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Show Chapter 16 CONCLUSIONS: THE RESEARCH DESIGN AND BEYOND Phil R. Geib Writing the conclusions to NMRAP would have been an easier task had I been able to complete it back in 1999, soon after our last season of field work. Unfortunately, other projects intervened and the analyses and specialists' reports were not done, some until just recently, so here it is late in 2007. The state of the discipline is not what it was back in 1991 when the project started or in early 1993 when the research plan was finalized. Moreover, my perspectives on archaeology have changed, in no small part by the very process of having worked on this project but also due to other developments, especially my return to graduate school. The very act of working on a project of this scale and thinking about its findings can change one's outlook and often as not it is with the hindsight that comes in the write-up stage that one can better see what should have been done to answer certain questions or indeed what some of the useful questions would have been. But that too is progress, to arrive at a different, more informed place. The NMRAP was not a big project, but it was the largest archaeological excavation undertaken in the Kayenta Anasazi region of northeast Arizona and southeast Utah since BMAP, the field work of which ended in 1983 (see Smiley and Powell 2002). One useful measure of the value of an undertaking is whether knowledge has been advanced, even if slightly. To this I can offer an unqualified yes. The NMRAP made numerous significant contributions to our understanding of prehistory and lifeways for the northern portion of the Kayenta region, providing a nice bookend to the BMAP findings and extending their results in a few key areas. The most important contributions concern the Basketmaker and Archaic periods, although this may largely reflect my predilections. An archaeologist with greater research leanings toward the ceramic interval might conclude that the contributions to the Puebloan occupation of the region were at least equal to those of preceramic times. With 33 excavated sites dating from the early Archaic, more than 8000 years ago, up until the final Anasazi abandonment of the area at about 1300 AD, the NMRAP provided an informative sample from a cross-section of the prehistoric occupation of the region. Fourteen of the sites had two or more components, so in all NNAD-NAU excavated 58 components. This sample included 16 sites/components from forager use of the area during the early and late Archaic periods,1 17 sites/components from the initial farmer presence in the area known as Basketmaker, and 26 sites/components from later Puebloan use of the area. This sample allowed NNAD-NAU archaeologists to examine a number of topics regarding long-term human adaptive responses to the changing environment of the Colorado Plateau, including changes wrought by humans themselves or resulting from social elaboration and differentiation that stemmed from food production. The Archaic sample (Volume II) mainly consisted of temporary camps, likely used briefly and for specific purposes such as hunting, plant processing, and perhaps even simple overnight stays. Several late Archaic components (including two at one site) appear to have functioned as residential camps. Most of the Archaic sites date to the early portion of this period, before about 5000 cal. BC. At least five components date to the late Archaic after about 1500 cal. BC but before ca. 800 cal. BC; these sites lack domesticates. The Basketmaker sites/components include greater diversity in site function, with several primary habitations, more secondary habitations, and a few temporary camps. The Basketmaker sites (Volume III) all date to an interval between about 400 cal. BC (shortly thereafter) and 500 cal. AD, overlapping the introduction of pottery. One Basketmaker site with an assemblage of Obelisk Utility pottery is well dated to between cal. AD 220 and 350 and appears to represent a good example of a Basketmaker II-III transitional habitation (see Chapter 10 of Volume III). The numerous Puebloan sites/components (Volume IV) include many primary habitations that range in age from middle Pueblo II to late Pueblo III but also several secondary habitations or field houses and limited activity camps, including one from the Pueblo I period, which is virtually unknown for the Rainbow and Shonto Plateaus. The Pueblo III sites in the N16 ROW typify those that have been little studied to date such as single or extended family habitations, one of which was grouped closely together with pit houses to form a larger hamlet. Eight of the sites are middle Pueblo III in age and are especially important because they date to the interval just before the larger pueblos started to form in the Tsegi phase and thus are critical to understanding organizational changes leading to late Pueblo III aggregation. 1 There were in total 14 Archaic sites, with two of these having multiple Archaic components; this count excludes Atlatl Rock Cave reported in Chapter 2 of Volume II. 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