Document Type
Full Length Article
Abstract
Tijeras Pueblo (LA-581), was an Ancestral Puebloan settlement occupied intermittently between approximately 1300 and 1425 AD. The pueblo is located at the intersection of the Sandia and Manzano Mountains near Tijeras, New Mexico. Despite the Pueblo’s strategic position at the intersection of several large canyons and mountain passes, and valuable trade connections as a result of this, the settlement experienced two major abandonment episodes. The first around 1370 AD, and the second around 1425 AD. This paper uses Tijeras Pueblo as a case study to examine the causes of settlement failure on the eastern Puebloan frontier. This analysis draws on such archaeological evidence as dendrochronology, ceramic assemblages, faunal remains, and regional paleoclimatic data to argue that it was climatic instability, rather than prolonged drought alone, that played a decisive role in abandonment. Indeed, contrary to common models of Puebloan collapse driven by aridity, the Tijeras abandonment appears to have occurred during unusually wet and cold climate conditions. Such conditions—compounded by the challenges of alpine living—ultimately resulted in the pueblo’s collapse. The abandonment of Tijeras Pueblo reflects broader patterns of climate-driven population displacement during the 1400s in the Puebloan world
Academic Department
Anthropology
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Recommended Citation
Anderson, Gage
(2026)
"Collapse on the Eastern Frontier: The Abandonment of Tijeras Pueblo 1300-1425 AD,"
The Agora: Vol. 4, Article 3.
Available at:
https://digitalcommons.nmsu.edu/the-agora/vol4/iss1/3