Plants in a Day: A Cost Distance Analysis of Single Day Distance to Floral Resources of the Ancestral Puebloans at Goat Springs Pueblo (LA 285)

Summary

The way in which groups interact with their surrounding environment can provide insight into the importance of natural resources for a social group, despite having a large reliance upon cultivation for subsistence. For this study the landscape around Goat Springs Pueblo (LA 285) was analyzed to identify accessible botanical resources for the pueblo’s inhabitants. Current research has indicated that abiotic natural resources were not frequently accessed, therefore site use may have been related to biotic resource availability. Through cost distance analysis in a geographic information system, in tandem with data from the Ecological Site Description System and the Terrestrial Ecological Unit Inventory, a single day foraging area was digitally replicated around the pueblo. Results indicate that Goat Springs Pueblo’s unique location allowed access to elevation-caused environmental gradients both north and south of the pueblo in addition to grassland and shrubland plant communities which bisect the foraging area. More specifically the cost catchment indicates access to large stands of an ethnographically important winter food staple: piñon pine (Pinus edulis) nuts. Finally, results indicate that ease of access to stands of Douglas fir (Pseudotsuga menziesii), an important construction material, may have further predicated the site’s positioning.

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This Resource is Part of the Following Collections

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

Keywords

Spatial Coverage