Site stabilization was conducted on Kiva F at the site of Gran Quivira during the summer of 2004. In this article, Marc LeFrançois, architectural conservator for the Salinas Pueblo Missions National Monument, discusses the problems and issues of the ongoing process of archaeological site stabilization.
History of Gran Quivira
The grey stone ruins of Gran Quivira are located at the top of the windy Chupadero Mesa on the south rim of the Estancia Basin of central New Mexico. Known as Las Humanas (or Jumanos) during the Spanish colonial period, the village is one of three in the Salinas Pueblo Missions National Monument. While it is uncertain where the people who built the village about 1300 AD came from, two likely candidates are either the Anasazi from the north, who abandoned Mesa Verde about 1300 AD; or the Mogollon from the south. The other two villages in the monument, Abo and Quarai, are located about 30 miles north of Gran Quivira. At each of these sites, visitors can see the ruins of the apartment block structures, interconnected rooms built of stone and local wood, and the ruins of the mission churches built by the Spanish in the 16th century.The first of the existing apartment block ruins at Gran Quivira was built about 1300. The original plan of the central apartment block (called Mound 7 by archaeologists) was circular in layout, with a central kiva (a circular room set into the earth and entered through the roof). This first block contained about 130 rooms arranged in four or five concentric rings. Las Humanas people had a very diverse diet, because the climate is so dry in the high deserts of central New Mexico and water availability so erratic. The Las Humanas people grew corn, beans, squash and cotton. They also hunted; remains of rabbit, pronghorn antelope, turkey, deer, and bison have been found in their middens. Seeds such as pinyon nuts made up a part of the diet as well; but there’s no doubt about it, even with such a diverse diet, occasional drought conditions brought hard times to the residents.
In 1540, the Spanish conquistador Coronado arrived at the Zuni pueblo Hawikuh, some 200 miles northwest of Las Humanas. By 1598, the first of the Spanish pioneers reached the villages of the Estancia Basin. The Spanish occupation was not a peaceful one, but ultimately, drought returned to the basin, bringing with it a full-blown famine during the years 1667-1672 that resulted in the starvation deaths of about 450 Indian people at Gran Quivira alone. Despite the best efforts of the missions, who moved food to the more needy conventos, eventually Las Humanas and the other pueblos had to be abandoned. All three were empty by 1677.
The Spanish left the New World in 1821, and the Mexicans lost New Mexico to the United States in 1848. By 1909, the ruins at Las Humanas were part of a national monument, and in 1913 they came under the control of the newly created National Park Service.
