Lab News

Lab Work for All Seasons: Winter 2007 Update

February 1, 2007

In these cold, dark days of winter, most of Crow Canyon’s research staff are keeping busy in the lab. Work on three different projects—Shields Pueblo, Albert Porter Pueblo, and Goodman Point Pueblo—is at varying stages of completion, from specimen processing to report writing.

Jonathan Till, Crow Canyon’s lab analysis manager, is putting the finishing touches on the first drafts of several chapters that describe the artifact assemblage from Shields Pueblo, where Crow Canyon conducted test excavations from 1997 to 2000. These chapters will be part of a larger volume that describes and interprets our findings at this important site, which had a primary occupation dating from the mid-eleventh through the late thirteenth centuries A.D.

	Lab staff analyzes pottery sherds from Albert Porter Pueblo.

The lab is beginning several special analyses of artifacts from Albert Porter Pueblo (excavated from 2001 to 2004), including an examination of selected bowl and jar rim sherds as part of rim-arc and bowl-design analyses (see the November 6, 2006, article on the analysis of painted designs on white ware bowls). In addition, research volunteer and colleague Robin Lyle will lead a temper analysis of a sample of the 170,000 pottery sherds from Albert Porter, and lab staff will prepare obsidian and turquoise artifacts for geographic-source analysis by outside specialists. Data from all these special analyses will be used to address a variety of research issues, including trade (both within and beyond the region), social differentiation, and the degree to which the inhabitants of Albert Porter Pueblo participated in the “Chaco phenomenon” of the eleventh and twelfth centuries.

Collections Manager Jamie Merewether continues to make great progress in preparing the Albert Porter collection (more than 500,000 items, not including field notes, maps, and photographs!) for eventual curation at the nearby Anasazi Heritage Center. She is coordinating the efforts of staff and volunteers and hopes to complete this task by early 2008.

Work on the materials collected in 2005 and 2006 from our current excavation site, Goodman Point Pueblo, is proceeding on several fronts. Jamie coordinated the processing and submission of tree-ring samples in early January—274 samples with good dating potential are now awaiting analysis at the Laboratory of Tree-Ring Research in Tucson. Erin Baxter, the laboratory program coordinator, has organized the labor needed to analyze the pottery and chipped-stone artifacts, and a small but dedicated group of volunteers, supervised by field archaeologists Grant Coffey and Steve Copeland, is helping with both analyses.

The wind may howl and the snow may blow, but the work of archaeological research continues at a constant pace in the Crow Canyon laboratory.