North America - Southwest (Geographic Keyword)
551-575 (899 Records)
The careful preparation of Clovis striking platforms is considered characteristic of the technology. Platform preparation is regarded as a critical component of many lithic reduction strategies but very few studies have specifically focused on individual platform traits. General observations regarding Clovis platforms on bifaces suggest that these platforms are well-prepared and utilize five traits; faceting, reducing, releasing, isolating, and grinding. Platform preparation in a blade...
On the Road Again (2017)
National parks and their cultural identities have changed their meanings to visitors throughout time. The significance of national parks in the United States to visitors during the 19th and 20th centuries was to experience the nation’s heritage, admire natural resources, and/or gain monetary value. One method in understanding past visitors’ behaviors and how they viewed the significance of national parks is to analyze historic roads. Roads help determine the most frequented places whether for...
On the Verge: A Pottery Analysis of the Northern Periphery of the Northern San Juan Region (2017)
Beef Basin is a geographic area located roughly 30 miles northwest of the Abajo Mountains in southeastern Utah. Archaeologically, Beef Basin is within the Northern San Juan Region, which has seen much recent and intensive study. Most of this research has focused on the area south of the Abajo Mountains, however, leaving the northern areas, including Beef Basin, only marginally studied. I discuss the results of pottery analyses from the area and discuss recent reconnaissance survey conducted by...
On the War Machine (2015)
This paper takes up the writings of Clastres, Deleuze and Guattari on the core premise that war is a driving sociological principle in societies that have successfully opposed the development of state organization. My first goal is an attempt at clarification: if predatory military exploits are involved in the consolidation of most, if not all, states, what did Clastres mean when, in contrast, he wrote about the centrifugal logic of the war machine in non-state societies? My second goal is to...
Ongoing Geoarchaeological Investigations in Eagle Nest Canyon (2015)
This presentation summarizes the 2014 geoarchaeological investigations conducted at Kelley Cave (41VV164), Skiles Shelter (41VV165), and Eagle Cave (41VV167) and highlights elements of the ongoing analyses. Research begun in 2013 at Kelley Cave and Skiles Shelter was expanded and new work was begun in Eagle Cave. The geoarchaeological investigations have encountered new problems, opportunities, and several surprises. The data obtained from each site includes micromorphological samples,...
Open Air Site Formation in Low Deposition Environments (2017)
Studies of intra-camp spatial organization and activity area patterning in open air camps often result in significant insights into forager behavior and social organization, but the complex spatial patterning in artifact distribution that can occur from the combination of long-term habitation, repeated habitation of the same area (due to reoccupations or to natural and/or cultural bounded space), and natural formation processes can be difficult to disentangle. A first step in doing so, however,...
Open eyes, open minds, open arms, and open hearts open archaeology (2017)
Archaeologists share formidable qualities of mind and temperament: observational acuity, organizational skill, perseverance. These are necessary, of course, in the sifting through of vast arrays of questions to address, evidence to harness, methods to deploy, and interpretive lenses to employ. Such rigor-making attributes may not, however, be sufficient for effective practice at hazy contacts among material pasts and intangible presents, for negotiating meanings and values out of that haze, or...
Optically Stimulated Luminescence (OSL) dating of Little Springs Lava Flow: Impact of Lava Flows to Human Adaptation in Mt. Trumbull, Arizona (2015)
Recently, optically stimulated luminescence (OSL) dating of sediment has been used increasingly in the study of human occupation history in archaeology. This paper employs OSL to date the Little Springs Lava Flow, a lava flow near Mt. Trumbull, northern Arizona thought to have erupted about 1000 years ago. The accepted dates are based on cosmogenic helium dating. This lava flow covers some of the most productive agricultural land in the Mt. Trumbull area. Previous archaeological surveys revealed...
Oral History and Ethnoarchaeology at Wupatki National Monument (2017)
The history between the Wupatki Basin Navajo, the National Park Service, and various local ranchers has resulted in the Navajo being driven from this part of their ancestral homelands. The results led to loss of land and connection to family members, some of whom were driven across the Little Colorado River and formed new settlements. My research this summer has been to chart the genealogy of the Wupatki Navajo and extended family, visit Navajo sites within the Flagstaff National Monuments and...
The Origins of Agriculture and Neolithic in the American Southwest: The View from Western Europe (2016)
The transition from foraging to farming is certainly one of the most dramatic processes in human history. The use of domesticated plants spread widely across Western Europe from the Near East, and across the American Southwest from Mexico. Research in Western Europe has traditionally focused on the movement of farming communities across the region which displaced or subsumed local foragers. Recently various aspects of this process have been discussed including climate change, the expansion of...
The origins of Chaco timbers by tree-ring based sourcing (2017)
The regional integration of Chaco Society includes the procurement of goods and materials from distant landscapes. Wood incorporated as roof beams, door and window lintels, and other building elements is no exception. Hundreds of thousands of trees were felled and hand-carried from mountain ranges over 50 km from Chaco Canyon. Using tree-ring width patterns of beams compared to tree-ring chronologies from potential harvesting areas, we have begun to reconstruct the dynamics of timber procurement...
Ornaments, Pigments, and Household Production: Spatial Patterning and Residue Analysis of Ground Stone Artifacts from Pueblo Bonito, Chaco Canyon, New Mexico (A.D. 800-1200) (2015)
Previous investigations of craft industries at Chacoan great houses have focused largely on finished objects (e.g., ceramics, turquoise, and shell). This study explores an often overlooked but ubiquitous and highly diverse class of artifacts – ground stone abraders – in an effort to better understand the organization of production at Pueblo Bonito great house. Analysis of variation in form of these versatile implements provides insight into the range of craft items manufactured. Drawing on the...
Over, Under, Sideways, Down: Cave Shrines and Settlement in Southwest Prehistory (2017)
Although evidence for the use of caves and earth openings as shrines in the North American Southwest begins in the Pleistocene, this practice intensified greatly after the development of agriculture. Many of the region’s major shrines appear divisible into three categories: controlled shrines, to which access was restricted by surface architecture; contested shrines, which were located equidistant between two or more surface sites; and remote sites, which may have marked cultural boundaries....
An Overview of Architectural Practice at the Ironwood Village, Northern Tucson Basin, Arizona (2015)
This paper provides a brief review of the Ironwood Village site structure, an overview of architectural styles observed at the site, a discussion of variation in architectural practice observed at the site, and a regional comparison of Hohokam pit structure architecture within the greater Tucson Basin. Data recovery at the Ironwood Village site resulted in the discovery of nearly a hundred Pioneer and Colonial period architectural features. The area investigated was centered around a large...
Oxygen Isotope Variability in Water Sources on the Colorado Plateau: Preliminaries to Stable Isotope Models of Prehistoric Irrigation (2015)
For aboriginal agriculturalists, subsistence strategies are tightly constrained by ecological conditions. The primary carbohydrate staple of prehistoric communities in the American Southwest (Zea mays) derives from low-altitude, subtropical conditions in Mesoamerica and is at its environmental limit on the cooler, more arid Colorado Plateau. In areas like Cedar Mesa in southeastern Utah, environmental limitations were addressed by either of two strategies. Dry farming with summer monsoonal...
Paint It Black: A Geospatial Analysis of Chupadero Black-on-white Ceramics (2017)
Chupadero Black-on-white ceramics were produced in the Salinas and Sierra Blanca regions of New Mexico beginning around A.D. 1100. They quickly gained popularity, covering a geographic region that encompassed much of the modern state of New Mexico, west Texas, southeastern Arizona, and northern Chihuahua. Yet, despite their popularity, little is known about the exchange mechanisms that yielded Chupadero Black-on-white’s impressive distribution. ArcGIS contains analytical applications that can be...
Painting as process: The context of mural production in the Puebloan Southwest (2015)
Murals have played a role in Pueblo religious practice since the AD 900s. Mural painting seems to have reached its zenith in the late 1300s to 1600s when richly detailed scenes of anthropomorphs, animals, and objects were produced at multiple sites in the American Southwest, providing glimpses of a complex ritual system. While scholars have traditionally approached these wall paintings from a motif-centered perspective, ethnographic observations of 19th and early 20th century mural painting...
Paleoethno...What? (2015)
It is a daunting task to make decades of research appear to be consistent and coherent when it is often ad hoc and opportunistic. During the past four and one-half decades I have tried to meld ethnobotany and archaeology with three themes focusing my work: food, anthropogenic ecology, and the value of research beyond archaeology. On the other hand, I have tended to avoided deep cultural contexts also and methodological issues. I will discuss each of these, not only for the past, but for the...
Paleofecal Analysis from a Human Behavioral Ecology Perspective (2017)
Paleofecal research has benefited from many recent methodological advances, such as SEM and high-throughput DNA sequencing. However, as our results grow both more robust and more precise, our interpretations have not always followed suit. Researchers are eager to establish what was on the menu, but often more cautious in exploring the biocultural and evolutionary implications of those findings. Some scholars have argued that it is difficult to apply human behavioral ecology (HBE) models to...
Paleoindian Use of the Lake Fork Valley, Southwest Colorado (2015)
For more than a decade, University of Oklahoma archaeologists have teamed with avocational archaeologist Mike Pearce to document Paleoindian use of the Lake Fork Valley (LFV), southwest Colorado. The Lake Fork of the Gunnison River flows from the town of Lake City approximately 50 km north to the Gunnison River in the Upper Gunnison Basin (UGB). Interestingly, however, the Paleoindian record of the LFV differs markedly from that of the better-known UGB. We hypothesize that treating the LFV as...
The Paleoindian-age Deposits of Eagle Cave: Preliminary Impressions (2017)
One of the fundamental research questions of the Ancient Southwest Texas project was to determine if there was Paleoindian occupation of Eagle Cave. Excavations during the 2016 field season explored the Paleoindian age deposits and revealed tantalizing evidence of human presence at that time. One clear occupation was revealed (discussed in another presentation in detail by Castañeda et al.) but beneath this were several deposits that appear to be decomposed fiber beds which are associated with...
Paleolandscape Reconstruction and Modeling in the Lower Pecos River Valley (2016)
The Lower Pecos River valley in southwestern Texas provides an ideal location for the development of a three-dimensional landscape reconstruction using modern geospatial methods, including LiDAR and digital photogrammetry. The goal of this project is to create a scientifically accurate, high resolution prehistoric landscape model of a portion of the Lower Pecos valley, an archaeologically-rich region that has experienced widespread modifications to the natural landscape during the historic...
The Panther Cave Digital Documentation and Visualization Project (2015)
Recent digital documentation efforts at Panther Cave (41VV83) have yielded a detailed record of current site conditions and provide a wealth of geospatial data pertinent to the prehistoric art preserved at the site. Three-dimensional laser scanning (LiDAR) and digital photogrammetry were integrated to record a highly accurate digital model of the rockshelter and its immediate environment. This documentation effort provides a robust corpus of data for use in the digital visualization, analysis,...
Paquimé and Diablo Phases at Paquimé: An Examination of Architectural Validity of Phase Declarations (2015)
This paper will present on the results of statistically-based analyses of architectural data relating to the Paquimé and Diablo Phases at the site of Paquimé collected and published by Charles Di Peso et al. in 1974. A re-examination of the architectural data is necessitated as, in a methodology dissimilar to standard procedure, Di Peso utilized architectural attributes as a basis for phase differentiation. While prior statistical analysis (Frost 2000) has been applied successfully to...
Parallel Analysis of Ancient Human mtDNA Sequences and Radiocarbon Ages of Quids from the Mule Springs Rockshelter, Nevada, USA (2016)
Ancient DNA research is revealing unprecedented information about past human migrations and residency. During the late Holocene people exploited food and material resources near Mule Spring Rockshelter in the Spring Mountains of Southern Nevada. In the 1960s hundreds of chewed plant remains (quids) were recovered from the shelter deposits. To better constrain patterns of human residency, mitochondrial DNA (mtDNA) was extracted and partially sequenced from twenty representative quids that have...