Casas Grandes: Addressing Key Issues of Chronology, Culture Change, Social Organization, and Exchange
Part of: Society for American Archaeology 82nd Annual Meeting, Vancouver, BC (2017)
Casas Grandes, also known as Paquimé, was one of the largest and most complex sites in northwest Mexico. The culture is characterized by a unique blend of Southwest and Mesoamerican traits, yet it has received far less scholarly attention when compared to its neighbors to the north and south. As such, there are a number of critical issues that require further investigation, including site and regional chronology, settlement and exchange patterns, relationships with outside groups, and the nature of the site itself. The papers in this symposium address these key areas of deficiency through a variety of methodological techniques, including radiocarbon dating, ceramic and lithic analyses, XRF, biodistance and stable isotope analyses. In so doing, this symposium provides new insight into the prehistory of Casas Grandes, as well as its relationship to surrounding regions.
Other Keywords
Gis •
Casas Grandes •
Lithic Analysis •
Ceramics •
bioarchaeology •
Migration •
Kinship •
Basalt Quarry •
Radiocarbon dates •
Borderlands
Geographic Keywords
New Mexico (State / Territory) •
Arizona (State / Territory) •
United States of America (Country) •
Colorado (State / Territory) •
Utah (State / Territory) •
North America (Continent) •
North America - Southwest •
USA (Country)
Resources Inside This Collection (Viewing 1-8 of 8)
- Documents (8)
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Bioarchaeological Approaches to Kinship and Social Organization at Paquimé (2017)
DOCUMENT Citation Only
Variation in cranial and dental non-metric traits provides a unique method for investigating prehistoric biological variability at Paquimé, Chihuahua, Mexico. Previous biodistance analyses have demonstrated patterns of long-distance gene flow with both Southwestern and frontier Mesoamerican groups, while stable isotope analyses have suggested a pattern of immigration into the site. The primary goal of this study is to determine what the pattern of biological variability tells us about social...
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Culture Change at Casas Grandes: New Perspectives from Bioarchaeological Analyses (2017)
DOCUMENT Citation Only
One of the significant ongoing debates surrounding Casas Grandes is whether the Medio period florescence of Paquimé arose from in situ developments or external stimuli. Some scholars have attributed Medio period cultural developments to the arrival of immigrants from surrounding regions, including Mesoamerica, west Mexico, and the American Southwest, while others have suggested that Paquimé grew out of the preceding Viejo period. To address this question, we use strontium and oxygen isotope...
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From Medio to Missionization: A Comparison of Lithic Technology in the Casas Grandes Valley into the Protohistoric Period (2017)
DOCUMENT Citation Only
After the early Medio period, populations subsisting in the Casas Grandes region, northwest Mexico experienced internal and external pressures that led to drastic reorganization of their socioeconomic system. This is reflected by significant changes in their lithic toolkit, where differences in raw material use and tool morphology accrued through time. Presented here are the results of our lithic study comparing multiple excavated Medio and the only excavated protohistoric site located...
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From Plain Wares to Polychromes: A Geospatial Evaluation of Ceramics in the Casas Grandes Region (2017)
DOCUMENT Citation Only
The past twenty-five years have seen a significant increase in archaeological fieldwork in the Casas Grandes region of Chihuahua, Mexico. Among significant issues in Casas Grandes archaeology is the relationship between sites close to Paquimé and those in its borderlands. Investigations into ceramic distributions across the landscape have the potential to provide a greater understanding of the relationship between sites and their relationship to Paquimé. In this study, we reexamine Carpenter’s...
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I Know Why The Caged Parrot Squawks: A Distributional Analysis of Casas Grandes Macaw Cage Stones and the Organization of a Ceremonial Industry (2017)
DOCUMENT Citation Only
The prehistoric exchange of macaws and their feathers was a ritually charged cultural phenomenon observed across the Southwestern United States and portions of Northern Mexico. Nowhere was the integration of this industry more apparent than at Paquimé, the principal center of the Casas Grandes culture, in present day Northern Chihuahua, Mexico. The residents of Paquimé and some of its outlying community members imported, bred, raised, and ritually sacrificed various species of macaws by the...
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New AMS Dates for Paquimé, Northern Chihuahua, Mexico (2017)
DOCUMENT Citation Only
In an effort to resolve some long standing questions about the chronology of the site of Paquimé, accelerator radiocarbon dates were obtained from bone collagen of 77 burials. Bone samples were obtained as part of a larger project to explore life history and diet at the site. We address three questions: the temporal relationship between the Viejo period (Convento site) and Medio period (Paquimé), whether or not the "non-interred" individuals from the Medio phase at Paquimé date to the later...
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Results of a new method for characterizing Casas Grandes polychromes (2017)
DOCUMENT Citation Only
Through time, the analyses of archaeological ceramics have produced a diverse number of characterization techniques. These various techniques have allowed us to create multiple understandings of style, production, and exchange patterns, building a formidable toolkit that is able to speak to many aspects of human behavior. However, though our standard set of techniques is imposing and productive, they may not automatically produce data sets that naturally lead to concrete patterns and natural...
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Sourcing Basalt from the Santiago Quarry in Chihuahua, Mexico Using XRF (2017)
DOCUMENT Citation Only
During survey in 2013, we identified the only known vesicular basalt quarry in the Casas Grandes region in northwestern Chihuahua, Mexico. Using XRF, we analyzed basalt from the Santiago Quarry and compared the results to the chemical characterization of formal tools (mostly mano and metate fragments) recovered at the site of Paquimé in order to determine if this quarry was one of the sources exploited by prehistoric stoneworkers during the Medio period (1200-1450 A.D.).