Introduction

Yellow Jacket Pueblo (5MT5) is the largest known ancestral pueblo site in the Mesa Verde region, and was occupied during the late Pueblo II period (AD 1050-1150), and during the Pueblo III period (AD 1150-1300). The site is in the approximate center of a northwest to southeast band of Pueblo III villages reaching from the southeast edge of the Mesa Verde to beyond Montezuma Creek in southeast Utah. Yellow Jacket Pueblo is near the head of one of the longest and largest canyons in the McElmo drainage. Much of the site is on a relatively flat, sagebrush-covered point (Figure 1) that is bounded on the east and on the west by canyons. Both drainages contain reliable springs, making this an attractive settlement location both prehistorically and historically. The name of the site is derived from the yellow jacket wasps that are attracted to these springs.

The size, location and high visibility of Yellow Jacket Pueblo on the landscape have resulted in heavy impacts during the last century by visitors, non-professional excavators, grazing livestock, and by people procuring both modified and unmodified rock from the site. In the mid-1800s, a spring in Yellow Jacket Canyon that is associated with the site served as a watering stop on a well-established wagon route, originally the Spanish Trail. As early as 1900, Prudden (1900) described the site as being "much dug out."

Yellow Jacket Pueblo was first described in print1859 by Newberry (1876), who referred to the site as "Surouaro," a Ute word meaning desolation. Newberry estimated a population for the site of several thousand for several centuries. Holmes (1878), Prudden (1900), and Fewkes (1919:17) also described the site. Yellow Jacket was mapped several times (Lange et al. 1986; Ferguson and Rohn 1987:129); however, only one previous archaeological excavation was undertaken at the site.

In the summer of 1931, C.T. Hurst and V.F. Lotrich from Western State College in Gunnison, Colorado, conducted excavations at a "site" they referred to as "Square Mug House" (Hurst and Lotrich 1932, 1933, 1935b, 1936a, 1937). Eleven kivas and ten rooms were excavated in Square Mug House, and a number of whole vessels were recovered, though little additional information could be found regarding these excavations. Crow Canyon's research showed that the "site" that Hurst and Lotrich called Square Mug House is a Pueblo III roomblock at the eastern edge of Yellow Jacket Pueblo (Figure 2 and Figure 3), which we called the Great Tower Complex.

In the 1950's, the sites in the Yellow Jacket community were the first in Montezuma County to be recorded using the Smithsonian designation system, which is evidence of its high visibility, and probably served to draw even more attention to the site. Also, the site is located along what is now a heavily-traveled highway. However, impacts to the site appear to have declined in recent years, and non-professional activity has been virtually eliminated on the portion of the site owned by The Archaeological Conservancy.

Professor Joe Ben Wheat and his field school students from the University of Colorado (Lange et al. 1986) conducted extensive excavations for many years at 5MT1 (Stevenson Site and Porter Pueblo) and 5MT3, which are across a draw to the southwest of 5MT5. These sites contained evidence of Basketmaker III, Pueblo II and Pueblo III occupations.

A sizable portion of Yellow Jacket Pueblo was acquired by The Archaeological Conservancy over a period of several years, beginning in the early 1980's. The Conservancy owns all of the site except for a block in the west-central portion of the site and the portion on the talus slope. Crow Canyon Archaeological Center conducted research at the site from April 1995 to October 1997. The project director of this research was Kristin Kuckelman, and Donna Glowacki assisted.