Factors Controlling Pre-Columbian and Early Historic Maize Productivity in the American Southwest, Part 2: The Chaco Halo, Mesa Verde, Pajarito Plateau/Bandelier, and Zuni Archaeological Regions

Chemical and nutrient analyses of 471 soil samples from 161 sites within four archaeological regions (Pajarito Plateau/Bandelier, Zuni, Mesa Verde, and the Chaco Halo) were combined with historical climate data in order to evaluate the agricultural productivity of each region. In addition, maize productivity and field-life calculations were performed using organic-nitrogen (N) values from the upper 50 cm of soil in each region and a range (1?C3%/year) of N-mineralization rates. The end-member values of this range were assumed representative of dry and wet climate states. With respect to precipitation and heat, the Pajarito Plateau area has excellent agricultural potential; the agricultural potentials of the Zuni and Mesa Verde regions are good; and the agricultural potential of the Chaco Halo is poor. Calculations of N mineralization and field life indicate that Morfield Valley in Mesa Verde should be able to provide 10 bu/ac of maize for decades (without the addition of N) when organic N-mineralization rates exceed 2%. Productivity and field-life potential decrease in the following order: Zuni, Mesa Verde, Bandelier, Chaco Halo. The Chaco Halo is very unproductive; e.g., 10 bushels per acre can be achieved within the Halo only from soils having the highest organic N concentration (third quartile) and which undergo the highest rate (3%) of N mineralization.     

Early agriculture and sedentism in the American Southwest: Evidence and interpretations

Recent archaeological research in the American Southwest is rapidly altering long-held perspectives on early agricultural adaptations. The adoption of maize and squash is now reliably dated to ca. 1200 B.C., rather than 4000–2000 B.C. as previously thought, and new sites have been found in a variety of unexpected ecological settings. These emerging spatiotemporal patterns suggest that the development of sedentary communities after A.D. 500 may have been the result of changing systems of foraging, instead of simply a greater dependence on agricultural production.     

Colonialism, Material Culture, and Identity in the Rio Grande and Hudson River Valleys

A comparison of two seventeenth-century colonial encounters in North America, examining the Pueblo–Spanish interaction in New Mexico and the Mohawk–Dutch situation in New York. I focus on material culture flows, the role of women, forms of labor that were extracted in each setting and how each of these contributed to power relations and identity construction.

The Southwest Michigan Historic Landscape Project: Exploring Class, Gender, and Ethnicity from the Ground Up

The Southwest Michigan Historic Landscape Project was initiated in 1994 to examine how the cultural landscapes and associated material culture of the region became transformed since the pioneer settlement of the early 19th century (ca. 1830s). Thus far we have used various methods to investigate four sites in Allegan, Calhoun, and Jackson counties at varying levels of intensity. From these initial efforts we have begun to compile comparative information on the built environment. Here we present the theory and methods used in the project and discuss how class, gender, and ethnic identities are expressed in the material record of the region.     

Struggle,Strength, and Survival: The Trujillo Homesteads National Historic Landmark and Hispanic American Settlement in the Mid-Nineteenth Century

Historical Archaeology - The Trujillo Homesteads National Historic Landmark encompasses two 19th-century Hispanic American ranches on the western edge of the Great Sand Dunes National Park and...     

Temporal frequency distributions of alluvium in the American Southwest: taphonomic,paleohydraulic, and demographic implications

The use of radiocarbon frequency distributions to reconstruct prehistoric human and animal populations must account for taphonomic loss and other factors that affect the archaeological and paleontological records. Surovell et al. (JAS, 36, 1715–1724) have recently proposed a correction for “taphonomic bias” that is based on the radiocarbon frequency of a global sample of volcanic deposits. Analysis of 717 radiocarbon dates sampled from the alluvium of the San Pedro and Santa Cruz rivers and their tributaries in southeastern Arizona shows that discovery and scientific biases also play an important role in the creation of radiocarbon frequency distributions, and that the rate of “taphonomic bias” in prehistory is not predicted by the radiocarbon frequency of volcanic deposits. The latter principle is further argued using a sample of 123 Pliocene to Clovis-age proboscideans from the San Pedro Valley. We propose an alternative model that is based on the nature of the stratigraphic record, with discovery bias, scientific bias, taphonomic loss, and the shape of the calibration curve all operating to influence the temporal frequency distribution of radiocarbon-dated prehistoric phenomena.     

The Context and Significance of Copper Artifacts in Postclassic and Early Historic Lamanai,Belize

Abstract

We consider the archaeological contexts in which copper objects have been recovered at the ancient Maya site of Lamanai in northern Belize and the significance these objects had for the residents of the community during Postclassic (ca. A.D. 950–1544) and Spanish colonial (post 1544) times. More copper objects have been recovered from controlled archaeological contexts at Lamanai than any other site in the southern Maya lowlands area. Bells make up the majority of the assemblage during the centuries just prior to and during historical times, but high status objects such as rings and clothing ornaments found in elite burials dominate in the Early Postclassic period. All of these objects were imported from outside the Maya area. Utilitarian objects, including needles, axes, and fish books, are found in a variety of contexts during Late Postclassic and Spanish colonial times, as are bells and rings. Production materials, including prills, blanks, and pigs/ingots, in addition to mis-cast objects that are production failures, also appear during this time. Nearly all of the copper objects found at Lamanai are distinctly Mesoamerican in form and design, and based on metallurgical analyses it appears that manufacturing technologies were distinctly Mesoamerican as well. The presence of production materials and mis-cast piecesy along with the results of chemical compositional and microstructural analyses, support the idea that the Maya at Lamanai were engaged in the on-site production of copper objects by late precolumbian times.     

How the Pueblos Became Global: Colonial Appropriations, Resistance, and Diversity in the North American Southwest

Theories of colonialism and modernity often present divergent ways of understanding how indigenous populations became global, yet there are several points of intersection. These points include: (1) the heterogeneity present within indigenous groups that led to varied experiences of colonialism, (2) the diversity in colonial programs, (3) how the colonized and the colonizers appropriated goods and labor from each other, and (4) the variable practices of indigenous resistance. These intersections are illustrated through a discussion of the Pueblos of the North American Southwest, from the late “precontact” period (ca. AD 1400) to the present.     

Queensland Aborigines,Multiple Realities and the Social Sources of Suffering: Psychiatry and Moral Regions of Being: Part 1

ABSTRACT This two part paper considers the experience of a range of magico‐religious experiences (such as visions and voices) and spirit beliefs in a rural Aboriginal town. The papers challenge the tendency of institutionalised psychiatry to medicalise the experiences and critiques the way in which its individualistic practice is intensified in the face of an incomprehensible Aboriginal ‘other’ to become part of the power imbalance that characterises the relationship between Indigenous and white domains. The work reveals the internal differentiation and politics of the Aboriginal domain, as the meanings of these experiences and actions are contested and negotiated by the residents and in so doing they decentre the concerns of the white domain and attempt to control their relationship with it. Thus the plausibility structure that sustains these multiple realities reflects both accommodation and resistance to the material and historical conditions imposed and enacted by mainstream society on the residents, and to current socio‐political realities. I conclude that the residents' narratives chart the grounds of moral adjudication as the experiences were rarely conceptualised by local people as signs of individual pathology but as reflections of social reality. Psychiatric drug therapy and the behaviourist assumptions underlying its practice posit atomised individuals as the appropriate site of intervention as against the multiple realities revealed by the phenomenology of the experiences. The papers thus call into question Australian mainstream ‘commonsense’ that circulates about Aboriginal and Torres Strait Islander people which justifies representations of them as sickly outcasts in Australian society.     

Eggshell and the archaeological record: new insights into turkey husbandry in the American Southwest

Eggshell in the archaeological record has interpretive potential beyond simple species identification. Structural features of eggshell itself indicate the degree of development of the embryo. Using a scanning electron microscope, a reference collection of modern eggshell characteristics has been produced that can be used for species determination and for the assessment of embryo development of prehistoric eggshell. We apply this technique to a sample of prehistoric eggshell from northwestern New Mexico and conclude that purposeful breeding of captive turkey populations is present during the 12th century AD. These preliminary results suggest a behavioral shift in turkey husbandry, concomitant with the well documented phenomenon of intensified turkey utilization after about AD 1100 in the American Southwest.     

The prehistoric drug trade: widespread consumption of cacao in Ancestral Pueblo and Hohokam communities in the American Southwest

We propose the existence of extensive trade and interaction among the peoples of the American Southwest and Mesoamerica. We base this inference on our detection of the widespread presence of theobromine, the biomarker for cacao, in 50 of 75 vessels used by Ancestral Puebloans (previously referred to as Anasazi) elites and non-elites from the Four Corners area and Hohokam elites of the Gila and Salt river valleys in the prehistoric American Southwest. We used a non-invasive, non-destructive aqueous sampling procedure that provides conservation advantages over the current methods that require crushing and boiling sherds or removing residues from vessel surfaces. Analysis of these samples by sensitive LC-MS instrumentation capable of detecting nanogram quantities of material revealed theobromine in non-local vessel forms found in elite burials in great house and platform mound sites as well as in local vessel forms used by non-elites living in small unit-pueblos. After elimination of plants native to the Southwest as the source of theobromine, we conclude that either Theobroma cacao or Theobroma Bicolor was imported from its homeland in the Mesoamerican tropical coastal lowlands. Our results are at odds with the current consensus that there was little systematic commerce between Mesoamerican and Southwestern polities. We suggest that cacao was exchanged for high quality turquoise such as that mined in the Cerrillos, New Mexico mining district. We conclude that, far from being isolated developmentally, this trade integrally tied populations in the American Southwest to the socio-political and economic activities of Mesoamerican states.