Through a Glass, Darkly: Shedding Light on Late Prehistoric Obsidian Conveyance and Apachean Ethnogenesis on the Western Great Plains of North America

Summary

This is an abstract from the "SAA 2021: General Sessions" session, at the 86th annual meeting of the Society for American Archaeology.

Obsidian was technologically and symbolically important to the prehistoric inhabitants of western North America, and analysis of the small but diverse obsidian assemblage from the Bayou Gulch site (5DA265) in Colorado suggests both uses were important to the site’s inhabitants toward the end of the Late Prehistoric Period (AD 1000-1540). Chemical analysis identified New Mexico, Idaho, and Colorado sources, and the symbolic importance of obsidian is suggested by a small, unmodified and unknappable nodule of Colorado obsidian. These data reflect a contemporaneous pattern of increasing quantities of obsidian and shifts in source areas through time across the Plains. The ten-fold increase of obsidian from northwestern sources (Idaho and Wyoming) on the Plains after AD 1000 is thought to reflect obsidian-conveyance among proto-Apache Promontory culture groups who arrived in the eastern Great Basin and Western Plains ca. AD 1200. After AD 1450, obsidian from northwestern sources becomes scarce, suggesting disruption in the social network that supported conveyance between western and eastern kin-groups. This social disruption could be associated with expansion of Numic speakers east to the Plains margin. This attenuation of contact between geographically separated groups of proto-Apacheans ultimately led to the ethnogenesis of the modern Eastern and Western Apachean branches.

This Resource is Part of the Following Collections

• Society for American Archaeology 86th Annual Meeting, Online (2021)   •
• SAA 2021: General Sessions

Keywords

Record Identifiers

Abstract Id(s): 32866