North America: Southern Southwest U.S. (Geographic Keyword)
76-100 (157 Records)
This is an abstract from the "SAA 2023: Individual Abstracts" session, at the 88th annual meeting of the Society for American Archaeology. The La Junta de los Ríos (or La Junta) region of West Texas and Northeast Chihuahua is composed of villages scattered around the confluence of the Rio Conchos and Rio Grande. Based on limited investigations, La Junta village sites (AD 1200-1684) appear to be archeologically similar to, yet distinct from, adjacent Mogollon groups. While the region has been...
Kiva Collaboration – The Toriette Lakes Great Kiva Project: Excavation, Oral History, Augmented Reality and Other Things We Should All Be Doing (2019)
This is an abstract from the "SAA 2019: General Sessions" session, at the 84th annual meeting of the Society for American Archaeology. The Toriette Lakes Great Kiva near Reserve, New Mexico was the subject of a 2018 field project under the auspices of the Denver Museum of Nature & Science. This high altitude, threatened site appeared to be a shallow, disturbed, somewhat isolated, square great kiva of unknown date. Survey, excavation, and remote sensing have refined this interpretation. This...
Landscape Archaeology and Plant Use in Northern Durango, Mexico (2019)
This is an abstract from the "SAA 2019: General Sessions" session, at the 84th annual meeting of the Society for American Archaeology. This paper presents the results paleoethnobotanical and architectural analyses at two prehispanic sites in northern Durango, Mexico. The sites, Corral de Piedra (PAS017) and Los Berros (PAS023), were recently excavated as part of the Proyecto Arqueológico Sextín" which seeks to build a "deep chronology" in the Sextín valley located at the frontier between the...
Late Preclassic and Late Classic Period Archaeology in the Upper Reaches of Queen Creek, Superior, Arizona (2023)
This is an abstract from the "SAA 2023: Individual Abstracts" session, at the 88th annual meeting of the Society for American Archaeology. We summarize research findings from a data recovery project conducted along US Highway 60 near Superior, Arizona for the Arizona Department of Transportation. Prehistoric sites here range from small habitation sites (farmsteads and/or hamlets) of the late Preclassic – early Classic (AD 1000 - 1160) to both small and large habitation sites of the late...
Light, Sharp, Lethal: Functional and Social Implications of Cienega Point Technology in Early Agricultural Period Southern Arizona (2019)
This is an abstract from the "SAA 2019: General Sessions" session, at the 84th annual meeting of the Society for American Archaeology. The Cienega phase (800 BC-AD 50) of the Early Agricultural period in southern Arizona is marked by an abrupt shift in projectile point technology from the large, heavy, side-notched San Pedro dart points of the preceding San Pedro phase (1200-800 BC) to significantly smaller, deeply corner-notched Cienega points. Investigations over the past two decades at...
Local Origins, Distant Connections: Exploring Prehispanic Macaw Exchange through Radiogenic Strontium Isotope Analysis at Paquimé, Chihuahua, Mexico (2018)
The prehispanic settlement of Paquimé (ca. 1200-1450 CE) lay at the intersection of traditionally-defined "Mesoamerican" and "U.S. Southwest and Northwest Mexico" (SW/NW) macro-regions in northern Chihuahua, Mexico. Extensive evidence of exchange with distant communities exists at the site, including remains of over 300 scarlet macaws; brilliantly plumed birds whose natural habitat is located at least 1000 km southeast in the humid lowlands of Mexico. Archaeological and historical records...
Long-Distance Interaction in Viejo Period Casas Grandes (2021)
This is an abstract from the "The Archaeology of Trade and Exchange" session, at the 86th annual meeting of the Society for American Archaeology. This research addresses how interregional interaction changed between the Viejo period (AD 700–1200) and Medio period (AD 1200–1450) in northwest Chihuahua, Mexico. Nonlocally procured or created artifacts, features, and iconographic elements are used as proxy evidence for past long-distance relationships. Data available in technical reports and...
Looking through the Glass: How Large-Scale XRF Obsidian Sourcing Has Expanded Our View of Late Pre-Hispanic Regional Networks in the U.S. Southwest (2019)
This is an abstract from the "2019 Fryxell Award Symposium: Papers in Honor of M. Steven Shackley" session, at the 84th annual meeting of the Society for American Archaeology. Over the past three decades, the Geoarchaeological XRF Lab, founded and directed by Steve Shackley, has defined and established unique chemical fingerprints for nearly all of the obsidian sources used by Native Americans in the pre-Hispanic U.S. Southwest. Sources and sub-source localities can be reliably identified...
Macrobotanical and Pollen Analysis of the Canada Alamosa Project (2018)
Analysis of macrobotanical materials from the Cañada Alamosa Project began with materials from the 1999 field season and continued to materials from the 2011 season. The samples were retrieved from four sites (LA 1125, LA 2292, LA 88891, and LA 88889). A total of 1,359 samples were analyzed for this project. In total, 223 individual specimens of corn cob fragments were examined via digital electronic photography (Table 2). A total of 3,052 individual cupules provided measurements for our...
Materiality and Memory: Understanding the Clandestine Movement of Child Migrants along the U.S.-Mexico Border (2019)
This is an abstract from the "SAA 2019: General Sessions" session, at the 84th annual meeting of the Society for American Archaeology. The Undocumented Migration Project (UMP) is a long-term anthropological analysis of clandestine border crossings between Northern Mexico and Southern Arizona that began in 2009. The UMP uses a combination of ethnographic and archaeological approaches to understand the distinct experiences of migrant subpopulations. This study focuses on child migrants and how...
Mesoamerican Precedents for Chaco Canyon Great House Architecture (2023)
This is an abstract from the "SAA 2023: Individual Abstracts" session, at the 88th annual meeting of the Society for American Archaeology. Architecture is one of the most common yet least understood of archaeological remains in the US Southwest. At Chaco Canyon, New Mexico unique and monumental building forms emerged and proliferated during the 9th – 12th centuries AD and questions still remain as to their origin. Lekson identified a formal typology for Chaco Canyon’s great houses which in...
Micaceous Ceramics at Los Ojitos, New Mexico (2018)
Los Ojitos (LA 98907) is a Hispanic New Mexican site occupied between 1865 and 1950 on the Pecos River in eastern New Mexico. Excavators recovered micaceous brownware sherds alongside American goods in household deposits and refuse scatters surrounding historic structures. A single ceramic type encompasses all micaceous wares found in the region: Middle Pecos Micaceous Brownware, dating AD 800–1300. A lack of typological guidelines for distinguishing prehistoric and historic micaceous sherds...
Middle Archaic Period Settlement Patterns and Subsistence Strategies in the lower Salt River Valley of Arizona (2023)
This is an abstract from the "SAA 2023: Individual Abstracts" session, at the 88th annual meeting of the Society for American Archaeology. Archaic period sites are rare in the lower Salt River Valley of south-central Arizona. Logan Simpson Design recently identified two middle Archaic period sites on the Holocene floodplain of the Salt River. Evidence suggests that the two sites were short-term riparian resource procurement and processing locales that were protected from flooding (and...
A Monument of Memories: The Pueblo Grande Platform Mound (2019)
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. Located at the head of a large canal system in Phoenix, the Pueblo Grande platform mound is one of the largest structures ever built by the Hohokam. This building is nearly 4 m in height, 4,000 m2 in area, and incorporates 16,000 cubic m of rock, trash, soil, and structural remains in its cell-like design. Although built in...
Mounds, Mounding, and Polychrome Pottery in the Late Prehispanic Tonto Basin (2019)
This is an abstract from the "Why Platform Mounds? Part 2: Regional Comparisons and Tribal Histories" session, at the 84th annual meeting of the Society for American Archaeology. Both platform mounds and Roosevelt Red Ware (or Salado Polychrome) pottery have been interpreted as tied to religious practice in the late prehispanic southern Southwest, although the relationship between the two traditions is still debated. In the mid-14th-century (Gila phase) Tonto Basin, settlement included not...
The Multivalence of Black in Casas Grandes Iconography (2019)
This is an abstract from the "Coloring the World: People and Colors in Southwestern Archaeology" session, at the 84th annual meeting of the Society for American Archaeology. Color symbolism was undoubtedly important to the Medio period (AD 1200–1450) Casas Grandes folks. Red, black, and white designs decorate their pottery, but excavations at Paquimé reveal that the Medio Period farmers used a variety of mineral pigments for painted murals and/or for makeup and body paint. They also conducted...
New Dates for Bonfire Shelter, a Multicomponent Rockshelter in West Texas (2021)
This is an abstract from the "The Big Bend Complex: Landscapes of History" session, at the 86th annual meeting of the Society for American Archaeology. Bonfire Shelter is a well-known but imperfectly understood multicomponent rockshelter site located in a short tributary canyon of the Rio Grande in West Texas. The site is particularly known for three “bone beds” deposited between about 14,000 and 2,500 BP, two of which appear to represent mass bison kills. Three years of renewed investigation...
Non-Native Incorporation of Native American Technologies in Historic Period Arizona (2018)
Numerous archaeological studies of European-Native American interaction in the Americas during the colonial and historic eras focus on the processes by which Native American households and communities procured and adopted (or resisted the adoption of) European technologies and material culture. Comparatively few studies have addressed instances in which non-Native households incorporated Native American technologies and material culture. Recent archaeological investigations in Tempe and Phoenix,...
The Northern Periphery of the Casas Grandes World: An Assessment and Update of the Animas Phase (2018)
In the 1930s through 1960s, several sites in southeastern Arizona and southwestern New Mexico were excavated to assess their role in a regional system that spanned across the international border. Many of these sites were characterized by their shared, mixed composition of architectural, ceramic, and iconography traits that did not neatly fit into established archaeological cultures. Subsequently, they became the basis of understanding for the northern Casas Grandes frontier, oftentimes termed...
Of Truck Tires and Kelly Bars: Geoarchaeological Perspectives of a Toolpusher (2018)
Over the course of several summers I had the opportunity to apprentice to Vance Holliday as he worked on the Southern High Plains. Whilst this work typically involved long hot days I had the opportunity to learn a lot of the intricacies of how field work is conducted by itinerant geoarchaeologists. This allowed me to be directly involved in research at some of the most prominent projects in Arizona, New Mexico and Texas. It also exposed me to a cross-section of small towns, motels, and BBQ...
On the Road Again: Archaeology on El Camino Real (2018)
In 2017, graduate students enrolled in a cultural resource management class conducted a week-long documentation and surface collection project at Paraje San Diego, a popular historic campsite on El Camino Real de Tierra Adentro National Historic Trail. The Camino Real once connected the Spanish colony of New Mexico, founded in 1598, to the markets and governing authorities in central Mexico. After Mexico won independence from Spain it served as a commercial corridor between Mexico and the United...
Ongoing Investigations at the Gila River Farm Site (2019)
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. The manifestation of the Salado Phenomenon in the Upper Gila is expressed as a combination of local Mogollon traits and traits associated with immigrants from northeastern Arizona. New communities that were formed in the generations after initial migration incorporated...
The Paleoecology of the Mockingbird Gap Clovis site, New Mexico and Surrounding Region (2019)
This is an abstract from the "The Paleoindian Southwest" session, at the 84th annual meeting of the Society for American Archaeology. In this paper I discuss recent work at the Mockingbird Gap Clovis site, New Mexico, and the surrounding region. Our goal was to understand how Clovis hunter-gatherers utilized and adapted to the regional landscape and its available resources. Focusing on lithic raw material use, I show that the Clovis occupants of Mockingbird Gap had access to a wide diversity...
Patterns of Migration at Paquimé: Insights from Isotopic and Demographic Data (2019)
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. Interregional interaction has factored prominently in debates about the origin and cultural trajectory of Paquimé since the site was first excavated six decades ago. In this paper, we use a bioarchaeological approach to reconstruct the structure and scale of migration at Paquimé to better...
Photogrammetry and Virtual Reality Visualization of Cultural Landscapes in Southeastern Utah (2019)
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. Recent technological advances, including photogrammetric capture and virtual reality visualization, offer exciting new means to document, analyze, and reconceptualize archaeological landscapes. Minimally invasive, cost effective, and extremely precise, these methods and technologies provide...