We'll begin our adventure with the excavation season at Elden Pueblo, a 65-room pueblo with trash mounds, smaller pueblos, kiva, a large community room, and numerous pit houses that both pre-date and are contemporaneous with the main pueblo. It is the type site for the Elden Phase of the Northern Sinagua tradition (A.D. 1150-1250), although earlier and later components are also present. Pilles and the Elden Pueblo Archaeological Project aren't the first to dig here, that was the Smithsonian's Jesse Walter Fewkes back in 1926. Fewkes' excavation, and a later field school in the 1960s, have barely scratched the surface of what Elden has to offer.

The current work, which began in the 1980s, is a model of public participation in archaeology--those doing the excavations include volunteers through the Museum of Northern Arizona and the Arizona Archaeological Society, as well as the general public. Also engaged in the program are the Arizona Natural History Association, as well as the Hopi Cultural Preservation Office (Elden is recognized by the Hopi as an ancestral site). The new excavations are being undertaken to confirm data, collect new information, and stabilize the pueblo as a public archaelogy project. Recent work has revealed much about the construction sequence of the site, late Sinagua social organization, subsistence, and the role as a major trade center for the area. Possible evidence for a long-term eruptive sequence for Sunset Crater volcano is being found to examine new geological and archaeological interpretations for the region.

• Field Notes: Excavation Goals for 2004