Flaked Stone Artifacts from the San Juan and Cutter Laterals of the Navajo-Gallup Water Supply Project

Summary

This is an abstract from the "The Navajo-Gallup Water Supply Project: A Multivocal Analysis of the San Juan Basin as a Cultural Landscape" session, at the 84th annual meeting of the Society for American Archaeology.

This paper presents the results of a lithic analysis of several archaeological sites subjected to data recovery efforts by PaleoWest within the San Juan Lateral and Cutter Lateral of the Navajo Gallup Water Supply Project (NGWSP). Three broad reduction strategies were identified within the assemblages, which fall chronologically and culturally between the Early Archaic and Protohistoric Navajo. Assemblages yielding large artifact sample sizes were subjected to detailed lithic analyses. Raw material analysis, including edxrf results from obsidian, indicate that nonlocal and semi-local raw materials were preferred during the Early–Middle Archaic periods, and during the Protohistoric Navajo period, whereas Late Archaic populations made much greater use of local and semi-local raw materials. Raw material selection, combined with other aspects of the lithic operational sequence, suggest increased residential mobility during the Early–Middle Archaic periods, and again during the Protohistoric Navajo period, whereas lower mobility and increased sedentism are suggested for Late Archaic occupations.

This Resource is Part of the Following Collections

• The Navajo-Gallup Water Supply Project: A Multivocal Analysis of the San Juan Basin as a Cultural Landscape   •
• Society for American Archaeology 84th Annual Meeting, Albuquerque, NM (2019)

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Record Identifiers

Abstract Id(s): 24230