North America - Southwest (Geographic Keyword)
476-500 (899 Records)
A comprehensive landscape survey covering 2,000 acres of private property was conducted this past May in the Sierra Diablo Mountains of far west Texas. The survey targeted a previously unsurveyed portion of the mountain range and surrounding alluvial fan environments adjacent to Sierra Diablo Cave with the goal of assessing the relationship between settlement and landform. The landforms included wooded juniper pine uplands at nearly 6,000 ft AMSL to the lower foothills and basin margins at...
Manito Trail Arborglyphs: Expressions of Place and Conceptions of Wilderness in Historic Graffiti from New Mexico, Colorado, and Wyoming (2017)
Chicana/o scholars Levi Romero and Vanessa Fonseca define the Manito Trail as a late 19th through mid-20th century diaspora of New Mexicans traveling to work across the state of Wyoming. Manitos labored in herding, ranching, farming, mining and lumber extraction, as well as in-town jobs. Some returned to New Mexico annually while others made Wyoming their permanent residence; yet most never fully lost contact with their homeland. Although Wyoming has a small Hispanic population whose presence...
Manufacturing Basketmaker III Bone Objects (2015)
Bone tools are an important component in the study of the archaeological record worldwide. They have become especially useful in the study of perishable objects. This is because they are one of the few preserved items left behind that were required for processes such as weaving, and leatherworking. This research seeks to identify and replicate the manufacturing techniques required to produce a selection of bone objects that were found at the Dillard and Switchback sites, which are from the...
The manufacturing traces of the turquoise objects and the lapidary technology from Chaco Canyon: an experimental archaeology approach (2017)
There are thousands of turquoise objects found in different sites of the American Southwest, and Chaco Canyon, New Mexico, is known as one of the principal areas that concentrated most of them. Unfortunately, most of the researches about these stones had been focused on their symbolic meaning, morphology, provenance, trade and use, but very few study their manufacturing traces and the organization of their production. In this paper, we will present a technological/traceological approach to...
Mapping the Monumental Architecture of the Largo Gap Great House (2015)
This study combines spatial technology with traditional field methods to accurately identify and map the monumental architecture of the late Pueblo II Largo Gap great house. Although previous visits by early researchers to the site identified monumental architectural characteristics typically associated with Chaco-style great houses (primarily the presence of a great kiva), the surface expression of such features is currently lacking. Rubble present along the steep slopes of the knoll upon which...
Marriage Patterns and Material Culture: A Pueblo/Fremont Test Case Using Basketry (2016)
At various times, archaeologists have proposed that the Great Basin Fremont, who lived in Utah and nearby areas between AD 500 and 1250, were Pueblo colonists, a purely indigenous Great Basin development, intrusive Athabaskans, or something in between. Fremont material culture is generally not very different from that of their neighbors, except in a few cases. Four artifact categories distinguish the Fremont: rock art and pottery depictions of trapezoidal figures; grey coiled-construction...
Material as Behavior: The Role of Generative Information Mechanisms in Restricting and Aiding in Settlement Dynamics (2016)
Archaeologists have long argued that the built environment is an expression of prehistoric community organizations, social interactions, and changes through time. Traditionally, archaeologists have interpreted buildings and settlement landscapes as proxies for estimating population size; indices of power structures; representations of community organization; markers of social interactions; etc. Even though there has been an increasing awareness of the importance of architecture it has been...
Material Culture of Communities: Temporal and Spatial Patterns in the Material Culture of the Goodman Point Community (2015)
In this paper, we explore temporal and spatial patterns present in the material culture of the Goodman Point Community. The Goodman Point area of southwestern Colorado was home to ancestral Pueblo peoples from the A.D. 600s until depopulation of the broader region around A.D. 1280. Recent laboratory analyses by the Crow Canyon Archaeological Center have produced a large data set of the material culture within the later Goodman Point Community, including data on over 95,000 sherds and 75,000...
Materiality and Movement: Indigenous Concepts in Archaeological Analysis and Interpretation (2017)
As investigations of cultures’ material pasts, archaeology’s units of analysis are tactile. The concepts we employ need material referents in order to be accessible to archaeological analysis and interpretation. To bring together the scientific method of archaeology with Indigenous frameworks, material referents of Indigenous concepts necessarily require theorizing the dynamic relationship between culture, time, and place in concert with Indigenous perspectives. In scaffolding theoretical...
Materiality of Death at Cerro de Trincheras, Sonora: A Comparison of Ceramic Urn Funerary Practice in a Macro Regional Scale (2015)
Funerary vessel urns represent a unique variety among other manners of treatment of the dead in the North American Southwest (SW) and Northwest Mexico (NW). The ritual practice of packing human remains in ceramic vessels is considered as a well-defined cultural accomplishment. Particularly, the urn funerary practice, although with local variation in time and space, represents a wider social action that reflects a particular worldview in the conception of death. Depositing human remains in...
The Matthew Effect in Archaeology: Discovery, the Transmission of Knowledge, and Credit (2016)
Although the Matthew Effect was originally used by sociologist Robert K. Merton for the disproportionate credit given to eminent scientists in cases of collaboration or independent discoveries within a professional discipline, it also is appropriate to apply it to situations where professionals take away or gain credit for work done by amateurs. Examples of such an effect are provided with an examination of the more general issue of how knowledge of discoveries is transmitted in archaeology and...
Maverick Mountain Phase Ceramics from Point of Pines Pueblo: A Preliminary Report (2017)
Emil Haury's 1958 synthesis of the Pueblo III-Pueblo IV period (A.D. 1265-1450) archaeology of Point of Pines Pueblo, in east-central Arizona, is the American Southwest's classic case study in how to reliably infer ancient migrations. Field school excavations conducted between 1946 and 1960 uncovered compelling evidence of immigrants from the Kayenta region of far northeastern Arizona and southeastern Utah. However, because the excavations at Point of Pines Pueblo have never been fully reported,...
Measuring Household Inequality in Hohokam Society: An Analysis of Domestic Architecture at Pueblo Grande (2017)
Recent archaeological efforts to explain the emergence and persistence of social inequality have been hampered by a lack of information about how wealth was transmitted across generations and how it may have accumulated or diminished over time. Building on studies that have shown domestic architecture to be an excellent material expression of household wealth, we provide a method for reconstructing the amount of labor invested in house construction at Pueblo Grande, taking into account different...
Measuring Mobility: Comparing Indices Developed from Architectural and Paleoethnobotanical Datasets (2017)
Thirty years of research on mobility and sedentism shows that population movement occurred for reasons both ecological and social. Population movement could occur over short or long distances, could occur seasonally or generationally, and could involve both small and large groups. While archaeologists have theorized mobility in a variety of ways, they have not developed a robust body of methods for measuring and comparing mobility between households at the intrasite or intersite level. This...
Measuring Risk to Food Security in the Prehispanic U.S. Southwest: The Salinas Region in the Broader Southwest World (2017)
Marginal environments present risks to food shortfall to prehistoric small-scale societies, which create and rely on social and environmental strategies to mitigate those risks. One piece to understanding the vulnerability to failing to produce enough food is defining the risk factors that may limit food procurement on a given landscape – in our case, the U.S Southwest. Using large archaeological, historical, and ecological datasets, our main risk to food production – growing season...
Memories of Women's Work: Investigating the 19th Century U.S. Army Laundresses' Quarters at Fort Davis, Texas (2016)
The 19th century U.S. army encampment at Fort Davis is commonly remembered for its association with the enlisted men and officers who served the U.S. government. However, the fort also employed and rationed a group of Hispanic and black female laundresses, who too often are made invisible in modern interpretations of the site. Using an assemblage of domestic materials collected during the summers of 2013 and 2015, this paper aims to highlight the work – including physical labor, cultural...
Mesa Grande and Its World: An Analysis of Intrusive Pottery Types Recovered from Mesa Grande and Their Social Implications (2017)
Mesa Grande, one of the two largest Hohokam platform mound villages in the lower Salt River Valley, Arizona, contains an exceptionally large and diverse excavated sample of intrusive, diagnostic pottery types that have been cross-dated with tree-ring dates in other regions. Complexes of these intrusive types in a stratigraphically defined sequence at the site provide new insight into calendrical age of the mound and its associated compounds, allowing us to test recent suggestions that Mesa...
Mesoamerican contact on the Southwest Northern frontier (2017)
Research by ARCON, Inc. over the past two decades, using multi-disciplinary archaeology research tools and inter-regional comparative research, is bridging regional boundaries to help construct histories of ancient people. The role of cultural exchange is becoming more apparent with intellectual data for exploring the rise of high civilizations in ancient cultures. A variety of research discoveries includes ancient turquoise trade between Mesoamerica and the Southwest (turquoise trace analysis...
Metal Sensing and Indigenous Copper from Isle Royale National Park and Gila National Forest (2017)
Though much professional work utilizing metal sensing comes from within the historic period and battlefield archaeology, the application of metal sensing techniques to precontact sites has much to offer contemporary studies of copper use in the U.S., particularly inter- and intra-site geospatial analyses of indigenous copper exploitation. Ongoing research in two U.S. regions is illustrative of the contributions metal sensing technology is making to studies of copper and copper technology. Recent...
Methods for Examining and Creating a Typology of Bedrock Features in the Lower Pecos Canyonlands (2015)
Bedrock features are a common archaeological occurrence in the Lower Pecos Canyonlands of southwest Texas. These occur in a wide range of forms, from polished "slicks", cupules, and small grinding facets to large, deep, well-developed mortar holes. Even though relatively common, bedrock features, and ground stone in general, have received very little directed research in the region. This paper discusses ongoing research which uses a multi-faceted approach to examine bedrock feature attributes at...
Methods for the Analysis of Structural Wood and Some Examples from NW Mexico – A Paper in Honor of Tomas C. Windes (2015)
The wooden portions of prehistoric and historic architecture are not always well preserved. However, when they are present they provide a wealth of information about construction techniques, labor effort, and other aspects of the lives of these people related to building construction. Some key attributes of analysis include: tree species, when the tree died, felling methods, branch and bark removal methods, and surface treatment. This paper summarizes some of Windes’ contributions to this area...
Micro analyses of 17th Century adobe bricks from the "new" church at Pecos, New Mexico. (2015)
The clash of Pueblo farmers and Spanish missionaries in central New Mexico marks the transition from prehistoric maize farming to the modern era along the Rio Grande River. The interaction between Native Americans and Spanish was not totally either peaceful or confrontational. The first church, built in the 1620s, was later burned during the Pueblo Revolt when Spanish were forced to leave, then rebuilt when relations improved. Four bricks from the new church (Mission de Nuestra Senora de los...
The Micro Seriation of Chupadero Black-on-White (2015)
In this poster we examine the Chupadero Black on White ceramic tradition of the Jornada Magollon cultural area located in the American Southwest. In search of microstlylistic variations within the Chupadero Black on White, we argue that this ceramic tradition can be classified into smaller phases or styles for more exact dating methods. Examples of this type of practice has been demonstrated in the Mimbres Black on White ceramic tradition, which had been the only white wear of the cultural area...
Microhistories of the "Funnel Effect": Tracing the banal materialities of U.S. border enforcement, 2000-present (2017)
Nearly two decades have passed since the strategic border security paradigm known as "prevention through deterrence" took root in the landscape of Southern Arizona. The aim is to deter illicit migration by strategically amassing border security forces to funnel migrants into a treacherous landscape of increased risk. Thousands of undocumented migrants have died when confronting those risks in an outcome known as the "funnel effect." This paper draws upon dissertation research that studied the...
Microscale Geoarchaeology in a Historic Context: Soil Micromorphology Analysis with the Fort Davis Archaeological Project (2015)
Microscale geoarchaeology, specifically soil micromorphology, has incredible potential for enriching archaeological understandings of the materiality of past experience through detailed information on the events, actions, and processes which create archaeological sites. Soil micromorphological analysis can parallel the strict time scales available through historic documentation with material evidence of specific human, non-human, and natural events. This paper shows how micromorphological...