PREFACE

partly dependent on agriculture after about AD 800. Following this period of intensive farming, Jelinek(1967:162) argues that there was a basic shift in the economic from sedentary farming to nomadic bisonhunting between about AD 1250 and 1350.Outside of these two areas, there is little evidence for the adoption of agriculture by Ceramic periodgroups in southeastern New Mexico. In the Santa Rosa area, 12 Puebloan sites have been documentedalong Pintada Arroyo, including one large adobe pueblo. These sites were documented during the 1930sand few other details are available, but there presence suggests that the area was occupied byagriculturalists sometime between AD 1200 and 1450 (Stuart and Gauthier 1981:305). In the Los Esterosarea, however, Mobley (1979) argues that the Ceramic period occupation continued the hunting andgathering lifeway established during the Archaic period.In the Eastern Jornada area, Leslie (1979) also contends that the Ceramic period economy was based onhunting and gathering, with a shinnery oak as the primary vegetable food and a lesser reliance onmesquite and other wild plant resources. Antelope and jackrabbit were the major meat resources, withlesser amounts of cottontail, deer, various rodents, and a small number of bison. Seasonal camps in theshinnery oak area are predominant during the early part of the period, but after about AD 1100–1150,pithouse villages are built in favorable locations suggesting a more sedentary settlement pattern.Archeobotanical data supporting this settlement-subsistence strategy are largely lacking, however, andSebastian and Larralde (1989:82) question whether a nonagricultural sedentary adaptation was feasible insoutheastern New Mexico.Finally, no evidence of agriculture has been found in the Guadalupe Mountains. Applegarth (1976)suggests that a mobile hunting and gathering lifeway persisted during the Ceramic period, with huntingfocused on small game, especially rabbits, while leafy succulents were a major plant resource. The latterhypothesis is supported by the radiocarbon dates on ring middens, which are predominantly datedbetween AD 500 and 1450 (Katz and Katz 2001:Table III-35).More recent research has provided more detailed subsistence data, primarily from sites in the Rio Hondoregion-Sierra Blanca region. As summarized by McBride and Toll (2003), corn has been recovered from10 of the 11 Late Archaic and Ceramic period sites in that region for which botanical data are available.Three of those sites also yielded beans and two others squash, but only three of the sites (Beth Cave, FoxPlace, and Robinson Pueblo) have yielded remains of all three cultigens comprising the triad ofSouthwestern agriculture. The ubiquity of maize at these sites is generally lower than at Formative sitesat Chaco Canyon and in the Rio Grande valley, however. This evidence suggests that populations in theRio Hondo-Sierra Blanca region were less dependent on agriculture than other Southwestern groups,although maize was clearly a dietary staple.Wild plant resources exploited during the Ceramic period typically include a variety of weedy annuals –goosefoot, pigweed, purslane, sunflower, tansy mustard, globe mallow, and seepweed – and diverseperennials – pinyon, juniper, cacti, mesquite, walnut, yucca, wild grape, and oak. The exploitation ofweedy annuals is widely practiced in the Southwest. These annuals are common on disturbed ground andin agricultural fields, and would have been available in the immediate vicinity of the sites. Theprevalence and diversity of perennials, however, appears to be characteristic of human adaptations to theChihuahuan Desert floristic community (McBride and Toll 2003:293).Faunal remains from Ceramic period residential sites in the area of the Pecos and Hondo rivers aretypically diverse, with a variety of rodents, birds, fish, turtles, and mussels. Akins (2002:155) argues thatsedentary groups tend to hunt a variety of species in the immediate vicinity of their settlements, and thatthe diversity of the faunal assemblage reflects the richness of the local environment. Sedentary groupstend to be more selective when hunting at some distance from their settlements, and Akins suggests thatthe higher proportion of artiodactyls at Ceramic period camps like Tintop Cave and Los Molinos mayreflect this tendency (2002:156).4-36