National Register Listing

Taos Pueblo

3 mi. N of Taos, Taos, NM

Taos Pueblo, like all of the pueblos, is visible, tangible evidence of Native American occupation and development in the American Southwest. Taos Pueblo exemplifies the tenacity of the Puebloan people in successfully adapting to centuries of change in their natural and social environments. In the Taos Valley, Taos Pueblo is the final site of an indigenous puebloan Indian occupation reaching back to at least AD 900. The earliest phase of the Puebloan Period identified in the Taos Valley is called the Valdez Phase. This phase is dated to ca. AD 900 - 1200 on the basis of ceramic cross-dating of Taos Black/White, a mineral painted ware (Wetherington 1968; Green 1976). Sites from this phase consist of pithouses and pithouse villages with associated work areas and/or rooms of jacal and adobe construction (Cordell 1978:36; Woosley 1980:8). Apparently contemporaneous are villages of surface adobe roomblocks (Woosley 1980:8). The next phase in the Taos Valley is the Pot Creek Phase, dated to AD 1200 - 1250 by the presence of Santa Fe Black/White, a carbon painted ware, and a few tree-ring dates (Cordell 1978:37). This phase is characterized by population aggregation in numerous small "unit pueblos", some with kivas. Examples have been recorded in the Arroyo Seco, Arroyo Hondo, Taos, Arroyo Miranda, and Rio Grande de Ranchos-Pot Creek areas, although only three such sites have been excavated. The Talpa Phase is dated to AD 1250 - 1350 by the presence of Talpa Black/ White. During this phase, population aggregation continued, apparently at the expense of the earlier smaller pueblos, although pithouses were still being occupied. The phase is known only from excavations at Pot Creek Pueblo, a large site first inhabited during the Pot Creek Phase which grew to perhaps 800 ground-floor rooms during the Talpa Phase. This trend of population aggregation and site growth may have set the stage for the establishment of the large pueblos of Cornfield Taos and Old Picuris. The end of the phase is established by the abandonment of Pot Creek Pueblo, which Wetherington (1968) assumes to have occurred about AD 1350 because neither Biscuit nor Glaze ceramics are present at the site.

Local significance of the district:
Listed in National Register of Historic Places in 1966.