Manzanares Pueblo

Manzanares Pueblo is a Coalition-period (AD 1200–1325) community comprised of adobe roomblocks, possible pit structures, and several possible agricultural features.

While the current tree-ring dates place occupation at the end of the Coalition period, around AD 1300, some of the ceramic evidence gathered during the survey suggests several features may have been occupied earlier in the Coalition period.

Manzanares PuebloManzanares Pueblo is sited on low, southeast-facing hills and on the floodplain at the southern periphery of the Sangre de Cristo foothills, just northwest and above Rio Galisteo. The site has been assigned LA numbers—LA 10607 and LA 1104. The site is privately owned. In addition to the prehistoric features, it contains several modern structures, a road, driveway, a water tank, and a windmill.

Four projects have focused on Manzanares. Nels Nelson mapped the site in 1915 and dug approximately 17 test units in the structures. In the 1970s, Charlie Steen excavated 27 rooms in the largest roomblock (Nelson’s Structure 6). Nelson’s brief excavation notes are on file at the American Museum of Natural History. Sheen’s documents and photographs are archived at ARMS in Santa Fe (ARMS site file LA 10607); the artifacts are curated with the Museum of New Mexico, Laboratory of Anthropology (under LA 10607). The Steen documentation is limited, and the artifacts have been minimally processed. In 2007 Wilson, Cohen, and Love used samples from Steen’s collection to compare attributes shared by Galisteo Black-on-white and Mesa Verde Black-on-white ceramics as possible evidence of a Mesa Verde migration into the Galisteo Basin at the end of the thirteenth century. In addition to this work, W.S. Stallings collected tree-ring samples from the site in 1933, although the provenience of the samples is unclear. Published dates provide a cluster of cutting dates at AD 1295. New, unpublished dates from the Steen excavations (Nelson’s Structure 6/7) submitted by James Snead provide additional support for the AD 1295 date for this portion of the site.