Two Years of Zooarchaeological Research from the Northern Chaco Outliers Project

Crow Canyon Archaeological Center started the Northern Chaco Outliers Project in 2016. This project focuses on the Lakeview Community, a collection of four neighboring Chaco period Great Houses located in southwestern Colorado. Ongoing fieldwork at the Haynie site (5MT1905)—containing two of the Great Houses in the Lakeview Community—is a substantial portion of the project. Zooarchaeology is the dynamic study of past human-animal interaction through the analysis of non-human animal remains, and it is one critical area of study in the larger Northern Chaco Outliers Project. Here, Dr. Dombrosky discusses findings from two years of archaeofaunal analysis at the Haynie site. He examines how such material was identified, the preservation of skeletal material, fascinating specimens recovered from the site (like bison and wolf remains), and what these findings can tell us about past Pueblo life.