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archaeology: n. c. nelson 
field we have, however, hke other investigators, been compelled to begin 
with merely local problems; but the solution of these local problems has — so we 
believe — led to the discovery of simple methods applicable to the Pueblo prob- 
lem in its entirety. 
The Field Data. — The Pueblo Indians, in the light of the ethnological and 
historical information we have concerning them, may be defined as a group of 
sedentary tribes who build substantial rectangular houses of a more or less com- 
pact and communistic type, who commonly construct semi-subterranean cere- 
monial chambers, either round or rectangular, who build reservoirs and irriga- 
tion ditches, who grow corn, beans, and squashes for food as well as cotton for 
clothing, who grind their corn on a metate, who use the curved rabbit-stick 
and the tubular pipe, who possess a special type (or types) of grooved ax, who 
work turquoise and who make pottery having very striking local peculiarities. 
The ethnologist would indicate additional characteristics of a linguistic, social, 
and religious nature; but these because they have received less definite or per- 
manent material expression are of secondary importance to the arachaeologist 
as working data. Some of the cited traits, like maize growing, the Pueblo 
share in common with other and even very distant tribes of North and South 
America; certain other traits like the round ceremonial chamber are only par- 
tially diffused over their own territory; and still other traits, like cotton grow- 
ing and the stone ax, have completely disappeared in modern times. Perhaps 
the most characteristic of the surviving traits, considered both as geographical 
and as historical phenomena, are architecture and ceramics. 
The tribes who today exhibit the above characters are domiciled in about 
thirty villages specifically known as pueblos in contradistinction, first, to the 
less local, rather loosely constructed and only semi-permanent type of villages 
known as rancherias and, second, to the still more widespread temporary set- 
tlements known as camps. Their numerical strength, according to the last 
census is about 11,000 souls; and their territorial possessions, in the form of 
land grants and reservations, are ofiicially placed at about 5,000 square miles. 
These artificial boundaries are not exactly conterminous with the actual range 
of the tribes but the figures give a fair idea of the amount of territory from 
which they draw sustenance. 
In 1540 or thereabouts when the Spanish explorers first entered the country 
the Pueblo appear to have inhabited all of seventy villages and to have num- 
bered about 20,000, a few more or less. Their territorial range was about 
13,000 square miles, or more than twice what it is today, a large section having 
been vacated, e.g., on the southeast. That much is determined for us in part 
by the historian; but from this point on for another short stretch only the 
ethnologist can accompany us. 
After several decades of more or less desultory work we are now in position 
to say that the Pueblo in prehistoric times ranged over a territory little short 
of 140,000 square miles in extent, throughout which they have left ruins and 
other characteristic remains very similar to those found in the territory still 
