page_title: Salmon Ruins
section_title: Construction and occupation
hierarchical_section_title: Salmon Ruins / Construction and occupation
caption_attribution_description: English: The Salmon Ruins, looking east. The tower kiva is in the foreground.
context_page_description: Salmon Ruins is an ancient Chacoan and Pueblo site located in the northwest corner of New Mexico, USA. Salmon was constructed by migrants from Chaco Canyon around 1090 CE, with 275 to 300 original rooms spread across three stories, an elevated tower kiva in its central portion, and a great kiva in its plaza. Subsequent use by local Middle San Juan people resulted in extensive modifications to the original building, with the reuse of hundreds of rooms, division of many of the original large, Chacoan rooms into smaller rooms, and emplacement of more than 20 small kivas into pueblo rooms and plaza areas. The site was occupied by ancient Ancestral Puebloans until the 1280s, when much of the site was destroyed by fire and abandoned. The pueblo is situated on the north bank of the San Juan River, just to the west of the modern town of Bloomfield, New Mexico, and about 45 miles north of Pueblo Bonito in Chaco Canyon. The site was built on the first alluvial terrace above the San Juan River floodplain.
context_section_description: Hundreds of tree-ring dates from Salmon indicate that the first and perhaps second stories were built between 1090 and 1095, using wood cut over a decade. The plan of the Salmon great house is very similar to that of Hungo Pavi in Chaco Canyon and nearby Aztec Ruins, built after Salmon between 1100 and 1125. The Chacoan occupation of Salmon ended by 1125, but the site was not abandoned. Subsequent use by local Middle San Juan Puebloans occurred from 1125 to the 1280s. After 1200, during the San Juan period, the site saw increased activity and population and contact with Puebloans across the greater San Juan area. Although residents at Salmon traded with people from the Mesa Verde or Northern San Juan region, few people from Mesa Verde actually migrated to Salmon Pueblo (Reed 2009, p. 58).
  At the end of its occupation in the 1280s, much of Salmon Pueblo was intentionally burned. Several rooms on the western side of the Pueblo contained bushels of corn that were consumed in the fire (Reed 2008b, p. 19). On the burned roof of the Tower Kiva in Salmon's central roomblock, nearly 20 children and several adults were partially cremated at the site's abandonment.  This event was originally interpreted as an act of warfare, with the deceased killed as a result of the fire. However, more detailed, subsequent analyses have revealed a much more complicated situation with the final cremation of the individuals at abandonment and little or no evidence for warfare (Akins 2008, p. 140-164).
caption: The tower kiva at Salmon Ruins
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