PREFACE

From the above discussion, then, the basic questions relating to late Archaic settlement/mobility strategiesare:• was the mobility strategy based predominantly on residential mobility?• how did the annual rounds of late Archaic groups differ in the different parts of the region?• is there evidence for a reduction in the size of the territories used by hunter-gatherer groupsduring the late Archaic?• was there a shift toward a greater dependence on logistical mobility as intensification pressuresincreased near the end of the period?CeramicGiven the working hypothesis that southeastern New Mexico was occupied by both horticulturalists andhunter-gatherers during the Ceramic period, a variety of settlement patterns can be expected. Residentialsites attributed to agriculturalists are concentrated in the middle Pecos valley, the Rio Hondo-Arroyo delMacho drainage basin, and in the Rio Peñasco drainage. Assuming a subsistence strategy based primarilyon agriculture, two basic land-use strategies can be suggested. The first is a land-intensive strategy inwhich the labor effort is focused on agricultural fields in close proximity to the permanent farmsteads orvillages. Mobility is largely limited largely to day-long logistical forays to tend crops and collect wildresources in close proximity to the settlements and to occasional logistical trips by task groups to hunt orprocure other resources at more distant localities. The second is a land-extensive strategy in which fieldare planted at a variety of locations, often at some distance from the settlement. This strategy involvesperiodic logistical trips to more distant agricultural fields, which may therefore be marked by fieldhouses, and it can result in a dual residence pattern in which families are dispersed at agricultural fieldsduring the growing season and aggregated during the winter. The positioning of settlements alongstreams or at higher elevations is suggestive of a land-intensive agricultural pattern, but the evidence isnot conclusive. The initial questions concerning Ceramic period settlements systems are therefore:• did horticulturalists in the area employ a land-extensive or land-intensive agriculturalstrategy?• were these groups sedentary?• were communities dispersed or aggregated?•The answers to these questions are expected to differ in different environmental settings, and probablyalso varied through time.Given evidence suggesting that horticultural groups in southeastern New Mexico employed a subsistencestrategy based on a mix of cultivated crops and wild plant and animal resources, two possiblesettlement/mobility strategies have been suggested. The first assumes that the groups were sedentary; thatis, that the residential sites were occupied throughout the year. Under this model, the procurement of wildresources at any distance from the village would have been undertaken by task groups in logistical foraysto collect the targeted resources and transport them back to the settlement. Clearly, this strategy wouldinvolve cooperation and coordination above the household level.The alternative strategy assumes that the wild resources were harvested by seasonally mobile householdgroups. Under this alternative, the primary residences would have been unoccupied for part of the year oroccupied by only some segment of the residential population. If agricultural production was centered atthe household level, then a strategy of household mobility is theoretically feasible under three conditions:1) that groups employed “plant it and leave it” approach to cultivation, 2) that crops were planted atlocations in close enough proximity to the locations where wild resources were collected that the fieldscould be tended, or 3) that the household groups returned to the settlements periodically to tend the crops.4-52