2022 ASNM Annual Meeting

  Speakers  


Saturday, May 7


9:10 - 9:40 am


Jeffrey L Boyer, former Supervisory Archaeologist/Project Director with the

Museum of New Mexico’s Office of Archaeological Studies

and

David H Snow


Jefffrey Boyer received a BA in Anthropology from the University of Arizona in 1977, and an MA in Anthropology from the University of New Mexico in 1983. Between 1982 and 1987, he established and directed a cultural resources management archaeology program for what was then the Kit Carson Memorial Foundation, now Taos Historic Museums. From 1987 to 2016 he was a Supervisory Archaeologist/Project Director with the Museum of New Mexico’s Office of Archaeological Studies.

Currently he’s an on-call field-hand for Cultural Resource Analysts. Most of his research has been in north-central New Mexico, but also include sites from Roswell to Farmington. His interests lie in Euroamerican artifacts; earthen building materials; and soils, sediments, and site geomorphology and currently focus on early Native American community development and organization in the northern Rio Grande region; Native American and Euroamerican frontiers; comparative archaeological, ethnohistorical, and ethnographic manifestations of Native American and Euroamerican worldviews; and forms and organizations of ritual and ritualized behavior.

David H. Snow was encouraged at Albuquerque High School by the late Dr. Winfred Buskirk to pursue his interest in SW Archaeology. After a BA in Anthropology from UNM, and an MA from Brandeis University, following ethnographic work in British Honduras, he returned to fill the position at the Laboratory of Anthropology left vacant by Marge Lambert's retirement in 1970.  He has retired from active field archeological excursions (2003), but continues to stir the anthropological 'pot' in New Mexico.

¿Donde Estaba El Cuartelejo?

Two Denizens* of the Past Look Out from the Northern Rio Grande

A location called “El Cuartelejo” by Spanish colonizers played an important role in Pueblo and Spanish history and ethnohistory. El Cuartelejo was identified by the Spanish as the destination of Tiwa and Tewa Pueblo Indians who quit their homes for different climes in the 17th and early 18th centuries. Historians have tended to view El Cuartelejo as a generally–defined region in the Plains north and east of the Northern Rio Grande. Southwestern archaeologists have paid scant attention to El Cuartelejo, whether as a region or a specific location. On the other hand, beginning in the 1890s, Plains archaeologists have given considerable attention to the “Scott County Pueblo” site in western Kansas as THE location of El Cuartelejo. They have focused on the site and its artifacts and largely looked southwest—we might say “back”—from afar at the Northern Rio Grande as the source of the site’s occupants. We are of the opinion that, if the Native residents of the Scott County Pueblo were from the two northern Tiwa pueblos—Taos and Picurís—and one northern Tewa pueblo—Santa Clara—as has been asserted for over a century, looking northeast from the Northern Rio Grande is in order. In this paper, we consider Northern Rio Grande evidence, circumstances, and implications of Pueblo people moving to El Cuartelejo and the Scott County Pueblo.

* Denizen, noun, (historical): a foreigner allowed certain rights in the adopted county.


9:40 - 10:10 am


Patricia Crown, PhD


Patricia L. Crown is an archaeologist who works in the American Southwest. She has been on the faculty at the University of New Mexico since 1993. She led the SMU field school at Fort Burgwin from 1985-1990, and she currently works in Chaco Canyon. She is writing a book on the cylinder jars from Chaco Canyon and she is particularly interested in the scope of interaction between the U.S. Southwest and Mesoamerica in the past.

Valued Qualities and Distant Commodities in Chaco Canyon

Research continues to expand our understanding of acquisition patterns and exchange networks in Chaco Canyon. From distant macaws and chocolate, to nearby toolstone and ceramics sources, Chacoans acquired high quantities of items. Recent advances in techniques for identifying sources help us determine the scope of their acquisition and exchange networks. She will discuss recent evidence for exotic items in Chaco, and how the qualities of luster, iridescence and flight were particularly valued.



10:30 - 11:00 am


Severin Fowles, PhD

Severin Fowles is Associate Professor of Anthropology and Chair of the American Studies Department at Barnard College, Columbia University, though he spends as much time as he can as a resident community member of Dixon, New Mexico. He has conducted surveys and excavations throughout the Taos region each summer since 1996, and his publications include An Archaeology of Doings: Secularism and the Study of Pueblo Religion (School for Advanced Research, 2013) and The Oxford Handbook of Southwest Archaeology (co-edited with Barbara Mills, Oxford University Press, 2017). Currently he is completing a book on the rock art of the Rio Grande Gorge (in collaboration with Lindsay Montgomery, Darryl Wilkinson and Ben Alberti) and is building two new research programs: a study of the archaeology and oral history of Hispano villages (co-directed with Levi Romero) and a study of the emergence of Picuris Pueblo as a regional trade center (in collaboration with the Picuris Nation and co-directed with Lindsay Montgomery and Mike Adler). 

Apache de Taos: Athapaskan Migrations, Cultural Fusion,

and the Origins of the Plains-Pueblo Macroeconomy



11:00 - 11:30 am


Kit Nelson, PhD, Southern Methodist University, Anthropology


Kit Nelson is an archaeologist and educator.  She is currently the Director of the Academic Studio at the New Orleans Center for Creative Arts (NOCCA) and remains active in the field of archaeology as part of the Belize Mopan Valley Preclassic Project and the Mopan Valley Archaeological Project.  She received her BA from St. Olaf College in 1994, her MA from Northern Illinois University and her PhD from Southern Methodist University in 2001.  Before beginning her work in education at NOCCA, she was an Assistant Professor at Tulane University for 9 years.  During this time she taught undergraduate and graduate classes, mentored students, and conducted archaeological fieldwork in Egypt, Peru, and the American Southwest. For her dedication to students in the classroom and the field she was awarded the Newcomb Distinguished Faculty Award (2010).  She acted as the Director of the Taos Collaborative Archaeology Program for Southern Methodist University from 2013 to 2015.  Her research interests include desert adaptations, pottery production, pottery and economics, educating creative students, and next generation STEM education.

Not so Black and White: The When and Why Glaze Wares in the Northern Southwest

In this paper, the presence of Glaze Ware Pottery in the Northern Southwest will be discussed in the context of framing economic and social exchange, interaction and production from 1200 to 1700 CE.  The Northern Southwest is a region that shows great stability and low diversity in pottery types, as well as other archaeological markers, while other parts of the Southwest show more rapid change and greater variation through time.  The distribution of Glaze Ware Pottery in the context of low diversity and great stability is an important one that frames the changing landscape and economic interactions through time through a Northern Southwest lens.  It also serves to show the ties the northern Pueblos have into the complex systems of interaction, exchange and pottery production through several major periods of reorganization.  Although just one marker, exploring Glaze Wares provides an avenue to discover and discuss economic systems in the northern Puebloan pre and early historic world.  


1:45 - 2:15 pm


Price Heiner, Forest Archaeologist/Heritage Program Manager on the Carson National Forest


Price Heiner has been working as a professional archaeologist for ~19 years with approximately 8 years working for private archaeological firms, and 11 years for the U.S. Forest Service. As an archaeologist he has primarily worked in New Mexico, Colorado, Wyoming, South Dakota, North Dakota and Montana. He is originally from Fort Collins, Colorado and received his bachelor’s degree in anthropology from Colorado State University, and his master’s degree in anthropology from University of Wyoming and is primarily interested in hunter-gather ecology, landscape archaeology, lithic technological organization, geomorphology, geoarchaeology, paleoenvironmental reconstruction, Pleistocene-Holocene transition, projectile point typology, bison evolution, predator-prey dynamics, experimental archaeology (flint knapping, animal butchering using stone tools, etc.), high-altitude archaeology, Paleoindian archeology, Peopling of the New World, and human behavioral ecology.


Archaeology of Miranda Canyon/Old Spanish Trail


My topic will address the archaeological results of two field seasons of work along the Miranda Valley Road/Camino Real/Old Spanish Trail. Field surveys, GPS mapping, metal detection, and limited shovel/trowel testing were conducted along this travel corridor. The results suggest the project did indeed locate a very old trail/road/route that was used for centuries by both Native Americans and Euro-Americans


2:15 - 2:45 pm


Susan Boyle, PhD

Susan Calafate Boyle received her doctorate in American Social History from University of Missouri-Columbia. She has been a member of the departments of history at Colorado State University, University of Missouri-Columbia and Westminster College. She was a Fulbright scholar to Argentina in 1988 and has received several grants and special achievement awards. As a National Park Service employee (1992 to 2015) she specialized in the development of management plans and the study of cultural landscapes. Dr. Boyle continues to work as an independent scholar focusing trade and commerce in New Mexico during the 19th century as well as the history of El Rito, a small community in northern New Mexico. She is the author of Los Capitalistas: Hispano Merchants and the Santa Fe Trade. Albuquerque: University of New Mexico Press, 1997.

The Merchandise of the Trail, 1821-1846: Stability or Change

This talk describes and analyzes the shipments that were hauled over the Santa Fe Trail and south to Mexico between 1821 and 1846. It tries to establish if the quantity, nature, and prices of the merchandise changed or remained stable during this quarter century. Finally, it explores, whenever possible, the strategies traders and merchants developed to adjust to evolving conditions in Mexico, New Mexico, and the United States.


2:45 - 3:15 pm


Dean Wilson, Research associate and former director of the OAS Ceramics Analysis Laboratory


Dean Wilson is currently involved in the analysis and write-up of prehistoric and historic ceramics from several projects in the Northern Rio Grande region. Pottery from most of the prehistoric sites in the Pojoaque Corridor Project in the Tewa Basin indicates an occupation during the Late Developmental period (AD 900 yo 1200) with a few small components dating to later periods. Data from these sites provides an opportunity to examine trends associated with the earliest pottery produced in areas north of Santa Fe. Another project is the analysis of pottery recovered during investigations by Los Alamos Nation Laboratory on the Pajarito Plateau. Pottery from these sites reflect occupations during [to] the Coalition (AD 1200 to 1350) and Classic (AD 1350 to 1600) periods. He will also be examining pottery from Coalition and Early Classic periods from a pueblo currently being excavated near downtown Santa Fe.

Ceramic Clues from “Chacoan Period” Communities in the Northeastern Pueblo World

Examinations of ceramic distributions from three communities dating to the Late Coalition or Late Pueblo II periods commonly associated with Chacoan period great houses, in the northern and eastern most areas of the Pueblo World, provide clues concerning the origin and social structure associated with different frontier communities and their relationship to modern Pueblo Groups. Ceramic data from communities at the Chimney Rock Greathouse community in the Piedra Valley, as well as communities in the Tewa Basin and Taos Valley, while indicating some connections with Chaco System, also seem to reflect deep, distinct and complex origins, that may reflect the presence and interaction of groups with various origins and connections.


3:30 - 4:00 pm


Catrina Banks Whitley, PhD, Southern Methodist University,  RPA Bioarchaeology Support Research Associate, Office of Archaeological Studies, Museum of New Mexico, Santa Fe


Ongoing investigations at the BaahKu Archaeological Site 

Occupation of the Taos Valley was one of the latest areas inhabited by Ancestral Puebloans and is interpreted as a frontier area.  Recent excavations at the BaahKu archaeological site provide an example of an architectural construction unique to the Taos Valley along with unusual abandonment processes.  This research presents a comparison between two pithouses in close proximity to each other, to highlight the differences present in the Valley providing evidence for the frontier hypothesis. We will also present a greater geographic architectural analysis for the Taos Valley through time.



4:00 - 4:30 pm


Sean Dolan, PhD


Sean Dolan received his Ph.D. from the University of Oklahoma, MA from New Mexico State University, and BA from Penn State University. A Registered Professional Archaeologist, Sean has managed cultural resources at Los Alamos National Laboratory since 2014, and he currently works for N3B Los Alamos. Sean is the author of several journal articles on the use of obsidian in New Mexico and Chihuahua, and has studied turkey domestication in the Mimbres Valley, and field houses in the Northern Rio Grande. 


Continental Perspectives on Trade:

Obsidian in the Southwest/Northwest and the Mesoamerican (dis)Connection

Obsidian is the ideal lithic raw material to study the connection between people in the American Southwest/Mexican Northwest (Southwest/Northwest) and Mesoamerica because geochemically sourcing obsidian artifacts connects people-to-places-to-things on continental scales. If people in the Hohokam, Chaco Canyon, Rio Grande, Mimbres, and Casas Grandes regions acquired chocolate drinks, colorful feathers, and horned serpent deities from further south, we would expect that some Mesoamerican obsidian would appear. However, after geochemically analyzing tens of thousands of obsidian artifacts, researchers have yet to find Mesoamerican obsidian from prehispanic contexts. In this presentation, I discuss the significance of prismatic blades from sites used or visited by the Spanish in New Mexico and Arizona that EDXRF spectrometry confirms are from the Pachuca obsidian source in Hidalgo, Mexico. Through the use of technological style, lithic technological organization, and historical narratives, I discuss why the absence of Mesoamerican obsidian at prehispanic sites and the presence of Mesoamerican obsidian after 1540 is significant for trade and interaction between two of the most connected and less connected regions of the Americas.  


7:30 - 8:30 pm

Bandelier Lecture


Stephen H Lekson, PhD

Dr Lekson is Curator of Archaeology, Emeritus, at the Museum of Natural History, University of Colorado, Boulder (retired Dec. 2018). He received his PhD from the University of New Mexico in 1988, and held research, curatorial, or administrative positions with University of Tennessee, Eastern New Mexico University, National Park Service, Arizona State Museum, Museum of New Mexico, and Crow Canyon Archaeological Center. Dr Lekson directed more than twenty archaeological projects throughout the Southwest. Relatively recent projects include excavations at Pinnacle Ruin in central New Mexico (2000-2008), at Chimney Rock in southern Colorado (2009), and at Black Mountain and Woodrow ruins in southwestern New Mexico (2010-13). He was editor of the journal Kiva (2006-2011) and he is currently Contributing Editor for Archaeology magazine. Lekson's publications include a dozen peer-reviewed books, ninety chapters in edited volumes, forty-five articles in journals and magazines, and many technical reports. Recent books: A Study of Southwestern Archaeology (2018), Chaco Meridian (2015), and A History of the Ancient Southwest (2009). He curated many exhibits, most recently “A History of the Ancient Southwest” (2013-2014) at the University of Colorado Museum of Natural History. 


Chaco and Cahokia: Twin Cities Across the Plains


Chaco and Cahokia were the two major 11th century cities north of Mesoamerica. They were exactly contemporary. Each was the center of a large region. Each accumulated impressive quantities of stuff from near and far. Each required remarkable amounts of labor to build and maintain. When each fell, Cahokia left the 'Vacant Quarter,' Chaco, the 'Abandonment of the Four Corners.'


There were important differences. Chaco was in the desert; Cahokia was on the richest farmlands of the Mississippi River. Cahokia's population was twenty-times larger than Chaco's. Cahokia inherited a history of monumental building; Chaco was something new. They were a thousand miles apart, separated by the Great Plains. We are told that they knew nothing of each other. Dramatic evidence--and indirect--suggests that they did, indeed, address each other across the Great Plains. Long-distance dynamics shaped their historical trajectories. The trade fairs of Taos and Caddo trading centers build on deeper histories of political commerce across the plains.







Taos Archaeological Society

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Taos, NM, 87571

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