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Stephen E. Nash 9 June 1999 |
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South Leggett Pueblo (also known as Reserve Survey No. 57; LA 3563), is a small, four-room pueblo in west-central New Mexico (Figure 1).
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Figure 1: Map showing the location of South Leggett Pueblo  |
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The site consists of a four-room (Rooms A, B, C, E) pueblo with an associated but unattached masonry room (Room D; Figure 1; see Martin and Rinaldo 1950:440-445) that may, at one time, have been attached to the main room block (Figure 2). Nearby is a pithouse ("Pithouse A", or "pithouse") that Martin and Rinaldo (1950:446-448) initially designated a kiva, but which did not yield artifacts and features that are characteristic of these specialized architectural forms (Figure 3). Therefore the designation was changed to "pithouse" though "kiva" remains written on some of the artifact bags |
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EXCAVATION STRATEGY Martin and Rinaldo (1950:403) stated that the Southwest Expedition's fieldwork of 1949 was devoted to finding and excavating sites of the Reserve Phase. As of 1949, only two sites of that phase had been excavated: Oak Springs Pueblo (Martin, Rinaldo, and Antevs 1949) and Starkweather Ruin (Nesbitt 1938). Their efforts were indeed successful, and by the end of the 1949 season they had excavated three such sites: Wet Leggett Pueblo, South Leggett Pueblo, and Three Pines Pueblo. They now noted that the sample of excavated rooms from the Reserve Phase numbered more than 30 (Martin and Rinaldo 1950:413). Martin and Rinaldo (1950) do not offer a detailed treatment of the excavation strategy employed at South Leggett Pueblo. It appears, however, that the strategy was more rigorous than that employed at Oak Springs Pueblo two years previously (Martin, Rinaldo, and Antevs 1949:30-32). At that site, once the overburden was removed, and the "general trend" of walls was discerned, a pit was excavated through room fill to determine the depth of deposit. Once ascertained, the pit was expanded until walls were encountered and excavation continued until the floor/wall intersections were reached (Figure 4). At South Leggett Pueblo, the subsite provenience information differentiates between room trenches and room fills, as well as floor-feature designations. Once the overburden was removed and wall outlines were delineated at South Leggett Pueblo, it seems that a bisecting trench was excavated to the floor, after which the two bulks of fill were removed. |
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excavated. Rooms A and D background partially excavated. North firepit in Room C.  |
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| From a theoretical standpoint, the Reserve Phase research was designed address a number of questions. Martin and Rinaldo recognized certain Anasazi influences in the Reserve Phase material, and sought to determine: 1) where the Anasazi influences originated; 2) whether there were actual Anasazi immigrants in the Reserve Phase sites; 3) whether Anasazi traits were borrowed; 4) when this mixing occurred; 5) whether kivas were associated with Reserve phase pueblos and if pithouses evolved into kivas; 6) what social and political changes accompanied the Anasazi innovations; 7) which Mogollon traits persisted and which were displaced; and 8) if the advent of masonry rooms was abrupt or progressive (Martin and Rinaldo 1950:415). Excavation Records Folder #4 (Rinaldo Southwest Expedition: 3 Pines [Pueblo], Wet Leggett Pueblo, Cochise House, South Leggett Pueblo, Three Pines Pueblo, Pine Lawn Pueblo) in the Field Museum of Natural History Anthropological Archives Box SW 3 contains archaeological record sheets for Pithouse A, Room A, Room B, Room C, and Room D. These include architectural and feature data, but no artifactual data. Accession Files Accession File 2443 lists the following: "Artifacts - approx. 150; Pottery vessels (whole or restorable) - 17; Human skeletons (fragmentary) - 4; Potsherds (total collected) - 13,292 (Figure 5). Total number of specimens: 170 (plus sherds). There is no indication in this list as to how many of these are from South Leggett Pueblo. |
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