2001 Research Objectives

	Pollen samples collected from within a stratigraphic column allow researchers to identify plants in the Chaves area during its occupation by the Pueblo.

As part of the long-term research plan to understand local and regional responses to climate change, population migrations, and village aggregation at Chaves Pueblo, the 2001 season will focus on the question of population immigration at the site.

Architectural indications of substantially different construction techniques, coupled with the artifactual evidence of regional exchange and interaction provide a strong justification for assessing the presence of both indigenous and migrant populations at the settlement. This is a difficult question to assess without the benefit of human remains, bone isotope data, or DNA evidence (Duff 1998), but recent research into the dynamics of population migration and relocation provide a set of important potential explanations for the architectural diversity at the Chaves site. Cameron (1998) has recently proposed that ancestral Pueblo peoples may have utilized architectural styles to symbolize and communicate ethnic and cultural differences between regional populations in the Southwest. Architecture, much like language, dress, and belief systems, does differ through time in the Southwest, but also communicates cultural differences between historic Pueblo groups.

Archaeologists agree that the 13th and 14th centuries was the period of greatest interaction between regionally distinct ancestral Pueblo communities due to population migration. This makes the research at Chaves Pueblo particularly significant for understanding how migrant and indigenous populations created new, larger communities during this period.

If this is the case at Chaves Pueblo, we should be able to isolate where and when the different construction techniques were being utilized at the settlement. Similarly, we should expect differences in the amounts of non-local artifact types and styles between the adobe-dominant and masonry-dominant portions of the settlement. There are spatially separate midden (refuse) areas associated with the main masonry mound and the attached adobe architectural complex, allowing the potential to test for intrasettlement differences in artifact types. Migrant populations would be expected to have continuing ties to homeland populations, and may also have continued to produce ceramic and lithic technologies that differ from the host population (Cameron 1995; Duff 1998; Futrell 1998).

Background information Past research at Chaves Pueblo: What we know 2001: What we are looking for

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