McPhee Reservoir, Dolores, Colorado
The first of the shorter, more analytical chapters in Crucible of Pueblos that follow the regional summaries is one by James Potter looking at faunal remains, which in this context basically means animal bones. (I guess this is sort of appropriate for a Halloween post, although animal bones aren’t really as spooky as human ones.) This chapter is basically a series of statistical comparisons of faunal assemblages from different Pueblo I sites, focusing particularly on the large, well-document collections from the Dolores and Animas-La Plata Projects, but also including a few others. Given the focus on these collections, the geographical range of these comparisons is limited to the Central and Eastern Mesa Verde regions. Nevertheless, Potter finds some striking differences between different sites that have interesting implications for understanding their inhabitants’ lives.
The first comparisons are of different villages within the Dolores area. Potter uses two widely used calculations, known as the artiodactyl index and lagomorph index, to compare McPhee Village on the west side of the Dolores River to Grass Mesa Village on the east side. The artiodactyl index is a measure of how common large game animals, such as deer and elk, are within the overall assemblage, and is calculated by taking the number of artiodactyl specimens in the assemblage and dividing it by the number of artiodactyl specimens plus lagomorph (rabbit and hare) specimens. The lagomorph index compares the number of specimens of the two most common lagomorph species, cottontail rabbits and jackrabbits, and is calculated as the number of cottontail specimens divided by the combined number of cottontail and jackrabbit specimens. This is an important measure because cottontails and jackrabbits favor different habitats and have different behavior which can shed light on human land use and hunting practices: jackrabbits prefer open spaces such as those created by clearing land for agriculture, and as a result can often be caught within gardens, while cottontails prefer more sheltered brushy environments. Jackrabbits also run to escape predation while cottontails hide, which makes the former more vulnerable to the kind of communal hunting known to have been practiced by Pueblo peoples in more recent times.
In the case of McPhee and Grass Mesa Villages both indices show little to no difference between the two; indeed they are nearly identical. This suggests that there weren’t major differences between the two communities in land clearing, communal hunting of lagomorphs, or hunting of artiodactyls. This is maybe not surprising, as the two villages are only a few miles apart and in similar ecological settings.
Where they do differ, however, is in another comparison, in this case of the prevalence and diversity of bird remains. McPhee Village has many more bird remains, representing more than twice as many species, than Grass Mesa, despite the overall sample sizes being similar. Furthermore, the avian bones are concentrated within McPhee Village at one particular residential site, known as McPhee Pueblo. This is one of the largest residences in the community and has features that have been interpret as reflecting ritual activity at a level higher than the individual residential group inhabiting the site. This site is considered likely to be a prototype of the “great houses” associated with the later cultural phenomenon centered on Chaco Canyon, where many of the inhabitants of the Dolores area are thought to have gone after the demise of the Pueblo I villages there in the late ninth century AD. The greater number of bird species, and the large number of specimens, at McPhee Pueblo reinforces other indications of the special role this site played in the community. Birds have often been associated with ritual among the Pueblos, with the macaws at Chaco being only one of the most spectacular examples. The fact that there is no similar site at Grass Mesa, and that bird remains are much rarer there overall, suggests significant differences in ritual organization at the two villages despite their proximity, which fits with other evidence suggesting they were settled by people from different cultural backgrounds.
The second major set of comparisons Potter makes addresses change over time, again within the Dolores area. He compares the artiodactyl and lagomorph indices of McPhee Village and the nearby but earlier community of dispersed hamlets known as Sagehen Flats. In this case, the Sagehen Flats sites had much lower artiodactyl indices, which suggests to Potter that this community had more difficultly organizing hunting parties to capture these large animals than the later, larger, and more aggregated community at McPhee. Indeed, it has been suggested that one reason for the formation of the large Pueblo I villages was the opportunity that larger communities provided for more effective hunting of large animals, especially in high-elevation areas close to large populations of artiodactyls.
Sagehen Flats also had a higher lagomorph index value, indicating more cottontails relative to jackrabbits, and suggesting that aggregation at McPhee also included more clearing of land for agriculture, creating the open spaces preferred by jackrabbits. It is also likely that larger communities were more effective at communal hunting, which as noted above would have been easier with jackrabbits. It’s not really surprising that larger communities would have cleared more land for agriculture and conducting larger communal hunts, but this evidence does provide another reason to think that.
Bird remains, on the other hand, were present in very similar proportions at both Sagehen Flats and McPhee, with both much higher than Grass Mesa. This likely results in part from the location of Sagehen Flats near marshes with lots of good habitat for waterfowl, but it’s also noteworthy that the bird remains there, as at McPhee, were heavily concentrated in one habitation site. This site, unlike McPhee Pueblo, doesn’t show other signs of having been exceptionally important compared to others, but it is highly intriguing that there were so many birds there, and it suggests that the pattern of unequal ritual influence seen at McPhee, and later at Chaco, goes back even further, at least in this area.
Durango, Colorado
Next, Potter does a broad comparison of several different site areas, this time treating the Dolores sites as a whole and comparing them to the nearby hamlet of Duckfoot as well as the site clusters of Ridges Basin and Blue Mesa to the east near the modern city of Durango, as well as sites in the Fruitland area to the south near the modern Navajo Reservoir. Starting with the artiodactyl and lagomorph indices, Potter finds high artiodactyl index values at Dolores and Ridges Basin, with much lower ones at Duckfoot and Fruitland. The factors mentioned earlier leading to more effective artiodactyl hunting in larger villages are probably one factor here, with another being elevation, with the higher sites having more artiodactyls than lower ones.
The lagomorph index is highest at Duckfoot and Blue Mesa and lower at Dolores and Ridges Basin, again echoing the pattern seen before where larger villages show evidence for more land clearing and communal hunting compared to smaller, more dispersed sites.
Turning to birds, Potter finds the highest numbers in Ridges Basin, with significantly smaller numbers at Dolores and Duckfoot. (Keep in mind that all of the Dolores sites are lumped together here.) This is likely due in part to the marshy environment of parts of Ridges Basin, but it is also due to much more extensive use of turkeys in Ridges Basin than elsewhere.
Following these rather simple comparisons, Potter does a correspondence analysis of all of the areas comparing categories of animal remains: birds, wild carnivorous mammals, domesticated dogs, lagomorphs, and artiodactyls. This analysis shows that the areas have very distinct associations with particular types of animals. Blue Mesa, Fruitland, and Duckfoot are associated with lagomorphs, Dolores with artiodactyls, and Ridges Basin with both birds and dogs. Potter notes that while Dolores and Ridges Basin have very similar artiodactyl indices, as this analysis suggests, they have very different overall percentages of artiodactyls. The index is thrown off because it uses lagomorph numbers to standardize the artiodactyl numbers, which is problematic in cases like this because the number of lagomorphs also differs a lot between the two areas, with a lot fewer of them at Ridges Basin than at Dolores.
Next, Potter does a detailed analysis of the Ridges Basin community, comparing categories of remains among different site clusters within the basin. He uses a more detailed set of a categories here than in the previous analysis: mammalian carnivores, birds of prey, waterfowl, dogs, turkeys, game birds, artiodactyls, and lagomorphs. The different site clusters show interesting differences in the proportions of these, with the marshy eastern cluster having higher numbers of waterfowl and turkeys. As mentioned above, turkeys are more common throughout Ridges Basin than in other Pueblo I communities, but there are differences in both numbers and context within the basin. The turkeys in the eastern sites are mostly burials, part of a widespread Pueblo practice of burying domestic animals that likely has ritual significance. In some site clusters, however, there is evidence for processing of turkey remains suggested they were used as food. In the north-central cluster there is one pit structure that seems to have been used as a processing area for turkeys and rabbits, and the same site also had turkey eggshells, suggesting strongly that these were domesticated rather than wild turkeys.
Dogs, wild birds, and carnivorous mammals are found mostly as burials throughout Ridges Basin, with some accompanying human burials. This is in contrast to McPhee Pueblo, which as mentioned above had high numbers of wild birds, where remains of ritually important animals like these were found in association with ritual structures. There is no such association anywhere in Ridges Basin, suggesting that while these animals were likely ritually important in both areas, the exact nature of the associated ritual differed.
As for artiodactyls, here as elsewhere they were found in greater numbers at the only aggregated site cluster that can be considered a village: Sacred Ridge. Since this site also has higher numbers of projectile points and processing tools, Potter suggests that the artiodactyls were the result of more effective hunting parties drawn from the larger village population, rather than evidence for special status of the residents of Sacred Ridge or special feasting being conducted there. There are a lot of unusual features to this site, however, so it’s hard to know how to interpret it.
That concludes Potter’s analyses. He ends the chapter with some conclusions that they suggest. First, as seen in multiple analyses, large sites tend to have more artiodactyls than small ones, probably because larger, more aggregated settlements allowed for the building of cooperative hunting parties that were more effective at taking down large game. This was a definite material advantage to community aggregation and the formation of villages, a key characteristic of the Pueblo I period that has led to a lot of questions about why and how it happened. It’s noteworthy, however (although Potter doesn’t note it) that the Pueblo I villages were as a rule short-lived and many seem to have been abandoned under duress, so the greater cohesiveness that allowed for these more effective hunting parties seems to have had definite limits under the circumstances.
Another pattern that emerges is the association of some sites with marshes and the extensive use of waterfowl, and presumably other marsh resources, at these sites. Potter connects this with the general importance of marshes, lakes, and other water places in Pueblo religion and ritual, as well as with the later artificial reservoirs built in the Mesa Verde region. It’s possible that an initial tendency to settle near wetlands because of their practical advantages in terms of resources led over time to a more metaphysical attitude toward watery places, although this remains highly speculative.
There is also a tendency over time for a shift in the contexts in which remains of animals of presumed ritual significance, like wild birds and carnivorous mammals, with early sites such as those in Ridges Basin having them largely associated with burials and the ceremonial “closing” of residential sites, whereas at later sites such as those in the Dolores area they are more associated with communal ritual structures. This suggests a shift in use of these religious symbols from the private to the public sphere, which Potter notes has also been proposed over the same period for the use of red ware pottery, which also likely had ritual significance. This shift may have continued into the rise of the Chacoan system, with its increased focus on monumental architecture presumably associated with public ritual.
Finally, Potter notes the early importance of turkeys in Ridges Basin, which could be due to general environmental differences across the region but may also reflect earlier depletion of large game in this area compared to others. There is a general pattern through Pueblo prehistory of increasing use of turkeys for meat as artiodactyl use declines, presumably in response to overhunting of local populations. On the other hand, one intriguing thing about the greater use of domesticated turkeys at the eastern edge of the Mesa Verde region during Pueblo I is the genetic evidence showing that domestic turkeys in the Southwest are likely more closely related to wild subspecies found to the east than to those found locally. Could the use of turkeys in Ridges Basin reflect early contacts with peoples further east? Potter doesn’t mention this possibility, and I don’t know if there is any other evidence of such contacts, but again, intriguing.
So, yeah, this chapter is a lot more focused than those coming before it, but the results of its analyses are intriguing. As more evidence becomes available from other regions with Pueblo I populations it may be possible to extend these sorts of comparisons further.
Bone Tools at Chaco Museum
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Gambler's House 