Labor, Settlement, and Social Dimensions of Earth Oven Use in Southern New Mexico and West Texas

Summary

This is an abstract from the "Hot Rocks in Hot Places: Investigating the 10,000-Year Record of Plant Baking across the US-Mexico Borderlands" session, at the 84th annual meeting of the Society for American Archaeology.

A decade of investigations of earth oven baking pits and their associated burned rock discard middens across southern New Mexico and west Texas have revealed new insights into the economic and social roles of these ubiquitous features. Investigations range from pedestrian and aerial surveys and 3-D image enhancement to the excavation of 80 earth oven facilities under a standard set of field and laboratory methods. Massive feasting pits were constructed during the Middle Archaic period, thousands of smaller baking pits were used during the Ceramic period, and during the Protohistoric and Historic periods large quantities of rock were transported to construct pits in distant locations in desert basins up to seven miles from the source of rock. These and other research findings challenge the conventional view that such features had relatively unimportant roles in past settlement and social organization. Systematic studies of large samples of earth ovens establishes that the features did not solely serve as a technology for food preparation, but instead functioned as active agents in social production related to labor organization, land tenure, feasting, and political economies. This paper explores the social dimensions of earth oven use in prehistoric and historic societies of the US Southwest.

This Resource is Part of the Following Collections

• Society for American Archaeology 84th Annual Meeting, Albuquerque, NM (2019)   •
• Hot Rocks in Hot Places: Investigating the 10,000-Year Record of Plant Baking across the US-Mexico Borderlands

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Record Identifiers

Abstract Id(s): 23311