Sherwood Ranch Pueblo | |
 Aerial view of the pueblo ruin | |
| Location | Springerville, Arizona |
|---|---|
| NRHP reference No. | 05000887 [1] |
| Added to NRHP | August 17, 2005 |
Sherwood Ranch Pueblo is an historic pueblo located overlooking the Little Colorado River, near Springerville, Arizona. It has two areas of habitation, consisting of over 800 rooms and was inhabited from approximately 1000-1450 A.D.
The older section of the pueblo was inhabited during the Pueblo III Period, from 1250-1300. [2] [3] It has a variety of masonry styles, and several different building materials were used, including large sandstone boulders, smaller sandstone, and river cobblestones. At the southern end of the northern pueblo rests a large great kiva, with an eastern entry ramp. The construction began with a few central rooms, and as the population grew additional rooms were added as necessary, without any central plan. [4] The great kiva was constructed first, along with a suite of rooms immediately adjacent. The additional rooms were added as needed to the north and east of this original structure. [5]
The newer, southern section was inhabited from 1310-1370. [3] It was a much more planned construction, with rooms constructed of tabular sandstone arranged in a geometric grid pattern around the central plaza, which in turn had a single rectangular great kiva on its southern side. [6]
The pueblo was one of the largest situated in Little Colorado River valley, and one of the few which was continuously inhabited throughout the Pueblo III and Pueblo IV periods. The ancient pueblo residents constructed numerous irrigation canals, utilizing the waters of the river. [7]
Excavations were conducted on the site during the 1980s and 1990s by the White Mountain Archaeological Center, [3] although no papers were published regarding those excavations, and any artifacts from those digs have not been shared with the public. [2]
Sherwood Ranch Pueblo had formerly been known by the name "Raven Ruin", but became known by the name of the ranch on which it was located when it was donated to The Archaeological Conservancy in 2003 by Ruth and Wendell Sherwood. [8] The site clearly has two distinct areas of habitation, the older is situated to the north, with the newer portion is at the southern end of the site. [9] The site was inhabited from approximately 1000 through 1450 A.D., and has features of both the Mogollon and Anasazi cultures, to the south and north respectively. It contains two kivas and estimates of the total number of rooms varying from 250 to over 800. [8] [10] The pueblo is claimed as ancestral by both the Hopi and Zuni tribes, and was one of the last settlements to be abandoned at the end of the Pueblo IV era. [3]
In the Southwestern United States, Pueblo (capitalized) refers to the Native tribes of Puebloans having fixed-location communities with permanent buildings which also are called pueblos (lowercased). The Spanish explorers of northern New Spain used the term pueblo to refer to permanent indigenous towns they found in the region, mainly in New Mexico and parts of Arizona, in the former province of Nuevo México. This term continued to be used to describe the communities housed in apartment structures built of stone, adobe mud, and other local material. The structures were usually multi-storied buildings surrounding an open plaza, with rooms accessible only through ladders raised/lowered by the inhabitants, thus protecting them from break-ins and unwanted guests. Larger pueblos were occupied by hundreds to thousands of Puebloan people. Various federally recognized tribes have traditionally resided in pueblos of such design. Later Pueblo Deco and modern Pueblo Revival architecture, which mixes elements of traditional Pueblo and Hispano design, has continued to be a popular architectural style in New Mexico. The term is now part of the proper name of some historical sites, such as Acoma Pueblo.
The Wupatki National Monument is a United States National Monument located in north-central Arizona, near Flagstaff. Rich in Native American archaeological sites, the monument is administered by the National Park Service in close conjunction with the nearby Sunset Crater Volcano National Monument. Wupatki was established as a national monument in 1924 and was listed on the National Register of Historic Places on October 15, 1966. The listing included three contributing buildings and 29 contributing structures on 35,422 acres (14,335 ha).
Chaco Culture National Historical Park is a United States National Historical Park in the American Southwest hosting a concentration of pueblos. The park is located in northwestern New Mexico, between Albuquerque and Farmington, in a remote canyon cut by the Chaco Wash. Containing the most sweeping collection of ancient ruins north of Mexico, the park preserves one of the most important pre-Columbian cultural and historical areas in the United States.
Mogollon culture is an archaeological culture of Native American peoples from Southern New Mexico and Arizona, Northern Sonora and Chihuahua, and Western Texas. The northern part of this region is Oasisamerica, while the southern span of the Mogollon culture is known as Aridoamerica.
Navajo National Monument is a National Monument located within the northwest portion of the Navajo Nation territory in northern Arizona, which was established to preserve three well-preserved cliff dwellings of the Ancestral Puebloan people: Keet Seel, Betatakin, and Inscription House. The monument is high on the Shonto plateau, overlooking the Tsegi Canyon system, west of Kayenta, Arizona. It features a visitor center with a museum, three short self-guided trails, two small campgrounds, and a picnic area.
The Sinagua were a pre-Columbian culture that occupied a large area in central Arizona from the Little Colorado River, near Flagstaff, to the Verde River, near Sedona, including the Verde Valley, area around San Francisco Mountain, and significant portions of the Mogollon Rim country, between approximately 500 CE and 1425 CE.
Canyons of the Ancients National Monument is a national monument protecting an archaeologically-significant landscape located in the southwestern region of the U.S. state of Colorado. The monument's 176,056 acres (71,247 ha) are managed by the Bureau of Land Management, as directed in the Presidential proclamation which created the site on June 9, 2000. Canyons of the Ancients National Monument is part of the National Landscape Conservation System, better known as the National Conservation Lands. This system comprises 32 million acres managed by the Bureau of Land Management to conserve, protect, and restore these nationally significant landscapes recognized for their outstanding cultural, ecological, and scientific values. Canyons of the Ancients encompasses and surrounds three of the four separate sections of Hovenweep National Monument, which is administered by the National Park Service. The monument was proclaimed in order to preserve the largest concentration of archaeological sites in the United States, primarily Ancestral Puebloan ruins. As of 2005, over 6,000 individual archeological sites had been identified within the monument.
Chimney Rock National Monument is a 4,726-acre (1,913 ha) U.S. National Monument in San Juan National Forest in southwestern Colorado which includes an archaeological site. This area is located in Archuleta County, Colorado, between Durango and Pagosa Springs, and is managed for archaeological protection, public interpretation, and education. The Chimney Rock Archaeological Site has been listed on the National Register of Historic Places since 1970. U.S. President Barack Obama created Chimney Rock National Monument by proclamation on September 21, 2012 under authority of the Antiquities Act.
Salmon Ruins is an ancient Chacoan and Pueblo site located in the northwest corner of New Mexico, USA. Salmon was constructed by migrants from Chaco Canyon around 1090 CE, with 275 to 300 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 resulted in extensive modifications to the original building, with the reuse of hundreds of rooms, division of many of the original large, Chacoan rooms into smaller rooms, and emplacement of more than 20 small kivas into pueblo rooms and plaza areas. The site was occupied by ancient Ancestral Puebloans until the 1280s, when much of the site was destroyed by fire and abandoned. The pueblo is situated on the north bank of the San Juan River, just to the west of the modern town of Bloomfield, New Mexico, and about 45 miles (72 km) north of Pueblo Bonito in Chaco Canyon. The site was built on the first alluvial terrace above the San Juan River floodplain.
The Awatovi Ruins, spelled Awat'ovi in recent literature, are an archaeological site on the Hopi Indian Reservation in northeastern Arizona, United States. The site contains the ruins of a pueblo estimated to be 500 years old, as well as those of a 17th-century Spanish mission. It was visited in the 16th century by members of Francisco Vásquez de Coronado's exploratory expedition. In the 1930s, Hopi artist Fred Kabotie was commissioned by the Peabody Museum to reproduce the prehistoric murals found during the excavation of the Awatovi Ruins. The site was designated a National Historic Landmark in 1964.
Kinishba Ruins is a 600-room Mogollon great house archaeological site in eastern Arizona and is administered by the White Mountain Apache Tribe. It is located on the present-day Fort Apache Indian Reservation, in the Apache community of Canyon Day. As it demonstrates a combination of both Mogollon and Ancestral Puebloan cultural traits, archaeologists consider it part of the historical lineage of both the Hopi and Zuni cultures. It is designated as a National Historic Landmark.
Tuzigoot National Monument preserves a 2- to 3-story pueblo ruin on the summit of a limestone and sandstone ridge just east of Clarkdale, Arizona, 120 feet above the Verde River floodplain. The Tuzigoot Site is an elongated complex of stone masonry rooms that were built along the spine of a natural outcrop in the Verde Valley. The central rooms stand higher than the others and they appear to have served public functions. The pueblo has 110 rooms. The National Park Service currently administers 58 acres, within an authorized boundary of 834 acres.
Hundreds of Ancestral Puebloan dwellings are found across the American Southwest. With almost all constructed well before 1492 CE, these Puebloan towns and villages are located throughout the geography of the Southwest.
The Trinchera Cave Archeological District (5LA9555) is an archaeological site in Las Animas County, Colorado with artifacts primarily dating from 1000 BC to AD 1749, although there were some Archaic period artifacts found. The site was added to the National Register of Historic Places in 2001 and is located on State Trust Lands.
The Pueblo III Period was the third period, also called the "Great Pueblo period" when Ancestral Puebloans lived in large cliff-dwelling, multi-storied pueblo, or cliff-side talus house communities. By the end of the period, the ancient people of the Four Corners region migrated south into larger, centralized pueblos in central and southern Arizona and New Mexico.
The Ancestral Puebloans, also known as the Anasazi, were an ancient Native American culture that spanned the present-day Four Corners region of the United States, comprising southeastern Utah, northeastern Arizona, northwestern New Mexico, and southwestern Colorado. They are believed to have developed, at least in part, from the Oshara Tradition, which developed from the Picosa culture. The people and their archaeological culture are often referred to as Anasazi, meaning "ancient enemies", as they were called by Navajo. Contemporary Puebloans object to the use of this term, with some viewing it as derogatory.
The Lower Zuni River Archeological District is an area of approximately 29,500 acres, comprising 89 distinct archeological sites. It is located approximately 24 miles northeast of St. Johns, Arizona, at the Arizona–New Mexico border, along the Zuni River.
Puerco Ruin and Petroglyphs are the ruins of a large Indian pueblo, which reached its peak around 1300 CE, containing over 100 rooms. It is the largest known archeological site within the Petrified Forest National Park.
Rattlesnake Point Pueblo is a single-story masonry pueblo ruin dating from the 14th and 15th centuries A.D. It is located in Lyman Lake State Park in between St. Johns and Springerville.
