Just Up the Hill and Not Down the Line: Ancestral Pueblo Obsidian Use at the Source

Summary

This is an abstract from the "Archaeologies of the Eastern Jemez Mountain Range and the Pajarito Plateau: Interagency Collaboration for Management of Cultural Landscapes" session, at the 84th annual meeting of the Society for American Archaeology.

The rich obsidian deposits found in the Jemez Mountains were utilized by all peoples in prehistory, including the Ancestral Pueblo groups who called the mountains home. For most of the geochemically-distinct geologic deposits of obsidian originating in the Jemez, raw materials can be found in secondary gravel deposits far away from the primary locations. However, one of the major geological sources of artifact-quality obsidian, Cerro del Medio (Valles Rhyolite), is geographically limited to a relatively small area within the caldera at the very center of the Jemez Mountains. Presence of this obsidian at sites close to the center can demonstrate direct access and use of this area by Ancestral Pueblo groups. We use geochemical sourcing methods to trace obsidian artifacts found at sites across the eastern flank of the Jemez Mountains (the Pajarito Plateau) to their geological sources. We also compile published sourcing data from the last few decades of archaeological work in the area. Adding current results from portable XRF instrumentation to legacy datasets enriches the picture of obsidian utilization patterns during the Ancestral Pueblo period in the Jemez Mountains.

This Resource is Part of the Following Collections

• Archaeologies of the Eastern Jemez Mountain Range and the Pajarito Plateau: Interagency Collaboration for Management of Cultural Landscapes   •
• Society for American Archaeology 84th Annual Meeting, Albuquerque, NM (2019)

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Record Identifiers

Abstract Id(s): 24777