C O N S E R VA N C Y
Field Notes
Coming Home University of Vermont student James Allen exposes the floor of a room at Fourmile Ruin.
Work Continues at Fourmile Ruin SOUTHWEST—The 2009 University of Vermont archaeological field school traveled to east-central Arizona to continue excavations at the Conservancy’s Fourmile Ruin preserve. Fourmile was the largest and perhaps most diverse village in the region, a central location
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that attracted groups who migrated to the area in the 14th century. The presence of exotic items such as yellow ware pottery and obsidian demonstrate that it had ties to other areas of the Pueblo Southwest. The researchers focused on middens at the site that could yield information about the production and
SOUTHEAST—In 2005, the Chickasaw Nation of Oklahoma gave the Conservancy a grant to purchase one of their ancestral village sites, referred to locally as Cedarscape, in Tupelo, Mississippi. During the height of Cedarscape’s occupation, in the early to mid 1700s, the Chickasaws were under almost constant attack from the French and their Indian allies, and they eventually abandoned the village for many years. It is believed the village was reoccupied later in the 1800s shortly before the
SCOTT VAN KEUREN
circulation of iconographic-style pottery during the early Pueblo IV period (A.D. 1300-1400). In addition to examining middens, the researchers excavated portions of two rooms and a kiva. In the latter they found perfectly preserved plastered walls, floor features, and an unusual incision in the paved floor. The excavations yielded abundant varieties of painted pottery, but little evidence of ceramic manufacture. Project director Scott Van Keuren said that red ware pottery was produced by specialists living at one or more villages in the region, and he thinks it’s possible that one village was the exclusive manufacturer of Fourmile Polychrome. The artifacts recovered this summer will undergo a battery of tests, including instrumental neutron activation analysis, which should provide information about where they were produced and how they circulated among the Pueblo villages in this region. Van Keuren also intends to clarify the economic organization of pottery production and exchange in the region in the 1300s, a period leading up to the end of permanent Pueblo occupation of the area.
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