North America - Southwest (Geographic Keyword)
826-850 (899 Records)
The 1970s were a period of intense activity in the Gallina heartland of north-central New Mexico. Excavations by James Mackey and Sally Holbrook and by Herb Dick documented dozens of Gallina sites and structures in the Llaves Valley alone. Unfortunately, analysis and publication did not always follow excavations, particularly in Herb Dick’s case. His untimely death in 1993 left much of his excavated material in disarray. Through the efforts of several individuals and institutions, however, his...
Tree-Ring Sourcing of Great House Timbers and the Plaza Tree of Pueblo Bonito, Chaco Canyon, New Mexico (2015)
Materials arriving in Chaco Canyon from AD 900 to 1150 came from many distant sources, and the necessary construction timbers for the great houses are no exception. Here we present tree-ring sourcing of great house construction timbers and the plaza tree of Pueblo Bonito (the "rooted tree", labeled JPB-99). To source these trees, we compared their tree-ring growth patterns to a network of millennial-length tree-ring chronologies surrounding the San Juan Basin. For JPB-99, we present new...
Trends in Catawba Architecture, ca. 1750-1820. (2015)
Recent archaeological investigations have documented a series of sites associated with the historic Catawba Nation in South Carolina dating from 1750-1820. During this period Catawba communities underwent dramatic and abrupt changes associated with population loss from epidemic disease, settlement relocation, and the development of new economic strategies. Among the most striking of these changes were in domestic architecture. In this poster, we define various types of Catawba structures present...
Tribal Heritage Management in Action at the Gila River Indian Community, Arizona (2015)
Many Native American communities have developed their own archaeology programs and taken over management of cultural resources from Federal agencies. The formation of Tribal Heritage Management programs has increased interactions between non-tribal archaeologists and members of native communities, and resulted in greater numbers of Native Americans becoming trained archaeologists. This synchronism has fostered new understandings of the past and has led to research that is scientifically valid...
True Facts About the Dinwiddie Site: Surprising Results from Limited Testing in a Disturbed Site (2015)
Archaeology Southwest and the University of Arizona’s 2014 Upper Gila Preservation Archaeology (UGPA) field school excavations at the Dinwiddie Site (LA106003) produced interesting and somewhat unexpected results. Dinwiddie is a Cliff Phase (A.D. 1300 – 1450) Salado site located along Duck Creek, a tributary of the Gila River, in southwestern New Mexico. It was partially excavated by avocational archaeologists in the 1960s and the remaining deposits have faced multiple sources of disturbance....
Tucson Platform Mounds in the Context of Classic Period Variability (2017)
The variability among Hohokam platform mounds and their related architectural complexes, the predominant form of public architecture during the Classic period, has now been well documented through ongoing field studies and archival research. Recognition of that variability encompasses multiple dimensions linked to perceptions of leadership, social structure, territorial configurations, civic and ritual affairs, and external relationships. The Tucson regional sector in southern Arizona is no...
Turkey Domestication and Utilization in an Ancestral Puebloan Community (2015)
The archaeofaunal remains left by the Ancestral Puebloan people who lived in the Goodman Point community provide a chronological record of their interaction with turkey (Meleagris gallopavo). Domestication can be regarded as a co-evolutionary relationship between a plant or animal species and humans that varies in the intensity of mutual dependence. We examine how the Goodman Point residents’ relationship with turkey evolved from the late AD 900s to the 1280’s. Our research involves the analysis...
Twenty Years of Studying the Salado (2015)
Archaeology Southwest (formerly the Center for Desert Archaeology) has been heavily engaged in studying the Salado Phenomenon through the lens of migration for nearly twenty years. Our research has been both intensive and extensive in scope: gathering new data from sites on public and private lands, reanalyzing existing collections, and scrutinizing published and unpublished reports from nearly every valley and basin in southern Arizona and southwestern New Mexico. Here we summarize this...
Twin Pines: Looking Beyond Mimbres Valley (2015)
The Twin Pines site, located in the Gila National Forest, New Mexico, is a large Mimbres site that shows signs of multiple occupational periods spanning the Late Pithouse Phase (AD 550-1000) through the Mimbres Classic phase (AD 1000-1130). On the basis of recent mapping and reconnaissance, the Twin Pines site can provide crucial information about the Mimbres culture. First, it is a large Mimbres site which lies farther north of the extensively studied Mimbres Valley and most other sites of the...
Two episodes of ritual turkey and dog burials in southwestern Colorado; a case study (2017)
Many instances of turkey and dog burials have been documented in the prehistoric American Southwest. Some are simple burials or discarded remains but some examples bear characteristics of deliberate sacrifice, arrangement and elaborate ritual interment. Excavations directed by D. M. Dove from 2008 through 2012 in Early Pueblo II period contexts at the large Champagne Spring site in Dolores County, Colorado, revealed two unprecedented examples of this latter type. On or near the floors of two pit...
Two Houses, Both Alike in Dignity: Visibility, Material Culture, and Contrasting Histories at Two Chaco Halo Communities (2016)
The communities that surround the neighboring great houses of Kin Bineola and Kin Klizhin contain broadly similar kinds of sites—including the great houses themselves, small habitation sites, and shrines—and are both located in the "Chaco Halo," the region immediately surrounding Chaco Canyon itself. Nevertheless, the two communities differ in their composition, spatial structure, and histories. Intervisibility between habitations and public or religious architecture provides one possible...
Two Independent Methods for Dating Rock Art: Age Determination of Paint and Oxalate Layers at Eagle Cave, TX (2016)
Using two independent methods, we provide reliable age estimates for three Pecos River Style figures at Eagle Cave in Langtry, TX. To obtain direct dates for the paintings, we employed plasma oxidation of the organic binders in the paint layer followed by accelerator mass spectrometry. For minimum and maximum ages, we acid treated the overlying and underneath accretion layers to isolate calcium oxalate for combustion and 14C measurement. The radiocarbon dates for the three paint samples are...
Uintah Basin Basketmaker II Anthropomorphic Style: Antecedent and Ancestral to Classic Vernal Fremont Style Rock Art (2017)
In his recent analysis of petroglyphs in the Uintah and San Rafael zones east of the Wasatch Mountains, Keyser (2016) identifies a subset of Fremont style figures as "solidly pecked trapezoidal body style Fremont." In this paper, I expand upon Keyser's analysis by adding to this stylistic repertoire a set of anthropomorphic figures that are largely similar to, but lack Classic Fremont diagnostic features, such as horned or winged headdresses, or body decorations, such as necklaces. Rather than...
Understanding Depositional Processes: A Contextual Analysis of Lagomorph Remains from Aztec and Salmon Ruins (2016)
On numerous projects, faunal analysts have speculated to the amount of rabbit (Lagomorph) remains deposited by human-related processes. Previous studies have failed to fully investigate potential differences in the treatment of Lagomorph remains between cultural and natural deposits. This project investigates evidence of human processing of Lagomorph remains from two Pueblo II/III Great Houses in the Middle San Juan region of northwestern New Mexico: Aztec and Salmon Ruins. The primary research...
Understanding Formation Processes of Archaeological Sites in Eolian Settings in the Petrified Forest National Park (2015)
Located on the southern edge of the Tusayan Dune Field in northeastern Arizona, the Petrified Forest National Park contains abundant archaeology sites located in dune settings. Past and recent archaeological survey has shown an apparent correlation between archaeological site locations and eroded dune blowouts. It is likely that sites are located in dune settings due to their favorable environmental setting; however, it is not clear if the apparent distribution of visible sites in relation to...
Understanding the Architecture of the Virgin Branch Ancestral Puebloan Using a Digital 3D Model-Based Process (2016)
On the Shivwits Plateau, there is scarce information concerning how the Virgin Branch Ancestral Puebloan people constructed their pueblos. This is a result of post-depositional processes that have destroyed much of the building materials. Thus, to further our understanding of the Ancestral Puebloan efforts to live in a semi-arid environment, this research incorporates information obtained from Puebloan ethnographies, experimental archaeology, and excavations. The data is combined through a...
Understanding the Relationship Between Sample Size and Variation in Ceramic Relative Chronologies at the Petrified Forest National Park (2016)
Petrified Forest National Park contains an extensive prehistoric ceramic variability, exhibiting ceramics from multiple regions at later prehistoric sites. Like much of the Southwest, most of the research at the park is survey oriented, recording only a sample of ceramics on site. The high diversity of ceramics and small sample sizes has the potential to create a recording bias when using ceramics to relatively date sites. This project investigates the relationship between site diversity and...
Uniform Probability Density Analysis and Population History in the Tewa Basin, New Mexico (2015)
One of the basic challenges facing archaeology is translating surface evidence into population estimates with sufficient chronological resolution for demographic analysis. The problem is especially acute when one is working with sites inhabited across multiple chronological periods. In this paper I present a Bayesian method that deals with this situation. This method combines uniform distributions derived from a local pottery chronology with pottery assemblage data to reconstruct the population...
Unraveling Sociopolitical Organization using Lithic Data: a Case Study from an Agricultural Society in the American Southwest (2015)
Archaeologists that conduct research in agricultural societies of the American Southwest have contributed little discussions and interpretation regarding sociopolitical organization using lithic data; several negative factors may be at the root of the problem. These factors include 1) archaeologists in the American Southwest have developed a remarkable level of pottery analysis that allows for the reconstruction of some aspects of sociopolitical organization, 2) none has developed a...
The Use of 3-D GPR As An Aid in the Rediscovery of Spanish Colonial Acequias in San Antonio, Texas (2016)
Archaeologists at Raba Kistner Environmental, Inc. (RKEI) have been utilizing 3-D ground penetrating radar (GPR) surveys to rediscover the locations and document the construction techniques of irrigation ditches in San Antonio, Texas. Using 3-D GPR, in conjunction with EM-31 surveys, archival research, and archaeological backhoe trenching has allowed us to determine under what geomorphological and burial conditions the GPR yields reliable results. This paper reviews recent RKEI projects...
The Use of Shell Ornaments at Las Capas, an Early Agricultrual Site in Southern Arizona (2015)
Recent excavations at the site of Las Capas, located along the Santa Cruz River in the Tucson Basin in southern Arizona, have given us an opportunity to examine an Early Agricultural period site in this area. Along with other pieces of material culture such as flaked stone and ground stone tools, ornaments manufactured from marine shell were also part of the lifeway of the local inhabitants. Deriving from locales in California and northern Mexico, where established marine shell ornament...
Using a Sexualized Ritual Landscape to Ontographically Examine Hohokam Gender Stereotypes (2017)
Between approximately A.D. 800—1450, politically oriented religious movements flourished and withered throughout the Hohokam world of the Greater Southwest. The public architecture associated with these movements is some of the only remaining evidence that archaeologists have for their occurrence. While researchers have started to investigate how these movements were politically intertwined, in this paper we lay out an argument that their physical remains can also be used to ontographically...
Using Building Information Modeling Programs to Understand the Built Environment of the Virgin Branch Puebloan Culture (2015)
Architecture has always been a key focus in archaeological research. This is because it dominates the context where the investigation takes place. However, there is a dearth of research concerning the vernacular architecture within the built environment of the Virgin Branch Puebloan (VBP) people on the Shivwits Plateau. This stems from the sediments of the area, which have obliterated most floor features and thus have limited the amount of architectural information that can be recovered. To...
Using Geospatial Strategies and Ground-Penetrating Radar to Study Sites in the American Southwest (2015)
In American archaeology, ground-penetrating radar (GPR) has enjoyed its longest use in the Southwest. While this method has long been used to locate features of archaeological interest, much of the focus has now shifted from using this technique as a prospection tool to one that can be used directly in the study of archaeological sites. This reflects an increasing sophistication in the ways practitioners process, interpret, and visualize GPR data, which capitalizes on this method's...
Using Ground-Penetrating Radar to Re-evaluate the Chetro Ketl Field Complex in Chaco Canyon, New Mexico (2016)
Recent geophysical remote sensing investigations conducted in Chaco Canyon, New Mexico have included studies at the "Chetro Ketl field" complex. This area is widely interpreted as gridded agricultural fields, though a lack of other gridded fields in the canyon have led some to question whether the Chetro Ketl "field" served an agricultural function. Ground-penetrating radar (GPR) surveys conducted here resulted in the unexpected identification of a complicated series of buried features at...