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Ceramics Tell the Story of an Ancient Southwest Migration

By Guest PostJune 5, 2012Culture, Scienceancient, archaeologist, arizona state museum, byron cummings, ceramics, charles adams, colorado plateau, confluence, diaspora, doctoral dissertation, east central arizona, emil haury, excavations, four corners region, gila, grasshopper, homolovi, jannelle weakly, jeff harrison, kayenta polychrome vessel, kayenta region, kinishba, masters theses, mogollon rim, patrick lyons, perforated plates, point of pines, river, san pedro, social unrest, southwest migration, university of arizona, vessel, winslow

Another look at a nearly 80-year-old pottery collection at the Arizona State Museum is yielding new information about migrants who abandoned the Four Corners region.

Approximately eight centuries ago, people living along the Colorado Plateau in what is now the Four Corners area faced a crisis. Environmental changes that devastated their agricultural practices and likely aggravated social unrest forced significant numbers of these people to move away.

Many of them headed south into central and southern Arizona and western New Mexico, into lands already inhabited by well-established groups.

What is remarkable about this diaspora is that while there is no written record of what happened, much of what archaeologists know is told in the ceramic bowls, plates and figurines that were created and left behind when those civilizations later collapsed. (more…)

Presidential Cuisine a Focus of Archaeology at Montpelier

Arizona State Museum zooarchaeologist Barnet Pavao-Zuckerman and her students are analyzing the remains of an early American president’s dining table.

Arizona State Museum archaeologists are looking through historic table scraps in an effort to find out more about the kitchen of America’s fourth president and author of the U.S. Constitution.

For about a decade, Barnet Pavao-Zuckerman and her students from the University of Arizona have been part of ongoing excavations at Montpelier, the home of James and Dolley Madison. The archaeology of Montpelier’s grounds offer some light on what day-to-day life was like from the pre-Revolutionary War era to well into the 18th century. (more…)

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Ceramics Tell the Story of an Ancient Southwest Migration

Presidential Cuisine a Focus of Archaeology at Montpelier