The Big Bend Complex: Landscapes of History

Part of: Society for American Archaeology 86th Annual Meeting, Online (2021)

This collection contains the abstracts of the papers presented in the session entitled "The Big Bend Complex: Landscapes of History" at the 86th annual meeting of the Society for American Archaeology.

The Big Bend region of west Texas in the United States and Chihuahua and Coahuila in Mexico is an area

of great archaeological, ecological, and historical significance for both countries. Unfortunately, not enough research has been conducted on this region, especially on the Mexican side. This session will be examining this region from prehistory to the present and showing the cultural diversity of different communities that made the Big Bend their home.

Other Keywords
Archaic • Historic • Paleoindian and Paleoamerican • Geoarchaeology • Historical Archaeology • Caves and Rockshelters • Frontiers and Borderlands • Bison • Zooarchaeology • Dating Techniques

Geographic Keywords
United States of America (Country) • North America (Continent) • New Mexico (State / Territory) • Oklahoma (State / Territory) • Arizona (State / Territory) • Texas (State / Territory) • Sonora (State / Territory) • Chihuahua (State / Territory) • Baja California (State / Territory) • USA (Country)

Resources Inside This Collection (Viewing 1-8 of 8)

  • Documents (8)
Documents
  • Bonfire Shelter: A Zooarchaeological Reevaluation of Bone Bed 2 (2021)
    DOCUMENT Citation Only James Ramsey.

    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 rockshelter in Eagle Nest Canyon, a short tributary of the Rio Grande in West Texas, that contains three distinct bone beds of varying ages. The middle bone bed, Bone Bed 2, is a Paleoindian-aged deposit dating to ~12,000 years BP. Bone Bed 2 was originally interpreted as the remains of one or more bison mass kills;...

  • Ceramics from a Presidio: Preliminary Results from Presidio San Carlos, Chihuahua (2021)
    DOCUMENT Citation Only Emiliano Gallaga. Manuel R. Parra.

    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. Despite the distance and how isolated the Presidio was, it did not cease to belong to the globalized colonial economic sphere. The paper will present the first results of the study of the ceramic materials of the Presidio de San Carlos Archaeological Project (PAPSC). It is a project of historical archeology on the northern border of the state...

  • Gamble across the Rio Grande: Industrial Archaeology of the Aerial Ore Tramway in the Big Bend (2021)
    DOCUMENT Citation Only Marisol Gama-Vooz.

    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. In the 1900s a group of adventurous entrepreneurs resumed mining activities that had been abandoned a decade prior in the Big Bend region. The idea this time was to utilize new mining technologies. Overcoming long distances, rugged terrain, and international and cultural borders, an expensive and new mineral transport system known as an aerial...

  • Geoarchaeological Approach to Resolving the Origins of Bison Bone Beds at Bonfire Shelter, 41VV218, Val Verde County, Texas (2021)
    DOCUMENT Citation Only Ashley Eyeington.

    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 large prehistoric rockshelter site situated at the northern end of Mile Canyon in southwest Texas. Early investigators determined the site to be the location of multiple bison jump events; however, subsequent investigations have disputed this interpretation. My research focuses on answering the questions of whether the...

  • Late Archaic Maize in the Trans-Pecos of West Texas: Implications and Future Research (2021)
    DOCUMENT Citation Only Bryon Schroeder. Bryon Schroeder.

    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. The recovery of Late Archaic maize from the Trans-Pecos, peripheral to the American Southwest, adds to an expanding list of primary crop acquisition by foragers that occupied the arid region. The region, however, lacks clear demographic and settlement patterns diagnostic of this period from adjacent regions. Lacking key similarities, local...

  • New Dates for Bonfire Shelter, a Multicomponent Rockshelter in West Texas (2021)
    DOCUMENT Citation Only David Kilby. Marcus Hamilton.

    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...

  • Sites, Non-sites, and Landscapes: Changing Land-Use Patterns in Wild Horse Draw and Vicinity, Trans-Pecos Texas (2021)
    DOCUMENT Citation Only David Carmichael.

    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. The University of Texas at El Paso 2014 summer archeological field school was hosted by the Ysleta del Sur Pueblo at Chilicote Ranch near Valentine, Texas. Students conducted a pedestrian sample survey focused on the cuestas and mesas between the Sierra Vieja and Wild Horse Draw. The survey identified 95 sites and a number of non-sites;...

  • W. T. Millington and the Mexican Revolution: The Search for Battle Sites and Camps (2021)
    DOCUMENT Citation Only Mark Howe. Nancy Gonzalez.

    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. The Millington letters from 1910 to 1913 described military actions along the Rio Grande in Presidio, Texas, at the start of the Mexican Revolution (1910–1920). These letters are handwritten accounts of the Mexican Revolution and what was occurring across the U.S.–Mexico international border and how this unfolded in the Big Bend region. This...