On April 14, Paul Reed kicked off our first-ever Archaeology Café served entirely online. Watch and share his discussion of “Aztec, Salmon, and the Puebloan Heartland of the Middle San Juan” below. To participate in our next Archaeology Café on May 5, 2020, register ahead here.
(April 20, 2020)—Thanks, folks, for the many good questions you posed during my April 14 Archaeology Café. Some were answered during the Q & A portion of the presentation. Others—some of which were more complicated or specific—I answered via email. In this blog, I want to address several questions that I think are of broad interest.
What did they eat? Did you find farmland or did they eat fish or something else?
The inhabitants of Salmon, Aztec, and other pueblo sites in the Middle San Juan, like other sedentary Pueblo people of the Southwest, depended on three primary agricultural crops: corn, beans, and squash (the latter including several varieties of squash, pumpkins, and gourds).
This basic diet was supplemented with a variety of natural plant foods, including so-called weedy plants like pigweed and goosefoot, other seed plants, piñon nuts, and cactus pods and pads. Protein was provided by a couple varieties of beans, and of course meat from numerous animals, predominantly deer, elk, antelope, rabbit, turkey, other small animals, and rodents. Interestingly, excavations at Salmon produced the bones of three native fish species.
Distinct field areas have not been identified in the direct vicinity of either Salmon or Aztec. There is little question, however, that people extensively farmed the floodplains and alluvial terraces of the San Juan and the Animas Rivers during the Puebloan periods. In addition, several miles of irrigation canals have been identified in the greater Aztec Community, indicating that water management was an important part of ancient Pueblo activities in the Middle San Juan.
Is Chimney Rock related to Aztec, Chaco, or Mesa Verde?
The Chacoan great house at Chimney Rock was built between 1075 and 1093 CE by, in my view, migrants from Chaco Canyon. Clearly Chacoan in construction, the great house was placed into a Puebloan community that had very different architecture, characterized as Upper San Juan style. People used the site until about 1125.
Because of its primary use in the Chacoan period, Chimney Rock’s inhabitants probably had little contact with the Aztec Community. People built Aztec West beginning in the early 1100s. Similarly, people mostly used the large cliff dwellings and other Pueblo III sites at Mesa Verde National Park used after Chimney Rock was no longer in use.
Did you discover any green bands of stone work at Salmon like at Aztec?
Although Salmon Pueblo does not have a large, serpentine design with green rock, as Aztec West Pueblo’s exterior does, some dark stone was found. Several rooms at Salmon have parallel bands of dark green or brown stone. This stone derives from the same formation as that used in the Aztec rock mural, coming from the Nacimiento Sandstone. A source of this stone lies north of Salmon and south of Aztec and inhabitants of both communities extracted it.
Do you find many six-toed sandals in Salmon or Aztec?
No, to my knowledge, six-toed sandals or wooden sandal forms have not been found at either Aztec or Salmon.
How did they feed the turkeys they ate?
Wild turkeys are omnivorous, eating a variety of plants and some small animals, including grasses, leaves, twigs, fruits, berries, seeds, and insects. In addition to this mixed diet, studies have revealed that ancient Puebloan turkeys also consumed considerable amounts of maize.
Can anyone access the library at Salmon?
Yes, the noncirculating library at Salmon Ruins Museum is open to the public, and items are catalogued online as part of the San Juan College library system. Members of the public cannot check out books, but are free to use materials in the library.
The model for Salmon, with Chacoan outsiders recruiting locals to develop the area, seems to apply for Chaco in general. It could be seen as outsiders or intruders taking advantage of locals for the rise of the Chacoan system. What would you say about this idea?
This a very good question, and many archaeologists have pondered it. I think most of us who study Chaco would agree that the communities who were part of the Chacoan world were multiethnic—distinct groups who practiced a Puebloan lifeway.
The key question relates to the nature of how Chaco migrants and local Puebloan groups interacted and came together. Although some archaeologists have suggested a coercive model, with Chacoan-affiliated people aggressively moving into established communities, others see a more cooperative model.
In the latter view, local Puebloan leaders and communities saw the benefit of joining the Chacoan world because of the social, economic, and ritual advantages. This view suggests that the greater Chacoan world comprised a diversity of great house sites and communities and many thousands of Puebloan people who came together voluntarily for the greater good.
Are any of the other sites shown on your maps open to the public?
No, unfortunately, the other sites that I showed in the Middle San Juan region are not open for public visitation. Most are on private lands and reasonably well protected, although a couple are at some risk of impacts.
Did the people in Aztec and Salmon trade parrots or chocolate with Central America?
Yes, both Salmon and Aztec had macaws. We know of the remains of three at Aztec (two heads and one mostly complete bird) and nine at Salmon. We don’t know how these birds were brought into the sites, but it makes sense to infer they came via the Chacoan trade network, which also produced several dozen macaws in Chacoan and other sites over several hundred years (from the 800s into the 1100s).
Cacao has so far not been detected on ceramic vessels at either Aztec or Salmon. Salmon lacks the cylinder jars that were used to store the bitter chocolate drink, and the sole cylinder jar fragment from Aztec has not been tested.
What is the difference between Chaco pottery and San Juan pottery?
Ceramics or pottery vessels are made with clay, temper, and paint. Potters add temper to the clay to help prevent shrinkage and cracking. All of these items can be studied and sourced.
Chacoan pottery is classified within the Cibola pottery tradition and consists of mineral (iron or manganese) paints on a variety of clays, with sand used as temper. San Juan pottery from the Middle San Juan is characterized largely by organic, carbon paints and crushed rock temper, and by use of local clays.
We can further distinguish Middle San Juan from Greater Mesa Verde or Northern San Juan ceramics by the specific types of minerals and rocks found in the tempering materials. These studies allow us to say that most (as high as 90 percent) of the San Juan pottery at Aztec, Salmon, and other sites were made locally using the local variety of crushed rock temper. This is true even for classic pottery types such as Mesa Verde Black-on-white. In fact, some of the earliest examples of Mesa Verde Black-on-white bowls come from Aztec Ruins and were not actually traded from anywhere to the north.
This is a very short answer to a complicated question. For more information about pottery, refer to:
Reed, L. S.
2008 Ceramics of the Middle San Juan Region: Potters, Recipes, and Varieties. In Chaco’s Northern Prodigies, edited by P. F. Reed, pp. 190–206. University of Utah Press, Salt Lake City.
2018 Ancestral Pueblo Pottery of the Middle San Juan Region. In Aztec, Salmon, and the Puebloan Heartland of the Middle San Juan, edited by P. F. Reed and G. M. Brown, pp. 81–89. SAR Press, Santa Fe.
Washburn, D., and L. S. Reed
2011 A Design and Technological Study of Hatched Ceramics: Tracking Chacoan Migrants in the Middle San Juan. Kiva 77:173–202.
For any other questions that I have not addressed, please contact me directly at preed@archaeologysouthwest.org. Here’s a list of readings that are not Archaeology Southwest Magazine issues, which are linked to the right.
For further reading:
Brown, Gary M., and Cheryl Paddock
2011 Chacoan and Vernacular Architecture at Aztec Ruins: Putting Chaco in its Place. Kiva 77: 203–224.
Clark, Jeffery J.
2011 Chacoan Immigration and Influence in the Middle San Juan. Kiva 77: 251–270.
Lister, Robert H., and Florence C. Lister
1981 Chaco Canyon: Archaeology and Archaeologists. University of New Mexico Press.
1987 Aztec Ruins on the Animas: Excavated, Preserved, and Interpreted. University of New Mexico Press, Albuquerque.
Morris, E. H.
1919 The Aztec Ruin. Anthropological Papers of the American Museum of Natural History, 26 (part 1). American Museum of Natural History, New York.
1921 The House of the Great Kiva at the Aztec Ruin. Anthropological Papers 26(2):109–138. American Museum of Natural History, New York.
1939 Archaeological Sites in the La Plata District: Southwestern Colorado and Northwestern New Mexico. Carnegie Institution of Washington Publication 519. Washington, D.C.
Reed, L. S.
2008 Ceramics of the Middle San Juan Region: Potters, Recipes, and Varieties. In Chaco’s Northern Prodigies, edited by P. F. Reed, pp. 190–206. University of Utah Press, Salt Lake City.
Reed, Paul F.
2011 Chacoan Immigration or Emulation of the Chacoan System? The Emergence of Aztec, Salmon, and Other Great House Communities in the Middle San Juan. Kiva 77: 119–138.
2011 Middle San Juan Settlement Patterns: Searching for Chacoan Immigrants and Evidence of Local Emulation on the Landscape. Kiva 77: 225–250.
Reed, Paul F. (editor)
2006 Thirty-Five Years of Archaeological Research at Salmon Ruins, New Mexico, three volumes. Center for Desert Archaeology, Tucson and Salmon Ruins Museum, Bloomfield, New Mexico.
2008 Chaco’s Northern Prodigies: Salmon, Aztec, and the Ascendancy of the Middle San Juan Region after AD 1100. University of Utah Press, Salt Lake City.
Reed, Paul F., and Gary M. Brown (editors)
2018 Aztec, Salmon, and the Puebloan Heartland of the Middle San Juan. SAR Press, Santa Fe.
Available for purchase here.
Stein, John R., and Peter J. McKenna
1988 An Archaeological Reconnaissance of a Late Bonito Phase Occupation Near Aztec Ruins National Monument, New Mexico. Southwest Cultural Resources Center, National Park Service, Santa Fe.
Washburn, D., and L. S. Reed
2011 A Design and Technological Study of Hatched Ceramics: Tracking Chacoan Migrants in the Middle San Juan. Kiva 77:173–202.
Webster, Laurie
2011 Perishable Ritual Artifacts at the West Ruin of Aztec, New Mexico: Evidence for a Chacoan Migration. Kiva 77: 139–172.
For information on how you can help, go here.
Enjoy the following free online resources related to this talk:
- Archaeology Southwest Magazine (Vol. 32, Nos. 2&3), “Chacoan Archaeology at the 21st Century,” free to download through April 30, 2020 here.
- Archaeology Southwest Magazine (Vol. 28, No. 1), “Chaco’s Legacy,” free to download here.
- Printable visitor’s guide to Aztec and Salmon, free to download here.
For more online resources, visit here.