North America - Southwest (Geographic Keyword)
76-100 (899 Records)
Bell-shaped storage pits are a global phenomenon, and most (but not all) of these features were used for grain storage. Native Southwesterners’ use of bell-shaped pits began well back in pre-ceramic times. Both highly mobile hunter-gatherers and less mobile farmers dug and used them, and in a very general sense storage pit sizes track variation in settlement-subsistence patterns. Specifically, mobile hunter-gatherers dispersed small caches throughout their foraging ranges. This was a sort of...
A Better Understanding of Ancient Farming through Hydrology (2015)
Physical evidence that ancient people manipulated their environment in order to better manage water resources for the purpose of facilitating agriculture has long been recognized. Remnants of canal systems indicate diversion of the flow of streams and springs and the direct application of surface water to irrigated fields. Terraces and check dams provide evidence of the diversion of overland runoff, while mulched fields, pumice patches, and dune fields imply that early farmers sited fields so as...
BETWEEN SERI, CAHITA AND TEPIMA: PALEOETHNOBOTANICAL RESEARCH ON THE CENTRAL COAST OF SONORA, MEXICO (2017)
The sixteenth century Spaniards that arrived at the Central Coast of Sonora described the region between the Río Sonora and the Río Yaqui, as a transitional territory between the Comcáac (Seri) nomadic bands of the coast, and the farmers of the river Yaqui (Yoeme) and Pima. Unfortunately, the archaeology of this region is very little known and very little is known about the prehistoric history of the area. Recent investigations at several sites in this area, have yielded a variety of...
Beyond Broken Bones: The Value of Creating an Osteobiography when Analyzing Violence in the Past (2017)
Population level analyses of violence that are focused on quantifying and comparing traumatic injuries on human skeletal remains recovered from an archaeological context are crucial for understanding violent interactions through time and across regions. However, these types of studies are also limited because, by design, they place less emphasis on individuals and their lived experience. In contrast, when researchers create what Frank and Julie Saul called an osteobiography for each set of...
Beyond Excavation and Laboratory Work: New Directions in Crow Canyon Archaeological Center’s College Field School Curricula (2016)
The Crow Canyon Archaeological Center was created in 1983 to advance and share knowledge of the human experience through archaeological research, education programs, and partnerships with American Indians. Since its creation, over 70,000 students and adults have participated in the Center’s innovative experiential education, research, and travel programs. Crow Canyon’s programs vary in a number of ways in order to highlight different aspects of its tripartite mission. In 2015, Crow Canyon...
Beyond the Dates: Reconstructing the Social Histories of Southeastern Utah Cliff Dwellings with Tom Windes (2015)
For over a dozen years, Tom Windes and his Woodrat crew have been scampering in and out of the canyons of the Cedar Mesa area, mapping hard to reach cliff dwellings and taking tree-ring samples from archaeological wood in intact structures. Beyond just obtaining tree-ring dates during this work, Tom has developed new dendroarchaeological sampling methods, trained a new generation of researchers in these techniques, and pushed the limits of standard tree-ring analysis and interpretative...
Beyond the Visible: Identifying Microscopic Erosion in Ceramics Used for Alcohol Fermentation. An Application of Scanning Electron Microscopy in Archaeology (2016)
Ethnographic research on low-fired pottery has demonstrated that the production of alcohol deteriorates the interior vessels’ wall leaving deep pitting marks. Similar pitting is seen on some jars and sherds from the North American Southwest and Northern Mexico, causing researchers to suggest that alcohol was brewed in this region before European contact. The identification of these marks on archaeological materials relies on an observer to visually confirm and quantify the level of erosion...
Big (Pre)History in North America:a view from the Southwest (2017)
While there are hopeful signs of change, for most of the last half-century American Anthropological Archaeology has been highly skeptical or openly hostile to continental-scale dynamics, particularly north of Mexico. Why was that? This paper briefly explores the history of our discipline, contrasts it to Europe and Latin America, and remarks on emerging, more realistic frames-of-reference for the prehistory of Native agricultural societies in North America. Examples begin with old chestnuts in...
Bioarchaeological Approaches to Kinship and Social Organization at Paquimé (2017)
Variation in cranial and dental non-metric traits provides a unique method for investigating prehistoric biological variability at Paquimé, Chihuahua, Mexico. Previous biodistance analyses have demonstrated patterns of long-distance gene flow with both Southwestern and frontier Mesoamerican groups, while stable isotope analyses have suggested a pattern of immigration into the site. The primary goal of this study is to determine what the pattern of biological variability tells us about social...
Bioarchaeology at Las Capas: Uniformity and Continuity within the Early Agricultural Period (2015)
Investment in cultigens and early irrigation in the Sonoran Desert (circa 3600 BP) signal a major shift in subsistence strategy identified as the Early Agricultural Period (EAP). The EAP is also recognized as a period of significant social transformation, and Las Capas (LCA) has played a critical part in our redefinition of this period. We examine how biocultural signatures from the LCA mortuary sample compare over the site’s occupation and within broader patterns of the EAP. Our results...
The Bioarchaeology of Social Order: Cooperation and Conflict among the Mimbres (AD 550-1300) (2015)
A comprehensive bioarchaeological assessment of Mimbres health, activity, and interpersonal violence was completed using data from a sample of 248 human burials from 17 Late Pithouse (AD 550-1000) and Pueblo (AD 1000-1300) sites in the Mimbres region. The findings presented here demonstrate broader patterns for interpretation of community experiences that have not been as well described in previous case studies from individual site samples. This larger sample of all available adult burials...
Black and White and Shades of Gray: Projectile Points and Bifaces from the Dinwiddie Site, Southwestern New Mexico (2015)
During Archaeology Southwest and University of Arizona’s 2013 and 2014 field school seasons, close to a hundred bifaces were recovered from the Dinwiddie site, a Cliff phase (A.D. 1300-1450) Salado site in southwestern New Mexico. These artifacts include Archaic and late Pueblo period projectile point styles and several bifaces interpreted as having been discarded during the manufacturing process. This poster presents the biface and projectile point analyses results, expanding on a study...
Black Mesa Cultural Resources: An Update (2015)
The Black Mesa Archaeological Project (1967-1987) was undertaken to clear archaeological sites to mine coal for the Navajo Generating Station to provide power for the Bureau of Reclamation’s Central Arizona Project. The original permit for this work expires in 2019. The Bureau of Reclamation is in the process of re-permitting (from 2019-2044) all of the connected features of the project that include the Kayenta Mine on Black Mesa, a railroad, and two large powerlines. This paper will present...
Black Rocks Beyond the Border: Obsidian in the Casas Grandes World (2015)
Archaeologists in the North American Southwest have documented the source provenance of obsidian artifacts throughout the Ancestral Pueblo, Hohokam, and Mimbres Mogollon regions. These results have impacted how we portray obsidian lithic technology, procurement, and social interaction at both macro and micro regional and temporal scales. Despite the methodological and theoretical advances in southwestern archaeological obsidian studies over the years, obsidian from the Casas Grandes region in...
Blast Caps and Other Stories of the CCC on the Gila National Forest: Imaging and Reimagining the North Star Road (2015)
The CCC and other New Deal agencies were active across the Gila National Forest during the 1930s. The North Star Road (which experienced earlier use as a Military Road) runs alongside the Gila Wilderness, the nation’s first wilderness area, established in 1924. The road is now sandwiched between the Gila Wilderness and the Aldo Leopold Wilderness (part of the first Wilderness established in 1964, under the Wilderness Act). Significant work was conducted along the North Star Road by the CCC. How...
Blending Architectural Traditions at the Edge of Cibola, New Mexico (2017)
The archaeological zone south of Grants, New Mexico and north of Quemado, New Mexico has long represented an enigma for southwestern archaeologists. Straddling the so-called Mogollon-Pueblo boundary and lying south of the boundary between the Pueblos of Acoma and Zuni, its archaeology combines traits of multiple cultural traditions. Detailed recording at sites in the area reveals a mix of architectural approaches including use of adobe, sandstone, and igneous rock—often at the same site. This...
Blue Birds and Black Glass: Traditions and Communities of Practice during the Coalition to Classic Period Transition on the Pajarito Plateau, New Mexico (2016)
Multiple lines of anthropological evidence demonstrate people moved from the northern San Juan region into the Pajarito Plateau in the late thirteenth and early fourteenth centuries A.D. This Coalition to Classic period transition was a time of immense demographic and social reorganization that shaped the historical and cultural trajectories for future of Ancestral Pueblo people. As a consequence of the influx of diasporic households, how did this transformation affect traditions of obsidian...
Blue-green stone mosaics in the U. S. Southwest and Northwestern Mexico: origins, spatio-temporal distribution and potential meanings (2017)
Intricately-crafted mosaics are prevalent among blue-green stone artifacts created in prehispanic Mesoamerica, but are rarer in the prehistoric United States Southwest and Northwestern Mexico (SW/NW). Because they occur earlier in Mesoamerica and are the most Mesoamerican-like of the SW/NW blue-green stone creations, we propose that the production and use of these artifacts in the SW/NW was derived from Mesoamerica. We describe the degree to which mosaics manufactured in the SW/NW resemble and...
The Bluff –Twin Rocks community: Community formation, persistence and evolution in the northwestern San Juan region (2015)
The valley of Bluff, Utah, is one of many localities in southeast Utah where the archaeological record may show evidence of a succession of Puebloan community centers from the AD 500s through the 1200s (Basketmaker III – Pueblo III periods). These remains can be (1) the formation and dissolution of successive, independent, econocentric communities that came and went in a location with economically advantageous qualities (water and arable land); or (2) a single, persistent, sociocentric community...
Boca Negra Wash: Investigating Activity Organization at a Shallowly Buried Folsom Camp in the Middle Rio Grande Valley of New Mexico (2017)
Shallow open-air Folsom sites in central New Mexico have been known for six decades, but have received little investigation; most are known only from surface collection. Their post-occupational geomorphic histories of erosional exposure and reburial, coupled with limited archaeological investigation, pose significant challenges to efforts to examine and interpret Folsom intra-site activity organization. We report on our efforts to detect and make sense of patterning in the distribution of...
BODIES AMONG FRAGMENTS: NON-NORMATIVE INHUMATIONS AMONG THE PRECLASSIC AND CLASSIC PERIOD HOHOKAM IN THE TUCSON BASIN (2016)
Inhumation and cremation usually are studied in isolation regardless of the fact that they may be practiced in the same culture and time period. Among the Tucson Basin Hohokam in the Prehispanic American Southwest cremation was the main funeral custom and normative and non-normative inhumations were practiced with very low frequencies throughout the Preclassic (A.D. 700-1150) and Classic (A.D. 1150-1450/1500) periods. This paper explores changes through time in non-normative burial customs of...
Booze or Food? Experimental Archaeology of Low-Fired Pottery to Examine Tribochemical Processes (2016)
Ceramic ethnographic research from Africa shows that the fermenting of alcohol in low-fired pottery results in a variety of tribochemical processes, which cause pitting in the interior of the vessel. Jars and sherds from the Casas Grandes region (AD 1200-1450) have similar pitting, causing researchers to propose that either alcohol or hominy was made in these jars. To evaluate these hypotheses we created low-fired vessels and used them for boiling water, making hominy, fermenting corn (corn...
Botanical and aDNA Analysis of the Dietary Contents of Human Paleofeces from Turkey Pen Ruin, Utah (2016)
Over the last few decades archaeologists and paleontologists have made great strides in paleofecal analysis, not the least of which was the application of aDNA testing. However, most aDNA analyses of paleofeces have focused exclusively on studying human populations and researchers have largely ignored the potential for using this tool to study dietary constituents themselves. In this study, we present analyses of aDNA from both the faunal and floral dietary constituents of 20 Basketmaker II...
Boxes and Boxes of Guilt: Guilt Mail from the Canyon de Chelly National Monument (2016)
Within the collections housed at the Canyon de Chelly National Monument there are many archaeological artifacts and natural resource materials which were taken and subsequently returned by visitors to the park, along with associated letters and correspondence. While the existence of these returned unauthorized collections, also known as "Guilt Mail", is not common knowledge among the general public or park visitors, many national parks have similar items in their collections. Within the...
A Brief Introduction to the Sonoran Desert Fish (2017)
While Suzanne and Paul Fish are endemic to the Sonoran Desert, they have been invasive in other regions of the World. The hybrid vigor from combining Paul's Michigan foundation with Suzy's Texas background added to their wide spread geographic range of experiences. As well, an enduring monogamy, a not well know known for this species, contributes to their impressive contributions in archaeology. Here, we briefly explore the natural history of this unique team.