Stemmed Points of the Southwest

Summary

This is an abstract from the "Papers in Celebration of Bruce B. Huckell, Part 2" session, at the 90th annual meeting of the Society for American Archaeology.

Recent research into the Archaic period in the North American Southwest (8000 – 1500 BP) has expanded our knowledge of the preceramic period, yet the origins and technological implications of long-tapering stemmed points of the Early Archaic remain enigmatic across the region. Historically, the debate in the Southwest has revolved around whether these points represent groups adopting a subsistence economy focused on a big game hunting strategy closely tied to the Late Paleoindian groups of the Plains, or alternatively, that these points represent the earliest manifestation of a “broad-spectrum” Archaic adaptation in the region with affiliations to the Western Stemmed Tradition (WST). Through a morphometric comparison of a large assemblage of tapering stemmed points from the Tularosa Basin of New Mexico with Hell Gap points from the Great Plains and WST points from the eastern Great Basin, it is suggested that the New Mexico assemblage more closely resembles WST points and may represent the arrival of a “broad spectrum” subsistence adaptation during this period. This work has important implications for the understanding of stemmed points in the Southwest, particularly Jay points of the Oshara Tradition, and the rarely considered interaction between the Great Basin and Southwest.

This Resource is Part of the Following Collections

• Society for American Archaeology 90th Annual Meeting, Denver, CO (2025)   •
• Papers in Celebration of Bruce B. Huckell, Part 2

Keywords

Record Identifiers

Abstract Id(s): 52377