The Sand Canyon Archaeological Project

Preface

The Sand Canyon Archaeological Project: Site Testing is the culmination of four seasons of fieldwork (1988-1991), many years of laboratory analysis and write-up, and over two years of production support by the Crow Canyon Archaeological Center, its supporters, and a host of professional consultants. The initial research design for the Testing Program was developed by Mark Varien in consultation with the Center's research staff. Varien directed fieldwork in 1988; he was joined the following year by Kristin Kuckelman, with whom he codirected fieldwork for the remainder of the project. Over 1,600 participants in Crow Canyon's research programs assisted in excavation and basic laboratory analysis, and an additional 3,000 people visited the various tested sites as part of the Center's educational programs. Combined, the field, laboratory, and production phases of the project have now spanned a full decade and drawn on the expertise of dozens of specialists and authors.

The 13 Puebloan sites investigated during the Site Testing Program were located both on privately owned farms and on public land administered by the Bureau of Land Management (BLM). Landowners who granted permission to excavate the sites on their land donated the artifacts collected. The sites located on BLM land were excavated under permit numbers C-39466(d), C-39466(d) renewal, C-39466(f), and C-39466(g). All materials recovered from the tested sites, as well as original paper records, are curated at the Anasazi Heritage Center in Dolores, Colorado.

The Site Testing Program was one component of the larger Sand Canyon Archaeological Project, the primary focus of which was the thirteenth-century abandonment of the Mesa Verde region and community organization in the century leading up to abandonment. The Testing Program was designed to ensure the collection of comparable data from each of the tested sites, data that could be integrated into what was already known from archaeological survey and intensive excavations in the Sand Canyon locality. At one of the sites reported in this publication, Castle Rock Pueblo, intensive excavations were conducted at the end of the testing phase of the investigation. An electronic site report, which includes data from both the testing and intensive excavations at Castle Rock, is scheduled for publication in 1999, and the reader should consult it for a complete description of this site, as well as for final interpretations.

Although one of the strengths of the Testing Program was its methodological and analytical consistency, field and laboratory procedures were continually refined over the years, resulting in some unevenness in the data reported in this volume. Laboratory analyses in particular became more detailed; for example, several stone tool types were redefined, necessitating reanalysis of selected tools from some of the sites. Because these changes took place over a period of time and in some cases were implemented after the "site-report" chapters (Chapters 2-14) were written, the reader may notice slight discrepancies between the artifact data presented in those chapters and the data presented in Chapter 15, Artifacts. In such cases, the latter should be regarded as more up-to-date. It should also be noted that, subsequent to the preparation of this manuscript, routine cross checking and continued use of the Test Program data resulted in the discovery and correction of minor inputting errors; as with any archaeological project, the process of fine-tuning the database is ongoing. Therefore, for the cleanest and most current provenience and artifact data, the reader is referred to Crow Canyon's electronic research database, which is scheduled to be available on the Internet sometime in 1999 (at www.crowcanyon.org). The changes that have taken place over the years are not believed to be dramatic enough to significantly affect the interpretations presented in this report.

The Sand Canyon Archaeological Project: Site Testing was originally designed to be published as a traditional site report in the Center's Occasional Papers series. Two factors contributed to the Center's decision to forego some of the usual editing and production steps and publish the manuscript in electronic form. The first was the size of the report: publication of a 1,300-page manuscript in Crow Canyon's Occasional Papers series would have been so time-consuming--the effort required to complete the technical and copy edit alone was prohibitive--that distribution of this important work would have been delayed by several years. A simple check for internal consistency (in some cases, simply noting and explaining the inconsistencies), a light copy edit of the Introduction and final three synthetic chapters, and publication on the Internet and in CD-ROM format, rather than on paper, ensured publication in a timely manner. The second factor in our decision to publish electronically was the quality and usefulness of the end product. Electronic media offered several distinct advantages over publication on paper. For example, the inclusion of 124 color photographs greatly enhances text descriptions of architecture, stratigraphy, and artifacts, and the hypertext linking of tables, figures, and references makes it much easier for the reader to move through the report and access specific kinds of information. However, we recognize that, particularly until the profession and the public are satisfied that the issue of long-term maintenance of electronic media has been adequately addressed, some form of paper backup is reassuring. Therefore, in addition to the electronic publications, paper copies of the manuscript have been stored at the Crow Canyon Archaeological Center, the Anasazi Heritage Center, the BLM office in Durango, Mesa Verde National Park, and the Colorado Historical Society. These copies exist for archival purposes only and are not for general distribution.

Finally, with its detailed descriptions of archaeological context and its presentation of basic field and laboratory data, this publication lays the foundation for more comprehensive and specialized studies of the late Puebloan occupation of the Mesa Verde region. One such study, of population movement in the century leading up to abandonment, has already been completed in the form of Varien's (1997) Ph.D. dissertation, a revised version of which is scheduled for publication by the University of Arizona Press in 1999. Together, these two complementary volumes provide the reader with a far greater appreciation of the dynamics of ancient Puebloan communities than has heretofore been possible.