Bedrock Mortars in the Salado Draw Watershed, Lea County, New Mexico

Summary

This report on bedrock mortars (BMs) is a component of an undertaking titled Salado Draw Archaeological Survey, Small-scale Excavation, and Geomorphological Characterization, General Services Administration (GSA) Contract No. GS-10F-0396P. The work was commissioned by the U.S. Bureau of Land Management Carlsbad Field Office (BLM-CFO) as part of research to be carried out under the Permian Basin Programmatic Agreement, Blanket Purchase Agreement (BPA) No. 11, Contract No. L14PA00010. It addresses Task 12 (report of the study of mortar holes in Salado Draw) in the Request for Quotation (RFQ) No. 40441902 and the Statement of Work (SOW) contained therein. Other components of the larger Salado Draw investigation are published separately. These consist Task 11 (report of Salado Draw survey, testing, and project synthesis; Cason et al. 2023); Task 13 (Salado Draw geomorphological study; Onken 2023); Task 14 (report describing the paleoethnobotany study; Cason 2022a), Task 15 (starch extraction and identification pilot study; Perry 2022), Task 16 (lithic use-wear analysis; Cason 2022b), and Task 17 (a public education report; Cason 2023). The project area is a 6,702-acre (2,712 ha) contiguous survey block centered on Salado Draw, a small drainage basin within the Pecos River watershed (Figures 1.1–1.3). It is situated in southeast New Mexico, Lea County, approximately 20 miles (32 km) east of the Pecos River and 2 miles (3 km) north of the Texas state line. It lies within the Mescalero Plain physiographic province and is encompassed by the BLM-CFO management district in the Permian Basin. Most of the project area is on BLM land, but small portions are owned privately or by the New Mexico State Land Office. Transect Recording Unit (TRU) survey of the project area produced data that were used to record 100 archaeological sites composed mostly of Indigenous artifacts and features but including a smaller number of historical-period resources (Cason et al. 2023). Small-scale excavations were carried out on 77 Indigenous features, many of which produced data for specialized studies including accelerator mass spectrometry (AMS) radiocarbon dates and microbotanical and macrobotanical identification. A geomorphological study produced a characterization of depositional units and paleoenvironment in the project area, augmented by optically stimulated luminescence (OSL) dates, bulk-sediment AMS, and other geomorphological analyses. Indigenous archaeological materials include abundant flaked and ground stone artifacts and a modest number of Indigenous ceramics. Features (n = 1,207) include numerous thermal appliances,1 small residential structures (and some structures of unknown function), midden deposits, activity areas, and lithic concentrations. There are also a few petroglyphs and one special-use cairn. BMs are the most abundant feature in the project area (n = 793); they are present in a variety of natural and archaeological contexts and, in some instances, in clusters consisting of several hundred features. Many of the sites appear to be logistical, but there are also examples of single- and multiple-household residential occupations. Salado Draw is noteworthy for several reasons, one being that a relatively high number (n = 29) of Paleoindian period projectile points have been recovered from six sites and two isolates—the highest density of known Paleoindian period artifacts in lands under the BLM-CFO’s jurisdiction. Clovis complex, Folsom complex, and Late Paleoindian projectile points indicate a presence in the area spanning ca. 11,500– 6000 B.C. A few Early and Middle Archaic period diagnostic projectiles attest to minimal occupation during those periods (ca. 6000–1800 B.C.) However, AMS dates and diagnostic artifacts indicate growing and persistent Indigenous occupations in Salado Draw from the Late Archaic period into the Early Formative period (ca. 1800 B.C.–A.D. 1100). Additional AMS dates and artifacts indicate a dwindling but notable presence in the Late Formative and post-Formative periods, from A.D. 1100 into the nineteenth century. Statistical Research, Inc. (SRI), conducted analyses of 793 bedrock mortars (BMs) in the Salado Draw project area of approximately 6,702 acres (2,712 ha) in Lea County, southeast New Mexico. The project is part of the U.S. Bureau of Land Management, Carlsbad Field Office’s (BLM-CFO’s), Permian Basin Programmatic Agreement, which sponsors archaeological research in the region. SRI’s BM study is Report Task 12 of Blanket Purchase Agreement (BPA) Call No. 11, which is one of several elements of research in Salado Draw that also includes survey, feature excavation, paleoethnobotany, and geomorphology. The investigation compares conventional documentation methods with a high-resolution approach employing three-dimensional (3D) mapping and botanical-residue studies. Morphological and spatial-cluster analyses examined the shapes and distributions of mortars in Salado Draw and compared them to those analyzed in other recent studies in the Mescalero Plain. The archaeological associations of the mortars, as well as proximal dated features and diagnostics, suggest that the mortars played a persistent and changing role in Formative and post-Formative period lifeways and at times served to support small village communities. Some may have been used to ferment alcoholic beverages in a communal or ritual context.

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