Located between Santa Fe and Albuquerque in the Galisteo Basin, Pueblo San Marcos is the largest pueblo ruin in the United States with 1,500 to 3,000 adobe rooms up to three stories in height on 158 acres. It is built around no less than eight enclosed plazas with three kivas discovered so far. The pueblo is proximate to the Cerrillos Hills turquoise mines, and modern pueblos identify it by native names as the “Turquoise Pueblo.” In the early 1600s the Spanish established a mission church there, and in 1680 San Marcos was deeply involved in the Pueblo Revolt that drove the Spanish from New Mexico. The resident priest was executed at a neighboring pueblo. When the Spanish returned twelve years later, San Marcos was in decline, and it was soon abandoned.
Archaeological investigations at Pueblo San Marcos began in the early twentieth century with a project led by Nels Nelson of the American Museum of Natural History, which was followed by other projects. In 1997, the University of New Mexico (UNM), under the direction of archaeologist Ann Ramenofsky, began fieldwork that focused on the organization and structure of San Marcos, population change, and interaction between the native population and the Spanish. This volume reports on what they found and its implications across the larger Pueblo world.
It is a volume that is full of data derived from years of research, and it is also an important contribution to the study of the Spanish colonization in New Mexico. The evidence suggests that the nearby Cerrillos Hills played a major role in the history of San Marcos both before and after the Spanish arrived. Before the Spanish came, Native Americans mined turquoise, which they traded over a vast area. They also mined galena, a lead ore that they used to make one of the first pottery glazes in the New World. The UNM researchers uncovered evidence of smelting at San Marcos, indicating that the Spanish were using Natives to mine metallic ores nearby. The smelting appears to have consisted of testing these ores for silver and other precious metals.
In all, fifteen scholars contribute to this volume that provides specific information about a number of elements found at the site as well as broader knowledge that spans the late prehistoric and the Spanish conquest periods. It is richly illustrated with sixty-seven black and white and color figures, thirty-one maps, and 112 tables. It is a very important addition to the story of the American Southwest and the people who lived there.
