Bedrock Mortars as Symbolic Features

Summary

This is an abstract from the "SAA 2019: General Sessions" session, at the 84th annual meeting of the Society for American Archaeology.

Bedrock mortars are common features in various parts of the world, including western North America. They are most often viewed as food-processing facilities, and indeed there is ample historical evidence for this function, especially from California and parts of the Great Basin. However, there is also evidence that bedrock mortars, or similar features, were used for more symbolic purposes. This includes ethnohistoric and archaeological examples in which mortars served symbolic functions, or could not have been effectively used for food processing. Known or possible symbolic functions include calendrical devices, earth openings, and sexual representations. After reviewing some known or suspected examples of symbolically functioning mortars from various parts of the world, this paper presents a case study from the Culebra Bluff site in southeastern New Mexico. This site, located along the Pecos River, was occupied over a long period of time and has numerous bedrock mortars in several spatially discrete clusters. The conglomerate bedrock into which many of the mortars were carved would have made them less-than-ideal for food processing. The bedrock mortars at Culebra Bluff may have embodied a symbolic function, perhaps intended, in part, to reinforce the site’s status as a persistent place.

This Resource is Part of the Following Collections

• Society for American Archaeology 84th Annual Meeting, Albuquerque, NM (2019)

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Record Identifiers

Abstract Id(s): 22870