Chaco Canyon - Development Updates
7/20/07 • A Slice Through Time: Exploration Trenching on the Kanab Creek
The initial test excavations for the KCAP have begun. As we attempt to negotiate a route for an access road between two large, mostly buried Late Pueblo II sites (circa A.D.1100 – 1200), backhoe trenching reveals features and artifacts. Our attempt is to understand the context of the feature’s artifacts, that is, the relationships and associations between them. The trench provides both vertical and horizontal perspectives on cultural features such as surface rooms, pithouses, hearths, occupation surfaces and so on. Actually, a trench doesn’t provide much more than a peek - what does a pithouse look like if you just clip a small piece of it? We can only speculate but this is the first step in hypothesis building - the hypotheses about the function of these features will eventually be tested through open excavations.
Natural features have their own problems of interpretation. One of our research goals is to understand what effect the natural environment had on the agriculturalists living along Kanab Creek. While the creek provided one of the more favorable settings for agriculture in southern Utah, we recognize that planting fields along it was a dynamic, potentially risky strategy...
(see the full report)
6/4/07 • Research Design and planned Project Map
See attached pdf file - map is on page 18
5/21/07 • Archaeological Dignitaries visit Chaco Canyon
Featuring: Dr. Emily Dean, SUU, Barbara Frank, SUU, Gardiner Dalley, BLM Cedar City Field Office, Geralyn McEwen, BLM St George Field Office, Brad Heap, Kanab.
Plus Doug McFadden, Abe McCowan, Don Sprecher, Boni McCowan
Development Updates
7/20/2007
A Slice Through Time: Exploration Trenching on the Kanab Creek
The initial test excavations for the KCAP have ... [Details]
6/4/2007
Research Design and planned Project Map
See attached pdf file - map is on page 18 [Details]
5/21/2007
Archaeological Dignitaries visit Chaco Canyon
Featuring: Dr. Emily Dean, SUU, Barbara Frank, ... [Details]
Photo Gallery
Chaco in the News
The booming West
(The Economist)
KANAB, UTAH - DOUG MCFADDEN, an archaeologist, walks through the site of a future suburb picking up shards of pottery more than a thousand years old. The 280-acre field in south-west Utah is littered with Indian artifacts (more...)
Developer seeks to preserve ancient ruins
(The Salt Lake Tribune)
KANAB - The ancient Anasazi carved out an existence in the hills outside Kanab. They dug pits, hunted elk and grew maize. Now, St. George (more...)