North America: Southern Southwest U.S. (Geographic Keyword)
51-75 (195 Records)
This is an abstract from the "Stability and Resilience in Zooarchaeology" session, at the 88th annual meeting of the Society for American Archaeology. The use of existing collections respects the finite nature of the archaeological record while allowing us to address important concepts such as resilience and stability. However, variables such as analyst skill, access to comparative collections, and recovery methods can impact analytical results. How does variability in data quality impact the...
Determining the Impact of Major Storm Events on Ancient Peoples of Coastal Florida (2019)
This is an abstract from the "SAA 2019: General Sessions" session, at the 84th annual meeting of the Society for American Archaeology. For this project, I assess the potential effects that periods of increased storm frequency and intensity may have had on the lives and behaviors of ancient coastal Florida populations. Using sediment grain size analysis, storm periods were retrodicted and organized into regional storm chronologies for 5 lake bed sediment cores within the East and Central,...
Developing a Condition Monitoring Plan for Archeological Sites at Organ Pipe Cactus National Monument (2019)
This is an abstract from the "Transcending Boundaries and Exploring Pasts: Current Archaeological Investigations of the Arizona-Sonora Borderlands" session, at the 84th annual meeting of the Society for American Archaeology. The Cultural Resources Program at Organ Pipe Cactus National Monument (ORPI) manages multiple cultural resource types across the unit. As part of the National Park Service’s (NPS) overall mission to preserve and protect natural and cultural resources, regular condition...
Digging the Tucson–Ajo Highway: Eight Years of Transportation-Funded Archaeology along Arizona State Route 86 and New Perspectives on Eastern Papaguerían Prehistory (2019)
This is an abstract from the "Byways to the Past: An American Highway Archaeology Symposium" session, at the 84th annual meeting of the Society for American Archaeology. The eastern Papaguería, a region of south-central Arizona, has historically not been the subject of intensive archaeological study due to its agricultural marginality, sparsity of large village sites, and lack of development that would prompt compliance-driven archaeology. Excavations sponsored by the Arizona Department of...
The Distribution and Provenance of Turquoise from Southern New Mexico, USA and Northern Chihuahua, Mexico (2019)
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. Compared to other regions of the Southwest, little is known about prehispanic turquoise acquisition and exchange in southern New Mexico and adjacent parts of Texas or in Chihuahua, Mexico. Here, we explore the distribution of sites with turquoise in the Tularosa and Hueco Basins as well as in northern Chihuahua. In...
Distribution of Artifacts at the Historical Campsite of Paraje San Diego (2019)
This is an abstract from the "SAA 2019: General Sessions" session, at the 84th annual meeting of the Society for American Archaeology. The site of Paraje San Diego in south-central New Mexico was used for over three centuries as stopping point on El Camino Real de Tierra Adentro National Historic Trail. While multiple historical sources identify this site as a "paraje" or campsite, we know surprisingly little about what travelers did at the site and where these activities took place. In 1994,...
Early Agricultural Use of Ground Stone in Southern Sonora (2023)
This is an abstract from the "SAA 2023: Individual Abstracts" session, at the 88th annual meeting of the Society for American Archaeology. Recent excavation at the site of Las Chachalacas in Quiriego, Sonora produced evidence for Early Agricultural period (EAP) occupation. Dating likely between the Silverbell Interval and the San Pedro phase this settlement would have been contemporaneous with other important early agricultural sites in Sonora, Chihuahua, and Arizona such as La Playa, Cerro...
Early Hohokam Platform Mounds and Social Signaling (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. Between A.D. 900 and 1250 major forces of change were operative among the Phoenix Basin Hohokam. These changes include a shift from ball courts to platform mounds as major public architectural features. What is the meaning of these mounds? A diachronic approach is used to investigate the origins and development of platforms...
The Effects of Inundation on an Early Fourteenth-Century Adobe Pueblo at Caballo Reservoir, New Mexico (2019)
This is an abstract from the "SAA 2019: General Sessions" session, at the 84th annual meeting of the Society for American Archaeology. In late 2016, the U.S. Bureau of Reclamation significantly lowered Caballo Reservoir on the Rio Grande in New Mexico to clean out debris behind the outflow gate. As a result, several submerged prehistoric sites were temporarily exposed on the lakeshore. One of those sites was an early fourteenth-century Jornada Mogollon adobe-walled pueblo. Because Caballo Dam...
Eleventh-Century Aviculture in the Mimbres Valley: An Archaeology of the Human Experience Approach (2023)
This is an abstract from the "Isotopic and Animal aDNA Analyses in the Southwest/Northwest" session, at the 88th annual meeting of the Society for American Archaeology. For the past 2,000 years, people throughout the US Southwest and Northwest Mexico have woven scarlet macaws and turkeys into their economic, social, and ceremonial fabric. Pueblo groups in the past did not view all birds as being equal, and neither do archaeologists today, as we study macaws and turkeys more so than any other...
An Evaluation of Type Definitions for Viejo Period Red-on-brown Pottery (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. 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...
Exploring the Pre-Classic Roots of Hohokam Platform Mounds: New Evidence from La Plaza (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. 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....
Favorite Things: An Overview of Ornaments Used by the Jornada Mogollon in the Tularosa Basin, New Mexico (2019)
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...
A Feasibility Analysis of Rock Art Recorded Thus Far for the Alexandria Project (2018)
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...
Finding and Understanding Ancient Hohokam Irrigated Agricultural Fields in the Middle Gila River Valley, South-Central Arizona (2021)
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...
Fired Fingerprints: A Point of Pines Pueblo Corrugated Ceramic Analysis (2021)
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...
Food storage and processing. A cross-cultural study of the Neolithic/Formative period of Central Europe and the USA (2024)
This is an abstract from the "SAA 2024: Individual Abstracts" session, at the 89th annual meeting of the Society for American Archaeology. We introduce the start of an international project focusing on the interpretation of prehistoric food preparation and storage in cross-cultural perspective—both different prehistoric cultures and different traditions of archaeological research. We consider archaeological patterns in Central Europe (the European temperate zone) and in US Southwest,...
The Forest for the Sites: Archaeological Heritage and Contestation in Gila National Forest (2021)
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...
Forest Regrowth and the End of Upland Farming at Picuris: Evidence from Tree Rings (2024)
This is an abstract from the "Collaborative Archaeology at Picuris Pueblo: The New History" session, at the 89th annual meeting of the Society for American Archaeology. Kilometers of terraced rock alignments characterize the upland slopes of the Picuris Pueblo watershed, capturing rainfall runoff in a water-efficient method of irrigation to combat the aridity of the Southwest. The terraces’ effective use of runoff rainfall and space supported the Pueblo's population growth and Plains-Pueblo...
From Survey to Surveillance in the U.S.-Mexico Borderlands (2024)
This is an abstract from the "SAA 2024: Individual Abstracts" session, at the 89th annual meeting of the Society for American Archaeology. Extractive industries such as gold, copper, and lead mining anchored settler colonial expansion in Southern Arizona through the 19th and 20th centuries, initiating survey-based cartographic practices as colonial method. These now-abandoned mining landscapes have since been incorporated into the contemporary border security landscape as U.S. Customs and...
From the Sea to the Mountains: Dave Killick’s Impact on Archaeological Science Advances in Northwest Mexico (2023)
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...
From Upper to Lower Santan: Platform Mound Community Organization within the Santan Canal System in the Middle Gila River Valley (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. 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...
Genetic Identity and Relationships in the Southwest United States and Mexico (2018)
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...
A Geospatial Analysis of Indigenous Habitation Sites in Central Texas (2023)
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...
The Gila River Farm Site and Salado Coalescence during the Fourteenth Century in the Upper Gila, New Mexico (2024)
This is an abstract from the "Emerging Voices in Mogollon Archaeology" session, at the 89th annual meeting of the Society for American Archaeology. Archaeology Southwest and the University of Arizona’s Upper Gila Preservation Archaeology (UGPA) Field School has conducted excavations for six field seasons (2016–2019; 2021–2022) at the Gila River Farm Site. This paper evaluates intrasite coalescence between a small migrant community with ancestry linked to the Kayenta-Tusayan area and local...