Dr. E. Charles Adams and crew working at Rock Art Ranch in 2016
Examining the Process of Community Building at Hopi Pueblos
ASM's Homol'ovi Research Program has been active since the early 1980s, coming under the director of Dr. E. Charles (Chuck) Adams in 1985. Research is focused on several ancestral Hopi pueblos, or villages, near Winslow in northeastern Arizona. Adams's research looks at the processes of aggregation in late prehistory — the formation of large communities — and contributes to interpretive programs at Homolovi State Park.
After 15 years of concentrating on ancestral Hopi villages in the park, the Homol’ovi program shifted its focus to Chevelon Ruin, a village contemporary with the other villages. Chevelon pueblo is the third largest of the Homol’ovi settlement cluster villages, consisting of about 500 rooms. Similar to Homol’ovi I, it seems to have been occupied from about AD 1280 to 1380. Archaeologists Adams and Rich Lange worked at the site from 2002-2006, supported by grants from the National Science Foundation and from Earthwatch.
Chevelon is especially intriguing because of its location upstream from the other villages, its location beside a spring-fed stream, and, in contrast to the other Homol’ovi villages, a higher percentage of pottery types from an area 100 km to the southeast.
Work over the many field seasons focused on the origins, layout, and history of the site and on the nature of its interaction with the other villages. Preliminary work done in the summer of 2002 discovered an unusual layout of the village — a semi-circular roomblock arrangement of the highest part of the site) — established the basic framework of the grid system, and noted a large number of areas throughout the pueblo with intense burning.
For more information about Homolovi State Park here.
E. Charles Adams, Ph.D. (retired)
Curator Emeritus
Arizona State Museum / University of Arizona
P.O. Box 210026
Tucson, AZ 85721-0026
See Dr. Adams's Profile