The Climates of Pueblo Emergence

Summary

This is an abstract from the "Adopting the Pueblo Fettle: The Breadth and Depth of the Basketmaker III Cultural Horizon" session, at the 84th annual meeting of the Society for American Archaeology.

In this paper, we explore the emergence of the first Pueblo Canon — how the period of initial Pueblo exploration in the northern upland Southwest coalesced into the suite of material and social patterns archaeologists readily identify as Basketmaker III. Steadfast development of temperate maize varieties set the stage for upland expansion; a warming climate invited migration by maize farmers; strikingly high birth rates among the immigrant population filled the readily available farming niche; and the Canon emerged as both the process and the product of social consensus and community formation, seeded by core concepts from Basketmaker II ritual practices and social identity. We present a new synthesis of high- and low-frequency temperature reconstructions from tree rings and pollen to identify environmental conditions structuring this emergence. Ultimately, we develop an account of a people prepped and fettled, a culture socially and economically primed for expansion and the development of Pueblo identity.

This Resource is Part of the Following Collections

• Adopting the Pueblo Fettle: The Breadth and Depth of the Basketmaker III Cultural Horizon   •
• Society for American Archaeology 84th Annual Meeting, Albuquerque, NM (2019)

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Record Identifiers

Abstract Id(s): 24754