Home on the Range: An Environmental History of Land Use Changes at Paa-ko, New Mexico

Summary

By using multiple lines of evidence from the archaeological material record, as well as from the environmental pollen record, this paper will explore the history of anthropogenic landscape changes at one particular site in the Galisteo Basin of New Mexico. Located on the margins of the Spanish mission system, the ancestral Pueblo site of Paa-ko and its surrounding field systems present an ideal opportunity to tease out the thread of colonial influences on local communities, particularly with the introduction of livestock into the region. The impacts of grazing continue to be felt into the present, as the eastern field systems are currently a privately owned ranch with small herds of cattle and horses. The transition from an exclusively agrarian landscape to an agropastoral landscape had dramatic and long-lasting social and physical consequences, and these dynamics will be the focus of this study. This project will explore the details of this physical transformation and examine these ecological shifts within the context of changing economics, politics, and aesthetics.

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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