North America - Southwest (Geographic Keyword)
501-525 (899 Records)
Eagle Cave (41VV167) is a large dry rockshelter with deep stratified deposits spanning the Early Archaic through the Late Prehistoric periods. My thesis research focuses on the deposits in the northern sector of the shelter sampled during the 1963 excavations by UT-Austin and again a half century later by Texas State University in 2014. My goal is to use multiple lines of evidence to evaluate the natural and cultural formation processes that resulted in the complexly stratified, culturally rich...
The Middle and Late Holocene Archaeological and Climatic Records of Southern New Mexico and Trans-Pecos Texas: New Insights and New Revelations (2016)
A contextual analysis of 3,989 radiocarbon dates provides unprecedented insights into 8,000 years of prehistoric adaptions and social evolution in the northern Chihuahuan Desert of southern New Mexico and Trans-Pecos Texas. The chronology is particularly robust between 4500 BP and historic times, allowing for distinctive subsistence, technological, and social developments to be isolated throughout the terminal Middle Holocene and Late Holocene and corresponding Middle Archaic, Late Archaic, and...
Mimbres Games, Gambling and Gods (2015)
This paper reviews the archaeological evidence for the presence of games played by the prehistoric inhabitants of the Mimbres region in the US Southwest/Northwest Mexico, emphasizing perishable materials recovered from cave/rock shelter deposits and iconic imagery present on Mimbres ceramic vessels. He compares the archaeological evidence with ethnographic information for gaming and gaming-related activities among Western Puebloan groups. Gaming and gambling among the ethnohistoric Hopi, Zuni...
"Mind the Gap": Social Networks and Chaco Migration Scenarios (2017)
Migration plays an important role in archaeologists’ reconstructions of the origins and development of Chaco society. Scenarios include migration from the northern San Juan to Chaco Canyon and other southern San Juan settlements in the 9th-10th centuries; from Chaco to the central San Juan in the 11th-12th centuries; and from the central San Juan to Chaco Canyon in the 12th century. To evaluate possible migration pathways we compiled a database of 1.8 million ceramics from 340 Chacoan great...
Miniature in Everything but Meaning: A Contextual Analysis of Miniature Vessels at Homol’ovi (2016)
Within the archaeological literature there are several studies of miniature vessels that have attempted to explain the presence of these unique artifacts in prehistoric Puebloan society. The two most common hypotheses are that these pots were made by inexperienced potters while learning their craft, or they were produced by expert ceramic artisans and served a ritual function. These analyses have largely depended on assessing the skill with which miniature vessels were produced. The results of...
Miniature Pottery Vessels in the Mimbres Region (2016)
This paper presents a study of Miniature Pottery vessels from the Mimbres region of the American Southwest. I define these vessels as no larger than 10cm in length in any dimension. My data set includes over 150 vessels from sites in southwestern New Mexico. I will look at attributes such as painting, slip, temper, and completeness as well as depositional context to make inferences about the possible uses of these vessels in the time period that is covered. My vessels span almost 1000 years...
Mitigating the Sacred? Examining the Role of Native American Associative Values in Resolving Adverse Effect (2015)
Under federal historic preservation legislation, mitigating adverse effects to archaeological sites commonly involves treating the site as a materialistic entity from which scientific information about the past is retrieved through systematic data recovery. Native American associative values associated with archaeological sites that view these places as sacred because they are home of ancestors that exhibit physical affirmations of oral histories and collective cultural identities are rarely...
Modeling Conditions Necessary to Detect Gene Flow in Humans from Archaeological Contexts (2017)
Gene flow between ancient human groups is difficult to detect. In a closed deme, variance in a morphological trait should decrease over short time periods due to genetic drift. Previous studies have thus regarded increases in within-site trait variance over time as a possible indicator for new genetic variation through flow or the physical movement of individuals. This interpretation depends on archaeological context, as diachronic changes in population variance may also arise from selection,...
Modeling ecological resilience and human-environment interactions in engineered landscapes of the prehistoric American southwest (2015)
The prehistoric human footprint in the American southwest is extensive and includes large and small structures, agricultural features, and other signatures of long and variably intensive landscape use. The southwest Jemez Mountains, focus of the current study, have been occupied continuously for the past 2,000 years, and by circa 1300 CE were densely settled in a network of large village sites and fieldhouses. Evidence from tree-rings and fire scars suggests that prior to ca. 1900 Jemez...
Modeling erosion risks for archaeological sites in the American Southwest using GIS and RUSLE (the Revised Universal Soil Loss Equation) (2017)
The greatest climate change related threat to archaeological sites in the American Southwest is soil erosion brought on by hotter temperatures, increasingly intense wildfires, bark beetle infestations, and other subsequent changes in habitats. At Los Alamos National Laboratory in northern New Mexico, we manage 38 square miles of canyons and mesas that contain more than 1700 archaeological sites, most of which are affiliated with Ancestral Pueblo cultures. In order to identify and protect the...
Modeling Polity Growth Among Ancestral Pueblo People in the Northern San Juan (2017)
In this paper we present research on the development of village-spanning polities in the central Mesa Verde region. First, we explore the dynamics of modeling not only households, but also groups of households, and how the interaction between them influences the development of social strategies. Second, we examine how territoriality shapes group development; we allow our agents to track lineage, and for lineages to own land, which, when populations increase, creates conflicts over the most...
Modeling Prehispanic Agricultural Risk Landscapes in the Cibola Region of the U.S. Southwest (2015)
Ethnographic research suggests maintaining diverse subsistence strategies and extensive social networks help to mitigate various ecological risks (e.g., Cashdan 1985; Spielmann 1986; Wiessner 1982). The prehispanic agriculturalists of the semi-arid U.S. Southwest faced several ecological challenges and may have maintained social connections with ecologically diverse areas as a risk mitigation strategy. To test this hypothesis, we have developed a temporally and spatially explicit model of...
Modeling Soil Moisture of Farmland near Mesa Verde Villages at Goodman Point, Southwestern Colorado (2015)
The abandonment of the Mesa Verde region at the end of the Pueblo III (PIII) period (AD 1150 to 1300) represents a complex synergy of causal processes, such as inter-village conflict, drought induced water and food resource stress, and high population density. Decisions to abandon a place, however, occurred at the scale of human interaction, that of the village. This study examines one factor that would have been important in those decisions, the location and properties of farmplots near...
Modeling Water Allocation and Scheduling in Canal System 2 (2015)
A great deal of progress has been made in understanding the physical layout, paleohydraulics and sociopolitical organization of Hohokam Irrigation systems. A relatively comprehensive database now exists for Canal System 2 identifying the location of main canals and the configuration and size of canal channels. Models of the available discharge, or the quantity of water available at points along the main canals, have been constructed. However, our understanding of the sequencing and nature of...
Modernizing Empirical Data in Alkali Ridge, Southeastern Utah (2016)
The Alkali Ridge Project conducted by New Mexico State University is a data modernization project geared towards updating maps and providing artifact analysis around the Ten Acres community in the National Historic Landmark Southern District in southeastern Utah. Though much work in this area has been done by our predecessors, additional data is necessary to better understand the community organization. The 2015 field season allowed us to survey four sites, including the Ten Acres site...
The Montezuma Canyon Citadel Complex: A Major Prehistoric Religious Shrine (2015)
Spirit Bird Cave created a new model to evaluate Southwestern caves and earth openings in relation to prehistoric Native American beliefs about religion and sacred landscape. This model suggests that such concepts were major considerations in the choosing of settlement locations and foremost in the ideology of the prehistoric peoples. Site 42SA2120 in Montezuma Canyon, which fits this new paradigm, has not been formally described to this point. A survey of the site found evidence that the...
More than a picture: Experiments in Terrestrial Lidar documentation in archaeological and architectural management at Texas Army National Guard (2015)
Texas Army National Guard is responsible for management of archaeological and historical buildings at several locations across the state. In order to more effectively integrate preservation concerns into the many internal systems of the Guard's organization, the Cultural Resources team has been reaching out to other departments for expertise and access to technology. This poster summarizes the efforts to utilize terrestrial LiDar not only for detailed documentation of historic properties, but...
Movement as an Acoma Way of Life: An Archaeology of the Pueblo's Pathways and Impressions (2017)
Throughout its history, the Pueblo of Acoma has been a community on the move. Even after having located their promised homeland—Haak'u, the "place prepared"—at the conclusion of a journey that began at Shipap, the "place of emergence," Acoma’s people have continued to move. With Sky City at its center, the people have engaged with their landscape in choreographed seasonal, interannual, and multigenerational movements informed by three tenets of Acoma’s traditional stewardship: Rest, Renew,...
Movement Encased in Stone: Revealing Ancestral Jemez Migration through Obsidian Source Provenience (2017)
Based on the results of collaborative research performed in conjunction with the Pueblo of Jemez, this paper uses a pXRF study of 2222 obsidian artifacts from 29 Ancestral Puebloan villages in northern New Mexico to provide insights into Jemez movement between AD 1175-1700. The results reveal clear evidence of migration between these villages and the Valles Caldera. These movements steadily increased in intensity throughout the pre-Colonial period. This pattern was disrupted by Spanish...
Moving Ideas, Staying at Home: Change and Continuity in 18th Century Pueblo Pottery (2017)
Sometimes staying in place requires movement. To stay in their pre-contact villages required that Pueblo people shift loci of cultural practice as well as reorder intellectual and material culture. New styles of pottery, including the adaptation of blackwares, quickly moved from one Rio Grande pueblo to the next. By the close of the 18th century, pottery changed and is adapted in its use for storing, preparing, and serving wheat-based foods such as oven-baked bread. The movement of new pottery...
Mugs of the Mesa and Old Chocolate: Evidence of Prehistoric Cacao Use in the Mesa Verde Region of the North American Southwest (2015)
Undergraduate Anthropology and Chemistry students at the University of San Diego (USD) collaborated on the application of analytical chemistry to archaeological ceramics. USD curates 1000’s of prehistoric Southwestern artifacts, all of which are available for student research. We examined some of the collections vessels for cacao, which is the raw form of chocolate. Patricia Crown and W. Jeffrey Hurst recently found it in cylinder jar fragments from Chaco Canyon. Crown’s methodology was adapted...
The Multi-Kiva Site: A new perspective on the Pueblo III period occupation of the middle Little Colorado River valley (2015)
Previous research in the middle Little Colorado River valley of Northern Arizona has characterized the Pueblo III period (1125-1275 C.E.) as dominated by dispersed pithouse villages which were later replaced by the aggregated cluster of masonry pueblos at Homol’ovi. Recent survey and excavation in this region shed new light on the occupation and land use of the middle Little Colorado River valley prior to Pueblo IV. The landscape is dotted with mid-sized pueblos that may have acted as...
The Multi-Kiva Site: Migration and interaction in Northern Arizona during the Pueblo III Period (2016)
The Multi-Kiva site (AZ P:3:112 [ASM]), situated on the Colorado Plateau in Northern Arizona provides insights into the ways that groups interacted and negotiated their place on the landscape during migration. The Middle Little Colorado River valley region has traditionally been characterized in the Pueblo III (1125-1275 C.E.) period by dispersed pithouse settlements. Recent investigations have illuminated the presence of masonry pueblos in the Middle Little Colorado River valley during the...
Multi-Millennial Fire Histories from Sedimentary Archives: Human and Climate Impacts (2015)
Sedimentary archives offer the opportunity to build millennial length fire history reconstructions with which to evaluate hypotheses of anthropogenic and climatic impacts on fire prone forests. Particularly when calibrated with centennial length fire history records from tree-rings, sedimentary paleofire proxies can be used to build spatially explicit records of fire regime changes. As part of the Jemez Fire & Humans in Resilient Ecosystems Project, this paper presents the results of multiple,...
Multi-vocal Landscapes: Mapping Mobile Ontologies onto the Northern Rio Grande (2017)
Forming a strategic corridor from the Southwest to the Plains, New Mexico’s northern frontier was an important site of cross-cultural interaction during the colonial period. It was on the fringes of the Spanish Empire that Hispano, Pueblo, Ute, Apache, and Comanche groups converged, generating new cultural identities and materials in the process. While archaeologists have long been interested in the particular ways in which Pueblo groups conceptualized and marked this region, the rich and...