Population Reconstruction for the VEP South Study Area
These maps illustrate the population reconstruction for the VEP South study area. There are 17 slides, each depicting a different time period, beginning in A.D. 900 and ending in A.D. 1760.

There are several things to pay attention to as the images shift from one time period to the next. You will see how site locations change through time, with subregions having greater or fewer sites in different periods. Take particular note of how sites concentrate in a portion of the Pajarito and Cochiti subregions where the landform known as the Pajarito Plateau is located. This is especially important during the A.D. 1200s when we believe Pueblo people migrated from the VEP North to the VEP South study areas. You will also notice how the total number of sites changes in each time period, and you can see how the number and density of sites correspond to the areas that have been surveyed. There would be many more sites—especially small-and-medium-sized sites—if archaeologists had surveyed the entire study area. Finally, pay special attention to how the proportion of small, medium, and large sites varies during different times; try to identify the periods when people were moving out of small sites and aggregating into larger villages. Because these villages and towns are so large, we think almost all of them have been located, so these maps provide a relatively complete picture of the distribution of the largest sites in the region and how their number and locations changed through time.

Chapter 3, Question 6 shows the size of the largest sites in greater detail. This is important for the VEP South study area because sites became especially large in this area—much larger than in the VEP North study area—and eventually almost the entire population lived in one of these large sites.

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Each map shows the location and size of the residential sites occupied during a particular time period.
Both the color and size of the dot indicate the size of the individual residential sites.

Red Dots - Farmstead (1 to 2 households, or about 6 to 12 people)
Yellow Dots - Hamlet (3 to 8 households, or about 18 to 48 people)
Blue Dots - Community Center (9 or more households and more than about 54 people)

Maps by Crow Canyon Archaeological Center (base map imagery by ESRI)

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