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Standing walls in the eastern section of Canyon Creek Ruin as they appeared in 1930 and 1979. Upper, Gila Pueblo photograph courtesy of the Arizona State Museum, University of Arizona; lower, photograph courtesy of J. Jefferson Reid.
Source publication
The tree-ring material from the Canyon Creek Ruin, east central Arizona, is reanalyzed to resolve a dating anomaly involving primary and secondary beams at the site. Most secondary beams were cut and stockpiled prior to the occupation of the locality, in contrast to primary beams which were usually cut for immediate use. By plotting the sequence of...
Context in source publication
Context 1
... is unlikely. Photographs of the ruin first taken in 1930 by Haury and more recently by J. Jefferson Reid in 1979 from the same location and of the same portion of the ruin document only slight deterioration of standing walls at the site (Figures 4 and 5). Despite nearly 50 years and countless visits by archaeologists to the ruin, relatively little structural damage has been recorded. ...
Citations
... This makes sense, as regional reorganization occurred at a large scale in the late 1200s and early 1300s in east-central Arizona. By the 1330s, people of the Grasshopper region had aggregated into a small number of large sites, and a dispersion was beginning whereby people were either leaving the region or splitting off from large communities to found smaller ones in relatively remote areas, such as Canyon Creek (Graves, 1982Graves, , 1983 Haury, 1934; Reid, 1989; Reid & Whittlesey, 1999: 148–156). Reid & Whittlesey (1999: 45) suggest that the regional influence in Room Block 1 may have derived from Grasshopper Spring, a 15-room pueblo 2 km east of Grasshopper Pueblo that dates to the last quarter of the 13th century. ...
... By about 1330, Grasshopper Pueblo had reached its peak of population. Satellite communities such as Red Rock House and Canyon Creek Ruin had been settled (Graves, 1982Graves, , 1983 Haury, 1934), likely resulting from the dual processes of niche filling (the budding off of new households from Grasshopper) and arrival of new immigrants into the region (Reid, 1989). Plaza 3 was converted into the Great Kiva about this time (Riggs, 1999Riggs, , 2001), and it served to house community-wide and regional-wide ceremonies (Reid & Montgomery, 1999 ). ...
... If such rules were not to their liking, they could always move on. Some apparently did, founding sites such as Canyon Creek Pueblo (Graves, 1982Graves, , 1983 Haury, 1934); others, perhaps less disaffected, settled into outlying room blocks at Grasshopper Pueblo. It is further likely that some of them married locals at Grasshopper and set up households either in the main room blocks, or outliers, or may have decided against settling at Grasshopper after marriage and relocated to a satellite community. ...
Strontium-isotope (87Sr/86Sr) analysis of first-molar enamel of 70 adult individuals interred at Grasshopper Pueblo, Arizona, when coupled with a variety of other lines of evidence, reveal a complex pattern of immigration and settlement at the site. Thirty-three of the individuals pattern as local (most likely having been born at Grasshopper), and 13 others originate from the region immediately surrounding the site. The remaining 24 individuals are of non-local, extra-regional origin. Recent 87Sr/86Sr analysis of rodent bone from archaeological sites in several regions surrounding Grasshopper—including the Tonto Basin, Payson area, Mogollon Rim, and Chevelon Valley, as well as prehistoric human bone from the Walnut Creek/Cherry Creek region—reveal potential matches for all of the nonlocal individuals. It is suggests that immigrants at Grasshopper likely derived from the Chevelon Valley, at least two localities from the central Mogollon Rim region, and possibly the Payson area at the western edge of the Mogollon Rim. Migration occurred throughout the occupational history of the site, but patterns of migration clearly changed through time. The structure of migrations likely followed the internal frontier model of Kopytoff (1987). A number of inferences that have been postulated for Grasshopper regarding ethnicity, diversity, and social and community organization are evaluated and supported.
... Irrigation was not practiced, the construction of agricultural features such as check dams and fieldhouses was minimal (Tuggle et al. 1984), and, despite the suggestions by Sullivan (1982), there is no clear evidence for fire ecology. After A.D. 1325, when settlement expanded into less accessible areas, less productive lands began to be utilized (Graves 1982aGraves , 1983). The studies mentioned above deal with fauna1 and floral resources, agricultural potential and subsistence management, and health of the pop- ulation . ...
... Did they have equal access to farmlands and food resources as main Room Block groups? Were they among the more mobile groups who occupied the site seasonally while establishing residence at cliff dwellings such as Canyon Creek and Red Rock House (Graves 1982aGraves , 1983 Reid 1989)? While these questions cannot be answered authoritatively at this point, the evidence supports the spatial distinction without much doubt. ...
... Using figures from Wetterstrom (1986:Table 4 Later in the occupation of Grasshopper Pueblo, with groups splitting off to settle into sites such as Red Rock House and Canyon Creek Ruin, and with the site possibly occupied only seasonally (at least by some of the inhabitants), a " good harvest " of maize would have provided considerably more than half the calories of the inhabitants. However, given the data inTable 7, it is unlikely that during the period A.D. 1325-1350 harvests would have been as productive as those in the preceding 25Graves 1982aGraves , 1983). A second would have been to allow fields to lay fallow for shorter periods, thus farming greater amounts of the land around the main pueblo. ...
A bone chemistry analysis of the adult burials (N = 230) from Grasshopper Pueblo (east-central Arizona) reveals considerable dietary variability of the inhabitants and distinct changes in the diet through time. Dietary data from the early period (A.D. 1275–1325) indicate males had greater access to meat and cultigens (maize, beans, squash), while females had greater access to wild plant foods. During the late period (A.D. 1325–1400), however, male and female diets become virtually indistinguishable; meat and wild plant foods decline in importance and the consumption of cultigens is emphasized. A series of social and environmental factors (increased population, increased aridity, marginal agricultural lands, etc.) interacted to create food stress, which compelled the inhabitants to focus attention on an agricultural rather than horticultural lifestyle in the late period. Responses to food stress at Grasshopper Pueblo include reduction of household size, increased storage, and increased mobility (and ultimately migration), as well as a breakdown in status whereby males no longer had greater access to preferred foods (e.g., meat and cultigens). The bone chemistry data also reveal some spatial variability, suggesting decisions regarding subsistence activities may have been made primarily at the household level.
... Dendrochronology is certainly one of the most precise dating methods available to archaeologists, and in places where suitable trees for dating are found, such as the mountainous and plateau zones of the American Southwest, it is the predominant technique used, especially for dating j pueblo sites. Yet, as other studies (Dean 1969;Graves 1982) have demonstrated dendrocbmnological anomalies do occur and thus the / application of treoring dates to archaeological contexts must include arguments of relevance linking the terminal ring date or dates to prehistoric events of interest. Unfortunately, when only noncutting dates (i.e. ...
... The rapid expansion of Grasshopper, the need for trees and rock to construct the pueblo rooms, very likely accounts for the high frequency of log stockpiling, reuse, and scavenging from abandoned sites or downed trees. This is also a behavioral pattern which has been noted at the Canyon Creek Ruin (Graves 1982). Of the 35 rooms, the Great Kiva, and the Comdor represented in Table I X , 25 reflect aspects of one or more of these activities, identified by the occurrence of early estimated tree-ring dates that do not overlap with construction dates. ...
A probabilistic technique for estimating outer ring loss on non-cutting date samples from rchaeological sites in east-central Arizona is described. This approach makes it possible to estimate the death date for Ponderosa pine and Douglas fir, and to some extent juniper and pinyon samples that lack the final ring. At sites such as the Grasshopper Ruin which produce few cutting dates, this technique can be used with date clustering and date overlap to improve intrasite chronology, to estimate the rate of room construction over time, and to identify other kinds of behavioral patterning including room remodeling, log reuse or stockpiling, and building material preferences.
... I have examined (Graves 1982a) three hypotheses that might account for this anomalous pattern of tree-ring dates: (1) natural processes differentially eroded the exterior rings of primary and secondary beams; (2) primary beams were inserted into rooms after they were first built or were replaced more often than secondary beams; or (3) secondary beams were stockpiled or reused from older structures. Several lines of evidence suggest that only the third hypothesis can account for the dating anomaly at this cliff dwelling. ...
... Nevertheless, it should be recognized that even with over 100 tree-ring dates and subsidiary information, it is not always possible to assign unambiguous construction dates to rooms at Canyon Creek (see Graves [1982a]). Thus, as did Haury (1934:34), I assumed rooms were added to the periphery of the settlement in a regular fashion, and that no more than five years separated the construction of immediately adjoining rooms. ...
... Thus, secular or cyclical climatic changes are unlikely to have been the sole factor contributing to rapid depopulation of the region as has been proposed for the Colorado Plateau (Euler et al. 1979;Schoenwetter and Dittert 1968). However, this does not preclude the possibility that more subtle sorts of climatic variability or environmental change may have interacted with increasing population size to produce unstable conditions (see Graves et al. [1982aGraves et al. [ , 1982b). Nevertheless, climatic changes alone cannot account for the complete depopulation of the area. ...
Tree-ring data from the Canyon Creek Ruin, east-central Arizona, are analyzed to evaluate two competing interpretations of pueblo growth at this well-preserved cliff dwelling. Despite an anomalous dating pattern, a logistic model best describes pueblo growth. Room construction activity is linked to population increase, which, in turn,m ay be divided into two varieties: natural increase, and immigration of households into the settlement. Logistic growth also accounts for population increase within the larger area of the Grasshopper region. I review the processes promoting both local and regional population increase, as well as subsequent abandonment of the mountains of Arizona. I suggest that rapid depopulation may have occurred after A.D. 1375 because late prehistoric communities lost access to nonlocal goods that had previously allowed populations to
increase beyond local resource constraints.
Archaeologists are often faced with the problem of integrating chronological evidence produced by different dating techniques. This issue of integration has received much less attention in the archaeological literature than have the workings of individual dating techniques. Procedures for combining different kinds of dates do exist. These procedures are discussed and illustrated by example, with special reference to situations involving the integration of tree-ring and other kinds of dates. Also considered is the question of when different kinds of dating evidence should not be integrated but instead should be treated independently. The goal of these discussions is to encourage the development of transparent and rigorous archaeological chronologies.
Dendroarchaeological evidence is not distributed evenly over archaeological contexts, but instead clusters within specific realms that apply to spatially and temporally discrete categories of material culture. This paper addresses the realm of Puebloan dendroarchaeology and, specifically, the concepts and principles relevant to interpretation of tree-ring data at different scales of time and space, the latter including behavioral, geographic, and social space.
The Sierra Ancha is part of a region below the Mogollon Rim that is not well known archaeologically. Despite the lack of knowledge about the area, it has figured as an important component in speculation about cultural events in adjacent areas. Surveys undertaken by Gila Pueblo in 1929 and 1930 provide valuable information about otherwise undocumented remains in the southeastern Sierra Ancha and the middle Cherry Creek drainage. Despite its limitations, the survey located many sites and collected basic data. Analyses of these data inform on several important aspects of southeastern Sierra Ancha prehistory and have significant implications for investigation of the larger region.
We may not typically think much about the labor required to build prehistoric pueblo dwellings, or about the effort involved in collecting the stone, soil, and wood necessary for construction. Data from Arizona cliff dwellings and surface pueblos are presented, indicating the scale of labor required and the extent of environmental impacts created. © 2012
The idea of a Mogollon people living in the mountains and adjacent deserts of Arizona and New Mexico began in controversy and continued in debate for over twenty years (Reid 1986). When proposed by Emil Haury in 1936, most southwestern archaeologists were reticent to accept the Mogollon as distinct from the neighboring Anasazi and Hohokam. Archaeologists working on the Colorado Plateaus were further annoyed by the suggestion that the Mogollon possessed ceramics earlier than their own Anasazi. As evidence accumulated, primarily through the prodigious field research of Haury and Paul Martin and the careful delineation of argument by Erik Reed. objection to the general notion of a Mogollon people gradually subsided. The invention of alternative cultural labels and the development of rather divergent working definitions of the Mogollon for different regions, however. continued to keep Mogollon studies in weakly disguised disarray. Although a biennial Mogollon conference ratifies broad acceptance of a cultural entity distinct from Anasazi and Hohokam, a commonly shared definition of Mogollon is unavailable (see Dean 1988; Haury 1988; Speth 1988; Wilcox 1988). Starting with the perspective that the mountains required an adaptation distinct from either the desert or plateau. one establishes a baseline for explorin't other behavioral differences that should, in time. lead to a more consistent picture of what it was to be Mogollon. The picture presented here,therefore, is one perception derived from a particular theoretical approach to the reconstruction of past behavior and from extensive research in the mountains of Arizona. It is a picture of a resilient, robust people skilled in the technology of hunting, gathering, gardening, and domestic crafts performed in a richly diverse and demanding environment; a people who, by the beginning of history, had become part of the uniquely southwestern pueblo agriculturalist pattern (see Martin 1979; Rice 1980; Cordell 1984b; see Haury 1985:406 on the Tarahumara connection). © 2006 by The University of Alabama Press. All rights reserved.
Continuing interest in the process of aggregation in the American Southwest requires accurate reconstruction of population figures for prehistoric pueblos. Since site size (rooms/floor space) often serves as a proxy for population size, evaluation of site growth is crucial for population reconstruction. Problems in dating are discussed with reference to Pot Creek Pueblo in northern New Mexico. The construction sequence is interpreted using 236 treering dates and wall abutment relations between rooms. Site growth and changing site structure are described. Calculation of room use life permits formulation of two contrasting models of pueblo growth. Construction and remodeling dates indicate a short use life for the adobe rooms. I argue that, although the pueblo grew in surface area and numbers of rooms, population size may not have changed dramatically from A.D. 1270 to 1310, with population increase before abandonment at about 1320.
