Rio Chama archaeology

This dissertation uses a relational approach and a contentious politics framework to examine the archaeological record. Methodologically, it merges spatial and social network analyses to promote a geosocial archaeology. The articles create a counter-narrative to environmentally and economically focused investigations that can fail to explain how and why societies in the Southwest often reorganize horizontally. The first article uses geosocial networks, which I argue represent memory maps, to reveal that people in the Gallina region during A.D. 1100 ̶ 1300 employed the socially important, and sophisticated, act of forgetting. A community level, settlement pattern analysis demonstrates similarities between the arrangement of Gallina and Basketmaker-era settlements. These historically situated settlement structures, combined with acts of forgetting, were used by Gallina region residents to institute and maintain a horizontally organized social movement that was likely aimed at rejecting the hierarchical social changes in the Four Corners region. The second article proposes that as ideologically charged material goods are consumed, fissures within past ideological landscapes are exposed and that these fissures can reveal acts of resistance in the archaeological past. It also contends that social and environmental variables need to be combined for these acts of resistance to be correctly interpreted. The third article applies many of the ideas outlined in the second article to a case study in the Greater Southwest during A.D. 1200–1450. Fractures in the ideological landscape demonstrate that the Salado Phenomenon was a religious social movement formed around, and successful because of, its populist nature. Based on variations in how the Salado ideology interacted with contemporaneous hierarchical and non-hierarchical religious and political organizations it is probable that the Salado social movement formed around desires for the open access to religious knowledge.

Many of these frontier and borderland zones in the Greater American Southwest—these non-places—are often non-hierarchical, or at least less hierarchical than many areas in the Chacoan World. Some of these non-places even prefer a more traditional style of architecture. Places like the crater houses around Chimney Rock (Chuipka 2011), the Gallina, the Valdez Phase near Taos (Boyer 1997; Fowles 2010), and Homol’ovi Pueblo III pithouse communities (Barker and Young 2017) often get labeled as “Out-of-Phase,” as though they failed to predict the eventual rise of the Pecos Classification System or the Northern Rio Grande Sequence. This highlights one of the major underlying processes for the construction of “sexy,” the construction of archaeological popularity, in archaeology. Things that look more like us, get more attention. And in the US Southwest at least, hierarchy is sexy (Borck under review).

The ancestral Tewa produced biscuit ware pottery in the Tewa Basin (northern New Mexico) during the Classic period (A.D. 1350-1598).  Two biscuit ware types (Abiquiu Black-on-gray and Bandelier Black-on-gray) were established according to design attributes and represent temporal changes from the Early Classic period (A.D. 1350-1400) to the Middle Classic period (A.D.1400-1500) when populations were coming together and forming a new identity.  Less emphasis has been placed on understanding compositional variation and this lack of characterization has restricted archaeological discussions of clay sourcing, procurement, and pottery making practices.  The initial objective of this study was to improve our understanding of how clay procurement strategies and/or conventional pottery making technology may have changed during coalescence by evaluating mineralogical variation between types.  X-ray diffraction was used to collect mineralogical data for biscuit ware sherds as well as other Tewa Series ceramic types, clays collected from the Tewa Basin, and fired tiles.  Biscuit ware types were shown to contain the same minerals and cluster analysis results showed the types cannot be separated by mineralogical attributes suggesting similar clay sources were utilized over time.  However, sherds recovered from the Ku’uinge and Otowi’uinge sites clustered separately and were also shown to contain varying frequencies of calcite.  This is potentially significant for supporting claims that clay sources vary between the Rio Chama watershed and Pajarito Plateau.  Additionally, the project produced significant findings regarding the identification of clay minerals.  Anna O. Shepard’s assumption that biscuit ware paste contained a bentonite-type clay, with specifically the clay mineral montmorillonite, was confirmed.  Montmorillonite and another bentonite-type clay were identified in Rio Chama watershed clays proving bentonite-clay sources were not restricted to the Pajarito Plateau and also suggesting ancestral Tewa potters living in the Rio Chama watershed had several options for clays but only selected those containing montmorillonite.

This paper will examine least-cost paths from multiple locations in the Ancestral Puebloan world to multiple locations on the Lower Rio Chama and Northern Rio Grande. The least-cost paths will model probable migration routes . Conflict areas in the Gallina region , as evidenced by informal burials with signs of violent skeletal trauma, will be examined. The location of these sites will then be analyzed to determine whether their location is statistically significant in relation to the probable migration routes.

Adaptation refers to traits or behaviors the provide a benefit to an organism and have been shaped by natural selection. Though the concept has been rigorously examined in biology, where it originated, it has received less explicit treatment in archaeology. Archaeologists have long noted diversity in Southwest farming technologies and techniques, but there have been few attempts to explain explicitly the variation in evolutionary terms that draw upon a well-defined concept of adaptation.

Using comparative and engineering analyses, prehistoric farming technologies and techniques in the Zuni and lower Rio Chama regions of New Mexico were studied to determine which of their functional aspects played a role in evolutionary change. The farming practices were compared in their environmental contexts and important differences were found. An engineering analysis then isolated those
functions which had evolutionary significance. Other functions were identified as ancillary benefits which did not play a role in the appearance of the technologies or techniques.