Join us for an educational and engaging presentation by Peter Pilles.

May 18, 2026 marks the 100th anniversary of the excavation of Elden Pueblo by the famous turn-of-the-century archaeologist, Dr. Jesse Walter Fewkes. By the end of that summer, Fewkes had cleared 34 rooms of the approximately 75-room pueblo, excavated about 150 burials, stabilized it for interpretation, and sent 650 artifacts back east to the Smithsonian Institution in Washington, D.C., much to the chagrin of many people in Flagstaff.
Other than a 1966-68 Northern Arizona University field school, Elden Pueblo was largely forgotten by archaeology and it was not until 1980 that attention was once again paid to one of northern Arizona’s most significant sites. Excavations were resumed as part of a public archaeology project that lasted almost 40 years, realizing Fewkes’ original intent to develop the site for public interpretation.
This talk will focus on the history of work at Elden Pueblo and what has been learned about the site that indicates Elden Pueblo is still a rich field for archaeological research. New information about the growth of the pueblo through time, its relationship to other sites in the Flagstaff area, the social structure of its people, and Hopi traditions about the pueblo will be presented. From the 1970’s assumption that Elden Pueblo was of no scientific importance, our recent years of work have demonstrated that Elden Pueblo is one of the most significant sites in the archaeology of northern Arizona that still offers a wealth of information about Flagstaff’s original inhabitants.

PETER J. PILLES, JR. received his BA degree in anthropology from Arizona State University in 1967 and spent summers from 1965-1967 as an archaeologist and collections manager at 'Sedav Va’aki (then “Pueblo Grande”) Museum. From 1967-1975 he worked as a field archaeologist and later as the Administrative Assistant to the Curator at the Museum of Northern Arizona. In 1975 he was offered a job with the Coconino National Forest, the first permanent Forest Archaeologist in the Southwest Region. He retired as Forest Archaeologist in 2024 but presently volunteers at both the Museum and the Forest Service. He has presented numerous papers and authored many publications which reflect his specialty areas of central and northern Arizona prehistory, rock art, ceramics, cultural resource management, and public archaeology. Since 1978, he has directed the archaeology program at Elden Pueblo and is currently working on a report of that work.