Examining Settlement Reorganization and Plant Food Use in the Greater Cibola Region A.D. 900-1400

Summary

Investigations at varying scales have been undertaken to understand the role of maize in the diets and daily lives of prehistoric societies in the U.S. Southwest. In the Cibola region, around the modern Pueblo of Zuni, archaeological studies provide a detailed temporal and spatial picture of rapid settlement reorganization and aggregation in the Pueblo III and IV periods between A.D. 1150-1400. Less well understood, however, is how daily subsistence practices and interactions with local environments changed in relation with widespread increases in settlement size and density over time. This research draws on a large number of archaeological plant analyses to explore spatial and temporal patterns in plant subsistence practices. In particular I examine evidence for changes in maize agriculture and the use of wild plant resources over the Pueblo II-Pueblo IV periods (A.D. 900-1400) in the Cibola region of the U.S. Southwest. The comparison of macrobotanical and microbotanical assemblages from across the Cibola region suggests an increased investment in agricultural activities and possibly the use of other plant food resources with the establishment of large nucleated PIV settlements across the Cibola landscape.

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)   •
• The Robustness and Vulnerability of Food Production and Social Change: An evaluation of interdisciplinary concepts using archaeological data, models and ethnographic observations

Keywords

Spatial Coverage