She believes that when researchers dissolve the ash in liquid and analyze what remains, theyll find markedly little evidence of maize, compared to the amount of maize refuse in rubbish pits around the village. This isnt a wild guess. Kuckelman and her co-workers noticed the pattern when they ran similar tests at a nearby contemporary ruin, Sand Canyon Pueblo. These findings helped Kuckelman piece together a new theory about the ancestral Pueblos departure, a theory she hopes to bolster with evidence from Goodman Point Pueblo and other excavations.
Kuckelman believes that as more and more people settled in the Mesa Verde region in the thirteenth century, they overwhelmed wild food sources in the area, such as deer and wild plants. As a result, they became increasingly dependent on maize crops -- not just for food, but for feed for domesticated turkeys -- as evidenced by the ubiquity of maize in refuse pits, essentially time capsules of the villagers eating habits and customs. But then something wiped out their ability to cultivate their crops, as indicated by the limited maize remains in hearths. The rabbit skeleton may also be a clue, suggesting that turkey populations may have died out and forced these people to fall back on small wild game. This could mean that Kuckelman has found more than just evidence of the last meals ever eaten by the ancestral Pueblo people in the Mesa Verde region; shes found a possible impetus for their leaving: to search out new means of sustenance.
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