North America - Southwest (Geographic Keyword)
601-625 (899 Records)
Macaws are not native to the American Southwest, but were imported into this region from central Mexico for hundreds of years. Recent research has demonstrated that the wing feathers of Southwestern turkeys were regularly plucked, as evidenced by significant scarring on the birds’ ulnae. This paper provides a macroscopic analysis of macaw skeletal remains from Pueblo Bonito and Pueblo Arroyo in Chaco Canyon, New Mexico, and argues that these elements also show evidence of a practice of regular...
Pochtecas and Pilgrims: Models for Elite and Commoner Exchange in the Río Sonora (2015)
The potential for the river valleys of eastern Sonora to serve as conduits for long distance trade between Mesoamerica and the U.S. Southwest was one of the original impetuses for research in the region. Researchers of the U.S. Southwest, using the same basic data sets, have come to drastically different conclusions regarding the frequency and overall importance of such long distance connections. Previous research in eastern Sonora has produced minimal direct evidence of long distance trade, but...
The Poetics of Corpse Fragmentation and Processing in the Ancient Southwest (2016)
The bioarchaeological record in the ancient Southwest has an abundance of evidence of disarticulated remains to suggest a long history of body (corpse) processing and fragmentation. From AD 800 to the 1500s, various assemblages of processed human remains have been recovered. Published studies of these have argued for a wide range of motivations that could account for such assemblages including anthropophagy/cannibalism, massacres, torture, witch executions, ritualized violence, warfare, raiding...
Point Pueblo, a Great House Community in the Middle San Juan (2017)
San Juan College field school excavations at Point Pueblo in Farmington, New Mexico, have revealed a great house with attached great kiva constructed of both local vernacular and stylized Chacoan Type II architecture. Extensive early southern influence, A.D. 850-1050, is based on the dominant presence of Red Mesa Black-on white pottery. The great kiva floors demonstrate a continuous ritual placement of artifacts subsequent to a major ritual remodeling event of the floor and roof support piers,...
Pollen Analysis of Coprolite Samples from Chaco Canyon, New Mexico (2016)
Chaco Canyon is an important archaeological region for providing information about the ancestral Puebloan cultures.By analyzing 12 coprolites from Prehispanic sites within Chaco Canyon, we found large concentrations of Zea mays pollen grains. The differences in size-frequency of these creates the hypothesis that there were different species of Maize being consumed. The size distributions of the earliest Zea grain populations are not normal, suggesting the possibility that more than one variety...
Poorly Provenienced Perishables at the USU Eastern Prehistoric Museum: New Directions for Old Utah Collections (2016)
The Utah State University Eastern Prehistoric Museum in Price, Utah contains an impressive collection of textiles and other perishable artifacts from Eastern Utah. Many of these artifacts were donated by private individuals early in the museum’s history and have very limited information on their discovery and provenience. Despite these limitations, these items can become much more than striking art objects displayed to the public. Recent efforts have focused on expanding the useful data...
Population Changes and Intraregional Variability in the Mimbres Region of Southwest New Mexico, A.D. 1000-1450 (2016)
Population estimates are the foundation for many current interpretations of social changes, human demands on resources, and land use patterns in the Mimbres region over time. Population estimates for the area currently rely on either local datasets for specific subregions, or regional data from the early 1980s. This poster presents updated population estimates for the Upper Gila, Mimbres Valley, and Eastern Mimbres areas between AD 1000 and 1450. A large regional database allows us to examine...
Possible Images of Theobroma cacao in the Prehispanic American Southwest (2015)
The discovery of cacao residues in southwestern pottery raises questions about how much southwestern populations knew about Theobroma cacao. A number of possible images of cacao trees and pods suggest that some southwestern people were either familiar with the tree and the fruit that held cacao beans. Comparisons of Mesoamerican and southwestern imagery offer possible parallels in depiction of trees and fruit, and the southwestern material provides potential iconographic models that may be...
A Possible Mammoth Kill Site in Northeastern New Mexico (2016)
Several years ago in a remote canyon in northeastern New Mexico, a rancher found the fragmented remains of what was later determined to be a Columbian Mammoth (Mammuthus columbi). In addition to the mammoth remains, now dated to 13,000 BP, the rancher also found several blades, allegedly in context, of chert that originated on the Edwards Plateau in central Texas (microanalysis of the blades is underway). At the invitation of the ranch manager, we began limited testing at the site in 2010. Since...
Pot Hunting, Artifact Collection and Site Destruction: A Study of a Multi Generational Pot Hunting Family on the Colorado Plateau (2015)
Both historic and prehistoric archaeologists reply on oral history as a powerful tool for understanding archaeological context. Although traditional archaeological research can provide useful information about the past, gathering information from ethnographic or historical sources can shed light on past uses of material culture. Oral history can also provide useful information about traditions, belief systems and origin stories. The focus of this project has been to interview people with ties...
The Potential Role of Water Salinity in Limestone Tempered Logandale Gray Ware Ceramic Production in the Moapa Valley, Nevada: An Experimental Approach (2015)
Limestone has been shown to be an advantageous temper to use in utility vessels due to its ability to affect factors that mitigate problems caused by heat expansion and thermal shock during the use cycle of ceramics. Specifically, limestone alters the characteristics of the clay, allowing for the manufacture of thinner walled vessels. Additionally, it has similar thermal expansion characteristics as clay itself. However, it has been noted that limestone temper has a propensity to spall, thus...
Pots, Middlemen, and the "Shopkeeper" Hypothesis in the Hohokam Sedentary Period (2015)
While ceramic analysts now report with some confidence where most Phoenix Basin Hohokam pottery was manufactured and where it was eventually discarded, we simply cannot use those two data points on their own to describe the exchange rules and distribution networks that moved pottery from specialist producers to consumers throughout the region. Agent-based modeling methods provide a powerful toolkit for interpreting complex spatial and distributional patterns in the archaeological record, and for...
Pottery Agents: A Case Study of Nonhuman Beings from the American Southwest (2016)
Since the enlightenment western approaches to material culture have distinguished between natural and supernatural processes. This demarcation produces archaeological perspectives at odds with ethnographically known cultures and likely past ones. Contemporary Native American ontologies emphasize the animacy of things such as architecture and pottery. An important theoretical question therefore, is what social relationships did people establish with material objects, and how did these...
Pottery Production at Cowboy Wash Pueblo: A Central Village on the Ute Piedmont Frontier (2017)
Cowboy Wash Pueblo (5MT7740), south of Sleeping Ute Mountain in the Northern San Juan Region, is the largest and latest pueblo in the Cowboy Wash Community. In collaboration with the Ute Mountain Ute Tribe, Potter and colleagues (2013) recorded a large rubble area (~1000 m2), 13 pit structures, a potential D-shaped structure, and a surprisingly sparse surface assemblage (n=206). They also noted that the east edge of the pueblo is endangered by arroyo cutting. Due to this and because it was...
Power before Paquimé? Hypotheses on Political Economies in Casas Grandes. (2015)
In this paper, I outline alternative hypotheses on the nature of the late-Viejo and early-Medio Period political economies in the Casas Grandes Regional System from what is now Chihuahua, Mexico. Recent research has described in impressive detail the productive base and the ideology that may have emerged at Paquimé during its late-Medio Period (AD 1350-1450) florescence. However, little is known about power in the Casas Grandes region either prior to Paquimé’s brief 14th Century expansion into...
Practicing Community Archaeology and Present Communities of Practice in Archaeology: A Southwestern Perspective (2015)
Practicing archaeology as part of descendant community historical research necessarily addresses issues of cultural identity, concepts of historical continuity, political status and myriad other considerations. This case study focuses on the interplay of communities in the northern Rio Grande region of the American Southwest that are variously defined by Native American, Hispanic, and other identities, as they relate to ongoing negotiations over water rights and other natural resource uses. ...
Pragmatism and Power: Considerations of Western Apache reuse of archaeological sites (2017)
Western Apache and archaeologists have often commented that Apache avoid archaeological sites for all but ceremonial purposes. Yet, the distribution of Western Apache site components in central Arizona shows that until the late nineteenth century Western Apache often reused earlier sites as residences and for resources. Elders from the Yavapai-Apache Nation and the White Mountain Apache Tribe interpret these patterns as expressions of their ancestors' pragmatism and their changing power in the...
Pre-Classic Obsidian in the Northern Tucson Basin (2015)
This poster focuses on the investigation of sourced obsidian artifacts found in and around the Cañada del Oro Valley in southeastern Arizona. The goal of this study is to understand the evolution of social interaction and obsidian distribution during the pre-classic Hohokam periods (ca. A.D. 700-1150) and how they compare to patterns in neighboring areas. There are no obsidian sources immediately adjacent to the Cañada del Oro Valley or Tucson Basin regions. Therefore, investigation of obsidian...
Pre-Columbian Exchange Systems and the Colonization of Northern New Spain (2015)
Traditionally, the colonization of Spain's northern frontier is studied as a uniquely 16th through 18th century enterprise. This paper will describe how this process of expansionism was informed by existing indigenous trade networks that linked bands, tribes, chiefdoms and states into mutual systems of exchange extending from the mouth of the Colorado river to coastal Oaxaca. In so doing, the role of indigenous peoples of southern Mexico as both settlers and mediators between the Spanish Crown...
Predictive Modeling for Site Detection in Central New Mexico using Remotely Sensed Data on Phenology (2016)
The potential for remotely sensed metrics of phenology and a Multi-Layer Perceptron (MLP) neural network to accurately model potential archaeological sites in central New Mexico is high. Focusing on two different environments, the Galisteo Basin and the Sandia-Manzano Mountain range, this study attempts to distinguish between archaeological sites and their surroundings based on differential growth in vegetation. Using multi-spectral satellite data, a time series of Normalized Difference...
Prehistoric Land Use in the Southern Tularosa Basin, New Mexico (2016)
Systematic archaeological survey of more than 100,000 acres in the southern Tularosa Basin of New Mexico has resulted in the discovery of almost 600 prehistoric sites and upwards of 65,000 isolated occurrences. These data, combined with highly detailed information regarding environmental characteristics of the study area, allow time-sequent reconstructions of land-use patterns over thousands of years. To anticipate more detailed discussions, there is evidence for long-term central places that...
Prehistoric Pipe Replication and Analysis, A Deeper Look into the Bowl (2017)
Smoking pipes have played an integral role for many American Southwestern groups. My research project conducts a thorough investigation into the construction of prehistoric ceramic and stone pipes. Using only stone tools, I conduct construction and use-wear analysis on the tools used to create pipes as well as the pipes themselves. I analyze the two materials most used among Southwestern Native American groups, local Southwestern clay (from the Tucson Basin) and vesicular basalt. Measuring the...
Prehistoric Rock Art and Historic "Graffiti": Petroglyphs at a Multicomponent Site in Eastern New Mexico (2017)
Recent field investigations at Los Ojitos, a multicomponent site in the Middle Pecos River Valley, have focused on refining the site chronology and documenting the land-use practices of Hispanic homesteaders who settled this area in the late nineteenth century. Like earlier visitors to this site, the Hispanic settlers were attracted to the clean water provided by several little springs ("ojitos") that empty into the river. Survey of one of these spring-fed drainages identified at least 45...
A Preliminary Analysis of Chipped and Ground Stone Artifacts from Garden Canyon Village (2015)
Garden Canyon Village is a large multi-component site located in southeastern Arizona. The main occupation dates to the Classic Period, but the rich resources of the Huachuca Mountains drew ancient people to the site from Preceramic times through the end of the Prehistoric Period (A.D. 1450). Located 10 miles north of the U.S.-Mexico Border and 65 miles southeast of the Tucson Basin, Garden Canyon Village was located on the frontier of the Hohokam, Mogollon, Mimbres, and Trincheras culture...
The presence and potential representation of turquoise at the Mimbres Site of Galaz (2017)
Turquoise, both the mineral and the color, are inexorably linked to contemporary ideas of the indigenous Southwest. Without doubt, the importance of turquoise extends back into prehispanic times, although we know relatively little about its cultural significance. The mineral turquoise may also have been represented in a more abstract way; J.J. Brody and Stephen Plog have suggested that Chacoan contemporaries of the Mimbres tradition may have used hachured elements on pottery to represent the...