Social and Physical Landscape of Lithic Procurement in the Jemez Mountains, New Mexico

Summary

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

The goal of this research project is to better understand the role that societal organization, namely the institution of Spanish colonialism, played in shaping Jemez lithic procurement and reduction strategies across the Jemez Mountains from 1300-1700 AD. Previous work (Liebmann 2017) using X-ray florescence to source lithic debitage from 31 ancestral Jemez sites, found that changes in the usage of specific obsidian sources seems to correspond with periods of colonial rule. Using a least-cost path analysis (LCPA) of the landscape, as well as a macroscopic attribute analysis of the lithic debitage (N=2222), I hope to uncover how the use of particular obsidian sources (indexed by ubiquity and percentage), is affected by Spanish colonial status (indexed by chronology of the sites) and the travel costs of obsidian procurement (calculated through LCPA). This analysis of lithic and topographic data will detail Jemez lithic resource procurement and reduction strategies, as well as outline differences that could be associated with changes in colonial rule.

This Resource is Part of the Following Collections

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

Keywords

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Record Identifiers

Abstract Id(s): 24372