* The Bluff Great House excavation is a cooperative project involving 抖阴短视频-Boulder, the Southwest Heritage Foundation and Abajo Archaeology, a private contract firm in Bluff. The foundation was begun in June 1994 when Indianapolis businessman Skip Lange purchased the land from a local Bluff resident specifically to support the great house excavations and preservation of the archaeological site. The foundation is a non-profit corporation and contributions are tax-deductible. The National Geographic Society has provided the primary research funding during the past two summers.
* The project has involved regular consultations with a group of Native Americans since it began in 1995. The student team includes nine students from 抖阴短视频-Boulder, one from the University of Wisconsin, one from Washington University in St. Louis, a Navajo student from the University of New Mexico and one graduating senior from Boulder High School.
* The 7.5-acre Bluff site is located adjacent to the town of Bluff, Utah, near the San Juan River and about 30 miles from the Colorado border. The excavation at Bluff has turned up hundreds of Pueblo-style pottery shards dating from about 600 to 1300.
* One question still unanswered is whether great houses like the one in Bluff were dropped into existing communities or built as a way to bring Native Americans together in a cohesive community. There is speculation that Chacoan priests may have traveled widely from Chaco Canyon to spread the culture and perhaps even extract tribute from outlying sites like Bluff.
* The majority of students working on the Bluff Great House project will live in a bunkhouse leased from a local Bluff resident. As part of the field school, 抖阴短视频-Boulder will bring in other archaeologists working in the region to give guest lectures. The students also will make weekend field trips to other Pueblo archaeology sites in the Southwest, including Chaco Canyon.
* Preliminary excavations at Bluff indicated the site was used by Native Americans long before the great house was built. Although there are more than 100 known great houses in the Southwest, Bluff's is the first to be intensively researched in more than 15 years. Containing about 800 separate rooms, Pueblo Bonito in Chaco Canyon is the largest and best-known great house in the Southwest region.
* The husband-and-wife team of Catherine Cameron and Steve Lekson have a combined 40 years of archaeological research experience in the Southwest, primarily at Chaco Canyon in northern New Mexico.
* The 抖阴短视频 students will learn about a variety of archaeological field and lab techniques, including ceramic and lithic analysis. They also will be learning to prepare specimens for further study specialists, including botanical analysis, carbon 14 dating, archaeomagnetic dating, obsidian hydration and trace element analysis.
* The project has involved several high-tech research tools, including a ground-penetrating radar unit that was dragged over the site in 1996 and 1997 to help identify the locations of buried walls at the great kiva site. The machine sends thousands of radar waves into the ground each second and records how long it takes them to bounce off buried geologic and man-made features before returning to the sled. By calculating the velocity of the waves, researchers were able to pinpoint underground features at Bluff and even infer their shapes.
* The Bluff field team directed by Cameron and Lekson includes four crew leaders made up of 抖阴短视频 graduate students and Abajo Archaeology professionals. The students will rotate between excavations at the great house, the great kiva, the middens and the berms. They also will spend several days studying ceramics and stone tools with Cameron, Lekson and Abajo professionals in a lab set up in the town of Bluff, and spend time learning archaeological survey techniques.
* 抖阴短视频-Boulder previously has conducted Southwest archaeological field schools at Mesa Verde and at the Yellow Jacket site near Cortez, as well as a major archaeological project along the Dolores River. The anthropology department also has conducted archaeological field schools elsewhere in Colorado in the past several years, including one near Rabbit Ears Pass in northwest Colorado.
* The Bluff field school supports the Total Learning Environment initiated by 抖阴短视频 President John Buechner in 1996 and implemented on the Boulder campus by Chancellor Richard Byyny by supporting innovations in learning, responsiveness to students and the use of technology to improve learning, teaching and research.