Joe Ben Wheat Site Complex is a set of
archaeological sites dated from AD 600 to 1300 that are located near
Yellow Jacket in
Montezuma County, Colorado
Montezuma County is a county located in the U.S. state of Colorado. As of the 2020 census, the population was 25,849. The county seat is Cortez.
Mesa Verde National Park, Canyons of the Ancients National Monument, Yucca House National Monu ...
. The complex is also known by its collective site ID of 5MT16722.
[Mitchell, Mark D]
''The Archaeology of 5MT1.''
Boulder: University of Colorado (CU) Museum. Retrieved December 6, 2011. In 2004, the Joe Ben Wheat Site Complex was added to the
National Register of Historic Places.
Discovery
A farmer named Mr. Stevenson found a piece of pottery at the site of a house that had burned down near the town of
Yellow Jacket, Colorado
Yellow Jacket is an Unincorporated area, unincorporated community and a United States Postal Service, U.S. post office located in Montezuma County, Colorado, Montezuma County, Colorado, United States. The Yellow Jacket post office has the ZIP Co ...
. In 1953 he sent the pottery to
Joe Ben Wheat,
Curator of the
University of Colorado Museum of Natural History
The University of Colorado Museum of Natural History is a museum of natural history in Boulder, Colorado. With more than four million artifacts and specimens in the areas of anthropology, botany, entomology, paleontology and zoology, the muse ...
. Wheat recognized that the pottery was probably dated AD 500-750 and accepted an offer from Stevenson to investigate the property in the
Mesa Verde region
The Mesa Verde Region is a portion of the Colorado Plateau in the United States that extends through parts of New Mexico, Colorado and Utah. It is bounded by the San Juan River to the south, the Piedra River to the east, the San Juan Mountains ...
of southwestern Colorado.
[Mobley-Tanaka, J.L. & Wilshusen R.H. (2003]
Joe Ben Wheat’s Excavation of Yellow Jacket
Colorado. Retrieved March 27, 2009.
Excavation
Wheat performed eight excavations at the three sites that make up the Joe Ben Wheat Site Complex.
Stevenson Site (5MT1)
Stevenson Site (Site ID 5MT1) is a small Basketmaker III Era
The Basketmaker III Era () also called the "Modified Basketmaker" period, was the third period in which Ancient Pueblo People were cultivating food, began making pottery and living in more sophisticated clusters of pit-house dwellings. Hunting ...
village (AD 675–700) of 4 semi-subterranean dwellings, arranged in two semi-circular arcs, with 28 pit-rooms that were used for work rooms and storage. In the center of the arcs were plazas. A large open-air ramada is also located at the site.[
Also known as the "Stevenson Site" after the farmer who had found the pottery, Wheat changed the original name to a methodical name using the Smithsonian nomenclature, 5MT1, which consists of: 1) the number "5" for the state of Colorado, 2) the two letter abbreviation of "MT" for Montezuma County, and 3) a sequentially assigned site number, "1" for the first excavation.][
]
5MT2
Site ID 5MT2 consists of 3 or 4 dwelling groupings from Pueblo II Era
The Pueblo II Period (AD 900 to AD 1150) was the second pueblo period of the Ancestral Puebloans of the Four Corners region of the American southwest. During this period people lived in dwellings made of stone and mortar, enjoyed communal activit ...
through Pueblo III Era (AD 1060-1280).[
]
Site 5MT3
Site 5MT3. The largest of the three sites excavated, it is multi-component pueblo with occupation components dating between AD 600 and 1300. The site consists of four pit-house
A pit-house (or ''pit house'', ''pithouse'') is a house built in the ground and used for shelter. Besides providing shelter from the most extreme of weather conditions, these structures may also be used to store food (just like a pantry, a larder ...
structures with associated storage rooms. The site was abandoned for three centuries then became occupied again.[Wilshusen R.H. & Mobley-Tanaka, J. L. (2005]
''Site 5MT3: A Small Village in the Joe Ben Wheat Site Complex, Yellow Jacket, Colorado''.
/ref>
Wheat's work at Yellow Jacket spanned over 30 years (1954–1991). These three sites, 5MT1-3, had unusual and interesting features never been seen before and were a great discovery of the Mesa Verde region.
References
External links
{{DEFAULTSORT:Wheat Site Complex, Joe Ben
Native American history of Colorado
Ruins on the National Register of Historic Places
Post-Archaic period in North America
National Register of Historic Places in Montezuma County, Colorado
Ancestral Puebloans