Reuven Sinensky – Early First Millennium CE Farmers of the Southwestern Colorado Plateau

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For much of the last century, archaeologists have endorsed a unidirectional model in which Ancestral Pueblo communities became increasingly invested in maize agriculture and more sedentary through time, and eventually, social, economic, and political differentiation between communities emerged. Few in-depth studies, however, have explored the foodways, material culture, or settlement patterns of contemporaneous, well-dated communities within a spatially restricted area during the early first millennium CE. In this presentation, I discuss the results of recent fieldwork and collections-based research focused on CE 200-550 communities of the far southwestern Colorado Plateau. Results suggest that communities of this era were more dynamic than often portrayed, and that key material and social changes adopted during the late sixth and seventh centuries CE have roots in earlier, diverse communities.

Speaker Reuven Sinensky is an archaeologist and paleoethnobotanist whose research explores the sophisticated foodways and rich culinary histories of farmers Indigenous to the North American Southwest. Reuven received his Ph.D. from UCLA in 2023 and is currently the Lab Director at the Crow Canyon Archaeological Center.