PREFACE

• Did agricultural groups eventually withdraw from southeastern New Mexico, or did theyabandon farming and revert to a hunting and gathering adaptation focused on bison hunting?• If so, was the transition fostered by the development of Pueblo-Plains trade centered on theexchange of bison meat for cultigens?Like most culture history questions, these questions must be addressed at the regional/integrative level,which means that a series of intermediate questions must first be answered. First, the subsistencestrategies employed by various groups in the region must be reconstructed to assess the relativedependence on cultigens, wild plant foods, and small and large game. Second, we need to know theextent to which subsistence strategies varied in different parts of the region and across time, which meansthat we must have some means of distinguishing local groups as well as a reliable regional chronology.The latter problem has already been addressed. The former requires identification of local differences inthe artifact inventories, architectural forms, and settlement/mobility strategies. With these data, questionsrelating to ethnic differences, the concurrent presence of agricultural and hunter-gatherer populations, and(with comparative data from other regions) the relative influence from adjacent culture areas can also beaddressed. The same data can also be used to provisionally address the question of population identity,although analysis of a large burial population would be needed for any definitive answer to this problem.Finally, a detailed reconstruction of paleoenvironmental conditions in the region would be needed toassess the possible influence of environmental factors on the observed cultural changes. The basicinformation needed to address these questions therefore consists largely of chronological, subsistence,settlement, and environmental data.ProtohistoricThe date range for the Protohistoric period is defined somewhat arbitrarily. The beginning date istentatively set at AD 1450, about the time that agriculture was apparently abandoned in southeastern NewMexico and the Plains Nomad adaptation emerged. An end date of AD 1600 was stipulated in the BLMtask order for this project, which coincides with the beginning of the Spanish Colonial period in NewMexico. Euro-American settlement in the region dates from the late nineteenth century, however, and theSpanish records contain only scant references to Native American groups in southeastern New Mexico.An end date of AD 1750 or even AD 1850 may therefore be more appropriate.Dating events within this period will be a major challenge. Given the nature of the occupations, it isdoubtful that dendrochronological or archaeomagnetic dates can be obtained, and the span of the periodscarcely exceeds the 95% confidence intervals for routine radiocarbon and thermoluminescence dates.Any chronology developed for the period is therefore likely to depend heavily on probabilisticinterpretation of absolute dates and on cross-dating of Pueblo ceramics and Euro-American artifacts whenpresent. On the other hand, the resolution of radiocarbon and TL dates is adequate for dating sites to theProtohistoric period, which is sufficient for investigations preliminary investigations of settlementsubsistencestrategies.A more fundamental issue is the development of criteria to identify Protohistoric sites, particularly duringsurvey. Tipi rings are one obvious feature associated with Protohistoric occupations in southeastern NewMexico, but a wider range of diagnostic artifacts and features needs to be found to identify a wider rangeof site types. Research by Carmichael and Unsinn (2000) identifying four-pile (cruciform) fire-crackedrock features as probable Mescalero agave pits is an example of the kind of research that is needed. Inaddition, several protohistoric complexes have been defined in adjacent areas of the Texas Panhandle, theTrans-Pecos and Central Texas regions, and the southern Rio Grande Valley that may be applicable tosoutheastern New Mexico. Comparison of these complexes with assemblages from southeastern NewMexico might provide an additional set of Protohistoric diagnostics.4-18