Salmon Pueblo: Chacoan Outpost & 13th-Century Beacon in the Middle San Juan of Northwest New Mexico
Paul F. Reed, Center Preservation Archaeologist and Chaco Scholar at Salmon Ruins Museum
Salmon Pueblo
What is Salmon Pueblo?
Salmon Pueblo was constructed as a Chacoan outlier—a settlement or enclave of people from Chaco Canyon—around A.D. 1090. At that time, the pueblo had 275 to 325 original rooms spread across three stories, an elevated tower kiva in its central portion, and a great kiva in its plaza. Subsequent use by local Middle San Juan people (beginning in the 1120s) resulted in extensive modifications to the original building: hundreds of rooms were reused, many of the original large rooms were divided into smaller rooms, and more than 20 small kivas were built into pueblo rooms and plaza areas. The site was occupied by Pueblo people until the 1280s, when much of the site was destroyed by fire and abandoned.
Project History
Salmon was excavated between 1970 and 1978 under the direction of Cynthia Irwin-Williams (Eastern New Mexico University) in partnership with the San Juan County Museum Association. The San Juan Valley Archaeological Program resulted in the excavation of approximately one-third of Salmon. More than 1.5 million artifacts and samples were recovered during the course of the project. In 1980, Irwin-Williams and co-principal investigator Phillip Shelley wrote, edited, and compiled a multi-volume, 1,500-page report. This document fulfilled the reporting requirements for the series of grants under which the project had been completed, but it was not intended for publication. Throughout the 1980s, Irwin-Williams and Shelley worked on a modified and greatly reduced manuscript, with the goal of producing a publishable report. This effort ended with Irwin-Williams’ death in 1990.
In 2000, the Center for Desert Archaeology met with Salmon Executive Director Larry Baker, and forged a multi-year partnership. The partnership is part of the Center’s endeavor to build a preservation archaeology network across the Southwest. The Center’s effort at Salmon began in 2001 as the Salmon Reinvestment and Research Program, which I was selected to direct. The research initiative comprised two primary tasks: first, to condense and edit the original 1980 Salmon report into a new, published technical report; and second, to conduct additional primary research in several targeted areas, with the goal of producing material for the detailed technical report, as well as a synthetic volume.
The three-volume report, entitled Thirty-Five Years of Archaeological Research at Salmon Ruins, New Mexico, was jointly published by the Center for Desert Archaeology and Salmon Ruins Museum in 2006. The synthetic volume Chaco’s Northern Prodigies: Salmon, Aztec, and the Ascendancy of the Middle San Juan Region After AD 1100, which I edited, was published by the University of Utah Press, Salt Lake City, in August 2008.
I should add that another goal of the partnership with Salmon Ruins Museum developed soon after I came on board. The Museum was facing a serious challenge in housing and caring for those 1.5 million artifacts and samples. We successfully pursued a Save America’s Treasures grant in the amount of $175,000 that enabled the Museum to significantly upgrade collections care and management.” For more about that project, follow the link below to read about collections management at Salmon Pueblo.
