Health and Resource Distribution at Tijeras Pueblo

Summary

This is an abstract from the "Archaeology, Cultural Heritage, and Public Education at Tijeras Pueblo, New Mexico" session, at the 84th annual meeting of the Society for American Archaeology.

Tijeras Pueblo is a Pueblo IV site in Central New Mexico located on a natural travel route between the Western Great Plains and the Rio Grande Valley, which likely facilitated frequent contact between different cultural groups. This study addresses two interconnected research goals: first, to examine burial and skeletal data for indicators of distinct cultural units within the site, and second, to test whether membership in such units affects the access to nutritional resources and therefore the health of an individual. Using geographic information systems (GIS), I define spatial units based on the distribution of burials within the site. Osteological data - including age, sex, skeletal non-metric traits and health indicators – as well as burial data and spatial information, then serve to examine the interrelatedness between spatial units, phenetic groups, and burial practices, in order to assess the cultural significance of those spatial units. Data are drawn from a sample of 55 individuals of varied demographic composition from known burial contexts excavated during the 1970s in Tijeras Pueblo. Results from these analyses are interpreted with special attention to the site’s location in a border area of the Ancestral Puebloan World.

This Resource is Part of the Following Collections

• Society for American Archaeology 84th Annual Meeting, Albuquerque, NM (2019)   •
• Archaeology, Cultural Heritage, and Public Education at Tijeras Pueblo, New Mexico

Keywords

Spatial Coverage

Record Identifiers

Abstract Id(s): 24504