North America - Southwest (Geographic Keyword)
176-200 (899 Records)
Tribes and museums have experienced a paradigm shift in their relationships during the twenty-five years of the NAGPRA era. The experiences of each group have been multi-faceted and complex, driven by new legal mandates and opportunities and shaped by differing viewpoints as to what must, should, and could emerge from the repatriation journey. This paper will explore some of the assumptions, experiences, and future expectations that NAGPRA has engendered in various tribal and museum...
Compositional and Lead Isotope Analyses of Carretas and Huerigos Polychrome from Northwestern Chihuahua (2017)
The northern Mexican state of Chihuahua contains many little-known archaeological sites. Established collections, such as E.B. Sayles’s 1933 survey collection, can provide new insights using analytic techniques not available when they were originally acquired. We analyzed a subset of Sayles’s collection, including Carretas and Huérigos polychrome ceramic types, for glaze compositional information and geographic sourcing of the lead flux. Analyzing the samples using laser ablation inductively...
The Conceptual Metaphor Expanded: A Visual Study of Whole Vessels in the Mesa Verde Region (2016)
Previous research into the conceptual foundations of the Mesa Verde style has found that ceramic imagery is conceptualized as textile designs and is representative of a worldview grounded in container imagery (Ortman 2000). However, these conclusions derive from patterns observable on sherds. In this study I examine designs on whole vessels using the same framework to determine whether the same worldview of textiles and ceramic imagery is seen in a complete context. Examining design constraints...
Connecting Tijeras Pueblo: Identifying Utility Ware Communities of Practice (2015)
This poster summarizes data on Southwestern utility wares from Tijeras Pueblo (LA 581), a fourteenth century village site in the Central Rio Grande region of New Mexico. Attributes such as paste color, vessel form, and surface modification were analyzed in order to characterize utility ware "communities of practice" at Tijeras Pueblo. Furthermore my research seeks to compare these aspects of utility ware form, style and production methods with those from adjacent areas of the Rio Grande a well...
"Constraint and Freedom" in the Era of Big Data (2017)
Twenty-seven years ago, Bruce Trigger presented a "new synthesis of archaeological explanation," seeking to harmonize neo-evolutionary explanations dominant in the 1970s with socio-historical perspectives of the 1980s. Central to his thesis was the distinction between "external" constraints that structure human agency independent of humans themselves, and "internal" constraints that are historically and culturally constructed. Here, I critique Trigger's formula by acknowledging that even...
Construction of a Mule Deer General Utility Index (2016)
Optimal foraging models and faunal analysis to interpret diet require quantitative data to negate variables of results. With the collection and processing of eleven mule deer (Odocoileus hemionus) in the Sierra Blanca Region, New Mexico, a statistically significant database for analysis is constructed. Previous researchers collected a wide range of data with different methods. By synthesizing it into a solid and replicable method an index can be developed for subsequent species to enable...
Consultants Are People Too: Meaningful Consultation and Archaeology (2015)
Gaining meaningful information from traditional community consultants can often be difficult. Furthermore, exactly what constitutes such information has changed over time. Recently the focus in archaeology has shifted from a point based search for specific locations to a landscape based approach aimed at information that can be used to define the attributes of traditional cultural properties, so that areas which could contain them can be managed. This paper explores the elements needed to...
Consultation and Beyond: NAGPRA as a Gateway to Collaboration (2016)
With NAGPRA’s passage 25 years ago, many saw this federal mandate as an opportunity for museum professionals, scientists, and Native Americans to assess and change the dynamics of their relationships. Few however, likely anticipated the full range of collaborations between Native communities and institutions that emerged from NAGPRA consultations. One such example is the ongoing partnership between the American Museum of Natural History (AMNH) and the A:shiwi A:wan Museum and Heritage Center in...
Context and Collaboration: The Maxwell's Repatriation to Jemez Pueblo (2016)
The Pueblo of Jemez and the Maxwell Museum of Anthropology have been working together since 2007 to document human skeletal remains in preparation for repatriation. Challenges presented in preparing for repatriation included a paucity of field notes and other records, as much of the material came to the Museum from 1930’s field schools, and a loss of information about which burial objects were originally with which burials. Despite these challenges, over 700 individual skeletons have been...
Corridors of Interaction: Using Chuskan Ceramics and Lithics to Reveal the Larger Sociopolitical Hierarchy of Chaco Canyon (2017)
Unraveling the complex relationships that existed between Chaco Canyon and outlier communities is essential to understanding how and why Chaco rose to prominence and the nature of its sociopolitical authority. Key to this debate is evaluating the interactions between Chaco Canyon and the great house communities of the eastern slope of the Chuska Mountains. This region produced substantial quantities of the lithics, ceramics, timber, and food found within Chaco Canyon. The social conditions that...
Costly Gobbling: Raising Turkeys in the Central Mesa Verde Area (2017)
In the Central Mesa Verde (CMV) area of the Southwest, turkey bones increased markedly relative to those of artiodactyls in sites of the late AD 1100s and 1200s. We present an exploratory model of the proportional contribution of turkeys, artiodactyls, and small mammals to the animal protein component of the diet. Assuming a demand of 5 to 10 g of animal protein/person/day, we estimate that more than half that demand was met by turkeys in the mid-1200s. Both turkeys and humans relied heavily on...
A Costly Signaling Model for Chacoan Great House Construction (2017)
Peer polity interaction has been suggested as a primary driver of interaction among communities with Chaco-style great houses. Unfortunately, the peer polity model lacks underlying theory and therefore using it to empirically examine the relationships between great house groups is difficult. We propose instead that costly signaling theory is a better framework for evaluating the construction of these monumental structures, the ritual or group level activities associated with their use, and...
Covering Ground: Spatial Relationships of Prehistoric Sites on Black Mesa, Arizona (2017)
Modern applications in spatial analysis are reinventing the way archaeologists view spatial relationships in the prehistoric Southwest. Building on the extensive research conducted by the Black Mesa Archaeological Project (BMAP), this poster presentation presents new insights into spatial relationships and social dynamics on northern Black Mesa, Arizona using ArcGIS applications, such as viewshed analysis, as well as predictive modeling. Recently conducted pedestrian survey on Peabody Western...
Cowboy Wash Pueblo and Community Organization on the Southern Piedmont of Sleeping Ute Mountain (2015)
Located on the southern piedmont of Sleeping Ute Mountain in southwest Colorado, Cowboy Wash Pueblo (5MT7740) is a large, late Pueblo III site containing thirteen kiva depressions and more than thirty rooms. It is the largest site within what has been termed the Cowboy Wash community, yet it is one of the least well documented of all the habitations composing this community. Recent investigations at the site documented a very different configuration for the site than had originally been...
Creating Communities of Collaboration through Digital Archaeology and the Digital Humanities (2015)
Over the last 10 years, I’ve been involved in various forms of "digital archaeology" with different forms of public and community outreach. In this paper I profile the more and less successful forms of public and community engagement entailed in these digital efforts. I also discuss current efforts to concurrently engage in humanistic and scientific forms of digital archaeology through communities of collaboration. SAA 2015 abstracts made available in tDAR courtesy of the Society for American...
Creating Insiders and Outsiders through Language (2016)
Anthropologists use discourse analyses to study how language is used within cultures and across cultural boundaries as a way to distinguish between the cultural “insiders” and “outsiders.” This study investigates how language creates insiders and outsiders in archaeology. Textbooks and primary literature are used in the professionalization of students from undergraduate through doctoral programs, helping to drive the transition from novice to professional status in archaeology. Scholars within...
Cross-Cultural Examination of Mortuary Practices of the Southern Sinagua and Prescott Culture (2016)
The burials from the Oak Creek Valley Pueblo and the Dewey Archaeological sites provide data for interpreting the mortuary practices and burial rituals of the Southern Sinagua and Prescott cultures. The variability exhibited in the burials uncovered at these sites, which include the remains of an adult male, two adult females, infant burials, and one dog, allows for an examination of mortuary practices as they relate to social structure and the role of children, symbolism, environmental...
Cubism, History and Narrative in Archaeology: shifting borders and disciplinary boundaries from New Mexico to California (2015)
Throughout his career David Hurst Thomas' work has stretched the disciplines of archaeology and history in novel and unexpected directions. Mr. Thomas essay on cubism and archaeology is one such example. This essay traces the shifts in borderlands archaeology using Thomas' powerful metaphor, and demonstrates the unique creativity and flexibility that characterizes Thomas' approach to the past. SAA 2015 abstracts made available in tDAR courtesy of the Society for American Archaeology and Center...
Cuevas arqueológicas al oeste de la Sierra Madre Occidental, Chihuahua. Las casas acantilado. (2017)
En esta ponencia se hablará de los sitios arqueológicos establecidos en cuevas conocidos como casas acantilado (cliff dwellings) asociadas a la cultura Casas Grandes, teniendo como punto de referencia la actual Zona Arqueológica Paquimé, la cual tuvo su momento de apogeo entre el año 1060-1340 d C. Este tipo de sitios tienen características muy específicas en cuanto a la formación del contexto arqueológico y todo lo que encontramos en él; es decir, gracias al microambiente que en este se genera,...
Cultural Landscape Assessment for the San Luis Valley-Taos Plateau (2015)
In support of the Bureau of Land Management’s (BLM’s) recent shift toward a regional landscape-scale approach to resource management on public lands, Argonne National Laboratory is conducting a pilot cultural landscape assessment in the San Luis Valley–Taos Plateau region of Colorado and New Mexico. The cultural landscape assessment is a paradigm shift from looking at individual cultural resource locations on a project-by-project basis to a more holistic approach of land use patterns at a...
Cultural Transmission and Artifact Variation in Late Prehistoric New Mexico (2016)
Prehistoric boundary dynamics likely affected aspects of cultural transmission. Several lines of archaeological evidence indicate increased economic importance of bison and related inter-group tensions ca. AD 1300 in southeastern New Mexico, a boundary zone between the Pueblos to the west and cultures of the southern High Plains to the east. This paper presents preliminary results of a study centered on artifact variability and designed to test the hypothesis that model-based, biased cultural...
Cultural Transmission and Lithic Technologies, a Case Study in the Late Prehistoric Tonto Basin (2016)
The past 5 years have seen new lithic studies inferring the degree of contact between and migrations of Pleistocene hominin populations (Tostevin 2013, Scerri et al. 2014). Their methodologies are grounded in a rigorously defined middle range theory, but independent tests of the approach have only recently begun. Bridging the gap between individual knapping events, and the trans-generational patterns we see in the archaeological record will likely require multiple approaches, including applying...
Culture Change at Casas Grandes: New Perspectives from Bioarchaeological Analyses (2017)
One of the significant ongoing debates surrounding Casas Grandes is whether the Medio period florescence of Paquimé arose from in situ developments or external stimuli. Some scholars have attributed Medio period cultural developments to the arrival of immigrants from surrounding regions, including Mesoamerica, west Mexico, and the American Southwest, while others have suggested that Paquimé grew out of the preceding Viejo period. To address this question, we use strontium and oxygen isotope...
Cumulative Survey: Defining Coalescent Communities in the American Southwest (2015)
The fundamental shift from artifacts to settlements as the basic units of archaeological inquiry required a rethinking of methodologies. Now the basic questions were about measuring interactions of people deployed differentially on cultural landscapes. At a more abstract level it required adoption of the logic of relations in preference to the typological logic of entities and their qualities. If settlements are portrayed as variously colored dots on a map, interactions can be expressed as what...
The Current State of Looting, Preservation, and Education in the Casas Grandes Region (2015)
The looting of archaeological artifacts is a worldwide phenomenon prompting the destruction of our world heritage. Looting and the antiquities market across the U.S/Mexico border is a complex bi-national issue that has highly impacted the archaeological record. A previous examination of the history of looting in Casas Grandes, Chihuahua, Mexico demonstrates three periods of looting: the Museum Period (1900-1939), the Private Collector Period (1940-1979), and the Present Period (1980-present)....