Exploring Prehistoric Resource Distribution in the Black Mesa Region: A Plains- Montane Ecotone in Cimarron County, Oklahoma

Summary

The Black Mesa region of Oklahoma is located in northwestern Cimarron County, and constitutes the edge of the Chaquaqua Plateau. It is the easternmost finger of Colorado's Mesa de Maya. Situated along Oklahoma's western border, Black Mesa is the highest and largest in a system of mesas and valleys that extend westward to merge with the foothills of the Rocky Mountains. The relief of this landscape is exaggerated by its juxtaposition with the high plains to the north, south, and east – it is thus referred to as the gateway to the Rockies. This ecotone contains a unique array of resources that have been exploited from the Paleoindian through historic periods. This paper focuses on the prehistoric utilization of these resources and the current state of archaeological knowledge of this transitional landscape. We synthesize the prehistoric record as documented principally in Oklahoma Archaeological Survey project reports. We highlight in particular the high quality quartzite that outcrop in the area and have been reported at sites both in and far from the Black Mesa region.

SAA 2015 abstracts made available in tDAR courtesy of the Society for American Archaeology and Center for Digital Antiquity Collaborative Program to improve digital data in archaeology. If you are the author of this presentation you may upload your paper, poster, presentation, or associated data (up to 3 files/30MB) for free. Please visit http://www.tdar.org/SAA2015 for instructions and more information.

This Resource is Part of the Following Collections

• Society for American Archaeology 80th Annual Meeting, San Francisco, CA (2015)   •
• Solving Archaeological Research Problems in Rocky Mountain and Plains Prehistory

Keywords

Spatial Coverage