North America: Southwest United States (Geographic Keyword)

DOCUMENT Citation Only Cyler Conrad. Sandi Copeland.

This is an abstract from the "Current Research on Turkey (Meleagris gallopavo) Domestication, Husbandry and Management in North America and Beyond" session, at the 84th annual meeting of the Society for American Archaeology. In this paper we use bone apatite and collagen stable isotope analysis to examine long-term Ancestral Pueblo turkey management strategies on the Pajarito Plateau in the northern Rio Grande of New Mexico. Since previous preliminary research within this region identified...

DOCUMENT Citation Only Braeden Dimitroff. Candice Disque.

The 2017 Alkali Ridge Data Modernization Project completed an intensive survey of 10 Ancestral Pueblo habitation sites within the Alkali Ridge National Historic Landmark as part of the ongoing collaboration between NMSU and the National Park Service to modernize data and conduct research. The 2017 fieldwork season focused on recording small residential sites in close proximity to community centers to examine the role small satellite habitations played in the Pueblo II-III period landscape of...

DOCUMENT Citation Only Alexandra Greenwald. Mary Weakhee. Hayley Kievman. Andrew Merryweather. Jamie Herridge.

This is an abstract from the "SAA 2023: Individual Abstracts" session, at the 88th annual meeting of the Society for American Archaeology. Running is an important, and even sacred, cultural practice among modern Indigenous peoples of the western North America and has deep roots in prehistory. Oral history and limited archaeological evidence suggest that running was important in ceremonial contexts, communication between communities, in hunting practices, and warfare. However, the prehistoric...

DOCUMENT Citation Only Tucker Deady.

This is an abstract from the "SAA 2019: General Sessions" session, at the 84th annual meeting of the Society for American Archaeology. Archaeological survey of 800 acres at Redwood Llama Ranch in southwest Colorado documented over 50 previously unrecorded archaeological sites. A 2016 survey, completed as a settlement pattern study using a landscape archaeology framework, explored the extent of Ancestral Puebloan habitation and activity within this property situated in a canyon and on the...

DOCUMENT Citation Only Scott Van Keuren. William Graves.

This is an abstract from the "SAA 2023: Individual Abstracts" session, at the 88th annual meeting of the Society for American Archaeology. Wendy Ashmore’s concept of ceremonial landscapes highlights how sacred ideas and ritual practices are intertwined with “sacred geographies” and “spiritscapes.” Her ideas have been primarily applied to pre-Hispanic urban settings in the Americas, where cities and surrounding natural features are seen to manifest “cosmograms.” We think her broader concept...

DOCUMENT Citation Only Kyle Waller. José Luis Punzo Díaz. Ana Morales-Arce. Meradeth Snow. Miguel Vallebueno.

Paquimé, the political and religious center of the Casas Grandes culture, demonstrates extensive evidence of Mesoamerican influence, including macaws, architectural characteristics such as ballcourts and platform mounds, and mortuary practices in the form of modified trophy skulls and human sacrifice. The role of Mesoamerican influence on the development and florescence of the Casas Grandes culture remains an important but contentious research question for the late prehistoric...

DOCUMENT Citation Only Saul Hedquist. Samantha Fladd. Vincent M. LaMotta. Nancy Odegaard.

This paper honors the anthropological contributions of the Homol’ovi Research Program (HRP) and its directors. We reflect on the conception and implementation of field and curation protocols that enabled years of innovative research into ancient Pueblo lifeways, work that continues today. Though fieldwork in the region has ceased, researchers still benefit from exceptional field recording standards, sound conservation techniques, and an explicitly behavioral project methodology. HRP was...

DOCUMENT Citation Only Melanie Cootsona.

This paper explores the role of animals as social actors, namely the way natural animal behaviors influence human religious settings. The paper focuses on the case study of a floor organization of a formally closed thirteenth century Northern Tiwa kiva in the Northern Rio Grande region of New Mexico. The worldview and beliefs of the Northern Tiwa were deeply shaped by the species and biomes with whom they co-habited. Through the synthesis of material data, ethnographic information and behavioral...

DOCUMENT Citation Only Carol Lorenz. David Preston.

This is an abstract from the "Social Interaction and Networks at the Intersection of Central Mesa Verde and Chaco/Cibola Culture Areas in the Middle San Juan River Valley" session, at the 84th annual meeting of the Society for American Archaeology. During the 2016 and 2018 seasons, excavators found more than 150 features in Floor 2 of the eastern half of the Great Kiva at Point Pueblo. Of these, 99 were east of the eastern vault complex. Features were lined with clay or adobe, demonstrated...

DOCUMENT Citation Only Jared Renaud.

This is an abstract from the "SAA 2021: General Sessions" session, at the 86th annual meeting of the Society for American Archaeology. In 2001, as part of the development of the Sonoran Desert Conservation Plan (SDCP), the Pima County government created a list of Priority Cultural Resources (PCRs) as a proactive approach to local heritage conservation. This list of PCRs highlights archaeological and historic sites considered integral to the county’s historical and cultural values and demand...

DOCUMENT Citation Only Severin Fowles.

In this paper, I explore Ancestral Tiwa rock modifications and linguistic conventions to identify what might be referred to as an "aquatic imaginary" governing Pueblo engagement with the northern Rio Grande landscape. The movement of water, it is argued, emerged out of a preceding Archaic preoccupation with the movement of animals as the dominant new way of both conceptualizing ecological systems and intervening in those systems through the organization and modification of stone. Evidence from...

DOCUMENT Citation Only Richard George. Stephen Plog. Adam Watson. Kari Schmidt. Douglas Kennett.

This is an abstract from the "Frontiers in Animal Management: Unconventional Species, New Methods, and Understudied Regions" session, at the 84th annual meeting of the Society for American Archaeology. Hundreds of scarlet macaw skeletons have been recovered from archaeological sites across the American Southwest and northwestern Mexico. The location of these skeletons more than 1,000 km outside their Neotropical endemic range has suggested a far-reaching pre-Hispanic acquisition network....

DOCUMENT Citation Only Elaine Hughes.

This is an abstract from the "To Curate or Not to Curate: Surprises, Remorse, and Archaeological Grey Area" session, at the 84th annual meeting of the Society for American Archaeology. The Museum of Northern Arizona (MNA) is a private institution, yet 89% of its archaeological holdings are from federal, tribal, and state lands. The story of how MNA acquired these collections is rooted in its founding in 1928 by a group of local citizens under the leadership of Dr. Harold S. and Mary-Russell...

DOCUMENT Citation Only Stephen Lekson.

This is an abstract from the "SAA 2019: General Sessions" session, at the 84th annual meeting of the Society for American Archaeology. After almost three decades in museums and allied institutions, I have some ideas about the challenges and opportunities facing archaeological curation, especially in the western United States. This poster presents several of these themes – the permanent curation crisis, UFOs and CUIs, legacy collections, changing audiences, and of course Tribal collaborations...

DOCUMENT Citation Only Victoria Monagle.

This is an abstract from the "Dogs in the Archaeological Record" session, at the 88th annual meeting of the Society for American Archaeology. Archaeologists frequently use single archaeological events to infer the entirety of the human-dog relationship in a particular time and place. While this practice makes sense given the limited sample of archaeological canids, it can lead to a one-dimensional understanding of how these two species interacted. The American Southwest, an arid region with a...

DOCUMENT Citation Only Ernie Rheaume. Dennis Gilpin.

This is an abstract from the "The Navajo-Gallup Water Supply Project: A Multivocal Analysis of the San Juan Basin as a Cultural Landscape" session, at the 84th annual meeting of the Society for American Archaeology. In 1848, towards the end of the Mexican War, Colonel Edward Newby, Commander of the Ninth Military Department of New Mexico, responded to Navajo raids on New Mexican settlements by leading a military campaign against the Navajos, which imposed the second treaty between the United...

DOCUMENT Citation Only Benjamin Van Alstyne. Karen Harry. Daniel Perez.

This is an abstract from the "SAA 2021: General Sessions" session, at the 86th annual meeting of the Society for American Archaeology. During the summer of 2019, members of the University of Nevada, Las Vegas excavated two rooms within Pete’s Pocket, a Virgin Branch Pueblo cultural site located on the Shivwits Plateau in Arizona. The rooms, which were located about 300 meters from the north rim of the Grand Canyon, were contiguous and circular, forming an almost figure-eight shape. An...

DOCUMENT Citation Only Anne Parfitt. Kathryn Cross.

This is an abstract from the "The Paleoindian Southwest" session, at the 84th annual meeting of the Society for American Archaeology. In May 2017, the QUEST Archaeological Research Program (SMU) investigated the Double Flute Folsom site (LA178142) in Socorro County, New Mexico. Intensive surface survey and excavations were performed to determine the nature and extent of Folsom activities, the stratigraphic integrity of archaeological deposits, and their paleoenvironmental context. The site...

DOCUMENT Citation Only Fumi Arakawa. Braeden Dimitroff. Fred Neils.

This is an abstract from the "Transcending Modern Boundaries: Recent Investigations of Cultural Landscapes in Southeastern Utah" session, at the 84th annual meeting of the Society for American Archaeology. The Montezuma Canyon and Alkali Ridge areas occupy a cultural and ecological boundary between the Great Sage Plain of the central Mesa Verde region and the canyon lands of the western Mesa Verde region. However, physiological and ecological differences are apparent between the two...

DOCUMENT Citation Only Samuel Levin. May Yuan. Michael Adler.

This is an abstract from the "SAA 2019: General Sessions" session, at the 84th annual meeting of the Society for American Archaeology. This paper explores new methods and developments in thermal remote sensing, aerial thermography, for archaeological research. These methods are applied in a pilot study at Picuris Pueblo, NM. Principles of thermal remote sensing that enable subsurface prospection are considered, along with previous investigations in this arena. Expanding upon existing...

DOCUMENT Citation Only Shannon Horton.

This is an abstract from the "SAA 2019: General Sessions" session, at the 84th annual meeting of the Society for American Archaeology. This poster aims to provide a comparative study using the ceramics at three prehistoric sites along southern Nevada’s California Wash. Several surveys, text excavations, and some full excavations were undertaken ahead of the proposed Navajo-McCullough Transmission Line Right-of-Way located in Clark County, Nevada. Typically archaeological sites in southern...

DOCUMENT Citation Only Mary Whisenhunt. John Roney. Robert Hard.

This is an abstract from the "Local Development and Cross-Cultural Interaction in Pre-Hispanic Southwestern New Mexico and Southeastern Arizona" session, at the 84th annual meeting of the Society for American Archaeology. Southeastern Arizona’s upper Gila River Valley is an understudied area that includes both large, aggregated prehistoric sites and small rock ring, pithouse, and pueblo sites from the Early Agricultural to Salado periods. University of Texas at San Antonio Field School...

DOCUMENT Citation Only Mary Whisenhunt. Kristin Corl. John Whisenhunt. Robert Hard. John Roney.

Southeastern Arizona’s upper Gila River Valley is an understudied area once heavily occupied by prehistoric people from the Early Agriculture to Salado periods. Over time, many important archaeological sites in the Duncan-York Valley, particularly those of large, aggregated communities, were extensively looted or destroyed due to agricultural and construction leveling. To document and, ideally, preserve the remains of these vulnerable sites, we have emphasized establishing relationships of trust...

DOCUMENT Citation Only John Carpenter. Guadalupe Sanchez Miranda.

There is little doubt that there exists cultural continuity linking the Río Sonora tradition and the Ópata (a term referring to an amalgamation of several groups, generally including Eudeve, Teguima and Jova-cf. Yetman 2010; Spicer 1962). The socio-political organization of the late prehispanic Rio Sonora archaeological tradition remains controversial though little studied. Carroll Riley (1982, 1987, 1999, 2005; see also Doolittle 1984, 1988, 2008) proposed that they constitute "statelets",...

DOCUMENT Citation Only Maren Hopkins.

The O’odham and other tribes of southern Arizona and northern Sonora have occupied the Western Papaguería since time immemorial. This dry and desolate corner of the Sonoran Desert is home to rich histories and living traditions that have left their subtle marks on the land, and that archaeologists have continuously tried to identify, describe, and interpret. For too long, ethnographic and ethnohistoric records from this region have run in parallel to the archaeology; however several recent...