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Recent
photos from the site
Click the photo above for recent photographs taken on the Chaves-Hummingbird
site.
Hosting
this web site and daily updates from the field are sponsored by
The Institute for the Study of Earth and Man at Southern Methodist
University.
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Pottery
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Click
to review pottery styles and samples.
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Site
Map
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Click
to see a detailed site map.
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Peer
below
ground
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Spot
architectural features at Chaves with twin-electrode soil
resistivity data.
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Chaves-Hummingbird
Welcome
to Chaves-Hummingbird Pueblo, a large, ancestral Pueblo village
occupied during the 14th and 15th centuries...
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July
28: Last day on site!
 July
28th marked the last day of the Earthwatch Expedition, and as
the last of the participants left the site I realized how amazingly
productive the past two weeks had been. Read
more from the team!
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July
26
There
are two rules in archaeology. First, you will find the most important
finds the final day of your excavations. Second, your most important
finds will show up just outside your excavation area. Read
more from the team!
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July
24
 ...Life
on the dig has not lacked interesting visitors, including rattlesnakes,
horned toads, tarantulas and other many-legged insects... Read
more from the team!
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July
20-21
 ...As
a gift to the project, the Chaves family rented a small airplane
and pilot to take aerial photos of the site. The new photo shows
the areas under excavation. Our thanks to the Chaves family for
this very generous gift, now you can all envision where we are
working on the site. Read more from
the team.
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July
18
...Think
of these one- and two-story adobe (clay-rich mud, if you will)
buildings exposed to the elements after the site occupants left
some time during the late 14th century. As the weather takes its
toll on the mud walls, the buildings begin to degrade and collapse.
The melting mud erodes into the now-roofless rooms, slowly filling
the rooms as the walls fall apart... Read
more!
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July
17
...
The earlier room is a rectangular adobe structure with a central
hearth that still contained the ashy remains of the last fires
that heated the room nearly seven centuries ago. After the room
had outlived its usefulness, a second later room was built over
the earlier, filled room.... Read
more!
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Research
underway by anthropologists from Southern Methodist University, and
sponsored by The Earthwatch Institute, will involve archaeological excavation
and analysis of materials from the pueblo. The site is near the Rio
Puerco, 25 miles west of Albuquerque, New Mexico.
Chaves-Hummingbird
Pueblo is one of only two major settlements built by ancestral Pueblo
peoples in the Rio Puerco Valley during the period spanning the abandonment
of the Four Corners region (Mesa Verde and Kayenta areas) and the arrival
of the Spaniards in 1540. The research will study the processes of late
prehistoric village formation and population migration in this portion
of central New Mexico, the present home of several modern Pueblo communities.
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The
Rio Puerco basin occupies roughly 16,000 square kilometers of
northwestern New Mexico. Rio Puerco is one of the main tributaries
of the Rio Grande, entering the river near Bernardo.
 Learn
more about this watershed here.
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Create your
own map, showing the Rio Puerco in relation to major roads and rivers,
and to state, federal and Native American lands. Click
here for Enviromapper.
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