Despite Fewkes's reports of 1909 and 1916 that a legend of a battle with the Anasazi was obtained from the Utes, such knowledge was denied by all Southern Utes queried in 1963. Their matter-of-fact acceptance of a common identity between the ruins builders and the modern Pueblo peoples, together with evidence from Spanish documents, led to the hypothesis that the Utes have had a long, unbroken (if somewhat peripheral), and for the most part nonviolent contact with the Anasazi-Pueblo. Spanish records also suggest that eastern Utes in early historic times had become quite unlike their more closely studied Great Basin relatives, and that as participants in the general plains culture they had further contact with the Pueblos and the Spanish. Evidence that an Athapascan intrusion successfully blocked Ute-Pueblo contact seems far from conclusive.

A general outline of, and justification for, this study, as well as a discussion of the major related concepts, are presented in this chapter.

Carl Lloyd supervised an archaeological survey of the area adjacent to the Ackmen pueblo in southwestern Colorado in 1937 in order to supplement the data recovered from the excavation of this famous site. Sixty-six quarter-sections (each equivalent to a ¼ sq mi area) measuring ½ mi on each side, were intensively surveyed by a large crew. Members of the crew were stationed 100 ft apart along the ½-mi width of the quarter-section, and the entire crew walked across the ½-mi length of the quarter-section.

From each section consisting of 4 quarter-sections, 2 diagonal quarter-sections were selected for investigation. Lloyd assumed that 66 surveyed quarter-sections would reflect adequately, at least, on a 33-sq mi area near the rim. This assumption was based on the rather large (50%) sampling fraction that he employed. He was not certain that his survey methods would produce a contribution to the archaeology of the area and stated the uncertainty as follows: “Given a discontinous intensive archaeological survey of a region, what contributions can be made to the archaeology of that region by means of an analysis of the data thus obtained?” (Lloyd 1938:282). He did not explicitly answer that question during the course of his report. However, I believe that his answer was implicitly positive, that is, the kind of survey he performed did produce a meaningful contribution to the archaeology of the Ackmen-Lowry region.

In cultural terms, the Southwest has never been satisfactorily defined. This is particularly true of the southern boundaries. Archeologists usually include the territory occupied by the groups we term Anasazi, Hohokam, Mogollon, and Patayan; it is this area that will be considered here.

Physiographically (Atwood 191+0; Darton 1925; Fenneman 1931), the northern and eastern parts of this area belong primarily to the Colorado Plateaus Province; the southern and western parts comprise a portion of the Basin and Range Province. Physiographers subdivide these major provinces into lesser units having more significance for the archeologist. The Colorado Plateaus Province is marked primarily by high mesas and plateaus underlain by nearly horizontal strata of strong, cliff-producing rocks locally covered by volcanic features or domed by igneous intrusions. This extensive area is drained largely by the Colorado River and its tributaries. Among the distinguishing features are the hundreds of deeply entrenched canyons and great retreating cliffs or escarpments.

The identification of pottery artifacts modeled after Cucurbita species from the Mochica culture of Peru is discussed. The evidence strongly suggests these artifacts were modeled after cultivars of C. moschata, not C. pepo as reported from time to time in botanical literature.

The river Basin Surveys' program, particularly in the Columbia River Basin, has had a peculiar role in American archaeology. Generally speaking, archaeological research programs should be oriented toward a specific problem such as the study of a certain culture sequence or an inquiry into a particular time horizon. In contrast River Basin Surveys' problem has been to examine in detail almost every phase of every culture that is represented over a vast area. True, the field of research has been limited to those portions of river basins that are scheduled to be inundated upon the completion of a number of dams, but because of the aridity of the Columbia Basin a vast majority of the aboriginal population was concentrated along the major streams. Thus the reservoirs planned for those streams will flood a large portion of the cultural material existing in the region.

The site of Pueblo Viejo extends knowledge of Ronquin-style ceramics farther east along the Orinoco than hitherto reported and provides new information on Ronquin settlement of the south bank of the Orinoco River. Laja de Manapiri adds another prehistoric settlement to the relatively thick cluster in the Caicara-Parmana area. Both sites contain Late Ronquin ceramics in a variety of forms including vessels, adornos, and figurines. Early Ronquin material is found at Laja de Manapire and is probably present at Pueblo Viejo. The Middle Orinoco is important archaeologically because of the possibility that the Ronquin styles link the Antillean area and northern Venezuela with the Guianas and the Upper Orinoco-Amazon region.