The Archaeology of Castle Rock Pueblo

Definitions of Raw Material Categories

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Although knowledge of lithic procurement sites and raw material availability in southwestern Colorado is limited, the raw materials out of which Castle Rock Pueblo chipped-stone tools were made can be grouped into local, semilocal, nonlocal, and unknown stone types. Each group is discussed briefly in this section.

Local Raw Materials

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Local raw materials are of average to poor quality, occur within the geological strata exposed around Castle Rock and lower Sand Canyon, and were likely available within easy walking distance of the site. The closest known source of Dakota quartzite is in upper Sand Canyon near Stanton's Site, approximately 6 km north of Castle Rock. Morrison quartzite and chert/siltstone are also available within Sand Canyon, as are fine-grained and conglomerate sandstones. Igneous rock occurs on Ute Mountain, immediately south of McElmo Creek. Finally, slates and shales are available in the Mancos Formation, which outcrops throughout the uplands of southwestern Colorado.

Semilocal Raw Materials

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Semilocal raw materials are of relatively good quality and probably occur less widely in their geological strata of origin than do local raw materials. As a result, such materials were probably more difficult to obtain, possibly requiring special collecting trips. Agate/chalcedony and petrified wood occasionally occur within the Morrison and Dakota Formations, as well as in other formations that outcrop only farther away. Jet occasionally occurs within shale and coal-bearing deposits in the Dakota, Mancos, and Menefee Formations. The closest known source of Burro Canyon chert occurs at a lithic procurement site on Cannonball Mesa, approximately 15 km west of Castle Rock. Additional known sources occur in the Dolores River valley. Known sources of Brushy Basin chert occur around the San Juan River near the Four Corners monument, approximately 45 km from Castle Rock (Green 1985*1:71–72).

Nonlocal Raw Materials

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These are high-quality materials that definitely do not occur within easy walking distance of Castle Rock and must have been acquired through either trade or special collecting trips. Red jasper comes from Triassic and Permian formations of the Monument Upwarp and Elk Ridge Uplift in southeastern Utah, west of Cottonwood Wash. Obsidian is likely to have come from either the Jemez Mountains of New Mexico or the San Francisco Peaks in Arizona, where sources of widely exchanged obsidian are known (Shackley 1988*1, 1995*1). Washington Pass chert occurs only in the Chuska Mountains of northeastern Arizona (Warren 1967*1).

Artifact Type vs. Raw Material
By Count

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Table 25 summarizes the number of chipped-stone artifacts in the Castle Rock Pueblo assemblage made from various raw materials (for definitions of the artifact types used, see the on-line laboratory manual). The full suite of raw material categories was considered for projectile points, bifaces, and drills, but since Brushy Basin chert, Burro Canyon chert, and red jasper were recorded only in comments for other chipped-stone artifact categories, their presence may be underrepresented in those categories. If these materials were not consistently identified, then red jasper would probably have been classified as nonlocal chert/siltstone, Brushy Basin chert as Morrison chert/siltstone or unknown chert/siltstone, and Burro Canyon chert as unknown chert/siltstone.

By Percentage

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Table 26 summarizes the proportion of objects in each chipped-stone artifact category that were made of various raw materials. Even if possibly inconsistently identified raw material categories are excluded, it appears that semilocal and nonlocal raw materials were used most often for making formal tools, including projectile points, some drills, and bifaces. On the other hand, informal, expedient tools, including peckingstones and modified flakes, were most often made of local, readily available materials. Also, no cores of demonstrably nonlocal materials were identified. This suggests that nonlocal materials were not procured directly and that primary reduction of nonlocal materials did not occur at Castle Rock. Nonlocal raw materials may have been procured in the form of formal tool blanks or as finished tools, which could have been used as is or modified into other tools.

Raw Materials in Tools and Manufacturing Debris
By Count

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Table 27 summarizes the raw materials of all chipped-stone tools and a sample of the manufacturing debris from the Castle Rock excavations. Chipped-stone objects are grouped into the following categories: chipped-stone debris, cores and core tools (cores, modified cores, and peckingstones), expedient tools (modified flakes and other chipped-stone tools), and formal tools (projectile points, bifaces, and drills). The column for chipped-stone debris includes only materials from the probability sample at Castle Rock (see paragraphs 134–154); the other three columns consider all such objects collected during the excavations. Chipped-stone debris is tabulated only for the probability sample because raw material identification for chipped-stone debris was incomplete for the intensive excavations, whereas all but nine pieces in the probability sample were analyzed for material type. A simplified set of raw material categories has been used to account for changes in the analytical criteria and raw material categories used by Crow Canyon laboratory staff over the course of the Castle Rock excavations. Dakota quartzite was simplified as Dakota Formation material, Morrison quartzite and chert/siltstone were simplified as Morrison Formation material, Burro Canyon chert and Brushy Basin chert were added to unknown chert/siltstone, and red jasper was added to nonlocal chert/siltstone.

By Percentage

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Table 28 presents column percentages for the data in Table 27, so that the relative abundance of different raw materials can be compared across chipped-stone artifact categories. The general correspondence between percentages of raw materials in chipped-stone debris, cores and core tools, and expedient tools probably relates to the relative amount of knapping of these various materials. The relative frequencies of raw materials across these categories appear roughly proportional to their availability in the local environment. In contrast, raw materials occur in very different proportions among formal tools. The most readily available materials from the Morrison Formation were seldom used for formal tools, whereas Dakota Formation materials, agate/chalcedony, nonlocal chert/siltstone, and unknown chert/siltstone are all overrepresented relative to other chipped-stone artifact categories. These data suggest that formal tools were made from certain preferred raw materials regardless of their availability in the local environment, whereas expedient tools, including peckingstones and modified flakes, were made from whatever material was at hand or easily obtainable.

Analysis of Bifaces, Points, and Drills
Catalog, Analysis Data, and Provenience

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Table 29 presents a catalog of all bifaces, projectile points, and drills collected from Castle Rock, along with the original use, condition, material, production stage, size, and context of each object. The point-classification scheme used follows Pierce (1999*1), Hayes and Lancaster (1975*1), Geib (1996*1), and Jennings (1986*1). A Bull Creek point (PD 97, FS 5) conforms to the variety found in Kayenta- and Mesa Verde-tradition sites in southeastern Utah south of the Colorado River and as far east as Montezuma Canyon (Geib 1996*1; Matheny 1962*1). This point was made of red jasper, which occurs widely in this area west of Cottonwood Wash. The combination of nonlocal material and an exotic point style suggests that this point was made in southeastern Utah. A second point of red jasper (PD 371, FS 4) may also be nonlocal, but since it appears to have been informally made on a small flake, it could also have been made locally using a nonlocal material.

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There is also a Desert Side-Notched point (PD 781, FS 2) made of petrified wood, a high-quality, semilocal material. Such points are believed to have been made by Numic peoples who migrated into southwestern Colorado several centuries after the departure of Puebloan peoples. This point was found 10 cm below the modern ground surface mixed with wall fall from structures on top of the butte and therefore was probably not deposited during the Puebloan occupation of Castle Rock. It seems more likely that this point is evidence of occasional visitation by Numic peoples several centuries after Puebloan peoples had left the region.

Form vs. Raw Material

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Table 30 summarizes the raw materials out of which formal tools of various types were made. Because projectile points could have been used as weapons, and because point forms can vary across cultures, the presence of exotic projectile points might give some insight into the conflict that apparently ended the Puebloan occupation of Castle Rock (see "The Final Days of Castle Rock Pueblo"). Unfortunately, the only definite exotic projectile point dating to the Puebloan occupation that can be sourced to a particular area is the jasper Bull Creek point, which was probably made in southeastern Utah west of Cottonwood Wash. There are several points of petrified wood and agate/chalcedony that might be exotic, and a few additional points were at least made of nonlocal materials (obsidian, nonlocal chert/siltstone). But none of these points is also stylistically distinctive. The Bull Creek point indicates some interaction with Pueblo peoples of southeastern Utah, but not necessarily warfare. Among the local raw materials, Dakota quartzite was clearly favored over Morrison chert/siltstone for projectile points, despite the fact that Morrison Formation materials clearly dominate the overall chipped-stone assemblage.

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A number of the projectile points collected from Castle Rock are of styles that date from the Basketmaker II, Basketmaker III, Pueblo I, and Pueblo II periods. Since there is no additional evidence of occupation at Castle Rock prior to A.D. 1250, the older projectile point styles may represent heirlooms or points found by inhabitants of Castle Rock at previously abandoned sites and kept for nonfunctional purposes. Another possibility is that the large corner-notched points indicate continued used of atlatl darts during Pueblo III times. Further study of production evidence for different projectile point styles might clarify this issue.

Production Stage vs. Raw Material

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Several of the formal tools collected from Castle Rock are interpreted as projectile points in various stages of production (Table 31). These unfinished projectile points were classified according to Whittaker's (1994*1:199–206) scheme. Stage 1 refers to edged blanks, Stage 2 to preforms, and Stage 3 to refined but unfinished points. These objects indicate the range of raw materials that were made into projectile points at Castle Rock. The Stage 2 agate/chalcedony preform suggests that at least some of this material might have been directly procured by the inhabitants of Castle Rock. The Stage 3 obsidian preform is also interesting. It is clearly of a nonlocal material and might indicate that obsidian preforms were imported into Castle Rock to be finished by local knappers.

Ground-Stone Tools
Inventory
Artifact Category vs. Raw Material

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Table 32 summarizes the ground-stone artifacts collected from Castle Rock Pueblo according to the kind of stone out of which each was made (for definitions of the artifact categories used, see the on-line laboratory manual). The table shows that most ground-stone tools were made of locally available, relatively coarse grained material. The two manos of unknown chert/siltstone might have been used for polishing rather than grinding.

Artifact Category vs. Condition

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Table 33 summarizes the ground-stone artifacts from Castle Rock according to their condition. Relatively few fragmentary ground-stone artifacts were classified as abraders or one-hand manos, because these are difficult to distinguish from other ground-stone artifact categories on the basis of fragments.

Functional Analysis of Two-Hand Manos

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In ethnographic accounts (e.g., Cushing 1974*1:378–394; Kidder 1932*1:67; Lange 1968*1:116–117; Mindeleff 1989*1:211), two-hand manos were used in conjunction with slab metates and peckingstones for grinding dried corn (maize) kernels into flour. The mano was held in the hands parallel to the shoulders and moved back and forth across a flat metate surface by a kneeling person. The metates were often set into fixed, slab-lined mealing bins to keep the resultant flour contained. To maintain their effectiveness, the grinding surfaces of both manos and metates had to be periodically roughened, or "sharpened," using peckingstones. Corn-grinding tools appear to have been used the same way by inhabitants of Castle Rock, but the transverse cross sections of two-hand manos from the site are quite variable, suggesting that a number of slightly different techniques might have been used. Three possible sources of variation in two-hand mano cross sections are examined in this section. Data collected on two-hand manos from Castle Rock suggest that all three sources may have been involved to some extent.

Grinding Strokes

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Bartlett (1933*1) observed that, historically, Hopi women used two different grinding strokes, and these strokes produced different wear patterns. In one stroke, the mano was held flat against the metate and moved back and forth. Since there was more pressure from the palm of the hand on the downstroke than on the upstroke, this stroke resulted in more wear on the proximal edge of the mano (that is, the edge closest to the grinder's body). Without rotation, this stroke would eventually produce a grinding surface that ran at an angle through the natural strata of the stone. In the second stroke, a rocking motion was used and the mano was held at an angle, creating two adjacent, beveled grinding surfaces. Again, greater pressure was exerted during the downstroke, creating more wear on the proximal surface. Without rotation, this stroke would produce a larger grinding surface on the proximal edge than on the distal edge. The proximal surface would also eventually cut at an angle through the natural strata of the stone. In both strokes, proximal edge wear could be evened out by periodically rotating the mano 180 degrees.

Wear Management

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Adams (1993*3) argued that wear was managed on two-hand manos through a periodic, patterned flipping and rotating of the grinding surfaces. Two-hand manos are flipped by keeping the ends stationary and turning the mano over, and they are rotated by moving the ends 180 degrees. Consistent, periodic flipping and rotating in conjunction with a flat grinding stroke would ideally produce a mano with two opposite grinding surfaces, one on either side of the mano, running parallel to the natural strata of the stone. Flipping and rotating with a rocking stroke would ideally produce a mano with four grinding surfaces of relatively even width that cut at an angle through the natural strata of the stone.

Reduction Sequence

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Members of Crow Canyon's Native American advisory group rotate their manos to keep the grinding surface from getting too hot and melting into the flour. In addition to rotating, an alternative method for keeping grinding surfaces cool is to switch manos periodically, beginning with coarse-grained stones for heavy crushing and moving to finer-grained stones for fine grinding. This practice may also have occurred in the more distant past, because several manos are often found for each metate bin in grinding areas in Pueblo II and III sites in southwestern Colorado (Mobley-Tanaka 1997*1). If the use of multiple manos obviated the need for wear-management techniques, then a third possible source of variation in mano cross sections would be that manos went through a characteristic reduction sequence. In this scenario, variation in mano cross sections would result from two-hand manos breaking or becoming unusable at varying stages in the sequence. The reduction sequence model is presented in Figure 11.

Material Grade vs. Number of Grinding Surfaces

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Table 34 summarizes the number of grinding surfaces that occur on two-hand manos from Castle Rock Pueblo according to the grade of the stone out of which each was made. The ethnographic literature on the Pueblos suggests that manos of these varying grades were used in different stages of the grinding process. Manos of the coarsest material, conglomerate sandstone, were used first to crush the corn kernels, followed by manos of increasingly fine-grained stone. There is a possible tendency for manos of conglomerate sandstone, a coarse material, to have fewer grinding surfaces than manos of finer-grade stone.

Condition vs. Number of Grinding Surfaces

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Table 35 summarizes the condition of two-hand manos with varying numbers of grinding surfaces. Most of the two-hand manos were broken. Nine of the 12 complete manos were found in collapsed structures or on structure floors and were probably in use at the time Castle Rock Pueblo was abandoned. Most of the complete manos have one or two opposing grinding surfaces, and very few have adjacent surfaces that could have emerged from a rocking stroke or periodic rotation. It is unclear from these data whether routine flipping or a reduction sequence created manos with two opposing surfaces. There are no complete manos with four grinding surfaces. If flipping was used in conjunction with rotation as a means of wear management, one would expect to see at least some complete manos with four surfaces in early stages of wear.

Condition vs. Material Grade

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Table 36 summarizes the condition of two-hand manos of varying raw material grades. It shows that there is no relationship between mano grade and condition at the time of discard. Broken and complete manos occur in similar proportions across raw material grades, suggesting that manos of all grades were equally susceptible to breakage. That different grades occur in the same proportions among both complete and broken manos suggests that these proportions reflect the relative numbers of manos of varying grades in use at any one time at Castle Rock. If so, many more manos of medium-grained sandstone were used than of either coarser or finer grained material. The implications of this pattern for the corn-grinding process are unclear. It may indicate that medium-grained manos wore down more quickly than manos of other materials, and therefore more were needed at any one time for alternating use. It could also indicate that coarse- and fine-grained manos were used less intensively during the grinding process. Both possibilities would have implications for the deposition rate of medium-grained manos.

Number of Surfaces Parallel to Grain of Stone

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Table 37 summarizes the number of surfaces on two-hand manos and their relationships to the grain of the stone from which each was made. Manos were made of sedimentary rock containing laminated layers. The rock tends to fracture along these layers, creating stones that naturally have two parallel, relatively flat surfaces. Manos were made by flaking the edges of such pieces to the appropriate shape, so that the naturally occurring flat surfaces could be used as grinding surfaces. In most cases the grinding surfaces on manos with one or two opposite surfaces run parallel to the laminated layers, or "grain," of the original stone. A flat stroke must have been used with these manos. It is impossible to determine whether manos with two opposite surfaces parallel to the grain were periodically flipped or whether the two surfaces were created in a sequence. It also is impossible to determine whether manos with one or more surfaces parallel to the grain were periodically rotated to keep the grinding surfaces parallel, although this seems likely.

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Manos with two adjacent, three, or four surfaces all have adjacent grinding surfaces on one or both sides of the mano. Two adjacent grinding surfaces could both come to cut across the grain of the original mano if rotation occurred consistently or if a rocking stroke was used. There are several manos from Castle Rock with two adjacent grinding surfaces on which one of the surfaces runs parallel to the grain of the stone and the other cuts across the grain. This wear pattern could have emerged through a rocking motion without rotation, such that the surface proximal to the grinder wore through the layers faster than did the distal surface. Alternatively, the observed pattern could be the product of a reduction sequence in which the surface parallel to the grain developed first, as the result of a flat stroke, and the surface that cut across the grain developed second, as the result of the thinner, worn-down mano being held at an angle to the metate. If the mano broke early in this reduction sequence, it would exhibit one adjacent surface running parallel to the grain of the stone and another cutting across the grain. Two adjacent surfaces that both cut across the grain of the original mano would develop only if a mano lasted long enough before breaking.

Widths of Adjacent Grinding Surfaces

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Figure 12 summarizes differences in width between adjacent grinding surfaces on two-hand manos from Castle Rock Pueblo. Twelve of the 25 cases of adjacent grinding surfaces exhibit width differences equal to or greater than 2 cm. These differences seem relatively large for a wear-management regime in which manos were consistently rotated to even out use wear. The differences are more consistent with rocking grinding strokes without rotation or sequential development using a flat stroke.

Summary of Functional Analysis

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The functional analysis indicates that broken manos tend to have more grinding surfaces than complete manos, that often one of each pair of adjacent grinding surfaces runs parallel to the original grain of the mano, and that there are differences in the widths of adjacent grinding surfaces. These observations suggest that two-hand manos at Castle Rock Pueblo were not consistently flipped and rotated as part of wear management. The other two models are better supported by the available data, although these data are insufficient to enable us to distinguish between the two models. More detailed study of mano "sharpening" might help distinguish mano cross sections resulting from a reduction sequence from those resulting from different grinding strokes. If manos followed a characteristic reduction sequence, then one might expect that only the surfaces in use during the final stages of reduction would have been kept sharpened. Comparison of two-hand mano assemblages from Castle Rock and other sites in the Sand Canyon locality might provide evidence of intensified food preparation associated with village formation and increasing levels of communal ritual (see paragraphs 41–66).

Pecked and Polished Stone Tools
Polished Igneous Stones and Polishing/Hammerstones

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Table 38 catalogs all the polished igneous stones and polishing/hammerstones collected from Castle Rock (for definitions of these artifact categories, see the on-line laboratory manual). It is intriguing that three polished igneous stones were found on the floor of the square kiva, Structure 103. Although the uses of polished igneous stones are unknown, the fact that several were found in the same structure might indicate that one of the inhabitants of that structure specialized in making them, or that activities requiring polished igneous stones occurred there with unusually high frequency.

Axes and Mauls

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Hafted stone axes and mauls are important artifact categories for the interpretation of Castle Rock Pueblo because, in addition to being used for activities such as wood chopping and stone quarrying and shaping, they might also have been used as weapons during the conflict associated with the abandonment of the village. Table 39 lists these items along with their condition, material, and form, measurements and use-wear data, and assessments of their likely uses. For definitions of the ax and maul categories, see the on-line laboratory manual. Minimum measurements recorded under "Comments" indicate the minimum possible measurement for a given dimension based on a fragment.

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Woodbury (1954*1) reviewed ethnographic data on the traditional uses of axes and mauls among the Pueblos and found that the types of axes used as weapons were relatively small, lightweight, and well balanced. Morris (1924*1) found a few such axes at Aztec Ruin in association with a thirteenth-century burial that clearly was that of a warrior. The individual was a large male, over six feet tall, who was accompanied by a basketry shield, several knives, a flintknapping tool kit, a wooden sword, and several small, single-bitted axes.

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Unfortunately for archaeologists, most of the axes and mauls discarded at Castle Rock appear to have been worn out by use, and few were found in their original, undamaged state. Of those whose likely uses could reasonably be inferred on the basis of form, size, and evidence of use wear, only one or two might have been made specifically as weapons. Given the evidence for a violent conflict at Castle Rock, it is somewhat surprising that so few were found. If any surviving inhabitants of Castle Rock felt threatened by additional violence, however, they would likely have scavenged all usable axes and carried them with them for protection. Alternatively, victorious attackers might have taken usable axes with them after the battle. It would be interesting to examine the raw materials of axes found in early-fourteenth-century sites in the Rio Grande valley and on the Hopi mesas to see whether any were made of materials that could be traced to the Mesa Verde region.

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Most axes and mauls were made of Morrison Formation materials. The evidence of battering on maul heads and of large flakes removed from them suggests that mauls were used for quarrying and shaping stone. Large flakes were also removed from the bit ends of axes, but battering damage, such as occurs from stone-on-stone contact, was rare, suggesting that heavier axes were used for chopping and splitting wood. On the basis of replication experiments, Mills (1987*1) inferred that axes might also have been used for chopping sagebrush at ground level, possibly as a step in field clearance.

Other Modified Stones and Minerals
Modification vs. Raw Material

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A wide variety of stones and minerals modified through polishing, grinding, flaking, battering, and/or fire alteration were found at Castle Rock. Data for these objects are summarized in Table 40 according to the kind of modification present (classification scheme after Pierce [1999*1]) and the raw material out of which each was made.

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Most edge-shaped slabs were made of sandstone and may have been architectural elements, portions of grinding bins, hatch covers, and so forth. Fire-altered rocks are most likely spalled fragments of burned building stones rather than evidence of cooking inside watertight baskets. Flaked/battered stones and minerals are primarily large, angular chunks and subangular stream cobbles that were initially unshaped but from which flakes had been removed through use as choppers, scrapers, and crushers. The "ground" category refers to miscellaneous pieces of ground, abrasive stone that could not be classified into the other ground-stone tool categories. Pigment stones are of iron-rich material and have one or more abraded surfaces resulting from grinding to obtain the pigment. Since little mineral paint was used in pottery painting at Castle Rock, it is unclear how this pigment was used. The "polished" category represents the most common type found at Castle Rock. It includes objects that are probably ornament fragments and blanks lacking signs of perforation, as well as several larger fragments of polished shale. Stone disks were probably used as lids for pottery vessels.

Unmodified Stones and Minerals
Inventory by Raw Material

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Unmodified stones and minerals were collected when, in the excavator's opinion, they were objects that did not occur naturally at Castle Rock Pueblo and therefore must have been collected and carried to the site by its inhabitants (Table 41). In many cases unmodified stones and minerals may represent unused raw materials for pottery temper (igneous rock), chipped-stone tools (agate/chalcedony, Morrison chert/siltstone, Morrison quartzite, unknown chert/siltstone), or pigment (concretions or pigment). Fossils, concretions, and petrified wood might have been collected for their spiritual value. Concretions reminiscent of real-world forms, especially of animals, are known to have been kept for spiritual reasons among the historic Pueblos (Jeancon 1923*1:65–68). Also, since no marine molluscan species occur naturally in the Pueblo area, and people's only knowledge of such creatures would have been through imported objects made of shell, fossil shells of marine species probably had special significance.

Animal Remains
Distribution of Animal Remains by Study Unit

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Table 42 summarizes the study units in which animal bones, gizzard stones, and eggshells were found. Animal bones were collected from nearly every excavation unit at Castle Rock and clearly indicate the butchering of animal carcasses for meat. Animal bones are discussed more fully in "Faunal Remains." There is ample evidence that domestic turkeys were raised in the Sand Canyon locality (Munro 1994*1). Eggshells probably derived from turkey raising or from the collection of eggs of other bird species for food. Identifiable gizzard stones probably derived from turkeys. Since gizzard stones are not passed by turkeys until they are too small to be captured by a 1/4-inch screen, the presence of identifiable gizzard stones is evidence of turkey butchering at Castle Rock. Also, the fact that several gizzard stones appear to be worn-down pieces of debitage from chipped-stone tool making suggests that turkeys were raised at the site and may have fed themselves on food remains thrown onto middens.

Worked Bone Tools
Inventory by Type and Condition

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Table 43 summarizes the worked bone tools collected from Castle Rock Pueblo (for definitions of the categories used, see the on-line laboratory manual). Driver (1999*2) discussed the morphology of bone awls in the Site Testing Program sample from Castle Rock more fully.

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Several authors have discussed a distinctive type of wear on bone awls consisting of transverse notches or grooves, sometimes called "weaving grooves" (Kidder 1932*1). No examples of such grooves were found among the bone awls from Castle Rock. Unfortunately, ethnographic information about the causes of transverse grooves is sketchy, and replication experiments have not yet determined which weaving techniques, if any, produce these grooves (Bullock 1992*1). So it is not yet possible to determine the specific activities represented by weaving grooves, if any, and whether the absence of weaving grooves at Castle Rock is significant.

Objects of Nonlocal Materials
Catalog of Stone and Shell Objects

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Table 44 catalogs all stone and shell artifacts made of raw materials that definitely do not occur in southwestern Colorado. Pottery sherds of nonlocal manufacture are discussed in paragraphs 84–90. Shell species were identified by G. Timothy Gross (see Gross [1999*1] for a more complete discussion of the shell objects from the Site Testing Program sample from Castle Rock). The material out of which each artifact was made, the closest possible source of each material, and summaries of the provenience of each item are given in the table. Half of all the objects of nonlocal material were found within Roomblock 300, on the north side of the village. Possible interpretations of this concentration are discussed in paragraph 168.

Provenance of Nonlocal Stone, Shell, and Pottery Objects

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For most archaeologists, provenance refers to the place where an artifact is inferred to have been made, based on characteristics of the material out of which it was created. This is in contrast to provenience, which refers to the place where an artifact became incorporated into the archaeological record (Blinman and Wilson 1993*1). Table 45 summarizes the raw materials and closest possible provenances of stone, shell, and pottery objects made of nonlocal materials found at Castle Rock. Most of the nonlocal objects appear to have come from other parts of the Puebloan world to the south, east, and west. In addition, items made of shell species that occur no closer than the Gulf of California and the Pacific coast suggest that Castle Rock Pueblo participated in indirect trade networks that went far beyond the Pueblo area. There is no evidence, however, of exchange with more northerly peoples such as the Fremont of Utah and Colorado.

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It is also important to recognize that only 43 of the more than 44,000 identified artifacts from Castle Rock—less than 0.1 percent—were made of definite nonlocal material. This suggests that the overall intensity of exchange relationships with people outside of southwestern Colorado was quite low. That such low levels of long-distance exchange occurred immediately prior to the final migrations of Pueblo people out of southwestern Colorado may have implications for the nature of this migration. It has recently been proposed that the final emigration from the Mesa Verde region took the form of a "migration stream," with small family groups moving to new areas over several generations (Wilshusen and Duff 1999*1). Studies of migration streams in the modern world suggest that small family groups do not usually immigrate to places about which they have limited information. In most cases, friends and relatives who have already moved provide information to potential migrants about attractive destination areas (see Duff 1998*1:32–34). In his review of recent migration literature, Duff (1998*1:33) concluded that long-distance trade relationships were probably a primary source of information about potential destination areas in the past. So if the final emigration took the form of a migration stream, one would expect to find increasing levels of long-distance exchange between the Mesa Verde region and destination areas during the final periods of Puebloan occupation.

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The evidence for long-distance exchange reviewed for Castle Rock Pueblo and other southwestern Colorado sites in paragraphs 84–90 suggests that in fact the opposite happened. Over time, inhabitants of the Mesa Verde region seem to have had fewer and fewer contacts with Pueblo people living in other parts of the Southwest. If this pattern is also evident in other late-thirteenth-century villages in southwestern Colorado (studies are currently in progress), it might provide contrary evidence for the migration stream model, or at least evidence that needs to be accounted for. Alternatively, if other late-thirteenth-century villages provide more abundant evidence of long-distance exchange relations, then the rare evidence for such contacts at Castle Rock might somehow relate to the ultimate fate of its inhabitants.

Objects of Personal Adornment
Catalog of Beads, Pendants, and Tubes

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Table 46 summarizes analysis and provenience information for objects of personal adornment found at Castle Rock (for definitions of the artifact categories used, see the on-line laboratory manual). The majority of beads and pendants were complete, although it is likely that fragmentary pendants were classified as shaped sherds (see paragraphs 36–37). Most of the objects of personal adornment were found in contexts that suggest accidental loss rather than discard in middens. Several objects of personal adornment were found in the fill of Structure 302, and a large number were found in the fill of Structure 304, all in deposits that also contained informally deposited human remains. It is possible that some of these items were worn by these individuals at their time of death. Overall artifact densities, however, were anomalously high in the fill of Structure 304 (see paragraphs 166–167), raising the possibility that this apparent concentration was simply a function of sample size.

Summary of Raw Materials

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Objects of personal adornment (Table 47) were made of many different raw materials, many of which were unusual, precious, and/or nonlocal to southwestern Colorado (see paragraphs 129–131). Unusual or rare materials are selectively used for personal adornment in many cultures throughout the world.

Probability Sample
Prior vs. Posterior Stratification

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Castle Rock Pueblo was first investigated as part of the Sand Canyon Project Site Testing Program. At that time, the site was divided into six sampling strata, and a stratified random sample of 1-by-1-m units was excavated (Kleidon 1999*1). This probability sample was intended to collect a representative sample of artifacts from the site and to estimate total numbers of discarded artifacts as a step in estimating the length of occupation (see Varien 1999*1). The six sampling strata were defined on the basis of surface expressions at the time the original site map was made. Owing to the setting of Castle Rock Pueblo on talus slopes around a large butte, however, surface expressions were variable from place to place. As a result, many probability squares did not uncover what the sampling stratum to which each was assigned suggested they would (compare site maps Database Map 510 [Topography and Surface Remains], Database Map 511 [Probability Sampling Plan], and Database Map 509 [Major Cultural Units]). For example, many units in the surface room sampling stratum did not encounter rooms, and many units in the midden sampling stratum did not encounter midden deposits. An efficient stratified sample is one that produces greater homogeneity in artifact totals for sampling units within each sampling stratum than across all sampling units. This becomes less likely when units within a sampling stratum contain mixtures of different kinds of deposits, such as pit structure deposits and peripheral, nonstructural deposits. Because this often occurred in the sampling strata defined for Castle Rock, the probability sample was not ideal as originally defined.

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Poststratification, or stratification after selection of the sampling units, is one method for dealing with probability samples for which the stratifying variable (i.e., cultural feature type) is poorly known prior to sample selection (Kish 1965*1:90). However, it is statistically sound to poststratify only a simple random sample, and the Castle Rock Pueblo probability sample was designed as a stratified sample. So before poststratification can be used, a judgment must be made that the original stratified sample, taken as a whole, could reasonably have been selected as a simple random sample if this strategy had been used in choosing the units to be excavated.

Comparison of Sampling Intensities

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A simple random sample is one in which each sampling unit has an equal chance of being selected for investigation. One way to assess the degree to which the prior stratified random sample for Castle Rock approaches a simple random sample is to consider the sampling intensities for each stratum in the prior sample. These intensities represent the fraction of each stratum that was excavated. Because all units within each stratum had an equal probability of being selected, relatively even sampling intensities across strata—that is, a stratified sample in which relatively even proportions of each stratum were investigated—would produce a sample that could reasonably have been selected using simple random sampling. Sampling intensities for the prior strata are given in Table 48; they vary between 0.005 and 0.025. On the whole, slightly more than 1 percent of the site was excavated as part of the probability sample, and although units in the surface room stratum were five times more likely to be chosen than units in the inner periphery stratum, no unit in any stratum was more than 2.5 percent likely to be chosen. If units in some strata were, say, 10 percent likely to be chosen, while units in other strata were only 0.1 percent likely, it would be unreasonable to consider the prior stratified sample comparable to a simple random sample. But because no one unit was significantly more likely to be chosen than any other in the sample we have to work with, it is reasonable to conclude that the prior stratified sample could have been chosen as a simple random sample. As a result, poststratification of the site and the sample, based on knowledge of the site at the conclusion of all excavations (both testing and intensive excavations), is reasonable. Revised sampling intensities for the posterior stratification are included in this table. The poststratification procedure is described in paragraph 137.

Definition of Posterior Stratification

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In an attempt to improve the statistical results obtained from the Castle Rock Pueblo probability sample, the boundaries of the six sampling strata used in the prior stratification were redrawn on the site map using the results of all excavations (testing and intensive excavations) as well as surface expressions. Each 1-by-1-m unit excavated for the prior sample was reassigned to one of these six sampling strata on the basis of their new boundaries, which incorporated the field archaeologists' interpretations for each excavated unit. Database Map 539 illustrates the refined boundaries of the six sampling strata. Resulting sampling intensities for these strata are presented in Table 48.

Correspondence Table for Probability Excavation Units

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Table 49 lists the prior and posterior stratum to which each unit in the probability sample was assigned. The coordinates of the southwestern corner of each probability unit on the site grid are also given.

Comparison of Excavation Unit Assignments

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Table 50 compares the number of probability units assigned to each stratum in the prior and posterior stratifications. If there were no changes in assignment between the prior and posterior stratifications, all sampling units would be accounted for along the diagonal cells of the table. That this does not occur shows how ineffective the prior stratification was at predicting the kinds of features that would be found under the modern ground surface. Prior Stratum 1 units, for example, ended up exposing pit structures, middens, and courtyards in addition to surface rooms. Since different depositional settings tend to exert a strong influence on artifact totals, the prior stratification scheme is likely to be less efficient than the posterior stratification.

Comparison of Sherd Weights by Stratum

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Table 51 presents means and standard deviations for corrugated jar, white ware bowl, and white ware jar sherd weights for each of the six prior and posterior sampling strata. Sherd size clearly varies across sampling strata, probably owing to depositional and postdepositional processes. As a result, the better estimator of pottery deposition is weight, not count. Because stone artifacts do not fragment the same way pottery does, count is a more interpretable measure of stone artifact deposition.

Probability Samples

¹⁴¹
Table 52 presents the prior and posterior probability samples used in the following sections. In order to create categories that contain a relatively large number of artifacts, certain categories have been grouped together. Formal chipped-stone tools include bifaces and projectile points, and expedient chipped-stone tools include modified flakes and other chipped-stone tools. All ground-stone tools and all worked bone tools, respectively, are also considered together. The values for pottery categories are total weights in grams; values for all other artifact categories are counts. Notice that the total numbers of artifacts in the prior and posterior probability samples are identical. This is because material from the same 64 probability units is used for both samples. The only difference between the prior and posterior probability samples is the allocation of excavation units to the six sampling strata. Also notice that the sampling unit is the excavation unit. The depths of archaeological deposits in different areas of Castle Rock are not taken into account.

Comparison of Stratum Standard Deviations for Common Artifact Categories

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An effective stratification procedure is one that produces smaller standard deviations for a measure across sampling units within each stratum than would be obtained from a simple random sample of the site as a whole. The upper register of Table 53 shows that in most cases, standard deviations are lower in the posterior stratification. The only artifact category for which this is not the case is chipped-stone debris, and the only stratum for which posterior standard deviations are consistently greater is Stratum 5, midden deposits.

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Why midden deposits have greater posterior standard deviations is unclear. One possibility derives from the fact that midden deposits generally contain the highest artifact densities of any archaeological deposits. Given this, variation in the depths of midden deposits in different sampling units may have a more significant effect on artifact totals than variation in the depths of other site deposits. This could account for greater standard deviations for midden deposits than for all other sampling units in the posterior stratification. In this scenario, prior Stratum 5 standard deviations would be lower simply because many of these units did not actually uncover midden deposits, making the prior Stratum 5 sample closer to a simple random sample.

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The lower register of Table 53 shows that stratum standard deviations are greater than the whole site standard deviation in 11 cases in the prior stratification but in only five cases in the posterior stratification. This suggests that the posterior stratification is more efficient and will produce correspondingly more precise estimates of total discard.

Comparison of Variances for Common Artifact Categories

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The efficiency of a stratification scheme is measured as the ratio of the stratified variance to the variance obtained by taking the entire sample as a simple random sample (SRS). The lower the ratio, the more efficient the scheme. Table 54 presents prior and posterior stratified and SRS variances for four common artifact categories and computes the efficiency of the prior and posterior stratification schemes. These figures show that the posterior stratification is significantly more efficient than the original stratification scheme used at Castle Rock Pueblo. The ratio of variances for the prior and posterior stratifications also shows that the posterior stratification consistently produces lower variances than the prior stratification. The increased efficiency of the posterior stratification should lead to more precise estimates of population totals.

Estimation of Artifact Population Totals
Comparison of Population Total Estimates, Prior vs. Posterior Stratification

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Table 55 presents point estimates and confidence intervals for the total discard of common artifact categories at Castle Rock Pueblo, on the basis of prior- and poststratified random samples. As an example, using the poststratified sample, we can be 95 percent confident that between 1,231 and 2,213 peckingstones were discarded during the occupation of Castle Rock. For most artifact categories, the posterior stratification produces slightly lower point estimates of total discard than does the prior stratification. In addition, the posterior confidence intervals are significantly smaller in most cases, indicating that the posterior estimates are indeed more precise, as the analysis of variances in paragraph 145 suggested.

Estimating the Occupation Span of Castle Rock Pueblo

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More precise estimates of artifact population totals should enable more precise estimates of site occupation span. Varien (1999*1:Chapter 4) and Varien and Mills (1997*1) developed and justified procedures for estimating site occupation span from the total discard of cooking pots in the form of corrugated jar sherds. Varien's method is to divide estimates of the total discard of corrugated jar sherds by an estimate of the accumulation rate for corrugated jar sherds derived from strong archaeological cases; the estimates are expressed in grams of corrugated pottery per household per year. This results in an estimate of the total household-years of occupation at a site, which is then divided by an estimate of the number of households that resided at the site, based on architectural evidence, to yield a point estimate and confidence interval for the occupation span of the site, expressed in years.

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These methods are used in Table 56 to estimate the total household years of occupation and the occupation span of Castle Rock Pueblo. The prior and posterior probability sample estimates are based on the Castle Rock Pueblo artifact database as of June 1998, whereas Varien's 1999 estimate (after Varien 1997*1) is based on the database as it existed in 1995. Varien considered 13 of the 16 kiva suites at Castle Rock to have been residential, but judging from the analysis of midden assemblages in paragraph 161, it appears more likely that all 16 kivas were components of residential household architecture. All three estimates use the accumulation rate developed by Varien and Mills (1997*1) on the basis of the Duckfoot site (Lightfoot 1994*1). Table 56 presents a simplistic model of site occupation span based on the assumption that all kiva suites were built and initially occupied during a single year and that all kiva suites were occupied until the entire site was abandoned. Note that the 95 percent confidence interval derived from Varien's data encompasses the posterior point estimate and confidence interval ranges. This is an expected result, since all these estimates are based on the same probability sample from the same site. The poststratification procedure therefore does not invalidate previous estimates but merely refines them, producing a more precise estimate. For example, the 95 percent confidence interval for the posterior estimate encompasses the same number of years as the 80 percent confidence interval for Varien's data.

Estimating the Year of Abandonment

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The site occupation spans shown in Table 56 are based on two simplifying assumptions—first, that all kiva suites were built and occupied during the same year, and second, that all kiva suites continued to be occupied until the site was abandoned. These assumptions are reasonable for small hamlets, which contained only one or two kiva suites, but for a larger village such as Castle Rock they are less realistic. The settlement history of Castle Rock, and especially the construction and abandonment of individual kiva suites, could have had a significant effect on the rate at which corrugated pottery accumulated during the occupation.

¹⁵⁰
Fortunately, the construction history and abandonment of Castle Rock are relatively well defined for a site of its size, and this enables a slightly more realistic assessment of its occupation span. The abandonment of Castle Rock appears to have followed on the heels of a violent conflict. All of the kivas at Castle Rock have been tested, and all but Structure 304 appear to have been in use until the site was abandoned (see "The Final Days of Castle Rock Pueblo"). Structure 304 appears to have fallen out of use before the attack, but since it could not have been built before A.D. 1274 and the latest tree-ring date from any site in the Mesa Verde region is A.D. 1280, it was probably abandoned no more than a few years before the battle. So it is reasonable, even if a bit imprecise, to model the abandonment of Castle Rock as having occurred during a single year.

¹⁵¹
Construction dates for eight of the 16 kiva suites at Castle Rock have been estimated on the basis of tree-ring data from one or more structures within each suite (see "Chronology"). These dated kiva suites appear to have been built over approximately an 18-year period, between A.D. 1256 and 1274, suggesting that the population of Castle Rock grew accretionally during this time. If so, it is unrealistic to use a single start date for all kiva suites at the site. What we really want to do is allocate household-years of trash deposition to various kiva suites on the basis of the pattern of growth suggested by tree-ring data. In an attempt to provide a slightly more realistic model, the growth pattern suggested by the dated kiva suites has been used to model the settlement history of Castle Rock.

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In Table 57, the cumulative number of kiva suites inferred to have been built and occupied by a given date is listed by year, beginning with A.D. 1256, and this figure is multiplied by two, so that by A.D. 1274 all 16 kiva suites have been accounted for. Using this settlement model, the cumulative household-years of occupation have been added year by year until the estimates based on pottery accumulations are reached.

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The results presented in the table show that, on the basis of this settlement model, the posterior point estimate was reached in A.D. 1293, and the 80 percent confidence interval spans the period from 1288 to 1299. If Castle Rock grew more quickly than the dated kiva suites suggest, then these dates would be pushed a little earlier in time; if the village grew more slowly, the dates would be pushed slightly later. These data suggest that the abandonment of Castle Rock occurred during the late A.D. 1280s or 1290s, approximately 15 to 20 years after the latest tree-ring date from the site, A.D. 1274vv. Pottery accumulations suggest a somewhat larger gap between the latest tree-ring date and abandonment than many previous studies suggest is typical (e.g., Ahlstrom 1985*2). Also, the latest tree-ring-dated construction timbers from Puebloan sites in the Mesa Verde region overall (from cliff dwellings in Mesa Verde National Park) date only to A.D. 1280. The late date suggested by pottery accumulations at Castle Rock Pueblo is therefore somewhat out of line with the regional tree-ring record. Varien (1999*1:Chapter 4) discusses several possible sources of imprecision when using pottery accumulations to estimate site occupation span. Possible explanations for the discrepancy identified in this study include (1) that the accumulation rate used is slightly inaccurate; (2) that Castle Rock Pueblo grew more quickly than the model used here suggests; (3) that little new construction took place during the final 20 years of occupation; and (4) that some of the cooking pots deposited at the site were left by periodic or temporary visitors who were not permanent residents (paragraphs 41–66 present evidence that Castle Rock Pueblo functioned as a central place for communal feasts).

¹⁵⁴
The fourth possibility does not seem especially likely, because ratios of cooking-pot sherds to other classes of material culture, such as chipped-stone tool manufacturing debris, are consistent across hamlets and villages in the Sand Canyon locality. This suggests that most artifact deposition in Sand Canyon locality sites occurred in the context of daily activities performed by permanent residents (Varien 1999*1:80–85). If deposition by nonresidents in the context of communal feasts made a significant contribution to the total accumulation of cooking-pot sherds at Castle Rock, then one would expect the ratio of cooking-pot sherds to chipped-stone debris to have been affected. The second and third possibilities argue that our knowledge of the settlement history of Castle Rock remains too limited to produce an occupation span estimate as precise as is possible for smaller and simpler hamlets. This seems possible, but regardless of the reasons for the discrepancy, the fact that pottery accumulations do provide occupation span estimates that are within the realm of possibility, even for such a complex site as Castle Rock, is a testament to the basic validity of accumulations research.

Intrasite Analyses
Midden Composition

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One of the primary research domains specified in the Sand Canyon Project research design was intracommunity differentiation in terms of status, function, and so forth (Lipe 1992*3:3–5). The smallest social unit below the community that is consistently expressed in Mesa Verde Puebloan archaeological sites is the household, which can be defined architecturally as a kiva suite with a small kiva and associated above-ground rooms and trash (Lightfoot 1994*1:Chapter 7; Lipe 1989*1; Ortman 1998*2; Varien 1999*1:Chapter 1). Kiva suite (or unit pueblo) architecture is quite variable at Castle Rock: Suite 103 contains a rare square kiva; Suite 105 contains what may be an unusually large kiva; Suite 402 contains a kiva inside a D-shaped enclosure; and the number of surface rooms in kiva suites appears to have varied significantly across the site. Whether this architectural differentiation correlates with social or functional differentiation across kiva suites is an important question. This possibility is examined in this section by comparing the trash deposits associated with kiva suites. If social and/or functional differentiation existed across kiva suites at Castle Rock, then one might expect different mixes of activities to have occurred in different areas of the site and for these different activities to be reflected in the trash they generated.

Assignment of Midden Deposits to Kiva Suites

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Midden deposits were identified during the Castle Rock excavations as areas of high artifact and ecofact density, usually in a matrix of gray, ashy soil. In Table 58, all excavation units containing such deposits are assigned to kiva suites on the basis of spatial proximity and topography. Each suite is named after the structure number of its kiva. The basic assumption in making these assignments is that trash generated by activities in kiva suites would generally have been tossed from the kiva courtyard southward, downslope, or away from the associated roomblock and kiva. It is also assumed that representative samples of all durable artifactual trash generated by activities in kiva suites ended up in midden deposits. That is, trash of all sorts was unreflectively deposited in the trash mound associated with each kiva suite. The table presents these assignments by kiva suite and excavation unit, along with the depth in meters and density per cubic meter of common artifact types (i.e., artifact categories described in paragraph 141) in these deposits. There are no excavated midden deposits that can be associated with Kiva Suites 102, 107, 204, and 406. These suites most likely produced midden deposits that were not specifically identified or sampled in the Castle Rock Pueblo excavations.

Depth vs. Density of Midden Deposits by Excavation Unit

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Figure 13 compares the relationship between the depth and artifact density of midden deposits at Castle Rock by excavation unit; it shows that there is only a modest correlation between them. The total number of artifacts deposited in a midden area depends on the duration and intensity of occupation, but denser deposits are not necessarily deeper. Thus, the abundance of various artifacts by volume in a midden deposit may relate more to depositional environments than to differences in artifact deposition per se. A measure that should be less influenced by depositional and postdepositional processes is the relative frequency of different artifact categories in a deposit. If different mixes of activities occurred in different places, this should be reflected in different mixes of artifacts in midden assemblages.

Kiva Suite Midden Assemblages

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Table 59 presents counts of common artifacts by category in midden deposits associated with various kiva suites at Castle Rock Pueblo. The artifact categories are the same as those used in paragraph 141—that is, formal chipped-stone tools include bifaces and projectile points, and expedient chipped-stone tools include modified flakes and other chipped-stone tools. All ground-stone tools and all worked bone tools, respectively, are also considered together. Counts rather than weights of pottery sherds were used for this analysis in order to increase the interpretability of relative frequencies across all artifact categories in paragraph 159. The use of counts rather than weights is also reasonable because sherd size is unlikely to vary as significantly across midden deposits as it does across archaeological contexts, as was discussed in paragraph 140.

Relative Frequencies of Common Artifact Categories in Midden Assemblages

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Table 60 presents relative frequencies of common artifacts by category in midden deposits associated with kiva suites at Castle Rock Pueblo, expressed as a percentage of the artifacts tabulated for each kiva suite in Table 59.

Box Plots of Artifact Frequencies across Kiva Suites

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Figure 14 examines the relative frequencies of common artifacts by category across kiva suites at Castle Rock Pueblo. The percentages of these artifacts were converted to Z-scores across kiva suites to facilitate comparison, because some categories are much more common than others. Z-scores rescale the values of a distribution in such a way that the mean value equals 0 and the standard deviation equals 1. The boxes represent the midspread (middle 50 percent of cases) of the distribution for each artifact category; the solid line represents the median value; and the tails represent the range of cases, excluding outliers. Outliers are values for a given artifact category that fall more than 1.5 box lengths away from the boundaries of the box. In other words, outliers represent trash deposits with unusually high relative frequencies of a particular artifact category. Notice that all the outlying cases identified in this analysis are at the high ends of the distributions. There are no kiva suites for which associated trash deposits contain anomalously low numbers of artifacts in any of these categories. The same set of outliers is identified in box plots of raw frequencies as in these plots of Z-scores.

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There is obviously some variation in midden composition at Castle Rock, but there is no clear, interpretable relationship between architectural variation and midden artifact variation. The unusually high frequency of chipped-stone debris associated with Suite 402 might indicate an unusual amount of stoneworking in the area of the D-shaped enclosure, and one might be tempted to interpret this pattern as evidence of male-dominated activities in this area. However, both men and women made and used chipped-stone tools for various activities, and no stone tool types are unusually common in this area, making any gender identification tenuous. Also, chipped-stone debris is not strongly associated with Suite 402 in the multivariate analysis presented in paragraphs 162–165. In addition, Suite 103, containing a square kiva, and Suite 105, containing a possibly "oversized" kiva, also appear to be associated with generally unremarkable trash. The lack of correspondence between architectural variation and midden composition makes it difficult to rule out random sampling error as a cause of the observed variation in artifact frequency, and it suggests that kiva suites with distinctive architecture were not necessarily functionally distinctive.

Correspondence Analysis of Artifact Counts by Kiva Suite

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Correspondence analysis (CA) is a multivariate analytical technique that produces the best possible projection of multivariate data onto two axes, so that the degree of relationship between cases and variables can be examined visually (Baxter 1994*1:Chapter 5). Figure 15 presents results of a CA of the data in Table 59. Counts are appropriate input data for CA because the technique takes sample size into account in such a way that larger collections and more common categories exert a greater effect on the placement of variables and cases on the resultant axes. The first two axes produced account for more than 80 percent of the total variation or inertia in the input data.

¹⁶³
Two of the outliers identified in Figure 14 are also expressed in the CA results as correspondences in the placement of certain artifact categories and kiva suites. First, high frequencies of turkey gizzard stones are clearly associated with trash downslope from Suite 304. Turkey gizzard stones are also associated with Suite 302, but this suite does not also appear as an outlier in Figure 14. These data suggest that turkeys were often butchered and possibly also raised on the north slope of the butte in the center of Castle Rock. Second, white ware jar sherds are clearly associated with trash near Suite 405. The trash in this area is relatively near an ancient reservoir that lies approximately 50 m to the north. Excavations at ancient reservoirs on Woods Mesa, approximately 15 km north of Castle Rock (Wilshusen et al. 1997*1), and at Mummy Lake in Mesa Verde National Park (Breternitz 1999*1:25) produced pottery assemblages that were also dominated by white ware jar sherds, presumably because such vessels were used for collecting and storing water. Inhabitants of Suite 405 may have traveled to the reservoir more often than other people in the village, or people from other kiva suites may have deposited white ware jars broken in transit between the reservoir and the village in the trash mound of Suite 405. No special jar forms were identified among the white ware jar rim sherds found in this midden.

¹⁶⁴
A third relationship is not apparent in the box plots but may have parallels at other sites. Fratt (1997*1:248) found that two-hand manos from the D-shaped structure at Sand Canyon Pueblo exhibited more intensive use wear than manos from other parts of that village and interpreted this pattern as evidence that inhabitants of the D-shaped structure produced more food than the average household, perhaps for ceremonial consumption. At Castle Rock, the CA results suggest that ground-stone tools were also strongly associated with Suite 402, which includes a kiva inside a D-shaped enclosure. The fact that discarded food-preparation tools were unusually abundant in trash associated with this kiva suite suggests that its inhabitants processed more food than other households at Castle Rock, as Fratt argued for the potentially analogous structure at Sand Canyon Pueblo. This may be evidence of organizational continuities across communities in the Sand Canyon locality.

¹⁶⁵
Although there is some evidence for differences in the mix of activities across kiva suites at Castle Rock, there is little evidence that qualitatively different activities occurred in one place or another. In other words, activities that led to deposition of the analyzed artifacts occurred in every kiva suite at Castle Rock Pueblo, and the mix of these activities appears to have been relatively consistent across kiva suites. This finding suggests that every kiva suite was primarily residential. It does not rule out the possibility, however, that certain activities that do not leave significant artifactual traces, especially ritual activities, occurred only in certain kiva suites. Implications of this analysis of midden composition are discussed further in paragraphs 169–185.

Abandonment of Structures
Artifact Densities in Kiva Fills

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In another portion of this report ("The Final Days of Castle Rock Pueblo"), Kuckelman provides an overview of the abandonment of Castle Rock, and more intensive studies of this abandonment are currently under way. This section considers only one line of evidence related to abandonment processes: artifact densities in the fills of kivas. Some artifacts will naturally wash into collapsing kivas as they fill with postabandonment sediment, but in some cases kiva depressions were used as trash dumps or were intentionally filled. Trash-filled kiva depressions can be interpreted as evidence of continuing habitation at a site for some time after those kivas were abandoned. Analysis of artifact densities in kiva fills may therefore shed some light on the abandonment of Castle Rock.

¹⁶⁷
One excavation unit was chosen from each excavated kiva at Castle Rock, and the density of all artifacts in strata interpreted as representing structural collapse was calculated. The results are presented in Figure 16. The artifact densities of most kivas were below 300 artifacts per cubic meter, in the range that Varien (1999*1:Chapter 6) interpreted as typical of naturally collapsing and filling pit structures. Also, none of the kivas at Castle Rock was filled with midden deposits, suggesting that the abandonment was not a gradual process. However, the fill of one kiva—Structure 304 on the north side of the village at the base of the butte—did contain a surprising number of artifacts in roof-fall strata immediately underlying informally deposited human remains. The artifact density of these deposits seems too high to be accounted for by slopewash from structures above this area on the butte. It is also clear from the sediment matrix that this structure was not gradually filled with an ashy midden deposit after the structure was abandoned. The most likely interpretation of this deposit, then, is that the structure was deliberately filled after the roof collapsed and before the human remains were deposited, and this fill just happened to have a high artifact density. Other structures at Castle Rock could also have been deliberately filled, but if so, the parent material used did not contain a large number of artifacts. This interpretation, if correct, suggests that some human activity, which may have included intentional or accidental deposition of human remains, did occur after the conflict associated with the abandonment of Castle Rock.

Abandonment Deposits Relating to Warfare

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There was an unusually high concentration of projectile points, bifaces, and objects of personal adornment in Structures 302 and 304. Both structures also contained concentrations of informally buried human remains. High overall artifact density (see paragraphs 166–167) hinders interpretation of this concentration in Structure 304, but in Structure 302 the concentration of these artifacts was clearly anomalously high. These two structures are located at the base of the north side of the butte in the center of Castle Rock Pueblo, and the only way to gain access to the top of the butte today is by walking through this area. The top of the butte would presumably have been the last bastion for defenders of the site, so it makes some sense that fighting would have been especially intense along the north side of the butte, leading to the observed concentration of projectile points, bifaces, and objects of personal adornment. Alternatively, this concentration could have resulted from the deposition of victims who died on top of the butte, along with their personal belongings, inside these structures. Regardless of the specific explanation, it is clear that some sort of cultural deposition was involved in creating these deposits.

Consideration of Results in Light of the Sand Canyon Project Research Design

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The Castle Rock Pueblo excavations took place in the context of the Sand Canyon Archaeological Project, a 10-year, interdisciplinary effort that focused on the Pueblo III occupation of the Sand Canyon locality. Fieldwork conducted as part of this project included full-coverage survey within the locality (Adler 1992*3; Adler and Metcalf 1991*1; Gleichman and Gleichman 1992*1), test excavations at 13 small sites (Varien 1999*2), and intensive excavations at Sand Canyon Pueblo (Bradley 1992*2, 1993*1, 1996*1) and the Green Lizard site (Huber and Lipe 1992*1) in addition to Castle Rock Pueblo. The research design for the Sand Canyon Archaeological Project was presented by Lipe (1992*3). This section considers how the results presented throughout this report relate to the major research domains identified in this article.

Community Organization and Change

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The concept of community adopted for the Sand Canyon Project follows from the cross-cultural research of George P. Murdock (Murdock 1949*1; Murdock and Wilson 1972*1), who defined the community as the largest social unit within which members interact face-to-face on a regular basis. In middle-range agricultural societies lacking beasts of burden and modern communication and transportation technologies, such communities are necessarily small in both geographic and demographic extent (Varien 1999*1). Adler (1990*1, 1994*1, 1996*3) and Adler and Varien (1994*1) added that such communities also tend to have a decision-making capacity above the level of their primary economic units, especially for the adjudication of resource access rights within community territories. Archaeological correlates of such communities in the Mesa Verde region include the spatial clustering of settlements around good springs and farmland and the presence of public architecture centrally located within settlement clusters (Adler 1990*1; Lipe 1970*1, 1992*2; Rohn 1965*1, 1977*1; Varien 1999*1:Chapter 1).

¹⁷¹
Lipe (1992*3), building on the work of Blanton and his colleagues (Blanton et al. 1981*1), identified four dimensions of organizational variation in communities. These dimensions are scale, differentiation (horizontal and vertical), integration, and intensity. These dimensions and the relevant findings of this report that address each one are considered in the following sections.

Scale

¹⁷²
Scale is defined as the size of the geographic area occupied by a community and its population. A related concept, the reach of a community, is the distance from which exotic and imported goods were obtained. Castle Rock Pueblo was probably the central place of a community that has been designated the Lower Sand Canyon community (Lipe 1992*1). This settlement cluster includes a number of small Pueblo III sites (including the tested sites Mad Dog Tower [Kleidon 1999*2] and Saddlehorn Hamlet [Kleidon 1999*3]) in lower Sand and East Rock canyons and adjacent portions of McElmo Canyon. Because only portions of this area have been systematically surveyed, the overall scale of the Lower Sand Canyon community is not yet clear. For Castle Rock itself, however, 16 households, one for each kiva at the site, is a reasonable estimate of the resident population. This estimate is based on the evidence for residential activity in every kiva suite at which associated middens were sampled (see paragraphs 155–165) and on the widespread occurrence of direct evidence of pottery making (see paragraphs 68–69). Also, at population estimates of fewer than 16 households, it becomes difficult to account for the total accumulation of corrugated jar sherds and the span of tree-ring-dated structures at Castle Rock. The reach of Castle Rock Pueblo did not extend beyond the boundaries of the Mesa Verde culture area to the north. To the east, south, and west, however, there was a small amount of indirect interaction through the exchange of material originating outside the region. Objects came from as far away as the Pacific Ocean and the Gulf of California to the west, possibly the Jemez Mountains to the east, and the Mogollon Rim country to the south (see paragraphs 129–131).

Differentiation
Horizontal

¹⁷³
Horizontal differentiation refers to functional specialization among parts of equivalent rank within a community. There is some evidence of possible horizontal differentiation within Castle Rock Pueblo (paragraphs 162–165). Gizzard stones indicative of turkey butchering are especially common in the midden area directly northeast of Kiva Suites 302 and 304. Whether this indicates that turkeys were also raised in this area is unclear. Trash deposited in the midden of Kiva Suite 405 is unusually rich in white ware jar sherds and is relatively close to a domestic water source for the village. It is unclear whether these data reflect an emphasis in the activities of this particular household or whether broken jars from other households were more often deposited in this trash mound as people came and went from the reservoir.

¹⁷⁴
Despite this equivocal evidence of horizontal differentiation, the more striking pattern that emerges from intrasite analysis of trash (paragraphs 155–165) is that a wide range of activities appears to have taken place in nearly every kiva suite. Trash deposits throughout Castle Rock Pueblo contained food-preparation tools, hunting tools, serving vessels, cooking pots, sewing tools, and waste products of chipped-stone tool manufacture. Unequivocal direct evidence of pottery making was collected from 10 of 16 kiva suites, and possible evidence was collected from another two, despite the fact that most kiva suites received only limited testing. These data suggest that pottery making continued to be a household-level industry even after village formation and that nearly every household included at least one resident potter. It is clear that a basic set of productive and maintenance activities took place in every kiva suite, strengthening the argument that kiva suites represent the domestic architecture of Mesa Verde Puebloan culture.

Vertical

¹⁷⁵
Vertical differentiation is defined as rank differences among functionally diverse parts within a community. There is no overwhelming evidence of qualitative rank differences between households on the basis of trash deposits associated with kiva suites (paragraphs 155–165). Kiva suites that include a square kiva (Suite 103), a kiva inside a D-shaped enclosure (Suite 402), and a potentially oversized kiva (Suite 105) all have associated trash that reflects an essentially consistent set of domestic activities. The fact that nondomestic trash cannot be distinguished suggests that all kiva suites were primarily residential. The fact that kiva suite architecture, however, is so variable at Castle Rock Pueblo, Sand Canyon Pueblo (Bradley 1993*1), and other late Pueblo III villages in southwestern Colorado (Lipe and Ortman 1999*1) suggests that vertical differentiation might have existed among households but that such distinctions were not of a kind that produced qualitative differences in basic household trash.

¹⁷⁶
Quantitative differences in trash across kiva suites include the relatively large number of ground-stone tools in the midden associated with Suite 402, which includes a kiva in a D-shaped enclosure. This concentration might indicate that inhabitants of this household prepared or processed more food than did other households. This quantitative difference might have resulted from social obligations that went along with whatever status was signified by the D-shaped enclosure. An unusually large household could also be responsible, but this seems unlikely, judging from the absence of a large surface roomblock in this kiva suite. Two-hand manos from the D-shaped structure at Sand Canyon Pueblo also exhibit more use wear than manos from other households (Fratt 1997*1), suggesting continuities in community organization in the Sand Canyon and Castle Rock communities.

¹⁷⁷
The only evidence bearing on vertical differentiation between individuals lies in objects of personal adornment. The materials out of which these were made tended to be rare and exotic (paragraph 133), suggesting that there was some concern for distinguishing between people on the basis of their attire. Change in items of personal adornment over time has not been examined.

Integration

¹⁷⁸
Integration is defined as the interdependence of structural units within a community and the manner in which the interdependence is accomplished. In general, households at Castle Rock appear to have been self-sufficient. At least one member of each household appears to have made chipped-stone tools, prepared food, and made pottery (paragraphs 68–75). On the other hand, it is possible that certain households specialized in turkey raising, that others were responsible for provisioning the village with water from the adjacent reservoir (paragraphs 155–165), and that another household specialized in the manufacture or use of polished igneous stones (paragraph 117). So in some respects households were relatively autonomous, and in others, they were potentially interdependent.

¹⁷⁹
The sizes and decoration of serving bowls also suggest that food was more often presented and consumed in public contexts in thirteenth-century villages than in earlier communities with dispersed settlement patterns (paragraphs 62–66). Cooking-pot sizes, serving-bowl sizes, and frequencies of exterior decoration on serving bowls all suggest that communal feasting was more common or intense at Sand Canyon Pueblo than at Castle Rock Pueblo. At Castle Rock, such public gatherings probably took place in the plaza, since no single structure in the village was large enough to accommodate the estimated village population. This increase in public presentation and consumption of food suggests that interhousehold integration increased along with village formation.

Intensity

¹⁸⁰
Intensity is defined as measures of population, material, information, or energy use per unit area or per capita. Spatial proximity alone indicates that residents of Castle Rock interacted more intensely than they had prior to moving into the village, but it is impossible to determine with present data whether village formation affected the intensity of interaction between residents of adjacent communities. Depressed frequencies of igneous-tempered pottery in village assemblages relative to those of adjacent, contemporaneous hamlets suggest that the larger populations of villages obtained pottery vessels across larger areas that extended farther away from igneous temper sources (paragraphs 77–83). It is unclear, however, whether this pattern reflects more-intense interaction per village resident or is simply a statistical effect of assemblages produced by larger population aggregates. In other words, even if the intensity of interaction per person was constant across hamlets and villages, village pottery samples would still exhibit more evidence of interaction than hamlet samples simply because more people contributed to the village samples. But even if interaction intensity per person was consistent in villages and hamlets, information gained through interaction with people in other sites would have been shared much more effectively within thirteenth-century villages than between earlier and contemporaneous hamlets.

¹⁸¹
Use-wear patterns on two-hand manos appear to relate more to variation in grinding strokes and to wear-reduction sequences than to wear management (paragraph 116). If this is the case, mano use wear appears unrelated to a possible intensification of food processing that one might expect to have occurred along with village formation. Possible evidence of a high frequency of large cooking pots at Sand Canyon Pueblo may indicate, however, that more large meals were prepared for larger consumption groups in this very large village than at other Sand Canyon locality sites, including Castle Rock. Serving vessel size and decoration suggest an increase in communal ceremonialism and feasting associated with village formation (paragraphs 62–66).

Abandonment

¹⁸²
Pottery accumulations, taken together with population estimates and tree-ring data, suggest that Castle Rock was abandoned sometime during the A.D. 1280s or early 1290s (paragraphs 146–154).

¹⁸³
Other results presented in this report improve our picture of social conditions immediately prior to the final migrations of Pueblo people out of the Mesa Verde region. It is apparent from frequencies of nonlocal pottery in Castle Rock and other southwestern Colorado sites that levels of interregional interaction declined significantly during the thirteenth century, especially in the central Mesa Verde region (paragraphs 87–90). This pattern is mirrored in the extreme rarity of other objects made of nonlocal materials at Castle Rock. These data suggest that very little interaction took place between Castle Rock and possible destination areas for the final migrations. This pattern seems contrary to the expectations of migration-stream models recently proposed to characterize this migration (paragraphs 129–131).

¹⁸⁴
A violent conflict clearly occurred during the final days of habitation at Castle Rock, and the concentration of projectile points and objects of personal adornment, along with the discovery of human remains in the fills of kivas on the north side of Castle Rock butte, suggests that the fighting was particularly intense and prolonged in this area (paragraphs 166–168). Unfortunately, artifacts collected from Castle Rock shed little light on the identity of the attackers. There is no clear artifactual evidence that the attackers originated outside the Mesa Verde region. The only possible evidence of nonlocal attackers comes from projectile points (paragraphs 99–103). The one point clearly of non-Puebloan origin is a Desert Side-Notched point that was found in a postabandonment context and thus probably originated from relatively recent Ute visitors to the site. The form and material of a Bull Creek point make it consistent with the type that was made in Mesa Verde-tradition sites in southeastern Utah west of Comb Ridge. Whether this point was brought to Castle Rock by the attackers or through peaceful means is unknown.

¹⁸⁵
Although Castle Rock Pueblo was built in a defensible setting, contained defensive architectural features, and was clearly the scene of a major battle, only one or two hafted axes and mauls that could have been made specifically as weapons were found there (paragraphs 118–121). Even if usable axes were carried away from the site by survivors of the battle, it is surprising that so few remained to be found during the excavations. The relationship between the abundance and elaboration of weaponry and the actual frequency of warfare is an important topic for future research on violence in agricultural village societies.

^{Acknowledgments}

^{The Castle Rock Pueblo excavations took place in the context of Crow Canyon's public archaeology programs, and innumerable participants in these programs spent countless hours washing, cataloging, and analyzing the artifacts considered in this report. This project would have been impossible without their support. All research that is accomplished at Crow Canyon results from a group effort by the research and publication staffs. In addition to myself, current and former Crow Canyon staff members Louise Schmidlap, Angela Schwab, Mary Etzkorn, Melissa Churchill, Melita Romasco, Jamie Merewether, Michelle Hegmon, Chris Pierce, Joe Keleher, and Maggie Thurs either supervised data collection or directly collected the data for Castle Rock artifacts. Maggie Thurs, Adele Bigler, and Robin Lyle collected the temper data from Sand Canyon locality white wares. The rim-arc data were collected by Molly Duncan. Jamie Merewether assisted in collecting data for points, knives, and drills. Chris Pierce classified most of the other modified stones and minerals and identified most of the direct evidence of pottery production. G. Timothy Gross identified shell species. Tim Kohler offered useful advice on poststratification of the probability sample. Lee Gripp and Melita Romasco offered critically needed technical computer support. I also thank Crow Canyon Native American Advisory Group members Jane Polingyouma, Ernie Vallo, and Peter Pino for drawing on their own experience in offering many interesting avenues for interpretation of Castle Rock Pueblo artifacts. Kristin Kuckelman, Donna Glowacki, Mark Varien, and Robin Lyle all provided many useful comments on an earlier draft. Jane Kepp gave the text an excellent copy edit, and Louise Schmidlap and Ginnie Dunlop accomplished the arduous task of translating the original print version of this report into electronic format.}

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