At 5MT 1692 Ruth finished up the ceramics, Kellam and Tucker mapped, and Seth and I started on the lithics. After a while, Trevor joined us, and took over helping Seth so I could work on the management form and site descriptions. Ceramics: there were 3 PII/PIII B/W sherds recorded, but other than that all of the diagnostic sherds were PIII sherds, which is a significant change from the other sites which have a few Mancos or undiff PII B/W sherds. Lithics: there were ~65 tools and ~45 pieces of debitage on the site which is a major change from the other sites. But that is probably because all the smaller flakes have washed away or are so mixed up in the gravel/shale/rock-filled soil that we couldn't see them. The tools were also much nicer than we've been seeing w/ well used/defined tools that were a bit more formalized, and maybe longer used?

[Trevor]
Today I went to 1690 (Cougar Cub) to see their 2 petroglyphs. They had 2 very interesting ones, both with some sort of snake/snaking line pattern. One was sort of coming out of a stick figure's head. The other was above to the right and had 3 dots next to it. I also found and recorded some faded pictographs on a small isolated panel above the intact granary. I only recognized it because the pigment looked a lot like that of 1692.

After I recorded and drew it I went to 1692 and helped Seth do lithics. Everyone else was working hard to knock off the site by lunch. We found one perfect pendant that was pretty cool. The site had a kiva that was very hard to see but I didn't think there was too much other structures…The site was also heavily looted, with about a 2 foot deep hole in it.

[Katie]
Something we noticed at all the sites in the canyon is that if there weren't lots of trees, you could see the LT Tower from all of them. I think that there is definitely significance to that. The tower must have been a focal point of some sort. Maybe it guarded the fields or was a point of entry or something. Anyway, if something were going on at the tower, all the other sites would have been privy to it. I'm not sure that that would be the case at the tower though. So, I think this means that the other sites were in charge of the tower and that the tower did not "run" the rest of the sites. I think if the tower were "in charge" then it would have better "control" over the other sites so that it could monitor them in some way. So, I think that whatever purpose the tower had was monitored by the rest of the canyon.

[Chelsea]
The similar ceramics and lithic assemblages in addition to the close proiximity of sites 5MT 1690 and 5MT 1692 make me wonder if these sites are associated with one another. Were Cougar Cub Alcove and 5MT 1692 part of the same community of PIII sites in the Burro Point and Lightning Tree Canyon area? The line of site potential of both of these sites with Lightning Tree Tower (5Mt 1691), if not intervisibility with one another, suggests to me that these sites may have been part of a Lightning Tree community. Each of these three site (5MT 1690, 91, and 92) have an element of possible water resource management and agriculture, suggesting that people during the Pueblo III time period chose Lightning Tree Canyon for habitation because of agricultural potential. In terms of social interaction this might tell us that habitation areas within the region were interdependent with one another as far as utilizing the same land and nautral resources in order to thrive. It is a little unclear to me why Lightning Tree Tower was constructed. It is visible from other sites and from the mesa top. The tower seems to maximize its visibility in a lot of ways but visibility with what? At the moment I am inclined to believe it was to maximize visibility with farmland as the canton floor seems like it yielded good agricultural potential during the Pueblo III time period.

[Tucker]
And with that we gathered pin flags and walked to the rim and sat on the point above LT Tower and had a triumphant lunch overlooking the canyon that we had finished mapping the N half of.

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