North America - Southwest (Geographic Keyword)
526-550 (899 Records)
From its inception, a major objective of the Ancient Southwest Texas (ASWT) project has been to investigate the potential for Paleoindian-age deposits in Eagle Cave. Previously, the oldest dated deposit in the shelter was a zone of dense charcoal and decomposing fiber designated "Lens 14" and dated to about 8500 RCYBP by University of Texas investigations in the 1960s. These excavations terminated beneath Lens 14 at "Zone 6," a stratum described as "sterile yellow cave dust." During the 2016...
Native Americans and Archaeology Training Workshop: A Twenty Year Retrospective (2015)
The Arizona Archaeological Council received funding from the NCPTT during its inaugural granting cycle to conduct a two day training workshop between Native Americans and archaeologists. The goal of the workshop was to promote a productive dialogue between Native Americans, Federal agency archaeologists, academic archaeologists, and archaeologists from the contracting community. Three issues were the focus of that workshop: consultation, oral tradition and archaeological interpretation, and...
A Natural and Unnatural History of Faunal Change in Southwestern New Mexico since AD 500 (2017)
An important intersection between archaeology and the study of natural history lies in understanding the long-term processes of human-environment interaction that affected local biotas in the past and have shaped contemporary landscapes. This study integrates information from archaeological faunal assemblages and historic and modern data from the major watersheds of southwestern New Mexico—specifically, the upper Gila-San Francisco and Mimbres drainages—to examine changes in the status and...
The Nature and Extent of Chacoan Hegemony in the Middle San Juan Region. (2015)
The Chacoan polity of northwestern New Mexico exercised hegemony throughout the San Juan Basin and surrounding highlands during the Pueblo II (A.D. 900 – 1140) period. Hegemony is defined as the predominant influence in ideological, political, military, and/or economic matters exercised by one culture over another. Furthermore, it is an historical process, and as such is theorized as "eventful," along the lines of Sewell (2005) and Beck et al. (2007). The extent and nature of this hegemony on...
NAVAJO LANDSCAPE CONSTRUCTION AT CANYON DE CHELLY: A QUINTESSENTIAL PLACE (2017)
My paper will discuss how the Navajo construct Canyon de Chelly as a quintessential place on the reservation. The canyon has been occupied at least since Basketmaker times in the first centuries A.D.. Archaeological investigations have identified Ancestral Pueblo cliff dwellings from roughly 700 to 1300A.D. followed by a brief Hopi presence. Navajo people began to settle Canyon de Chelly in the late 1700s. Unlike the Ancestral Pueblos, the Navajo lived on the canyon bottom and reused some of...
Neutron Activation Analysis of San Juan Red Ware Pottery (2015)
San Juan Red Ware pottery is most common in southeastern Utah, where most of it appears to have been made, but is widely distributed throughout the Four Corners region from about A.D. 750 to 1100. Neutron Activation Analysis of San Juan Red Ware potsherds shows that there were numerous production locales, and red ware pottery from southeast Utah falls into several distinguishable chemical groups. These chemical groups have distributions that suggest relatively little exchange among the...
New AMS Dates for Paquimé, Northern Chihuahua, Mexico (2017)
In an effort to resolve some long standing questions about the chronology of the site of Paquimé, accelerator radiocarbon dates were obtained from bone collagen of 77 burials. Bone samples were obtained as part of a larger project to explore life history and diet at the site. We address three questions: the temporal relationship between the Viejo period (Convento site) and Medio period (Paquimé), whether or not the "non-interred" individuals from the Medio phase at Paquimé date to the later...
New but Classic: An examination of Hohokam Canal System 1 during the Classic Period (2017)
Canal System 1, the largest of the four major systems along the lower Salt River, brought water to fields associated with some of the most well-known Hohokam villages, including Mesa Grande, Los Hornos, and Los Muertos. Previously, it was thought that the system reached its maximum extent prior to the Sedentary Period. Recent data and reconstructions of the development of Canal System 1, however, indicate that the system may not have reached its full extent until the Preclassic/Classic...
New Contributions to Black Mesa Archaeology (2017)
Between 1967 and 1983 the Black Mesa Archaeological Project (BMAP) conducted extensive survey and excavations on Peabody Western Coal Company lease area on Hopi and Navajo tribal lands on northern Black Mesa, Arizona. The project contributed immensely to our collective understanding of the Kayenta Branch of Ancestral Pueblo and prehistory in northern Arizona. In support of a current environmental impact statement, Logan Simpson recently completed a Class III pedestrian survey of nearly 4,000...
New Evidence for Early Ceramic Use in the Middle Rio Grande Valley (2016)
Recent archaeological excavation of an early Developmental period village within the Albuquerque city limits has revealed the earliest evidence for ceramics in the Middle and Northern Rio Grande Valley to date. A roasting pit at LA 138927, located immediately adjacent to Montaño Pueblo, contained Alma Plain jar sherds associated with charcoal dated to the early AD 400s. The identification of pottery in fifth century deposits in the Albuquerque area is significant, as pottery first appeared in...
New genetic perspectives on early maize cultivation in the American Southwest (2015)
Following the initial domestication of maize (Zea mays ssp. mays) from a teosinte grass in Mexico, human populations dispersed the cultivar through trade and migration. Despite a long history of archaeology in the American Southwest, many questions about maize remain, including how the crop was dispersed northward from Mexico and how maize was acclimated to new environments. These unresolved questions can be explored in new ways, thanks to next-generation DNA sequencing technology and targeted...
New Insights at the Intersection of Historical Archaeology and the Archaeology of Religion (2015)
An increasing number of archaeologists are arguing against the separation of ritual and religion as separate fields of study, favoring pragmatic combinations of theoretical criteria to advance more holistic understandings of the theory and practice of religion. Advancements in the archaeological study of religion have been spearheaded by archaeologists of ancient and pre-historic societies. In this paper, I will outline the potential contributions of historical archaeology to anthropological...
New Methods for Rock Art Recording at Petrified Forest National Park (2015)
Researchers and park staff recorded rock art at Petrified Forest National Park with a number of different and disparate approaches over the past half-century. As part of a graduate research project a standardized multi-scalar approach for recording rock art at the park was developed. The development process examined the efficacy of four different approaches for creating panel sketches. A comparison of the variables of time to complete, accuracy, and perceived ease for each method revealed the...
New Perspectives on Casas Grandes Mortuary Practices: (2015)
The diversity of Casas Grandes mortuary practices has often been cited as strong evidence for hierarchy and political centralization at Paquimé. Initial mortuary analyses argued that variability in grave furniture, corpse treatment, and burial location represented the social identity of the deceased. A central finding of these analyses was that mortuary variability cross-cut age and sex categories, supporting inferences of ascribed vertical status differentiation. In this study, we use recent...
New Perspectives on the use of Yucca in the arid Southwest: archaeobotany and experiment (2015)
Macrofloral analysis conducted on sites concentrated in the northwestern Permian Basin (southeastern New Mexico) recovered evidence of charred yucca (Yucca sp.) leaf bases in numerous features. Ethnographically various yucca plant parts are mainly associated with fiber and food processing. The presence of these remains in solitary hearth features distributed on the arid landscape of southeastern New Mexico suggests use of these plants simply as tinder. Yucca plants represent a natural and easily...
The Night is Different: Sensescapes and Affordances (2016)
Archaeology has paid scant attention to the differences between diurnal and nocturnal landscapes, and the differences in meaning and use implied and constrained by the change from day to night. We also neglect the multi-sensoral nature of the landscape. Vision is emphasized almost to the exclusion of hearing, smell, and touch. Humans are diurnal animals emphasizing vision, and modern archaeologists are further biased by our brightly lit world of electricity, neon, and LED screens in which a...
No Attempt Was Made to Cultivate Crops until Very Recent Times (2016)
Ethnographic and ethnohistoric information are significant sources of data for archaeologists in developing various models. It is a widely held belief among archaeologists that the Chiricahua Apache subsistence was based only on food foraging and raiding. This interpretation originates with Opler, the primary ethnographer for the Chiricahua Apache ,who stated that "no attempt was made to cultivate crops until very recent times" and "By the time the Eastern Chiricahua became seriously interested...
No Better Angels Here: Bioarchaeology of Non-Lethal Head Wounds in the Greater Southwest (AD 900-1350) (2015)
A survey of healed cranial depression fractures from Southwest collections revealed new information on the patterning of head wounds by age and sex. Head wounds demonstrate nuance and a non-linear trend over time. Thus suggests a much more complex picture than has been offered by recent scholarship that examined fracture rates based on published literature for select sites. This analysis is based on new data collected directly from Southwestern skeletal collections representing Ancestral Pueblo...
No Big Dudes Here: Bioarchaeology of Social Control at Aztec Ruins ( (2015)
The discussion of elite leaders in the Greater Southwest has primarily focused on Chaco Canyon. This project extends that discussion to the later site to the north called Aztec Ruins. Because of its size and some architectural similarities to sites in Chaco Canyon, it has also been suggested to be a regional center with considerable political-economic power. Morris recovered a number of human skeletal remains from Aztec Ruins between 1916 and 1922. One burial in particular is of interest...
Not Just any Stones: Virgin Branch Puebloan Sandstone Artifact Distribution on the Southern Shivwits Plateau (2016)
Throughout the summer of 2015, graduate students at the University of Nevada Las Vegas began the data mining of over 20 years of archaeological site forms pertaining to the prehistoric occupation of the southern portion of the Shivwits Plateau in Northern Arizona. This data, as collected by the National Park Service, was organized and placed into a geodatabase, allowing for the first time a thorough spatial investigation of artifact distributions associated with the upland Virgin Branch...
Not Quite Coalesced: Salado Settlements in the Upper Gila (2017)
Most 14th-century Salado settlements in the Upper Gila watershed are comprised of separate room blocks in both planned and ad hoc configurations. These spatial arrangements suggest that integration, and by extension coalescence, was never fully achieved despite occupation spans of more than a century. This poster examines ceramic and other material culture variability among room blocks within four settlements to identify social and cultural differences that persisted until depopulation in the...
The Nutritional Context of the Pueblo III Depopulation of the Northern San Juan: Too much maize? (2015)
The abandonment of the Four Corners area is a longstanding problem in archaeology. Recent work has shown that the terminal occupation was concentrated into a limited number of large defensive sites. This resulted in an extreme emphasis on maize, which was untenable because of maize's low amounts of Lysine and Tryptophan. I describe the processes that led to this settlement pattern and the evidence for this diet. I then explain how the combination of the settlement pattern and the...
Obsidian in the Southwest (2016)
Payson Sheets has often been on the cutting/bleeding edge of obsidian research. We review current obsidian studies in the Southwest, as a proxy for social/economic interaction. We comment on confirmed or tentative sightings of Mexican obsidian in and around the region, also as a proxy for social/economic interaction.
Obsidian Procurement Strategies at the Harris Site (2016)
The Harris Site is a large pithouse village in the Mimbres Valley of southwestern New Mexico. Many of the twenty structures (recently excavated) are organized into five discrete clusters that have been interpreted as the remains of extended family corporate groups. Some of these groups apparently had more wealth and social power, and these differences may be tied to both land tenure and ritual sponsorship. We use obsidian provenance data to explore differences in obsidian procurement strategies...
Of Braudel & Beams: How Tree-ring Dating Enables the Study of Transformative Social Changes in the Ancient Southwest U.S. (2015)
Fernand Braudel said, "History may be divided into three movements: what moves rapidly, what moves slowly and what appears not to move at all." Archaeologists gravitate towards the longue durée–cultural continuities and traditions–but our most important questions have traditionally focused on transformative changes such as the rise of the state, the collapse of empires, or the origins of agriculture. Armed with imprecise dating methods, archaeologists have tended to view transformative changes...