new acquisition LANDOWNER DONATES AFAMOUS ARIZONA SITE

Landowner Donates A Famous Arizona Site

Fourmile Ruin can shed light on a little-known period.

Ever since Southwest archaeologist Jesse Walter Fewkes briefly explored the site in the late 1800s, Fourmile Ruin in east-central Arizona has been well known to archaeologists working in the area. The site’s accessibility also resulted in a century of looting, a fate shared by other large pueblo villages in the Silver Creek drainage. While the site destruction is tragic, news of it helped pass two 1990 Arizona state laws protecting human burials and associated artifacts on private and state lands. Discussions between the site’s landowner, Pete Shumway, and archaeologist Scott Van Keuren, who is conducting research at the Silver Creek sites, led to the donation of the 4.6-acre site to the Conservancy, making Fourmile Ruin the Conservancy’s 20th Arizona preserve.

Fourmile Ruin is a 450-room multi-story masonry village with as many as six discrete roomblocks that correspond to different building episodes. The earliest and largest roomblock surrounds a small plaza and dates as early as the late 13th century. Later roomblocks delineate two additional plazas, both of which contain circular kivas. By the early to mid-14th century, the settlement was home to hundreds of inhabitants, making it the largest of the several aggregated towns that were settled in the drainage at the time. Some of these large towns were abandoned around A.D. 1325 as inhabitants moved to Fourmile Ruin and other lower elevation localities adjacent to Silver Creek and its tributaries. The abandonment of Fourmile Ruin by about 1400 marked the conclusion of permanent Pueblo occupation in the Silver Creek drainage.

“With the near total destruction of other late prehistoric sites in the Silver Creek drainage, Fourmile Ruin is one of the last remaining villages with deposits that date between 1325 and 1400,” noted Van Keuren. “This period of Ances-

It was believed that adobe bricks were not used in wall construction before the arrival of the Spanish. But the discovery of adobe bricks in this prehistoric wall at Fourmile Ruin refutes that assumption.

tral Pueblo occupation is poorly understood. Despite previous work at the site, we still lack the data necessary to answer questions about architectural layout, settlement growth and abandonment, timing of occupation, and the cultural affiliation of Fourmile Ruin’s occupants.” Van Keuren, who is curator of North American Archaeology at the Natural History Museum of Los Angeles County, plans to record the site’s exposed architecture and to excavate test units in the remaining intact deposits. After the site is mapped, the Conservancy will stabilize the exposed areas and create a long-term management plan for the preserve, with the help of the Hopi and Zuni tribes, both of whom claim ancestry to the site. Researchers hope that work within the Silver Creek drainage will help them to better understand the demographic and cultural reorganization of this region of the Southwest during the 14th century. —Tamara Stewart Conservancy Plan of Action

SITE: Fourmile Ruin CULTURE & TIME PERIOD: Anasazi, A.D. 1275–1400 STATUS: Encroaching residential development and continued looting threaten the site. ACQUISITION: The site has been donated to the Conservancy. Funds are needed to fence, map, and backfill the site. HOW YOU CAN HELP: Please send contributions to The Archaeological Conservancy, Attn:Project Fourmile, 5301 Central Ave. NE Suite 902, Albuquerque,NM 87108-1517