PREFACE

elations. Finally, Speth notes an increase in the communal processing of bison during the late phaseoccupation, which both underscores the growing importance of bison in the subsistence system andindicates a possible shift in the size of the basic subsistence unit beyond the household to an extendedfamily group.Speth documents changes in the procurement of non-bison faunal resources that appear to be adjustmentsto potential scheduling conflicts arising from the growing importance of spring bison hunting. He notes,however, that there are no major changes over time in the density of small starchy seeds (e.g., chenopodand amaranth) or of maize, which was clearly a dietary staple, so the increased importance of longdistancebison hunting does not appear to have disrupted maize cultivation (Speth 2004:423).Nevertheless, in the absence of evidence for hunting during the late fall and winter, he suggests that mostable-bodied adults left the village during this period to exploit bison and other resources in areas far fromthe settlement (Speth 2004:422). Further, he suggests that as Henderson emerged as a source for trade inbison meat, robes, and hides, the residents were well on the way to becoming bison specialists. With thescheduling conflict between spring bison hunting and spring planting, he speculates that Henderson’sresidents may have taken the short step to becoming fully nomadic bison hunters (Speth 2004:426).An alternative interpretation of the Henderson data is that the village was not partially abandoned duringthe late fall and winter but that the group relied primarily on stored food resources. The evidencesuggests that the subsistence system was based on a combination of maize cultivation and bison hunting,supplemented by a variety of wild plant and animal resources. In short, the subsistence strategy may havebeen similar to that employed by contemporary Plains Village groups in adjacent areas of the SouthernPlains (Hughes 1989). This seems a more viable subsistence option, especially if Speth is correct in hissuspicion that bison were only seasonally available in southeastern New Mexico, but it does not accountfor the disappearance of sedentary or semi-sedentary communities in the region.Dillehay’s (1974) generalizations about the presence and absence of bison on the Southern Plains hasbeen criticized primarily because he did not give adequate consideration to the environmentalheterogeneity of the Southern Plains region (Baugh 1986; Lynott 1979). Nevertheless, the scarcity ofbison remains in early Ceramic period sites in southeastern New Mexico and the Panhandle Plains(Hughes 1989:25) suggests that bison were present but not abundant in the westernmost parts of theSouthern Plains during his Absence Period II (AD 500–1200/1300). The evidence is even morecompelling that the numbers of bison on the Southern Plains increased sharply after about AD 1200–1300(Presence Period III), and their range was greatly expanded (Hughes 1989; Prewitt 1981). Although thereasons for this dramatic increase in the southern bison herds has not been fully explained, climaticchange was almost certainly a major factor.In contrast to Jelinek, Hughes (1989:39) argues that the climate was warmer and drier after about AD1100. He speculates that bison herds began returning to the Southern Plains, attracted by the reneweddominance of nutritious short grasses favored under those climatic conditions. Hughes further suggeststhat herds may have begun spreading southward from the Northwestern Plains where they were abundantduring the first millennium AD. That southward movement was marked by the emergence of successivecomplexes of Plains Village complexes: the Upper Republican and Apishapa in southwestern Coloradoand northeastern New Mexico; the Antelope Creek and Buried City in the Texas Panhandle; and,somewhat later, the Ochoa phase (Hughes 1989:42). Henderson and the late McKenzie phase sites in thePecos River valley can tentatively be added to this list.With increased availability, the diet breadth model predicts that high ranked resources like bison will bepreferentially exploited and lower-ranked resources will be dropped from the diet. That response is areversal of the intensification process described earlier, both in terms of decreasing diet breadth and in thetrend toward increasing the net amount of food that can be extracted from a given geographical area.Binford (2001:346–347) defines this alternative process as extensification, and he argues that groupsemploying this strategy are characterized by relatively large group size, utilization of huge geographic4-41