News From The Field

August 31, 2007

	Margie Connolly leads middle school students from tent after torrential downpour.
	Field crew, August 2007.
	Bedrock underlies many midden deposits.

Nearly 200 diggers participated in our excavations at Goodman Point Pueblo during August: middle school and high school students, families, and adults in our teachers workshop and adult research programs (see Archaeology Adventures). The monsoons hit full force during the first half of the month, and one group of middle school students in particular received a thorough drenching. Even so, we lost only one afternoon of digging to the muddy conditions. Our final field staff photo of the season shows how punchy we’re getting by this point in the season.

The end of this third and last season of excavation at Goodman Point Pueblo draws near, and we’ve begun our final push to ensure that we reach the goals stated in our research design. In August, we continued to focus on Blocks 100, 400, 500, 600, 700, 800, 1200, and 1300, although most activity occurred in Blocks 700, 1200, and 1300 (see the site map for May for block locations).

Bedrock was recently exposed in numerous excavation pits located in middens, and many tons of sediment and rubble were carefully removed from kivas, rooms, and test units dug to expose the exterior walls of roomblocks across the site. As usual, the majority of sherds found are Mesa Verde Black-on-white. Many are bowl sherds decorated on both their interior and exterior faces; some include the rim portion of the vessel, which often is very square and embellished with dabs of paint called “rim ticking.” These traits are characteristic of vessels produced very late in the history of the region, and the predominance of such sherds correlates with the lateness of the tree-ring dates (A.D. 1260s) for the site.

Against all odds, the west wall of Block 700 (the D-shaped bi-wall block) was successfully exposed in a 1-x-1-m unit that we had placed in a vast area of sloping, undifferentiated rubble, in the hopes of finding intact masonry. Even more amazing is the presence of a doorway in this short section of exposed wall, because we were, in fact, also searching for a doorway in that very location (the only known exterior doorway in the D-shaped bi-wall block [Block 1500] at Sand Canyon Pueblo is in the same relative location). The similarities between the two bi-wall structures (see September 22, 2006, diary entry), which are only a few miles apart on the landscape, are remarkable, and they surely reflect positive interaction between the villagers of Goodman Point and Sand Canyon pueblos. I’ll provide a more complete update on our investigations in Block 700 in October.

Kristin Kuckelman, Senior Research Archaeologist, Project Director, Goodman Point Pueblo Excavation