Archaeological Structures & Tools

Often when visitors hear about the archaeological site at Keystone images of ancient structures and scattered artifacts on the floor comes but in reality this is far from what’s on site. The vast majority of the sites discovered at Keystone are buried underground or are remnants or outlines of the former structures. The structures at Keystone site were actually small, single-room brush huts similar to an Apache Wickiup. The structures clustered in groups of two or three and probably reflect the size of the occupying habitants.

Stone Tools

River gravels that are around the Keystone site contain quartzite, a dense metamorphic rock formed under intense heat and pressure, and small nodules of obsidian washed all the way down the Rio Grande from the Jemez Mountains northwest of Albuquerque. The nearby Franklin Mountains also contain a variety of stone materials, including chert, rhyolite, limestone, and sandstone, that could be used to produce tools.