Departmental News

Posted:  Nov 10, 2017 - 12:00am

The Archaeology and History of Pueblo San Marcos Change and Stability, University of New Mexico Press
Edited by Ann F. Ramenofsky & Kari L. Schleher

San Marcos, one of the largest late prehistoric Pueblo settlements along the Rio Grande, was a significant social, political, and economic hub both before Spanish colonization and through the Pueblo Revolt of 1680. This volume provides the definitive record of a decade of archaeological investigations at San Marcos, ancestral home to Kewa (formerly Santo Domingo) and Cochiti descendants.

The contributors address archaeological and historical background, artifact analysis, and population history. They explore possible changes in Pueblo social organization, examine population changes during the occupation, and delineate aspects of Pueblo/Spanish interaction that occur with Spaniards’ intrusion into the colony and especially the Galisteo Basin. Highlights include historical context, in-depth consideration of archaeological field and laboratory methods, compositional and stylistic analyses of the famed glaze-paint ceramics, analysis of flaked stone that includes obsidian hydration dating, and discussion of the beginnings of colonial metallurgy and protohistoric Pueblo population change.

Ann F. Ramenofsky is a professor emerita of anthropology at the University of New Mexico. She is the author of Vectors of Death: The Archaeology of European Contact and the coeditor of Unit Issues in Archaeology: Measuring Time, Space, and Material and Exploring Cause and Explanation: Historical Ecology, Demography, and Movement in the American Southwest. Kari L. Schleher is laboratory manager at the Crow Canyon Archaeological Center and an adjunct assistant professor of anthropology at the University of New Mexico. She is a contributor to Potters and Communities of Practice: Glaze Paint and Polychrome Pottery in the American Southwest, AD 1250 to 1700 and to articles in the Journal of Archaeological Science and Kiva.