Terminal Pleistocene-Early Holocene Paleoenvironmental Conditions in the Northern Jornada del Muerto, South-Central New Mexico

Summary

This is an abstract from the "Papers in Celebration of Bruce B. Huckell, Part 1" session, at the 90th annual meeting of the Society for American Archaeology.

The northern Jornada del Muerto in south-central New Mexico is home to the Mockingbird Gap Clovis site and over 65 other Paleoamerican loci. Most of this record is concentrated along Chupadera Draw, the highest order drainage in the Jornada, and in proximity to a series of playas primarily near the margins of the basin. Understanding the environmental context of the Paleoamerican occupation in the Jornada, and the Southwest in general, had been a long-term goal of Bruce’s and several of his colleagues and students. This paper contributes to this objective by presenting new paleoenvironmental data from two playas and compares them to previous work in Chupadera Draw. Although not entirely congruent, the paleoenvironmental records from the playas and Chupadera Draw suggest increased biological productivity during the Younger Dryas Chronozone, coeval with late Clovis, Folsom, and possibly the early part of the Plainview occupation, while the Late Paleoamerican Cody Complex occurred during increased aridity and diminishing biological productivity.

This Resource is Part of the Following Collections

• Papers in Celebration of Bruce B. Huckell, Part 1   •
• Society for American Archaeology 90th Annual Meeting, Denver, CO (2025)

Keywords

Record Identifiers

Abstract Id(s): 52361