This volume of the Animas-La Plata series describes the results of excavations at 9 sites at the western end Ridges Basin approximately 2 miles south of Durango, Colorado, as part of the Animas-La Plata (ALP) Project. The Western Cluster encompassed two and possiblythree groupings of single small Pueblo I habitations around thevillage site known as the Sacred Ridge site. The volume is concluded with a summary discussion of chronology, architecture, material culture, population, subsistence, and settlement within both local and regional cultural contexts.

Volume XV of the Animas-La Plata series (SWCA Anthropological Research Paper No. 10) contains thirteen chapters and multiple appendixes by a multitude of authors. The introductory chapter presents the broad archaeological context of the ALP project, explains some of the terminology used in writing about the ALP skeletal remains, and briefly characterizes the nature of the assemblage with respect to basic demographics such as the age and sex distribution of the human remains recovered from the different ALP sites. The NAGPRA process through the several stages of this long-term project is described, as is its influence on data collection. The remainder of the volume presents the results of bioarchaeological data collection and analysis conducted by different analysts who address mortuary practice, paleodemography, skeletal and dental morphology, health indicators in adults and children, biological variation, and ethnicity of the basin's Pueblo I residents. The final two chapters document the methods employed in the processed human remains (PHR) analysis from Sacred Ridge, and present the results of a first analysis of these data.

Archaeologists are increasingly recognizing the early Pueblo period as a major social and demographic transition in Southwest history. In Crucible of Pueblos: The Early Pueblo Period in the Northern Southwest, Richard Wilshusen, Gregson Schachner and James Allison present the first comprehensive summary of population growth and migration, the materialization of early villages, cultural diversity, relations of social power, and the emergence of early great houses during the early Pueblo period. Six chapters address these developments in the major regions of the northern Southwest and four synthetic chapters then examine early Pueblo material culture to explore social identity, power, and gender from a variety of perspectives. Taken as a whole, this thoughtfully edited volume compares the rise of villages during the early Pueblo period to similar processes in other parts of the Southwest and examines how the study of the early Pueblo period contributes to an anthropological understanding of Southwest history and early farming societies throughout the world.

This report compiles evidence concerning cultural affiliation with NAGPRA items recovered from the Animas-La Plata (ALP) project area near Durango, Colorado, for 25 modern tribal groups residing in Arizona, Utah, Colorado, and New Mexico. Though a small percentage of the cultural resources in the ALP project area represent earlier and later cultures, most identified archaeological remains, including NAGPRA items, date to the Pueblo I period (ca. A.D. 700-900). A preponderance of geographic, biological, oral tradition, linguistic, and archaeological evidence reasonably leads to the conclusion that the modern Keresan Pueblos of Acoma, Laguna, and Zia are the closest cultural affiliates to the Pueblo I period sites in the ALP project area.

This volume of the Animas-La Plata series describes the results of excavations on Blue Mesa, a borrow area just south of Durango, Colorado, as part of the Animas-La Plata (ALP) Project. In 2002 and 2003, SWCA excavated seven sites, all of which dated to the early Pueblo I period (AD 750-850): four habitations and three limited activity sites. One of the limited activity sites also contained a small Basketmaker II component and a Paleoindian component. The authors use these limited excavation data in conjunction with previous survey data to address issues of chronology, population, and settlement on the mesa and to make comparisons with nearby Ridges Basin, the location of the ALP reservoir.