An Agricultural Landscape on the Northern Mimbres Frontier, South-Central New Mexico, USA

Summary

The Cañada Alamosa is the northernmost frontier of the ancestral Pueblo Mimbres people of the U.S. Southwest. Intensive survey of a side canyon has defined a distinct agricultural landscape composed of small pueblos, farmsteads, field houses, shrines, and other features. Occupation was centered around alluvial fans located on the first terrace above the drainage, fed by runoff from upper terraces, rather than the floodwaters of the drainage bottom itself. While the Cañada Alamosa has significant later Tularosa and Mesa Verde occupations, use of this agricultural landscape is confined to the Classic Mimbres phase, A.D. 1000-1130. This agricultural landscape reveals both spatial and temporal diversity in farming practices in the eastern Mimbres area, with implications for the understanding of social and economic changes in this part of the region during the later years of ancestral Pueblo occupation.

This Resource is Part of the Following Collections

• Society for American Archaeology 82nd Annual Meeting, Vancouver, BC (2017)

Keywords

Spatial Coverage

Record Identifiers

Abstract Id(s): 16991