Bee Burrow, Seven Lakes Wash, Crownpoint, McKinley County, NM

Significance: The Bee Burrow community centers on a rectangular sandstone structure associated with the Anasazi culture which flourished one thousand years ago in the Four Corners region of the American Southwest. The people who constructed this structure were part of a complex cultural system that integrated smaller remote "outlying" farming communities such as Bee Burrow with a concentration of larger pueblos in Chaco Canyon. Features associated with the large public structures in the canyon and in the outlying communities are distinctive core and veneer masonry walls, blocked-in kivas, great kivas, road segments, earth works such as berms and mounds, and smaller house sites. Public structures such as Bee Burrow integrated the community on both social and religious levels while the great structures at Chaco Canyon integrated much of the Four Corners region. It is believed that large pilgrimages to Chaco Canyon from the outlying communities were made for social and religious events. By 1100 A.D. the center of the Anasazi culture dispersed and shifted north to the San Juan, Animas, and La Plata Rivers, and most of the sites, including Bee Burrow were abandoned. Bee Burrow is situated atop a low mesa near a large sandstone outcropping. The rectangular structure contains eleven rooms and two kivas. Bee Burrow probably served as the social and religious center for a cluster of small Anasazi house sites located approximately 1.5 to 3 kilometers to the east. Although much of the structure has collapsed, the north wall and interior walls of the eastern kiva are over six feet in height and reflect the characteristic Chacoan "core-and-veneer" style of masonry. A number of related Anasazi features are located in proximity to the ruin, including petroglyphs etched into the nearby sandstone cliffs and two prehistoric road segments leading to Chaco Canyon.
Unprocessed Field note material exists for this structure: N575
Survey number: HABS NM-180