WS Ranch Archaeological Project

The WS Ranch Site (800-1300 CE) is an Upper Mogollon archaeological site near Alma, New Mexico. This unique site, which includes a large pueblo surrounded by smaller satellite sites, offers additional insight into the transitional periods from Pithouse to Pueblo architecture in the American Southwest. The site was excavated as part of a field school under the direction of Dr. James Neely from the University of Texas at Austin from 1977 to 1994. Objects excavated include ceramics, chipped and ground stone, faunal and botanical remains, shell, mineral and architectural sample. These materials comprise the WS Ranch Archaeological Project (WSRAP) Collection—an important and irreplaceable assemblage of approximately 500,000 artifacts from Late Pithouse, Classic Mimbres, and Tularosa Phase material cultures. 

In 2020, Denver Museum of Nature & Science (DMNS) gained custody of the materials and set out to process this legacy collection to make it available as a valuable resource for researchers, students, and tribal nations. Beginning in 2021, DMNS staff, volunteers, and interns worked to rehouse, catalog, and store the entire collection. Staff also worked to repatriate 45 ancestors and 30 associated funerary objects, which were successfully repatriated and reburied in July 2021. In 2025, DMNS completed the rehousing and cataloging of the collection, amassing over 503,000 specimens and processing over 62 linear feet of archival materials.   

When DMNS staff began this project, they knew that excavations occurred at the eponymous WS Ranch Site and five smaller sites in the greater Alma region of west-central New Mexico.  Through processing the collection, staff discovered that there is a Late Pithouse period component to the site, and that there is evidence of at least six pit houses underneath the main pueblo. Additionally, in total, excavations and surveys took place at 26 identified satellite sites. The implications of these discoveries have yet to be fully realized but may be through future research.  

Previous and current research on the WS Ranch Collection include: 

• A macrobotantical analysis conducted on eleven macrobotanical samples by Alpine Archaeology Consultants, which resulted in identified mixes of domesticated plants, including high concentrations of Zea mays (corn), small amounts of Phaseolus spp. (bean), as well as wild and gathered plants such as Pinus edulis (pinyon pine) and Chenopodium/Amaranthus spp. (Goosefoot/pigweed). These results provide good data to identify future flotation samples for further processing. 
• Nineteen groundstone samples were returned from the Archaeobotany Lab at the Natural History Museum of Utah and analyzed by Dr. Louderback, Curator of Archaeology, for starch residue. None of the specimens presented any samples. 
• Ten tree-ring samples were analyzed by Dr. Steve Nash of Archaeology Southwest helping to refine the reported date range of contexts within the site. 
• Over 2,300 bags of faunal remains are currently being analyzed by Dr. Katelyn Bishop, Assistant Professor at University of Illinois Urbana-Champaign and her graduate students.  While species identification is important, this endeavor will also aid in our future repatriation efforts to return Ancestors and their cultural belongings to the tribes.   

While over 29 sites are identified within the scope of WS Ranch, no formal site synthesis was written.  Future endeavors by DMNS staff include digging into the archival material to compile a more comprehensive site report for better understanding of WS Ranch and how it relates to the other sites Dr. Neely and students investigated. Additionally, this will better position WS Ranch compared to other contemporaneous field schools such as University of Arizona’s Point of Pines and Grasshopper Pueblo. 

This work is made possible in part by the grant PF-280964-21 from the National Endowment for the Humanities: Sustaining Cultural Heritage Collections program.

The views, findings, conclusions, or recommendations expressed in this web resource are those of the authors and should not be interpreted as representing the opinions or policies of the National Endowment for the Humanities.