Boca Negra Wash: Investigating Activity Organization at a Shallowly Buried Folsom Camp in the Middle Rio Grande Valley of New Mexico

Summary

Shallow open-air Folsom sites in central New Mexico have been known for six decades, but have received little investigation; most are known only from surface collection. Their post-occupational geomorphic histories of erosional exposure and reburial, coupled with limited archaeological investigation, pose significant challenges to efforts to examine and interpret Folsom intra-site activity organization. We report on our efforts to detect and make sense of patterning in the distribution of artifacts and bison remains at Locus B of the Boca Negra Wash Folsom site, a substantial portion of which was excavated in 2001-2004. The Locus B artifact assemblage is indicative of a short-term residential camp at which both resource processing and weaponry repair and replacement tasks were carried out. We describe the geomorphic and soil stratigraphic history of Locus B, and then present distributional data on various classes of flaked stone artifacts, point production debris, tool manufacture and repair debitage, and poorly preserved bison remains. These data are analyzed using spatial statistical methods to discern whether traces of cultural patterning in the locations of particular tasks have survived the impact of post-occupational geomorphic processes.

This Resource is Part of the Following Collections

• Society for American Archaeology 82nd Annual Meeting, Vancouver, BC (2017)   •
• Open Air Camps of the Terminal Pleistocene and Early Holocene: Intra-Camp Spatial Organization, Activity Areas, and Technology

Keywords

Spatial Coverage

Record Identifiers

Abstract Id(s): 15385