Fires, Landslides, and All Manner of Varmints: site formation processes at high elevations in the VCNP

Summary

The Valles Caldera National Preserve in northern New Mexico encompasses a diverse landscape of grassy valleys, forested mountainsides, and rocky peaks, almost entirely more than 2600 m (8500 ft) above sea level. People have visited the area regularly for millennia to access large obsidian quarries and other resources. The long history of human activities has left us a rich archaeological record, but interpreting that record is complicated by the dynamism of the landscape; physical and biological as well as cultural processes have altered it in many ways, in some cases dramatically. We present the results of multiple seasons of investigations at two large sites where we focused on site formation processes. Combining standard techniques with detailed pedostratigraphic recording, clast size distribution analysis, and obsidian hydration dating, we have begun untangling the complicated history of human activity, erosion, deposition, turbation, and other processes that formed the archaeological record. Contrasts between the sites both illustrate the range of alterations present and provide preliminary indications of the effects of large-scale landscape factors such as slope and aspect. While broadly applicable, our research should be especially useful for archaeologists working in montane and high-elevation settings.

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This Resource is Part of the Following Collections

• Society for American Archaeology 80th Annual Meeting, San Francisco, CA (2015)   •
• Natural Formation Processes

Keywords

Spatial Coverage