Emily Lena Jones

The ‘Columbian Exchange’ and landscapes of the Middle Rio Grande Valley, USA, AD 1300–1900:

When Spanish colonists entered New Mexico in 1598, they encountered landscapes shaped by centuries of intensive human use: the fields, water features, and towns of prehistoric New Mexico were all products of human activity, and both zooarchaeological and paleoethnobotanical data suggest significant human impacts on floral and faunal features outside of human settlement. And yet, these human-influenced prehistoric Southwestern landscapes were distinct from those that developed through the ‘Columbian exchange’ and contact between indigenous communities and the Spanish. The Spanish colonists brought with them a suite of new taxa – both floral and faunal – as well as new land management practices that transformed New Mexican environments, eventually leading to the iconic Southwestern landscapes of today. In this paper, I use zooarchaeological data to explore New Mexican landscapes from the late prehistoric period through the early 20th century, assessing the degree of influence of Spanish fauna across this period of time.

STABLE OXYGEN ISOTOPE SOURCING OF ARCHAEOLOGICAL FAUNA FROM CHACO CANYON, NEW MEXICO

Modern datasets provide the context necessary for accurate interpretations of isotopic data from archaeological faunal assemblages. In this study, we use the oxygen isotope ratios (δ18O) of modern small mammals from Chaco Canyon, New Mexico, to quantify expected isotopic variation in a local population. The δ18O values of local, modern small mammals encompass a broad range (−6.0‰ to 4.8‰ VPDB), which is expected given the extreme seasonal variation in the δ18O of precipitation on the Colorado Plateau (−11‰ to −3‰ VPDB). Isotopic ratios of small mammals obtained from excavated archaeological sites in Chaco Canyon (ca. AD 800 to 1200) show no significant differences with their modern counterparts, suggesting that there is no difference in the origins of the archaeological small-mammal collection and the modern, local Chaco Canyon small-mammal collection. In contrast, δ18O values of large mammals from Chaco archaeological sites are significantly different from those of modern specimens, reflecting a nonlocal, but also nonspecific, source in the past. Los datos isotópicos de los animales modernos pueden proporcionar información importante para la interpretación de los datos isotópicos procedentes de conjuntos faunísticos arqueológicos. En este estudio utilizamos las proporciones de isótopos de oxígeno (δ18O) de pequeños mamíferos modernos en Chaco Canyon, Nuevo México, para cuantificar la variación esperada para una única población local. El rango de valores de δ18O de los pequeños mamíferos locales en Chaco Canyon es amplio (-6,0‰ a 4,8‰ VPDB). Esto no es sorprendente, dada la considerable variación estacional de δ18O ligada a la precipitación en la meseta del Río Colorado (-11‰ a -3‰ VPDB). Las proporciones isotópicas de los pequeños mamíferos arqueológicos procedentes de los sitios excavados en Chaco Canyon (ca. 800–1200 dC) no difieren de manera significativa de las de los animales modernos. Esto sugiere que no hay diferencias de procedencia entre la colección arqueológica de pequeños mamíferos y los mamíferos locales modernos de Chaco Canyon. En cambio, los valores de δ18O de los mamíferos grandes de los sitios arqueológicos de la zona son muy distintos de los valores de mamíferos grandes modernos. Esto sugiere que los especímenes de mamíferos grandes arqueológicos tienen origen diferente y no local, aunque no especulamos sobre dónde pudo haber sido ese lugar.

Coming to Terms with Imperfection: Comparative Studies and the Search for Grazing Impacts in Seventeenth Century New Mexico

Many of the classic questions in zooarchaeology, from the cause of Pleistocene extinctions to the relationship of anthropogenic faunal resource depression to the transition of agriculture, are regional or continental in scale. While the increasing availability of large datasets makes studies focused on such questions ever more possible, comparative meta-analyses come with hazards. This paper uses data from a project testing evidence for grazing impacts in seventeenth century New Mexican archaeological sites to illustrate both the problems and the potential of comparative zooarchaeology. While challenges associated with mechanical problems, differences in chronological resolution, and site type variability all influence results and limit conclusions, even when these problems are addressed this analysis finds no evidence for a decrease in abundance of native ungulates in early Spanish colonial New Mexican archaeofaunas. This result, in association with other studies, suggests severe grazing impacts were not present in New Mexico until the eighteenth century or later.

New Directions in Southwestern Zooarchaeology

Zooarchaeology has occupied a peculiar place within the archaeology of the American Southwest. While archaeologists with an interest in animal bone have worked here from the nineteenth century onward, and the presence of taxa such as macaws, domestic dogs, and domestic turkeys as well as taxa more commonly used in subsistence in southwestern zooarchaeological assemblages is of interest to archaeologists outside the Southwest as well as within it, the southwestern record has not figured prominently within the history of North American zooarchaeology. In the hopes of increasing the reach of southwestern zooarchaeology, this special issue presents three papers, each reflecting a potential new direction in southwestern zooarchaeology.

Big Game, Small Game: Why It Matters

Though today the assumption that “bigger equals better” when it comes to animal prey is often equated with optimal foraging theory, this expectation has long been present in archaeolology. In this chapter, I explore the history of the bigger is better concept and its relationship to the Broad Spectrum Revolution hypothesis. I review initial approaches to the Broad Spectrum Revolution and then turn to more recent studies, including both prey choice and niche construction perspectives on the transition to broad spectrum diets.

Was There a Broad Spectrum Revolution in Southwest Europe

This volume has explored the evidence for the presence of a Broad Spectrum Revolution in Late Paleolithic Southwest Europe from theoretical, paleoenvironmental, site location, and archaeofaunal perspectives. This chapter summarizes the findings of previous chapters and explores the connection between human demographic pressure and environmental stress. While the mammalian archeofaunal record from southern France does suggest change at the Pleistocene–Holocene transition (as does to a lesser extent that of Euro-Siberian Iberia), I find little evidence for environmental stress in this region and time period. Instead, local environmental variability seems to have shaped human response to warming climates.

Human Subsistence and the Archaeofaunal Record of Late Paleolithic Southwest Europe

This chapter examines changes in human hunting in Upper Paleolithic Southwest Europe and the correspondence of those changes to the environmental regions discussed in Chap. 3. The archaeofaunal data suggest significant regional differences between southern France and the Iberian Peninsula during the Upper Paleolithic. Within the Iberian Peninsula, the modern-day bioclimatic division between the Euro-Siberian and Mediterranean climatic regions is apparent throughout the Upper Paleolithic and into the Epipaleolithic. Southern France, by contrast, shows significantly more variability in archaeofaunal composition in the Upper Paleolithic, suggesting a patchy, non-analogous mosaic. In the Epipaleolithic, archaeofaunas from southern France begin to show a more modern character, with those from Mediterranean France grouping with Mediterranean Iberian faunas.

Paleolithic People, Paleolithic Landscapes

The zooarchaeological record from Late Paleolithic Southwest Europe provides a means to understand how hunter–gatherers interacted with the landscapes in which they lived. In this chapter, I define the basic concepts on which this volume rests—landscape, zooarchaeology, Late Paleolithic, Southwest Europe—and explain how a study of archaeofaunas from this time and place can help us better understand human–environment interactions.

Archaeofaunal Diversity and Broad Spectrum Diets in Late Paleolithic Southwest Europe

Chapter 4 showed that subsistence strategies from Late Paleolithic Southwest Europe differed by region. If diets broadened in Southwest Europe at the Pleistocene–Holocene transition, it seems they did so regionally. Zooarchaeological studies focused on specific sites and/or localities support this hypothesis, both descriptively and quantitatively: many have observed broad spectrum diets in the earliest Upper Paleolithic in the Mediterranean bioclimatic region of Iberia, while in southern France, some suggest broader diets appear in response to the Bolling/Allerod warming around 13 kya BP. In Euro-Siberian Iberia there may be increasing diet breadth in early Holocene, though there is evidence of resource intensification much earlier. In this chapter, I use the richness, evenness, and nestedness of archaeological faunas to explore the if, when, how, and why of increasing diet breadth in Late Paleolithic Southwest Europe.

Climate and Environment in Late Paleolithic Southwest Europe

Although the Broad Spectrum Revolution model focuses primarily on human population pressure, environmental variables also contribute to the carrying capacity of any particular landscape. For this reason, understanding environmental change is critical to any test of the Broad Spectrum Revolution. In this chapter, I review paleoenvironmental data for Late Paleolithic Southwest Europe and establish three paleobioclimatic regions: Mediterranean Iberia (comprising the central and southern portions of the Iberian Peninsula as well as the Mediterranean coast up to the Pyrenees); Euro-Siberian Iberia (the northernmost portion of Iberia); and southern France.