News From The Field

September 15, 2005
In the past few months the field crew has worked with many wonderful people from across the country. For three weeks in July, we had 28 high school students in our annual High School Field School. Also joining us at various times have been many school groups, lots of individual adults enrolled in our Adult Research Program, and families who spent their summer vacations participating in our Family Archaeology week. All have been conscientious and careful excavators, fun lunch buddies, and steadfast diggers, even in hot weather. They have worked all over the site, found walls in unexpected places, carried hundreds of buckets of dirt, discovered a multitude of artifacts, and seemed to have a great time overall.

Highlights of the past few months have included the collection of dozens of tree-ring samples (burned wood we can use to date the site), as well as the discovery of several structure floors, an interesting bin feature, and lots of interesting artifacts.

Block 100
In the previous diary entry, we mentioned the unusually large room that was being tested in Block 100. Our attention now is focused on a kiva, where we found several turkey skulls and a rabbit skeleton in a pile of refuse on the floor. These interesting finds were painstakingly mapped, removed, and then taken to our lab for further analysis.

Work in test pits, excavated to sample the middens in Block 100, has been completed, and we have begun backfilling them. By this time next summer, you could probably never even tell we dug there.

Block 200
The kiva we're testing in this roomblock was full of rocks, but we finally found some intact architecture. The 2-x-2-m unit that we started digging has since been reduced to a 2-x-1-m unit, and alumni of our Adult Research Program are currently excavating down to the structure's floor. In the process, they've also discovered an unusually large masonry deflector.

Our development director, Dan Mooney, wanting to experience a Crow Canyon field program firsthand, joined us for a week with the Adult Research Program. The room in which he was excavating contained an interesting feature—possibly a mealing bin—tucked into the corner formed by the junction of the north and east walls of the room. Radek Polanka, our volunteer researcher from Poland, has continued the excavation of this feature and hopes to ascertain its function soon.

Block 300
Mentioned in the previous entry, research staff member Grant Coffey has continued work in the kiva that we're testing in this block. He has located the deflector and southern recess and is very near the floor of the structure, but the presence of a masonry deflector in the middle of the excavation unit makes it especially difficult for him to maneuver.

The test units excavated in the middens in Block 300 contained little refuse. One unit revealed yellow, broken-up sandstone that we believe is part of a berm that enclosed a kiva. Students from the Southwest Open School in Cortez helped us backfill them.

Block 400
Radek has been supervising units in a kiva and in a room in Block 400. One unit yielded large tree-ring samples, but for a long time we saw no intact architecture. We suspected that we'd placed the excavation unit directly in the center of a kiva, a suspicion that was confirmed when one of our research participants uncovered a masonry deflector. We still haven't found a southern recess, bench, or pilaster; it's likely that these features lie outside the boundaries of the test unit. However, the kiva has yielded several large pieces of corrugated pottery, a polished and shaped sandstone slab, numerous groundstone tools, and other interesting artifacts that we hope the participants in our Fall Lab program can analyze to help us better understand this structure.

The room in Block 400 was constructed of McElmo-style masonry consisting of large blocky stones; portions of the south and west walls of the room have been exposed. Nearly 2 cubic meters (that's more than 50 cubic feet) of stone have been removed so far, and we're still excavating!

Block 500
Block 500 has been a hive of activity over the last six weeks. Multiple pit features were found at the bottom of three of the five midden units, which had already yielded numerous sherds, flakes, and other artifacts. The pits were mapped and assigned feature numbers, and flotation samples were collected. Flotation samples are important because they reveal significant information about the ancient environment, including the types of plants that grew nearby, the type of wood that was used for fuel, and the kinds of plant foods that were cooked in fires.

Both of the tested kivas in Block 500 were found to be burned, and many tree-ring samples were collected. In the kiva near the east edge of the pueblo, we found numerous chunks of adobe that bore impressions of the plant materials that had been used in roof construction. The original builders had pressed the adobe onto the top of the roof in order to seal it from the elements. Many of the adobe chunks had impressions of vigas (large roof-support beams), latillas (smaller beams that sat atop the vigas), and the small twigs that made up the "closing layer." The closing layer revealed particularly unusual and beautiful plant impressions. It's difficult to know exactly what kind of plant made those impressions, but environmental archaeologist Karen Adams postulates they may have been made by pine needles.

Block 900
Five months ago, when the field crew chose this kiva for excavation, it seemed like the ideal place to dig. The kiva is near our staging tent, is shaded by two juniper trees, and, when probed, appeared burned and therefore likely to yield tree-ring samples. Two-and-a-half months and countless blisters later, we are still excavating, our progress impeded by an unusual, super-hard fill that doesn't yield easily to the trowel or pickaxe. The kiva has yielded few artifacts and revealed no intact architecture. The clay fill, mottled and gray, has been found nowhere else at Goodman Point Pueblo, and we're interested to learn why.

The Block 900 middens had very ashy, artifact-rich deposits. Our first completed excavation unit revealed the east-west wall of a room, the remains of a burned and collapsed roof (roof fall), and a well-preserved floor.

Block 1000
Block 1000 is unusually rocky, from the unit that has exposed the village-enclosing wall to those in the possible tower and the bi-wall structure. Digging here has required skill and extra patience.

Excavation of the unit that straddles the village-enclosing wall is nearly complete. We've exposed a large, 60-cm-thick wall with finished faces on both sides. The portion of the unit inside the village-enclosing wall contained ashy midden deposits with numerous artifacts, including many burned corn kernels. On the outside of the wall, the unit is contained some chipped-stone artifacts and wall rubble.

We've been excavating a 1-x-2-m unit in what we thought was a tower at the east edge of the block. The deeper we get, however, the more this structure looks like a kiva. If it is a kiva, it's an unusual one because it's so tall and it was built right up against the village-enclosing wall. Another interesting discovery is a double row of masonry found above the roof-fall deposits. We're close to the floor of this structure, and if features on the floor don't conclusively show this to be a kiva, we might expand the 1-x-2-m unit to learn more.

Two new excavation units have been placed in Block 1000. These contiguous 1-x-2-m units were placed across an odd, high, circular structure located outside the village-enclosing wall. Several walls have already been exposed in these units. Could these walls be part of a special tower that was outside the village? Keep reading the field updates, and we'll keep you posted.

Erin Baxter, Archaeologist, Goodman Point Pueblo Excavation