054vv

433-5F-4/7

pn

137-3-5/8

pn

1086vv

433-5F-4/8

pn

146-1-1/7

pn

433-5F-4/9

pn

150-1-3/1?

pn

433-6S-10B/2

jn

200-1-1/2

pp

433-6S-10B/4

jn

200-2-1/2

pn

433-6S-12P/1

pn

200-2-1/3

pn

433-6S-12P/6

pn

200-3-1/1

pn

1032vv

433-6S-18B/1

pn

200-3-1/2

pn

1074vv

433-6S-18B/10

pn

201-1-1/1

pn

1042vv

433-6S-18B/2

pn

201-1-1/2

jn

433-6S-18B/4

pn

201-1-1/4

jn

433-6S-18B/6

jn

213-4-5/2

?

433-6S-18B/7

213-4-5/3

?

same as 433-4R-3/29

213-8-6/2

pp

433-6S-18B/8

213-8-6/3

pp

same as 433-4R-3/29

213-9-7/1

pp

433-6S-6P/2

pn

213-9-7/10

?

433-6S-6P/3

pn

1079v

213-9-7/2

pp

435-1-2/3

pn

1043vv

213-9-7/3

pp

435-2-2/2

pn

213-9-7/4

pp

435-2-2/6

pn

213-9-7/5

pp

435-3-8/3

pn

213-9-7/6

pp

435-4F-4/1

pn

213-9-7/7

?

435-4F-4/10

pn

213-9-7/8

?

435-4F-4/11

pn

213-9-7/9

?

435-4F-4/12

same as 435-5S-12B/14

220-10-10/2

non-con

435-4F-4/15

pn

220-10-10/3

non-con

435-4F-4/2

pn

220-10-10/4

pn

435-4F-4/21

pn

220-10-11/2

non-con

435-4F-4/3

jn

220-1-12/1

jn

435-4F-4/4

pn

220-2-2/1

pn

435-4F-4/5

pn

220-2-2/2

pn

435-4F-4/7

pn

220-3-3/1

non-con

435-4F-4/9

pn

220-3-3/7

pp

435-4F-5/1

pn

220-5-5/1

jn

435-4F-5/5PH

jn

220-5-5/2

jn

435-4F-9H/1

non-con

220-5-5/3

pn

435-5S-10B/8

jn

220-5-5/4

jn

435-5S-11B/4

jn

220-5-5/5

pn

435-5S-12B/14

pn

220-7-6/5

non-con

435-5S-12B/15

pn

220-8-6/1

pn

1033vv

1065vv

990vv 1092vv

1079vv

1070vv

303

Mattocks Site Tree-Ring Species and Dates

Provenience

Species

220-8-6/2

?

220-9-6/1

non-con

220-9-6/2

pp

Date*

Provenience

Species

435-5S-14B/10

same as 435-5S-14b/9

435-5S-14B/11

non-con

435-5S-14B/14

non-con

435-5S-14B/9

pn

435-5S-16B/10

same as 435-5S-16B/6

435-5S-16B/4

pn

435-5S-16B/5

pn

435-5S-16B/6

pn

435-5S-16B/7

pn

435-5S-16B/8

same as 435-5S-16B/4

435-5S-16B/9

pn

435-5S-20H/1

pn

435-5S-20H/2

pn

Date*

220-9-6/5

pn

230-1-1/8

pn

1067vv

231-1-1/10

pn

1046+vv

231-1-1/11

pn

1077vv

231-1-1/2

pn

1071vv

231-1-1/2

pn

1071vv

231-1-1/4

pn

1072vv

231-1-1/5

pn

1047vv

231-1-1/8

pn

231-1-1/9

pn

231-1-2/10

jn

231-1-2/11

pn

231-1-2/12

same as 231-1-2/15

435-5S-8/2

pn

231-1-2/13

pn

438-1-1/12

pn

231-1-2/14

pn

438-1-1/2

pn

1093vv

231-1-2/15

pn

438-1-1/3

pn

1117v

231-1-2/16

pn

438-1-1/5

pn

231-1-2/17

pn

438-1-1/6

pn

231-1-2/18

pn

438-1-1/7

pn

231-1-2/4

pn

1049vv

438-1-1/9

pn

231-1-2/5

pn

1039vv

438-2-1/11

pn

231-1-2/6

jn

438-2-1/7

pn

231-1-2/7

jn

438-2-1/9

pn

231-1-2/8

pn

438-2RF-4/11

jn

231-1-3/10

pn

438-2RF-4/12

jn

231-1-3/2

pn

438-2RF-4/13

jn

231-1-3/4

pn

438-2RF-4/14

pn

231-1-3/7

pn

438-2RF-4/15

231-1-3/8

pn

same as 438-2RF-4/7

231-1-3/9

jn

438-2RF-4/16

231-2-3/1

same as 231-1-1/11

same as 438-2RF-4/7

231-2-3/2

same as 231-1-2/8

438-2RF-4/17

pn

231-2-3/3

same as 231-1-1/11

438-2RF-4/23

pn

231-2-3/5

pn

997vv

438-2RF-4/33

same as 438-2RF-4/17

231-3-3/1

pn

1015+vv

438-2RF-4/34

pn

1092+vv

231-3-3/3

same as 231-1-1/11

438-2RF-4/6

pn

1087vv

231-3-3/4

same as 231-3-3/1

438-2RF-4/7

pn

1092vv

231-3-3/5

same as 231-1-1/10

438-3F-13H/3

pn

231-3-3/6

pn

438-3F-16PH/1

jn

231-3-3/7

same as 231-1-1/11

1056vv 1031vv

1096+vv 1050vv 978vv

1076vv 1059vv

1066vv

1117r

1078vv

1095v

304

Appendix 1

Provenience

Species

Date*

Provenience

Species

Date*

231-3-3/8

pn

1059vv

438-3F-4/10

pn

1117vv

231-3-3/9

pn

1082vv

438-3F-4/11

pn

232-1-1/3

pn

438-3F-7PH/1

232-2-1/1

pn

1007vv

same as 438-2RF-4/34

438-3S-8PH/1

jn

232-2-1/1

pn

995vv

438-3S-8PH/4

jn

232-2-1/10

jn

438-4S-20B/1

pn

232-2-1/10

pn

1052vv

438-4S-20B/2

pn

232-2-1/12

pn

1022vv

490-1-1/9

pn

1026vv

* Tree-ring dates are A.D. B: bark present; cutting date unless +-symbol also present. r: less than a full section present, but the outermost ring is continuous around the available circumference; cutting date unless +-symbol also present. v: a subjective judgment that, although there was no direct evidence of the true outside on the specimen, the date is within a very few years of being a cutting date. vv: there is no way of estimating how far the last ring is from the true outside. + symbol: one or more rings may be missing near the end of the ring series, the presence or absence of which cannot be determined because the specimen did not extend far enough. Species: jn = juniper; pp = Ponderosa pine; pn = pinyon; non-con = non-coniferous; ? = unknown. Same as = both samples from the same tree.

fill

in situ fill above floor

intrusive burials

fill above floor, in situ fill above floor, floor pits / postholes

pothunted

extramural fill

80a

80a

80a

80b

100

105

extramural pit / posthole

pothunted

41a, b

71

fill above floor, floor pits / postholes

41b

extramural fill, extramural pit / posthole

trash, fill above floor, pothunted

41b

51

roof fall, fill above floor

41a

0–50; DC

100; DC

50–100

100

100

100

100

100

100

50–100

50–100

50

0–100

fill, roof fall, or floor

Provenience

41a

Analytic Unit

fill or extra- 50–100 mural fill, fill above floor or fill of limited time depth, floor

Percentage Screened

31

Classic B/w

31

36

76

13

50

5

0

0

86

10

58

24

102

13

Classic/Transitional Indeterminate B/w

1

1

38

5

2

5

0

3

8

0

0

0

0

7

1

3

0

13

7

Transitional B/w

19

0

1

39

5

25

2

27

6

Transitional/Boldface Indeterminate B/w

0

1

2

0

0

0

0

0

0

1

0

0

1

2

Boldface B/w 1

0

13

2

2

0

0

0

6

0

4

0

1

7

Boldface/Three Circle Indeterminate B/w 0

0

0

0

0

0

0

0

0

0

0

0

0

0

Three Circle R/w 0

0

0

0

0

0

0

0

0

0

0

0

0

0

Mogollon R/br 0

0

0

0

0

0

0

0

0

0

0

0

0

0

Truly Indeterminate B/w 6

3

165

23

127

13

3

4

167

17

129

11

146

43

San Francisco Red 0

0

5

1

1

0

0

0

5

0

3

0

1

0

Other Red 0

1

7

0

9

0

0

0

1

0

1

0

1

3

Clapboard Not Obliterated 0

0

12

3

6

0

0

0

10

0

8

1

8

5

Clapboard Obliterated 0

4

3

182

22

0

0

0

0

0

18 125

0

0

0

0

0

0

0

0

Indented Not Obliterated

1

0

195

11

129

20

179

50

Indented Obliterated 0

0

1

0

2

0

0

0

2

0

0

0

3

0

Corrugated Blackened Not Obliterated 0

0

0

0

1

0

0

0

0

0

0

0

0

0

Corrugated Blackened Obliterated 0

0

1

0

0

0

0

0

2

0

1

1

1

0

Plain 6

20

727

91

344

28

14

8

531

46

362

40

345

245

Scored 0

0

10

4

4

0

0

0

0

0

0

0

3

0

Punctate Incised 0

0

1

1

1

0

1

0

1

1

3

0

0

0

Handle 1

1

0

0

1

1

0

0

1

0

0

0

0

0

Playas Red 1

1

0

0

0

0

0

0

0

0

0

0

0

0

Chupadero B/w 0

0

0

0

0

0

0

0

0

0

0

0

0

0

El Paso Polychrome 0

0

0

0

0

0

0

0

0

0

0

0

3

2

Ramos Polychrome 0

0

0

0

0

0

0

0

0

0

0

0

0

0

Gila Polychrome 1

0

0

0

0

0

0

0

0

0

0

0

0

0

White Mt Red Ware 0

0

0

0

0

0

0

0

0

0

0

0

0

0

Cibola White Ware 0

0

0

0

0

0

0

0

0

0

0

0

0

0

El Paso Temper 0

1

0

0

0

0

0

0

0

0

0

0

0

0

Other 0

2

2

0

0

0

0

0

2

1

0

1

10

7

Total 57

72

1247

168

695

65

19

13

1055

93

726

100

844

390

Percentage Classic B/w 0.54

0.50

0.06

0.08

0.07

0.08

0.00

0.00

0.08

0.11

0.08

0.24

0.12

0.03

Percentage Transitional B/w 0.09

0.03

0.00

0.00

0.00

0.00

0.00

0.00

0.01

0.01

0.00

0.00

0.02

0.02

Percentage Boldface B/w 0.02

0.00

0.01

0.01

0.00

0.00

0.00

0.00

0.01

0.00

0.01

0.00

0.00

0.02

Percentage Three Circle/Mogollon R/br 0.0000

0.0000

0.0000

0.0000

0.0000

0.0000

0.0000

0.0000

0.0000

0.0000

0.0000

0.0000

0.0000

0.0000

Percentage Red 0.00

0.01

0.01

0.01

0.01

0.00

0.00

0.00

0.01

0.00

0.01

0.00

0.00

0.01

Percentage Scored/Punctate 0.00

0.00

0.01

0.03

0.01

0.00

0.05

0.00

0.00

0.01

0.00

0.00

0.00

0.00

Percentage Non-Mimbres 0.04

0.03

0.00

0.00

0.00

0.00

0.00

0.00

0.00

0.00

0.00

0.00

0.00

0.01

APPENDIX 2

Mattocks Site Sherd Counts and Proportions

subfloor, extramural pit / posthole

110

fill

fill, roof fall

fill, in situ roof

in situ roof, floor pits / postholes

fill, in situ roof

in situ roof, floor pits / postholes, burials associated with and postdating occupation

112

112

113

113

114a

114a

fill

fill of limited time depth

110

fill, in situ roof, fill above floor, floor pits / postholes, subfloor

extramural fill, fill of limited time depth

110

111

trash, fill above floor

106b

111

fill

roof fall, floor pits / postholes, subfloor

Provenience

106a

Analytic Unit

106a

Percentage Screened

6

7

409

1

45

33

Classic B/w

100

100

100

100

100

100

0–100

127

81

18

32

7

16

158

50–100 128

0

100

100

100

100

50–100

15

Classic/Transitional Indeterminate B/w

8

2

37

0

2

0

0

5

1

0

1

8

10

0

0

8

0

3

3

Transitional/Boldface Indeterminate B/w

3

0

10

18

1

2

36

0

6

4

Transitional B/w

39

11

6

6

13

71

93

1

6

121

1

10

3

Boldface B/w 0

0

1

2

1

0

7

6

0

0

8

0

2

0

Boldface/Three Circle Indeterminate B/w 0

0

0

0

0

0

0

0

0

0

0

0

0

0

Three Circle R/w 0

0

0

0

0

0

0

0

0

0

4

0

0

0

Mogollon R/br 0

0

0

0

0

0

0

0

0

0

5

0

0

75

Truly Indeterminate B/w 61

200

28

58

32

52

280

404

5

33

829

33

87

0

San Francisco Red 0

2

1

0

0

0

4

3

0

1

10

0

3

3

Other Red 2

8

1

0

0

0

3

4

0

0

20

0

1

14

Clapboard Not Obliterated 17

29

2

4

0

3

30

41

0

2

44

0

10

Clapboard Obliterated 205

211

29

95

27

42

242

347

9

25

841

1

99

135

0

Indented Not Obliterated 0

0

0

0

0

0

0

0

0

0

1

0

0

3

Indented Obliterated 0

79

21

0

0

1

0

0

0

0

0 0

0

0

0

0

0

0

0

0

Corrugated Blackened Not Obliterated

2

3

0

0

0

0

18

0

Corrugated Blackened Obliterated 1

0

1

2

0

0

0

0

0

2

6

0

1

274

Plain 399

607

86

253

82

113

870

982

12

82

2090

2

275

1

Scored 0

0

0

3

2

1

0

0

0

0

5

0

1

0

Punctate Incised 0

0

0

0

0

0

0

0

0

0

0

0

0

2

Handle 0

0

0

0

0

1

0

0

0

0

1

0

1

0

Playas Red 0

0

0

0

0

0

0

0

0

0

2

0

1

1

Chupadero B/w 0

0

0

0

0

0

0

1

0

0

3

0

0

0

El Paso Polychrome 0

2

0

1

0

0

0

0

0

0

1

0

0

0

Ramos Polychrome 0

0

0

0

0

0

0

0

0

0

0

0

0

0

Gila Polychrome 0

0

0

0

0

0

0

0

0

0

0

0

0

0

White Mt Red Ware 3

5

0

0

0

0

1

0

0

0

0

0

0

0

Cibola White Ware 0

4

0

0

0

0

0

0

0

0

7

0

0

2

El Paso Temper 0

0

0

0

0

0

1

1

0

0

5

0

0

6

Other 4

4

1

3

1

3

10

17

0

0

43

0

8

574

Total 938

1223

180

464

161

245

1697

2058

34

160

4499

38

571

0.06

Percentage Classic B/w 0.14

0.07

0.10

0.07

0.04

0.07

0.09

0.06

0.18

0.04

0.09

0.03

0.08

0.01

Percentage Transitional B/w 0.00

0.01

0.01

0.01

0.02

0.00

0.01

0.01

0.03

0.01

0.01

0.00

0.01

0.01

Percentage Boldface B/w 0.00

0.00

0.01

0.00

0.01

0.00

0.00

0.00

0.00

0.00

0.00

0.00

0.00

0.0000

Percentage Three Circle/Mogollon R/br 0.0000

0.0000

0.0000

0.0000

0.0000

0.0000

0.0000

0.0000

0.0000

0.0000

0.0020

0.0000

0.0000

0.01

Percentage Red 0.00

0.01

0.01

0.00

0.00

0.00

0.00

0.00

0.00

0.01

0.01

0.00

0.01

0.00

Percentage Scored/Punctate 0.00

0.00

0.00

0.01

0.01

0.00

0.00

0.00

0.00

0.00

0.00

0.00

0.00

0.01

Percentage Non-Mimbres 0.00

0.01

0.00

0.00

0.00

0.00

0.00

0.00

0.00

0.00

0.00

0.00

0.00

306

Appendix 2

25–100

Analytic Unit

pothunted

fill above floor, burials postdating occupation

fill, trash, in situ roof

trash, in situ 0–100 roof, floor pits / postholes, burials associated with and postdating occupation, subfloor

114

115a

115a

fill

fill, in situ fill above floor

121a/131

121a/130

floor pits / postholes, pits of questionable association, pothunted

120

roof fall, floor pits / postholes, burials associated with occupation, subfloor

116

fill

fill

fill above floor, floor pits / postholes

subfloor

115b

116

119

roof fall, fill above floor

115b

119

trash, fill above floor

Provenience

115b

0

46

307

991

561

26

40

Classic B/w

25–50

95–100

0–100

50–100

50

100

24

50

51

6

8

49

25–100 138

0–100

100

100

100

100

Percentage Screened

114b

Classic/Transitional Indeterminate B/w

19

45

18

4

3

11

25

0

0

4

11

45

9

28

4

Transitional B/w

3

7

5

0

0

1

22

0

0

8

15

8

6

1

Transitional/Boldface Indeterminate B/w

0

3

0

0

1

2

5

0

0

2

1

6

0

0

Boldface B/w 0

0

1

0

0

3

3

0

2

14

16

18

0

0

Boldface/Three Circle Indeterminate B/w 0

0

0

0

0

0

0

0

0

0

0

0

0

0

Three Circle R/w 0

0

0

0

0

0

0

0

0

0

1

2

0

0

Mogollon R/br 0

0

0

0

0

0

0

0

0

0

1

0

0

72

Truly Indeterminate B/w 74

71

97

12

24

86

302

0

0

7

54

151

39

0

San Francisco Red 1

2

0

0

0

0

4

0

0

4

10

4

0

2

Other Red 1

4

2

2

0

2

3

0

4

5

5

15

3

Clapboard Not Obliterated 3

21

5

0

0

6

18

0

24

31

88

84

9

12

91

Clapboard Obliterated 62

164

137

21

33

170

419

0

8

112

298

396

65

0

Indented Not Obliterated 0

1

1

0

0

0

0

0

2

3

10

1

0

Indented Obliterated 2

1

1

0

0

1

14

0

0

15

34

16

3

16

0

Corrugated Blackened Not Obliterated 0

0

0

0

0

0

0

0

0

6

1

6

0

0

Corrugated Blackened Obliterated 0

1

0

0

0

1

2

0

0

0

0

0

0

209

Plain 155

513

256

52

64

218

951

2

118

598

1311

1263

170

0

Scored 0

0

1

2

1

0

7

0

6

9

18

18

0

0

Punctate Incised 0

0

0

0

0

0

0

0

0

5

11

21

0

0

Handle 1

0

0

0

0

2

0

0

0

0

0

1

0

0

Playas Red 0

1

0

0

0

0

0

0

0

0

0

0

0

0

Chupadero B/w 0

0

0

0

0

0

0

0

0

0

0

3

0

0

El Paso Polychrome 1

0

1

0

0

0

0

0

0

0

0

0

0

0

Ramos Polychrome 0

0

0

0

0

0

0

0

0

0

0

0

0

0

Gila Polychrome 0

0

0

0

0

0

0

0

0

0

0

0

0

0

White Mt Red Ware 0

3

0

0

0

0

0

0

0

0

0

1

0

0

Cibola White Ware 0

0

0

0

0

0

0

0

0

0

0

0

0

0

El Paso Temper 4

0

1

0

0

0

0

0

0

0

0

0

0

Other 3

6

6

0

1

1

13

0

0

0

1

3

7

17

492

Total 353

893

583

99

135

553

1926

2

210

1130

2877

2623

337

0.08

Percentage Classic B/w 0.07

0.06

0.09

0.06

0.06

0.09

0.07

0.00

0.22

0.27

0.34

0.21

0.08

0.01

Percentage Transitional B/w 0.01

0.01

0.01

0.00

0.00

0.00

0.01

0.00

0.00

0.01

0.01

0.00

0.02

0.00

Percentage Boldface B/w 0.00

0.00

0.00

0.00

0.00

0.01

0.00

0.00

0.01

0.01

0.01

0.01

0.00

0.0000

Percentage Three Circle/Mogollon R/br 0.0000

0.0000

0.0000

0.0000

0.0000

0.0000

0.0000

0.0000

0.0000

0.0000

0.0007

0.0008

0.0000

0.00

Percentage Red 0.01

0.01

0.00

0.02

0.00

0.00

0.00

0.00

0.02

0.01

0.01

0.01

0.01

0.00

Percentage Scored/Punctate 0.00

0.00

0.00

0.02

0.01

0.00

0.00

0.00

0.03

0.01

0.01

0.01

0.00

0.00

Percentage Non-Mimbres 0.01

0.00

0.00

0.00

0.00

0.00

0.00

0.00

0.00

0.00

0.00

0.00

0.00

Mattocks Site Sherd Counts and Proportions 307

pothunted

pothunted

pothunted

pothunted, extramural fill

fill, fill above floor

pothunted

extramural pit / posthole

pothunted

pothunted

125

126

127

128

131a

137

141

200

201

100; DC

100; DC

100

0–100; DC

50

0–50; DC

0–100; DC

0–100; DC

0–100; DC

50–100; DC

0–100; DC

100

10–100

0–100

Percentage Screened

subfloor

fill

fill, roof fall

210

213

213

100

0–100

100

extramural fill 0–100

pothunted

123

210

pothunted

pothunted

121

122

floor, floor pits / postholes, subfloor

121b

Provenience

fill above floor, in situ fill above floor, floor, floor pits / postholes

Analytic Unit

121a/131

Classic B/w

0

53

1

71

17

14

26

37

30

34

37

70

42

62

42

2

5

71

Classic/Transitional Indeterminate B/w

0

9

1

11

0

0

8

1

12

4

1

8

2

0

2

1

3

25

Transitional B/w

0

13

1

5

2

2

3

7

4

0

8

8

5

8

9

0

0

8

Transitional/Boldface Indeterminate B/w

0

1

1

0

0

0

0

0

0

0

0

0

0

0

0

0

0

3

Boldface B/w 0

1

0

1

1

0

0

2

0

0

0

1

0

0

0

0

0

3

Boldface/Three Circle Indeterminate B/w 0

5

0

0

0

0

0

0

0

0

0

0

0

0

0

0

0

0

Three Circle R/w 0

1

0

0

0

0

0

0

0

1

0

0

0

0

0

0

0

0

Mogollon R/br 0

0

0

0

0

0

0

0

0

0

0

0

0

0

0

0

0

0

Truly Indeterminate B/w 3

117

4

153

0

1

69

7

74

7

5

9

2

6

4

7

12

180

San Francisco Red 0

4

1

0

0

0

1

1

0

0

0

0

0

0

1

0

0

1

Other Red 0

6

0

7

0

0

0

2

1

1

0

2

1

1

2

0

1

6

Clapboard Not Obliterated 2

55

2

12

0

0

0

0

1

0

0

0

0

0

0

0

2

16

Clapboard Obliterated 0

91

3

191

0

2

57

8

125

9

5

12

4

4

3

1

8

190

Indented Not Obliterated 0

0

0

0

0

0

0

0

0

0

0

13

0

0

0

0

0

0

0 0

0

0

0

0

1

0

0

21

Indented Obliterated

0

0

0

0

0

0

0

0

Corrugated Blackened Not Obliterated 0

0

0

0

0

0

0

0

0

0

0

0

0

0

0

0

0

1

Corrugated Blackened Obliterated 0

0

0

0

0

2

0

0

0

0

0

0

1

1

1

0

0

1

Plain 14

389

26

390

5

12

155

29

170

10

39

50

24

31

16

15

16

513

Scored 0

5

0

2

1

2

0

0

2

0

0

0

1

0

0

0

0

0

Punctate Incised 0

9

0

0

0

0

0

0

0

0

0

0

0

0

0

0

0

0

Handle 0

0

0

2

0

1

2

0

0

0

0

1

1

0

0

0

0

0

Playas Red 0

0

0

1

0

0

0

0

0

0

1

1

0

1

0

0

0

0

Chupadero B/w 0

1

0

1

0

1

0

0

1

0

1

4

0

1

0

0

0

0

El Paso Polychrome 0

0

0

1

0

1

0

1

0

1

0

0

3

0

0

0

0

0

Ramos Polychrome 0

0

0

0

0

0

0

0

0

0

2

0

0

0

0

0

0

0

Gila Polychrome 0

0

0

0

0

1

0

0

0

0

0

1

0

0

0

0

0

0

White Mt Red Ware 0

0

0

0

0

0

0

0

0

0

0

1

3

1

2

0

0

0

Cibola White Ware 0

14

0

0

2

0

1

1

0

0

0

1

0

0

0

0

0

0

El Paso Temper 0

0

0

1

0

0

0

1

0

0

0

0

4

3

4

0

0

1

Other 0

20

0

5

0

3

1

6

5

1

5

8

17

13

4

0

0

12

Total 19

794

40

867

28

42

323

103

425

68

104

177

110

132

91

26

47

1052

Percentage Classic B/w 0.00

0.07

0.03

0.08

0.61

0.33

0.08

0.36

0.07

0.50

0.36

0.40

0.38

0.47

0.46

0.08

0.11

0.07

Percentage Transitional B/w 0.00

0.02

0.03

0.01

0.07

0.05

0.01

0.07

0.01

0.00

0.08

0.05

0.05

0.06

0.10

0.00

0.00

0.01

Percentage Boldface B/w 0.00

0.00

0.00

0.00

0.04

0.00

0.00

0.02

0.00

0.00

0.00

0.01

0.00

0.00

0.00

0.00

0.00

0.00

Percentage Three Circle/Mogollon R/br 0.0000

0.0013

0.0000

0.0000

0.0000

0.0000

0.0000

0.0000

0.0000

0.0147

0.0000

0.0000

0.0000

0.0000

0.0000

0.0000

0.0000

0.0000

Percentage Red 0.00

0.01

0.03

0.01

0.00

0.00

0.00

0.03

0.00

0.01

0.00

0.01

0.01

0.01

0.03

0.00

0.02

0.01

Percentage Scored/Punctate 0.00

0.02

0.00

0.00

0.04

0.05

0.00

0.00

0.00

0.00

0.00

0.00

0.01

0.00

0.00

0.00

0.00

0.00

Percentage Non-Mimbres 0.00

0.02

0.00

0.00

0.07

0.07

0.00

0.03

0.00

0.01

0.04

0.05

0.09

0.05

0.07

0.00

0.00

0.00

308

Appendix 2

pothunted

pothunted

fill, trash

roof fall, floor pits / postholes, burials associated with occupation

pothunted

232

233

233

235

fill, trash

trash, roof fall, floor, floor pits / postholes, burials postdating occupation

fill, trash, roof fall

fill

trash, roof fall, floor, floor pits / postholes

286a

286a

286a, b

286b

286b

fill, roof fall, subfloor, pothunted

237

230

100

50–100

50

0–100

63

59

25

129

49

31

11

96

51

5

0

1

28

17

11

66

1

70

56

0

107

Classic/Transitional Indeterminate B/w

67

274

24

170

143

16

375

Classic B/w

25–100 107

0–100; DC

fill above 0–100; floor, subfloor, DC pothunted

236

0–75; DC

100

100

0–50; DC

0–100

100

fill, pothunted

226

231

100

fill, fill above 0–100; floor DC

Provenience

225

Analytic Unit

floor pits / postholes, pothunted

Percentage Screened

220

Transitional B/w

23

8

4

26

11

28

4

4

6

16

1

7

15

3

40

Transitional/Boldface Indeterminate B/w

13

4

2

10

1

0

0

0

4

6

0

4

3

0

7

Boldface B/w 46

22

5

35

8

3

1

0

0

8

0

5

0

0

6

Boldface/Three Circle Indeterminate B/w 0

0

0

0

0

0

0

0

0

0

1

0

0

0

0

Three Circle R/w 0

0

0

0

0

0

0

0

0

4

0

0

0

0

0

Mogollon R/br 0

1

0

0

0

0

0

0

0

1

0

0

0

0

0

Truly Indeterminate B/w 200

150

42

322

322

16

3

2

107

519

1

352

339

0

953

San Francisco Red 1

2

0

2

2

3

0

0

1

12

0

6

3

0

24

Other Red 5

3

0

1

3

7

3

1

0

13

1

5

8

1

32

Clapboard Not Obliterated 42

21

8

17

7

0

0

0

5

18

0

19

9

0

24

Clapboard Obliterated 199

142

46

340

301

44

3

4

132

587

3

425

371

2

878

Indented Not Obliterated 0

0

0

0

0

5

0

0

2

2

7

0

0

0

0

6

18

0

4

2

0

8

Indented Obliterated

0

0

2

0

0

0

0

0

Corrugated Blackened Not Obliterated 3

0

0

0

0

0

0

0

0

1

0

0

0

0

9

Corrugated Blackened Obliterated 0

1

1

1

3

7

0

0

1

9

0

9

3

0

7

Plain 797

419

138

985

735

129

10

15

450

1400

9

992

994

13

2370

Scored 0

4

2

2

1

3

1

1

5

2

0

1

4

0

8

Punctate Incised 3

3

2

4

3

0

0

0

0

0

0

0

0

0

0

Handle 2

0

0

0

1

3

0

0

0

0

0

2

1

0

0

Playas Red 0

1

0

0

0

32

3

3

0

10

2

2

5

6

17

Chupadero B/w 1

0

2

2

0

8

3

6

0

2

2

2

1

0

9

El Paso Polychrome 0

1

0

3

1

28

10

11

0

7

3

8

1

2

11

Ramos Polychrome 0

0

0

0

0

0

0

0

0

0

0

0

0

0

0

Gila Polychrome 0

0

0

0

0

0

0

0

0

0

0

0

0

0

0

White Mt Red Ware 0

0

0

0

0

3

0

0

0

0

0

0

0

0

0

Cibola White Ware 0

0

0

0

3

0

0

2

0

3

0

0

0

0

1

El Paso Temper 0

1

0

0

1

37

3

4

0

2

1

2

6

0

7

Other 1

0

0

0

0

19

4

6

2

23

2

13

7

0

47

Total 1453

873

288

1977

1563

612

65

88

797

3003

51

2098

1971

43

4940

Percentage Classic B/w 0.04

0.07

0.09

0.07

0.07

0.38

0.26

0.32

0.08

0.09

0.47

0.08

0.07

0.37

0.08

Percentage Transitional B/w 0.02

0.01

0.01

0.01

0.01

0.05

0.06

0.05

0.01

0.01

0.02

0.00

0.01

0.07

0.01

Percentage Boldface B/w 0.03

0.03

0.02

0.02

0.01

0.00

0.02

0.00

0.00

0.00

0.00

0.00

0.00

0.00

0.00

Percentage Three Circle/Mogollon R/br 0.0000

0.0011

0.0000

0.0000

0.0000

0.0000

0.0000

0.0000

0.0000

0.0017

0.0000

0.0000

0.0000

0.0000

0.0000

Percentage Red 0.00

0.01

0.00

0.00

0.00

0.02

0.05

0.01

0.00

0.01

0.02

0.01

0.01

0.02

0.01

Percentage Scored/Punctate 0.00

0.01

0.01

0.00

0.00

0.00

0.02

0.01

0.01

0.00

0.00

0.00

0.00

0.00

0.00

Percentage Non-Mimbres 0.00

0.00

0.01

0.00

0.00

0.18

0.29

0.30

0.00

0.01

0.16

0.01

0.01

0.19

0.01

Mattocks Site Sherd Counts and Proportions 309

pothunted

302

0; DC

100; DC

50

50–100

extramural fill 0; DC

330

0; DC

0–100

fill, trash

trash

410

25–50

0; DC

extramural fill 0–100; DC

410

400

pothunted

extramural fill 0; DC

326

335

floor, floor pits / postholes, burials postdating occupation, subfloor

325

75–100

325

50–100

fill

roof fall, fill above floor, floor pits postdating occupation

325

extramural fill 0; DC

pothunted

pothunted

290

300

subfloor, extramural trash

324

100

100

Percentage Screened

extramural fill 50–100

290

290

intrusive burials

286b

Provenience

burials associated with and predating occupation

Analytic Unit

286b

Classic B/w

31

2

21

1

1

7

5

45

93

2

2

67

55

33

81

1

0

Classic/Transitional Indeterminate B/w

3

0

0

0

0

0

1

0

53

0

0

6

8

15

23

5

0

Transitional B/w

0

0

2

2

0

0

0

0

7

0

0

5

10

10

6

0

0

Transitional/Boldface Indeterminate B/w

1

0

0

0

0

0

0

0

3

0

0

0

0

0

2

0

0

Boldface B/w 1

0

0

0

1

0

0

4

2

0

0

0

1

3

1

4

0

Boldface/Three Circle Indeterminate B/w 0

0

0

0

0

0

0

0

0

0

0

0

0

0

0

0

0

Three Circle R/w 0

0

0

0

1

0

0

1

0

0

0

1

0

0

0

0

0

Mogollon R/br 0

0

0

0

0

0

0

0

0

0

0

0

0

0

1

0

0

Truly Indeterminate B/w 48

0

1

0

0

0

10

0

188

0

0

5

57

77

153

12

1

San Francisco Red 0

0

0

0

0

0

1

2

6

0

0

0

2

2

2

0

0

Other Red 1

0

1

0

0

0

0

7

6

0

0

1

1

1

3

0

0

Clapboard Not Obliterated 2

0

0

0

0

0

0

25

34

0

0

0

11

8

12

1

0

Clapboard Obliterated 47

0

2

1

0

0

11

31

208

0

0

5

113

93

166

13

1

Indented Not Obliterated 0

0

0

0

0

0

0

2

0

0

0

0

0

0

0

0

0

Indented Obliterated 1

0

0

0

0

0

1

1

1

0

0

0

1

0

2

0

0

Corrugated Blackened Not Obliterated 0

0

0

1

0

0

0

1

0

0

0

0

0

0

0

0

0

Corrugated Blackened Obliterated 0

0

0

0

0

0

0

0

1

0

0

6

2

0

1

0

0

Plain 135

4

5

0

2

0

38

112

676

0

1

44

328

333

443

30

5

Scored 0

0

0

0

0

0

0

1

3

0

0

0

3

1

5

0

0

Punctate Incised 4

0

0

0

0

0

0

0

0

0

0

0

0

0

0

0

0

Handle 0

0

0

0

0

0

0

0

0

0

0

1

0

0

1

0

0

Playas Red 0

0

0

0

0

0

1

0

11

0

0

21

0

1

7

0

0

Chupadero B/w 0

0

1

0

1

0

0

0

1

0

0

1

0

0

3

0

0

El Paso Polychrome 0

0

0

0

0

0

0

0

10

0

0

12

3

0

0

0

0

Ramos Polychrome 0

0

0

0

0

0

0

0

3

0

0

0

0

0

0

0

0

Gila Polychrome 0

0

0

0

0

0

0

0

3

0

0

0

0

0

0

0

0

White Mt Red Ware 0

0

0

0

0

0

0

0

3

0

0

0

0

0

0

0

0

Cibola White Ware 0

0

0

0

0

0

0

0

3

0

0

0

0

0

0

0

0

El Paso Temper 0

0

1

0

0

0

0

0

8

0

0

14

0

0

0

0

0

Other 1

0

2

0

0

0

1

2

17

0

0

5

5

9

12

0

0

Total 275

6

36

5

6

7

69

234

1340

2

3

194

600

586

924

66

7

Percentage Classic B/w 0.11

0.33

0.58

0.20

0.17

1.00

0.07

0.19

0.07

1.00

0.67

0.35

0.09

0.06

0.09

0.02

0.00

Percentage Transitional B/w 0.00

0.00

0.06

0.40

0.00

0.00

0.00

0.00

0.01

0.00

0.00

0.03

0.02

0.02

0.01

0.00

0.00

Percentage Boldface B/w 0.00

0.00

0.00

0.00

0.17

0.00

0.00

0.02

0.00

0.00

0.00

0.00

0.00

0.01

0.00

0.06

0.00

Percentage Three Circle/Mogollon R/br 0.0000

0.0000

0.0000

0.0000

0.1667

0.0000

0.0000

0.0043

0.0000

0.0000

0.0000

0.0052

0.0000

0.0000

0.0011

0.0000

0.0000

Percentage Red 0.00

0.00

0.03

0.00

0.00

0.00

0.01

0.04

0.01

0.00

0.00

0.01

0.01

0.01

0.01

0.00

0.00

Percentage Scored/Punctate 0.01

0.00

0.00

0.00

0.00

0.00

0.00

0.00

0.00

0.00

0.00

0.00

0.01

0.00

0.01

0.00

0.00

Percentage Non-Mimbres 0.00

0.00

0.06

0.00

0.17

0.00

0.01

0.00

0.03

0.00

0.00

0.25

0.01

0.00

0.01

0.00

0.00

310

Appendix 2

pothunted

extramural fill

427

428

0

0–100

100

roof fall, in situ fill above floor, floor, floor pits / postholes, burials postdating occupation

50–100

426

426

100

66–100

fill, roof fall, 33–100 in situ fill above floor

fill

425

0

0; DC

100

100

426

fill

fill above floor, floor pits / postholes

425

subfloor

floor pits / postholes

423b

fill, fill above floor

roof fall, floor, floor pits / postholes

423a

423b

fill

425

100

pothunted

423

423a

100

100

100

extramural burials

Provenience

410

Analytic Unit

roof fall, fill above floor, floor pits / postholes, burials associated with and postdating occupation

Percentage Screened

410

Classic B/w

7

88

92

10

36

9

16

0

1

4

31

19

3

6

99

Classic/Transitional Indeterminate B/w

1

32

34

7

17

3

8

0

0

0

25

11

4

1

60

Transitional B/w

0

8

10

1

2

0

1

0

0

0

6

1

0

0

12

Transitional/Boldface Indeterminate B/w

0

63

5

2

2

1

1

0

0

1

0

0

0

0

1

Boldface B/w 1

7

1

0

0

0

2

0

0

0

0

0

0

0

7

Boldface/Three Circle Indeterminate B/w 0

0

0

0

0

0

0

0

0

0

0

0

0

0

0

Three Circle R/w 0

0

0

0

0

0

0

0

0

0

0

0

0

0

0

Mogollon R/br 0

0

1

0

0

0

0

0

0

0

0

0

0

0

0

Truly Indeterminate B/w 8

193

215

37

96

12

32

3

0

4

76

32

4

5

238

San Francisco Red 1

5

1

1

1

1

2

0

0

0

1

0

1

0

4

Other Red 0

6

2

1

2

1

4

0

0

0

1

0

0

0

1

Clapboard Not Obliterated 5

36

9

1

2

2

7

1

0

0

7

2

3

0

23

Clapboard Obliterated 6

194

259

49

17

13

38

3

0

4

70

26

10

5

251

Indented Not Obliterated 0

0

0

0

0

0

0

0

0

0

0

0

0

0

0

Indented Obliterated 0

3

10

0

10

0

0

0

0

1

4

1

0

0

2

Corrugated Blackened Not Obliterated 0

0

0

0

0

0

0

0

0

0

0

0

0 0

0

0

0

0

0

0

0

0

Corrugated Blackened Obliterated

0

0

0

0

0

0

0

0

Plain 11

503

534

151

200

66

156

13

0

17

197

126

40

13

969

Scored 0

4

3

0

3

0

0

0

0

0

0

0

2

0

7

Punctate Incised 0

0

8

1

3

0

0

0

0

0

2

0

0

0

9

Handle 0

0

0

0

0

0

0

0

0

0

0

1

0

0

0

Playas Red 0

1

1

0

0

0

0

0

0

0

0

0

0

0

0

Chupadero B/w 0

0

0

0

0

0

0

0

0

0

0

0

0

0

2

El Paso Polychrome 0

1

0

0

0

0

0

0

0

0

0

0

0

0

0

Ramos Polychrome 0

0

0

0

0

0

0

0

0

0

0

0

0

0

0

Gila Polychrome 0

0

0

0

0

0

0

0

0

0

0

0

0

0

0

White Mt Red Ware 0

0

0

0

0

0

0

0

0

0

0

0

0

0

0

Cibola White Ware 0

0

0

0

1

0

0

0

0

0

0

0

0

0

0

El Paso Temper 0

0

0

0

0

0

0

0

0

0

0

0

0

0

0

Other 0

6

2

0

2

2

0

0

0

0

0

0

0

0

1

Total 40

1150

1187

261

394

110

267

20

1

31

420

219

67

30

1686

Percentage Classic B/w 0.18

0.08

0.08

0.04

0.09

0.08

0.06

0.00

1.00

0.13

0.07

0.09

0.04

0.20

0.06

Percentage Transitional B/w 0.00

0.01

0.01

0.00

0.01

0.00

0.00

0.00

0.00

0.00

0.01

0.00

0.00

0.00

0.01

Percentage Boldface B/w 0.03

0.01

0.00

0.00

0.00

0.00

0.01

0.00

0.00

0.00

0.00

0.00

0.00

0.00

0.00

Percentage Three Circle/Mogollon R/br 0.0000

0.0000

0.0008

0.0000

0.0000

0.0000

0.0000

0.0000

0.0000

0.0000

0.0000

0.0000

0.0000

0.0000

0.0000

Percentage Red 0.03

0.01

0.00

0.01

0.01

0.02

0.02

0.00

0.00

0.00

0.00

0.00

0.01

0.00

0.00

Percentage Scored/Punctate 0.00

0.00

0.01

0.00

0.02

0.00

0.00

0.00

0.00

0.00

0.00

0.00

0.03

0.00

0.01

Percentage Non-Mimbres 0.00

0.00

0.00

0.00

0.00

0.00

0.00

0.00

0.00

0.00

0.00

0.00

0.00

0.00

0.00

Mattocks Site Sherd Counts and Proportions 311

fill

fill, roof fall, in situ fill above floor

roof fall, in situ fill above floor, floor, floor pits / postholes, burials associated with and postdating occupation

435a

435a

roof fall, in situ fill above floor, floor pits / postholes, burials associated with and postdating occupation

433

435a

fill

floor pits postdating occupation

433

fill or extramural fill

432

433

fill

fill above floor, floor pits / postholes, burials associated with and postdating occupation

431

431

fill, roof fall, pothunted, extramural fill, extramural pits / postholes

430

Provenience

extramural fill

Analytic Unit

429

Percentage Screened

100

100

33–100

100

100

44

7

1

12

44

1

43

9

21

0

32

41

1

0

Classic/Transitional Indeterminate B/w

150

20

75

4

0

50–100

58

62

10

3

Classic B/w

100

50–100

0–100; DC

100

Transitional B/w

0

2

3

4

4

0

0

0

2

6

0

1

Transitional/Boldface Indeterminate B/w

1

7

7

5

3

0

8

15

1

1

Boldface B/w 1

0

0

3

0

2

0

8

13

1

1

Boldface/Three Circle Indeterminate B/w 0

0

0

0

0

0

0

0

0

0

0

Three Circle R/w 0

0

0

0

0

0

0

0

1

0

0

Mogollon R/br 0

0

0

0

0

1

0

0

0

0

0

Truly Indeterminate B/w 100

3

108

327

38

170

3

51

113

12

3

San Francisco Red 2

0

0

9

1

1

0

2

5

0

0

Other Red 0

0

3

6

0

7

0

2

5

0

0

Clapboard Not Obliterated 3

0

6

7

0

8

1

21

51

1

0

Clapboard Obliterated 172

7

103

267

42

172

5

148

137

12

2

Indented Not Obliterated 0

0

0

0

0

0

0

3

1

0

0

Indented Obliterated 2

0

3

10

3

2

0

4

0

1

0

Corrugated Blackened Not Obliterated 0

0

0

0

0

0

0

1

0

0

0

Corrugated Blackened Obliterated 0

0

0

0

0

0

0

0

1

0

0

Plain 336

15

239

825

140

468

5

385

552

30

12

Scored 0

0

3

3

2

3

0

2

6

0

0

Punctate Incised 0

0

0

2

0

0

0

0

0

0

0

Handle 0

0

0

0

0

0

0

1

1

0

1

Playas Red 0

0

0

0

0

0

0

0

0

0

0

Chupadero B/w 0

0

2

0

0

2

0

0

0

0

0

El Paso Polychrome 0

0

0

0

0

0

0

0

0

0

0

Ramos Polychrome 0

0

0

0

0

0

0

0

0

0

0

Gila Polychrome 0

0

0

0

0

0

0

0

0

0

0

White Mt Red Ware 0

0

0

0

0

0

0

0

0

0

0

Cibola White Ware 0

0

0

0

0

0

0

0

1

0

0

El Paso Temper 0

0

0

0

0

0

0

0

0

0

0

Other 2

0

4

2

3

2

0

2

10

0

0

Total 674

28

538

1665

263

937

18

730

1021

69

24

Percentage Classic B/w 0.07

0.04

0.08

0.09

0.08

0.08

0.22

0.08

0.06

0.14

0.13

Percentage Transitional B/w 0.00

0.04

0.01

0.00

0.02

0.00

0.00

0.01

0.01

0.01

0.04

Percentage Boldface B/w 0.00

0.00

0.00

0.00

0.00

0.00

0.00

0.01

0.01

0.01

0.04

Percentage Three Circle/Mogollon R/br 0.0000

0.0000

0.0000

0.0000

0.0000

0.0011

0.0000

0.0000

0.0010

0.0000

0.0000

Percentage Red 0.00

0.00

0.01

0.01

0.00

0.01

0.00

0.01

0.01

0.00

0.00

Percentage Scored/Punctate 0.00

0.00

0.01

0.00

0.01

0.00

0.00

0.00

0.01

0.00

0.00

Percentage Non-Mimbres 0.00

0.00

0.00

0.00

0.00

0.00

0.00

0.00

0.00

0.00

0.00

312

Appendix 2

extramural fill

450 (1976)

100

100

100

Classic/Transitional Indeterminate B/w

10

6

11

16

1

19

2

1

3

1

0

0

0

3

2

0

2

0

0

0

Transitional/Boldface Indeterminate B/w

0

2

0

8

0

0

1

0

0

1

0

0

3

0

0

0

Boldface B/w

7806 2020 649 227 339

13

25

44

44

100

100

6

101

10

10

100

100

Classic B/w

4

Transitional B/w

Percent Screened: DC = diagnostic sherds collected.

Total

trash

trash, fill above floor

trash, in situ fill above floor, floor pits / postholes, burials associated with occupation

438b

441

floor pits / postholes

438a, b

441

fill

roof fall, in situ fill above floor, floor pits / postholes

438a

438a

100

10–100 trash, fill above floor, floor pits / postholes, burials associated with and predating occupation

Provenience

435b

Analytic Unit

burials of questionable association

Percentage Screened

435a

Boldface/Three Circle Indeterminate B/w 6

0

0

0

0

0

0

0

0

0

Three Circle R/w 17

0

0

0

0

0

0

0

0

0

Mogollon R/br

Truly Indeterminate B/w 57

51

121

97

7

164

6

33

5

San Francisco Red 0

0

0

0

0

3

0

0

0

Other Red 0

0

2

0

1

2

0

0

0

Clapboard Not Obliterated 0

0

1

6

0

7

1

0

1

Clapboard Obliterated 57

51

96

110

7

193

13

18

7

0

0

0

0

0

1

0

0

0

Indented Not Obliterated

11 10987 186 293 1115 12668 28

0

0

0

0

0

0

0

0

0

Indented Obliterated 405

2

1

2

6

0

5

0

0

0

Corrugated Blackened Not Obliterated 32

0

0

0

0

0

0

0

0

0

Corrugated Blackened Obliterated Plain 157

100

210

277

16

476

43

62

23

Scored 0

1

3

1

1

5

0

0

1

1

1

2

3

0

4

0

0

0

Punctate Incised

84 35697 206 110

0

0

0

2

0

0

0

0

0

Handle 36

0

0

0

0

0

0

0

0

0

Playas Red 134

0

0

0

0

0

0

0

0

0

Chupadero B/w 69

0

0

0

0

0

0

0

0

0

El Paso Polychrome 130

0

0

0

0

0

0

0

0

0

Ramos Polychrome 5

0

0

0

0

0

0

0

0

0

Gila Polychrome 6

0

0

0

0

0

0

0

0

0

White Mt Red Ware 26

0

0

0

0

0

0

0

0

0

Cibola White Ware 44

0

0

0

0

0

0

0

0

0

El Paso Temper Other 0

1

0

1

0

3

0

3

0

298

237

496

567

39

996

75

127

45

Total

116 507 73959

0

0

0

0

0

0

0

0

0

Percentage Classic B/w 0.16

0.04

0.11

0.09

0.08

0.15

0.10

0.13

0.08

0.09

Percentage Transitional B/w 0.02

0.00

0.00

0.01

0.00

0.00

0.01

0.00

0.00

0.02

Percentage Boldface B/w

Percentage Three Circle/Mogollon R/br 0.0000

0.0000

0.0000

0.0000

0.0000

0.0000

0.0000

0.0000

0.0000

0.00

0.00

0.00

0.00

0.03

0.01

0.00

0.00

0.00

Percentage Red 0.01 0.0016 0.01

0.00

0.00

0.00

0.00

0.00

0.00

0.00

0.00

0.00

Percentage Scored/Punctate 0.01

0.00

0.01

0.01

0.01

0.03

0.01

0.00

0.00

0.02

Percentage Non-Mimbres 0.02

0.00

0.00

0.00

0.00

0.00

0.00

0.00

0.00

0.00

Mattocks Site Sherd Counts and Proportions 313

APPENDIX 3

Mattocks Site Test Unit and Backhoe Trench Descriptions

The excavation units discussed here are those that are not the pit structures and pueblo rooms detailed in chapters 2 and 3. In general, these units are test trenches, tested areas, or backhoe trenches. We used the latter to examine deposits in parts of the site where no architecture appeared on the ground surface. Figure I.4 shows the locations of these excavation units. Information on tree-ring samples mentioned here is in appendix 1. We note that the cardinal directions included in the descriptions below are grid and not compass directions, as explained in the introduction.

Backhoe Trench 2

Unit 1

Unit 25

Unit 1 was a 1 by 3 m test trench excavated near the north edge of the site. It was placed to investigate a possible eastwest wall. The trench revealed the south side of one course of rocks that had been set on their ends on culturally sterile soil 39 cm below the present ground surface. No floor surface was noted. Excavation in this unit ceased before we could determine whether the area was within a structure.

Unit 25 was a 2.0 by 1.5 m test trench placed 2.5 m north of the south end of Backhoe Trench 4. Excavation showed a pit with approximately the same dimensions as the test trench, which contained historic artifacts, including leather (25-11/1), ceramics (25-2-1/1), and several tin cans (25-2-1/2, 25-3-1/1). The level of culturally sterile soil was about 50 cm (9.01 m) below the present ground surface. The bottom of the pit was 34 cm (8.77 m) below the top of culturally sterile soil. The pit may either have been an early pothunter’s hole or a pit used for dumping modern trash.

Unit 2 Unit 2, a 1.2 by 1.7 m test trench, was placed near the north edge of the Mattocks site to investigate potential cultural deposits under the location of a planned tool shed. Although rocks appeared on the ground surface, they had cement on one side and were therefore modern. Excavation between 20 cm and 50 cm below the present ground surface revealed no cultural deposits.

Backhoe Trench 1 Backhoe Trench 1 (TT I on figure I.4) had a north-south length of 35.2 m and was placed north of the northeast corner of the 400s room block to determine the nature of deposits in this area. Culturally sterile soil was reached at an average of 53 cm below the present ground surface. No structures were encountered, although Units 15 and 16 were excavated in possible cultural deposits.

Unit 15 Unit 15, a 0.75 by 1.70 m test trench, was placed to investigate an area around a possible posthole revealed by Backhoe Trench 1. The test revealed three possible postholes, two of which were fully excavated. The easternmost feature was 40 cm in diameter and 23 cm (9.64 m) below the top of culturally sterile soil. A second possible posthole was 50 centimeters to the west, and it was 30 cm in diameter and 43 cm (9.58 m) below the top of culturally sterile soil in this area. The third posthole was about 50 cm northwest of the second and was not completely excavated. It is not known to what these features might relate.

Unit 16 This 90 by 60 cm test trench was located adjacent to Backhoe Trench 1, in an area where we observed sherds and chipped stone. Artifact density decreased below 35 cm below the present ground surface, and culturally sterile soil was at about 50 cm. We encountered no features. This may be an area where some trash had been dumped.

Backhoe Trench 2 (TT 2 on figure I.4) was a 10.75 m long trench running east-west through a slightly mounded area between the 100s and the 400s room block. The area was near a large fallen tree and had a stand of wolfberry (Lycium sp.), which occurs nowhere else at the site. The trench uncovered cultural deposits and was expanded into Units 58, 68, and 69. There was probably at least one room here, but roots, rodent action, and possible pothunting disturbance had almost completely jumbled the deposits.

Backhoe Trench 3 Backhoe Trench 3 (TT3 on figure I.4) was excavated to the west of the area between the 100s and the 200s room blocks, to determine the nature of the deposits. It was 19.5 m long. Unit 31 was expanded from the north end of the trench, near the 200s room block, and Unit 32 was placed 7.8 m north of the south end. Other than Unit 31, no deposits of cultural significance were uncovered.

Unit 31 Unit 31 was a 2 by 2 m test trench excavated where two possible postholes were exposed at the north end of Backhoe Trench 3. The unit was 6 m south of the south wall in Unit 237. Nesbitt’s Room 11, a possible pit room, was probably located just north of Unit 31 and was between it and Unit 237. It is not clear whether Unit 31 represented a plaza area south of the 200s room block, or whether it was a room along the south edge of the room block. Culturally sterile soil was at 57 cm and 72 cm below the present ground surface (9.29 m to 9.14 m). This depth may indicate the presence of a room, although the sherds present there (chapter 2; table 2.9) suggest a Late and Late Late Pit Structure period date for this unit. There was a compact and lighter-colored surface from 6 cm to 10 cm above culturally sterile soil, which could have been either a plaza surface or a room floor. The lack of roof fall in Unit 31 argues against the presence of a room in the area. Because we did not expand the unit beyond a 2 by 2 m square, we did not ascertain what Unit 31 was. There was a possible posthole in Unit 31 that was about 15 cm deep and 25 cm in diameter. This feature might have been associated with either a room or a plaza surface. The area had not been disturbed by earlier work or pothunting.

Unit 32 Unit 32 was a 1.15 by 1.00 m trench excavated from the east edge of Backhoe Trench 3 to follow a slight depression that seemed to be filled with clay soil. This soil did not appear to be cultural, although artifacts were recovered from the brown

Mattocks Site Test Unit and Backhoe Trench Descriptions

loamy soil above it. Culturally sterile soil was 50 cm (9.17 m) below the present ground surface.

Unit 33 Unit 33 was a 0.70 by 1.75 m test trench placed 5.5 m north of Unit 69 to investigate a possible rock alignment. We noted no cultural features in the unit, although there were many large rocks in the area. Culturally sterile soil was 45 cm below the present ground surface. This unit was not within a structure or any other recognizable cultural area.

315

meters south of Unit 52, two individuals were present in Unit 54. The northernmost of these, 54-2-3B, was an elderly male with no grave goods. Directly to the south, 54-2-2B was a 25to 30-year-old female with an Early Classic bowl (54-2-2B/2), an Early Classic seed jar (54-2-2B/6), and a shell bracelet (542-2B/4). This burial clearly dated to the Early Classic period.

Unit 58

Backhoe Trench 4 (TT 4 on figure I.4) was the easternmost of the three backhoe trenches placed between the 100s and the 200s room blocks to investigate deposits in that area. The trench was 21.5 m long and was oriented north-south. Unit 25, an historic trash pit, was uncovered in the west side of the trench, 2.5 m north of its south end. The other cultural feature that the trench revealed was Unit 41, a Classic room at the north end of the trench, on the southeast corner of the 200s room block.

Unit 58 consisted of two units southwest of the room represented by Unit 69 and adjacent to Backhoe Trench 2. Unit 58-1-1 was a 1 by 1 m square placed southwest of the southwest corner in Unit 69 to determine whether the west wall of that unit continued farther south. It did not, and given the shallow depth of culturally sterile soil, at 47 cm (9.98 m) below the present ground surface, this unit was apparently not within a room. Unit 58-1-2 was placed 2.35 m west of 58-1-1 to investigate the nature of some large rocks observed in Backhoe Trench 2. These rocks were not a wall, and the unit was apparently not within a room. Culturally sterile soil was reached here at 34 cm (10.11 m) below the ground surface.

Backhoe Trench 5

Backhoe Trench 6

Backhoe Trench 5 (TT 5 on figure I.4) began west of Unit 325, near the intersection of the east-west and north-south fences. It was placed about 5 m east of the north-south fence to examine the subsurface deposits in this area of the site. When we began to uncover extramural burials (Units 50 and 51) near the north end of the trench, we moved the backhoe trench farther to the south and began again. We also recorded sherds, chipped stone, and ground stone in the north part of the trench. Units 52 and 54 were noted south of Units 50, 51, and 53, as were a couple of postholes. Backhoe Trench 5 was about 80 m long and ended with the detection of Unit 410 at its south end.

Backhoe Trench 6 (TT 6 on figure I.4) was started about 14 m northeast of the 400s room block, and was extended south past the east side of that room block for about 49 m. We thought that if there were any pit structures remaining to the south of the Classic period room blocks at the site, this trench might uncover some of them. A dip in the level of culturally sterile soil in the western profile of the trench indicated a possible pit structure, and we placed Unit 60 to investigate this. We uncovered no other cultural remains.

Backhoe Trench 4

Units 50 to 54 Units 50, 51, 52, 53, and 54 were extramural burials and pits along the west-central edge of the site, and they were exposed by Backhoe Trench 5. Units 50, 51, 52, and 54 were adult burials. Unit 51 also included an extramural pit, and Unit 53 was an extramural pit only. Unit 51-2-3P was a pit that was partly exposed in Backhoe Trench 5. The bottom of the pit was 14 cm below the level at which the pit was defined. We could not assign a function to this feature. Unit 53 was an historic ash pit at the north end of Backhoe Trench 5. We failed to map it, and so it is not on figure I.4. The pit was 2.4 m long. It began 10 cm below the ground surface and extended to between 23 cm and 26 cm below the surface. We recovered historic artifacts from within the ash in this pit. The burial loci had five individual burials. The northernmost of these was 51-2-2B, an adult male with a small Three Circle Neck-banded jar (51-2-2B/10) and a Late Transitional bowl (51-2-2B/11). This interment was probably made during the Late Late Pit Structure period. About a meter south of Unit 51, Unit 50 was the burial of an elderly person, probably a female. The quarter of a neck-corrugated jar (50-1-1/3) associated with the skeleton did not indicate the relative date. Unit 52 was about 13 m south of Unit 50 and was the burial of an adult with no associated grave goods. One and a half

Unit 60 This 1.25 by 1.25 m test trench was placed 4.5 m south of the north end of Backhoe Trench 6 and 75 cm from its west edge. This backhoe trench had revealed a possible pit structure in this area, but Unit 60 showed only culturally sterile soil at about 75 cm below the present ground surface. This culturally sterile soil was riddled with rodent holes and seemed to contain a lot of adobe. It was somewhat different than culturally sterile soil on other parts of the site, perhaps because of different soil formation processes in this area. We saw no pit structure, although there were some sherds and chipped stone in the fill above the culturally sterile soil.

Unit 68 Unit 68 was a 0.75 by 2.00 m test trench placed just west of the southwest corner of Unit 69. Although the south wall of Unit 69 continued west, there was apparently no room in this area. Culturally sterile soil was 50 cm (9.95 m) below the ground surface, and we noted no floor surface. The purpose of the wall was unclear, since there was no room either north or south of it.

Unit 69 Unit 69 represents at least one surface room between the 100s and 400s room blocks and is possibly Nesbitt’s Room 41. The room was uncovered in the east-west Backhoe Trench 2. Our excavation located only 4.1 m of the west wall and 5.8 m of the south wall. Tree roots, rodents, and pothunting activities

316

Appendix 3

had so disturbed the room that we did not continue excavation. Thus, we do not know whether these are the walls to one room or several. The southwest corner had been pot­ hunted, as was a hearth, the remains of which (69-1-1/5) were recovered. There were possible remnants of an adobe floor at 43 cm (9.73 m) below the present ground surface. Culturally sterile soil was encountered 62 cm (9.54 m) below the surface. We collected three tree-ring specimens from this unit, but none dated, and their context is unknown. Adult bones were also present in the disturbed fill of the unit.

Backhoe Trench 7 Backhoe Trench 7 (TT 7 on figure I.4) was placed in the southeast corner of the site, near the edge of the first bench, to determine the nature of the cultural deposits. The trench was 14.5 m long and revealed an extramural burial near its south end (Unit 72) and a previously excavated room (Unit 70). The intervening material was a thin (30 to 35 cm) layer of fill above culturally sterile soil.

Unit 70 Unit 70, in the north end of Backhoe Trench 7, revealed a previously excavated room that may have been Nesbitt’s Room 27, which he designated as a Pit Room (chapter 3). Room 27 was on the southeast corner of Nesbitt’s Southeast Group room block and was probably the same as Unit 70 since apparently no room was to the south of Unit 70. The east wall of Unit 70 ran along the east edge of the backhoe trench and was constructed of two to three courses of horizontally laid cobbles. The wall extended from 12 cm to 55 cm below the present ground surface. The north end of the trench may have been quite close to the north room wall, since there was much wall fall in this area, perhaps placed by Nesbitt during backfilling operations to support the walls. The east wall of Unit 70 ended 3.72 m from the north edge of Backhoe Trench 7, and the level of culturally sterile soil rose from 1.01 m (7.92 m) below the ground surface to 56 cm (8.37 m) below. This change probably signified the south wall of the room, with the rise in culturally sterile soil being an area outside the room block. No adobe floor surface or features remained in this part of the room. We collected 21 tree-ring specimens from the fill of the unit; all were pinyon, and one (70-1-1/15) dated to A.D. 1095vv. The charred wood and a piece of burned adobe may indicate that this room burned, if Nesbitt returned the original fill to the room upon backfilling.

Unit 71 Unit 71 was a 1.00 by 1.45 m test trench placed outside the northeast corner of Unit 70. Its purpose was to define the east wall of Unit 70, which was initially covered with wall fall, and to determine the possible existence of a room east of Unit 70. This test trench clearly defined the wall, and culturally sterile soil was 35 cm (8.51 m) below the ground surface. There was thus no room in this area. The fill in the unit was soft, dark soil with a number of large wall rocks but very few artifacts. Unit 71 did reveal two small (about 20 by 30 cm) probable postholes that extended 38 cm and 47 cm below the culturally sterile surface. The postholes may have associated with the construction of Unit 70 or with a sheltered work area represented by Unit 71.

Unit 72 This unit was an extramural burial near the south end of Backhoe Trench 7. The burial pit was quite large (1.65 by 1.40 m). The skeleton was oriented north-south with the cranium to the north and was that of an adult female. No grave goods were with the body, and the pit had not been plastered over at the surface of the culturally sterile soil where it was first evident.

Backhoe Trench 8 Backhoe Trench 8 (TT 8 on figure I.4) was about 12 m long, and was 6 m to the west of Backhoe Trench 7 in the southeast corner of the site. The trench was placed to determine the nature of cultural deposits in the area, since little was evident on the ground surface. Unit 80, an Early Pit Structure period pit structure with a superimposed Classic extramural work area, was uncovered in the north end of the trench, along with a possible posthole just south of Unit 80. Culturally sterile soil was between 35 cm and 50 cm below the ground surface in the remainder of the trench, and we uncovered no other features, although adult human bones were present in the fill.

Backhoe Trench 9 Backhoe Trench 9 (TT 9 on figure I.4) was 16 m long and was placed 8 m west of Backhoe Trench 8 to determine the nature of cultural deposits. The trench uncovered an extramural burial (Unit 90) about 8 m from the north end of the trench. A possible posthole, 27 by 25 cm and 30 cm deep, was at the north end of the trench, in an area that seemed disturbed because the culturally sterile soil did not form a level surface. The remainder of the trench was fill above culturally sterile soil, the surface of which varied between 30 cm and 40 cm below the present ground surface.

Unit 90 This unit was an extramural adult burial located in the approximate center of Backhoe Trench 9. The preservation of the bones was poor, and few remained. The skeleton was oriented east-west and was interred 25 cm into culturally sterile soil. Only a square stone, a possible gaming piece (90-2-1B/2), was present with the body.

Unit 100 Unit 100 was a 3 by 2 m test trench excavated in what was apparently a pothunted or previously excavated room, although Nesbitt’s rooms were all to the south of Unit 100 in his Southeast Group room block (figure I.4), and so it seems unlikely that his excavations were responsible for this disturbance. The unit was about 21 m southeast of the 100s room block and about 12 m west of the first bench edge within a small room block in this area. We observed no roof fall or floor, but culturally sterile soil was at about 91 cm (8.34 m) below the present ground surface, and this depth implies that Unit 100 was within a structure. The unit fill was light brown, fine, and loosely consolidated with gravel, rocks, and adobe chunks throughout. A possible cobble wall ran north-south through the center of the unit; we were not completely certain that this was a wall. About 75 cm to its west was a posthole in culturally sterile soil that contained a piece of juniper (100-5-5/5). The posthole extended 7 cm below the top of culturally sterile soil.

Mattocks Site Test Unit and Backhoe Trench Descriptions

Although we recovered no historic artifacts from Unit 100, there were a number of small, fragmentary artifacts, including five projectile point fragments (100-1-1/1, 100-11/2, 100-1-3/1, 100-2-3/1, 100-2-4/3) and three mano fragments (100-1-1/A, 100-1-3/A, 100-1-4/1). These artifacts, and others, were either overlooked or considered unimportant by whoever had previously excavated in the area. Of note were a number of tree-ring specimens in the fill, one of which dated to A.D. 1048vv. This date may not relate to the room, given that the area had been disturbed.

Unit 101 Unit 101 was a 1.00 by 3.75 m test trench extending west from Unit 100. The purpose of the trench was to examine the deposits in this part of the site in hopes of finding an area that had not yet been excavated. Unfortunately, Unit 101 was completely disturbed, and we recorded no roof fall or floor. The fill was much like that in Unit 100, with many rocks and loose adobe chunks and a few adult human bones. The unit did not contain any historic artifacts. There was a possible wall that ran approximately north-south, 1.4 m from the east edge of the trench. This would place it about 3 m from the possible wall in Unit 100, and the two walls may define a room. Unit 101 was certainly within a structure, as culturally sterile soil was at about 94 cm (8.41 m) below the present ground surface.

Unit 102 Unit 102 was a 0.75 by 2.75 m test trench that ran east-west, about 3.5 m south of 128-1-7. We excavated the trench to determine the character of cultural deposits in this part of the site, but the nature of the fill in this test trench was not clear. We did not reach culturally sterile soil, and we noted no roof fall or floor surfaces. We excavated the trench to 33 cm (9.04 m) below the present ground surface to a caliche layer at the west end of the trench, and 49 cm (8.88 m) below the ground surface at the east end. Few artifacts were recovered. This trench was probably within Nesbitt’s Southeast Group room block defined on its north side by Units 128-1-7, 100, and 101.

Unit 105 Unit 105 was an operation designed to uncover evidence for rooms north of Unit 106, in the 100s room block. To this end, trenches were extended along, and away from, the north wall of Unit 106, and around the outside of the northwest and northeast corners of that room. We saw no continuations of the walls in Unit 106, nor were there any other features. The soil in this area was generally very friable, sandy silt. Culturally sterile soil was encountered at 32 cm to 43 cm (9.04 m to 8.93 m) below the present ground surface, an expected depth where no rooms are present. Thus, Unit 106 was without doubt the northeasternmost room in the 100s room block, and Unit 105 represents an area outside the room block.

Unit 110 Unit 110 was an arbitrarily defined triangular area just outside the northwest edge of the in the 100s room block, and it was placed to determine whether the aforementioned walls formed a room. Although there were rooms on two sides of the unit, Unit 110 itself was outside the room block. Test

317

trenches revealed that no walls were present to the north and west in Unit 110. There was no evidence of pothunting in this area. An intermittent layer of adobe was present from about 67 cm to 82 cm (9.33 to 9.18 m) below the present ground surface. This layer did not form a floor surface at any point, and it contained many large rocks. The layer may at one time have been a prepared adobe surface, but weathering, rodent activity, and wall fall may have altered its original appearance. There were several pits (110-4-7 #2, 110-4-7 #3, 110-4-7 #4, 110-4-7 #7) opening onto the adobe at about 82 cm (9.18 m) below the present ground surface. These pits may have been postholes, but we could not ascertain their function. Culturally sterile soil was below the adobe layer. The fill above the adobe layer consisted of loose, finegrained dark brown soil with bits of adobe, wall fall rocks, and lenses of ash (110-4-3/1, 110-2-7/2, 110-2-7/4). The artifact density in the fill was quite low, with the highest density occurring near the center of the triangle (110-2-7) in the 25 cm above the adobe surface. One adult human bone was present in the fill. Unit 110 could be interpreted a number of ways. It might have been unrelated to any room block activities, except by proximity. That is, what we see is natural soil development and evidence of rodent activity, with a small amount of cultural debris washed over the area. Alternatively, the unit might have been an extramural work area with a rough adobe surface, and the pits were postholes that supported a ramada shade. The excavation area may have been inside a fairly large room in which not all of the walls were uncovered. In this case, the roof would have been dismantled, and the floor would subsequently have disintegrated from exposure. However, we suggest that Unit 110 was an area outside the room block that was used only occasionally and onto which relatively little trash was dumped after the area was abandoned.

Unit 117 Unit 117 was an L-shaped test trench placed south of Unit 119 to determine the nature of the deposits. The fill in the unit was homogeneous from the present ground surface to the level of culturally sterile soil between 73 cm and 77 cm (9.09 and 8.85 m) below the ground surface. There was no evidence of a prepared floor surface, walls, or features in the test trench, and two pieces of glass (117-1-1/1) 40 cm (9.42 m) below the ground surface in the west part of the unit were the only evidence of pothunting. The test trench was probably outside of the 100s room block and away from the extramural work area represented by Units 121, 130, and 131 to the east.

Unit 128 Unit 128 was a series of test trenches placed east of the 100s room block to investigate the nature of cultural deposits in the area. Although all were called Unit 128, many were separated by 3 m of unexcavated soil, which allowed much area to be covered but ensured that we did not miss any structures. All trenches but one (128-1-7) were outside of rooms. We will discuss each test trench, distinguished by their locus numbers, here. Unit 128-1-1 was a 1 by 3 m test trench that extended east from the northeast corner of Unit 127. The trench was

318

Appendix 3

beyond the limits of the 100s room block, since culturally sterile soil was reached 61 cm (8.95 m) below the present ground surface, with no intervening floor surface. Although there was some wall fall in the form of rocks and adobe chunks near the wall of Unit 127, no other signs of structural components were present. It is not clear whether the trash density was high enough in this area to be regarded as a dump from the room block. We encountered no features. Unit 128-1-2 was also a 1 by 3 m test trench, 3 m east of 128-1-1. A double row of cobbles running north-south was uncovered in the unit. The row was only one course high, and no prepared floor was associated with it. This row extended another 2 m to the north, as exposed in Unit 128-1-5, for a total length of 3 m. Its function is unknown. We uncovered no features in the area, and the artifact density was light. Unit 128-1-3, another 1 by 3 m test trench, extended east from the east end of 128-1-2. We uncovered no remains that would explain the purpose of the row of rocks in 128-1-2. The soil was loose and fine with many rocks, and a complete sandstone mano (128-1-3/1) was 10 cm above culturally sterile soil in the east end of the trench. This area was definitely not within a structure. Unit 128-1-4 was a 3 by 1 m test trench, this time running north-south. The north end of the trench connected with the southeast corner of 128-1-2. Had the row of rocks in 1281-2 continued to the south, 128-1-4 would have exposed it. Although fragments of a vesicular basalt mano (128-1-4/2) and a quartzite or tuff mortar (128-1-4/1) were recovered, the trench was not within a structure. Beginning as a 3 by 1 m test trench to further define the row of rocks uncovered in 128-1-2, Unit 128-1-5 was a 1.25 by 1.00 m trench along the east side of the trench to define a possible adobe floor. The “floor” was apparently a natural deposit and did not continue, and no features were associated with the row of rocks. The artifact density was low, and there was no evidence that the trench was within a structure. The row of rocks may have defined an extramural work area, but there was no evidence of a surface or associated artifacts that might confirm this interpretation. Unit 128-1-6, a 3 by 1 m test trench south of 128-1-4, revealed no cultural remains other than a light density of artifacts. No features, surfaces, or walls were present. The south half of the trench did have a much greater concentration of rocks than the north, possibly related to the structure present in 128-1-7, to the south. Three meters south of 128-1-6, Unit 128-1-7 was an L-shaped test trench that uncovered a previously excavated structure in the north part of Nesbitt’s Southeast Group room block. Rocks were heavily concentrated in the north part of the “L.” They were probably associated with the rocks in 128-1-6, and with the lower level of culturally sterile soil just south of the rock concentration. The latter was probably originally the north wall of the structure, and the rocks may have been the remains of that wall. A line of rocks that was probably the west wall appeared 3 m from the southeast corner of the “L.” There was a heavily disturbed, discontinuous surface at least 59 cm (8.83 m) below the present ground surface. We did not reach culturally sterile soil, but this unit was probably previously excavated or pothunted, as evidenced by the disturbed nature of the north wall, and because a piece of metal was uncovered in about 60 cm of fill.

Unit 129 Unit 129 consisted of two test trenches placed on the east and north sides of a mound that was east of the 100s room block. We thought that this mound might be a room block, but at least part of it was natural, as demonstrated by the lack of cultural deposits uncovered in the two trenches. Unit 129-1-1 was 1.15 by 6.20 m and ran east-west toward the top of the mound. The unit was on the east side of the mound and was 20 m from Unit 127 in the 100s room block. We encountered two probable pothunting holes in the trench, one about 1.75 m from the east end of the trench, and the other 4.25 m from that spot. About 4.5 m from the east side of the trench was a rock pit that contained rocks similar to those used to make the masonry walls at the site. The rocks probably originally came from rooms that had previously been excavated to the west of the pile. Unit 129-1-2 was a 3.3 by 1.0 m unit placed on the north side of the same mound as 129-1-1. The only cultural remains were on the present ground surface. Since culturally sterile soil appeared at a shallow depth near the top of the mound, at least part of the mound was natural.

Unit 133 Two test trenches comprised Unit 133. One of these ran north-south to the west of the west walls of Units 134 and 144 in the 100s room block, while the second ran east-west to the south of the south wall of Unit 144. The purpose of these trenches was to determine the nature of the deposits near the south and west edges of the 100s block. The northsouth trench was extended south until a probable wall was reached. The wall extended out from the corner only 75 cm, and so the remainder may have been removed by a pothunting hole, although it is also possible that a longer wall never existed. We could not determine from the limited excavations whether the trench was within a room, or whether it was a protected work area continuous with that exposed in Units 121 and 131 to the northwest. Perhaps because of heavy rains as we were excavating this area, we encountered no surface in Unit 133 but culturally sterile soil was encountered 62 cm (8.66 m) below the present ground surface, and so it is possible that some type of structure or work area existed here. Alternatively, the area might have been outside the room block.

Unit 134 Unit 134 was a continuation to the west of the test trench that began as Unit 136. Unit 134 defined a room with a south wall that was 3 m long. There was a pothunting hole in the northeast corner of the test trench, but the trench was only deep enough (about 30 cm) to define walls, and so the nature of the rest of the room is not certain. The unit was probably Nesbitt’s Room 46.

Unit 136 Unit 136 was started as a 75 cm-wide test trench, which ran east-west along the north side of a wall that continued west from the south wall of Unit 137. The trench eventually defined two rooms—Units 135 and 136. The questionable nature of the walls made the actual rooms difficult to define, but it appears that both rooms were 3 m to 4 m long on their south sides. As noted in the description of Unit 137 (chapter 3), part of Unit 136 was excavated as Unit 137 because

Mattocks Site Test Unit and Backhoe Trench Descriptions

the dividing wall had been removed. In this northeast corner of Unit 136 (designated Unit 137) was the only remaining adobe floor in the area, at 61 cm (8.96 m) below the present ground surface. We placed the test trench to determine the presence and condition of rooms in the area. A large pothunting hole was observed at the west end of the trench in Unit 135. This room was probably Nesbitt’s Room 47, and so we assumed that it had been disturbed. However, the top of a level that may have been roof fall was at 86 cm (9.21 m) below the present ground surface, and it is possible that both of these rooms were only partially disturbed. Near the center of the south wall of Unit 135 was a large upright pinyon tree-ring specimen (136-1-1/2 and 136-1-1/3) that may have been a post from a posthole in the area.

Unit 141 Unit 141 was a circular pit measuring 1.40 by 1.55 m at its top, and it was about 11 m south of Unit 120 in the 100s room block. The pit was outside the room block but may have been associated with it. The feature was slightly bellshaped toward the bottom, which was 1.33 m (8.12 m) below the present ground surface. About 31 cm above the bottom of the pit, along its south side, was the top of a shelf that was formed of culturally sterile soil. The shelf was about 30 cm wide, and its function is unknown. Unless this feature was a trash pit, the artifacts recovered from it do not reveal its function. The artifact density was generally high and consisted of sherds, including Classic Black-on-white, chipped stone, and quite a bit of animal bone. The soil was soft and mixed with pebbles and cobbles, and there was some ash but no charcoal in its uppermost 25 cm, where culturally sterile soil first defined the pit. There was, however, no evidence of burning on the sides of the pit. Also in the uppermost level were half of a small corrugated jar (141-1-1/1), a complete basalt mano that had also been used as a hammerstone (141-1-1/3), a complete vesicular basalt mano (141-1-2/1), a mano fragment (141-1-1/5), two metate fragments (141-1-1/4, 141-1-1/6), and a worked stone or mano fragment (141-1-1/7). If this pit was not originally used for trash, then it filled, or was filled, with garbage during its final use.

319

sterile soil, 58 cm (8.69 m) below the present ground surface. Previous excavation or pothunting may have removed the original floor surface, or this room may have originally had a floor of culturally sterile soil. Because of the likelihood of earlier disturbance, we did not continue excavations in this room.

Unit 146 This 0.75 by 1.80 m test trench ran east-west along what we originally thought was a room wall on the south edge of the 100s room block, east of Unit 145. Unit 146 was placed just north of the rocks that, upon excavation, we determined not to be a wall. The fill in the area contained many rocks and five ground stone fragments. A hard, irregular surface uncovered was about 28 cm (8.48 m) below the present ground surface. This surface was lumpy adobe with a little culturally sterile soil, and it probably represented the extramural surface just south of the 100s room block.

Unit 150

This unit was a 1 by 1 m test trench placed to determine whether the walls uncovered in Units 133 and 134 had enclosed a room. The west wall of this potential room was 2.6 m long, making it a small structure. The deposits in the test were completely disturbed, with culturally sterile soil interspersed with sandy loam and rocks. We also uncovered a large piece of metal. The unit was excavated to about 44 cm (8.80 m) below the present ground surface. No floor or culturally sterile soil was present, and excavation of the unit ceased at this point. The unit was probably Nesbitt’s Room 13.

Unit 150 consisted of three test trenches (150-1-1, 150-1-2, 150-1-3) beginning south of the 100s room block and running north to find the south edge of the room block. Unit 150-1-1 was about 14 m south of Unit 144 in the 100s room block. This test trench measured 1.55 by 1.10 m, and culturally sterile soil was quite deep here, at about 1 m below the present ground surface. The depth of culturally sterile soil seems to have been a natural variation from the usual level, which was normally shallower in extramural areas. The fill in this unit was loose and contained large cobbles. Unit 150-1-2 was 1.5 m from the north edge of 150-1-1, and it measured 1.00 by 0.85 m. The matrix here consisted of loose soil with some large cobbles and occasional lumps of adobe. Culturally sterile soil was reached about 40 cm (9.00 m) below the present ground surface. As with 150-1-1, this test trench was outside the 100s room block. Unit 150-1-3 began as a 2.0 by 0.8 m test trench, 1.5 m north of the north edge of 150-1-2, but it became a T-shaped trench when we uncovered a cobble wall at the north end of the unit. We followed the wall east and west for about 3.9 m to ascertain that it was in fact a wall. The area encompassed by 150-1-3 appeared to have been just outside the room block, as evidenced by the relatively shallow depth of culturally sterile soil, between 41 cm to 51 cm (8.99 to 8.89 m) below the present ground surface. The matrix in the test trench was again loose and contained, in this case, many large cobbles that may have been wall fall. We recovered four pieces of ground stone. Both the wall fall and the ground stone may have been indicators of increasing proximity to the room block. The surface of the culturally sterile soil was irregular and contained fill, adobe, culturally sterile soil, and cobbles. While this unit was outside the room block, Unit 145, on the north side of the wall defined here, was probably inside a room.

Unit 145

Unit 151

Unit 145 was a 1.43 by 1.80 m test trench running east-west just north of a cobble masonry wall. The matrix in the test trench was loose and contained many large rocks that may have originally come from room walls. The surface at the bottom of the trench was irregular and composed of culturally

Unit 151 was about 5 m east of the test trenches in Unit 150, and it was excavated for the same purpose—to define the south edge of the 100s room block. Like Unit 150, Unit 151 consisted of three separate test trenches (151-1-1, 151-1-2, 151-1-3). Unit 151-1-1 was about 13 m south of Unit 144 in

Unit 144

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the 100s room block. It measured 1.6 by 1.0 m and contained soft soil with many fist-sized cobbles. Unit 151-1-2 was 2.6 m north of the north edge of 151-1-1 and measured 1.3 by 0.9 m. There were few fist-sized rocks in this area, and we reached an undulating adobe surface that was similar to the extramural ramada floor in Unit 426. Like 151-1-1 and 151-1-2, 151-1-3 was outside of the 100s room block. This trench measured 1.70 by 0.85 m, and it was 2.25 m north of the north edge of 151-1-2. Culturally sterile soil was reached 31 cm (8.45 m) below the present ground surface. A possible cobble wall was in the north end of the trench, on the other side of which was Unit 146. However, the wall was simply a concentration of rocks, and Unit 146 was also outside the room block. Unit 137 therefore appears to have been the southeast corner of the 100s room block, and Unit 145 is within a tier of rooms that does not completely extend across the south edge of the room block.

Unit 200 Unit 200 was a 1 by 3 m test trench placed east-west along a possible wall in the 200s room block. An east-west wall was apparently in a pothole to the west of Unit 200, and we thought that this wall should continue to the east. The placement of Unit 200 confirmed the presence of the wall along the south side of the unit and also made it clear that Unit 200 was within a room that had already been excavated. The wall was made of adobe with very few embedded rocks. The adobe probably represents the plaster face of the wall, because the line of rocks on the surface to the west was some centimeters south of the adobe face. The fine, unstratified fill in this unit contained few large sherds, some historic artifacts, little wall fall, and few large artifacts, such as ground stone. The lack of large artifacts, and the nature of the fill, support the conclusion that this area had previously been excavated, and Unit 200 seems to fall within Nesbitt’s Rooms 6 or 7. The fill contained several tree-ring specimens and a few small chunks of burned adobe, which may have originally been burned roof fall. The adobe face on the south wall showed no evidence of burning, however, and the fill in this unit may not have derived from the original room deposits. Unit 200 was excavated to a maximum depth of 66 cm below the ground surface. We uncovered no floor surface within the unit, since excavations ceased when we determined that the area had already been investigated.

Unit 201 Unit 201 was a 1 by 3 m test trench in the northwest area of the 200s room block to investigate the nature of the deposits. The trench straddled the corner of a room with a rock and adobe wall along the south side of the trench and an east wall running north-south through the center. The south wall consisted of one or two courses of masonry placed on top of adobe that was at least 28 cm thick. The adobe began at a level of 46 cm (10.66 m) below the ground surface and ended 35 cm (10.31 m) farther down. This kind of wall construction is uncommon in Classic rooms at the Mattocks site, but a small test trench through the wall ascertained the thickness of the adobe. The east wall contained only rock, with no adobe, and it had been undercut because several rocks had been removed.

The fill in Unit 201 was unstratified and undifferentiated. It contained numerous rocks that may have originally been wall fall, along with a small quantity of tree-ring specimens and historic artifacts. As with Unit 200, the lack of large artifacts along with the loose fill indicated an earlier excavation. This unit may have been within Nesbitt’s Room 8, and it was perhaps the room on the northwest corner of the room block. We excavated Unit 201 to a maximum depth of 82 cm (10.30 m) below the ground surface, at which point culturally sterile soil was uncovered. We noted no floor surface, because it had probably been removed during Nesbitt’s excavations.

Unit 210 Unit 210 was just west of the “Great Wall” that formed the west edge of the 200s room block. It consisted of a natural or only slightly modified surface onto which trash had been thrown in antiquity. We excavated an arbitrary 5 by 3 m area just west of Nesbitt’s Rooms 8, 9, 59, and 60, and so we do not know how extensive the trash area was. We uncovered no postholes, pits, hearths, or ashy areas, which suggests that the surface was not a ramada. We also recovered few, if any, in situ artifacts on the floor surface. Instead, whole and fragmented artifacts were strewn at various elevations on and above the surface, which is characteristic of trash deposition. The only wall in Unit 210 appeared on the east side of the excavation, and it formed the west walls of the rooms that Nesbitt excavated. The alignment of rocks was evident on the ground surface for a distance of about 14 m. In profile from the west side, the wall consisted of one or two courses of rocks, some of which were quite large. The rocks were laid either on culturally sterile soil that had high adobe content or on an adobe footing, since a solid adobe face underlay the base of the rocks from at least 64 cm (from 10.77 m to 10.41 m) below the present ground surface. This wall on the edge of the room block apparently collapsed to the west, as there was considerable wall fall above the floor surface in Unit 210. We noted no east-west walls dividing the unit, a fact supporting the interpretation that this was an area outside the room block. The floor in Unit 210 near the room block wall consisted of hard-packed adobe over culturally sterile soil, changing to patchy adobe and culturally sterile soil as distance from the wall increased. The surface was 35 cm or less (10.75 m to 10.86 m) below the present ground surface, which conformed to the natural level of culturally sterile soil across the site and indicated that the area was never excavated for room building in antiquity. The surface may thus have been the ancient ground level that was smoothed through use, although the area nearest the room block may have been artificially prepared. The former alternative is more likely since the only apparent function of the area was for trash dumping. A cache consisting of a Middle Classic flare rim bowl (210-2-2/1) inverted over a small plain jar (210-2-2/2) was uncovered 20 cm below the floor surface. It was 2 m from the room block wall and was not clearly related to that structure. The cache was embedded in culturally sterile soil, rather than in a pit or a loose area of the culturally sterile matrix. The jar contained 13 turquoise beads (210-2-2/3a, 210-2-2/3b), six turquoise pendants (210-2-2/3c-h), one possible turquoise pendant (210-2-2/3i), and one shell bead (210-2-2/3a), along with some loose soil.

Mattocks Site Test Unit and Backhoe Trench Descriptions

The trash that overlaid the floor surface consisted of sherds that formed parts of as many as seven corrugated vessels (appendix 7.4), about a third of a Middle Classic bowl (210-2-3), metate fragments (210-1-1/9, 210-1-1/11, 210-11/15, 210-3-1/3, 210-1-3/6), a mano fragment (210-2-3/5), a complete worked stone slab (210-1-3/7), three complete stone hoes (210-1-1/6, 210-1-1/12, 210-2-3/2), a whole turquoise pendent (210-1-3/4), and three complete projectile points (210-1-3/2, 210-2-3/1, 210-3-3/1). The latter four categories were the only whole artifacts in the trash, and their presence, especially that of the large hoes, is an enigma because they were not on the floor surface and so could not have been part of an in situ artifact assemblage. One possibility is that they were offerings, made in the same way that the cache was. Vertically, these artifacts ranged from the floor surface to only a few centimeters below the present ground surface. Horizontally, most of the trash was located within 2 m of the room block wall, and the density of trash decreased with distance from the wall. There was little animal bone or charcoal, and few pieces of chipped stone, although the density of the latter increased from south to north. We uncovered no roof fall or postholes, and so it is unlikely that this area was ever roofed. The unit therefore seemed to represent an area used for occasional trash dumping since the artifact density was not great. There was no evidence that people ever performed extramural, work-­related activities in this area, possibly because it was at the “back” of the room block, that is, on the side away from the central plaza. Since the depth of the cultural deposits in Unit 210 was so shallow, we could not separate the post-occupation fill from trash that had been deposited deliberately. The larger artifacts listed above were probably trash, rather than washed-in fill, and as noted, we recovered some just below the present ground surface. Historic artifacts occurred only in the upper 15 cm.

Unit 211 Unit 211 was an approximately 1 by 2 m test trench placed in a pothunting hole along the east side of the “Great Wall” to determine whether a wall extended east from the southernmost rock of that wall. We saw possible evidence for a wall in this area, but it was not conclusive because the entire area was partly or fully disturbed. The “Great Wall” did not extend south past the rock noted above, and so it is possible that the south part of Unit 211 lies outside the room block, while the north part is within Nesbitt’s Room 60. If so, it is likely that a wall once extended east from that southernmost rock, but all that remained of the wall were three flat slabs that were in-line but separated from one another. Either Nesbitt or pothunters may have removed this wall. The fill in Unit 211 was alternately soft or hard and rocky. Culturally sterile soil was at 1.03 m (9.76 m) below the present ground surface in the south part of the trench. The depth of culturally sterile soil might imply that this portion of the trench was within a room, but the soil above the level was intermixed with culturally sterile soil and rocks, suggesting that the area had been disturbed. There were few artifacts in any part of the test trench. The evidence thus implies that most, if not all, of the area encompassed by Unit 211 was disturbed either by Nesbitt or by pothunters.

321

Unit 215 Unit 215 was a 1 by 3 m test trench placed 4 m west of the great kiva depression (Unit 213) to examine the nature of the deposits in this area. The fill in the trench was very rocky, with some loose soil. The rocks probably were from culturally sterile soil taken from another location and placed here, either in antiquity or recently. If the material was ancient, then it may have come from the construction of the great kiva. Undisturbed culturally sterile soil was reached 67 cm (10.70 m) below the present ground surface. We noted only one sherd in the trench, although there were two pieces of historic china in the upper 30 cm of fill.

Unit 220 Unit 220 was a large, irregularly shaped area on the east side of the 200s room block. The entire unit was probably pot­ hunted or was part of Nesbitt’s Rooms 58 and 4, although there were few historic artifacts. All that remained were two postholes in culturally sterile soil and the adobe base of a possible wall. The depth of culturally sterile soil, 81 cm (9.28 m) below the ground surface, and the lack of cultural deposits in Unit 275 to the east, indicated that Unit 220 was once a room or rooms and that it was on or near the east edge of the room block. The ridge of adobe that may have been the base of a wall ran north-south near the west side of the excavation unit. Its alignment was similar to that of the cobble wall uncovered in Unit 225 to the north, and it may once have connected with that wall. Only 2 m of this wall base remained, and only adobe remnants, which might represent either wall or floor, appeared in the part of the trench where a connection to the wall in Unit 225 would have been expected. To the south was a jumble of large rocks that may have originally been part of one of the room walls. There may also have been a cobble wall running east-west along part of the south side of the unit. It was not wholly convincing and may either have been a badly pothunted wall or just a fortuitous alignment in an area of dense rock concentration. No discernable floor surface remained, although there was much adobe in the fill that seemed to form floors at various levels. The floor in Unit 225 to the north was 59 cm to 54 cm (9.41 m to 9.46 m) below the ground surface, and it is likely that the floor in Unit 220 was originally near this level. The level of culturally sterile soil supports this argument, at 10 to 15 cm (9.28 m) below the proposed floor level. Two postholes (220-10-10 and 220-10-11) remained in the culturally sterile soil. That they were not detected in any of the “surfaces” above culturally sterile soil also supports the idea that this unit had been pothunted, and no surfaces remained. We do not know whether the fill in the postholes was intact or disturbed, but they contained both pinyon and non-coniferous wood, the latter being fairly unusual at the Mattocks site. Both postholes were 34 cm in diameter and 32 cm below the top of culturally sterile soil. The fill in Unit 220 contained many adobe chunks, along with numerous large rocks in the south part of the unit, small rocks, gravel, and charcoal. Some of the charcoal was large enough to provide tree-ring samples, and although none of the samples dated, the presence of non-coniferous species and Ponderosa pine meant that the samples were different

322

Appendix 3

from those in most other rooms. The large amounts of charcoal and the burned adobe chunks in some parts of the fill may indicate that this room had burned, but much of the adobe in the fill was not burned, and charcoal was scarce in some areas. Thus, the nature of the disturbed fill in Unit 220 did not indicate whether the room had burned.

Unit 225 Unit 225 was excavated as a wall trench, to the east of a line of rocks that was evident on the ground surface in the 200s room block. Because of the presence of a floor next to the wall, the unit was probably unpothunted, although there were two unexplained discontinuities in the wall. The south part of the trench was heavily disturbed by rodents, as evidenced by four rodent burrows between the rocks in the walls, tiny balls of aluminum foil, and several modern walnut shells. The line of rocks seen on the ground surface proved to be a masonry wall, running north-south, along the west side of Unit 225. About 4.15 m of the wall was exposed. It consisted of two rows of rocks that were separated by about 20 cm of soft fill. The western row of rocks was higher than the eastern row, but its depth and relationship to a floor surface are unknown because of the position of a row of flanking rocks, and because we did not excavate beyond the western row. The rocks in the western row were comparatively large and were generally upright. The two discontinuities mentioned above were evident in this row, but not in the eastern one. The rocks in the eastern row were smaller, began at a lower level, and formed one or two courses above the floor level. These two rows were unusual in terms of wall construction. They may have originally formed a single wall with two faces, or one row may have been built to replace the other, if the latter was in disrepair. We cannot make a choice between the alternatives, nor can we explain the discontinuities, since we did not excavate on the immediate west side of the wall. The alignment of this wall was at a slight angle to that of the wall remnant in Unit 220, but it is possible that they were once a single wall. We uncovered a floor surface next to the eastern row, 59 cm (9.41 m) below the ground surface The floor was smooth, hard adobe. It contained a 30 by 40 cm, adobe-lined depression that extended only 7 cm below the floor surface. The function of this shallow pit is unknown. Since the wall did not continue south into the north part of Unit 220, we assumed that at least some of the room represented by Unit 225 had been pothunted. The exact nature of the room therefore was undetermined, although its location suggested that it may have been the northeast corner room of the 200s room block.

Unit 226 Unit 226 was a long, irregularly shaped test trench placed in the north-center of the 200s room block to search for walls. The unit began on the west side of Unit 220 in the area where the walls in Units 220 and 225 should have joined, and then the test trench paralleled the length of Unit 225. One east-west wall remnant was uncovered in the south part of the trench near Unit 220, but none was recorded in the parallel part of the excavation. We then continued the trench in a generally western direction, up the mound of the room block. We noted a second wall remnant along with a floor

surface about halfway between the beginning of this part of the trench and the east wall of Unit 231. The trench ended at the east wall of Unit 231. The wall remnant near Unit 220 ran east-west but was not continuous. All that remained were a few rocks and some adobe in the form of a “bench.” This remnant may represent a cross wall connecting with the wall in Unit 225 and the wall remnant in Unit 220. These latter walls may have extended north and south from the cross walls at slightly different angles, thus accounting for the fact that they were not aligned with each other. This wall remnant in Unit 226 was aligned with the north wall of Unit 233 and was probably part of it. The second wall remnant in the trench was about 5.5 m from the east wall of Unit 231. It was composed of discontinuous large rocks and clumps of adobe. We could not accurately determine the alignment of this wall, but it may have been a continuation of the east wall of Unit 233 to the south. West of the second wall remnant, we exposed a small area of the floor surface at 92 cm (9.58 m) below the ground surface. The fill above the floor was not excavated in other areas of the west part of Unit 226 because of our desire to find cross walls and to leave any floor surfaces that might exist undisturbed. However, in the east part of the trench parallel to Unit 225, we removed much of the fill to the level of the floor surface in Unit 225 or below that level to culturally sterile soil, which was at 1.23 m (9.27 m) below the ground surface. No floor surface remained, and so this area was probably pothunted. The remnant of the east-west wall at the south end of this unit was probably also evidence of pothunting. It seems that Unit 226 was excavated through at least three rooms and perhaps four or five. The first would have been north of the first wall remnant and west of the wall in Unit 225. The trench may have also passed through a room north of this, but no evidence was present for the existence of this room aside from the length of the test trench. These rooms may have been bordered on the west by the wall represented by the second wall remnant. However, the distance between this remnant and the wall in Unit 225 is nearly 7 m, and this area could easily represent four rooms rather than two. Finally, there is a room between the second wall remnant and the east wall of Unit 231. Thus, using a combination of walls, wall remnants, and area covered, between three and five rooms are in the area of Unit 226. We can say little concerning the nature of the rooms in Unit 226. The area parallel to Unit 225 was clearly pothunted as demonstrated by the lack of a floor surface, and the potting probably included the full north-south extent of the trench in this area. However, at least some of the west portion of the trench was intact, as evidenced by the floor surface west of the second wall remnant, but the fact that this wall was only a remnant indicated that portions of the area were disturbed as well. The fill in general contained a high density of artifacts and no historic material. We collected no tree-ring samples, and so apparently none of the rooms in this area burned.

Unit 230 Unit 230 was a small test trench that extended south from the west end of Unit 226. After the east wall of Unit 231 was reached at the end of Unit 226, we designated a new unit (230) to follow this wall south to find a cross wall. Excavation

Mattocks Site Test Unit and Backhoe Trench Descriptions

in Unit 230 revealed a cross wall only 56 cm south of where Unit 230 was begun, this being the north wall of Unit 233. Fill in Unit 230 was removed to 73 cm (10.06 m) below the present ground surface. The depth of cultural deposits left no doubt that the unit was within a room, but we did not excavate far enough to know whether the room had been pothunted, or if the floor was intact. The floors in adjoining Units 231 and 233 were much lower than our excavations (at 9.55 m and 9.51 m, respectively), and any floor in Unit 230 would likely have been at a similar depth. We noted no evidence of a bench in Unit 230, unlike the one observed in Unit 231 (at a depth of 10.19 m). We discontinued excavation in this unit in favor of those in Units 231 and 232.

Unit 235 Unit 235 was excavated in what was thought to be a room south of Unit 232. We placed it along the possible southerly continuation of the wall dividing Units 232 and 233, but we uncovered no wall. We then extended the test trench to the west and north, but again saw no walls, although this area did have a greater concentration of rocks. It was apparent from the lack of roof fall, floor surface, and walls that this area was either pothunted or had been excavated by Nesbitt, although it does not coincide with our interpretation of where Nesbitt’s rooms are located. The fill in the unit showed no stratigraphy, and although there were areas with adobe lumps, these appear to have been secondary deposits. A piece of metal uncovered 50 cm (9.78 m) below the ground surface is another indicator of recent disturbance. Culturally sterile soil was between 95 cm and 101 cm (9.37 to 9.43 m) below the ground surface. This was well below the depth of the floors in Units 231 and 232, and so the floor had been previously removed in the unit. The fill excavated from Unit 235 was apparently not from a burned room. We recovered only one tree-ring sample, which was pinyon and dated to A.D. 1046vv.

Unit 236 Unit 236 began as a trench to test for the existence of a room in the area west of Unit 235. The unit was also directly adjacent to the east wall of Unit 237 near the south edge of the 200s room block. Unit 236 was apparently inside a room, as evidenced by a surface at 42 cm (9.66 m) below the present ground surface along the west wall, but the center of the room and the areas where the north and south walls should have been were pothunted, and we can say little regarding the room characteristics. We can only discuss the probable wall positions of the room in relationship to the walls of surrounding units, since the only wall discernable in Unit 236 was along the west edge of the excavation. This wall joined with the south wall of Unit 237, and the south wall of 237 probably continued east and also formed the south wall of Unit 236. The only possible remnant of the latter wall was near the southwest corner of Unit 236. As we noted in the discussion of Unit 237, pothunting had removed the northeast corner of that room. The disturbance apparently also removed the north wall of Unit 236, although we did not ascertain the actual extent of the pothunting hole. If evidence of an east wall remained in this room, the test trench may not have been wide enough to uncover it.

323

The original floor level of this room probably was intact for an undetermined width along the west wall. This harder, reddish surface was at an elevation of 42 cm (9.66 m) below the present ground surface. Supporting this as the floor is the fact that the floor in the adjoining Unit 237 was at a similar level. Material below this floor in Unit 236 was culturally sterile soil. Culturally sterile soil was lower than 9.66 m in the central potted area of the unit. We uncovered no features, and only one artifact, on the floor that remained in the unit. The artifact was part of a stone palette (236-2-3/2), the remainder of which (236-2-1/1) was at a higher level (9.73 m) in the central, pothunted area of the room. Given the difficulty in differentiating pothunted from unpothunted fill in this unit, it is possible that both parts of the palette were in disturbed areas. However, it is equally possible that the palette uncovered at the floor level represents trash that was thrown into the room after it was no longer used for habitation purposes, in which case it is likely that the second fragment was also originally on or near the floor level. Alternatively, the palette may have been an artifact placed on the floor as part of the room closing. We did not detect roof fall in this unit, although we uncovered portions of three large corrugated jars (236-14/2) near the northwest corner, at a level that might be interpreted as roof fall. The jars appeared to be just outside of the pot­hunting hole that removed the northwest corner and north wall, about 30 cm (9.67 m) below the ground surface. They were so close to the west wall that they seemed to be embedded in it. Only one obliterated corrugated jar was complete enough to profile, and the missing portions of all three may have been removed during the pothunting activities. The lack of tree-ring materials and burned adobe from the unit probably indicated that the room did not burn. The only tree-ring sample we collected (236-2-3/3) was of Ponderosa pine, and it could not be dated. There were patches of ash throughout both the unpot­ hunted and the pothunted fill in this unit. The highest eleva­ tion of the ash was only 15 cm (9.93 m) below the ground surface, and it continued in seemingly random concentrations to 9.69 m in the undisturbed areas of the unit and to 9.40 m in the pothunted locations. The ash may have been original trash fill, which was redeposited when the pothunting holes were backfilled, but because of the difficulties interpreting the deposition sequence in the room, this is speculative.

Unit 275 Unit 275 was a 0.8 by 3.5 m test trench placed east of the 200s room block to search for peripheral rooms to that room block. We positioned the trench along a possible rock alignment that, upon excavation, did not exist. There was some possible wall fall and adobe in the trench, but culturally sterile soil was reached about 50 cm below the ground surface, and so this area was extramural fill. Very few artifacts were present.

Unit 276 Unit 276 was a 1.0 by 3.5 m test trench that was 4 m east of Unit 275 and closer to the rock pile that may have been Nesbitt’s Rooms 12, 14, 23, 37, 38, and 39. The test trench was about 11 m from that rock pile. Culturally sterile soil was reached about 50 cm below ground surface. This was extramural fill with cobbles and very few artifacts.

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Appendix 3

Unit 280 Unit 280 was a 2 by 2 m test trench placed north of the northeast corner of Unit 286a to determine the condition of the room in that area. Although the limited excavation did not make the depositional sequence entirely clear, it appears that this corner of the room had not been pothunted. This was surprising, because Unit 280 should have been within Nesbitt’s Room 1. Wall fall from the masonry wall along the south side of the unit began only 10 cm (9.95 m) below the ground surface, and it extended north from the south wall for about 1.4 m before it ended, an expected pattern with intact deposits. There was an irregular adobe surface 15 cm think, interpreted as roof fall, below the wall fall. This was above another 15 cm thick layer that contained softer soil with a higher density of sherds, chipped stone, and animal bones. This layer could be interpreted as trash fill between the roof fall and the floor surface, which was 66 cm (9.39 m) below the present ground surface and was constructed of small rocks. Beneath the floor in the southeast corner of the trench was an 85 by 75 cm pit dug into culturally sterile soil and devoid of cultural material. It was not obvious whether this pit existed before the floor was constructed or whether the cobble “floor” was part of the trash thrown into the room. The latter possibility is less likely since no other floor surface was encountered, and there is no question but that Unit 280 was within a room. The room was bordered on both the south and east sides by masonry walls, and culturally sterile soil was 81 cm (9.24 m) below the ground surface, a point too deep to represent the natural level of culturally sterile soil.

Unit 281 Unit 281 was an exploratory 1 by 1 m test trench outside the west wall of Unit 41. Using this and other test trenches, we were able to determine the existence of Units 286a and 286b. Unit 281 thus became part of Unit 286, which we discuss in chapters 2 and 3.

Unit 282 Located north of the northeast corner of Unit 41, Unit 282 was a 1 by 1 m test trench excavated to determine the nature of the deposits in this area. It seems that there was a room here, perhaps Nesbitt’s Room 2, given the depth of culturally sterile soil at 76 cm (9.24 m) below the ground surface. However, the trench revealed no stratigraphy, or any significant density of artifacts, and it is likely that the area had been excavated or pothunted. A nail and the proximity of the trench to the disturbed area in the northeast corner of Unit 41 support this interpretation.

Unit 283 Unit 283 was probably a disturbed room (perhaps Nesbitt’s Room 1) north of the western half of the pit structure that is Unit 286b, but we did not excavate to the level of culturally sterile soil, and the unit may instead have been within the unroofed area in the center of the 200s room block. Excavation ended 39 cm below the ground surface, and the soil was very soft with no stratigraphy, probably indicating pothunting or previous excavation. Four rocks in the center of the unit may have originally been a double-coursed wall, but if so the pothunting had removed major sections of it. Unit 283 was not placed far enough south to detect the possible

presence of a wall continuing west from the north wall of Unit 286a.

Unit 284-1-1 Unit 284-1-1 was a 2 by 2 m test trench south of the southeast corner of Unit 286a to determine the presence of a room in this area. Although the test trench was excavated to culturally sterile soil, 54 cm (9.28 m) below the ground surface, it was not clear whether there was a room here. The depth of culturally sterile soil was such that it could be interpreted either as having been inside or outside a room. We uncovered no south extension of the east wall of Unit 286a, and we noted no other possible north-south walls. When compared with similar evidence from Unit 284-1-2, there was probably no row of rooms south of Units 41 and 286. However, the culturally sterile soil was slightly lower than the usual natural level at the site, and so this test trench may have been in an outside work area or similar feature associated with the room block.

Unit 284-1-2 The same arguments can be made for the cultural context of this 1 by 1 m test trench as for Unit 284-1-1. This trench was south of the southeast corner of Unit 41, and we also excavated it to culturally sterile soil at 54 cm (9.18 m) below the ground surface. Again, this may represent a room area, but given the lack of a wall continuing south from the east wall of Unit 41 and other corroborating evidence discussed above, this test trench was probably outside the room block.

Unit 285 Because of the high elevation of culturally sterile soil in this 1 by 1 m unit, it was probably an unroofed area in the center of the room block. Culturally sterile soil was only 37 cm (9.52 m) below the present ground surface, approximately the natural level of culturally sterile soil across the site. An undulating adobe surface began about 7 cm above culturally sterile soil, but it contained no features or artifacts that might indicate its function. The unroofed surface in this unit was probably continuous with that in Unit 286-1-2 and over the western half of Unit 286b.

Unit 286-1-2 Unit 286-1-2 was not within the boundaries of Unit 286 but rather was a 1 by 1 m trench with a small extension west of Unit 286b. As with Unit 285, culturally sterile soil was only 45 cm below the ground surface, probably the natural culturally sterile level. There was an adobe surface above the culturally sterile soil that contained many small rocks, but no other stratigraphy was evident in the trench. The trench was probably in a part of the unroofed area in the center of the 200s room block, as also seen in Unit 285 and the fill above the western half of Unit 286b.

Unit 290 Unit 290 (see figure A3.1) was a 9 m test trench in the area between the 200s and 300s room blocks, and it was excavated toward the north side of the 200s to locate the northernmost tier of rooms in that room block. We uncovered an extramural surface and a possible trash dumping area. The southernmost 3 m of the trench were apparently within a room, although no wall remained separating this room from the outside surface.

Mattocks Site Test Unit and Backhoe Trench Descriptions

325

Figure A3.1.  Profile of Unit 290.

Starting at the north side of the trench away from the 200s room block, culturally sterile soil was 1.03 m (9.47 m) below the present ground surface. This was rather deep for the natural level of culturally sterile soil, although the ground surface did slope up toward the 200s room block along the length of Unit 290, and so we posit that culturally sterile soil was excavated in antiquity to a depth of 9.47 m. In fact, a prepared adobe surface 5 cm thick was encountered directly atop of culturally sterile soil in Unit 290, beginning about 1.75 m from the north end of the trench and ending 5 m from that end. The soil above both the adobe surface and the culturally sterile soil in the north end of the trench was undifferentiated and unstratified. A layer of pebbles and fist-sized rocks, which included a relatively high concentration of sherds, chipped stone, and animal bones, occurred just above the adobe surface and above the culturally sterile soil in the northern 3 m of the trench. Moreover, a portion of a 2 cm thick ash lens lay directly on the adobe surface, beginning about 1.8 m from the north end of the trench and extending 1.2 m to the south. The ash (290-5-3/1) contained many kinds of charcoal (oak, rose family, juniper, pinyon) and charred seeds (yucca, prickly pear, corn, hedgehog cactus, grass, juniper, Chenopodium), and it may represent ash that was dumped in this location while it was still hot, since the surface around the ash was darker than the surrounding soil. Both the ash and the rocky layer supported the idea that this area was a trash dump. We noted no features such as postholes, extramural hearths, or artifacts in place on the adobe surface that would counter this claim. As noted, the adobe surface extended 5 m south from the north end of the trench. At that point, the surface ended, and the culturally sterile soil dropped to 1.17 m (9.33 m) below the ground surface. At 6 m south of the north end, the culturally sterile soil rose to the highest point in absolute terms in the trench—0.87 m (9.63 m) below ground surface. The final 3 m in the south end of the trench are probably within the 200s room block, but the area had been pothunted, as evidenced by the much lower artifact density, the small size of the sherds in the fill, and the lack of any surface. Accordingly, the 1 m area where the culturally sterile soil dropped to 9.33

m might have been the location of the north wall of the room, which would have been cut deeper into culturally sterile soil. If this area was indeed a room, it would have been directly north of Unit 231, and within the same tier as Unit 201.

Unit 300 Unit 300 was a series of test trenches placed in a room at the south end of the 300s room block. We do not know how many rooms were present in this room block, but there was probably at least one tier south of Unit 300 (Nesbitt’s Room 32 may be included in this tier), as there was a square depression in this area that we assumed was previously excavated. As well as being close to the south side of the room block, Unit 300 was probably also near its east edge. The area had indeed been excavated or pothunted, as evidenced by a Prince Albert tobacco can and two fingers of a leather glove at a depth of 105 cm (9.66 m) below the ground surface, along with the scattered bones of minimally a possibly female adult, a child of about 10, and an infant. Only a portion of an irregular adobe surface remained, in the southwest corner of the room between 110 cm and 120 cm (9.51 m to 9.61 m) below ground surface. The surface was continuous with plaster on the west wall, and it probably was a floor level. The south wall of Unit 300 was 5.20 m long and was built of uniformly sized rocks. The top course of the west wall was made of large rocks, although those of the other courses were smaller. Plaster extended between 30 cm and 40 cm up this wall.

Unit 301 This test trench extended west and north outside the southwest corner of Unit 300. No south wall was present in the western extension of this trench, and we excavated Unit 301 to a distance of 4 m without uncovering a west wall. A 0.75 m trench was extended north along the west wall of Unit 300. An irregular surface was uncovered throughout the unit at 80 cm (9.91 m) below the present ground surface. Given the lack of walls and the general feeling that this unit was disturbed, we halted the excavation. It is, however, possible that the unit was not disturbed and that the surface represented

326

Appendix 3

roof fall, floor, or some sort of extramural surface. Parts of a cranium, possibly of an adult male, were in the fill of this unit.

Unit 302 Unit 302 extended east and north from the outside of the southeast corner of Unit 300. There was no wall along the south edge of this trench, and the east extension uncovered no wall within a distance of 3 m. Trenching north along the outside of the east wall of Unit 300 revealed no wall within a distance of 5 m. There was a hard surface 35 cm (10.36 m) below the ground level in the east-west trench. The soil below this surface was fine and powdery, and so it is not clear whether this was a cultural feature or a natural level formed after the room was pothunted. This area had almost certainly been disturbed. There was a pothunting hole and pile of backdirt south of the east end of the trench, which, along with the lack of walls, supported that conclusion.

Unit 324 Unit 324 was a test trench along the northwest and northeast walls of Unit 325 to search for rooms contiguous with that structure. We first extended the test trench northwest from the west corner to look for a continuation of the southwest wall of Unit 325. We noted rocks in this area, but they did not form a wall and were probably wall fall from Unit 325. We then excavated the unit northwest from the north corner of Unit 325, where again we encountered rocks that were probably wall fall, rather than a wall. We extended another trench northwest from the north corner of Unit 325, out the door in its northwest wall. We excavated these trenches to a depth of 69 cm (11.04 m) below the ground surface but uncovered no features or surfaces, although there were some irregular parches of adobe at elevations of 11.26 to 11.22 m near the walls of Unit 325. Artifact densities were low throughout Unit 324.

Unit 326 This test trench ran along the outside of the southeast wall of Unit 325 and extended southwest from the south corner. We uncovered no walls or significant numbers of wall rocks in the trench, although two rocks on top one another extended southeast from the east corner of Unit 325. The soil in the trench changed at 43 cm (11.30 m) below the ground surface from dark brown, moist humus to lighter brown fill. Adobe chunks appeared at an elevation of 11.26 m, possibly equivalent to the adobe at a similar level in Unit 324. Only the northeast portion of the trench was excavated below 11.29 m, where an irregular adobe surface was present at 11.02 m. One posthole appeared in the surface. It was 15 cm in diameter and extended 23 cm below the surface. The surface may have been some sort of extramural activity area, although not enough area was excavated to determine if this was the case. Culturally sterile soil appeared at 10.95 m in the northeast portion of the test trench, the same level as in Unit 325.

Unit 327 Unit 327 was a small test trench that extended southwest from the west corner of Unit 325. Numerous rocks were present in the area, but they did not appear to form a wall. The rocks could have been wall fall, especially since the northwest part of the southwest wall in Unit 325 was quite jumbled.

We only excavated the trench to 25 cm (11.48 m) below the ground surface, and we noted no features or surfaces. Artifact density was very light. Thus, all of the test trenches around Unit 325 demonstrate that the room was isolated from other pueblo rooms at the site. It is possible that there were cultural surfaces outside the room, especially on the southeast side, but we could not ascertain this.

Unit 330 Unit 330 consisted of two test trenches (330-1-1 and 3301-2) in the area between the 200s and 300s room blocks, north of Unit 290. The northernmost test trench, 330-1-1, ran approximately north-south for a distance of 5.5 m. Unit 330-1-2 was a test trench located between 330-1-1 and Unit 290 and was 4.6 m long. Neither trench contained any walls, prepared surfaces, features, or dense concentrations of artifacts. Therefore, the trenches were not within rooms, and they were also probably not extramural work areas or trash dumps. The one fact that might refute this latter statement is that the level of culturally sterile soil in 330-1-2 was quite deep, at 79 cm to 90 cm (9.37 to 9.27 m) below the present ground surface. This elevation is similar to the depth of culturally sterile soil at the adjacent north end of Unit 290 (87 cm below ground surface) and may thus have been a continuation of the extramural surface or trash dump area in that unit. By contrast, culturally sterile soil in 330-1-1 was 34 cm to 38 cm (9.78 to 9.82 m) below the surface. This is the general depth at which culturally sterile soil is present naturally at the Mattocks site. Unit 330-1-1 was in a depression between the room blocks that drains toward the Mimbres River, while 330-1-2 was somewhat upslope. The latter trench may have been covered with material from the 200s room block, with this fill having been washed off Unit 330-1-1. Whether the level of culturally sterile soil in 330-1-2 was natural or not remains unresolved.

Unit 335 Unit 335 was a 1 by 2 m test trench located 12 m east of Unit 300 and just north of a large depression that may have been Nesbitt’s Pit Room 32. The trench was placed in an area that appeared to have been pothunted. We uncovered no walls or features, and culturally sterile soil was encountered at 76 cm (9.58 cm) below the ground surface. The depth of culturally sterile soil probably indicated that Unit 335 was within a structure that had been pothunted or previously excavated.

Unit 350 This unit was a long, narrow pothunting hole about 30 m north of Unit 325, from which we took some tree-ring samples. The pothunting hole was oriented east-west along a masonry wall that was possibly part of Nesbitt’s Rooms 19 and 54. Because we did no excavation in the pothunting hole, its boundaries are not outlined on figure I.4. All of the treering samples were pinyon, and none of them dated.

Unit 400 Unit 400 was a 4 by 2+ m area that was excavated 5 m east of Backhoe Trench 1 and 14.5 m west of the 100s room block. A line of stones was visible on the ground surface, and excavation revealed it to be a 1.25 m north-south alignment of

327

Mattocks Site Test Unit and Backhoe Trench Descriptions

rocks that joined a 0.75 m east-west alignment at its south end. We uncovered an irregular, hard-packed surface between these alignments 27 cm (9.30 m) below the present ground surface, and culturally sterile soil was 57 cm (9.00 m) below ground surface. Excavations along the exteriors of both walls demonstrated that they did not continue, and no other walls joined them. We noted no features in the unit, and artifact densities were not heavy and presented no evidence concerning how the area was used. This unit might be an ephemeral structure or an extramural work area.

Unit 422 Unit 422 was a test trench approximately 1.4 by 1.4 m and north of the northwest corner of Unit 423. We placed it to determine whether the west wall of Unit 423 continued to the north. That wall did not continue, but there was an undulating adobe surface 23 cm (10.47 m) below the ground surface. The surface was higher than the upper floor in Unit 423, and so we concluded that culturally sterile soil was directly below this surface and that the test trench was outside the room block. There was a possible pit in the northwest corner of the test trench that we did not excavate.

Unit 430 Unit 430 (except 430-1-1, which was within Units 422 and 423) was a test trench about 70 cm wide that extended along the outside of the east wall and northeast corner of Unit 423. Its purpose was to discern the presence of walls in the area, and once we discovered that there were none, to investigate the nature of the exterior surface. A relatively smooth adobe surface was at 10.13 to 10.17 m, slightly below the lower floor in Unit 423b. It is possible that this surface was a continuation of the ramada in Unit 426 to the south. No artifacts were on the surface, but there were three postholes (430-2S-4PH A, B, and C; table A3.1) present. Two of these postholes (B and C) were along the east wall of Unit 423, while the third was diagonal to the northeast corner. One tree-ring date of A.D. 1015vv (430-1-2/2) came from a charcoal specimen in this unit. The sample could not be confidently associated with any construction in the unit, and thus it might have been in trash fill. Table A3.1.  Dimensions and Depths Below Surface of the Postholes in Unit 430. Provenience

Unit 424 This test trench, 80 by 90 cm, was placed west of the northwest corner of Unit 423 to determine whether the north wall of that room extended farther to the west. The wall did not continue but, as with Unit 422, there was an undulating adobe surface 25 cm (10.45 m) below the ground surface, and culturally sterile soil was 10 cm below that. We concluded that this trench was outside the room block. There was a significant amount of wall fall in the trench, indicating that the west wall of Unit 423 collapsed toward the west.

Unit 428 Unit 428 was a test trench extending north of the northeast corner of Unit 425 to determine whether the east wall of that room continued to the north. The wall did not continue, and we encountered no further walls when we excavated the trench 5.6 m to the north. This area was probably outside the room block. We excavated the trench to between 10.16 m and 10.22 m, but the soil was wet during excavation, and we could not discern whether a surface existed. This level was the same as the lower floor in Unit 423b, but it was higher than the floor surfaces in Units 425 and 426. Several mano and metate fragments were present in the test trench, and sherds from a punctate jar (428-1-1/1) were in the south end of the trench. Sherds from this jar were also present at opposite ends of the trench in Unit 429 (429-1-1-/2), and in the top 20 cm of Unit 425.

Top Dimensions (cm)

Depth Below Surface (cm)

2S-4PH A

25 × 25

34

2S-4PH B

20 × 15

31

2S-4PH C

20 × 20

26

Unit 432 Unit 432 was a test trench begun along the outside of the west wall of Unit 431 to find any walls in this area. A wall continued west from the south wall of Unit 431, suggesting that Unit 432 was within a room. The test trench followed this south wall 1 m to the west, where the wall stopped, either because of pothunting or because a modern fence had been built to the west of the trench. We did not excavate the trench deeply to ascertain the presence of a floor surface, and it is not certain whether this was a room, a ramada, or an area outside the room block.

Unit 436 This 1 by 1.7 m test trench was placed north of Unit 427 to determine the nature of the deposits in the area. We encountered no walls, and because of this we interpreted the area as being outside the pueblo, and excavation ceased. Had we extended the trench, we would have encountered the walls of what was later called Unit 423. Unit 436 was entirely within Unit 423.

Unit 429

Unit 437

Unit 429 was a 1 by 3 m test trench that ran east from the northeast corner of Unit 425 to determine the presence or absence of an east-west wall in this area. We encountered no wall, and the test trench seemed to be outside the room block. We excavated the trench to a level of 10.21 to 10.25 m, similar to that of the lower floor in Unit 423b, but we located no surface, perhaps because of wet soil. This level was higher than the floor in the ramada area (Unit 426) to the south, which we expected to be present in the area of this test trench.

Unit 437 was a 1.34 by 0.90 m test trench just east of the ramada represented by Unit 426 (figure 3.4). The trench was placed to locate the east edge of the ramada, and it was in fact only about 40 cm away from Unit 426 that we had previously excavated. Although an area of adobe was 30 cm (10.14 m) below the ground level, we could not be certain from such a small trench that this was the ramada surface. The adobe was about 9 cm above the level of the ramada floor in Unit 426, and so it is unlikely to have been the ramada surface.

328

Appendix 3

Figure A3.2.  Photo of Unit 450-3-1 (1976) mano cache.

Unit 439 This test trench included parts of Units 426, 433, and 435 that we had already excavated in earlier years. We were searching for rooms south of these three, but misjudged our position due to the lack of a transit.

Unit 440 Unit 440 was a 40 cm wide test trench along the inside of the east wall of Unit 438. The trench extended from the ground surface to the level of the lower floor (Unit 438b). It is included with Unit 438 for analytical purposes.

Unit 442 Unit 442 was a 1 by 1.2 m test trench placed south of the southeast corner of Unit 438 to determine whether there was another room in this area. The east wall of Unit 438 did not continue south, and Unit 442 instead seems to have been a continuation of the ramada area represented by Unit 426 and the part of Unit 441 outside the pit structure. A surface was encountered 81 cm to 85 cm (10.12 to 10.16 m) below the ground surface, at about the same elevation as the ramada floor in Unit 426. A complete sandstone mano (442-1-1/1) and a worked stone slab (442-1-1/3) were on the floor surface, while two more complete manos (442-1-1/2, 442-1-1/5) and an oddly shaped, smoothed rock (442-1-1/4) were resting atop the lower mano and slab (see figure 3.43 for ground stone locations). There was apparently a pit in this surface, west of the southeast corner of Unit 438, but we did not excavate it. The test trench also contained many rocks, which may represent wall fall from the south wall of Unit 438.

Unit 450 (1974) This L-shaped test trench was placed along an apparent rock alignment about 22 m east of the 400s room block and 16 m

south of the 100s room block. The main portion of the trench was 1 by 3 m. The rocks were not a wall, and culturally sterile soil was 45 cm below the ground surface. The artifact concentration was relatively low in the area. The test trench was probably in an area where sheet-washed trash covered the site.

Unit 450 (1976) Unit 450 (see figure A3.2) was a 1.8 by 1.8 m area around a neatly stacked pile of manos and mano blanks, about 12 m south of the 400s room block. The manos were uncovered at the south end of an unnumbered backhoe trench. In the pile were eight sandstone manos (450-3-1/2, 450-3-1/3, 4503-1/4, 450-3-1/6, 450-3-1/7, 450-3-1/8, 450-3-1/11, 450-31/17), three vesicular basalt manos (450-3-1/5, 450-3-1/9, 450-3-1/10), one rhyolite mano (450-3-1/13), three sandstone mano blanks (450-3-1/1, 450-3-1/12, 450-3-1/14), and two vesicular basalt mano blanks (450-3-1/15, 450-3-1/16). All manos and mano blanks were rectangular in outline, and all of the manos were unifacially worn. There were no other cultural features in the area, and culturally sterile soil was at about 49 cm (9.72 m) below the ground surface. The lowermost manos lay directly on culturally sterile soil; there was no cultural floor surface.

Unit 451 We excavated this 1 by 1 m test trench at a dip in the culturally sterile soil level of the same unnumbered backhoe trench south of the 400s room block that was noted for Unit 450 (1976). Culturally sterile soil was 87 cm (9.15 m) below the present ground surface. No cultural features were in the trench, but rodents had disturbed the area, which perhaps accounts for the soft soil and the dip in culturally sterile soil seen in the trench.

Mattocks Site Obsidian Artifact Data

APPENDIX 4

Provenience

Number of Pieces

Artifact Type

Modified

Weight (g)

TT 4/1

1

other flake

yes

1.0

surface, south of 290-2-6

1

other flake

yes

0.5

31-3-2/1

1

other flake

no

0.5 1.5

41-1-1/4

1

core prep

yes

41-2-1

1

?

?

41-1-3/4

1

other flake

no

?

Notes

41-1-2?

0.5

41-1-2

1

other flake

no

0.5

41-1-4

1

other flake

no

1.0

41-2RF-4

1

core prep

no

3.5

41-2RF-4

2

other flakes

1-no, 1-yes

1.0

41-1-3

1

other flake

yes

0.5

41-5S-18PH/1

1

punch or drill

yes

1.0

41-4S-19/1

1

other flake

no

0.5

41-5S-20/4

4

other flakes

2-no, 2-yes

1.0

41-5S-26/A

1

other flake

no

0.5

41-4S-21/9

1

core prep

yes

1.5

41-4S-21/9

1

other flake

yes

0.5

41-5S-21/7

2

other flakes

no

0.5

41-5S-21/7

1

core prep

yes

1.0

72-2-1/2

1

biface base

yes

1.0

72-2-1/2

3

other flakes

2-no, 1-yes

1.0

80-3-8/3

1

core prep

no

1.5

80-3-8/3

1

biface thinning

no

0.5

80-4-8/3

1

core prep

no

0.5

80-4-8/3

1

other flake

no

0.5

80-4-8/3

1

core

yes

10.0

80-1-1

1

core prep

no

1.0

80-2-4/4

1

core prep

yes

4.0

80-2-4/4

1

other flake

no

0.5

80-2-4/4

3

core prep

2-no, 1-yes

1.0

41-6S-26?

80-3-6/1

3

other flakes

1-no, 2-yes

1.5

80-2-6?, 80-3-7?

80-4-6/3

1

other flake

no

1.0

80-4-7?

80-1-5/1

1

other flake

no

0.5

80-2-4/4

1

other flake

no

0.5

80-2-20B/5

1

core prep

no

1.0

80-2-20B/5

2

other flakes

1-no, 1-yes

0.5

80-3-8/7

1

biface nodule

no

80-3-11B/7

2

other flakes

yes?