North America: Southern Southwest U.S. (Geographic Keyword)

DOCUMENT Citation Only Todd Pitezel. Michael Searcy.

This is an abstract from the "25 Years in the Casas Grandes Region: Celebrating Mexico–U.S. Collaboration in the Gran Chichimeca" session, at the 84th annual meeting of the Society for American Archaeology. We recently began a long-term research program focused on identifying and excavating Viejo Period settlements in the near vicinity of the massive, latter Medio Period settlement known as Paquimé (ca. A.D. 12-1450) in Chihuahua, Mexico. We have located previously unrecorded Viejo sites and...

DOCUMENT Citation Only Christopher Garraty. Travis Cureton. Erik Steinbach. Paula Scott.

This is an abstract from the "WHY PLATFORM MOUNDS? PART 1: MOUND DEVELOPMENT AND CASE STUDIES" session, at the 84th annual meeting of the Society for American Archaeology. Recent archaeological and historical investigations at the Hohokam site of La Plaza revealed robust evidence that a platform mound once stood in the north part of Arizona State University’s Tempe campus. Recently obtained archaeological evidence suggests that the mound was built during the middle-late Sedentary period (ca....

DOCUMENT Citation Only Evan Kay. Alexander Kurota.

This is an abstract from the "Recent Research at Jornada Mogollon Sites in South-Central New Mexico" session, at the 84th annual meeting of the Society for American Archaeology. Recent UNM Office of Contract Archeology evaluations and surveys at numerous sites on White Sands Missile Range (WSMR) and White Sands National Monument (WSNM) offer new insight into the use, manufacture and trading of diverse objects of adornment by the Jornada Mogollon during the Doña Ana and El Paso phases. A wide...

DOCUMENT Citation Only Jerod Roberts. Victoria Roberts. Amanda M. Castañeda. Carolyn Boyd.

The Lower Pecos Canyonlands of southwest Texas is home to over 350 identified rock art sites depicting multiple styles, complexity, and intricacy. In 2017, Shumla Archaeological Research and Education Center launched the Alexandria Project, a three year mission to revisit each known rock art site in Val Verde County and perform baseline documentation, with the aim to answer overarching questions requiring a large and consistent dataset. Our documentation methods utilize Structure from Motion 3D...

DOCUMENT Citation Only Kyle Woodson.

This is an abstract from the "Finding Fields: Locating and Interpreting Ancient Agricultural Landscapes" session, at the 86th annual meeting of the Society for American Archaeology. For over a century, archaeologists have investigated the vast network of prehistoric Hohokam canal irrigation systems in the lower Salt and middle Gila River valleys in southern Arizona. However, documentation of the agricultural fields in which prehistoric farmers irrigated their crops generally was lacking until...

DOCUMENT Citation Only Rebecca Harkness.

This is an abstract from the "SAA 2021: General Sessions" session, at the 86th annual meeting of the Society for American Archaeology. Point of Pines Pueblo is a key site for understanding the Kayenta migration to the Mogollon and how communities adapt or maintain practices while experiencing changing demographics. This study analyzes practices in corrugated jar production before, during, and after the migration in the Point of Pines area. Exposed coils on corrugated jars allows us to...

DOCUMENT Citation Only James Margotta.

This is an abstract from the "Research Hot Off the Trowel in the Upper Gila and Mimbres Areas" session, at the 86th annual meeting of the Society for American Archaeology. The national forests of the United States represent a highly contested cultural space, where narratives of archaeological heritage, stewardship, wilderness, and more intersect and clash in the present day. For two previous field seasons (2018 and 2019) the Upper Gila Preservation Archaeology (UGPA) field school, run jointly...

DOCUMENT Citation Only Matthew Pailes.

This is an abstract from the "Archaeological Science and African Archaeology: Appreciating the Impact of David Killick" session, at the 88th annual meeting of the Society for American Archaeology. The borderlands setting of the University of Arizona has made it an epicenter for research focused on Northwest Mexico. This geographical proximity combined with the unfailing collaborative spirit of Dave Killick resulted in his students (official and honorary) having an outsized impact on the...

DOCUMENT Citation Only Brian Medchill. Chris Loendorf. M. Kyle Woodson.

This is an abstract from the "WHY PLATFORM MOUNDS? PART 1: MOUND DEVELOPMENT AND CASE STUDIES" session, at the 84th annual meeting of the Society for American Archaeology. Recent and extensive Data Recovery investigations have been completed at sites along the prehistoric Santan Canal system in the Middle Gila River Valley, including both the Upper Santan and Lower Santan Platform mound communities. This work is being conducted by the Gila River Indian Community Cultural Resource Management...

DOCUMENT Citation Only Meradeth Snow. Ana Morales-Arce.

The prehistoric occupants of the Southwestern United States and Mexico have many similarities, including maize agriculture and the Uto-Aztecan language family. A genetic relationship, potentially due to migration between the regions, has been investigated through mitochondrial DNA analysis. However, limited modern and ancient samples, a focus on the hypervariable region of the mitogenome, and limited samples from intermediate regions between the Valley of Mexico and the cultural complexes in the...

DOCUMENT Citation Only Austin Schraub. Esequiel Ortiz. Amy Thompson. Manda Adam. Fred Valdez Jr..

This is an abstract from the "SAA 2023: Individual Abstracts" session, at the 88th annual meeting of the Society for American Archaeology. In order to properly characterize and speculate about an ancient group and their apparent subsistence strategies, it is imperative to understand the landscape and regional ecology in which the group inhabited. The widespread adoption of Geographic Information Systems within archaeology has generated new avenues of research surrounding ancient...

DOCUMENT Citation Only Ismael Sánchez-Morales. Kayla Worthey. Guadalupe Sánchez.

El Fin del Mundo is a Clovis site with multiple activity areas located in the Sonoran Desert of Northwest Mexico. The site contains the only gomphothere (Cuvieronius sp.)-Clovis association yet known in North America and has produced one of the largest assemblages of diagnostic Clovis stone tools south of the US-Mexico border. Zooarchaeological and taphonomic analyses indicate that Locality 1 preserves the remains of two gomphotheres, aged to approximately 2 years and 8-19 years old, and that...

DOCUMENT Citation Only Summer Peltzer. Kaley Kelly. Ryan Arp. Christopher Schwartz.

This is an abstract from the "SAA 2023: Individual Abstracts" session, at the 88th annual meeting of the Society for American Archaeology. To date, much of the archaeological research in the Phoenix Basin has focused on the central Phoenix area, and specifically the areas surrounding Canal Systems 1 and 2. Recent cultural resource management testing and excavation projects in the west Phoenix area have provided new insights into Hohokam daily life at the confluence of the Salt and Gila...

DOCUMENT Citation Only Aaron Wright. John Jones. Todd Bostwick. Arleyn Simon.

Hohokam communities who resided alongside the perennial rivers in south-central Arizona are renowned for the massive canals they engineered and operated, representing some of the largest preindustrial irrigation systems in the world. In light of such achievement, dry farming technologies and practices remain a lesser known component of the Hohokam agricultural landscape. This paper takes a close look at recent fieldwork around the South Mountains, an upland setting at the confluence of the Salt...

DOCUMENT Citation Only Joseph Curran.

This is an abstract from the "Defining Perishables: The How, What, and Why of Perishables and Their Importance in Understanding the Past" session, at the 88th annual meeting of the Society for American Archaeology. This study provides an innovative multidisciplinary model operationalizing the study of perishable weaponry through experimental archaeology. In this model, I focus on war clubs, a type of Indigenous weapon commonly found across North America. Most of these weapons were made wholly...

DOCUMENT Citation Only Carolyn Boyd.

This is an abstract from the "The Art of Archaeology" session, at the 84th annual meeting of the Society for American Archaeology. The Lower Pecos Canyonlands of southwest Texas and northern Mexico are home to one of the most sophisticated and compositionally intricate rock art traditions in the world—the Pecos River style. This style is characterized by finely executed, polychromatic figures woven together to form mythic narratives. Artists depicted and vivified the actors in these...

DOCUMENT Citation Only Gary Huckleberry.

This is an abstract from the "From Middens to Museums: Papers in Honor of Julie K. Stein" session, at the 84th annual meeting of the Society for American Archaeology. Of Julie Stein’s many contributions to geoarchaeology, her publications regarding sedimentology and stratigraphy with respect to site formation have been particularly influential. By employing earth science methods to elucidate the history of archaeological sediments in a diversity of environments and cultural settings, her work...

DOCUMENT Citation Only Stephen Uzzle. Karen Schollmeyer.

During the 2016-2017 Upper Gila Preservation Archaeology Field School, test excavations focused on the Gila River Farm Site [LA39315], located near Cliff, New Mexico. These excavations allow us to gain new insights into the Cliff phase (AD 1300-1450) in the upper Gila region. Despite evidence of looting and other disturbance, artifacts and data recovered here allow us to better understand several aspects of the Salado occupation of the site, including architectural styles, room function,...

DOCUMENT Citation Only Diane Slocum.

This is an abstract from the "Historical Archaeologies of the American Southwest, 1800 to Today" session, at the 84th annual meeting of the Society for American Archaeology. This paper investigates the development of the Fort Huachuca Cemetery, an active burial ground first established in the late-nineteenth century on a military post in southern Arizona. The cemetery is known as a final resting place for a unique combination of individuals including Apache Scouts, Buffalo Soldiers, other...

DOCUMENT Citation Only Suzan Granados.

This is an abstract from the "SAA 2023: Individual Abstracts" session, at the 88th annual meeting of the Society for American Archaeology. This paper provides evidence of the presence of maize in southeastern New Mexico radiocarbon dated to 1,000 years prior to any in a dataset of 30 known southeastern New Mexico “Old Maize” sites. The oldest maize site is Keystone Dam radiocarbon dated to 3540 cal BP. Site LA 112766 radiocarbon dates to 4825–4575 BP. An investigation of the macrobotanical,...

DOCUMENT Citation Only Chris Caseldine.

The Hohokam within the lower Salt River Valley, central Arizona, practiced large-scale irrigation the spanned thousands of acres. Previous studies examining Hohokam irrigation assumed that there was a direct correlation between the amount of available water within the lower Salt River and the amount of land that could be irrigated. The amount of available water is necessary for assessing where water was sufficient for successful crops and where insufficient water made agricultural production...

DOCUMENT Citation Only Michael Pool.

Obsidian Hydration and conventional radiocarbon dates at the HO-Bar Site range from 900 B.C. to A.D. 750, partially overlapping dates from nearby Mogollon Village. Perhaps more importantly, these dates are comparable to the Early Agricultural and Early Pithouse Period sites from Southwestern New Mexico. An Early Agricultural occupation has not been established in the Upland Mogollon area in the middle Mimbres River and San Francisco Rivers. The HO-Bar Site dates suggest that there is a Early...

DOCUMENT Citation Only Haley Dougherty.

This is an abstract from the "SAA 2021: General Sessions" session, at the 86th annual meeting of the Society for American Archaeology. The UNLV Shivwits Research Project has excavated at numerous Virgin Branch habitation sites since its inception more than fifteen years ago. Sand-tempered ceramics recovered from these projects, which represent the first large-scale investigations conducted in the area, exhibit a high degree of variability in terms of their mineralogy and paste color. This...

DOCUMENT Citation Only Courtney McConnan Borstad. Adrianne Offenbecker. M. Anne Katzenberg.

This is an abstract from the "SAA 2019: General Sessions" session, at the 84th annual meeting of the Society for American Archaeology. Stable isotope analysis of prehistoric human remains has complemented other dietary reconstruction techniques for many years. It provides biologically-based data that allow an examination of what was actually consumed. Using 70 individuals from Paquimé and 14 from the nearby Convento site, we examine whether bone collagen δ13C and δ15N values are correlated...

DOCUMENT Citation Only Andrew Krug. Kyle Waller. Christine VanPool.

Excavations have uncovered millions of marine shells throughout the Southwest. However, it was not an easily obtainable resource. The nearest possible location was the expansive shorelines of Sonora, Mexico. Archaeological literature is full of hypotheses regarding shell procurement and exchange—models of down-the-line trading, least cost, prestige, and group membership. Each of these hypotheses agrees that where and whom the people of the Southwest interacted with to acquire marine shell are...