Lab News

Tsama Pueblo and the Mesa Verde Migration

Initial Findings of Tsama Pueblo Collection Analysis

by Scott Ortman, Acting Director of Research and Education

August 26, 2009

In the preceding installment of Lab News, Jamie Merewether introduced Tsama Pueblo and Crow Canyon's work with the "orphaned" collection from this site. In this column, I'd like to share some initial findings of this work and discuss their implications for our understanding of the depopulation of the Mesa Verde region.

When A.V. Kidder published the first synthesis of Southwestern archaeology in 1924, he noted that the population of the northern Rio Grande region in New Mexico grew substantially as the population of the Mesa Verde region declined, but he also noted that there were precious few indications that these new Rio Grande populations actually came from the Mesa Verde region. Ever since, archaeologists have debated whether Mesa Verde immigrants were gradually absorbed into existing Rio Grande communities, as Kidder believed, or whether Mesa Verde populations played only a limited role in the formation of the Rio Grande pueblos.

Neither scenario accounts for the Mesa Verde–region archaeological record as we know it today. Due largely to the work of Kristin Kuckelman, we now know that the final Pueblo inhabitants of this region experienced food shortages and internecine warfare, but only a portion of the population perished as a result. Physical remains of the final inhabitants otherwise suggest a healthy and fertile population. Also, through the work of Bill Lipe, Mark Varien, and myself, we now know that, although the regional population began to decline around A.D. 1260, more than 10,000 people remained in the A.D. 1270s, and all of them had left for good by A.D. 1285. These are not the patterns one would expect if the Mesa Verde region–population dwindled in place, or if the Mesa Verde migration involved a gradual infiltration of small groups into existing Rio Grande communities. At least some people must have moved somewhere, very rapidly and in large groups.

I've been puzzled by these contradictions for years, and when I began working on my Ph.D. dissertation, I wanted to better understand why, if in fact thousands of people migrated from the Mesa Verde region around A.D. 1280, there is so little evidence of Mesa Verde cultural influence in the Rio Grande.

What I've found is that the degree to which Mesa Verde immigrants expressed their homeland culture depended on the social situation they encountered upon arrival. Some portions of the Rio Grande, such as the area surrounding Santa Fe, had sizeable Pueblo populations prior to A.D. 1200. In these areas, Mesa Verde immigrants may well have joined established local communities and adopted local pottery traditions. Other areas, such as the Pajarito Plateau northwest of Santa Fe, were settled in the A.D. 1200s by immigrants who came in small groups; these immigrants, too, adopted local pottery traditions of Pueblo groups already living in nearby areas and provided models for subsequent immigrants to follow.

Elements of the painted design on this bowl from Tsama Pueblo are similar to elements seen on A.D. 1200s pottery from the Mesa Verde region—for example, the dabs of paint on the vessel rim (called "rim-ticking") and the two sets of concentric parallel lines (called "framing lines") that define the main design field.

However, the relatively remote Rio Chama drainage north of the Pajarito Plateau was settled in the mid–A.D. 1200s by village-sized groups who would have encountered few local potters after arrival. As a result, potters at villages like Tsama (the source of the name for the Rio Chama) continued the Mesa Verde pottery-painting tradition. The work of our laboratory has shown that, although pottery vessels from Tsama were made with local materials, the painted designs on these vessels exhibit close continuities with late Mesa Verde painted pottery. As far as I am aware, this is the clearest evidence of cultural continuity between the Mesa Verde region and northern Rio Grande that has been identified to date. Our work with the Tsama collection thus suggests that large numbers of Mesa Verde people did migrate to the Rio Grande in the A.D. 1200s, but that they encountered a variety of social situations upon arrival, and this was one of the factors that encouraged the adoption of destination-area practices in some cases and the continuation of homeland practices in others.