News From The Field

July 23, 2005
We're a little more than three months into the field season and making great progress on all fronts. The new map created with the total station is awesome! It shows the extent of rubble mounds, as well as the locations of kivas (more than 100 of them), towers, wall alignments, the village-enclosing wall, possible dams, slickrock, the spring, the National Park Service path, and the great kiva. This map is more accurate than earlier maps created before we had a total station, and we used 28 mapping datums to create it (that's a lot). We're all really grateful to master cartographer and archaeologist Neal Morris for drafting the beautiful AutoCAD map that you see here.

The site has been divided into 13 architectural blocks, or clusters of structures. Some of these blocks are very obvious—the buildings are grouped together and spatially separated from those of other blocks. In other areas, we defined blocks in ways that made it easier to manage the excavations—for example, we arbitrarily split the huge cluster of 32 kivas and hundreds of rooms across the central part of the site into Blocks 400 and 500. The blocks are numbered starting in the northwestern portion of the site and working south and east.

We've begun excavations in Blocks 100, 200, 300, 400, 500, 900, 1000, and 1100. We're currently working in several types of excavation units: units in middens (1-x-1 m in size), kivas (2-x-2 m), and rooms (1-x-2 m), and units (1-x-2 m) located along the exterior faces of the north walls of roomblocks. We're also testing towers (with 1-x-2-m units) and the village-enclosing wall.

Here's a summary of what we've excavated so far in four of the blocks:

Block 100
The far northwestern block has eight excavation units in it: five midden units, a kiva unit, and two contiguous 1-x-2-m units in another structure. Our excavations in the midden have shown us that it is relatively shallow and that trash was thrown right on top of bedrock; we've recovered lots of Mesa Verde Black-on-white pottery from these units. The kiva is burned and has really nice, blocky masonry, a vertical-slab deflector, and a floor-level vent tunnel.

The two contiguous 1-x-2-m units have revealed a large structure, measuring at least 2.7 m north-south, at the far northern end of the site. There is an unusual-looking doorway in an abutted wall (it's tucked into a corner); two big upright slabs leaning against the wall might have been door covers. A small portion of the floor was exposed, and we found an upside-down neck of a corrugated pottery vessel in the southeast corner of the room. Also found in the room were four axes. The room is located just east of a possible opening in the village-enclosing wall and is much taller than the surrounding rubble. Some of us theorize that it might have been a special room or possibly a tower . . . we'll keep you posted.

Block 200
Jason, an intern who is a graduate student at Arizona State University, has been doing a bang-up job in Block 200. Block 200 is a small block located at the northeast edge of the site. Jason is working in a kiva filled with more rock than dirt and in a room with a wall going across the middle of it that we don't yet understand. He's also excavating a unit along the north wall of a roomblock and has found a surface, burned beans, an obsidian projectile point, and marine shell. It's really something you have to see.

Block 300
Research staff member Grant, also known as "Mr. Dendro," has collected dozens of dendrochronological (tree-ring) samples from the kiva being tested in Block 300—located just north of the main east-west path that you walk on when you visit the site. (He gets all the visitors too.) The kiva is just amazing, with many burned beams, some quite large. We're about 40 cm above the floor and are keeping our fingers crossed that we'll find artifacts left in situ (in place) when the structure burned. Excavation along the north wall of the roomblock is revealing a section of the exterior face of the roomblock wall, as well as part of the rubble and masonry of the village-enclosing wall, which abuts the roomblock. Helen, an archaeologist trainee from Iraq, worked hard to complete the excavation of this unit.

There is also another possible tower or a really tall room in this block. The structure has a nice doorway in the south wall and is quite long north-south (we haven't found the north wall yet). Excavation in this structure, too, is very near the floor. The midden in this block is interesting—one pit contains a little bit of cultural fill (with mostly Pueblo III artifacts) beneath a lot of redeposited construction fill that formed a berm around the south edge of the kivas. For the most part, excavation in this midden is now complete.

Block 500
Block 500 has been open for only a few weeks, but is already providing us with a lot of information. Because this block is so big, we decided to test two kivas in it. Excavation in the west kiva has just begun, and we've already found part of a masonry pilaster. The east kiva, at the far eastern end of the block, is definitely burned, judging from the condition of the bench that we recently defined. The upper lining wall of this kiva is actually visible at the modern ground surface, which is really unusual. Excavation in the surface room selected for testing has revealed two big, blocky masonry walls. We'll know more with time.

The midden is the densest and deepest we have seen so far on the site—ashy, lots of charcoal, and full of artifacts. One of the units has a huge upright slab in it—let us know if you have any theories on what it's doing there. Excavation in the unit located along the north wall of the Block 500 roomblock has been completed, revealing a thick, 50-cm-wide wall. In the coming weeks, we'll continue working in these units and in new ones started by students in our High School Field School. We'll keep you posted, so check back for more notes on how things are going at the site!

Erin Baxter, Archaeologist, Goodman Point Pueblo Excavation