The Flow of Lithic Production: Debitage Analysis in the Mogollon Highlands, AD550-1000

Summary

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

The Late Pithouse Period (AD550-1000) was a time of significant material development and social change in the Mogollon region of southwestern New Mexico. Intensive research has been devoted to explaining these changes. These approaches have resulted in a wealth of data concerning architecture, site layout, ceramic design, and incipient hierarchical social structures. What has not been examined in detail are lithic debitage assemblages. This is due to the difficulties inherent in applying non-functionalist theoretical lenses to lithic technologies as well as the minimal stylistic expression commonly seen in expedient lithic artifacts. In this paper I present analysis results from two Mogollon pithouse sites, the Harris Village (LA1867) and the La Gila Encantada site (LA113467). I synthesize this data taking into account regional stone sources, production methods, and differential material use in lithic technological systems. These lines of inquiry provide behavioral inferences about Mogollon debitage patterns and their implications for regional technological identity.

This Resource is Part of the Following Collections

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

Keywords

Spatial Coverage

Record Identifiers

Abstract Id(s): 25144