Spiders and Mud Daubers at LA112420, an Early Developmental Pithouse in Sandoval County, NM

Summary

This is an abstract from the "Byways to the Past: An American Highway Archaeology Symposium" session, at the 84th annual meeting of the Society for American Archaeology.

Mud dauber nests are uncommon in archaeological contexts, but when preserved, are usually present as a result of having been burned in structures or other sheltered features. Approximately 70 nests have been examined from sites in the Midwest, Texas, Oklahoma, and New Mexico, a few of which contained charred spiders and wasp pupae. It is not possible to definitively determine the season of an archaeological feature by the presence of open or closed cells alone since the nests may occur year round. However, mud daubers reproduce throughout the spring and summer, and since spiders are usually consumed by wasp larvae within three weeks of being provisioned, their short-lived presence yields information about the seasonality of the site settlement. Furthermore, charred spiders can provide accurate AMS dates, as demonstrated at an Early Developmental (Basketmaker III) pithouse in central New Mexico. This paper describes the context of a burned spider-packed nest discovered at LA 112420 in terms of environmental inferences and how this information relates to site abandonment at LA 112420.

This Resource is Part of the Following Collections

• Byways to the Past: An American Highway Archaeology Symposium   •
• Society for American Archaeology 84th Annual Meeting, Albuquerque, NM (2019)

Keywords

Spatial Coverage

Record Identifiers

Abstract Id(s): 23488