Seeking the Center Place: Archaeology and Ancient Communities in the Mesa Verde Region

The continuing work of the Crow Canyon Archaeological Center has focused on community life in the northern Southwest during the Great Pueblo period (AD 1150- 1300).Researchers have been able to demonstrate that during the last Puebloan occupation of the area the majority of the population lived in dispersed communities and large villages of the Great Sage Plain, rather than at nearby Mesa Verde. The work at Sand Canyon Pueblo and more than sixty other large contemporary pueblos has examined reasons for population aggregation and why this strategy was ultimately forsaken in favour of a migration south of the San Juan River, leaving the area depopulated by 1290.

Seeking the Center Place is the most detailed view we have ever had of the last Pueblo communities in the Mesa Verde region and will provide a better understanding of the factors that precipitated the migration of thousands of people.