ABSTRACT
For the information in this study I am grateful to Jack Young of the State of New Mexico Historic Preservation Division. The site in question is named LA 12147 located in the Bisti bad-lands, Sandoval county in Northwest/Central New Mexico. The site is on lands owned by the Department of Interior held in trust by the Bureau of Land Management. The legal co-ordinates for the site fall in the San Ysidro Quad (100 square mile area) Township15 north, Range 1east, Section 29 (mile square). This is a prehistoric Ancestral Puebloan (commonly called Anasazi) Room Block remnant. Based on observed surface ceramic types the date of the site would range from 650BP to 400BP. The primary features are buried masonry foundations for rectilinear domestic units. Some observed features are situated in ‘mounds’, indicating buried remains in situ: one is a refuse midden with buried artifacts and a grey staining to the soil and another is a dark carbon stain and scattered masonry. The site lies south and west of a large Jurassic sandstone outcropping, east of Canada de los Milpas Mesa and west of the same named drainage. It represents a Puebloan domestic site and habitations, where maze production in the flood plain would have been the primary pursuit. The soil type is a sandy loam and is eroded by intermittent sheetwashing. Vegetation on site is composed of range grass and Cholla (cacti). A pipeline bisects the site and has disturbed approximately 25 per cent of one feature. Very little of the structural remains projects above the ground, as may be seen in this site photograph.
