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This article investigates the context, dating, and character of Ancestral Pueblo building murals at multiple scales in one of the least-studied areas of the northern US Southwest. The study focuses on developing a diachronic seriation of Ancestral Pueblo mural styles in the Cedar Mesa area of the Bears Ears and Natural Bridges National Monuments in southeastern Utah. In this process, I evaluate prior discussions of the function and dating of murals in the region during the recent and ancient past. This seriation is built using a combination of newly developed methods for dating mural creation and use with dendrochronology and augmented with previously published data. Using the Cedar Mesa area as a case study, I demonstrate the methods used to create the mural seriation, using aspects of technological style to identify communities of building mural practice shared at the site and subregional scales over the 12th and 13th centuries a.d. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

We examine provenance data collected from three types of geological resources recovered at Goat Spring Pueblo in central New Mexico. Our goal is to move beyond simply documenting patterns in compositional data; rather, we develop a narrative that explores how people's knowledge and preferences resulted in culturally and materially determined choices as revealed in those patterns. Our analyses provide evidence that residents of Goat Spring Pueblo did not rely primarily on local geological sources for the creation of their glaze paints or obsidian tools. They did, however, utilize a locally available blue-green mineral for creation of their ornaments. We argue that village artisans structured their use of raw materials at least in part according to multiple craft-specific and community-centered ethnomineralogies that likely constituted the sources of these materials as historically or cosmologically meaningful places through their persistent use. Consequently, the surviving material culture at Goat Spring Pueblo reflects day-to-day beliefs, practices, and social relationships that connected this village to a broader mosaic of interconnected Ancestral Pueblo taskscapes and knowledgescapes. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

We developed a new approach to identify vulnerabilities to water insecurity across entire archaeological culture areas by combining a paleohydrological model of the sensitivites of hydrological systems to droughts with least-cost analyses of the costs to acquire domestic water. Using a custom Python script integrated into ArcGIS Pro software, we calculated the pairwise one-way cost in time for walking between 225 water sources and 5,446 Ancestral Pueblo cultural sites across the Jemez and Pajarito Plateaus of the Jemez Mountains, New Mexico. This allowed us to identify whether periodic hydrological droughts occurring between AD 1100 and 1700 increased water acquisition costs across these regions.We found that hydrological droughts increased travel times in both regions to durations exceeding modern standards for water insecurity. Beginning in the fourteenth century, greater underlying hydrogeological sensitivities to droughts and the decline of a dual-residence pattern caused by population losses made the remaining aggregated communities of the Pajarito Plateau much more vulnerable to water insecurity than those on the Jemez Plateau. This would have upended long-standing relationships between communities and water on the Pajarito Plateau during a time when socioeconomic integration across the northern Rio Grande Valley pulled people toward valley bottoms. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

Anthropologists have recently paid greater attention to gender and the division of labor in subsistence societies around the world. These studies have included Ancestral Puebloan societies in the United States Southwest, particularly on the Colorado Plateau. Based on ethnographic literature, women in this region have been responsible traditionally for a wide range of domestic activities, including child-rearing, farming, food preparation, cooking, pottery making, basket weaving, and collecting and transporting firewood and water. The present study presents a predictive model for prehistoric cooking energy systems on the Colorado Plateau. This model examines the causal links between environmental variables and fuelwood demand, acquisition, and use. These causal relationships have been delineated in contemporary cross-cultural research as well as studies of high-altitude cooking. Fuelwood collection, transport, and use form the core of women's workload. This preliminary study serves to predict women's annual workload based on the relationship between the number of fuelwood collecting trips and the elevation of Ancestral Puebloan settlements. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

The impact of Indigenous populations on historical fire regimes has been controversial and beset by mismatches in the geographic scale of paleofire reconstructions and the scale of land-use behaviors. It is often assumed that anthropogenic burning is linearly related to population density and not different cultural practices. Here we take an off-site geoarchaeology strategy to reconstruct variability in historical fire regimes (<1000 years ago) at geographic scales that match the archaeological, ethnohistorical, and oral tradition evidence for variability in the intensity of Indigenous land use by two different cultural groups (Ancestral Pueblo and Western Apache). We use multiple, independent proxies from three localities in ponderosa pine (Pinus ponderosa) forests in east-Central Arizona to reconstruct fire regime variability during four phases of cultural use of different intensities. Elevated charcoal with domesticate pollen (Zea spp.) but otherwise unchanged forest pollen assemblages characterized intensive land use by Ancestral Pueblo people during an early phase, suggesting fire use to support agricultural activities. By contrast, a phase of intensive pre-reservation Western Apache land use corresponded to little change in charcoal, but had elevated ash-derived phosphorus and elevated grass and ruderal pollen suggestive of enhanced burning in fine fuels to promote economically important wild plants. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

Despite considerable developments in the archaeological application of lidar for detecting roads, less attention has been given to studying road morphology using lidar. As a result, archaeologists are well equipped to locate but not thoroughly study roads via lidar data. Here, a method that visualizes and statistically compares road profiles using elevation values extracted from lidar-derived digital elevation models is presented and illustrated through a case study on Chaco roads, located in the US Southwest. This method is used to establish the common form of ground-truthed Chaco roads and to measure how frequently this form is across non-ground-truthed roads. This method is an addition to the growing suite of tools for documenting and comparing roads using remotely sensed data, and it can be particularly useful in threatened landscapes where ground truthing is becoming less possible. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

Corrugated vessels are ubiquitous throughout the US Southwest, and yet their research potential is often overlooked. This paper quantifies how much uniformity or variability goes into the process of manufacturing these objects. The paper focuses on the fundamental, early-stage technological choice of coiling direction. Does coiling direction determine other attributes visible on ceramic vessel bodies, specifically indentation angle? To answer this question, I closely examine whole and majority-intact ceramic vessels. The sample comprises 255 vessels with exposed coiling or corrugation. The goals of the study are twofold: 1) to resolve whether indentation angles on corrugated sherds are a good proxy for coiling direction, and 2) to define the distributional patterns of coiling direction across the Ancestral Pueblo and Mogollon regions of the Southwest. Results indicate 1) indentation angle is associated with coiling direction, but perhaps not closely enough to make indentation angle a wholly reliable proxy for coiling direction; and 2) coiling direction is nearly uniformly counterclockwise with clinal variation at the southern and northern bounds of the US Southwest and a temporal trend toward clockwise coiling. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

Although the application of semiotics to the archaeological study of rock art is not new, Peircean perspectives are still uncommon, and those implementing the concepts of qualisigns and qualia are only rarely employed. Yet, an approach centered on sensuous properties can serve as a valuable complement to other materiality- and landscape-based frameworks popular in contemporary rock art research. Using Ancestral Pueblo rock art from the Middle and Northern Rio Grande region of the U.S. Southwest as an example, I offer an archaeological narrative of how social values may be attached to conventionalized qualia rooted in sensorial experiences. Specifically, I examine how diverse media—rock art, shields, objects of adornment, and feathers—were connected through luminosity and security, culturally conceptualized qualitative properties that became formalized and enregistered in the context of new social institutions and modes of group conduct appearing during the 14th century CE. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

Many Mesa Verde cliff dwellings were occupied during the thirteenth century in the final decades before the Four Corners region was depopulated. Deposits in such cliff dwellings offer unique opportunities to research motivations for migration and to understand living conditions in these unusual locations. In compliance with NAGPRA, bioarchaeological data were collected from Wetherill Mesa burials in 1995; this study is the first systematic analysis of these data. Skeletal health indicators demonstrate increased physiological stress for residents of Pueblo III cliff dwellings. Worsening health related to resource availability and distribution, aggregation, and unsanitary living conditions might have influenced migration from the region. Skeletal fracture data indicate decreased trauma during the Pueblo III, contrasted with the possibility of culturally mediated violence or violent attack at Long House. This pattern of violence was likely a response to insecurity during the late thirteenth century and ultimately might have provided another motivation for migration. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

Indigenous American shield-making traditions are best known among the peoples of the Plains and Southwest cultural provinces, where shields were used in martial and ceremonial contexts. In these regions, shields are frequently represented in images cross-cutting a range of visual media including rock and mural paintings, and pictographs and petroglyphs, some of which exhibit considerable antiquity. Actual shields, however, are almost unknown archaeologically. This article presents new data resulting from an analysis of five coiled basketry shields recovered from archaeological sites in the northern Southwest. Digital image enhancement clarifies the nature of early shield decoration, while evidence for use in combat contributes to knowledge of shield evolution and function. Improved dating suggests the possibility that basketry shields predate the proliferation of shield imagery in the AD 1200s. These observations help reorient discussion of shield form, function, and iconography within the context of wider cultural developments during the AD 1200s and beyond. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

In the Northern Rio Grande region of New Mexico, USA, Ancestral Pueblo villages experienced rapid demographic and economic growth in the late 14th and 15th centuries A.D. Recent research has proposed that this growth was underwritten by cotton production for exchange. Gravel mulch was an important component of cotton agriculture, but its function and soil legacies are not well understood. Since water management was likely a critical feature of gravel mulch, this study examines soil variables affected by changes to water supply. Gravel mulch analyzed in this study was found to have a substantial impact on the surface soil particle size distribution, but other aspects of soil quality were unaffected. The depth profiles of base cation ratios in mulched and unmodified locations suggest that gravel mulch continues to enhance water infiltration. Based on the timing of cotton development and inferred infiltration depths associated with gravel mulch soils, gravel mulch technology is well suited to the monsoonal precipitation regime of the region and the phenology of cotton. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

Across seventy years of research, the site of Tijeras Pueblo has become an important place for understanding the transformations that impacted Rio Grande Pueblo society during the fourteenth century A.D. During that time, the course of research at the pueblo has been guided in part by its changing ownership and management of the site. While the first investigations were conducted while the site was privately owned federal acquisition of the pueblo facilitated the major excavations that took place there in the late 1960s and 1970s. As federal objectives for research evolved with new legislation, the involvement of Native Americans resulted in a major shift in how the last excavations in 2000 were conducted. While sustained interest in Tijeras Pueblo has been driven by its role in addressing major questions about the course of Pueblo history, its ownership and management have shaped, and continue to shape, how we know this important place. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

This paper provides an overview of the Tijeras Pueblo archaeological site. Highlighting Tijeras Pueblo as a community located at a cultural, geographical, and temporal crossroad, the paper attempts to place Tijeras Pueblo within a broader academic and social context. The excavation history of the site will be discussed, along with previous research, and past and modern significance. In its current context, Tijeras Pueblo has become of center of archaeological and cultural education and a place where knowledge is both created and disseminated. Occupying a very public space in the community, the site and its collections have become teaching tools for a new generation of professional and avocational archaeologists and for the greater Albuquerque community. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

Beads and other personal ornaments were recovered during excavations at Tijeras Pueblo (LA 581). In 2008, a volunteer project was begun (1) to identify potential jewelry artifacts from the site, and their contexts; (2) to develop criteria for classifying artifacts as jewelry; and (3) to make these data accessible to future researchers. Comparisons with other sites show that Pueblo IV jewelry consists mostly of beads and pendants, with a few unusual pieces at each site. The variety of ornament materials, styles, and designs in the Tijeras Pueblo assemblage suggests the flow of objects, ideas, and practices across the Southwest and Northern Mexico. A comparison of the contexts in which jewelry artifacts were recovered at Tijeras Pueblo and Pottery Mound (LA 416) indicates possible differences in jewelry use. This project highlights how volunteers with specific interests and expertise can significantly enhance the research value of legacy collections. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

The Tijeras Pueblo Ceramics Project was designed to explore how the origin and spread of glaze-painted pottery and technology among the Ancestral Eastern Pueblos of the middle Rio Grande was associated with inter-regional macro-scale social processes, such as immigration, population aggregation, and coalescent community formation during the Pueblo IV period in the American Southwest (AD 1275-1425). However, carbon-painted black-on-white ceramics make up over half of the decorated pottery from Tijeras Pueblo and these white wares have their own unique story to tell. In particular, this article argues that the diversity of traits that characterize local carbon-painted black-on-white pottery was directly associated with the context in which novice potters learned to make pots, how technological practices were transmitted and regulated within these communities of practice, and how such practices were related to strategies of coalescence and identity formation around the turn of the fourteenth century. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

Landscape archaeology has been widely used as a framework for understanding the myriad ways in which people lived in their natural and built environments. In this study, we use systematic survey data in conjunction with ceramic chronology building to explore how residents of the Lion Mountain area in Central New Mexico created and sustained community landscapes over time as memories and stories became linked with specific places. We combine practice theory with the concept of social memory to show that these residents used their community landscape to both maintain and transform community identity over multiple generations. To strengthen our argument, we use a dual temporal approach, considering our data both by "looking back" and "looking forward" in time relative to the residents living on the landscape. Ultimately, we argue that residents of the Lion Mountain Community lived and died within a community landscape of their making. This community landscape, which was maintained and transformed through collective memory, included significant landmarks and entailed participation in specific networks, helping to reinforce community identity over time. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

In recent years, the field of paleogenomics has grown into an exciting and rapidly advancing area of scientific inquiry. However, scientific work in this field has far outpaced the discipline's dialogue about research ethics. In particular, Indigenous peoples have argued that the paleogenomics revolution has produced a "vampire science" that perpetuates biocolonialist traditions of extracting Indigenous bodies and heritage without the consent of, or benefits to, the communities who are most affected by this research. In this article, we explore these ethical issues through the case study of a project that sequenced the ancient DNA (aDNA) of nine Ancestral Puebloan people from Chaco Canyon, New Mexico. By providing a "thick description" of this controversy, we are able to analyze its metanarratives, periodization, path dependency, and historical contingencies. We conclude that the paleogenomics revolution needs to include an ethical revolution that remakes the field's values, relationships, forms of accountability, and practices. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

Disarticulated fish remains are frequently recovered from late preHispanic and early historic archaeological sites in the Middle Rio Grande basin of central New Mexico, but they are rare during earlier time periods. Increased aquatic habitat quality brought on by wetter climatic conditions may have impacted Ancestral Pueblo foraging goals related to risk minimization, leading to an uptick in fish exploitation. Wetter stream conditions can increase the number of different energy channels that help support fish populations and increase ecological stability, which makes fish less risky to pursue for human foragers. Here, we illustrate how to identify stable ecological communities in the archaeological record using stable carbon and nitrogen isotope values of fish bones recovered from archaeological sites in the Middle Rio Grande. We find that energy derived from terrestrial C4 plants—a stabilizing “slow” allochthonous energy source—was important for the Middle Rio Grande aquatic food web during the late preHispanic/early historic period. This result suggests that fish populations were supported by a broader resource base and were thus more stable and less risky to pursue for Ancestral Pueblo people. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

The appearance of Fourmile Polychrome in the AD 1320s signaled a shift in the decorative layout, use, and perhaps even value of red-slipped pottery in east-central Arizona. Bowls were often painted with iconographic-style designs that diverged from the geometric imagery of earlier White Mountain Red Ware. The type was circulated through the region and even copied in some localities. The provenance of Fourmile Polychrome has remained a mystery due to the lack of research at late Silver Creek villages. We integrate results of neutron activation analysis (NAA) with a large corpus of existing NAA data to shed light on the production and circulation of this iconographic-style pottery. The results illuminate the social networks of ceramic circulation in the Silver Creek drainage and surrounding areas during the fourteenth century. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

This paper examines multiple lines of evidence to argue Ancestral Pueblo peoples engaged in pitched battle and thereby challenges the common view that warfare in the North American Southwest primarily took the form of raiding. Although various tactics likely coexisted in the martial repertoire of Prehispanic peoples, I highlight that raiding has generally been overemphasized by Southwestern archaeologists. After critically reflecting on how scholars interpret tactics, the bulk of this manuscript is devoted to examining evidence of battle among Prehispanic and post-Contact Pueblo peoples. I argue the earliest solid evidence of battle tactics dates to around AD 1300 and possibly as early as AD 1200. I develop a case for a shift in tactics tied to changes in weaponry along with groups aggregating for protection and the resulting spatial needs of large communities. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

Pinworms infected Ancestral Pueblo populations since early periods of occupation on the Colorado Plateau. The high prevalence of pinworm found in these populations was correlated with the habitation style developments through time. However, in previous studies, Turkey Pen Cave, an early occupation site, and Salmon Ruins, a late occupation site, exhibited prevalences that were anomalously low, suggesting that these sites were outliers. Alternatively, it is possible that the previous quantification method was not successful in detecting the real prevalence and eggs per gram, which led to inexact interpretations. The aims of this study were to verify if previous pinworm prevalences for Turkey Pen Cave and Salmon Ruins were underestimated. In addition, new analyses were added to the data set. Two latrines from Aztec Ruins, a Pueblo III occupation never studied before, were sampled and studied. We applied the pathoecology concept and descriptive/comparative parasitological statistical parameters. Human coprolites were weighed and rehydrated along with introduced exotic Lycopodium tablets and screened through 250-μm mesh. Parasite eggs and Lycopodium spores were quantified and eggs per gram were estimated for each sample. Parasitological statistical parameters were calculated at Quantitative Parasitology 3.0 software. Pinworm was the only parasite recovered in all sites. The prevalences observed in early and late occupation sites refute previous correlation with habitation style. This study indicates that the previously estimated prevalences were underestimated, which interfered in the accurate interpretation on Ancestral Pueblo pinworm infection. This study reveals a new paleoparasitological panorama of pinworm infection in Ancestral Pueblo populations. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

At the 1988 SAA annual meeting in Phoenix, Margaret Lyneis presented a paper with the title Ceramic Production and Exchange among the Virgin Anasazi. In that paper, she presented evidence that much of the pottery found on archaeological sites in the Moapa Valley of southeastern Nevada was in fact produced 70–100 km to the east. This pottery was made from distinctive raw materials found near the north rim of the western Grand Canyon. That 1988 SAA paper inspired much subsequent research, including my doctoral dissertation, which examined ceramic distributions across the western part of the Virgin region. In this paper, I update and expand on my earlier study. This analysis adds detail to Lyneis's original arguments, but demonstrates that she was largely correct. From about AD. 1050–1125, small-scale Virgin region settlements were linked by intensive ceramic exchange networks that crossed long distances and rugged terrain. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

This paper describes and interprets the results of multiple analyses conducted on human paleofeces from Turkey Pen Ruin, an early Ancestral Pueblo farming site in Cedar Mesa, Utah. Analyses of pollen and macroscopic contents were performed on 44 specimens; DNA testing for several faunal and botanical dietary constituents was also conducted on select samples (n = 20) using targeted PCR analysis. These data were used to assess what foods supplemented the predominant dietary staple—maize (Zea mays). Resources were evaluated based on caloric efficiency and nutritional value to gain insight into what motivated these late Basketmaker II period (ca. AD 1-400) farmers to continuously rely so heavily on corn, in lieu of incorporating a higher proportion of foraged resources into their diet. This project confirms a very high level of maize reliance (likely around 80% of the diet) as established by earlier studies. However, these results also show common inclusion of wild resources that are much less calorically efficient than the type of maize farming practiced here, including weedy plants commonly associated with agricultural fields. This suggests early farmers on Cedar Mesa were pushed by low environmental productivity to rely on farming, and to include low-ranked wild resources to calorically and nutritionally augment their maize-based diet. These findings also indicate that farmers were harvesting much more than corn from their fields, and that the productivity of the anthropogenic ecological niche created by farming activities may have influenced supplemental foraging choices, as well as the degree of labor dedicated to fields. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

For over two decades archaeologists and bioarchaeologists have identified evidence to suggest that there was a system of captivity and subjugation in the American Southwest before the arrival of Europeans. However, to understand the practice of taking captives in the region, we must attempt to determine why people are subjugated and who is at risk of being enslaved. The focus of this paper is to understand the signs of captivity in the archaeological and bioarchaeological record, and parse out possible motivations for why slavery or raiding for captives was practiced among the Ancestral Pueblo. Using evidence from oral traditions and historical texts of the Spanish colonizers, archaeological evidence of environmental stress, changes in paleodemography at sites, and data obtained from human skeletal remains, this paper explores the likelihood that the practice of captive-taking was present among the Ancestral Pueblo. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

Analyzing how humans interacted with (and within) their greater ecosystems facilitates a more nuanced understanding of past lifeways. In this aim, we use food web modeling to reconstruct the biotic environment of Ancestral Pueblo people living in the central Mesa Verde region between A.D. 750 and A.D. 1300. This framework enables an investigation into the effects of species introductions and removals by linking humans to the species they consumed. We combine a diachronic examination of multiple archaeological assemblages with a database of every modern non-invasive species and their feeding links in a 4,600 square kilometer area of southwestern Colorado. Although human omnivory provided some flexibility, high population density likely curtailed the ability to prey switch. Ultimately, these factors combined to decrease the resilience of Ancestral Pueblo people to environmental changes. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

This article describes several roads with apparent associations with the Bluff Great House site (42Sa22674) in southeastern Utah. These descriptions underscore the similarity of these features with other such features in the northern Southwest, including roads and road-related features in the San Juan Basin of northwestern New Mexico. The differing configurations and contexts of the Bluff Great House roads suggest opportunities to explore community organization and identity, Puebloan cosmology, and emergence narratives. [ABSTRACT FROM PUBLISHER]

In this paper we present evidence through a cross-media and contextual comparison approach that cotton textile production had major economic and ideological importance to Ancestral Pueblo peoples living in the greater Cedar Mesa area during the Woodenshoe and Redhouse Phases (A.D. 1165–1270). First, we present the current data available for direct evidence of cotton textile production from archaeological contexts. Then, we use a cross-media approach to look for evidence of cotton textile production in the media of pottery and kiva mural design motifs. Given the extensive nature of cotton textile production at several sites in the area and the pervasive cotton-textile-based designs on pottery and in kiva murals in the area, we argue that the greater Cedar Mesa area was an important gateway for cotton technologies and imagery between the Kayenta and Mesa Verde areas that afforded the peoples greater access and control over cotton textile production and distribution. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

While most archaeological measures of population rely on material proxies uncovered through excavation (rooms, hearths, etc.), we identify a technique to estimate population at unexcavated sites (the majority of the archaeological record). Our case study focuses on ancestral Tewa Pueblo villages in northern New Mexico. Uninhabited aerial vehicle (UAV) and instrument mapping enables us to quantify the volume of adobe architectural rubble and to construct a decomposition model that estimates numbers of rooms and roofed over space. The resulting metric is applied at ten Pueblo villages in the region to ‘rebuild’ architecture, and calculate maximum architectural capacity and the maximum extent of population size. While our focus is on population histories for large Classic period (A.D. 1350–1598) pueblos in the American Southwest, the model and method may be applied to a variety of archaeological contexts worldwide and is not limited to building material, site size, or construction technique. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

Hybridity is a term used by anthropologists to characterize the amalgamation of influences from two (or more) different cultural groups. Hybridity has captivated archaeology in recent years, especially archaeologists investigating colonialism in Native American contexts. At the same time, a growing chorus of critics has begun to question anthropology’s devotion to hybridity and hybrid objects. These critics take issue with the term’s alleged Eurocentrism, implications of cultural purity, and evolutionary etymology. In this article, I address these critiques and advocate a more circumscribed use of hybridity in archaeology. I caution against the abandonment of the term entirely, because the archaeological identification of hybridity provides insights into both present-day (etic) and past (emic) perspectives on cultural amalgamation. Hybridity reveals the biases of contemporary researchers regarding the societies we study, as well as highlighting the ways in which power structures centered and marginalized colonial subjects in the past. To illustrate these points, I draw on case studies involving the Hopi Mickey Mouse kachina, eighteenth- and nineteenth-century Indigenous-colonial whips from the American Plains and southeast Australia, and seventeenth-century Pueblo ceramics from the American Southwest. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

Animal body size estimation from zooarchaeological specimens often relies on specific, one-dimensional (i.e., conventional) measures from skeletal elements. Here, we introduce an animal body size estimation technique for archaeological fishes that relies on 3D reference scans and the calculation of centroid size, a standard 3D geometric morphometric proxy measure for organism size. Centroid size-based estimations on whole caudal vertebrae are strongly correlated with a widely accepted measure (i.e., centrum width), but the scalability and flexibility of the centroid size-based approach allows for use on a wide variety of fragmented remains. We use zooarchaeological fish remains (subfamily Ictiobinae) from late pre-Hispanic period large village sites located in the Middle Rio Grande region of New Mexico. Informal reports suggest that fishes were large during this time, and we demonstrate that ictiobines were significantly large compared to modern specimens. The centroid size-based body size estimation technique indicates that Ancestral Pueblo fishing strategies were associated with energy maximizing foraging behavior. • A new body size reconstruction method is as reliable as common techniques. • It answers questions about fishing strategies in difficult contexts. • It is applied to fishes from sites in the Middle Rio Grande of New Mexico. • Results suggest environmental change is linked to fishing in the Middle Rio Grande. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

Highlights: [•] Ancestral Pueblo glaze-painted ceramics involved complex technological practices. [•] The composition of paints can be precisely measured using TOF-LA-ICP-MS. [•] Distinct paint mixtures were used on red ware bowls from east-central Arizona. [•] Findings suggest exclusive access to crafting-knowledge in rendering glaze-paints. [Copyright &y& Elsevier]

The corn lifeway originated in Mesoamerica and spread throughout the Americas. Unresolved is the mechanism by which this lifeway entered the American Southwest. In this article I offer new kinds of evidence to support the argument that corn was brought north with migrating maize farmers (e.g., Carpenter et al. 2002; Matson 2002), in contrast to the prevailing view that corn diffused northward via a down-the-line, group-to-group process (e.g., Merrill et al. 2009). I posit that if corn moved into the Southwest with migrating farmers, one should expect to find many similarities in the way a life dependent on corn is conceptualized and ritualized and, accordingly, in the way this belief system is manifest on media from the two areas. I specifically explore representations that are based on the maize metaphor--the concept that equates human life stages with those of corn growth. I use three forms of evidence to argue for and interpret the shared presence of this metaphorical perspective that heretofore have not been considered: (1) information about corn that explicates its growth stages and how they are manifested, (2) depictions of the natural resources needed to promote these stages of corn growth, and (3) informant testimony and ritual song texts that metaphorically describe the stages of corn growth. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

In this study, models of cultural evolution are used to examine one of most intensively studied archaeological areas in world: the central Mesa Verde region of southern Colorado (USA). I work back and forth between models in this case study to tease out new insights into culture change in the Mesa Verde region and to suggest ways that models of culture change can be improved. The results of a new research program, the Village Ecodynamics Project, are presented here and provide the most recent and refined account of settlement in the central Mesa Verde region. The study concludes that many factors contributed to culture change in the region, and it suggests that one factor has been overlooked in previous studies: the development of incipient social hierarchy. This study argues that the development of social inequality needs to be added to the mix offactors that produced culture change, especially immigration from the region during the tenth and thirteenth centuries. This study suggests that evolutionary models emphasizing cyclical change are more appropriate than unilinear models. A model of cyclical change that highlights the dimensions of demographic scale and the emergence of hierarchical social organization best describes the cultural trajectory of the Mesa Verde region. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

As a form of cranial deformation, obelionic flattening is rare. Originally named and described by Stewart (J Wash Acad Sci 29 (1939) 460-465), based on a small sample from Florida, it has been little noted since. Previously [Nelson and Madimenos, Paper presented at the Paleopathology Association annual meeting (2007)], we reported the discovery of two individuals from the Pueblo III Gallina site of Cañada Simon I who exhibit flattening of this type. Although technically undescribed in the Southwest before now, there are tantalizing clues in the literature that it occurred in low frequencies throughout the Ancestral Pueblo world. To determine whether the obelionic flattening found at Cañada Simon I was isolated or an indication of a more widespread phenomenon, we undertook a survey of crania from other Gallina sites, Chaco Canyon, and the literature (type of deformation can be determined on lateral photographs of crania properly positioned along the Frankfort Horizontal). We examined 146 crania (78 first-hand) of which seven exhibit obelionic flattening. Our results indicate that obelionic flattening should be added to the suite of cranial deformations that occur in the Southwest. Here, we propose parameters by which obelionic flattening can be described and differentiated from the more common lambdoidal and occipital forms and suggest that the three types of flattening form a continuum of cradleboard induced deformation, although the exact mechanism for obelionic flattening remains elusive. Am J Phys Anthropol 143:465-472, 2010. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

Puebloan peoples in most times and places used various dry farm agricultural techniques to produce their crops. Related prehistoric populations who once lived in the Mojave Desert, however, had to rely on riverine agriculture owing to the region's extreme aridity. Because there currently is no direct evidence of how Puebloans living in the Mojave Desert practiced agriculture, their specific techniques can only be inferred. A cross-cultural review of non-industrialized groups living in similar settings, both in the Mojave Desert and elsewhere, is presented in order to explore the range of methods that could have been used by the eleventh-century community of Pueblo Grande de Nevada. Although floodplain irrigation was more than likely practiced to some degree, flood recession agriculture is offered here as an alternative technique that resolves critical problems posed by the natural and sociological setting. Other findings from the cross-cultural review include implications about the facilities constructed, overall reliance on agriculture, labor and authority, and the rise and fall of the Pueblo Grande de Nevada community. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

Abstract: Previous coprolite research on the Colorado Plateau has shown that macrofossils are a useful way of statistically demonstrating prehistoric dietary variation of Ancestral Pueblos (Anasazi). Up until now, pollen concentration from human coprolites has not been used for comparative, statistical study. We present here the statistical analysis of pollen concentration values of coprolites from two Ancestral Pueblo sites, Salmon Ruin and Antelope House. The data show that although most pollen types do not show statistically significant variation, there are some types that show how different Ancestral Pueblo populations adapted to plant resources in different environments. The analysis indicates that future work should focus more on pollen concentration analysis of coprolites. [Copyright &y& Elsevier]

Abstract: Our previous analysis of phytolith content of coprolites showed that calcium oxalate phytoliths from desert food plants caused dental microwear among prehistoric Texas hunter-gatherers. We demonstrated that phytoliths from desert succulents were ubiquitous and abundant in hunter-gatherer coprolites. We found that calcium oxalate phytoliths were harder than human dental enamel. We concluded that phytoliths from desert succulent plants caused dental microwear and hypothesized that such dental microwear would be common in other desert hunter-gatherer and horticultural peoples. Presented here are further analyses of phytoliths from coprolites. Two additional hunter-gatherer sites and three Ancestral Pueblo (Anasazi) horticultural sites are included in this study. Calcium oxalate phytoliths are ubiquitous in coprolites from hunter-gatherer sites in the Mojave Desert and the Colorado Plateau. For the three Ancestral Pueblo sites, calcium oxalate phytoliths from desert succulents (agave family and cactus family) are the most common types of phytoliths encountered. However, silica phytoliths are also present in Ancestral Pueblo coprolites. The data demonstrate that phytoliths from non-cultivated desert plants were a source of dental microwear for the pre-maize Archaic hunter-gatherer bands and maize-reliant Ancestral Pueblo villages. [Copyright &y& Elsevier]

• Household inequality for ∼1900 Oraibi was low, typical of horticultural societies. • Prehistoric inequality arises first in the middle San Juan and Chuska regions. • High inequality is then observed at Chaco, while other regions have low inequality. • Prior to mid-1000s, central Mesa Verde exhibits low population and low inequality. • Peaks of violence accompany or follow peaks in inequality in the central Mesa Verde. Recent studies of household inequality based on the distribution of floor area indicate that the distribution of wealth varied significantly across time and space in the prehispanic upland US Southwest. In this study, we first examine inequality among households from Orayvi ca. 1901 to contextualize the patterns of inequality we then report among ancestral Pueblo households in the Basketmaker II-Pueblo III periods from the central Mesa Verde region, middle San Juan region, Chaco Canyon, and the Chuska Valley. At Orayvi just prior to the 1906 split, inequality was relatively low, in line with values typical for horticultural societies. Most inequality at Orayvi was among households rather than among clans and phratries, though clans were more wealth-differentiated than were phratries, factions, or other groups we examined. Degree of ancestral Pueblo wealth inequality varied considerably through time, with levels exceeding those calculated for Orayvi primarily during the Pueblo II period. Wealth disparities exceeding those at Orayvi arose in the Chuska Valley and Middle San Juan regions prior to the marked increase we document at Chaco, suggesting that populations from these areas may have been involved in the development of early great house construction at Chaco Canyon. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]