Geochemical Sourcing of Obsidian Artifacts from the Northern Rio Grande

Summary

This is an abstract from the "SAA 2025: Individual Abstracts" session, at the 90th annual meeting of the Society for American Archaeology.

This poster presents the results of a large-scale geochemical sourcing study of over 4000 obsidian artifacts from Coalition and Classic Period sites in the Northern Rio Grande. These obsidian artifacts, held in legacy collections at the Maxwell Museum, the Museum of Indian Arts and Culture, SMU-Fort Burgwin, and the SMU Archaeology Research Collection, were excavated from eight Coalition and Classic Period sites in the Rio Chama Basin; from the Coalition Period site of Pot Creek Pueblo on the Taos Plateau; and from Picuris Pueblo. Using pXRF, we obtained geochemical data on these artifacts and identified the geological source for each artifact. We explore how the arrival of Tewa-speaking migrants in the Rio Chama may have impacted the accessibility of certain obsidian sources to Northern Tiwa residents of the Taos Plateau, and we investigate patterns of obsidian source procurement among large towns in the Rio Chama.

This Resource is Part of the Following Collections

• Society for American Archaeology 90th Annual Meeting, Denver, CO (2025)   •
• SAA 2025: Individual Abstracts

Keywords

Record Identifiers

Abstract Id(s): 53847