Location

Old School Gallery
Old School Gallery
4009 Ice Caves Rd, Ramah, NM 87321

Category

Date

Nov 16 2025

Time

2:00 pm - 3:00 pm

Labels

Onetime Event

Talk: The Archaeology of the El Morro Valley AD 1200-1375

The Archaeology of the El Morro Valley / AD 1200-1375

Sunday, November 16, 2:00-3:00 pm
By Keith Kintigh
Professor Emeritus of Archaeology at Arizona State University.

This presentation focuses on the archaeology of the El Morro Valley during its heyday, the time from A.D. 1200 to 1375. Coming soon after the collapse of Chaco Canyon, this short period saw the Valley’s population dramatically rise, stabilize, and then collapse with the late A.D. 1300s exodus to the historic Zuni villages.

Early in this period, the El Morro Valley’s Los Gigantes Site had imposing, Chaco-inspired, architecture and was the ritual and perhaps political center for scores of nearby, small pueblos. Starting in the mid A.D. 1200s, these small pueblos were replaced by more than 20 large, planned, plaza-oriented Pueblo IV towns (such as Atsinna). By about A.D. 1375, the Valley’s thousands of occupants left these large pueblos and moved downstream to the historic Zuni villages, the fabled Seven(?) Cities of Cibola.

Keith will discuss how we understand those dramatic changes in settlement and society based on evidence from the excavations at Los Gigantes and another Zuni-area post-Chacoan settlement, the extensive systematic surveys in three Zuni-area projects, and his earlier research on the settlement patterns of the large El Morro/ Zuni Pueblo IV towns.

  • 00

    days

  • 00

    hours

  • 00

    minutes

  • 00

    seconds