The Pithouse to Pueblo Transition, Mealing Facilities, and the Mogollon Mimbres Society

Summary

This is an abstract from the "Research Hot Off the Trowel in the Upper Gila and Mimbres Areas" session, at the 86th annual meeting of the Society for American Archaeology.

Mealing facilities include the tools (metates, manos), features (bins), and architecture (kivas, pueblo rooms) used in the process of grinding corn kernels and other materials at an archaeological site. The goal of this poster is to classify, catalog, and compare the properties of mealing facilities in the Mogollon Mimbres region from before and after the pithouse to pueblo transition to understand how their use changed. Using site reports from excavations dating to these two periods, I will create a database of mealing facilities to consider their characteristics, including room size, number of mealing bins, types of associated artifacts, and evidence for wear on the artifacts themselves. This research speaks to gender relationships in society, due to ethnographic evidence that mainly women used mealing facilities. The pithouse to pueblo transition was a major regional change in the prehispanic Southwest. By examining mealing facilities before and after this transition, we can not only improve our understanding of the changes in food processing but also learn more about the dynamic position of women within society in the Mogollon Mimbres region.

This Resource is Part of the Following Collections

• Society for American Archaeology 86th Annual Meeting, Online (2021)   •
• Research Hot Off the Trowel in the Upper Gila and Mimbres Areas

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Record Identifiers

Abstract Id(s): 33009