Excerpts from the 2000 Research Proposal

Project Summary

This document describes proposed archaeological research to be conducted by the University of Chicago Summer Archaeological Field Studies Program at the site of LA 162 in Bernalillo County, New Mexico, between 18 June and 15 August, 2000.  This work will be conducted under the direction of Mark Lycett, Director of the Summer Archaeological Field Session at the University of Chicago.  This work will be carried out by ten to sixteen student crew members under the direction of the field director,  four teaching assistants, and special consultants for metallurgical, faunal, botanical, and sedimentological research.

 LA 162 is a large adobe and masonry pueblo situated on the east side of the Sandia Mountain range, along the west bank of Arroyo San Pedro.  There is evidence of an extensive fourteenth to early fifteenth century occupation at this site.  A more restricted and apparently short lived settlement was established at this location in mid to late sixteenth or early seventeenth century.  This settlement shows evidence of incorporation into Spanish colonial distribution systems, but was abandoned sometime in the mid-seventeenth century.  Several features suggest post-residential use of the site for herding.  Two historic place names, Paa-ko, and San Pedro are associated with this site.  The former is a Spanish transcription of an indigenous place name, while the latter refers to a mission or visita occupied sometime during the seventeenth century.

 Prior to 1996, three large scale excavation projects had been conducted at this site, resulting in the excavation of nearly 400 rooms.  Only the WPA sponsored excavations completed in the 1930s have been adequately published.  Extant museum collections and field notes from these projects are curated at the American Museum of Natural History, the Museum of New Mexico, and the Maxwell Museum of Anthropology at the University of New Mexico.  Recent archaeological survey in the vicinity of the site indicates the presence of more than 40 small architectural sites and artifact scatters, most of which are contemporaneous with the site's occupation.

 During the summer of 1996, Northwestern University Archaeological Field School conducted a program of surface documentation and extramural test excavations at LA 162 under State permit SP-269.  Surface observations and test excavations suggest that the occupational history and construction sequence of  LA 162 is complex.  Results of excavations, conducted under State permits SE-120 in 1997,  SE-134  in 1998, and SE-144 in 1999 confirm intensive and spatially differentiated use and reuse of extramural space at LA 162.  Excavations in two separate areas of the historic plaza of the North Division indicate a complex sequence of occupation, reoccupation, and construction including reuse of plaza for animal penning.  Excavations within the masonry terrace associated with metal slags exposed a series of well defined feature associated with 17th century metal working.  All of these constructions are associated with Late Glazeware ceramic assemblages.

 The proposed research at LA 162 is a continuation of the research program begun in 1996. This research focuses on two interrelated issues: changes in spatial organization and site structure of settlements from the fifteenth to seventeenth centuries A.D., and changes in the organization of indigenous land use and economic systems during the same time period.  The proposed research program includes surface documentation and excavations on LA 162, documentation of small sites in the vicinity of LA 162, and work with existing notes and collections.  Because of the complex sequence of previous research at LA 162, documentation of the contemporary site surface is important to the integration of previously collected and newly recovered data.  Among our most important tasks during the 2000 field season will be to field check Nelson's incomplete  maps of the site surface.  Other tasks to be completed on the fenced portion of the site are continued excavation of facilities associated with metal working and horizontal exposure of anomalous plaza features first recorded by Nelson .  Controlled, stratigraphic excavations of up to 0.07 percent of the site surface are discussed in this proposal.

 During the 1996 season, we began discussion with landowners in the immediate vicinity of LA 162 in order to 1) promote public protection of this and other sites and 2) obtain permission to conduct future data recovery on private lands.  These efforts are continuing.   In addition we are actively participating in the development of a site steward program for LA 162. Data recovery on private land will be limited to contexts where archaeological sites are directly threatened by future construction activity.  On these sites, we will initiate a program of mapping, surface collection, and limited excavation consistent with the field techniques employed on LA 162.  Analysis of artifacts, fauna, soil, and botanical samples from all collections and excavations will be conducted both at the field laboratory and at archaeological laboratories at the University of Chicago.

 During the 1996 the project began a multifaceted program of public education.  In order to promote public awareness of archaeological research and historic preservation, the field school actively engaged casual visitors to the site and conducted educational tours and lectures for public groups. We expect this program to continue during 2000.

 Study of extant museum collections is an important component of this research program.  The proposed fieldwork is designed to facilitate and complement this study.  Based on collections research completed in 1997 and 1998, we have begun to develop a database on architectural and intramural depositional variation at LA 162.  Analysis of this data base will focus on isolating patterns within contiguous complexes of rooms and comparing the prehistoric and historic occupations at the site.

Research Issues

 Since 1996, our research at LA 162 has addressed the relationship between Spanish colonization and the historical transformation of indigenous societies in the northern Southwest.  We view colonial transformations of indigenous settlement, economy, and society as a multidimensional process.  Here, we limit our focus to two interrelated problems within this process: 1) trends in the occupational history and spatial organization of  Pueblo settlements; and 2) variation in the organization of indigenous economic practices and their articulation with colonial production and distribution networks.  We are particularly interested in understanding how variation in the duration and intensity of incorporation into colonial networks influences the permanence, periodicity, and stability of occupation at Pueblo villages and structures changes in the organization of local economies.

 Although residential instability may have been a generalized feature of the colonial period in the Middle Rio Grande Valley (Herr and Clark 1997; Lycett 1995; Schroeder 1979), we believe it is important to consider variation in the course and outcome of this process.  Settlements with relatively small populations and short or intermittent occupation spans must be investigated in order to understand the differential survival of Pueblo communities in the seventeenth century.

 The extension of Spanish hegemony over the northern Southwest in the sixteenth and seventeenth centuries redefined the social and environmental matrix of indigenous occupation in this region.  Demographic and social disruption associated with this period led to changes in settlement and land use throughout the Middle Rio Grande Valley (Lycett 1989, 1995; Ramenofsky 1996; Reff 1991; Upham 1992).  We suggest that long term changes in the size, stability, and number of households, social networks, and communities influenced the organization and stability of both indigenous and colonial cultural systems.  By the mid-seventeenth century, fewer and less populous indigenous settlements occupied a smaller overall area.  Missions had become the focus of settlement, incorporating a declining indigenous population into new systems of production centered on European crops and domestic animals, new technology, and emerging exchange networks (Lycett 1995).

 One outcome of these processes was the creation of novel and integral economic and social networks that linked colonial and indigenous populations.  The differential persistence of indigenous communities, settlements, and places in the colonial period ramified through the web of interdependent productive systems dependant on the organization of social labor (Wolf 1982) and its expropriation.  Our work at LA 162 is designed to investigate the timing, nature, and magnitude of these historical processes by linking the study of occupational history with the study of productive organization.

 Pueblo habitation sites have complex and cumulative occupational histories.  Ethnographic, ethnoarchaeological, and historical research have shown that intensively occupied residential locales have complex histories of construction, maintenance, abandonment, and reuse (Cameron 1991, Cameron and Tomka 1993). Architectural and depositional patterns in these contexts are strongly influenced by demographic variables as well as duration of occupation, periodicity of reoccupation, and post-occupational modification.  Long term shifts in the size, composition, and growth rate of resident populations should, therefore, result in formal variation in the size and spatial organization of settlements.  At least two patterns have been documented ethnographically (Lycett 1995).  Over time and coincident with population decline, a complex, discontinuous pattern of occupied, unoccupied but maintained, and un-maintained architectural space may develop in multi-room, agglutinated settlements.  Alternately, radical contraction of occupied area and spatial reorganization may occur where the scale of structure abandonment is sufficiently large and its tempo sufficiently fast (cf. Cameron 1992).

 LA 162 offers a unique opportunity to extend our understanding of site structural variation in late prehistoric and early historic pueblo sites.  The historic and prehistoric habitation areas of this site are well defined and associated with distinct ceramic and faunal assemblages.  Large areas of contiguous habitation space associated with each of these occupations have been excavated, creating an existing database for site structural research.  Through a combination of surface documentation, extramural excavation, and work with extant notes and collections, it should be possible to define the distribution and density of structures, features, and artifact deposition associated with each of these occupation periods. These data will be used to contrast the size, scale, and spatial organization of the prehistoric and historic occupations.  We are particularly interested in how existing structures and extramural space are modified and restructured by subsequent occupation.  Many of the day to day activities associated with large settlements occur in and are structured around extramural space.  We expect the distribution and content of features and the density of artifact deposition in these  areas to be especially useful in understanding contact period transformations.  Incorporation of European domesticates into Pueblo economies may entail the reorganization of existing extramural space into new kinds of facilities such as corrals, smelters, and threshing floors. Changes in the organization of agricultural production, wild taxa and raw material procurement, and processing activities may influence the distribution, density, and contents of assemblages deposited in these contexts.  We expect excavation of features associated with historic metallurgy to directly contribute to our knowledge of colonial technologies and their organization.

Data Recovery on LA 162

Site Mapping
 

 Obtaining a complete and accurate spatial representation of the site surface remains our highest priority.  During the 1996 season, we completed a Feature Map showing the location of cultural and natural features on the site surface (Lycett 1997).  Features recorded by the mapping crew included depressions and mounding associated with previous excavations, land surface modification associated with the 1930s excavations, and recent disturbance, as well as mounds, masonry alignments, and other features associated with residential occupation of the site.  A total of 167 features have been assigned mapping numbers. During the 1999 field season, we completed field checking this feature map.  A total of 3367 transit shots have been taken for topographic mapping.  These points are currently being entered into a database to facilitate quantitative transformation and computer mapping.  To date, approximately 70% of these data have been entered.  We expect to produce a corrected Feature Map and Topographic Map of the site during the Spring Quarter, 2000.

 In addition to feature mapping, in 1996 the mapping crew established a metric coordinate system used in maintaining horizontal control during all phases of data recovery.  This coordinate grid system is aligned on a (true) north-south/ east west orientation with its origin point (0E, 0N) arbitrarily designated to be the northwest corner of the property.  The location of all proveniences is described by the distance of its southwest corner south and east of this point.

 Thirty six points of horizontal and vertical control  have been established on the site.  The first of these is located at 92E/-140N and will serve as the main datum point for horizontal and vertical control during the 2000 season.  A spatial representation of the coordinate system, along with a record of the exact location of all primary and secondary control points and all data collection units will be maintained on the Site Record Map as part of the permanent record of this project.

 Nelson's field notes from LA 162 include map sheets for the site.  Unfortunately, the map of LA 162 is the least complete of all extant site plans prepared by Nelson.  Each division of the site is mapped on multiple large sheets of graph paper using a separate and independent mapping grid.  In most cases only edges of excavated room and, in some cases, roomblock edges are mapped.  There are, however, handwritten notes on these maps that are not duplicated elsewhere.  While the incomplete condition of these maps and the large number of map sheets make these documents somewhat unwieldy, they are the most important available source indicating the spatial distribution of Nelson's work at the site.  During the upcoming field season we propose to use copies of these map sheets to determine the exact location of the excavation units represented.  We will then re-map these units using the surveyor's transit and stadia rod.
 
 
 

Plaza Excavations

 Three sets of extramural excavations are planned for the 2000 season at LA 162. Each of these excavations is described in more detail, below.  A maximal total of 82  square meters of area (0.070% of the total site area) is included in this research design, although we anticipate exposing significantly less area than this maximum.  Among the tasks to be completed during the 2000 season  is exposure and documentation of a set of extramural wall alignments first documented by Nelson in 1914.  We also propose to test probable masonry enclosures that formed part of the extensive corral system on the southern third of the historic plaza. In addition, we propose to expand excavations on the western portion of the masonry terrace bearing evidence of historic copper smelting in order to fully document the range of facilities associated with colonial metallurgy at the site.  Each of these excavations is expected to contribute to our understanding of temporal and spatial variation in cultural and natural deposition; site structure; and economic organization at LA 162.

 Excavation procedures will closely follow those first established in 1996 (Lycett 1997).  Horizontal control will be maintained in one meter square units.   Each one meter by one meter unit will be designated by the location of its southwest corner in the metric coordinate system.  Prior to excavation, a point of vertical control will be placed proximate to the excavation unit.  The elevation of these subdata will be measured from the main mapping datum using the surveyor's transit and stadia rod.  All depth measurements for a given unit were taken from the nearest control point and recorded as depth in centimeters below subdatum.  All units will be hand excavated in a controlled, scientific manner in stratigraphic increments no larger than 10 centimeters.  All excavated matrix will be passed through 3.18 millimeter hardware cloth. Recovered material will be bagged by artifact class, counted, and weighed to the nearest 50 grams with a spring balance.  Non-artifactual material including pebbles, gravel, and clay clods will be weighed then discarded.  Cobbles will be counted, and their volume estimated.  A record will be kept of the dry volume of all excavated soil.  Artifacts occurring within features or on visible surfaces will be piece plotted as will intact artifacts and formal tools in any context.  All other artifacts will be provenienced to unit and level.  In addition to excavator notebooks, standard excavation forms describing excavation and recording procedures, soils, cultural materials, features encountered, samples taken, and excavator comments will be completed for each level (see Lycett 1997: appendix  5).  A scale, plan view map will be drawn and black and white photographs will be taken at the base of each level.  The excavation supervisor will maintain a unit form recording all activity on and samples taken from each excavation unit.  Features will be recorded and sampled separately.  A profile drawing will be completed for at least one least one side wall of each unit.  Visible strata will be characterized by color, texture, structure, and consistence.  Upon completion of documentation, excavated units will be immediately backfilled to the original contour of the ground surface.

 Several units may be judgementally selected for continuous column sampling. These units will be selected on the basis of their potential for plant macrofossil preservation.   Stratigraphic samples 20 centimeters by 20 centimeters in area and ten centimeters in depth (four liters) will be collected unscreened from a profiled face of the unit for flotation and plant microfossil analysis.  In addition to the continuous columns, bulk samples for flotation will be collected from features or other contexts with visible macrobotanical remains.  Coarse fractions from these samples will be sorted separately, and all cultural materials retained for further analysis.   A sample of 236.60 cm3 of matrix will be collected from each excavated level for sedimentological analyses.  A stratified systematic unaligned sample of soil will be taken from plaza surfaces for chemical and plant microfossil analysis.  This sampling design, first employed in 1997, emphasizes spatial dispersion and ease of execution while avoiding periodicities (see Lycett 1998a).  Within each one meter square excavation unit, one ten centimeter by ten centimeter area will be selected for sampling.  The surface of each selected sample area will be scraped with a clean trowel, then excavated to a depth of 2.5 centimeters, providing 250 cubic centimeters of sample for sedimentological and palynological analysis.

 In previous seasons we have documented a wide array of features on three superimposed  plaza surfaces.  In 2000, we propose to expand contiguous excavations in the Historic Plaza to include a 25 m2 block with its southwest corner at 25E/-140N (Figure 4).  This block represents 3 per cent of the estimated total Historic Plaza area (circa 800 m2).  Following existing procedures, each exposed plaza surface will be mapped, artifacts will be point provenienced, and  features will be individually excavated.  A stratified, systematic, unaligned sample of sediment will be taken from each identifiable plaza surface for chemical and plant microfossil analysis (Lycett 1998a, Morrison and Truran 1998).  The goals of this excavation are to 1) expose and document the extramural wall alignments first noted by Nelson, and 2) clarify the relationship between these walls, domestic animal enclosures, and plaza surfaces.

 Prior to 1997,  excavations at LA 162 have concentrated on architectural contexts rather than plaza surfaces and exterior areas.  Much of the daily activity of pueblo settlements, however, was conducted in and structured around these open areas.  A comprehensive analysis of changing land use and site structure must examine these areas as well as architectural space.  Sites with extensive extramural excavations, such as LA 12 (Creamer 1993) and LA 162, exhibit evidence of intensive domestic use of plazas in the form of abundant and well preserved feature and artifact distributions.  Excavations at LA 162 indicate strong potential for the recovery of artifact, faunal, and botanical samples from features and plaza surface contexts within the Historic Plaza Group and previous work  indicates a complex sequence of occupation, reoccupation, and construction within the historic plaza including at least two successive plaza surfaces, conversion of plaza area to animal penning, and construction of at two successive barriers to animal movement.  Each of these occupations is associated with late Rio Grande Glazeware ceramics, European introduced domesticates, and radiocarbon samples calibrated to the seventeenth century.

 The depositional sequence within the historic plaza is discussed in Lycett (1997, 1998a) on the basis of two stratigraphic test units excavated in 1996, and Block excavations in 1997.  Outside of corral space, 21 to 36 centimeters of disturbed, mixed silt loam overlie at least two superimposed plaza surfaces.   Within enclosure walls that define corral structures, the uppermost stratum appears to consist of decomposed animal dung.  This stratum, designated surface 1, lies directly atop the uppermost plaza surface.  Surface 2 is the last occupied plaza surface identified.  It was first encountered at a depth varying from 1.56 to 1.68 meters below datum. Surface 3 was the earliest plaza surface exposed (see Lycett 1998a, 1999a; Seddon 1998, 1999; Folsom 1999a for a more detailed discussion of these excavations).

 There are several extramural features within the plaza.  Kiva I (Nelson's Kiva B) and Kiva II (Nelson's Kiva A) were tested by Nelson (1914a, 1914b) and fully excavated during the 1930s (Lambert 1954).  A third depression (Mapping Feature 20) is located in the southwest quarter of the plaza.  Handwritten notes on  Nelson's (n.d.a.) map sheets, however, indicate that he encountered wall alignments in this area (Figure 3) .  Nelson referred to these alignments as "old buried house ruin in a hollow supposed to be a kiva.  These walls alignments form three sides of a small structure, 4.88 meters by at least 3.66 meters, located in the southwest quadrant of the plaza.  Although Nelson partially cleared overburden from this area, there is no record of excavation of this structure or any underlying deposits.  Nor is there any record of the construction, chronology, or association of this  architectural feature.  We believe that this structure, isolated in an open plaza and located relatively near the present day ground surface, is likely to be a colonial period or post-residential feature.  Based on Nelson's map and our own feature mapping, be believe that the proposed excavation will at least partially expose this structure.

 We propose excavating the manifestly disturbed overburden to expose these walls and any associated features.  We are particularly concerned to determine 1) the layout of this structure, 2) the association between this structure and surface 2, the uppermost plaza surface, and 3) the articulation between this structure and the probable corral wall to the south (Mapping Feature 26).  We do not intend to excavate beyond the articulation of this structure and its associated surface, whether that surface is a constructed plaza surface or lies above the plaza.  Because the complete extent of this structure is unknown, we propose to remove overburden from up to 25 contiguous units until all exterior walls of the structure are exposed.  We will open as few units as possible beyond the original block excavation, and in no case will we open more than 50 square meters.

 Excavation in each one meter square unit will proceed no further than  the uppermost plaza surface, approximately 26 to 30 centimeters below the present day ground surface. When the structure and associated  surface have been exposed throughout the block, the surface will be mapped, artifacts will be point provenienced, and exposed features will be sampled or completely excavated.  A stratified systematic unaligned sample of soil will be taken from each identifiable plaza surface for chemical and plant microfossil analysis.  Within each one meter square area, one ten centimeter by ten centimeter area will be randomly selected for sampling.  The surface of each selected sample area will be freshly scraped with a clean trowel, then excavated to a depth of 2.5 centimeters, providing 250 cubic centimeters of sample for sedimentological and palynological analysis.  Following complete documentation of the uppermost plaza surface, underlying plaza surfaces will be exposed and documented using the same procedures.

 Through these excavations, we expect to greatly expand our understanding of the spatial structure of extramural features on the historic plaza.  In addition, we expect to recover additional artifactual, botanical, and sedimentological samples whose analysis will bear directly on the changing organization of contact and colonial period space use and economy.

 Several stone enclosures have been documented at LA 162, including two in the Historic Plaza and one appended to a prehistoric roomblock in the South Division (Lycett 1997, 1998a, 1999a).  in the historic plaza, open, masonry enclosures abut both the north and south roomblocks.  The northern stone enclosure (Mapping Features 7 and 8) has a small opening near its center.   A prominent enclosure (Mapping Feature 9) abuts roomblock XI.  The westward continuation of the northern wall of this enclosure (Mapping Feature 166) was exposed in 1998.  This wall stub probably joined with Mapping Feature 26 to enclosure the southwest corner of the plaza. These results indicate  that the southern stone enclosure of the historic plaza group is only part of a larger complex of enclosures located in the southern third of the plaza. Some of these enclosures were constructed to pen animals, while others appear to have been intended to prevent penned animals from entering an enclosed area.  The construction sequence documented in 1997 and 1998 confirms that substantial deposits of animal dung had accumulated prior to the construction of the stone enclosures and that these constructions superseded an earlier corral represented by lines of post holes.

 We propose to excavate one meter by one meter test units in each of two previously undocumented probable enclosure areas in the southern third of the historic plaza.  Past experience has shown that the density of features can be very high in these areas, making one meter by one meter exposures difficult to interpret.  For that reason, we propose to reserve the option of expanding  excavations to an area no greater than two meters by two meters for each test unit if it includes one or more features.  These excavations will be conducted in order to obtain soil samples, profiles, and artifact samples from each of these morphologically similar feature on the site.  One unit has been randomly chosen for excavation from within the mapped interior space of these features (Table 1).  We expect data recovered from these excavations to clarify the roles and temporal associations of these features and their relationship to similar features already documented at LA 162.
 

Features Associated with Metal Working.

 During the 1996 field season,  a scatter of metal slag, including items from several stages in the smelting process, was identified in spatial association with a south facing masonry terrace located southeast of the Historic Plaza Group (Lycett 1997).  Preliminary analysis of slags from this area suggest that they derive from "poor", or incomplete smelting of copper ores (Hall, personal communication 1997).  During the 1997 season, a  probable smelting facility was excavated on this terrace [162/ 97E/-172N/F1] (Lycett 1998a).  In 1998 and 1999, we expanded excavations to the eastern and southern limits of the terrace in order to expose the full range of intact facilities associated with copper smelting at LA 162 (Lycett 1999a, 2000; Stettler 1999).

  The terrace  is a "U" shaped construction of irregularly coursed cobbles approximately 12 to 14 meters north-south by 23 meters east-west (Figure 5).  This terrace is a discrete structure superimposed on architectural debris and midden deposits.  There is no record of excavation in this feature either in 1914 or during the W.P.A. excavations in the 1930s.  Nevertheless, a northeast-southwest trench with a western extension has been excavated through the center of the terrace.  The "L" shaped trench bisecting the terrace is 4.2 meters (east-west) by 7 meters (north- south) at its greatest extent, with a 1.9 meter by 4 meter extension to west.  It is similar in shape and placement to other excavation trenches bisecting roomblocks at the site.  Despite the extensive disturbance caused by this trench, intact deposits remain on the easternmost third, and possibly western edge, of the terrace.  Surface collections made in 1996 and subsequent observations suggest spatial differentiation in smelting byproducts across the terrace, with a greater density of ore on the western edge of the terrace and a greater density of slags on the eastern side.  These differences may be due to functional differentiation in processing facilities on different parts of the terrace.

 The facility excavated in 1997 was designated 97E/-172N/F1.  At its maximal extent, the feature is 6 meters north-south by 2.2 meters east west.  It is oriented at 10o east of north. This feature is the product of several episodes of construction and use.  It has clearly been subjected to repeated episodes of burning and reconstruction.  In plan, this facility is  composed of two segments: the northernmost 2 meters which include a ventilator shaft, a multi-course masonry wall, a low adobe wall, and an alignment of irregular fired clay blocks; and the southern 4 meters which include single course masonry bounding walls to the south and west, a small ventilation inlet at the southern end, and at least two superimposed prepared surfaces separated by charcoal lenses and covered with a linear mound of burned earth.    Excavations in 1998 exposed a southern extension of this facility, a similar and adjacent facility  on the eastern edge of the terrace, and an underlying trench feature.  Each of these facilities is the product of several episodes of construction and use, with at least two superimposed constructions.

In 1999, we continued  horizontal excavations on the eastern half of the  masonry terrace.  The first stratum removed was the  lower surface of the copper smelting facilities excavated in 1997 and 1998.  This surface is constructed of a highly  compact, grey-brown silty clay loam and incorporates several mold made adobes.  At the base of the excavations is a compact red-brown silt loam with charcoal flecking that appears to be the ground surface on which several metal working features were originally constructed.

 In 1999, we began testing the western half of the terrace.  These excavation were undertaken in order to investigate the variation in ore and slags noted in the surface collection, and to determine the extent of disturbance caused by the trench bisecting this terrace.  Excavations were conducted in seven contiguous one meter by one meter units with their southwest corner at 88E/-172N (Figure 6).   Excavations were discontinued at a probable  smelter surfaces similar to those recovered in 97E/-172N/F1.  The north face of the south terrace wall and the east face the west terrace wall and two internal east-west alignments were also exposed.  Because it became evident  that intact features do remain, and that these are formally and possibly functionally similar to the facilities recovered on the eastern terrace, it was decided to halt excavation for 1999.  The western terrace was designated 88E/-172N/F1.

 We propose to expose a total of twenty-four square meters, including seven square meters of previously excavated area, on the western half of the terrace in order to fully document 88E/- 172N/F1.   Excavation within this exposure will continue to the lowest level associated with metal working facilities.  Standard excavation and recording procedures, discussed  above, will be followed. Excavation will discontinue at the base of deposits associated with the terrace (approximately 4.3 meters below datum). We do not propose to excavate midden deposits underlying this masonry terrace.  These excavation will help clarify the internal chronology of late occupations at the site, provide direct information on the morphological and functional range of features associated with metal production, and greatly enhance our understanding of Colonial period technologies.

 Early colonial metallurgy in New Mexico is not well documented either historically or archaeologically (but see Warren and Weber 1979; Ramenofsky et al. 1997), and the articulation between these technological systems and indigenous economies is virtually unknown.  These excavations offer a unique opportunity to expand our understanding of the nature and organization of copper smelting and iron working technology in historic New Mexico.

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