 Well good morning Claire the archaeologist and myself are at Montezuma Castle National Monument There's so much information here. I feel like you should definitely stop in and I Don't know do some research yourself visit we're gonna try and see some of the ruins and It is Can be a little bit hard to see with this lens, but I don't know oh I can see around the corner But I think it's gonna be really cool. So I will try to overlay some information, but yeah, it's gonna be a fun day Beaver Creek has always been a major focus of life in the Verdi Valley Prehistoric Sonagua farmers constructed Montezuma Castle and other structures near the creek They dug ditches to carry creek water to irrigate the fields of corn beans squash and cotton They cultivated on flat patches of creek bottom land They also hunted animals attracted by the creek and gathered creekside plants Uh, I think that the Pueblo was built up here not to For protection from enemies no trace well only one documented instance of of hostilities in 350 years Um, so it wasn't that um it You want to get the the dwellings up off of the valley floor if you could use it for agriculture But I think also it's important to have it up here because of Wind conditions Wind here would blow the smoke from cooking fires away You're up higher than the insects along the river Makes a lot of sense So but it limits how much you where where you can build and what you can build Behind us there, you know on between this room block right immediately behind us and the Pueblo proper Is a plaza No, that was excavated and it is a plaza It was used as very much. We think like dense plazas over in new mexico. Is there a kiva here? No kivas A couple of rooms that have ceremonial features wills what ceremonial unusual features They also also have hearts so Yeah, but I think that there's no reason to Suspect the religious practices here were identical with what you find in the eastern pueblos or zuni or Or hopi, but the point is That when this got built out up here at this level Um, there was no place to build additional homes up here residences Uh, and if we had another group of people as So could this have been field houses then? No, I what I think and what my wife maggi agrees with Is that this may be what we see Of a clan That was looking for a permanent place in its wanderings They came and said can we come and settle in love with you guys? Yeah, but there's no more room up here You can build down there that makes sense that whole group of buildings of rooms all residential As far as I can tell um That was constructed as a unit As was this group of this room block right here constructed as a unit What's a sherd a sherd is a um Piece of ceramic that's broken. Oh not shard. So Claire is training me. I'm a novice archaeologist now Self-proclaimed, but I just happened to look Here and I found this little piece of pottery and then I found this one here that was just sort of sticking Sticking out of the dirt a little bit. So I'll just put that guy back I think you can touch this stuff as long as you don't take it, but here's a little what is this one Claire? It's a macro flake. I'm sitting in And it was made for what? It's evidence of tool production. So it was probably used for some kind of projectile pointer knife