North America - Southwest (Geographic Keyword)
276-300 (899 Records)
Investigations at varying scales have been undertaken to understand the role of maize in the diets and daily lives of prehistoric societies in the U.S. Southwest. In the Cibola region, around the modern Pueblo of Zuni, archaeological studies provide a detailed temporal and spatial picture of rapid settlement reorganization and aggregation in the Pueblo III and IV periods between A.D. 1150-1400. Less well understood, however, is how daily subsistence practices and interactions with local...
Examining Variable Funerary Practices at Pottery Mound, New Mexico (2017)
Pottery Mound (LA 416) is a Pueblo IV village site located on the Rio Puerco in central New Mexico southwest of the modern city of Albuquerque and was occupied from the mid-14th to mid-15th centuries. This site is most notable for its abundance of local and non-local ceramic types and elaborate kiva murals (Schaafsma 2007). Excavations at Pottery Mound took place during several University of New Mexico (UNM) field schools under direction of Frank Hibben and later Linda Cordell between the 1950s...
Excavations at Vista del Valle, a Viejo Period Site of the Casas Grandes Cultural Tradition in Chihuahua, Mexico (2016)
In the summer of 2015 we conducted excavations at a site located along the Palanganas River, just south of the Casas Grandes River Valley in northwestern Chihuahua, Mexico. This represents the first excavation of a Viejo Period site (A.D. 700-1200) in this vicinity since the 1960s. We discovered remnants of at least five structures, and fully excavated three. This paper reports our findings and compares them to previous work carried out in the region.
Exchange and Resource Procurement During the Chaco Era in the American Southwest (2016)
The great houses of Chaco Canyon and the similar monumental buildings scattered across the northern Southwest during the Pueblo II period (A.D. 900-1150) are often discussed in terms of a regional system. One aspect of recent research is evaluating the movement of goods between great houses as an indication of the degree to which these communities were well integrated into a social or economic system. This paper examines patterns of non-local resource procurement and exchange among three great...
The Exotic and the Sacred: Evidence for Ritual Uses of Birds and Long Distance Exchange at Chaco and Mimbres (AD 800-1200) (2017)
Birds are key actors in Pueblo narratives of emergence and symbolize the six sacred directions in Pueblo cosmology and in some instances religious sodalities and societal divisions; bird feathers are powerful offerings to the supernatural, carrying prayers to the gods who in turn use them for adornment. Simply put, birds are central to modern Pueblo cosmology and social and religious life. Similarly, iconographic representations and the ritual treatment of avian species such as the Scarlet Macaw...
Experimental Archaeology: Insights from the Construction of an Adobe Room (2015)
Experimental archaeology is a useful tool for improving our understanding of prehistoric technologies and testing archaeological interpretations. The "Hands On Archaeology" project at the 2014 Archaeology Southwest / University of Arizona Upper Gila Preservation Archaeology Field School focused on the experimental construction of a single-story adobe pueblo room in the style of the Cliff phase (AD 1300-1450+). This project was done in conjunction with limited excavation in three Cliff phase...
Experimental Hearth Reconstruction at White Sands National Monument (2015)
Cultural sites known as "hearth mounds," scattered throughout the gypsum dune field of White Sands National Monument in south-central New Mexico, have the potential to provide additional insight into human habitation and subsistence strategies within the Tularosa Basin. These sites contain the remains of prehistoric thermal features which transformed the surrounding gypsum sediments into a hardened material similar to plaster of Paris. This paper explores the formation processes that influence...
Experimental Replication of Stone Tools used For Agave and Similar Plant Harvesting and Processing (2015)
There are numerous burned rock middens in the region around Fort Bliss. These sites are usually assumed to be agave processing locations, although it is possible that other types of plants, such as yucca, were being processed. Some of these sites have small quantities of artifacts, while others have fairly large numbers of artifacts, particularly modified flakes. We believe that this difference may relate to processing the plants for fiber, rather than food. We intend to replicate stone...
An Exploration Into a New Method of Skeletal Inventory in a Curatorial Setting (2015)
The Standards for Data Collection from Human Skeletal Remains has been the standard for inventorying skeletal collections around the country, as well as most recently adopted by the Autry National Center of the American West. In 2011, a new digital method of inventory was developed by the Smithsonian Institution, called Osteoware. Osteoware is intended to be a common set of core observations between different researchers and incorporates The Standards. This project looks over the merits and...
An Exploration of Indigenous Participation in Spanish Economic Activities in 17th-century New Mexico (2017)
When the viceroy of New Spain gave permission for the establishment the colony of New Mexico in the late 16th century, he acknowledged the importance of indigenous people to the colonial enterprise, urging the governor to treat indigenous Pueblo people kindly so that they would work for the colonists. The Spanish colonists’ economy largely consisted of the barter of subsistence goods. Throughout the 17th century, Pueblos and other indigenous peoples both engaged and were integrated into the...
Exploring Archaeological Collections and Research Possibilities at the Museum of Indian Arts & Culture (2016)
The Museum of Indian Arts and Culture (MIAC) acts as the Repository for the State of New Mexico, curating archaeological materials from Federal, state, and tribal lands, and private donations. The Archaeological Research Collections (ARC) is the museum’s largest collection, with Paleoindian through historic material from New Mexico and the greater Southwest. The collection is housed at the Center for New Mexico Archaeology, a new state-of-the-art facility shared with the Office of Archaeological...
Exploring Early Agricultural Technological Traditions at Las Capas with Experiments (2015)
Experiments conducted in concert with the analysis of ground stone artifacts recovered from Las Capas, AZ AA:12:111, (ASM) explored important early agricultural activities including planting and harvesting maize, processing maize, and making stone and fired-clay pipes. Results from the experiments combined with models developed from ethnographic references created workable correlates for evaluating features and tools associated with these activities. Las Capas style fields were planted with two...
Exploring Mimbres Social Memory through Burials and Architecture (2017)
Social memory has become a topic of increasing investigation in the field of archaeology. While social memory in archaeology can often be very theoretical and abstract, it can also be very tangible and concrete in its archaeological manifestations. In this poster, I illustrate various social memory practices with specific emphasis on the reference process, strengths of associations, and intimacy past peoples had with their history as observed in architecture and burials in the Mimbres region of...
Exploring Pithouses: Using GPR to Identify and Map Taos, NM Sites (2015)
In June of 2014, multiple pithouse sites within the Taos Valley were surveyed with ground-penetrating radar (GPR). GPR survey was employed to map two known pithouse sites and two possible pithouse sites. The Taos Valley ranges dramatically in elevation and terrain, many times leaving the surface indications of sites nonexistent. Also, the components (features) of each site exist at different depths. Because GPR is a high resolution mapping method that allows features of interest to be analyzed...
Exploring Technological Organization through Time: Mimbres Pottery Production (2015)
For some time, archaeologists have sought to characterize the manner in which ceramic technology was organized in the Mimbres area of southwestern New Mexico. Recent syntheses of INAA compositional data allow for a more thorough characterization of the organization parameters associated with ceramic technology in the Mimbres region. Here, we present a more contemporary analysis of the manner in which ceramic technology was organized in the Mimbres area using Costin’s (1991) organization of...
Exploring the Deposition of Fauna in Public Spaces in the Tonto Basin, Arizona (2017)
The nature and performance of public rituals and have long interested archaeologists studying the pre-Hispanic U.S. Southwest. The frequent deposition of animals in public spaces suggests that certain animals were important parts of public rituals and the broader activities surrounding them. In this poster, I explore the deposition of ritual fauna in the Tonto Basin area of central Arizona. Typically considered "Hohokam," the Tonto Basin exhibits influence from the neighboring Sinagua region and...
Exploring the Diagnostic Projectile Points of the Valles Caldera, Jemez Mountains, New Mexico (2015)
The Valles caldera holds a key position in the prehistoric human landscape of North America. Located in north-central New Mexico at the highest point of the Jemez Mountains, this area connects the Southwest with the Plains and anchors the southern extent of the Rocky Mountains. In addition to an abundance of high elevation resources, the Jemez volcanic field offered North America’s easternmost sources of high-quality obsidian toolstone. The caldera provides a unique setting for investigating...
Exploring the Effects of Endemic Warfare and Violence on Women and Children at Casas Grandes (2015)
Bioarcheologists have consistently explored the role that males play in warfare and raiding but the impact of warfare on women and children has been less of a focus. Other studies have shown that women sometimes play a role in fighting, and that women and children suffer from things such as declining resources, losing males from the household, and forced relocation. Casas Grandes provides a case study for the examination of women and children during what was likely to have been a period of...
An Extraordinary Earth Oven Facility at Kelley Cave (2015)
Feature 4 is a complex, well-preserved feature documented in Kelley Cave, a dry rockshelter in Eagle Nest Canyon that was investigated in 2013-2014 by the Ancient Southwest Texas Project of Texas State University. What we first recorded and still habitually refer to as "a feature" is a stratigraphically complex set of deposits and interfaces that formed near the mouth of the rockshelter over time. We think it represents an earth oven facility reused many times to bake agave lechuguilla, wild...
Extreme Tooth Wear: Understanding Dog Diets in the American Southwest (2016)
Dogs have been described as a refuse management system in prehistoric villages across the world; in fact, much of their domestication has been attributed to their ability to adapt to consume human garbage/waste. Recent research on prehistoric dog burials housed in the Museum of Northern Arizona’s curated faunal collections illustrates unusual tooth wear patterns on both the upper and lower carnassials in a large number of the canids. The wear does not appear to represent excessive gnawing on...
A Family of Five is Not the Same as One Household: The Effects of Disaggregation on Demographic Outcomes in Archaeological Simulation Models (2016)
Many archaeological agent-based computer models (ABMs) use the household as the smallest unit of investigation but, in order to answer questions about how factors such as disease, social interaction, and population movement contributed to population dynamics in prehistory, there is a need for individual-level models. Our team has worked to disaggregate an early archaeological ABM, the Artificial Anasazi model, into an individual-level model, the Artificial Long House Valley model. The baseline...
Farmaging and the Limitations of Storage during the Early Agricultural Period at Las Capas (2015)
The charred macroplant assemblage from Las Capas yielded one domesticate (Zea mays), and forty-six wild plant taxa endemic to the greater Tucson Basin of southern Arizona. These 47 taxa, their ubiquities, and their natural ranges of occurrence, indicate that the San Pedro phase and Early Cienega phase occupants of Las Capas were primarily dependent upon wild foods. Agriculture was used to mitigate the risks of food shortfalls associated with the alternative strategy of foraging for wild food...
Farmers’ Responses to Resource Stress and Climate Change in the Prehistoric US Southwest (2015)
Researchers in the semi-arid US Southwest have long linked abandonment, mobility, and other high-visibility culture changes to climate change, particularly shifts in precipitation patterns. Early researchers used synchronicity to infer causal relationships between cultural changes and climatic shifts. Recent work indicates a more complicated pattern in which some climatic shifts are contemporaneous with periods of population movement and upheaval, while other equally severe shifts are not...
Farming the Great Sage Plain: Mesa Verde Loess, Soils, and Agriculture (2015)
The Pueblo Farming Project (PFP) seeks to preserve traditional farming knowledge and educate the public concerning traditional farming practices and the place of corn cultivation in Pueblo cultures. Soil profiles inside and adjacent to project gardens reveal the impact of farming on soils over relatively small temporal and spatial scales. The Basketmaker Communities Project (BCP) focuses on better understanding the Basketmaker III Period, as well as the development of Early Pueblo communities....
The Faunal Assemblage from the Cañada Alamosa, New Mexico (2015)
The Canada Alamosa Project in southwestern New Mexico has generated a faunal assemblage of over 24,000 elements that span 4000 years. The assemblage is the result of 13 years of excavations by Human Systems Research at four archaeological sites located on the privately owned Monticello Box Ranch. The bulk of the material was derived from pithouse and pueblo components at the Montoya Site (LA88891), the Kelly Canyon Site (LA1125), the 450 room Victorio Site (LA88889), and the Pinnacle Ruin...