Fourmile Pueblo
Above: Leslie Spier, American anthropologist, 1918 sketch of the Fourmile Ruin, reproduced from "Notes on Some Little Colorado Ruins", Anthropological Papers of the American Museum of Natural History, vol 18, pt 5.
Above: Photomontage of Fourmile Pueblo CG model over aerial photo of actual site on a dry Silver Creek during drought, looking west.
Fourmile Pueblo is, with 450 rooms, the largest of the pueblos of the Silver Creek drainage of the Little Colorado River in east-central Arizona. Like other pueblos in the Silver Creek vicinity, it was constructed around 1275 CE. And all of these pueblo ruins have been abused by the bulldozers of pot hunters, makiing archaeology of these ruins very challenging.
The people of Fourmile Pueblo lived there through a great drought in the 1200sCE and stayed on until an even worse drought of the 1300s. Around 1400 CE, after that terrible century, they abandoned the Silver Creek area, and migrated south to Tonto Basin, Safford Basin and the Lower San Pedro Valley. Archaeologists have traced this migration through the ceramics they left on their way, and the resulting influence they had on the ceramics that produces in their final destinaltions. Jesse Fewkes excavated Fourmile in 1897 and the large collection of ceramics he found is now housed in the Smithsonian Institution.
Elevation is 1743 meters (5720 feet) above sea level.
Coordinates: 34°27'55.9"N 110°08'04.9"W
34.465538, -110.134702
Materials of construction: Systematically organized adobe and stone masonry with mud mortar, tree log roof structure supporting mud/clay roofing over tree sappling mats.
Closeup view of creekside pueblo looking southwest.
Looking north.
Looking northeast.
Looking southwest.
Looking south.
3
looking west.
Plan view with scale and orientation.
Data source for this CG model:
1. Spier, Leslie, 1918 . "Notes on Some Little Colorado Ruins", Anthropological Papers of the American Museum of Natural History, vol 18, pt 5. 1918.
2. Shumway Archaeologica Project: https://www.uvm.edu/~svankeur/SHAP/project_area/fourmile_ruin/fourmile.htm
3. Johnson, Douglas, 2022. Adobe Brick Architecture and Katsina Ceremonialism at Fourmile Pueblo. Second Books, Albuquerque, NM, 2022.