Analyses of Archaeological Use-Wear on Artifacts Recovered from the Salado Draw Watershed, Lea County, New Mexico

Summary

This lithic use-wear study is a component of an undertaking entitled Salado Draw Archaeological Survey, Small-scale Excavation, and Geomorphological Characterization, GSA Contract No. GS-10F-0396P. The work was commissioned by the U.S. Department of Interior Bureau of Land Management (BLM) Carlsbad Field Office (CFO) as part of research carried out under the Permian Basin Programmatic Agreement, Blanket Purchase Agreement No. 11, Contract No. L14PA00010. It addresses Task 16 (lithic use-wear and analysis) in the Statement of Work. This report incorporates two studies—a flaked-stone-tool use-wear analysis and a characterization of ground stone use wear. Separate laboratory reports for each are included in this report as Appendixes A and B, respectively. Other components of the larger Salado Draw investigation are published separately and consist of Task 11—report of Salado Draw survey, testing, and project synthesis (Cason, Heilen, Leckman, et al. 2023); Task 12—report of the study of mortar holes in Salado Draw (Cason, Heilen, and Babicz 2023); Task 13—Salado Draw geomorphological study (Onken 2023); Task 14—paleoethnobotany research study of pollen, phytolith, starch, and macrofloral samples (Cason 2022); Task 15—starch extraction and identification pilot study (Perry 2022); and Task 17—a public-education report (Cason 2023). The project area is a 6,702-acre (2,712.2-ha) contiguous survey block centered on Salado Draw—a small drainage basin proximal to the Pecos River (Figure 1). It is situated in southeast New Mexico, Lea County, ca. 32 km (20 miles) east of the Pecos River and 3 km (2 miles) north of the Texas state line. It is located within the Mescalero Plain physiographic unit 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 privately owned or owned by the New Mexico State Land Office. Transect-recording-unit (TRU) survey of the project area produced records of 100 archaeological sites (Figure 2), mostly composed of indigenous artifacts and features along with a smaller number of historical period resources (Cason, Heilen, Leckman, et al. 2023). Small-scale excavations were carried out on 77 indigenous features, many of which produced data for special studies, including analysis of accelerator mass spectroscopy (AMS) radiocarbon samples and micro- and macrobotanical remains. A geomorphological study produced a characterization of depositional units and paleoenvironment in the study area augmented by optically stimulated luminosity (OSL) analysis, AMS analysis of bulk sediment samples, and other geomorphological analyses. The survey yielded indigenous archaeological materials, including abundant flaked and ground stone artifacts and a modest number of ceramic artifacts. The features (n = 1,207) include numerous fire-cracked rock (FCR) concentrations (with or without stains), FCR middens, small and large stains, small residential structures (and some structures of unknown function), midden deposits, activity areas, and lithic-artifact concentrations. There are also a small number of petroglyphs and one special-use cairn. Bedrock mortars are the most abundant feature in the project area (n = 793), which are present in a variety of natural and archaeological contexts; in some instances, they are in clusters of several hundred. Many of the sites appear to be logistical in nature, but there are also examples of single-and multiple-household residential occupations. Salado Draw is noteworthy for several reasons, and one is that a relatively high number (n = 29) of Paleoindian projectile points have been recovered from six sites and two isolates in the area—the highest density of known Paleoindian artifacts in the BLM-CFO. Clovis, Folsom, and Late Paleoindian projectile points indicate a presence in the area spanning ca. 11,500–6000 B.C. A small number of Early and Middle Archaic period diagnostic projectile points attest to minimal occupation from ca. 6000 to 1800 B.C. However, AMS dates and diagnostic artifacts indicated growing and persistent indigenous occupations in Salado Draw from the Late Archaic into the Early Formative period, ca. 1800 B.C.–A.D. 1100. Additional AMS dates and artifacts indicated a dwindling but notable presence in the Late Formative and post-Formative period, from A.D. 1100 to the nineteenth century.

This report features laboratory reports by Douglas Harro of Paleoanalytics and Tessa Branyon and Jenny Adams of Desert Archaeology, Inc.

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