Introduction
 

LA 162 or Paa-ko, was a relatively small and discontinuously settled ancestral Pueblo  that persisted at the geographical margins of colonial New Mexico until the mid-seventeenth century.  In contrast to mission locations in the nearby Galisteo and Albuquerque-Belen Basins, this settlement was never central  to European  occupation in the region.

 Since 1996, our reseach at LA 162 has addressed the relationship between Spanish colonization and the historical transformation of indigenous societies in the northern Southwest.  We are particularly interested in the occupational history and spatial organization of contact period settlements, and  the organization of indigenous economic practices and their articulation with colonial production and distribution networks Over the last 85 years several large scale excavation projects have been conducted at LA 162.

Both surface documentation and excavation suggest that the occupational history and construction sequence is complex and discontinuous.  There is a widespread and intensive occupation early fifteenth centuries, followed by about a century of abandonment. Colonial period (ca. AD 1540 to AD 1680) occupation of the site is restricted to a single plaza group in the southwest quarter of the north division.  Features associated with this colonial period occupation include soil and water control facilities, corral enclosures, and a copper smelting facility.
 

 Horizontal exposure of superimposed plaza surfaces provides a sample of temporally distinct extramural occupation surfaces and their associated assemblages.  In the remainder of this poster, we focus on two plaza surfaces constructed and used during the colonial occupation of the site.  We  explore the occupational histories of these plaza surfaces then relate these histories to formal and functional aspects of their  associated ceramic assemblages.
 
 

 Previous excavations at LA 162 have concentrated on architectural contexts rather than plaza surfaces and exterior areas.

 Many of the day to day activities associated with large settlements occur in and are structured around extramural space.  We expect the distribution and content of features and the density of artifact deposition in plaza and exterior areas to be especially useful in understanding contact period transformations.  Incorporation of new technologies and domesticates entails the reorganization of space into new kinds of facilities as well as changes in the contents of assemblages deposited in those contexts.

 In 1997 and 1998 we exposed a 54 square meter area of the historic plaza surface.

 Several large masonry enclosure walls were exposed in these excavations.  Together they define a system of corrals and enclosures located in the southern third of the plaza.  These masonry corrals overlie and paralell an earlier wooden corral system defined by alignments of postholes.

 The interior space of the corrals is associated with SURFACE 1, an irregular, undulating stratum composed primarily of animal dung.

Ceramics, fauna, and other artifacts from this stratum are consistent with 17th century occupation.

 These Excavations clarify the complex occupational sequence in this plaza group.  The earliest documented occupation dates to the early seventeenth century.  A wholesale reconstruction of the plaza occured sometime during the mid-seventeenth century, creating a new surface with a high density of associated features.

 Sometime later, this space became restructed in a colonial land use system incorporating domestic animals.  This restructuring included construction of two successive complexes of corral enclosures.

 Each of these occupations is associated with Late Rio Grande Glazwware ceramics and radiocarbon dates calibrated to the seventeenth century.

 In a period that may have spanned less than 50 years, the historic plaza underwent a complex sequence of occupation, reoccupation, and construction that included successive plaza surfaces and new kinds of facilities.

SURFACE 2

Surface 2  is the last occupied plaza surface identified in these excavations.  Forty three features were identified in these excavations including several ash filled depressions, as well as a hearth, small pits, post holes, a large trash filled pit, and two burned jacal structures.
 

SURFACE 3

 Ceramics dominate the plaza feature assemblages, comprising 82.9 percent of all artifacts recovered by weight.  A total of 5,238 ceramics from forty nine features on plaza surfaces 2 and 3 are included in this analysis.

 Additonal meaurements were taken on a sample of  rim sherds with at least two centimeters of rim arc from features containing at least two measurable rims (183/309).  The sample includes 86 utility ware sherds and 97 decorated
sherds from nine features on surfaces 2 and 3.

     By weight, utility wares make up 61.2 percent of the assemblage from surface 3 and 56.8 percent of the assemblage from surface 2.

 Rio Grande Glazewares make up 96 percent of the decorated assemblage, with carbon painted whitewares and biscutwares each making up about 2 percent of the remainder. The vast majority of identifiable glazeware sherds, more than seventy percent by weight, are late glazes.

 In this sample, the overwhelming majority of utility ware vessels are jar forms.  The only utility ware bowls identified from plaza features are miniatures with openings less than ten centimeters in diameter.

 Conversely,  jars make up only 38.24 percent of the decorated assemblage.  Decorated jar forms are restricted to late Rio Grande Glazeware shouldered vessels.   Decorated bowls include hemispherical and shouldered vessels.

 Similar amounts of early and middle glazewares were recovered from each surface, however, more than four times as much late glazeware occurs on  surface 2 as on surface 3.

 Using the more restrictive criteria of glazeware bowl rims,  surface 2 is dominated by Glaze F types, while the earlier surface is dominated by Glaze E types .

       The features on these occupational surfaces provide insight into the range of activities occurring in the plaza and the ways in which these activities were organized.  Changes in feature type and distribution  suggest that there were important shifts in the organization  of space during the seventeenth century.

 A range of features are present on the plaza surfaces, including both facilities such as hearths,structures, and pits, and depositional anomalies such as ash and charcoal concentrations.  Other features, such as post holes are remnants of facilities that have been filled with post occupational deposits.  In most cases, the assemblages of facilities will include a mix of materials associated with their use as well as materials deposited later.

     Surface 2  contains many depositional anomalies and features with clearly redeposited materials. While  most ceramics were recovered from structures and large pits, ash deposits, isolated animal dung concentrations, and corral foundations are important sources of material. This fact alone suggests a different history of use intensity and maintenance.

A number of studies have documented that regular patterns of  trampling, maintenance, and refuse disposal result in size biased ceramic assemblages.  As comminution increases, the proportional representation of larger size classes decreases.
The smallest size classes are highly fragmented and resistant to further comminution.  While both assemblages are clearly highly fragmented, surface 2 has a significantly higher representation of the lower size classes.

The frequency of sherds per gram of sherd weight is a measure of aggregate fragmentation.  The coefficient of variation of ceramic weight was  also calculated for each provenience.  This measure increases with variability in sizes of sherds recovered from a provenience while the ratio of ceramic frequency to weight increases with fragmentation.   When graphed against one another, it is apparent that surface 2 includes more high fragmentation / low variation contexts and that these contexts are predominantly depositional anomalies rather than facilities.

  Despite a lower resident population and a relatively short occupation span, features on surface 2 contain about twice as much ceramic material as those on surface 3. This material is on average smaller, more comminuted, and includes a higher admixture of eroded sherds.

 We suggest that these differences are due to lack of regular maintenance in combination with the introduction of livestock during the terminal phases of the plaza occupation.

The shifts in feature type and frequency between surfaces suggest changes in the organization of extramural activity patterning.

Within morphological and ware classes, vessel orifice, here measured by rim diameter, is strongly related to both vessel size and vessel function. Variation in ceramic ware categories, vessel size, and vessel form should be sensitive to changing patterns of production, processing, and consumption throughout the seventeenth century.

 Beginning with wares, surface 2 has significantly more decorated wares than surface 3.

At a gross level, however, there are no differences in average rim diameter for all vessel types between the two surfaces, nor are there significant differences in the average rim diameter of utility ware jars when compared by surface.

Decorated vessels include both jar and bowl forms.  Overall, the relative distribution of decorated vessel form is stable between surfaces.  The  full range of bowl sizes is present on both surfaces and there are no significant differences in average rim diameter.  Decorated jars are the least common categories considered here.  There are no significant differences in average jar rim diameters by surface.

Thus, neither the average size of decorated vessels nor the range of sizes represented changes significantly between surfaces.

Although there is a difference in the proportional representation of ware categories, this ceramic sample does not, by itself, indicate a change in the organization of production at LA 162 during the seventeenth century.
 
 

 A variety of lines of evidence indicate that the seventeenth century was a period of tremendous demographic and social transformation  in the Middle Rio Grande.  During this period, LA 162 was incorporated into Spanish economic and social networks.  New technologies, domesticates, and foreign biota were introduced and at least partially incorporated into existing land use and economic systems.  Historic and archaeological data are consistent with multiple discontinuous occupations, contraction of residential space, resurfacing and reconfiguration of extramural space, and construction of new and sometimes novel facilities at the site. The plaza itself underwent several shifts in spatial organization including partial conversion to corral area.

  Ceramics are part of the technological repertoire with which seventeenth century Pueblo peoples addressed the changing conditions of their daily lives.  Yet, counter to our initial expectations, the formal attributes of vesselmorphology in this sample are remarkably complacent.  Whatever this continuity may have signified to contemporaries, it is not appropriately construed as a measure of culture change in general. Colonial period technological strategies were complex and situational.  Settlements with different occupational histories, withdifferent levels of incorporation into mission economies, and with different forms of access to resources may have very different and differently organized ceramic technologies.  Only through investigation of sites with varied occupational histories can we come to understand the missionized places of sixteenth and seventeenth century New Mexico.