Archaeology of the Mimbres Region Southwestern New Mexico U.S.A. 9781841719023, 9781407329147

Citation preview

BAR  S1466  2006   LEKSON   ARCHAEOLOGY OF THE MIMBRES REGION, SOUTHWESTERN NEW MEXICO, U.S.A.

9 781841 719023

B A R

Archaeology of the Mimbres Region, Southwestern New Mexico, U.S.A. Stephen H. Lekson

BAR International Series 1466 2006

Archaeology of the Mimbres Region, Southwestern New Mexico, U.S.A. Stephen H. Lekson

BAR International Series 1466 2006

Published in 2016 by BAR Publishing, Oxford BAR International Series 1466 Archaeology of the Mimbres Region, Southwestern New Mexico, U.S.A. © S H Lekson and the Publisher 2006 The author's moral rights under the 1988 UK Copyright, Designs and Patents Act are hereby expressly asserted. All rights reserved. No part of this work may be copied, reproduced, stored, sold, distributed, scanned, saved in any form of digital format or transmitted in any form digitally, without the written permission of the Publisher.

ISBN 9781841719023 paperback ISBN 9781407329147 e-format DOI https://doi.org/10.30861/9781841719023 A catalogue record for this book is available from the British Library BAR Publishing is the trading name of British Archaeological Reports (Oxford) Ltd. British Archaeological Reports was first incorporated in 1974 to publish the BAR Series, International and British. In 1992 Hadrian Books Ltd became part of the BAR group. This volume was originally published by Archaeopress in conjunction with British Archaeological Reports (Oxford) Ltd / Hadrian Books Ltd, the Series principal publisher, in 2006. This present volume is published by BAR Publishing, 2016.

BAR

PUBLISHING BAR titles are available from:

E MAIL P HONE F AX

BAR Publishing 122 Banbury Rd, Oxford, OX2 7BP, UK [email protected] +44 (0)1865 310431 +44 (0)1865 316916 www.barpublishing.com

Frontispiece. Mimbres Classic Black on White bowl (ca. A.D. 1050) from the collection of Richard Ellison of Silver City, New Mexico. Mimbres art often combined elements of different animals. In this example, the pronghorn of an American antelope (Antilocapra americana) was grafted onto a jackrabbit (Lepus alleni?), creating the earliest known image of a famous but mythical Western beast, the jackalope (Lepus temperamentalus). (Hugo Rodeck Archives, University of Colorado Museum.)

i

ii

TABLE OF CONTENTS TABLE OF CONTENTS ............................................................................................................................... iii LIST OF TABLES........................................................................................................................................... v LIST OF FIGURES........................................................................................................................................ vi PREFACE 2005 ............................................................................................................................................. vii ACKNOWLEDGEMENTS 2005 ................................................................................................................. xii ACKNOWLEDGEMENTS 1982&1992 ..................................................................................................... xiii REFERENCES FOR PREFACE.. .............................................................................................................. xvi CHAPTER ONE: INTRODUCTION............................................................................................................ 1 IA. Purpose, Scope, Outline. ............................................................................................................................. 1 IB. Culture History. ........................................................................................................................................... 2 Paleo-Indian Stage............................................................................................................................... 2 Archaic Stage. ..................................................................................................................................... 3 Ceramic Stage-Mimbres District......................................................................................................... 3 Ceramic Stage-Reserve District. ......................................................................................................... 9 Ceramic Stage-Jornada District........................................................................................................... 9 Ceramic Stage-Southern Hidalgo District. ........................................................................................ 10 CHAPTER TWO: EFFECTIVE ENVIRONMEN.................................................................................... .11 2A. The Landscape. ........................................................................................................................................ 11 Biotic Zones............................................................................................................................................... 11 Long-Term Environmental Change ........................................................................................................... 12 Short-Term Environmental Change ........................................................................................................... 12 2B. Prehistoric Economies and Their Scales ................................................................................................... 13 Prehistoric Subsistence Economies............................................................................................................ 13 Scale.......................................................... ................................................................................................. 13 2C. The Effective Environment of the Mimbres...... ....................................................................................... 14 How Many Southwests?............................................................................................................................. 14 Nuts, Berries, and Meat............................................................................................................................. .15 Corn, Beans, and Squash........................................................................................................................... .16 Ancient Mimbrenos, Chiricahua Apaches, and Hispanic Labradores…………...... ................... ......16 Conclusions.................................................................................................................................................... ..18 CHAPTER THREE: SUMMARY OF PREVIOUS RESEARCH............................................................. 20 3A. History of Research................................................................................................................................. ..20 3B. Cultural Resource Management Surveys.. ........................................................................................ ........24 3C. Discussion. ................................................................................................. ...............................................26 CHAPTER FOUR: CURRENT THINKING ABOUT CULTURE HISTORY.................... ...................30 4A. Dating and Systematics......................................................................................... ....................................30 Dating.................................................................................................. .......................................................31 Systematics. .................................................................................................. ............................................ 32 Paleo-Indian and Archaic. ............................................................................................................. .......32 Late Archaic Pit House Sites............................................................................................................. ...33 Early Pit House Period. .............................................................................................................. ..........34 Late Pit House Period.......................................................................................................... .................39 Early Pueblo Period.......................................................................................................... ....................42 Late Pueblo Period .........................................................................................................……..........….45 Protohistoric .........................................................................................................………………….....48 Discussion….................................................................................................………………..………...….48 4B. The Survey Record…...........................................................................................……………….……….49 Chronological Control........................................................................................ ...............................50 Site Size.. ............................................................................................... ....................................................50 Summaries of Surveys by Environmental Zone............................. ............................................................50 Upland Zone Surveys ......................................................................................................... …..............51

iii

Transition Zone Surveys.. .............................................................................................................……52 Desert Zone Surveys ..........................................................................................................……..…….57 4C. Mimbres Multicomponency, Mobility, and the Survey Record........ ........................................................59 The Constant Pit House............................................................................................ ............................59 A Newer, Shiftier Model.. .......................................................................................... ..........................60 Jamming Round Numbers into Square Deals.................................... ...................................................61 The Meaning of Models. ............................................................................................... .......................62 Dire Conclusions. ............................................................................ .....................................................63 CHAPTER FIVE: RESEARCH ISSUES AND HISTORIC CONTEXTS......... ......................................64 5A. Research Issues............................................................................................ .............................................64 Paleo-Indian and Archaic Stages........................................................................................................ ..65 Late Archaic and Early Pit House .......................................................................................... ............. 65 Late Pithouse and Mimbres.. .......................................................................................... ......................65 5B. Historic Contexts ................................................................................................. .....................................70 5C. Alternate Archaeological Strategies.................................................................................................. ........73 National Register........................................................................................... .......................................74 Public Relations................................................................................................ ....................................74 Cultural Resource Management. .......................................................................................... ................75 Facilitating Research. .......................................................................................... .................................75 CHAPTER SIX: STRATEGIES FOR SURVEY, NOMINATION, AND SITE PROTECTION. .... .....78 6A. Introduction............................................................................................ ...................................................78 6B. Undersurveyed Areas and Areas Subject to development.... .................... ................................................78 6C. Areas Likely to Contain National Register Sites................ .......................................................................82 Working with Known Sites.................................................................................................... ....................83 Finding New Sites......................................................................................................... ............................ 85 6D.Pothunting, Integrity, and the National Register............................... .........................................................86 ENVOI.. ........................................................................................................... .............................................90 ARCHAEOLOGICAL REFERENCES FOR SOUTHWESTERN NEW MEXICO............ ..................91

iv

LIST OF TABLES Table 1.1 Land status in square miles, southwestern New Mexico. ......... .....................................................110 Table 1.2 Mimbres Foundation Chronology.......................................................................................... ........111 Table 3.1 Excavations in southwestern New Mexico ......................... ...........................................................112 Table 3.2 Major surveys.... .............................................................................................. ..............................115 Table 3.3 Gila National Forest survey coverage by district.................. .........................................................116 Table 4.1 Tree-ring dates................................................................................................ ...............................117 Table 4.2 Calibrated carbon-14 dates... ............................................................................................ .............121 Table 4.3 Archaeomagnetic dates..................................................................................................... .............123 Table 4.4 ARMS site-components in southwestern New Mexico, as percentages of total number of components................................................................................................. ...................................................125 Table 4.5 Ceramic assemblages of southwestern New Mexico..... ...............................................................126 Table 4.6 Surface archaeology of the Transitional Zone expressed as percentages of room count totals for each survey.. ....................................................................................................................... ...............................127 Table 4.7 Percentage distribution of Mimbres architectural sites by size class. .............. ..............................128 Table 4.8 Percentage distribution of Mimbres rooms by size class.. ... ..........................................................129 Table 4.9 Data and estimates used in simulation........................................................................................ ...130 Table 4.10 Late Pit House site sizes.... ....................................................................................... ...................131

v

LIST OF FIGURES FIGURES FOR PREFACE Fig. i-1 Mimbres and Hohokam: distributions of key Hohokam architecture, artifacts, and burial practices .......................................................................................... ............................................................xvii Figure i-2. Hohokam shell objects from the Citrus Site at Gila Bend, Arizona (Hohokam, left) and the NAN Ranch Ruin, Mimbres Valley, New Mexico (Mimbres, right). (After Wasley and Johnson 1965:Fig. 77 and Cosgrove and Cosgrove 1932:Plate 76.).............................................. .................................... .....................xviii Figure i-3. Mimbres and Anasazi: distributions of key Anasazi architecture and ceramic styles. .................xix Figure i-4. The “Pueblo II expansion” (a term not used by McGregor; from McGregor 1965), core and maximum extent............................................................................................................................................... xx FIGURES FOR TEXT Fig.I-1. Landforms and modern features in southwestern New Mexico........................................................ 133 Fig. I-2. Biotic zones in southwestern New Mexico (after Brown and Lowe 1980)................................. …134 Fig. I-3. Selected ecological features of the Greater Southwest………................………………………..... 135 Fig. I-4. Archaeological activity in southwestern New Mexico........................................…......................... 136 Fig. I-5a. Archaeological sites in Gila Pueblo surveys by USGS quadrangle…............................................ 137 Fig. I-5b. Archaeological sites in Arthur Jelinek’s Mimbres area survey by USGS quadrangle.......... .........137 Fig. I-6 ARMS database: a. Archaeological sites by USGS quadrangle. ....................................................................................... ........138 b. Surveyed area by USGS quadrangle......................................................................................... .................138 Fig. I-7. BLM Database: a. Archaeological sites by USGS quadrangle. ....................................................................................... ........139 b. Surveyed area by USGS quadrangle......................................................................................... .................139 Fig. I-8. Gila and Coronado National Forests database: a. Archaeological sites by USGS quadrangle.. ....................................................................................... .......140 b. Surveyed area by GNF district and by USGS quadrangle in CNF ...........…..............................………....140 . Fig. I-9 Composite of ARMS, BLM and National Forests databases: a. Archaeological sites by USGS quadrangle. ....................................................................................... ....…141 b. Surveyed area by USGS quadrangle..................................................................................................…….141

vi

WHENCE AND WHITHER MIMBRES? PREFACE 2005 In this preface to an obscure study of Mimbres (an eleventh century culture of the U.S. Southwest), I will attempt to explain the importance of being Mimbres, the genesis of the present volume, and (very briefly) review recent Mimbres research. I will then essay, at greater length, on where Mimbres archaeology should go in the future. Mimbres is the archaeological term for ancient Native American peoples who lived along the river of that name (the Rio Mimbres) and several other valleys in the southwestern corner of the state of New Mexico. They flourished, artistically, from about A.D. 950 to 1150; and the characteristic black-on-white pottery of that period is represented in art museums and private collections around the world. A single Mimbres bowl can fetch tens of thousands of dollars at auction. The pottery itself was not technically remarkable (hand-formed, indifferently finished earthenware) but the designs – painted in black pigment on the white-slipped interior of bowls – constitute one of the most appealing, intriguing and recognizable Native artistic tradition of ancient North America. Any reader of this volume almost certainly has seen Mimbres art, and the chances are good that the reader possesses a Mimbres image or two on a T-shirt, a trivet, a tea towel, or even a tattoo. But there was more to Mimbres than high-priced objet d’art and royalty-free designs. The Mimbres at their peak (during the Mimbres phrase, A.D. 950 to 1150) were one of the three significant, contemporary developments in the ancient Southwest: Mimbres Mogollon, Chaco Anasazi, and Sedentary Period Hohokam (Lekson 1993a). Moreover, the run-up to the Mimbres phase was not without interest, nor was what came after. This volume summarizes the archaeology of the Mimbres area (southwestern New Mexico) up to 1992. As described the introduction to the text, the study was originally commissioned as “An Archaeological Overview of Southwestern New Mexico” by the New Mexico State Historic Division (HPD), which was to publish it. Strangely in my experience as an author, it was my content which delayed (and ultimately prevented) publication. HPD and most readers seem to approve of the content or, at least, to find it a useful compilation and synthesis of the subject. Bureaucratic tribulations at HPD delayed publication, and, to save money, my study was to be bound with two others (by other authors) on south-central and southeastern New Mexico. Only one of these two was completed. Then, the whole endeavor (to produce comparable regional syntheses for the entire state of New Mexico) fell victim to budgetary woes. The project was cancelled, and the “Archaeological Overview of Southwestern New Mexico” was shelved, on a dark and dusty shelf. Still, the “Archaeological Synthesis of Southwestern New Mexico” had a real if furtive existence. Copies circulated and it was cited. Students and researchers seeing those citations contacted HPD or me, wondering how to obtain it. This has happened often enough that when I proposed publication by BAR, HPD gladly accepted this solution. (Both HPD and I were tired of xeroxing copies, usually on our own nickels.) Mimbres archaeology has never achieved the bustle or momentum of Anasazi and Hohokam archaeology. Compared to its neighbors to the north and west, the Mimbres region is severely under-researched. However, Mimbres archaeology has not stood still since 1992, when I wrote the Overview. Much has been accomplished, and that work has been ably summarized in an article by Michelle Hegmon (2002), “Recent Issues in the Archaeology of the Mimbres Region.” Professor Hegmon has saved me a good deal of labor and, more importantly, she has saved the reader my almost idiosyncratic (if not biased) evaluation of a decade’s research. A score of excellent archaeologists are thinking and publishing on Mimbres. I mention here only four major projects or publications undertaken since 1992 (all described with bibliographic details in Hegmon’s article): first, the field program of Hegmon and Margaret Nelson in the eastern Mimbres area (e.g., Hegmon 2000; Nelson and Hegmon 2001; Nelson 1999); second, Darrell Creel’s on-going excavations at the very important Mimbres valley site of Old Town (e.g., Creel and Anyon 2003); and third, the culmination of Harry Shafer’s extensive excavations at the NAN Ranch Ruin in an excellent monograph (Shafer 2003); forth, the continuing publication of the Mimbres Foundation’s earlier excavations (e.g., Diehl and LeBlanc 2001). My contributions since 1992 have been minor, consisting mainly of synthetic efforts, listed below. So I will not discuss at any more length what Mimbres archaeology did in the last decade. I am more interested in where Mimbres archaeology should go in the decades to come. I am heartened by the rediscovery or reemergence of cultural interactions and “long-distance” dynamics as legitimate fields of inquiry. Mimbres, in particular, must be reconnected, recontextualized with its regional and continental neighbors. Context is everything. We have, thanks to the work of the Mimbres Foundation, the NAN Ranch project, and their offshoots, remarkably detailed knowledge of the prehistory of the Mimbres valley. That prehistory did not

vii

occur in isolation. The Mimbres were cosmopolitan people. Their sites yield substantial numbers of objects obtained from Mesoamerica, and their pots show birds and beasts of distant lands – and, perhaps, deities and cosmologies from southern cities. It seems very clear that the Native peoples of what is today the United States were by no means ignorant of each other, or of the civilizations to the south in Mexico. Much will be gained by thinking about Mimbres as part of, and not apart from, those larger contexts. When I wrote the “Overview” such thinking was sternly discouraged. But I thought them then. “Mimbres was an Anasazi life style built on a Hohokam infrastructure”: I muttered this impiety at meetings and conferences back in the mid- and late 1980s. Impiety? No, more like heresy: the three cultures of the ancient Southwest – Anasazi, Hohokam, and Mogollon (of which Mimbres was part) – were declared by the doctrine of those times to be a wholly separate trinity. Each stood alone, inviolate and independent. Mimbres had no commerce with Anasazi, nor did it share infrastructure with Hohokam. Texts which suggested otherwise were vehemently denounced; for example, the blistering reviews of Michael Berry’s Time, Space and Transition in Anasazi Prehistory, 1982, in which he suggested that, from time to time, Anasazi became Hohokam and vice versa. My heresy, although smacking of Sabellianism, was less radical than Berry’s. And it was ancient: long before me, others had preached the interplay of Mimbres and Anasazi, and still others had hinted at Hohokam connections (as we shall see, below). But those antique arguments were rejected and banned during the great reawakening of Mimbres archaeology when, in the 1970s, the Mimbres Foundation and NAN Ranch projects declared that Mimbres was its own entity, sharing little and owing less to its famous contemporaries, Anasazi and Hohokam (for example, LeBlanc 1986). I disagreed. I thought the old prophets – Emil Haury and Ted Kidder and Jerry Brody – were on to something. Mimbres, to them and to me, really did look like Anasazi built atop Hohokam canal systems! So I muttered. And I actually published something along these lines in the early 1990s (Lekson 1993a). That article sank like a stone, without a ripple. But it’s still true. I was not saying that Mimbres was the tag end of Hohokam and Anasazi, nor the tail wagged by those two big dogs, which conjures up a metaphor of conjunction best let lie. Rather, I was saying that we will never understand Mimbres without simultaneously considering Anasazi and Hohokam which, during Mimbres times, were both in remarkably dynamic, expansive episodes of their histories. Note that these were sequential episodes: Hohokam explodes outward in the Colonial Period (A.D. 750 to 950, which equals Mimbres Late Pit House and Early Mimbres phase) and Anasazi explodes outward in Pueblo II (A.D. 900 to 1150, which equals the Mimbres phase) – a one-two punch. Increasingly, archaeologists see that Hohokam was an important influence in Late Pithouse and early Mimbres times (Brody 1977; Creel and Anyon 2003; Hegmon 2002; Shafer 2003). There is still considerable resistance to any Anasazi role in Mimbres prehistory, but some agreement that many aspects of Pueblo corporate life originated in the south; that is, in the Mimbres, and not in the Anasazi world. So what do I mean by: “Mimbres is an Anasazi life style on a Hohokam infrastructure?” What are the implications of this challenge to orthodox doctrines? I believe that Hohokam canal irrigation made Mimbres life possible, and that the evidence for both economic infrastructure (canals) and other, less worldly aspects of Hohokam society appear among the Mimbres during the Hohokam Colonial Period (A.D. 750 to 950). For Colonial Hohokam, I’d like to consider five things: pottery, cremations, cut shell, canals, and ball courts (Figure i-1). Pottery: There are well known parallels in pottery form and ceramic decoration (e.g., Brody 1977). Early Hohokam Red-on-buff is much like Mogollon Red on Brown (and Three Circle Red on white, for that matter). More intriguingly, perhaps, Hohokam had a long tradition of naturalistic representation on their pottery predating the appearance of (rather Hohokam-looking) naturalistic motifs on Mimbres Style I and II. As Jerry Brody has noted, it is not hard to pull early Mimbres figurative art out of earlier Hohokam styles. Cremations and burial ritual: In the central Hohokam region, after 500-600 AD, cremations and stone palettes were linked in a formal burial ritual. Emil Haury called palettes “the characteristic Hohokam artifact” (and we will meet another Hohokam calling card in the discussion of “shell,” below). Mimbres, too, had palettes (Anasazi did not). Mimbres palettes are well known, and known to be somewhat different than Hohokam versions. I conducted a study of palettes in museum collections in the 1980s; the data from that study launched at least three masters theses, but I’ve never done anything more with it than a conference paper (the study was

viii

ably completed by White 2004; see also Garcia de Quevedo 2004). I was struck by both differences and similarities and particularly with the apparent misfit (chronologically) of Late Pithouse palettes and Mimbres and post-Mimbres urn cremations (which were all that were known at the time). Harry Shafer’s (2003) discovery of Late Pithouse cremations and cremation pits at NAN amply confirmed patterns suggested by Darrell Creel (1989) that cremations were most common in the Mimbres region during the Late Pithouse period; that is, during the expansive Colonial Period of Hohokam. That is, Hohokam burial ritual, translated into local idioms, were a big part of the Late Pithouse period in the Mimbres area. Shell: Hohokam is justly famous for shell ornaments. We, in this age of sartorial fads and fashions, may dismiss ornaments as merely ornamental or decorative; but I strongly suspect that ancient Hohokam and Mimbres peoples took them seriously. Dress is the most direct artificial means for communicating identity: cowboys dress one way, Indians another. Unfortunately, dress is largely perishable and therefore lost to archaeology. Shell “ornament” is perhaps the most abundant class of recoverable artifacts that speaks to personal adornment and identity. We should take shell ornaments seriously. And Hohokam shell was big business. A complex production system with acquisition sites on the Gulf of California and large processing sites in the Sonoran deserts midway between the Gulf and the Phoenix Basin, created an assemblage of cut shell distinctive in North America. Mimbres, in the Mimbres phase, was clearly deeply involved with Hohokam cut shell. I juxtaposed two plates from two different books (Figure i-2): one from William Wasley’s (Wasley and Johnson 1965) work at Gila Bend and one from the Cosgrove and Cosgrove’s (1932) Swarts Ruin. Gila Bend as far west as Hohokam gets; it is over 300 miles from the Mimbres Valley! Wasley, of course, noted the similarities and set up his plate from Gila Bend to mirror the plate from the Swarts report (which actually shows a cache from the NAN Ranch ruin). Wasley felt a picture (or two) was worth a thousand words and he was right: so this paragraph ends. Another major Hohokam shell form was the glycymeris bracelet. Jim Bayman has suggested that glycymeris shell bracelets were, in effect, badges of Hohokam identity (Bayman 2002). Many glycymeris shell bracelets were found on Mimbres arms (usually on the upper arm, not around the wrist). Many of those bracelets were clearly of Hohokam manufacture, but it is possible and even likely that the Mimbres were themselves involved in the production of this type of artifact (my interpretation of the West Baker Arroyo site; McCluney 1968). Canal irrigation: Hohokam was, in may ways, the product of its infrastructure: irrigation canals which began very early on the smaller creeks of southeastern Arizona and eventually developed into one of the most extensive systems in the New World, in the Salt-Gila Phoenix Basin area. Mimbres, too, was a product of canals: the deep sedentism of large Mimbres villages (comparable to Hohokam but decidedly unlike the peripatetic Anasazi) reflected the position of those villages on canals, usually near the likely take-outs. LaVernne Herrington discovered and documented intact Mimbres ditches in the Rio Arenas in the late 1970s (Herrington 1982). I presented inferential evidence (which I felt was very strong) suggesting canal systems in the Late Pithouse period and Mimbres phases on the Gila, Mimbres, and Rio Grande tributaries in early 1980s (Lekson 1986). It was Harry Shafer’s NAN Ranch project, however, that actually found Mimbres phase canals in the Mimbres Valley (Shaffer 2003). I think that canals made Mimbres. Canals were the necessary condition and the proximate cause of the precociously large, long-lived Mimbres towns, with all the social ramifications of largeness and long-lived-ness. In the late 11th century, Anasazi (outside of Chaco) were living in small, short-lived unit pueblos; Anasazi would not aggregate on Mimbres scales for almost two centuries, in Pueblo III. Canals were many centuries earlier in the Hohokam region than in the Mimbres. The source of Mimbres irrigation technology seems fairly obvious. As a side issue, we should consider the possibility of ball courts in the Mimbres area. Ball courts accompany irrigation canals in the Hohokam region; they were part of the social solution to the quandaries of water management. When we think of ball courts, we think of the monumental structures of Snaketown (and indeed one of that size was a central feature of Pueblo Viejo in the Safford Valley, just beyond the margins of the Mimbres region, as it conventionally mapped); but in fact many (most?) Hohokam ballcourts are far smaller, much less well preserved and, in fact, rather subtle features. I have seen a number of Hohokam ball courts which I might have mapped as pithouse depressions on the gravel capped terraces of the upper Gila or the Mimbres. Were there, in fact, Mimbres ballcourts? Richard “Red” Ellison, an avocational archaeologist from Silver City, maintained that there were at least three; two in the Mimbres Valley and one at the Woodrow Ruin on the upper Gila. I mention this “rumor” because Red had no particular ax to grind in this matter: he just called ‘em as he saw ‘em. We might do well to reconsider enigmatic sites and features, especially oval or

ix

slightly oval depression which we may have called pit houses (with a question mark?), or reservoirs, or simply undefined depressions. Those survey problems may turn into something interesting. Hohokam-Mimbres interactions peaked during the Colonial Period (Hohokam) and the Late Pit House period (Mimbres). On this we all agree: Harry Shaffer, Darrell Creel, Roger Anyon, Michelle Hegmon and me. That is when all the Hohokam stuff shows up in the Mimbres. We disagree, still, on the import of those imports. I think Hohokam was of fundamental importance to the creation of Mimbres. Recall that the Colonial period was when Hohokam at its most expansive, exploding up and down along the major drainages of southern Arizona, and arguably into the similar desert environments of southwestern New Mexico. Following the Colonial period, Hohokam stabilized and contracted, markedly, during the following Sedentary Period, which corresponds to the Mimbres phase and to Pueblo II in the Anasazi area. Pueblo II was the era of Chaco Canyon (A.D. 900 to 1150, more or less). Chaco, of course, is notorious for expansive archaeology (or would that be: “expansive archaeologists”?). To which we now turn… Chaco was Mimbres’ 11th and early 12th century contemporary to the north. Chaco consisted of a center at Chaco Canyon and a rather large region defined by “outlier” Great Houses and roads. The extent, nature, and operation of that region is a matter of some debate, but my version puts “outliers” just beyond the extreme northern margins of the Mimbres region (for example, at Aragon, NM on the Rio San Franciso, and perhaps at Magdalena, NM). I have suggested that “emulation” Great Houses (that is, local copies) exist on the Gila and Mimbres, but we need not pursue that idea here (Duff and Lekson 2005; Lekson 1999a). In considering Mimbres and Anasazi, I focus on two things: pottery, and unit pueblos/kivas (Figure i-3). There are two aspects of Mimbres pottery that suggest or recall the north: corrugation and black-on-white decoration. These were two (of several) developments that suggested to Emil Haury (and Kidder many others) an “Anasazi swamping” or “Anasazisation” of the Mimbres about 1000 AD (see, for example, Haury’s 1986 restatement of his views; see also Hegmon 2000 for a different view). When I was first introduced to Mimbres, I questioned the received view, and doubted Haury. I was simply swimming with the school (something I’ve ceased to do, unless the school is headed somewhere interesting). The big Mimbres projects of the 1970s and 1980s (when I was learning about Mimbres) denied absolutely any Anasazisation. For example, the rejection of swamping and other Anasazi entanglements was one of the proudest accomplishments of the Mimbres Foundation (LeBlanc 1986). It was emphatic, almost heated: no Anasazi need apply. With that much intellectual and emotional investment in the exorcism of Anasazi ghosts, it will be difficult to reconsider or reevaluate. But we should. Let’s first reconsider Anasazi pottery from the perspective of the Hohokam area. Corrugated pottery or indented corrugated pottery is an unmistakable symptom of Anasazi in the Hohokam region. How might Mimbres evidence be viewed, if it was found to the west? For Hohokam archaeologists, sherds of corrugated pottery mark the spoor of the North. And that seems reasonable. But take that same sherd from Tucson (for example) east across the border into New Mexico, and it becomes the final type in a long developmental series of Mimbres utility wares. And, of course, that too was true. But could it be both? Corrugated in the Hohokam area means Anasazi; the Mimbres utility ware tradition, which leads to corrugation in several interesting varieties, might “mean” Anasazi, too. The Mimbres sequence of textured types parallels, even presages Anasazi types: neck-banded, shoulder corrugated, corrugated, indented corrugated march in lock step across the Chaco/Mimbres line, but the Mimbres leg leads. Who is zooming who? – to paraphrase a gifted chanteuse of the past. Mimbres corrugated is part of a larger package. There is also that famous black on white ware that crops up about AD 800/900, first as rather Hohokam-looking Style I and II, but, by AD 1000, Anasazi-looking in its geometries. Indeed, more Anasazi than the Anasazi themselves: Kidder said that Mimbres was the pottery they should have made at Pueblo Bonito. Could similarities outweigh the stylistic and technological differences? If you were visiting from Mars, and saw Chaco pottery and Mimbres pottery, and contrasting them to Hohokam, would you not say: “Sure, there are differences between the Chaco stuff and the Mimbres stuff: but are those differences really important?” Some people think so; but not me. The differences between Gallup and Mimbres aren’t much greater than the differences between Gallup and Mancos, or Gallup and Kwahee (or Gallup and Dogoshzi, or Dogoshzi and Kwahee, for that matter). Somehow, someway, the black on whites, north and south, are part of the same Big Picture (presumably black & white). But it was not so much pottery that led Haury to suggest “Ansasazisation” as the Mimbres shift from pithouses to masonry pueblos about AD 950/1000. Haury felt that Mimbres masonry was historically derived from

x

Anasazi precedents. The inception of above-ground masonry indeed came earlier in the north than in the south. (Note how fine we are chopping logic to give Anasazi precedence: “above-ground masonry” is about as far as we can go.) I am not overly impressed with the fact (if “fact” it is) that Anasazi stacked up rocks before Mimbres did. Anasazi sandstones were more stackable than the round river cobbles and jagged rhyolite clasts available to the Mimbres. Again, viewing the two from Mars, one would have to plead very, very specially, to separate Mimbres and Anasazi masonry as fundamentally different technologies: both areas built pueblos out of coursed stone, and varying details reflect varying geology and (more importantly) differing forms. Pueblo Bonito does not look like Swarts Ruin or NAN Ranch Ruin. But were the forms so very different? Yes and no. Mimbres buildings do not look like Chaco. But most Anasazi building did not look much like Pueblo Bonito, either. The question is in part entangled in the “pithouse to pueblo transition” – an event or process operating in near parallel in both Anasazi and Mimbres regions. The pithouse to pueblo transition is a classic research question in both areas, but for some reason it is conventional to think that the transition in the Anasazi has nothing to say to the transition in the Mimbres, and vice versa. Surely the same thing happening at the same time in two contiguous areas is, at the very least, curious? After the transition, pueblo architecture in the two regions took divergent paths. Our visitor from Mars might well put Pueblo Bonito into one pigeon hole and NAN Ranch Ruin into another; and, with even more confidence, a late, geometrically rigid Great House like Wijiji (all right angles and strict symmetries) and a sprawling random jumble like Swarts Ruin. But I have argued for a fundamentally shared form between Anasazi and Mimbres at the inception of pueblo-building: the “unit Pueblo” or “Prudden Unit” of six rooms and a “kiva” (Lekson 1999a). Unit Pueblos were the characteristic and typical Anasazi house form. They were also, I think, a characteristic and typical Mimbres house form, at least for one brief shining moment, at the shift between pithouse and pueblo. Which, in the Mimbres case, was relatively discrete, swift, and remarkable. Many small sites in the upper Gila show a clear pattern of the Unit Pueblo: five or six above ground masonry rooms in direct association with a small, square, subterranean “kiva.” I think the pattern is also evident, but obscured, in Harry Shafer’s intermediate rooms at NAN, and at comparable small nuclei (“core rooms”) identified by LeBlanc at Swarts Ruin. The small, independent room blocks, at least, were there. “Kivas,” too, but their association is not nearly as clear as in the upper Gila: scores of small, square “kivas” are known from excavations in, under, and around big Mimbres pueblos. The association of a particular five or six room room block with a particular kiva is not easily demonstrated. It’s hard to tease out the early levels under the considerable mass of later, classic Mimbres pueblo: 150 rooms built, rebuilt, modified, remodeled, riddled with burial pits, and (much later) pot hunted almost out of existence. That history wears hard on the earliest structures: “unit pueblos” razed and buried beneath NAN Ranch, Swart Ruin, Mattocks, Old Town. Or so I think. Earlier Pithouse Period domestic architecture in the Mimbres region did not foretell or foreshadow the Unit Pueblo. In the Anasazi country, lines of storage pits behind pit houses seemed to provide a potential proto-unitpueblo, with its incipient pueblo form realized at the vaunted “transition.” Those hints are absent in Mimbres. Indeed, there are more similarities in Late Pithouse Period sites between Mimbres patterns and Hohokam-like “courtyard groups” (a form foreign to Anasazi). Where, then, did Mimbres Unit Pueblos come from? Around AD 1000s, large Anasazi population streamed into the Mogollon Rim area of Arizona (Herr 2001) and into the Mogollon Highlands of west central New Mexico (Oakes 1999). Why not Mimbres? Harry Shafer (2003) argues that in-migration into the Mimbres Valley is required to create the demographics of both Late Pit House Periods and Mimbres, and I agree. We can’t get big Mimbres pueblos out of the local, Late Pithouse Period population (Lekson 1993b). Shafer draws those populations from local sources, upland Mimbres who left their mountain homes and rolled down to the river. It is my impression that the upland populations are late, expansions out of the valley. I think the new people could have come from the north, from beyond the limits of Mimbres: that is, from the Anasazi region. We know Anasazi (or at least northern Pueblo) peoples washed into southeastern Arizona and southwestern New Mexico in the late 13th century; is it so unthinkable that it happened a few centuries earlier, during the Mimbres phase, too? Doctrinaire Mimbres archaeologists reject and denounce “Anasazi swamping.” And there is much good evidence (not presented here) in favor of the conventional view. Maybe it never happened; but please consider what was happening in the rest of the Anasazi region in Pueblo II (A.D. 900 to 1150). The history of migrations into and out of the Four Corners is now understood to be a series of repeated abandonment and re-population events dating back into Basketmaker III, if not earlier; that same dynamic may well apply to the south (as noted above for the late 13th century). Focus particularly on the period of interest, Pueblo II (up north). Much as

xi

Hohokam had done in the preceding Colonial Period, Anasazi during Pueblo II exploded outward in a supernova of migrations and ripple effects. This has been referred to as the “Pueblo II Expansion.” John McGregor’s version (Figure i-4) is the classic; this map is from a later edition, McGregor 1965, and politely excludes Mimbres; see also the first, 1941 edition, with arrow from Pueblo II right into the Mimbres Valley. The “Pueblo II Expansion” is pretty interesting: it even included the Four Corners, the supposed heartland of the Anasazi. Much of the Four Corners was depopulated at the end of Pueblo I, and during Pueblo II, Anasazi populations were moving back into the northern San Juan and Mesa Verde areas. During Pueblo II, stone masonry pueblos with black and white and corrugated pottery sprang up from Las Vegas, NV, east into the Rio Grande, and north almost to Montana (in the extremes of “Fremont”). At the core of it all, of course, was Chaco. Local archaeologists argue about local precedents, and about local copies and emulations; but the simple fact remains that during Pueblo II, Anasazi like patterns of material culture expanded (alarmingly) in geographic scope, very much like the Colonial Period Hohokam had done a century before. People were sloshing back and forth around the northern Southwest like water in a dish pan, moving back and forth on scales we’ve yet to comprehend. (Michael Berry was probably more right than wrong.) Expansion characterized Pueblo II to the west, north and east; why not to the south? The Mimbres region in the Late Pit House Period was on the edges of the Colonial Period Hohokam explosion; and the later Mimbres phrase was an arc on the penumbra of the Anasazi Pueblo II Expansion. Beyond state boundaries, local loyalties, and reasonable doubt, are there reasons to reject the preceding statement out of hand? I don’t see any reason to build walls around Mimbres in material culture. Nor does isolation seem warranted in view of what we know of ancient New World societies. In the North American “Post-Classic” (to borrow a term from Mesoamerica), people moved around a lot. Mimbres clearly knew Mesoamerica; how could they not have known Hohokam and Anasazi? Indeed, during the Late Pithouse/Colonial period, Mimbres was Hohokam (and vice versa), and during the Mimbres/Pueblo II phase, Mimbres was Anasazi (and vice versa). What were the directions of the dynamics? I suspect they were multiple and multifarious. Mimbres, I think, can only be understood in the contexts of Colonial Period Hohokam expansions and Chaco era Pueblo II Anasazi expansions (Figures i-1 and i-3). But it wasn’t a one way street. Mimbres was an active player in regional dynamics and historical sequences. Perhaps it is time to ask: how did Mimbres impact Hohokam and Anasazi? I suspect Mimbres did rather less for Hohokam than it did for Pueblo/Anasazi. Hohokam got Mimbres on its feet, but once it was rolling Mimbres was in many ways a worthy complement to Chaco, perhaps a peer or even peer polity. The curious chronology of utility wares (with innovations appearing first in Mimbres, later in Anasazi) suggests the flow of ideas was hardly one way between regions. And many of the baubles, bells, feathers, and trinkets which so famously marked the lords of Chaco Canyon may have come from the Mimbres – at what cost? Chaco was a failure; Mimbres, I think, was a success that played out, ultimately, in the Pueblo world’s more glorious city, Paquime (a long story far beyond the limits of this paper). I have argued elsewhere (as has Shafer and others) that Mimbres contributed far more to modern Pueblos than did the grim, failed capital at Chaco: Chaco was a failed secondary state, rejected in whole and part by Pueblo people; Mimbres may have originated the communal living, kachina ceremonialism, and worldviews which allowed (and allow) Pueblo success without the burden of Chaco’s complex government. ACKNOWLEDGEMENTS 2005 The preceding essay began as a paper presented at the 2004 Mogollon Conference at Silver City, New Mexico. It was originally titled “Mimbres Beyond the Valley.” The Silver City conference marked the twentieth anniversary of the Third Mogollon Conference, at which I organized and chaired a session on “Mimbres Archaeology Outside the Mimbres Valley.” 1984, the year of the Third Mogollon conference, was a very good year for archaeology in the Mimbres Valley. Harry Shafer completed his sixth season at NAN Ranch – half way through his exemplary field program – and the first major report appeared from the Mimbres Foundation: Anyon and LeBlanc’s classic Galaz Ruin. NAN and Galaz were, obviously, of far more consequence than a conference session on “Mimbres Outside the Mimbres Valley” session, but the theme piques me still. For the volume, I thank Jan Biella and Glenna Dean of the New Mexico Historic Preservation Division for permission to publish this study, and Susana and Paul Katz for allowing me to use the revised figures, which were redrafted by James I. Williams, AIA. My thanks, also, to Danielle Benden, who undertook the final formatting of the text, and to David Davison of British Archaeological Reports and his reviewers, for publishing this study in the BAR series.

xii

ACKNOWLEDGMENTS 1989 & 1992 Writing the first installment of a revised New Mexico State Plan has been entertaining, but not entirely a cakewalk. In the existing State Plan, David Stuart and Rory Gauthier offered a wonderfully kaleidoscopic view of New Mexico prehistory, informed by an eye-popping range of insights and models (Stuart and Gauthier 1981). There were surprises around every corner, but the whole had a coherency framed by Stuart's pervasive use of a theory of power and efficiency. It was a tour de force and I liked it a lot. Not everyone was so pleased with Stuart and Gauthier's efforts. Stuart's interpretations were often original and iconoclastic, and archaeologists disagreed when their own particular bulls were gored. Disagreement of that kind is part of any academic discourse; it's healthy criticism. But some saw a fatal flaw in Stuart's imposition of his theoretical perspective on what was, after all, a planning document. Most archaeologists would agree that it is not possible to think or write about archaeology without a theoretical perspective, either implicit or explicit, but many would also contend that a planning document should minimize proselytizing a particular brand of thinking. A planning document should be encompassing, homogenizing, safe, and perhaps a little boring. I'm afraid I agree. A theory is a theory and, based on the history of human thought, we can be reasonably certain that most theories will eventually turn out to be wrong. That is, after all, how we learn. Should we base our preservation efforts -- decide what will or will not be saved -- on the theory-of-the-moment? I think not. Preservation and archaeology are closely related fields, but they are different fields, with different goals. I am an archaeologist, yet I have tried to write a preservation planning document. It is not free of theory: gardenvariety, uncritical, Americanist materialism pervades the structure and content of the study. Nor is it free of fad: the content reflects what I and my colleagues in southwestern New Mexican archaeology are thinking today, just as Stuart and Gauthier's synthesis reflected the data of the late 1970s. Changing content does not bother me. Archaeologists should be changing our view of prehistory constantly, or they are not doing their jobs. What concerns me are the implications for preservation, since the conclusions, recommend-ations, etc., contained in this report will determine the data base future archaeologists can use to do their jobs. A site is a terrible thing to waste. My only undoubtedly good and correct decision in structuring this research was based on cowardice. Mimbres archaeologists are a prickly bunch, and I wanted to make very certain that in preparing this study, I was not inviting a lynching. Thus I tried to include as many interested archaeologists in its preparation as humanly possible. I sent out questionnaires, placed want ads, and spent hours on the phone and over coffee, all to ensure that this study would reflect the broadest possible range of views on what was worth preserving in southwestern New Mexico. Being a shy and retiring sort, I did not anticipate that bearding and baiting my colleagues would be much fun. I was wrong: talking to colleagues about subjects of deep mutual interest was great fun and, more than just fun, it was an education. I am deeply grateful to the many archaeologists who shared unpublished data, published and unpublished papers, ideas, comments, and kind support for this project: Neal Ackerly Keith Anderson Roger Anyon Mary Bernard-Shaw Ronald Bishop Michael Blake James Braford Gordon Bronitsky Fel Brunett Eileen Camilli John Carpenter Richard Chapman Darrell Creel Jeffrey Dean Suzanne DeAtely David Doyel Frank Findlow James Fitting Patricia Gilman

New Mexico State University National Park Service, Tucson Zuni Archaeological Program University of Arizona Smithsonian Institution University of British Columbia National Park Service, Santa Fe (Albuquerque, NM) (Fife Lake, MI) Ebert and Associates University of Arizona University of New Mexico University of Texas at Austin Laboratory of Tree-ring Research (North Hollywood, CA) Pueblo Grande Museum University of Oklahoma

xiii

J.R. Gomolak Donald Graybill Andrew Gulliford Arthur Jelinek Michael Johnson Carl Halburt Laurens Hammack Jeannie Hart Emil Haury Alden Hayes LaVerne Herrington Linda Kelley James Koons Karl Laumbach Steven LeBlanc Alexander Lindsay Raymond Mauldin Michael Mallouf Joe Martin Peter McKenna Linda Mick-O'Hara Paul Minnis Ben Nelson Margaret Nelson Chris Nightengale Jay Peck Stewart Peckham John Peterson David Phillips Margaret Powers John Ravesloot Daniel Reiley Barbara Roth Dale Rugge Jon Sandor Curtis Schaafsma Robert Schiowitz Chet Shaw Phillip Shelly David Siegel Harry Shafer Pamela Smith John Speth Rosemary Talley Steadman Upham Sharon Urban James Walker John Welch W.H. Wills Regge Wiseman

New Mexico State Land Office University of Arizona Western New Mexico University University of Arizona Cibola National Forest Complete Archaeological Services Bureau of Land Management, Las Cruces University of Arizona (Portal, AZ) (Silver City, NM) Gila National Forest Gila Archaeological Associates Human Systems Research, Inc. Mimbres Foundation Arizona State Museum University of New Mexico Bureau of Land Management, Las Cruces Bureau of Land Management, Las Cruces National Park Service, Santa Fe Laboratory of Anthropology University of Oklahoma James Neely University of Texas at Austin State University of New York, Buffalo State University of New York, Buffalo University of New Mexico University of Texas at Austin Laboratory of Anthropology Archaeological Research, Inc. Laboratory of Anthropology Laboratory of Anthropology Arizona State University Historic Preservation Division, Santa Fe University of Arizona Iowa State University Laboratory of Anthropology Gila National Forest University of Arizona Eastern New Mexico University Fish and Wildlife Service Texas A&M University Bureau of Land Management, Las Cruces University of Michigan Laboratory of Anthropology New Mexico State University Arizona State Museum Archaeological Conservancy University of Arizona University of New Mexico Laboratory of Anthropology

I have tried to incorporate their ideas and concerns into this document, but no useful purpose will be served by identifying which idea came from which person. The overall structure of the argument that presents their ideas is mine, and if it is faulty, the blame is mine. For better or worse, the mix is my own. Do I hear cries for a rope? The foregoing was written in August 1989, three years ago, when the first draft of this report was delivered by Human Systems Research to the Historic Preservation Division. Dr. Lynne Sebastian, of HPD, then reviewed xiv

the manuscript in admirable detail; I revised major sections for publication elsewhere (as discussed below); and the text received no less than three copy edits, by Meli Duran, Pat Neitfeldt, and Carol Cameron (in addition to Sebastian -- no mean editor). Peggy Nelson read several sections and provided detailed comments, as did Pat Gilman. Meli Duran prepared the first draft of the bibliography and Carol Cameron, the second. I worked at revisions and additions and deletions whenever I had the time, and have come to complete the project, hurriedly, in my last days of freedom, just prior to Columbus Day, 1992. In my haste, I am sure I did none of the editors' or readers' efforts justice. Sections of this report were developed from earlier drafts written (as part of a proposal) for the Arizona State Museum, and I gladly acknowledge ASM's support. Other sections were extracted and expanded for the National Park Service's Mimbres National Monument study, and I gladly acknowledge NPS's support. Bits and pieces have appeared -- revised, digested, and bowdlerized -- in some of my other Mimbres writings, and two sections (3 and 4) will soon appear, in modified form, in a regional journal. Hopefully, HPD will consider this wide dispersal as evidence of money well spent, although others may see it as the spread of a virulent virus. This project has taken a long, long time for reasons varying from understandable to twilight-zone inexplicable. There is no point in recounting the ups and downs of the project but, while it idled, the world did not stand still - even the small, slow world of Mimbres archaeology. Three major projects are nearing completion that will substantially effect almost every generalization offered here. These are: the Amerind Foundation's Wind Mountain project, the Office of Contract Archaeology's Cuchillo Dam project, and the Museum of New Mexico's Luna Highway project. In addition, on-going research by Margaret Nelson, Patricia Gilman, Harry Shafer, and James Neely is (not surprisingly) still on-going. Add to these the slow but steady progress of various CRM projects and you will find a lot of important archaeology that is not included in my overview. Only a few days before I wrote these paragraphs, the citizens of southwestern New Mexico succeeded in defeating a proposal, well-advanced, for a Mimbres National Monument. For over a century, greed and a misplaced frontier mentality have all but destroyed Mimbres archaeology: southwestern New Mexico is world famous -- literally, a textbook example -- for looting and destruction of internationally significant cultural properties. When offered the opportunity to redress a century of rampant pothunting, the people of southwestern New Mexico declined. I have mixed feelings about those people (there are a few -- mostly newcomers -- who are appalled by what has happened) but our opinions of the locals are largely irrelevant. We clearly cannot hope for local enlightenment on archaeological matters. If and when those people come around and join the modern world, there won't be anything left. Mimbres archaeology (or rather, what's left of it) is far too important to be left any longer to local decision-making; hopefully a state-level plan will help lift this important, but savagely battered archaeology out of the ethical quagmire of southwestern New Mexico.

xv

REFERENCES Bayman, James M. 2002 Hohokam Craft Economies and the Materialization of Power. Journal of archaeological method and theory 9(1):6995. Berry, Michael S. 1982 Time, Space and Transition in Anasazi Prehistory. University of Utah Press, Salt Lake City. Brody, J.J. 1977 Mimbres Painted Pottery. School of American Research Press, Santa Fe. Cosgrove, Harriet B. and C.B. Cosgrove 1932 The Swarts Ruin. Papers of the Peabody Museum of Archaeology and Ethnology 15(1). Creel, Darrell 1989 Primary Cremation at the NAN Ranch Ruin. Journal of Field Archaeology 16(3):309329. Creel, Darrell and Roger Anyon 2003 New Interpretations of Mimbres Public Architecture and Space: Implications for Cultural Change. American Antiquity 68(1):67-92. Diehl, Michael W. and Steven A. LeBlanc 2001 Early Pithouse Villages of the Mimbres Valley and Beyond. Papers of the Peabody Museum of Archaeology and Ethnology 83. Harvard University, Cambridge. Duff, Andrew and Stephen Lekson 2005 Chaco From the South. In The Archaeology of Chaco Canyon, edited by Stephen H. Lekson. School of American Research Press, Santa Fe. Garcia de Quevedo, Susan L. 2004 Trade, Migration, or Emulation: A Study of Stone Palettes from the Mimbres Region. MA thesis, University of Oklahoma, Norman. Haury, Emil W. 1986 Thoughts After Sixty Years as a Southwestern Archaeologist. In Emil W. Haury’s Prehistory of the Southwest, edited by J. Jefferson Reid and David E. Doyel, pp 435464. University of Arizona Press, Tucson. Hegmon, Michelle 2000 Corrugated Pottery, Technological Style, and Population Movement in the Mimbres Region of the American Southwest. Journal of Anthropological Research 56(2): 217240. 2002 Recent Issues in the Archaeology of the Mimbres Region. Journal of Archaeological Research 10(4):307-357.

Herr, Sarah A. 2001 Beyond Chaco: Great Kiva Communities on the Mogollon Rim Frontier. Anthropological Papers No. 66. University of Arizona Press, Tucson. Herrington, LaVerne 1982 Water-Control Systems of the Mimbres Classic Phase. In Mogollon Archaeology, edited by Patrick H. Beckett, pp 75-90. Acoma Books, Ramona. LeBlanc, Steven A. 1986 Development of Archaeological Thought on the Mimbres Mogollon Region. In Emil W. Haury’s Prehistory of the American Southwest, edited by J. Jefferson Reid and David E. Doyel, pp 297-304. University of Arizona Press, Tucson. Lekson, Stephen H. 1986 Mimbres Riverine Adaptations. In Mogollon Variability. C. Benson and S. Upham editors, pp 181-190; Occasional Paper 15, New Mexico State University Museum. 1993a Chaco, Hohokam and Mimbres: The Southwest in the 11th and 12th Centuries. Expedition 35(1):44-52. 1993b The Surface Archaeology of Southwestern New Mexico. Artifact 30(3). 1996 Southwestern New Mexico and Southeastern Arizona, A.D. 900 to 1300. In The Prehistoric Pueblo World, A.D. 1150-1250, edited by Michael A. Adler, pp 170-176. University of Arizona Press, Tucson. 1999a Unit Pueblos and the Mimbres Problem. In La Frontera: Essays in Honor of Patrick H. Beckett, Meliha Duran and David Kirkpatrick, editors. Archaeological Society of New Mexico, Albuquerque. 1999b Chaco Meridian: Centers of Political Power in the Ancient Southwest. Altamira Press, Walnut Creek. 2002 Salado Archaeology of the Upper Gila, New Mexico. Anthropological Papers of the University of Arizona 67. University of Arizona Press, Tucson. Lekson, Stephen H., Michael Bletzer, and A.C. MacWilliams 2004 Pueblo IV in the Chihuahuan Desert. In The Protohistoric Pueblo World, A.D. 12751600, edited by E. Charles Adams and Andrew I. Duff, pp 53-61. University of Arizona Press, Tucson. McCluney, Eugene B. 1968 A Mimbres Shrine at the West Baker Site. Archaeology 21(3):196-205. Nelson, Margaret C. 1999 Mimbres During the Twelfth Century. University of Arizona Press, Tucson. xvi

Nelson, Margaret C. and Michelle Hegmon 2001 Abandonment Is Not As It Seems. American Antiquity 66(2):213-235. Oakes, Yvonne R. 1999 Synthesis and Conclusions. Vol 6, Archaeology of the Mogollon Highlands, edited by Yvonne R. Oakes and Dorothy A. Zamora. Archaeology Notes 22, Museum of New Mexico, Santa Fe. Shafer, Harry J. 2003 Mimbres Archaeology at the NAN Ranch Ruin. University of New Mexico Press, Albuquerque. White, Devin Alan 2004 Hohokam Palettes. Archaeological Series 196, Arizona State Museum, Tucson. Wasley, William W. and Alfred E. Johnson 1965 Salvage Archaeology in Painted Rocks Reservoir, Western Arizona. University of Arizona Press, Tucson.

xvii

xviii

xix

xx

xxi

xxii

Stuart and Gauthier, the HPD, and in this report) are all arbitrary and political, and the use of a longitude for the eastern boundary greatly simplifies the use of computer data files, the primary management tool for archaeology in southwestern New Mexico.

Chapter One Introduction 1.A. Purpose, Scope, Outline This study is a revision of the State Plan for southwestern New Mexico. The current plan was presented in Chapter 5 ("Southwestern New Mexico") of David E. Stuart and Rory P. Gauthier's Prehistoric New Mexico: Background for Survey (1981). This work has become a standard reference in New Mexican archaeology; it is an excellent (and wonderfully provocative) treatment of a vast amount of data. Even a single chapter of Stuart and Gauthier is a very hard act to follow, so I won't even try: this report updates only half a chapter.

Southwestern New Mexico as defined in this report includes all of Grant, Hidalgo, and Luna counties and portions of three other counties (Figure I-1). The western half of Sierra County is included to extend the study area eastward to the Rio Grande Valley, which is the conventionally accepted "cultural" boundary between the Mimbres and Jornada branches of the Mogollon. As rather different archaeological sequences can be recognized in the northern and southern Rio Grande Valley in this part of New Mexico, longitude 107o7.5'W was selected as the east boundary of southwestern New Mexico. This longitude crosses the Rio Grande approximately at Hatch, thereby including the Rio Grande Valley above Hatch and excluding the valley below Hatch from the study area. A small portion (about one-seventh) of western Dona Ana County west of longitude 107o7.5'W is also included in the study area. There, this longitude line passes approximately through the West Potrillo Mountains, which represent a pragmatic boundary in cultural resource management surveys; east of the Potrillos, a significant amount of survey has been completed, while west of that range, survey coverage is spotty and incomplete. Similarly, the southernmost one-sixth of Catron County is included in southwestern New Mexico to extend the northern boundary of Sierra County across to the Arizona line, thereby creating a workable regular outline for the study area. This northern border also falls approximately on a conventionally perceived "cultural" boundary between the Mimbres and Cibola branches of the Mogollon.

Stuart and Gauthier's "southwestern New Mexico" encompassed both the Mimbres and Jornada areas, a definition which included the area discussed in Steven LeBlanc and Michael Whalen's Archaeological Synthesis of South-central and Southwestern New Mexico (1980). LeBlanc and Whalen (1980) -- another standard reference -- provided the basic data for Stuart and Gauthier's analysis. LeBlanc edited and assembled the Mimbres (southwestern New Mexico) half of the volume, with individual chapters by such notable Mimbres scholars as Roger Anyon, Patricia A. Gilman, Paul E. Minnis, Margaret C. Nelson, and, of course, Steven A. LeBlanc. That, too, is a tough act to follow. In 1988, the New Mexico State Historic Preservation Division (HPD) requested proposals for a revision of the State Plan for the Mimbres half of "southwestern" New Mexico, as that area had been defined in Stuart and Gauthier (1981), and Human Systems Research, Inc. was awarded a matching grant to prepare this document.

Southwestern New Mexico, as defined here, contains about 14,415 square miles, or a little over one-eighth of the total area of New Mexico. This area is considerably larger than Maryland. Table 1.1 summarizes land ownership (land status) in southwestern New Mexico. The four major categories of land status in southwestern New Mexico (Forest Service (FS), Bureau of Land Management (BLM), State, and private) are not proportionate to land status totals for the entire state (for all of New Mexico, FS = 11.8%, other Federal = 22.4%, Indian trust = 9.6%, State = 12.1%, and private = 44.1%). Southwestern New Mexico has no Indian trust lands, more Federal lands, and less State and private lands than the state average. The relatively high proportion of southwestern New Mexico under Federal and State control (70.6%) creates both opportunities and difficulties in the analysis of cultural resources and planning for their preservation.

For this report, southwestern New Mexico (Figure I-1) is defined as that part of New Mexico south of latitude 33o15'N (approximately the latitude of the northern boundary of Sierra County) and west of longitude 107o7.5'W (approximately the longitude of Hatch). Alternately, the study area may be defined as New Mexico south of T 9 S and west of R 2 W, extending to the Arizona line on the west and the international border on the south. This area deviates slightly from the Mimbres portion of southwestern New Mexico presented in Stuart and Gauthier (1981: maps I:2 and V:1) by including the Rio Grande Valley above the town of Hatch and excluding a very small portion of south-central Dona Ana County. Stuart and Gauthier's boundary clearly was intended to be provisional (cf. the use of the Rio Grande as a boundary in LeBlanc and Whalen 1980: fig. I-1). Arguments offered in following sections will attempt to justify, archaeologically, this small revision. It should be noted that the western, northern, and southern boundaries of southwestern New Mexico (as defined by

The scope-of-work for this project defines a series of specific items required for the archaeological overview of southwest New Mexico: (1) "summaries of

1

environmental variability," (2) "history of research," (3) "discussion of current thinking about culture history," (4) "review of major research issues . . . and data needed to address these issues," (5) "a strategy for survey," identifying (6) "areas of high site potential that are . . . undersurveyed," (7) "areas likely to contain . . . National Register eligible sites," and (8) "areas subject to the pressure of development." These items are identified and capitalized in the Table of Contents. This report puts slightly greater emphasis on the nuts and bolts of culture history because so much new data (and new ways of looking at old data) have developed over the decade since LeBlanc and Whalen's overview was being prepared. Indeed, a significant portion of the data presented here (including absolute dates, settlement pattern data, and environmental reconstructions) is brand, spanking new and previously unpublished. Strategies for survey, the National Register, and the State plan are all discussed at length in Sections 5 and 6. In Section 6.E I have provided what I hope are innovative (or, if not innovative, at least different) ways of planning for the preservation of prehistoric cultural resources in southwestern New Mexico.

research and management. It was not intended to present research, but to structure future HPD-sponsored survey and federal cultural resource management in southwestern New Mexico. Prologemena, perhaps, to Mimbres archaeology, but not a final report. 1.B. Culture History The culture history of southwestern New Mexico is summarized here as a prologue to more detailed analyses and discussions in Sections 3, 4, and 5. Prehistory (our best guess at what happened in the past) is the product of research and interpretations of that research. Since archaeology's content constantly changes with each new excavation and archaeology's interpretive methods change with no less frequency, there can be no "culture history" written in stone. Phase sequences, dates, and systematics can (and indeed must) change as we discover new data and new ways to interpret data. This section presents an attempt at consensus -- an effort doomed to failure, for consensus is rare indeed in archaeology. Consensus culture history represents a lowest common denominator, a bare- bones, nuts-and-bolts approach to ordering archaeological data for more productive (and inevitably controversial) treatment in later sections. For all my attempts to be fair, evenhanded, and even boring, I'm certain that every single statement can and will be challenged.

One item, "major research issues," has been modified to include "historic contexts," an important part of National Register nomination and the primary means of articulating research goals and National Register consideration. The second part of item (4), "data needed to address these issues," is primarily discussed in Section 6, but discussion of data deficiencies appear throughout the text.

Paleo-Indian Stage (10,000 B.C. - 7000 B.C.) So little is actually known about the Paleo-Indian stage in southwestern New Mexico that it is hardly worth talking about. Every synthesis or discussion of the Paleo- Indian for this area simply covers our ignorance by extending summaries from nearby or not-so-nearby areas (e.g., Judge's 1973 monograph on the middle Rio Grande, or Huckell's 1982 study of fluted points in Arizona) to southwestern New Mexico, but there is little hard evidence that patterns or conclusions from those areas apply here. They might, but we don't know.

Being an archaeologist, I have naturally directed my content more towards my professional colleagues, but, in fact, the organization and intent of this study are heavily weighted toward planning -- it will form part of the State Plan. Nonarchaeological planners will undoubtedly be dismayed by the extended discussion of archaeological trivia. Archaeologists may feel that complex problems have been overly simplified. You can never please everyone, but in this case I couldn't even please myself. I have refrained from having fun with the data.

The fact that we don't know is particularly unfortunate, since Paleo-Indian sites are certainly present. Several sites or isolated points have been reported (e.g., Huckell 1972; Fitting 1972b; Fitting and Price 1968; Baker and Campbell 1960; Wendorf 1959), mainly from the lower desert settings. Fitting (in Fitting, Hemphill, and Abbe 1982: 41-42) argues that extant Paleo-Indian sites may be rare in the mountainous uplands due to the high degree of erosion. Given the reported Paleo-Indian sites from high elevations in other parts of New Mexico, we are not so pessimistic. It is true, however, that the most thoroughly studied areas of southwestern New Mexico are the mountain and mountain- transition zones, and no Paleo-Indian sites have been reported in these areas. In the absence of any real data, it is pointless to offer a summary of Paleo-Indian in southwestern New Mexico. This stage, and how to

Some of my archaeological colleagues may be disappointed to find that I offer no weighty conclusions. (Others will undoubtedly be relieved.) This study does not push a particular theoretical position and therefore poses no explicit research questions. Without questions, there can be no conclusions. Despite the fact that it is impossible, I have tried with almost religious fervor to avoid theoretical editorializing and to simply summarize the data. As in most of my religious exercises, I have undoubtedly failed. Personal biases and theories color the way I view and present data, but I hope my sins are only little ones and not the deadly variety. This study is only an introduction, a plan for

2

study it, are more a research issue (Section 5) than an element of current knowledge.

Bussey, and Ice 1966; Chapman, Gossett, and Gossett 1985). It appears that the transition to settled village life may have begun in the Archaic, before the appearance of pottery in the Mimbres area. Excavations in nearby southeastern Arizona suggest that agriculture also began at this time, prior to pottery (Huckell and Huckell 1988), but this development has not yet been confirmed for the Archaic of southwestern New Mexico.

Archaic Stage (7000 B.C. - A.D. 200) The Early and Middle Archaic stages are only slightly better known than the Paleo-Indian. Based on data from nearby areas (MacNeish and Beckett 1987; Huckell and Huckell 1988; Wills 1988), we assume that the Archaic of the Mimbres region represented huntingand-gathering peoples accommodating themselves to an environment that was changing from that of the Paleo-Indians to one similar to modern southwestern New Mexico. The Archaic peoples continued the mobility of the earlier Paleo-Indians, but over increasingly smaller areas. Southwestern New Mexico was probably only a small portion of the area used by Paleo-Indians, but by the Late Archaic, the scale of mobility probably decreased to a seasonal cycle from uplands to lowlands within what would later become the Mimbres region. The area needed for a Late Archaic lifeway may have fit into southwestern New Mexico, and thus - in terms of scale - it may be possible to talk about the entire Archaic stage of southwestern New Mexico in a meaningful way. Unfortunately, we don't know very much about it.

Ceramic Stage (A.D. 200 - 1500) -- Mimbres District Our current understanding of prehistory in the Mimbres area is largely the product of the researches and writings of the Mimbres Foundation, which built on the pioneering work of Emil Haury (1936a). The Mimbres Foundation's synthesis of chronology and culture history appears in LeBlanc and Whalen (1980), but the more accessible summaries are available in Anyon, Gilman, and LeBlanc's "A Reevaluation of the Mogollon-Mimbres Archaeological Sequence" (1981), LeBlanc's The Mimbres People (1983), Anyon and LeBlanc's The Galaz Ruin (1984: 21-26), and Nelson and LeBlanc's Short-term Sedentism in the American Southwest: The Mimbres Valley Salado (1986: table 1.1). Other research programs, such as the NAN Ranch Project (Shafer and Taylor 1986), augment and refine this outline, but, so far, new data have largely confirmed the phases and datings suggested by the Mimbres Foundation. Table 1.2 summarizes the regional chronology. This is not to say that the Mimbres Foundation has answered all our questions about southwestern New Mexico; far from it. Many points of detail and broader issues of interpretation are hotly contested; however, the basic outline of Mimbres prehistory seems well established as a result of the Mimbres Foundation's work.

Hundreds of Archaic sites are reported in surveys from southwestern New Mexico, but "Archaic" is a great catch-all in Southwestern archaeology. If a site lacks ceramics ("aceramic"), it is usually assumed to be preceramic (i.e., Paleo-Indian or Archaic); but if it also lacks identifiable projectile points, the nod almost always goes to a nonspecific Archaic period. This is the customary clerical fate of large, nonarchitectural, aceramic sites, and particularly of a common class of site consisting of multiple eroded hearths (or campfires) scattered through miles of sand dunes -- the bane of many an archaeological project. These big sites could in fact be preceramic; or they could be aceramic aspects of later, Ceramic stage economies that included gathering and processing of wild plant foods from dune areas; or they could be post-Ceramic stage Apache sites (historic Apaches used many of the same plants as prehistoric peoples). Alternatively, since all the societies that used southwestern New Mexico included gathered wild foods in their cuisines, these big, rambling, aceramic dune sites could be all three, used by different peoples through a very, very long time. Most often, however, these kinds of sites are recorded as generalized, generic Archaic.

Architecture, pottery, and burial patterns appear to change in neatly patterned ways during the Ceramic stage. A quick summary of these patterns may aid in understanding the archaeological logic behind the various phase divisions discussed at greater length below. Settlement locations shift through time in relation to rivers or creeks. Many of the earliest Ceramic stage (Early Pit House period) settlements are located on high mesas well away from the valley bottom. Through time, settlements shift to terraces immediately above the valley bottom, and later settlements are sometimes found on the valley floor itself. Ceramic stage villages exhibit two basic types of architecture: pit houses and pueblos. Pit houses were one-room units built by digging a hole with a level floor, erecting a beam-and-post framework on the floor, covering that framework with rushes or branches, and then piling dirt back over the whole business. When completed, a pit house looked like a little knoll with a doorway to one side and a smokehole in the roof.

The Archaic stage spans seven millennia; about the first five of those millennia, we have almost no information. Only for the later Archaic have some archaeological data been recovered in southwestern New Mexico. During the latest part of the Archaic, small villages of very shallow pit houses appear; these are best known from the Upper Gila area (Hemphill 1983; Hammack,

3

"Pueblo," in this case, means any above-grade structure with four walls and a roof. None of the Mimbres pueblos looked like Taos or Walpi; they more closely resembled the rambling, warrenlike, one-story ranch houses of the late Spanish or Mexican historic periods.

"brownware," referring to the color of the coiled body of the vessel walls, not to any surface covering or "slip" (a microscopically thin, fine clay finishing layer). Brownware is contrasted to Anasazi graywares and Hohokam buffwares. The undecorated Mimbres utility pots were always brownwares, as was the early decorated pottery; but later Mimbres area decorated types included more than a few body colors that were not brown, such as Mimbres Black-on-white. These are brownware by courtesy only.

Pit houses are found in the earlier periods, while pueblos were used almost exclusively during the final occupation of the Mimbres area. The shift from pit house to pueblo appears to have taken place about A.D. 1000, but this threshold is fuzzy. The latest Pit House period sites may have had somewhat ephemeral surface structures (arborlike ramadas, wind screens, etc.), and pit structures of some kind (perhaps like the Anasazi ritual "kiva") were used alongside the large Mimbres phase pueblos.

The earliest utility pottery was "plain" (smooth) surfaced; through time, the exterior surface of utility pots became increasingly "textured" -- bas-relief patterns were created by leaving coils exposed in a "corrugated" pattern and by marking a series of small "indentations" on the exterior of each coil.

The first pueblolike structures were built of whatever stone was at hand. In major river valleys, the available stone was river cobbles, rounded loaf-sized stones which stacked up about as steadily as a pile of ball bearings. Because the building stone was rounded, a great deal of mud mortar was needed to stabilize the walls, but the combination of round stones and lots of mud mortar did not produce a very stable or strong structure. Much of the weight of the flat roof was probably carried by wooden roof support posts set into the floor.

Decorated pottery, archaeology's favorite dating tool and cultural calling card, went through a tidy series of changes from early to late periods. The earliest pit house villages were distinguished by not having any decorated pottery; they had very simple ceramic "assemblages" (types of pottery present) of plain brown pots and a few red-washed vessels. New types of decoration and surface treatment were added to this basic assemblage, starting with a well-polished red-slipped ware (a plain brown pottery coated with a thin outer layer of extremely fine red clay), followed by a series of increasingly complicated decorated types, in sequence: red-on-brown, red- on-white, and black-on-white. This last kind of pottery, black-on-white, is subdivided into three sequential styles, which have names (Boldface, Transitional, Mimbres Classic), but which are more often referred to simply by numbers: Styles I, II, and III. The series of decorated pottery starts with the earliest red-slipped ware: red painted designs on the interior of red-slipped bowls produce red-on-brown (Mogollon Red-onbrown). Covering the brown surface with a white slip before painting produces red-on-white (Three Circle Red-on-white). Shifting to a black paint turns the red-on-white to black- on-white (Styles I, II, and III). The subsequent stylistic developments within the black-on-white decoration are similarly forthright and logical, ending in the famous Mimbres Classic Black-on-white, the climax and hallmark of the entire area.

Most of the later Pueblo period walls were built entirely of adobe. Here, "adobe," does not mean the famous adobe bricks introduced to the Southwest after the Spanish conquest. Rather, adobe in this case refers to simple mud, puddled in long pours, allowed to dry, and then topped with another puddled pour until a fullheight wall was achieved. This type of adobe wall may have been reinforced by internal poles, like rebar in reinforced concrete, but more often it was not. A thin puddled adobe wall would support only the lightest of roofs, so much of the roof's weight was probably carried by wooden posts set in the floor. Some adobe walls were built over a row of upright river cobbles. These distinctive cobble foundations, or cimientos, were topped by the puddled adobe walls, but when the walls eroded, the uprights remain as evidence of the original walls. Lines of cimientos can still be seen on the gravel-capped terraces of southwestern New Mexico's creeks. The upright stone foundations may have strengthened the base of the wall, which is particularly vulnerable to erosion by splashing rain. Cimientos appear in all Pueblo period construction, but they were particularly conspicuous in the latest adobe building.

Mimbres Black-on-white is thought to signal the end the Mimbres sequence (see Table 1.2), but it does not end ceramic production in the Mimbres district. After Mimbres Black-on-white (Style III) pottery, pottery assemblages include new types that seem to be foreign to the Mimbres series; these will be discussed below, with the post-Mimbres phases.

Mimbres pottery was made by spiraling a thin ribbon or coil of plastic clay into the desired form. To make a smooth interior, the exposed coils were scraped down and melded together; this was usually also done to the exterior as well. Mimbres pottery is often called a

Burial patterns in southwestern New Mexico included two different methods for disposing of the dead. The body might be buried in a pit pretty much as it was

4

("inhumation"), or it might be cremated. The pit might be large enough to accommodate the body laid out at full length (an "extended" inhumation) or the individual may have been bent into a smaller pit, in a "flexed" inhumation. Cremations usually included gathering the ashes into a jar and burying the jar in a small pit. These patterns change through time. In the earliest pit house sites, inhumations were made in pits outside the house ("extramural" burials) or in the fill of abandoned houses. At later pit house sites, burials begin to appear in subfloor pits; that is, a pit was dug below the floor of a functioning house, the body was deposited, the pit was plastered over, and life went on. "Intramural subfloor inhumation," as this process is called, began at later Pit House period sites and continued in the early Pueblo period. Indeed, a single room at a Mimbres pueblo site could have dozens of burials under its floor. In the later Pueblo period sites, cremation begins to replace intramural subfloor inhumations, but the jars containing the ashes were often buried in pits under the floor, continuing the intramural tradition. At the latest Pueblo period sites, burial patterns come full circle, with extramural (outside) cemeteries of cremations in jars.

Corn and corn-processing equipment are found at Early Pit House period sites; however, it is thought that agriculture was much less important (and hunting and gathering more important) during this period than in subsequent periods. Very low population levels would have allowed continued hunting and gathering, augmented by limited farming. Early Pit House period archaeology changes so little over time that the entire period is encompassed in a single phase. The Pine Lawn phase is a term used in many areas; in the Mimbres Valley these materials have been called Cumbre phase. Late Pit House Period (A.D. 550 - 1000) The Late Pit House period is characterized by slipped or decorated pottery, deeper and more formalized pit houses, and larger villages located not on isolated terraces but on the terraces above major drainages. The Late Pit House period has been divided into three shorter phases: Georgetown, San Francisco, and Three Circle. In theory, each phase has characteristic ceramics and pit house forms (Table 1.2), but in practice, we have some difficulty in separating pit houses of the earlier two phases from each other and from pit houses of the latest, Three Circle phase.

Early Pit house Period (A.D. 200 - 550) The Early Pit House period is marked by simple, shallow, round or oval pit houses and a ceramic assemblage of plain brownware pots and a small proportion of vessels with a redwash on the exterior. Villages numbered in the scores. One or two large villages with as many as sixty pit houses are known, but most averaged only about seven pit houses. At larger sites, one or two larger structures may represent "communal structures," or "Great Kivas," or "Great Holes-in-the-Ground," of which more below. Sites are usually found on high, steep-sided knolls or mesas, at some distance from the nearest river or creek. Some sites have dry-laid stone walls across the most accessible approach. These locations and features suggest to most archaeologists that defense was a consideration (LeBlanc 1980a). Some of these sites are indeed dramatically defensive; in fact, it is difficult for a modern, nonsmoking archaeologist to climb up to them. The inhabitants of these sites might laugh themselves hoarse at any attacker, at least until they looked around for some water to soothe their throats. Then they may have stopped laughing. These isolated sites would be effective only against inconstant enemies, and not all archaeologists are convinced that defense was a primary factor in their location (Lekson 1989a).

In the Mimbres Valley, the number of villages declined slightly from Early Pit house totals, but over the entire Mimbres area, there appear to be many more Late Pit House period sites than Early Pit House sites. The total population was definitely larger than that of the Early Pit House period and probably increased steadily during the three phases of the Late Pit House period. It is difficult to estimate Late Pit House period site size, because large Late Pit House villages are often hidden beneath subsequent Mimbres pueblos. But we are confident that population increased greatly over Early Pit House levels. The size of individual sites also increased. Many Late Pit House period villages were large, with up to 100 Three Circle phase pit houses at the Galaz site and 150-200 pit houses at the Lee Village - Fort West complex on the Gila. Larger Late Pit House period villages usually included at least one pit structure that was several times larger than a normal pit house; these have been called "communal structures" (Anyon and LeBlanc 1980a). We believe that communal structures were the settings for community rituals, much like the "Great Kivas" of the Anasazi area. "Great Kiva," rather than "communal structure," will be used in this report for these extralarge pit houses; this preference is purely stylistic and does not imply any rejection of Anyon and LeBlanc's (1980) conclusions about these interesting structures. Elsewhere, I have used the only partially facetious term "Great Holes-in-the-Ground" for Great Kivas (or more

Early Pit House village sites are found throughout the mountainous portion of the Mimbres area, from the Rio Grande to the San Francisco River. They are not yet known from the southern deserts, but sites of this time period are present in the adjacent deserts of Arizona. I suspect that Early Pit House sites will be found in the low deserts when we get around to looking for them.

5

accurately, Great Kiva-sized depressions) recorded in survey.

field houses for small groups from the larger sites (B. Nelson, Rugge, and LeBlanc 1978; Laumbach 1982). In the Mimbres Valley, a late expansion of settlement seems to occur from the valley proper to secondary drainages and upland parkland settings; however, all the large sites are along the river itself.

Late Pit House period sites are found throughout the northern, mountainous portion of the Mimbres area; the same reservations concerning the apparent absence of Early Pit House period sites in the deserts also apply to the Late Pit House period. Late Pit House sites are definitely present in the Deming Plain (Minnis and Wormser 1984), and the distribution of Boldface Black-on-white (the marker type for the Three Circle phase) suggests Late Pit House use of desert zones throughout the region (Laumbach 1978).

The Mimbres phase goes well beyond the confines of the Mimbres Valley; in fact, it extends beyond southwestern New Mexico to the west, south, and east (Lekson 1986a). However, for our purposes, southwestern New Mexico is an appropriate area for consideration. The entire Mimbres Basin (which includes a great deal more than the Mimbres Valley proper) is less than a third of southwestern New Mexico; the area investigated by the Mimbres Foundation is about a tenth of the basin. The archaeology of the Mimbres Valley is thus only a sample of the range of sites (and the prehistory) that make up the Mimbres region (discussed at length in Section 4.A).

Late Pit House villages were often located in the same places where later Mimbres pueblos were constructed. Not all Late Pit House sites have large pueblos built over them, but very few large Mimbres pueblos have been excavated that do not have substantial Late Pit House period village ruins beneath them. Many of the elements that we see in the later Mimbres phase begin in the Late Pit House period. Burial patterns, ceramic traditions, and economic patterns established during the Late Pit House period continue to develop during the Mimbres phase. Intramural subfloor burials first become common in the Three Circle phase; Boldface Black-on-white, the black-on-white type that leads stylistically to Mimbres Classic, is the hallmark of that phase; and the identical location of Late Pit House and later Mimbres phase villages (along with internal evidence from each period) suggests that agricultural use of the major stream valleys began in the Late Pit House period and continued in the later Mimbres phase.

Mimbres settlement--or rather, sites with Mimbres pottery--extends over this entire large region. Conservatively, there are at least 650 Mimbres architectural sites, ranging from one room to 300+ rooms in size, scattered across southwestern New Mexico. (This minimum figure is derived from a number of large-scale surveys of the major drainages, discussed in Section 4.B.) The real total of Mimbres architectural sites is two or three times this figure. Sites comparable in size to the largest Mimbres Valley sites are found on the Rio Grande, Animas Creek, Cameron Creek, the Rio Arenas, the Three Forks area of the uppermost Gila River, and several other creeks in the mountain-transition zone. Even larger Mimbres sites are found on the Gila River (Lekson 1984c). There are at least 20 and more likely about 25 Mimbres sites with more than 100 rooms, and only half of these are in the Mimbres Valley.

Pueblo Period -- Mimbres Phase (A.D. 1000 - 1150) The Pueblo period is divided into three phases: the Mimbres phase and two post-Mimbres phases, the Black Mountain and Cliff phases (see Table 1.2). Our knowledge of the Mimbres phase far surpasses our information on earlier and later periods. Mimbres sites are by far the most numerous and widely distributed of sites from any time period in southwestern New Mexico, and probably 90% of all our archaeological effort in the area has gone into Mimbres phase sites (see Section 3.A).

Mimbres settlement patterns outside the Mimbres Valley include sites on a smaller scale than the big pueblolike sites. In several areas away from the major creeks (and probably over a significant portion of the region defined as Mimbres), most Mimbres sites consist of a small room block and a pit structure. These small sites may form a loose cluster over several square miles, with a Great Kiva in a central location. This pattern has only recently been identified, and its place in the larger patterns of Mimbres settlement is not yet understood (Lekson 1988, 1990; Chapman, Gossett, and Gossett 1985). Numerically, the "typical" Mimbres site was probably a five-room household and not the 100-room pueblo -- there may have been ten of the smaller sites for each of the larger ones. However, it is likely that the majority of the population lived in the larger sites (that is, one 100-room site equals more people than 15 five-room sites), but we have not yet

The transition from pit house to pueblo architecture has been seen as a rather sudden shift, but evidence of transitional architecture at the NAN Ranch site (Shafer and Taylor 1986: 50-51) and data from outside the Mimbres Valley (Lekson 1988) suggest that the change was perhaps less categorical. The large Mimbres valley pueblo sites began as groups of small, four- or fiveroom units. These grew by accretion into rambling pueblos of up to two hundred rooms (LeBlanc 1983; Anyon and LeBlanc 1984; Shafer and Taylor 1986). In the Mimbres Valley, it appears that population, for the most part, was aggregated into about a dozen large sites of this size. Smaller Mimbres phase sites either budded off from the large sites or represent seasonally used

6

studied this question on the appropriate regional scale. All we can say at this time is that while large sites are the most conspicuous element of Mimbres settlement geography, they are not the only -- or, perhaps, even the most important -- element.

have been replaced by special plazas (Anyon and LeBlanc 1980), but these structures may have been present at other large Mimbres sites and at the dispersed communities of small Mimbres sites (Lekson 1982, 1989a).

Population during the Mimbres phase appears to have been concentrated in drainages in the Transitional Zone between the Mogollon Uplands and the basin-and-range Desert Zone (see Section 2), particularly on the smaller creeks that could be exploited with simple ditch irrigation. While the Anasazi (the ancestors of the Pueblos on the Colorado Plateau) were largely limited to dry farming, there is little doubt that the Mimbres used diversion irrigation in most and probably all of the streams coming out of the Mogollon Uplands. The earliest observers noted the remains of irrigation canals (Bandelier 1884; Kessell 1971), but these prehistoric features were usually obliterated (or perhaps reused) by later Spanish and American farmers. In at least one case, a valley farmed by the Mimbres was not used for later farms, and this valley has provided exceptional evidence for Mimbres irrigation systems (Herrington 1979, 1982). Other intact Mimbres canal systems have been found in side canyons that escaped historic development (Creel and Adams 1986). A very close correlation between the total number of Mimbres rooms and the area of irrigable bottomland in valleys demonstrates that diversion irrigation was a general practice across the Mimbres region (Lekson 1986c).

Rooms were modified or rebuilt, and new rooms or apartments were added as needed; but no construction exceeded the scale of several families in either planning or labor requirements. Construction with river cobbles made the building of more than one story almost impossible. Only a few examples of possible two-story construction are known, and these are tentative. Smaller Mimbres sites are very similar in wall and roof construction to the larger sites; however, some lack all the floor features and living elements of larger sites (B. Nelson, Rugge, and LeBlanc 1978), while others appear to have almost every feature observed at larger sites (Laumbach 1982). Pottery is the hallmark of the Mimbres phase; this is the period that produced Mimbres Classic Black-on-white (Style III). We find Mimbres Black-on-white as whole pots inverted over the heads of burials and as tiny fragments in household trash. How did the Mimbres people use Mimbres Black-on-white? As usual, archaeological opinion on this question is divided. Some (perhaps most) Mimbres Black-on-white bowls show signs of daily use as food serving vessels, but other very fine pieces may have been produced specifically as burial offerings.

Upland park settlements have been mentioned; these were situated in areas suitable for rainfall farming during the rainfall optimum of the later A.D. 1000s (see Section 2). To augment this dry farming strategy, the Mimbres also constructed extensive systems of water-retaining check dams and terraces across small upland drainages (LeBlanc 1977; Sandor, Gersper, and Hawley 1986; Sandor and Gersper 1988). At some point in the late A.D. 1000s, almost every area that could be farmed was being farmed.

Understandably, archaeologists have focused on the production of these very finest examples: Kidder (1932) thought that a single ceramic genius and his/her school were responsible for the best pots, and LeBlanc has suggested that a group as small as ten "would have been able to produce all the funerary vessels for the entire 150-year span of the Mimbres period" (LeBlanc 1983: 139, original emphasis). Shafer (1985) offered evidence from a burial at the NAN Ranch for a craft specialist potter (see also LeBlanc 1983: 138-39), but Gilman (1988) argues that pottery production was a household craft.

The basin-and-range deserts were also used, both for wild plant procurement and settlement. Mimbres architectural sites are known (but barely investigated) from the deserts of extreme southern Luna and Hidalgo counties (Findlow 1980; Fitting 1971c). There is very limited evidence that Mimbres sites continue into northern Chihuahua (Lekson 1986a), but beyond the suggestion that such sites are present, we know almost nothing more about them. The sites on the Mimbres River are the most thoroughly studied. These sites consist of large room blocks clustered around open plaza areas. Shafer identified a two-room apartment as the family unit, consisting of one living room and one storage room (sometimes more); other rooms might have been communal granaries (Shafer and Taylor 1986) and kivalike ritual structures that served several families (Anyon and LeBlanc 1980). In most of the larger Mimbres Valley sites, Great Kivas appear to

It is impossible not to wonder about the production of this exceptional pottery -- Who made it? What was it for? -- but our speculations may be premature. We do not know, for example, if the Mimbres Black-on-white found over the huge Mimbres region was all made in the Mimbres Valley or if it was locally produced throughout the Mimbres region. The latter seems likely to me; but only a systematic study of ceramic source chemistry will resolve this issue, and until this question is resolved, arguments about the mode of production of Mimbres Black-on-white are probably futile. Such a study is currently in the planning stages (R. Bishop, personal communication 1989). It would also be useful to be able to contrast our ideas about Mimbres Black-on-white with our views on other types of

7

pottery in Mimbres phase assemblages; Mimbres Black-on-white is usually only less than one-quarter of the total ceramic assemblage at these sites. Mimbres sites are by far the most frequent and the largest sites of the entire sequence in the Mimbres Valley and over most of the Mimbres region, and Mimbres population must have been larger than Late Pit House period levels. But how much larger?

Pueblo Period -- Black Mountain and Cliff Phases (A.D. 1180 - 1450) The Mimbres phase was followed by the Black Mountain phase (A.D. 1180 - 1300) and the Cliff phase (A.D. 1300 - 1400). While the Mimbres phase defines its own eponymous territory, both of the post-Mimbres phases were local expressions of much wider regional phenomena: Black Mountain is the Mimbres Valley version of the larger Casas Grandes phase elsewhere called the Animas (discussed below), and the Cliff phase is the southwestern New Mexico aspect of the very large Salado system (also discussed below).

By the peak of the Mimbres phase, about A.D. 1100 or shortly later, there appear to be a lot of Mimbrenos out there. Like all interesting questions, the actual size of the Mimbres population is a hotly contested issue. For the Mimbres Valley alone, recent population estimates range from a peak of 5,133 (Blake, LeBlanc, and Minnis 1986: table 12) or 4,021 (Minnis 1985: table 4) to as low as 594 (Gilman 1988). By any reckoning, the Mimbres of the Mimbres Valley were not a large-scale society, nor do we have any reason to believe that other drainages in the Mimbres region were more densely occupied. The total population of the Mimbres region, at its peak, could not have been more than tens of thousands, and possibly more like a single ten thousand than any multiple of that figure. Again, larger than the Late Pit House period, but probably less than New York City.

In LeBlanc's (1980b) original discussions, the Black Mountain phase was seen as a local expression of the Casas Grandes system, a major development of the late twelfth through fourteenth centuries in northern Chihuahua. The Black Mountain phase (A.D. 1180 1300) corresponds to the earlier part of this long span. Because of its distance from the Chihuahua center at Casas Grandes, the Mimbres area Black Mountain phase was somewhat attenuated, with low frequencies of Casas Grandes pottery. Casas Grandes sites of this time period had been called Animas phase elsewhere, but "because the Animas phase . . . is ill-defined, it was decided to call sites of the Animas time period in the Mimbres area 'Black Mountain phase'" (LeBlanc 1980b: 280).

A small population spread over a large area is unlikely to develop any complex social or political hierarchies, and indeed there is little evidence for class stratification in Mimbres villages or for any regional system of larger villages dominating smaller settlements. LeBlanc (1983: 148) concluded that "in all probability the Mimbres were an essentially egalitarian people," although he thought an "incipient form of elite" was just beginning to emerge at some sites.

In early Mimbres Foundation publications (e.g., Anyon, Gilman, and LeBlanc 1981; LeBlanc 1980), the boundary between the Mimbres and Black Mountain phases was seen as a hiatus, a break, with nearly complete depopulation followed by partial repopulation. Post-Mimbres populations were thought to be much smaller than the Mimbres peak. The archaeological remains of the post-Mimbres phases differed from those of the Mimbres phase (see Table 1.2). Black Mountain phase pueblos were far fewer in number than those of the Mimbres and were found in lower elevations of the Mimbres Valley. They were built of adobe, rather than stone masonry, and Black Mountain phase pottery assemblages included a number of new types (Chupadero Black-on-white, Playas Red, El Paso Polychrome), none of which are usually considered to be related to Mimbres Black-on-white and its associated wares.

If so, elite emergence was brought to a rude halt with the famous Mimbres Collapse. The consensus view is of a sudden, dramatic end to the Mimbres phase at about A.D. 1150. Unfortunately, we do not know exactly what caused this epochal event. From their earliest visits to the Mimbres Valley, archaeologists have speculated on the Mimbres Collapse. With the end of Mimbres Black- on-white, the whole population appears to have left, or died, or gone to heaven. What happened? Bandelier speculated that malaria carried off the Mimbres; Gladwin suggested an early Apache bloodletting on a scale not seen again until John Wayne and the movies; later authors (e.g., LeBlanc 1983) have proposed movements to Casas Grandes. Certainly, there was a radical change in the area's archaeology, but in Section 4 I will discuss the possibility that the perceived collapse reflects more our inability to understand that change than an actual prehistoric catastrophe.

But other elements of the record suggest continuity. First, many large Mimbres phase sites have some evidence of limited occupation into the post-Mimbres period. On most sites, this evidence is simply the presence of a thin post- Mimbres ceramic assemblage, but on a few sites, small post- Mimbres adobe room blocks are built directly over earlier Mimbres room blocks. Second, burial patterns show interesting continuities. Most Mimbres burials were inhumations in subfloor pits, often with a "killed" bowl over the head, but a small number of late Mimbres burials were cremations, with the ashes placed in jars which were

8

then covered by upside-down, "killed" bowls and buried in subfloor pits. The latter practice seems to presage post-Mimbres patterns. Both subfloor inhumations with "killed" bowls and cremations in pots with "killed" bowl covers are found at Black Mountain phase sites (LeBlanc 1980b), and cremations in jars are typical of the later Cliff phase. Therefore, more recent reevaluation has tempered the original "cultural break" view somewhat: "we cannot accept without qualification that population displacement occurred. At the same time, we feel, however intuitively, that the changes between the Classic Mimbres and Black Mountain periods are indicative of profound reorganization and cultural displacement, if not replacement of population" (Nelson and LeBlanc 1986: 247).

Mimbres area shows little evidence of reoccupation until the protohistoric arrival of Apache groups (late A.D. 1500s or early 1600s). Ceramic Stage (A.D. 200 - 1500) -- Reserve District The Reserve district (see Figure I-4) is a small southern extension of a much larger, poorly defined branch of the Mogollon that has been variously called Alpine, Cibola, or Pine Lawn. The Reserve district is only a projection of this cultural area into southwestern New Mexico, but, curiously, it is perhaps the most thoroughly studied portion of that larger cultural area (Haury 1936a; Martin, various; Nesbitt 1938). Up to the Pueblo period, the cultural history of the Reserve district is essentially the same as that of the Mimbres region. After the end of the Late Pit House period, the Reserve district differs from the Mimbres in ceramics and settlement plan. These differences have suggested, to many archaeologists, that the Reserve district was heavily influenced (and even colonized) by Anasazi populations to the north (see, e.g., Martin and Rinaldo 1950: 568).

The Cliff phase in the Mimbres Valley was even smaller in extent (and population) than the Black Mountain phase. Although the adobe pueblo architecture and cremation burials in jars continued, the Cliff phase was seen as a major break from the earlier Black Mountain phase, with a hiatus separating the two (LeBlanc 1980b). The most striking characteristic of Cliff phase sites is the ceramic assemblage, in which most decorated ceramics (Gila Polychrome, Tonto Polychrome, and Pinto Polychrome) are a series of decorated types jointly termed "Salado." "Salado" is neither a phase nor period, but instead represents the extraordinary distribution of these very distinctive types, which are abundant at contemporary sites from Phoenix to Casas Grandes (Doyel and Haury 1976; Nelson and LeBlanc 1986: 1-14). LeBlanc (1980b) interpreted the Cliff phase in southwestern New Mexico as a repopulation of the area by migrants from a collapsed Casas Grandes who in effect "bought into" the Salado regional system; this population was concentrated in the Cliff Valley, and Cliff phase sites in the Mimbres Valley represented secondary movements from the overcrowded Cliff Valley into the empty Mimbres Valley (Nelson and LeBlanc 1986).

Following the Late Pit House period, the Reserve district sequence includes the Reserve and Tularosa phases. The Reserve phase is poorly dated but is assumed to be roughly contemporary with the Mimbres phase (i.e., A.D. 1000 to 1150). The Reserve phase is marked by Reserve Black-on-white pottery and small (four-to-eight-room) masonry pueblolike structures, often clustered in a community pattern around a central Great Kiva. Reserve phase settlements are widely dispersed over the landscape, both along river and creek valleys and in upland settings. The following Tularosa phase (A.D. 1175-1200 to 1350-1400) may someday be subdivided into two phases: an earlier "Apache Creek phase," characterized by medium-sized pueblos with associated square kivalike pit structures (see, e.g., Peckham, Wendorf, and Ferdon 1956; Martin, Rinaldo, and Barter 1957) and a later "classic" Tularosa phase of very large, multistoried pueblos (see, e.g., Hough 1907, 1914). It is the latter that are best known. By the late Tularosa phase in the Reserve district, population seems to have aggregated into a few very large sites located in the prime agricultural areas near the larger creeks and rivers. Following the Tularosa phase, the Reserve district apparently was abandoned.

The Cliff phase on the Gila River is a very different story; a series of very large Cliff phase sites is located in the Cliff Valley and on nearby Duck and Mule creeks (Hammack, Bussey, and Ice 1966; Nelson 1988). While the Cliff phase may have been a population minimum in the Mimbres Valley, it might have been a maximum in the Upper Gila Valley (Fitting 1972; Chapman, Gossett, and Gossett 1985). Moreover, large Salado-related sites are known from the Animas and Playas drainages in extreme southwestern New Mexico (O'Laughlin, Foster, and Ravesloot 1986), discussed below under "Southern Hidalgo County."

Ceramic Stage (A.D. 200 - 1500) -- Jornada District Unlike the Reserve district history, the Jornada Mogollon sequence is not so much a divergence from the Mimbres Mogollon as a record of a completely different culture area (this statement represents the clear consensus but an opposing view, stressing the similarities between the two areas, exists; see Lekson 1985). Only a very small portion of the Jornada falls into the southeastern corner of southwestern New Mexico, as defined here. The relevant phases include

Consensus is not common in archaeology; unanimity is indeed rare. But most archaeologists seem to agree that after the Saladoan Cliff phase, the twelve-century record of the Ceramic era ended about A.D. 1400. The

9

the Mesilla, the Dona Ana (perhaps), and the El Paso phases (Whalen in LeBlanc and Whalen 1980; Lehmer 1948).

Lake San Luis, which straddles the border at the extreme southern tip of Hidalgo County). Earlier San Luis sites have nothing but plain brownwares; later San Luis phase sites have small amounts of Mimbres Black-on-white.

The Mesilla phase (A.D. 600 to 1100-1150) is a pit house horizon with brown ware ceramics. In its later stages, Mesilla phase ceramic assemblages include small amounts of Boldface and Classic Mimbres Black-on-white. The Mesilla phase may be followed by the Dona Ana phase, an intermediate stage of small pueblos (with or without associated pit structures). The reality of the Dona Ana phase is a matter of considerable debate, and since the data fueling that debate mostly derive from well outside southwestern New Mexico, I do not use the Dona Ana phase in this report.

There may be no relation between the San Luis phase and the later Animas phase pueblos. Most archaeologists consider the Animas phase to be an actual expansion of Chihuahua populations into the Southern Hidalgo district. Presumably, this intrusion was closely tied to the major Chihuahuan center at Casas Grandes (DeAtley and Findlow 1982).

The El Paso phase can be usefully divided into early (A.D. 1150-1200 to 1300) and late (A.D. 1300 to 1450+) halves. (The early El Paso phase would include much of the Dona Ana phase materials.) Both the early and late El Paso phases are characterized by adobe pueblos and El Paso Polychrome and Chupadero Black-on-white ceramics. The very distinctive El Paso Polychrome has earlier and later forms (corresponding to the early and late El Paso phases); in addition, late El Paso phase sites often have small amounts of Salado and Chihuahuan polychromes. El Paso phase sites are located near agricultural lands, either along major streams (such as the Rio Grande) or on less permanent desert water sources. Ceramic Stage (A.D. 200 - 1500) -- Southern Hidalgo District Southern Hidalgo County, in the "bootheel" of New Mexico, has long been known for its Chihuahuan ruins. A series of very large adobe pueblos with Chihuahuan pottery, similar to that found at the great site of Casas Grandes (eighty miles to the southeast in Mexico), has captured archaeological attention since the 1920s (Kidder, Cosgrove, and Cosgrove 1949). The Southern Hidalgo sites are commonly referred to as Animas phase, named for the Animas Valley in which many of them are found. The sites are very large (100+ rooms) adobe pueblos, often built around plazas; very rarely, a Casas Grandes-style ball court is present. High proportions of Chihuahuan polychromes (mainly Ramos Polychrome) are a further indication of close ties to Casas Grandes. The dating of the Animas phase is a matter of major debate, discussed in detail in Section 4.A; for this brief summary, it will be sufficient to note that the Animas phase is later than the Mimbres phase. We know a great deal about the Southern Hidalgo sites and a great deal about Casas Grandes (DiPeso 1974), but almost nothing about the area between them. We have learned a little, but only a little, about what preceded the Animas phase. This was a pit house and brownware horizon termed the San Luis phase (for

10

be very large, but in dry years all that remain of the lakes are sand flats.

Chapter 2 Effective Environment This section describes the environment of southwestern New Mexico, particularly those aspects of the environment that may have influenced human use and occupation in the past. Southwestern New Mexico is synonymous with Mimbres. Much of the following discussion centers on what we know of Mimbres economy and subsistence.

Southwestern New Mexico (Figure I-1) encompasses the northern half of this area: the Mogollon Uplands, the basin- and-range Desert Zone, and a Transitional Zone between the two. The Transitional Zone, where permanent streams flow out of the mountain uplands and into the lower deserts, is of particular importance for archaeology. Use of these three environmental divisions provides an effective way to relate archaeology to the environment of southwestern New Mexico (Lekson 1978a: 58-63), and following sections will discuss surveys, etc., in terms of the Mogollon Uplands, Transitional Zone, and basin-and-range Desert Zone.

The effective environment can only be judged empirically, from actual human behavior (archaeological or ethnological), or from a robust body of theory. Lacking the latter, we can do much worse than looking at the preindustrial human beings who subsisted in southwestern New Mexico. The Apache provide models for the effective environment for hunter-gatherers, while early Historic period subsistence-level farmers provide models for the effective agricultural environment.

Biotic Zones It is impossible to summarize the range of environments in southwestern New Mexico in a single series of statistics or a set of tables. Use of biotic zones (Brown 1980; Brown and Lowe 1980) is the best available way to compress the diversity of environments into manageable units.

Southwestern New Mexico constitutes the major portion of the Mimbres region, but that region also extended into southeastern Arizona and northern Chihuahua. This huge area encompasses an impressive range of environments, from barren deserts that see eight inches of rain a year to green pine forests on high mountain slopes that annually receive over twenty-five inches of rain and snowfall.

In the Mogollon Uplands, the spruce, fir, and aspen forests of the very highest elevations (Rocky Mountain subalpine forest zone) grade, with decreasing elevation, into extensive ponderosa pines forests (montane conifer forest zone). Together, these two higher-elevation biotic zones cover about one-half of the Mogollon Plateau; the lower half supports pinyon-juniper forests and mixed pinyon-juniper forest and grasslands (Great Basin conifer woodland zone). The zonation of subalpine to montane conifer to Great Basin conifer is largely elevational, but with the general drainage pattern to the south, the zones are also directional, from north to south. Along the southern face and foothills of the Mogollon Plateau is a narrow zone of oak forest (Madrean evergreen woodland zone) which, as discussed below, may have been a critical resource area in prehistory. This oak forest along the south face of the Mogollon Plateau is a thin band separating the pinyon-juniper and ponderosa pine of the Mogollon Plateau from the Chihuahuan Desert to the south.

2A. The Landscape The north end of the Mimbres region is uplands: 5,000 square miles of volcanic uplands form the Mogollon Plateau (a good term, but seldom used in archaeology), ranging from 7,500 to 10,000 feet elevation. This upland is drained by the three forks of the Upper Gila River, the San Francisco River (a tributary of the Gila), and the Mimbres River. All three flow to the south; the Gila and San Francisco bend to the west and eventually flow into the Colorado, while the Mimbres disappears into an inland basin. A series of similar basins separate the Mogollon Plateau from the northern tip of the Sierra Madre Occidental, the foothills of which reach into the southwesternmost corner of New Mexico. The Sierra Madre, reaching elevations of over 10,000 feet, are a more massive range by far than the Mogollon Plateau.

The Chihuahuan Desert, the biotic zone of the basinand-range, has upper and lower (elevational) subdivisions. The higher portions of the desert are grasslands (semidesert grassland zone), while the lower Chihuahuan Desert is marked by the ubiquitous creosote bush (Chihuahuan desertscrub zone).

Thus the Mimbres region is framed by the Mogollon Uplands on the north and the Sierra Madre, in Mexico, on the south. Between the two is the northwestern arm of the Chihuahuan Desert, a dry grassland between about 4,000 and 5,000 feet in elevation. Linear, craggy mountain ranges, too low to support the extensive mountain forests like those of the Mogollon Uplands or Sierra Madre, separate a series of broad basins, running from the Rio Grande on the east into Arizona on the west. The basins are hydrologically closed; they have no outlet. The deep centers of each basin hold intermittent lakes, or playas. In wet seasons, playas can

The Transitional Zone is the ecotone between the Mogollon Uplands and the Chihuahuan Desert, where fingers of desert extend up drainages into the foreslopes of the Mogollon Plateau. The Transition Zone is, of course, somewhat nebulous, but generally it includes the drainages and hills in a broad area between 32o30' and 33o north latitude.

11

Moving south out of southwestern New Mexico, the land dips through the desert grasslands into the desertscrub and then slowly rises back up through grasslands to the foothills of the Sierra Madre. The biotic zones of the Mogollon Plateau are repeated in ascending order in the Sierra Madre, with one major and very significant exception: replacing the extensive pinyon-juniper (Great Basin conifer woodland zone) of the north is a greatly expanded oak forest, the encinal of the Sierra Madre foothills (Madrean evergreen woodland zone).

As noted above, the reconstruction of past environments much prior to 2000 B.P. is in many ways an empty exercise, since detailed archaeological knowledge of southwestern New Mexico begins no earlier than about A.D. 200, by which time the environment was very much like we see it today. Indeed, if certain cosmetic changes were made -removing 200,000 cows, 65,000 people, 7,000 miles of highways and railroads, and a dozen open-pit mines and smelters (and their effects) -- the Mimbres area today might look something like it did during archaeological times. Modern impacts on the environment have been major (see Ackerly et al. 1988: 41-52 for an excellent analysis of historic impacts on the basin-and- range desert grasslands), but the damage is not so complete as to erase the biotic zones that had potential significance for prehistoric land-use practices (Brown and Lowe 1980).

Long-term Environmental Change We know that long-term climatic change has occurred in the Southwest and that the environment 10,000 years ago was significantly different than that we see today. However, as discussed in Sections 1.B and 4.A, we have almost no information about the earliest archaeological periods in southwestern New Mexico (Paleo-Indian and Archaic, up to about A.D. 200), so there is no urgency in evaluating the spotty evidence for earliest environments and long-term environmental change before A.D. 200. However we might set the stage, the archaeological actors are presently missing.

Short-term Environmental Change Given the shallow time depth of the archaeology of southwestern New Mexico, short-term environmental changes, and particularly -- for the agricultural Mimbres -- yearly fluctuations in rainfall, are of more interest. Prehistoric rainfall (and, by extension, agricultural success) can be determined by study of tree-ring widths. The most widely cited analysis of prehistoric rainfall in southwestern New Mexico has been Minnis's (1985). From direct ring width departures, Minnis determined that

Moreover, appropriate environmental data are not currently available for this period in southwestern New Mexico. Long-term climatic (and vegetational) change is (usually) caused by global-scale phenomena, but the nature of change, locally, must be reconstructed with local data. The classic monograph on the "last 10,000 years" in southeastern Arizona (Martin 1963) suggests itself as a reference applicable to southwestern New Mexico, but there are two major problems with this early effort: it is solely pollen-based, and one of its key pollen stations has been shown to be seriously flawed (see Hall 1985 for a discussion of the latter problem and an excellent review of recent pollen studies). To the east of southwestern New Mexico, a small series of fossil pack-rat midden studies has been ably summarized by Ackerly (in Ackerly et al. 1988: 52-63).

the best time for crop harvest was the Classic Mimbres period, from A.D. 1050 to 1099. The rest of the early Classic Mimbres period was usually good for agriculture, with the exception of a single thirteen-year drought in the 1030s and 1040s. However, toward the latter part of the Classic Mimbres period, starting about A.D. 1090, the precipitation pattern was closer to the average for the whole prehistoric period. . . . Not only was the first part of the period quite moist, but it [rainfall] was also quite predictable, indicating a generally favorable agricultural climate. The last part of the Classic Mimbres period was not only relatively unpredictable, but also less moist, indicative of a poorer agricultural climate. (Minnis 1985: 152-53).

In what is perhaps the best recent review of all the data, Wills (1988: 57-58) concluded, "By 4000 B.P. regional environmental boundaries had come to approximate their modern extent, but the period of increased effective moisture between 4000 and 2000 B.P. probably favored increased complexity in plant and animal resource distribution through the continued expansion of pinyon-juniper woodlands and savannahs and the episodic resurgence of basin lakes." The pack rat midden data specific to south-central New Mexico appear to agree: "In general, environmental shifts in the study area over the last [10,000] years parallel the climatic changes from the Late Wisconsin though the Late Holocene. Transition from more mesic to xeric conditions prevailed, with corresponding transitions from woodland to grassland to desert-scrub vegetation occurring at moderate elevations" (Ackerly in Ackerly et al. 1988: 62).

Minnis used tree-ring data from the Reserve area, at the extreme northwest corner of southwestern New Mexico, and his conclusions are valid for that area. New tree-ring data from the Mimbres Valley itself have been analyzed by Chet Shaw (n.d.), of the Laboratory of Tree-Ring Research, University of Arizona. Shaw's analysis greatly refines, but does not radically contradict, Minnis's study of the Reserve area, but Shaw shows that the Mimbres and Reserve areas differed significantly, sometimes dramatically. For the period

12

from A.D. 600 to about 1000, droughts in the Mimbres were less frequent and of shorter duration than those in the Reserve area; from A.D. 1000 to 1100, the moisture situation in both areas was relatively good, with the exception of a series of severe, back-to-back droughts (from 1034 to 1044) in the Reserve, but not the Mimbres, area. (The dendroclimatological record in the Mimbres ends at about 1106.) In the Reserve area, the generally favorable conditions of the 1000s began to deteriorate slightly in the late 1000s and the early the 1100s. The second half of the 1200s was marked by a series of back-to- back droughts, with over two-thirds of the years between 1250 and 1286 marked by severe drought. The dendroclimatological record for the Reserve area ends in 1286.

corrective to the notion that people hop on the agricultural bandwagon the minute a seed salesman sets up shop in town. They don't. Hunter-gatherers become farmers because they have to. In the southern Southwest, it is useful to think of farming as replacing some element or aspect of hunting-and-gathering economies. Farming (food production) never completely replaced hunting and gathering (food collection) for any Southwestern society. Even after the switch was made, hunting and gathering remained critically important to Southwestern farmers. The same environmental constraints that molded earlier, purely hunting-and-gathering groups affected the later agricultural groups as well. These constraints are constant because they act on the hunted-andgathered resources, not on their human harvesters. We can write poems (and grow corn), but only God can make a tree (and the acorns on it) -- at least until the advent of agribusiness. Thus it is critically important to understand hunting-and-gathering ecology, as well as the ecology of farming, in order to comprehend the effective environment of prehistoric Southwestern peoples like the Mimbres.

2B. Prehistoric Economies and Their Scales To understand how prehistoric peoples articulated with this environment, it is necessary to briefly review prehistoric subsistence economies in the Southwest. We traditionally view societies such as the Mimbres as settled village agriculturalists, much like the modern Pueblos. Two potential misconceptions could arise from this view: the first concerns our notions of prehistoric agriculture, and the second concerns the regional scales on which Southwestern agricultural societies operated.

Scale Archaeologists and interpreters often think of prehistoric Southwestern societies on comparatively small scales. A single site is treated as a self-sufficient, contained community -- Pueblo Bonito is conceived as similar to Taos -- and the relevant landscape is limited to the nearest farmland, plus some farther mountain shrines. Small scales are pernicious. The people of all societies in the Southwest, historic or prehistoric, were hunter-gatherers. It is the amount of agriculture and its criticality that vary. In some societies, like the Apache, agriculture is either absent or not of major importance. Other societies, like Zuni, depend on agriculture but continue to obtain animal protein and critical wild plant food through hunting and gathering. The Zuni hinterland goes well beyond their fields; it is a huge area that encompasses most of west-central New Mexico and east-central Arizona (Ferguson and Hart 1985).

Prehistoric Subsistence Economies A simple view of prehistoric economies in the Southwest dichotomizes between hunter-gatherers and farmers. Hunter- gatherers subsist on the fruits of nature; farmers work for a living, attempting to bend nature to their will. The story usually goes like this: Peoples of the earliest periods of Southwestern prehistory (Paleo-Indian and Archaic, represented in archaeological sites by stone tools only) are usually seen as wandering hunter-gatherers, and those of later periods (with their settled villages and pottery) are seen as farmers. This is a neat dichotomy, but, unfortunately, real life (as always) fails to fit the most convenient model. We can be fairly certain that the very earliest Paleo-Indians didn't farm, but increasingly we are finding evidence of corn and other crops in the later Archaic period (Huckell and Huckell 1988); so perhaps the division into early-hunting and late-farming economics is not so neat. Of more significance for the Mimbres is the enormous importance of hunting and gathering to later agricultural societies.

It has taken a series of modern Indian land-claims cases to bring home just how large an area a "sedentary" Southwestern society with a traditional economy needs to survive. People need access to a lot of different environments, and they need a great many square miles per capita of those varied environments. Environmental diversity has long been recognized as a nice thing for hunter-gatherers, but, unfortunately, archaeologists traditionally have thought of biotic diversity on far too small a scale. To many archaeologists, the margin between the grassland valley bottom and the juniper-covered valley slopes is an ecotone, or ecological boundary, indicating diversity of potential adaptive importance. It may be a useful ecotone for a shrew or a kangaroo rat, but that is not a realistic scale

Generally speaking, hunting and gathering is a lot less work than farming. People buckle down and farm only when the population level upsets the delicate balance between consumers and hunted-gathered resources or when some outside factor (for example, environmental change) throws that balance out. While this view is not universally accepted by anthropologists, it is a fair

13

for people. Consider the areas occupied by the Navajo, by the Apache, and by the Pueblos. The Navajo historically occupied (at about 1800) an area the size of a small European country; the Apache held sway over an even larger domain. Our stereotype of Pueblo settlement is a highly aggregated farming village, but the hunting- gathering hinterlands for these villages were enormous. The area occupied by Pueblo groups at contact stretched from Flagstaff, Arizona, to the Great Plains -- a distance of almost four hundred miles. These are scales that make sense for human adaptation in the Southwest; not a valley, or even a drainage, but major physiographic provinces -- half a state and even larger.

The Colorado Plateau is not a particularly good place to hunt and gather. Because there is relatively little for hunter-gatherers to eat, Anasazi populations relied on corn agriculture from very early on. The Sonoran Desert, on the other hand, is a rich place to hunt and gather. Indeed, the Sonoran Desert has a carefully nurtured reputation as a great place to eat. Not so the Chihuahuan Desert. The Chihuahuan Desert -- and recall that only its northernmost extent pokes up into the Southwest -- is the Jornada del Muerto, the Journey of Death (in the north) and the Bolson de los Muertos, the Lake of the Dead (in the south). You bring your lunch to the Chihuahuan Desert.

2.C. The Effective Environment of the Mimbres

Superficially, the Chihuahuan and Sonoran deserts are similar: both are basin-and-range landscapes, and the creosote bush is everywhere. There are, of course, substantial biotic and climatic differences, which will not be summarized here. Instead, this section will briefly discuss differences in the structure of biotic zones within each desert and its upland margins that make a significant impact on hunter-gatherer economies. This discussion is based on the biotic zones mapped by Brown and Lowe (1980).

The large Mimbres villages were located in the narrow Transitional Zone along the base of the Mogollon Plateau, where the permanent streams of the plateau leave the uplands and flow into the upper Chihuahuan grasslands. This zone marked the narrow overlap of two critical environmental parameters for prehistoric farming: the permanent water of the montane uplands and the long growing season of the low desert. Settlement expanded beyond this zone, but by far the largest Mimbres sites -- in both number and size -- are found along creeks like the Mimbres, the Rio Arenas, the Gila, and the San Francisco, where these streams escape their mountain gorges and cut broad valleys in the warm desert grasslands.

The Sonoran desert portion of the Southwest centers on the Arizona Upland division of the larger Sonoran Desert, interfingered with the furthest reaches of the Lower Colorado division. The Lower Colorado division is pretty tough country (home of the Sand Papagos, among others), but the Arizona Upland is remarkable for the richness of its floral resources, a point to which we will return in a moment. The larger geography of the Sonoran Desert is also of interest here; essentially, the desert is bounded on the south by the sea and on the north by the Mogollon Rim. Thus there is a direction, a slope, to the Sonoran Desert, from mountains (in the north), through a foothills zone of encinal (oak-agave associations), through the desert itself, to the seashore (in the southwest).

All of the large Mimbres pueblos are found in such a setting, between 4,000 feet and about 5,500 feet elevation along the "transition" zone between the ponderosa/pinyon- juniper uplands and the low Chihuahuan Desert. The consistent location of large Mimbres populations is testimony to the decisive role of ecology in shaping simple agricultural societies like the Mimbres. This Transitional Zone, between the Mogollon Uplands and the low desert, was agriculturally optimal; but the hunting-and- gathering landscape was far, far larger.

The Chihuahuan Desert in the Southwest is structured very differently. The desert, in effect, forms a vast plain between the Mogollon Mountains (to the north) and the Sierra Madre Occidental (to the south). Biotic zones are symmetrically distributed, from mountain to desert and back again to mountain, with one major exception: whereas the desert grasslands give way to pinyon-juniper woodlands to the north, in the south this altitudinal zone is filled by encinal, the oak forests.

The Mimbres left us no maps, and we must define their domain from both the remains we think are indicative (such as pottery) and the ecology that defines how remains such as pottery functioned when they were not archaeology, but tools used by real, live people. The following discussion will examine the biogeography of the Mimbres region in terms of both hunting-gathering and farming. To understand just how extensive this area was, we must consider the larger Southwest and home in on the portion appropriate to the Mimbres.

In contrast, biotic variation on the Colorado Plateau is patchy, not zonal. Pinyon-juniper forests form rather evenly distributed patches in the broader desert grasslands. This resource structure is basically homogeneous, at least when compared to the directional zonation of the Sonoran Desert and the asymmetrical zonation of the Chihuahuan Desert.

How Many Southwests? The Southwest of the United State is divided into three parts: the Colorado Plateau, the Chihuahuan Desert, and the Sonoran Desert (Figure I-3). These tags mix physiographic and biotic metaphors, but this inaccuracy will not prove fatal to our central interest.

14

The "area-in-between" the Sonoran and Chihuahuan deserts is potentially of great interest. Most small-scale maps show the Chihuahuan and Sonoran deserts slamming up against each other, but this is not quite accurate. The "area-in-between" the two deserts is also where the Colorado Plateau most closely approaches the Sierra Madre. With four major environments in effect meeting, the "area-in-between" contains more useful diversity per degree of latitude and longitude (which is the scale on which we should be thinking) than any other part of the Southwest.

Meat is a different matter. The basic large game animals over most of the Southwest are deer and pronghorn antelope; but we know from sequence after archaeological sequence in the Southwest that the minute people settled down and began to seriously multiply, the deer and the antelope ceased to play, and discouraging words were undoubtedly heard from the would-be deer slayers who came home with nothing but rabbit. It is entirely possible to hunt out deer and antelope both locally and regionally; the pronghorn of New Mexico were all but wiped out in the early part of this century. Elk and a few other large creatures are also available, but an inventory of faunal remains would probably indicate the quarries of choice (i.e., that offered the best return for the least work) were deer and pronghorn.

Nuts, Berries, and Meat How does the southern Southwest stack up for huntergatherer resources? Some critical aspects of the floral and faunal landscapes that slip through more generalized ecological measures will be addressed here. These are winter resources and big-package products.

The real wild cards in hunting and gathering in the Southwest are the big, all but inexhaustible meat sources: migratory fowl, (possibly) ocean fish, and bison. The extent to which ethnographic and archaeological groups actually ate birds is a matter of some mystery, in part because archaeological bird remains were usually analyzed by specialists other than the faunal expert and are seldom incorporated in subsistence reconstructions.

Winter and early spring are the lean seasons in the Southwest. Stored foods are necessary to make it through. Reliable plant foods for storage in the southern Southwest include agaves, acorns, mesquite beans, and pinyon nuts, in approximate order of importance. Pinyon is, of course, the signature of the Colorado Plateau, and pinyon-juniper forests form the northern margin of the two low deserts. Pinyon is a trendy, but unreliable, food. To rely on pinyon puts you in the same boat as the Great Basin folks; they managed, but just barely.

Fish do not seem to be a very popular food among most native Southwestern groups, partly because local freshwater species are not very efficient meat sources. (Trout's great, but you wouldn't want to try to provide protein for the whole village of Taos from trout.) Ocean fish are a different matter; both shellfish and school fish can be had in quantities large enough to feed the multitudes. And we know that groups as far inland as the Mimbres were very familiar with ocean species (Jett and Moyle 1986). I am not suggesting that the Mimbres imported tons of red snapper from the Sonoran coast, but the regional knowledge indicated by the Mimbres-Pacific Coast connection has important implications for mobile settlement patterns and seasonal rounds.

Acorns are another good storable food. Various oak species are found in the mountains and mountain fringes of both deserts. But there are two places to go for really big oak forests: the encinal of the Sierra Madre and the oak chaparral along the base of the Mogollon Rim in Arizona. Note that these zones are, respectively, along the south margin of the Chihuahuan Desert and the north margin of the Sonoran Desert. Mesquite beans were a staple, but the aboriginal distribution of mesquite is a matter of debate. Mesquite must have been common along many washes and streams; however, the present ubiquity of this nasty thorny plant is probably an unsought byproduct of cattle ranching. As a result, we are not sure what to say about mesquite and its distribution in the Southwest.

Fish and fowl are possible meat sources that must be kept in mind, but bison are the true salmon (or caribou) of the midcontinent. Bison must have had a magnetic effect on hunter-gatherers in southern New Mexico, but we have never considered bison and the Mimbres, since we don't find bison bones in Mimbres farming villages. Would we recognize the remains of Mimbres hunting parties on the plains? Probably not.

Agaves were the premier storable plant food of the ethnohistoric southern Southwest. There are agaves in both the Chihuahuan and Sonoran deserts, but by far the greatest variety and densities are found in a band knifing across the southern Southwest, from the Sierra Madre, through the international Four Corners, and along the base of the Mogollon Rim -- a distribution almost precisely parallel to that of the oak forests and chaparral.

In any event, bison and agaves are not exactly interchangeable. Nutritionally, that is comparing apples and oranges -- or, rather, comparing meat and potatoes. However, these are the kinds of reliable, bulk, big-package resources that focus a subsistence system and define its shape. Below, we will discuss how historic groups aligned themselves around these resources.

15

The big rivers of the Sonoran Desert are much smaller than the Rio Grande. Instead of one really big river, there are two medium-sized rivers, the Salt and the Gila; for example, the Gila, which is the smaller of the two, runs about 373,000 acre-feet per year above Coolidge Dam -- one-third of the Rio Grande's flow. And there are half a dozen small- to medium-sized rivers of some length in the Sonoran Desert, like the Santa Cruz, the San Pedro, the Verde, the Agua Fria, and a couple of others. These are manageable creeks, and the prehistoric Hohokam managed them very nicely, up to a point. Thus, the big rivers of the Sonoran Desert were much better suited to simple riverine irrigation than the big river of the Chihuahuan Desert, and one result was the very impressive irrigation systems of the Phoenix Basin Hohokam. These systems were of a far larger scale than anything attempted by the Mimbres. The Mimbres likely learned a lot about diversion irrigation from the Hohokam.

Corn, Beans, and Squash In many parts of the Colorado Plateau, it is possible to grow corn by dry farming (relying only on rainfall). Some parklands in the Mogollon Uplands, which biotically are Colorado Plateau-like, can also support farming by rainfall alone. Most of the Sonoran and Chihuahuan deserts are far too arid for simple dry farming. The "area-in-between" is slightly uplifted and may be one of the few areas in the southern deserts that might actually support dry farming. There are some localized wet spots (discussed below), but for most of the southern Southwest, dry farming is out. Moisture must be managed, one way or another, to get the job done. In effect, this means concentrating rainfall runoff or irrigating from river or stream waters. Rainfall runoff was historically used through akchin farming (also called temporal farming on the Rio Grande), in which crops are planted at the mouths of small canyons, and rainfall runoff is minimally manipulated to spread local storm runoff over the fields. Akchin techniques are chancy because summer rainstorms are very localized affairs, and the "basket" to catch this rain in is a pretty small drainage system. Since the basket cannot be moved around to follow rainstorms, there's a good chance that it will not catch all the rain necessary to produce a crop.

Naturally wet areas, or cienegas, are excellent places to grow corn with almost no irrigation labor. Cienegas are not uncommon in high mountain settings, but they are few and far between in the desert, which makes their distribution all the more important. It appears that desert cienegas are much more common in the "areain-between" (Hendrickson and Minckley 1984) than in the Sonoran and Chihuahuan deserts proper, but no good map of cienegas in southwestern New Mexico exists.

Riverine irrigation, in effect, uses a bigger basket -- a huge natural drainage system. There is reasonable certainty that somewhere in a large drainage, useful precipitation will be "caught," if only last year's mountain snows. However, manipulating that moisture, once it is roaring down a river channel, is much more difficult than akchin farming. Riverine irrigation is tricky, and there appear to be some optimum stream sizes for simple, prepump, gravity irrigation techniques (Lekson 1986c).

The most notable wetlands outside the "area-inbetween" are riverine wetlands. Riverine wetlands are bottomlands that are subirrigated by very high water tables and periodically renewed by floodwaters. In the Sonoran Desert, there is a major riverine wetland on a short length of the Gila just above its confluence with the Salt, and in the Chihuahuan Desert, there were limited wetlands on the Rio Grande below Elephant Butte and much more extensive wetlands at the river's confluence with the Conchos.

Irrigation hydrology is critical, and the hydrologies of the two deserts are very different. In the New Mexican portion of the Chihuahuan Desert, there is one big river, the Rio Grande (or Big River). The Rio Grande is a really big river; 1,200,000 acre-feet of water flow per year at San Marcial, approximately. It has only one significant tributary, the Conchos in Chihuahua (which is almost out of the Mimbres sphere). Historically, people irrigated from the Rio Grande, but it was a terribly difficult and discouraging business until the construction of Elephant Butte Dam in the early 1900s. An industrial technology was needed to make the Rio Grande a useful stream. In the remainder of the Chihuahuan Desert, simple irrigation worked for only a few short stretches of a few short mountain streams, such as the Gila and the Mimbres. The Upper Gila in the Mimbres area runs at about 89,000 to 141,000 acre-feet annually, and the Rio Mimbres itself runs at a modest and manageable 7,200 to 9,400 acre-feet per year.

This flying tour of 150,000 square miles of the southern Southwest sets the stage for considering what real people actually did on this landscape. We are interested in the native peoples, not ourselves, and we study them through "ethnohistory" -- the history of people without history, ethnic groups that have left no written documents or archives. Despite numerous problems, ethnohistoric data can provide critical insights for conceptualizing and evaluating differences in how the Sonoran and Chihuahuan deserts were used. Ancient Mimbrenos, Chiricahua Apaches, and Hispanic Labradores To illustrate the application of these kinds of data in understanding the effective environment, I will briefly summarize selected information about modern hunter-gatherers and modern subsistence farmers in the Mimbres area of southwestern New Mexico (Lekson

16

1986a, 1986b, n.d.). The generally accepted view of Mimbres subsistence holds that the Mogollon peoples of southwestern New Mexico relied on corn, perhaps from the very first appearance of ceramics and pit house villages, but at the least from the Late Pit House period on (LeBlanc 1983; Minnis 1985; Shafer and Taylor 1986). However, we know that hunting and gathering played a very important part in Mimbres economy, just as it did among the early historic Zuni.

By historical accident, the Mescalero Apache's agave source was north of the presidios, and they had bison. The Western Apache were, literally, above it all: the resources of the plateau and the agaves and acorns were available in one concentrated zone. It was the Chiricahua (and particularly the eastern Chiricahua) who had the longest and most vulnerable seasonal round; intriguingly, the eastern Chiricahua occupied almost exactly the same territory as the prehistoric Mimbres.

The most famous hunter-gatherers in the southern Southwest were, of course, the Apache. The eastern Chiricahua occupied the area earlier inhabited by the Mimbres, but the Chiricahua were only one of a series of Apache groups arrayed across the old Mogollon culture area. The Apache occupied the mountain margin separating the Colorado Plateau from the low deserts -- precisely the same area as the mountain Mogollon. From east to west were the Mescalero, the Chiricahua, and the Western Apache.

Since the eastern Chiricahua occupied the same area as the Mimbres, their use of hunted-and-gathered resources can serve as a potential model for this aspect of Mimbres subsistence. During their seasonal round, the Chiricahua spent summer and early fall in the Mogollon Uplands and the Transitional Zone and winter and spring in the desert and foothills of northern Chihuahua, eating acorns and agaves (Lekson 1985). This area coincides almost precisely with the distribution of sites with Mimbres ceramics (Lekson 1986a). Mimbres pueblos are found along the small creeks flowing out of the Mogollons into the Chihuahuan Desert, but nonstructural (or better, nonpueblo) Mimbres sites cover a much larger area almost exactly the same area as the eastern Chiricahua. The nearly identical geographic scale is an indication that the Mimbres were probably using many of the same resources as the Apache. How important these hunted-and-gathered resources were in Mimbres subsistence is a matter of debate (Lekson n.d.), but it seems clear that the scale of the area used by the Mimbres for hunting and gathering approached the huge scales used by the historic Zuni.

Apache mobility (economically motivated movement) is almost a cliche, but not all Apaches were equally mobile. All evidently moved north to south on an annual round, which was predicated on the seasonal availability of plant foods. "Home," or the summer/fall end of the round, for all these groups was in an east-west band of mountains, between about 33o and 35o north latitude, running along the base of the Mogollon Rim in Arizona and continuing across the Mogollon and Sacramento mountains in New Mexico. The western Chiricahua extended slightly south of this band into the interesting "area-in-between." Generally speaking, the distance involved in the Apachean seasonal round was determined by the distribution of agave and acorns -- the two critical winter storage foods. Since the main region for these resources was a band slicing across the Southwest at a southeast to northwest angle, the easternmost Apache (Mescalero and eastern Chiricahua) had a very long way to go, while the Western Apache could exploit approximately the same environmental variation within a much smaller area. The Western Apache could go from pinyon-juniper uplands to oak-agave associations in a day's walk. The eastern Chiricahua, however, had to travel hundreds of miles from the Mogollon Uplands of southwestern New Mexico to the encinal and agave country along the foreslopes of the Sierra Madre. The length of this round made it the most vulnerable of all the Apache seasonal movements. In the early and middle 1800s, when presidios (Spanish frontier forts) and "scalp hunts" (bounty hunting for Apaches sponsored by the governments of Chihuahua and Sonora) cut off the critical, southern, storable resources, the eastern Chiricahua were in real trouble. To compensate for the lost winter resources, they began serious farming in the Mogollons. Agricultural crops replaced storable, winter season wild crops.

What can ethnohistory tell us about farming in the southern Southwest? At historic contact there simply was not very much farming in the Chihuahuan Desert. In fact, the only candidates for serious farming in the Chihuahuan Desert were the groups around La Junta de los Rios, where the Conchos joins the Rio Grande -- the ultima Thule of the Southwest. That far down, after the Rio Grande has travelled many hundreds of miles through the desert, it is no longer quite such a big river; indeed, at La Junta, the Conchos is by far the bigger of the two. The Rio Grande at La Junta flows at only 654,000 acre-feet annually; the Conchos, at over 2,000,000. These rivers are still too large for simple diversion irrigation. The historic groups around La Junta used two strategies for farming: riverine wetland farming and temporal farming on short tributaries to the river. Around La Junta, riverine wetlands were of major importance; while it is not possible to apportion the reliance on wetlands versus temporal farming, the local river bottomland was a critical arable locus for the people around La Junta, probably because it was the largest, most useful pocket of riverine wetlands on the Rio Grande and Rio Conchos. There was another

17

advantage to this location, too: access to the bison. The La Junta area was, in effect, that part of the southern Southwest where major river systems most closely approached the plains and its bison herds. This nearly unique situation was exploited in an unusual bicultural symbiosis, with a cooperative economy linking settled farmers on the Rio Grande with Plains hunters.

irrigable acreages indicate that important insights can be gained from the ethnohistoric record of Hispanic (and Anglo) subsistence farmers. However, the Mimbres practiced a number of agricultural techniques that modern farmers did not attempt (at least until the CCC). Dry farming in favorable pockets of the Mogollon Upland was, during some periods, common. Check dams, often associated with upland dry farming (Doolittle 1985), are apparently common in the parks and cienegas of the Upland Zone (LeBlanc 1983; J. Neely, personal communication). Significantly, cienegas were the first reported locations of Chiricahua Apache farm plots, when farming became a necessary adjunct to hunting and gathering. More intensive use of side drainages (Creel and Adams 1986) indicates that Mimbres populations may have been higher than those of later farming communities.

The remainder of the Chihuahuan area was occupied by Apaches and a few other poorly known hunter-gatherer groups. In a nutshell, nobody else farmed very much in the Chihuahuan Desert portion of the southern Southwest --the only possible exception being the very poorly known contact groups along the flanks of the Sierra Madre. The really famous ethnohistoric farmers in the southern Southwest were the Pima and the Papago (O'odham) in the Sonoran Desert of Arizona. The Pima were riverine agriculturalists along the Gila, just above its confluence with the Salt. In the late historic period, the Pima used an impressive ditch irrigation system, but the consensus seems to be that Piman agriculture at contact was very much like that of the La Junta groups: planting on river wetlands and floodwater irrigation in the broad floodplain of the Salt. For the Papago, essentially a desert facies of the Pima, grouping crops was possible only by managing storm runoff and by practicing varieties of temporal, or akchin, farming. The Papago were less dependent on farming than the Pima -- or, more precisely, corn made up less of the diet, although its role in the diet may have been critical (we don't know). However, there is no question that farming played a regular and important role in Papago subsistence and a central role in Pima subsistence, while it did not throughout most of the Chihuahuan southern Southwest.

Conclusions The effective environment of the large Mimbres pueblos, the pit house villages that preceded them, and the adobe towns than followed them can only be understood on a variety of scales corresponding to the variety of resources that entered into Mimbres subsistence economy. For farming alone, the agricultural characteristics of the streams and valleys of the Transitional Zone are clearly paramount, with upland parks and cienegas being of secondary importance. Farming may have begun in naturally wet spots -- subirrigated cienegas and the like -- and then expanded rapidly to simple diversion irrigation on the small creeks of the Transitional Zone. During the favorable highland rainfall regimes of the latter half of the eleventh century, Mimbres settlement expanded from the stream valleys to upland parks, where, for a short time, rainfall dry farming was possible. Following this wet period, however, settlement returned to managed rainfall and diversion irrigation locales.

Yet we know that the Mimbres were farmers, and from their many ruined towns and villages, they must have been successful farmers. To look for the appropriate ethnohistoric models, we must look to those who occupied southwestern New Mexico after the Apache: Hispanic (and Anglo) subsistence farmers. We know from surviving Mimbres irrigation systems (e.g., see Herrington 1982) that simple canal irrigation played a major (but not exclusive) role in Mimbres agriculture. From the discussion of hydrology above, recall that only limited portions of a valley bottom can be successfully irrigated with prepump technology, and the proportion of a valley bottom that is irrigable is not constant from one valley to the next. We know the approximate areas of irrigable land in Transitional Zone drainages from early historic records, and the total area of irrigable land in these drainages is very highly correlated with the total number of Mimbres rooms in each valley (Lekson 1986c). Just as the correspondence of Apache and Mimbres territories tells us something about the effective environment in prehistory, so too does the correlation of Mimbres rooms with modern

The use of hunted-and-gathered resources by these farming communities probably has a far more complex history, which we are only beginning to appreciate -and have not yet begun to fully understand. The only extensive discussions are Minnis's (1985) consideration of hunting and gathering within the Mimbres Valley and my own attempts to relate the Mimbres to the much larger Chiricahua Apache scale (Lekson 1986b, 1989b); Minnis and I differ drastically on the appropriate scale. I am not certain that the data exist to resolve our difference, but we both agree on one point - the scale of the Mimbres effective environment is much, much larger than the stream valleys. At this time, the reasonable conclusion is this: to limit the Mimbres region to the agricultural villages runs the risk of depriving the Mimbres of their extensive hunting-andgathering hinterland, exactly as the Zunis were deprived of theirs. If the Mimbres will live in our national

18

heritage, they must live with the mistakes we make in our interpretations. Projecting an outdated, myopic view of the effective Mimbres environment onto the past is one error we can easily avoid.

19

Chapter

3

Summary

of

So, despite a nearly complete absence of archaeological research, by 1920 southwestern New Mexico had achieved archaeological fame for Mimbres Black-on-white pottery and the Gila Cliff Dwellings. It had also gained a reputation for catastrophic pothunting.

Previous

Research Previous research can be summarized in tables and maps, but facts and figures are better understood in light of the history that produced them. This section presents a brief narrative of archaeological research in southwestern New Mexico. Archaeology in the Mimbres region can be categorized as excavations (Table 3.1, Figure I-4), major research surveys (Table 3.2, Figure I-4), and cultural resources management (CRM) studies. The isolation of CRM archaeology does not imply a secondary status for this work. However, the data from CRM archaeology are available in forms largely unique to CRM work, and they are therefore presented in a separate section.

The first major scientific excavations in the Mimbres area were undertaken by Harriet and Cornelius ("Burt") Cosgrove. The Cosgroves, who ran a hardware store in Silver City, were appalled at the destruction of the Mimbres ruins by pothunters and determined to save something from the wreck. They began their study of Mimbres archaeology about 1911, shortly after moving to Silver City (Kidder in Cosgrove and Cosgrove 1932: xvi); in 1919 they purchased a large Mimbres site which they named Treasure Hill (LA 16241, Figure I-4; Cosgrove 1923). To learn archaeological methods, the Cosgroves visited several professional excavations in northern New Mexico. They met Alfred Vincent Kidder at his excavations at Pecos Pueblo and began their long association with Kidder and the Peabody Museum. The Peabody Museum sponsored the Cosgroves' work at the Swarts Ruin (LA 1691, Figure I-4; Cosgrove and Cosgrove 1932), the seminal Mimbres excavation, and their later research on Mimbres area caves (Cosgrove 1947) and post-Mimbres pueblo sites (Kidder, Cosgrove, and Cosgrove 1949).

3.A. History of Research Ruins in the Mimbres area were briefly noted in the late 1800s, but it was not until the first decade of the 1900s that the remarkable black-on-white pottery of the Mimbres Valley gained scholarly attention, first of Hough (1907) and Nelson (1912) and later and more importantly of Fewkes (1914, 1915). Fewkes's (1914) illustrated catalogue of Mimbres pots obtained from E.D. Osborne and S.D. Swope (both of Deming) was the means by which Mimbres pottery was "formally introduced to the outside world" (Brody 1977: 9). Fewkes's purchase of large collections of Mimbres pots also initiated serious pothunting in the Mimbres area; whereas ranchers and townsfolk had previously dug in the ruins out of curiosity, the new demand from East Coast museums for pots transformed a spare-time hobby into a cottage industry. Osborne, the first of a long line of commercial pothunters in southwestern New Mexico, supplied the National Museum and the Heye Foundation with hundreds of Mimbres pots (see, e.g., Fewkes 1924). Fewkes, strangely blind to supply and demand, decried pothunting, but while hobbyists continued to dig to satisfy personal curiosity, many more sites were dug into to supply a commercial market at least partly created by him. As a result of these earliest publications, Mimbres pottery was famous, but the sites from which it came were all but unknown. It was an art without a context.

The Cosgroves also solicited and encouraged research by other archaeological institutions in the 1920s. Largely as a result of the their lobbying, the School of American Research and Museum of New Mexico jointly sponsored Wesley Bradfield's excavations at the Three Circle site (LA 53, Figure I-4) and Cameron Creek (LA 190, Figure I-4). Bradfield died before he could complete a full report of this work (Bradfield 1929). The Cosgroves also assisted Paul Nesbitt of Beloit College in his excavations at the Mattocks site (LA 676, Figure I-4; Nesbitt 1931). The last major excavation of this period was at the Galaz Ruin (LA 635, Figure I-4). The Southwest Museum and the University of Minnesota both excavated at this site, but no full report was published at that time (Anyon and LeBlanc 1984). These early excavations at large Classic Mimbres pueblos produced an archaeological context for all the Classic Black-on-white pots on museum shelves. The pots could now be related to the Mimbres people who made them and the sites they left. But who were the Mimbres, and where did they come from?

One of the nation's first archaeological parks, the Gila Cliff Dwellings National Monument, was designated in 1907. Almost all of the prehistoric materials that had been left exposed in the Cliff Dwellings (LA 13658, Figure I-4), had already been removed by early visitors, but the architecture of the site apparently justified its inclusion in the park system. The relationship of the Cliff Dwellings to Mimbres pottery was uncertain. As it turns out, the cliff dwellings were built over a century after the end of the Mimbres phase (Anderson et al. 1986).

Those questions were first studied by Gila Pueblo, a private archaeological foundation in Globe, Arizona. Gila Pueblo conducted a reconnaissance survey, visiting all parts of southwestern New Mexico except western Sierra County (Figure I-5a). During this survey, they discovered the remains of pit house

20

villages older than the Mimbres pueblos, which apparently answered the question of Mimbres origins. Gila Pueblo decided to excavate a sample of these, and the pioneering work of Emil Haury at Mogollon Village (LA 11568, Figure I-4) near Alma and Harris Village (LA 1867, Figure I-4) in the Mimbres Valley outlined the Mogollon pit house sequence that preceded the Classic Mimbres phase (Haury 1936a). (Haury felt that Mimbres itself was the result of Anasazi "swamping" of the indigenous brownware- and-pit house peoples.)

Stabilization (often accompanied by limited excavation) took place at the Gila Cliff Dwellings in 1942, 1955, 1962, 1963, and 1968 (Anderson et al. 1986). The archaeology of the Cliff Dwellings National Monument (well-summarized in Anderson et al. 1986) has been oddly disconnected from other Mimbres area research; this is unfortunate in that the TJ Ruin, included in the monument, is a very large Mimbres site (McKenna and Bradford 1989). Indeed, the TJ Ruin is the last large Mimbres site preserved without serious disturbance -- it is, in many archaeologists' opinions, the unknown gem of Gila Cliff Dwellings National Monument. Other important Mimbres sites are also preserved on the monument; these are known from a survey in 1968 by Don Morris (Anderson et al. 1986) and a resurvey recently conducted by James Bradford of the Southwest Regional Office of the National Park Service (Figure I4, I-5a).

The archaeological sequence that followed the Mimbres was extended with the Animas phase (first named in the 1930s), defined in excavations at the Pendelton Ruin (LA 1369, Figure I-4; Kidder, Cosgrove, and Cosgrove 1949). The Animas phase was thought to be a local variant of the Casas Grandes culture, centered in the huge site of that name in northern Chihuahua. With the initial research into the Animas phase, the archaeological sequence in southwestern New Mexico was well established, at least in general terms. Haury's definition of pre-Mimbres phases, the early excavations of Classic Mimbres pueblos, and Kidder and the Cosgroves' Animas phase research provided the basic cultural-historical framework we use today in southwestern New Mexico. The archaeology of areas surrounding the Mimbres region was clarified with Paul Martin's work beginning in 1936 in the Pine Lawn Valley to the northwest; Sayles's (1945) excavations and Sauer and Brand's (1930) surveys to the west; Lehmer's (1948) seminal work in the Jornada area to the east; and Brand's (1943) surveys to the south. By 1950, the basic frameworks of Mimbres prehistory -the archaeological sequence and the regional picture -were in place.

An archaeological project of major significance for understanding the Mimbres area took place outside of southwestern New Mexico in Chihuahua, Mexico. From 1958 to 1961, Charles DiPeso, of the Amerind Foundation, excavated a portion of the very important ruins at Casas Grandes, about sixty miles south of the border town of Columbus, New Mexico. His report (DiPeso 1974) is an archaeological landmark for interpreting the archaeology of southwestern New Mexico, which was affected by the remarkable late prehistoric developments at Casas Grandes. While mainstream archaeological attention turned elsewhere, pothunting continued to supply museums' and collectors' demands for Mimbres black-on-white pots. For decades, pothunting was a pleasantly profitable sidelight for the ranching and mining population of southwestern New Mexico. The pattern of small-scale pothunting changed, disastrously, in the late 1950s and early 1960s. A growing appreciation of the "primitive" in the art world greatly expanded the market for Mimbres pottery, leading to a "meteoric rise in monetary value of the pieces" (Rodeck 1976: 46); individual bowls sold for tens of thousands of dollars. Such high returns justified higher investments in pothunting technology, and a new period of mechanized, commercialized site destruction began. Commercial pothunters knew that complete, intact pots were usually found as grave offerings with burials, and burials were customarily found in deep pits dug below the floors of the pueblolike Mimbres sites. Thus the "pueblo" part of the site was simply overburden, waste material to be removed to get at the burial pits and the Mimbres pots. With thousands of dollars to be made on a single pot, pothunters could afford to employ bulldozers and large gangs of laborers. The bulldozers simply pushed the pueblo away, exposing the floor surfaces, and the laborers then probed the exposed floors for the burial pits and the pots they contained. With this improved technology, a large Mimbres site

After the initial burst of Mimbres excavations, which ended in the early 1930s, archaeological interest in the Mimbres waned for thirty years. A few highway salvage operations were undertaken in the late 1960s: the Cliff Highway Salvage Project (Hammack, Bussey, and Ice 1966; Bussey 1972) excavated a large Late Pit House period site (LA 5779, Figure I-4), a small Mimbres site (LA 6783, Figure I-4), and a large Salado site near Cliff (LA 5793, Figure I-4); the Diablo Highway Salvage Project (Hammack 1966) excavated two small Mimbres units and a Late Pit House period village (LA 6537, LA 6538, Figure I-4). Other small highway salvage projects excavated small sites or small portions of larger sites in the Mimbres Valley and elsewhere. Excavations were undertaken in Animas phase sites and caves in southernmost Hidalgo County by the School of American Research (see, e.g., McCluney 1962; Lambert and Ambler 1961), and local amateur archaeologists excavated Salado period sites near Cliff (Mills and Mills 1972a; Richard Ellison, personal communication 1973). See Table 3.1 and Figure I-4 for these sites.

21

could be processed for pots -- and completely destroyed -- in a matter of weeks (LeBlanc 1983).

area and offers a complement to survey and excavation data from the lower elevations of the Mimbres Valley.

The increasing prices paid for Mimbres pots coincided with a series of slumps in locally critical copper mining; financially strapped landowners leased their sites to commercial pothunters, creating a frenzy of site destruction. By the early 1970s, many Southwestern archaeologists reasonably concluded that the Mimbres area was a lost cause. J.J. Brody wrote, "With so many sites gone, there appears to be little hope that much more will ever be known about the people who made Mimbres art than was understood by the Cosgroves in 1928" (Brody 1977: 22). When I first came to work in the Mimbres area in 1971, I was told by a knowledgeable friend that all we would ever know about the Mimbres was published in the Cosgroves' (1932) The Swarts Ruin.

Fitting's Upper Gila Project excavated or tested eighteen sites, ranging in time period from Late Archaic to Salado, and surveyed in the Cliff-Gila and Redrock valleys (Figure I-4, number 5). A series of publications (cited in Tables 3.1 and 3.2) resulted, mostly preliminary and descriptive reports; a final synthetic monograph was never produced, but Fitting presented his views on the Upper Gila in a CRM document (Fitting, Hemphill, and Abbe 1982). A report on the Saige-McFarland site (LA 5421, Figure I-4), the Upper Gila Project's largest excavation, was written long after the fact (Lekson 1990). The Upper Gila Project was important for both its results and its geographic focus; other than the Cliff Highway Salvage Project (Hammack, Bussey, and Ice 1966), no major research project has investigated the archaeology of the Upper Gila -- despite the unfortunately misleading name of the Peabody Museum's Upper Gila Project (Danson 1957). As we shall see, the Upper Gila is an area critical to understanding Mimbres archaeology.

This pessimism was understandable; there are few things more discouraging to an archaeologist than a badly pothunted site. Of the twenty or so largest Mimbres sites, only one today remains untouched by extensive commercial pothunting (and this site was subjected to many years of hobbyists' digging). Prospects for site excavation were seemingly hopeless, but the late 1960s and early 1970s saw a renaissance of scientific research in the Mimbres area. Some of this research salvaged data from pothunted sites, and other research focused less on site excavation than on site distributions and settlement geography -- topics that could be addressed even with badly disturbed sites. The University of Michigan's Mimbres Area Survey, a wide-ranging reconnaissance under the direction of Arthur Jelinek, was the first of the "second wave" of projects in the Mimbres area. Jelinek's reconnaissance recorded about five hundred sites located from the slopes of the Black Range in Sierra County on the east to Redrock on the Upper Gila on the west, and from the headwaters of the Gila and the Mimbres on the north to the bootheel of Hidalgo County in extreme southwestern New Mexico (Figure I-5b). Work was concentrated on the Mimbres Valley, the Cedar Mountains, the Upper Gila, Burro Cienega, and the Upper Animas/San Luis valleys. The large ceramic and lithic samples collected from these sites constitute a remarkable study collection for southwestern New Mexico.

At about the same time as the project ont he Upper Gila, the Mimbres Foundation began its very important work in the Mimbres Valley (summarized in LeBlanc 1983). Steven LeBlanc, director of the Mimbres Foundation, was the leading champion of Mimbres archaeology at a time when most archaeologists considered it hopeless. The fine work of the Mimbres Foundation (cited in Tables 3.1 and 3.2) was a vindication of both LeBlanc's judgment and Mimbres Valley archaeology. The Mimbres Foundation tested twenty-seven sites (see Table 3.1) in an ambitious program of limited excavation at a wide variety of sites of all time periods (LeBlanc 1975, 1976, 1977). This strategy was a clear break from earlier excavations in the Mimbres Valley, all of which concentrated on a single site. LeBlanc hoped to compensate for the widespread disturbance of Mimbres sites by obtaining many small samples rather than a single big sample; moreover, many small samples could answer some kinds of questions that could not be addressed at a single site (LeBlanc 1983:15-16). The most extensive excavations were at the Mattocks (LA 676) and Galaz (LA 635) sites, each a very large (100+ room) Mimbres site superimposed on earlier, Pit House period occupations.

Donald Graybill and James Fitting worked with Jelinek and returned to southwestern New Mexico for important follow-up projects in the Upper Mimbres drainage (Graybill 1973) and the Upper Gila (Fitting 1972b). Graybill intensively surveyed the three forks of the Upper Mimbres, much of which is upland, ponderosa pine forests (Figure I-4, 9). Coverage for structural sites was very nearly complete (D. Graybill, personal communication 1989). Graybill's survey is by far the most extensive upland survey in the Mimbres

The Mimbres Foundation also undertook an extensive survey of the Mimbres drainage. The survey consisted of two major parts: first, the Middle Mimbres Valley (Figure I-4, 10), from the southern limits of Graybill's upland survey down to the south end of riparian vegetation on the Mimbres, at about 32o30' north latitude (Blake, LeBlanc, and Minnis 1986); and second, a survey of the Deming Plain south of 32o30' (Figure I-4, 12) (Blake and Narod 1977). Limited reconnaissance surveys also extended into Lampbright

22

Draw, portions of the Upper Gila, and a few other isolated areas in southwestern New Mexico.

Harry Shafer's very important work at the NAN Ranch site, a 100+ room multicomponent site in the Mimbres Valley, began in 1978 and continues today. The NAN Ranch site (LA 2465, Figure I-4) was, for the Mimbres Valley, well preserved, and Shafer's and his colleagues' careful stratigraphic work has maximized the interpretive potential of the high-quality NAN data -data of a quality perhaps no longer available elsewhere in the Mimbres Valley. The complexity of stratigraphy and architectural sequence revealed at the NAN site provides a useful balance for modern restudy of other Mimbres sites less carefully excavated in the 1930s (Shafer and Taylor 1986: 65-66). Survey around the NAN Ranch site and in nearby Gavilan canyon has been an important secondary goal of the project (Figure I-4, 11). A series of excellent interim reports have been produced (e.g. Shafer and Murray 1978; Shafer et al. 1979; Shafer 1986a, 1987, 1988b, 1990a), and Shafer and Taylor summarized the NAN Ranch research in a very important article (Shafer and Taylor 1986). Shafer is currently preparing a summary monograph report (Harry Shafer, personal communication 1989).

Several worthy ancillary projects were also undertaken, including most notably a photographic archive of all Mimbres pottery vessels in museums and private collections. Fieldwork ran from 1974 to 1978. Interim reports (cited above) and a series of important monograph reports (Anyon and LeBlanc 1984; Minnis 1985; Nelson and LeBlanc 1986) have appeared, along with LeBlanc's excellent popular summary (LeBlanc 1983). Other reports remain to be published. Three later, major research projects began in the late 1970s and continued through the 1980s. These include the Amerind Foundation's Wind Mountain Project, University of Texas at Austin's WS Ranch Project, and Texas A&M's NAN Ranch Research Project. In the Mangus Valley, the Amerind Foundation investigated the Wind Mountain site, a late pit house site with a small Mimbres pueblo component in the Mangus Valley (O, Figure I-4). Wind Mountain and the nearby Rideout Ruin were extensively excavated; about eighty pit houses and fifteen rooms in three small pueblos were cleared, representing most or very nearly all of the architecture at the two sites. Almost all of the pit houses were of the Late Pit House period, and the pueblos were all of the Mimbres phase (Gilman 1987b). Over two-hundred samples were submitted for tree-ring dating; unfortunately, all failed to date. Carbon-14 and archaeomagnetic dates were obtained, which Gilman (1987b) described as "ambiguous at best." (These dates are not included in the present study.) Research at Wind Mountain was interrupted by the death of the Amerind Foundation's director, Charles DiPeso. Analysis of these materials has been completed by Anne Woosely, Patricia Gilman, and their colleagues at the Amerind Foundation, and a report should appear shortly.

The NAN Ranch and Mimbres Foundation projects are potentially complementary: whereas the Mimbres Foundation's strategy was one of limited testing at a large number of disturbed sites and restudy of previously excavated sites (Galaz and Mattocks), the NAN Ranch Project concentrated on more extensive excavation at a single, relatively well preserved site. A synthesis of both projects should prove of even greater value than the already very significant results of each project alone. A number of recent, smaller-scale research projects have made significant contributions to the archaeology of southwestern New Mexico. Laverne Herrington's long-term survey of the Rio Arenas Valley (Figure I-4, 8), from 1974 to 1977, allowed her to observe sites over a variety of conditions and seasons (Herrington 1979). Repeated observations are much more productive than the standard, one-visit archaeological survey, and in some respects the Rio Arenas offered more to observe. Because the valley was not farmed historically, prehistoric agricultural features on the floodplain were well preserved (Herrington 1982). The preservation of canals and floodplain fields in the Rio Arenas is probably unique in southwestern New Mexico. Herrington is currently planning a program of research in the Rio Arenas drainage at Treasure Hill (LA 16241, Figure I-4), once owned and excavated by the Cosgroves.

James Neely's ongoing work at the WS Ranch site, a very large Tularosa phase pueblo overlying extensive earlier occupations (LA 3099, Figure I-4), has produced a series of short articles and student papers (cited in Tables 3.1 and 3.2). The WS Ranch area is at the extreme northwestern margin of the Mimbres area and is of great interest to the present study for that reason. Neely and his colleagues have excavated extensively at the large multicomponent WS Ranch site and have tested at a number of other sites ranging in time from Late Archaic through Tularosa phase. Surveys of the San Francisco River drainage (Figure I-4, 1 and 2), including ongoing work at a well-defined Reserve settlement cluster at Devil's Park (Figure I-4, 3) (Peterson 1988) have greatly increased our knowledge of site distributions in this very interesting but previously understudied area.

Other recent projects of smaller scales concentrated on the east slopes of the Black Range, including New Mexico State University field schools at Winston and Garfield, the Berrenda Creek Project (Gomolak and Ford 1979), the Ladder Ranch Project (Nelson 1984), the Black Range Survey (Laumbach and Kirkpatrick 1983), and the Sierra County Rio Grande Project

23

(Lekson and Wilson 1985). Stanley Bussey of New Mexico State University conducted field schools at a large Mimbres site near Garfield in 1973 (LA 1082, Figure I-4) and at a large Tularosa phase site near Winston in 1974 (LA 923, Figure I-4). No publications resulted from these field school excavations. Berrenda Creek (LA 12992, Figure I-4) was a student project from New Mexico State University; a small, badly disturbed Mimbres pueblo was excavated and a fine report prepared (Gomolak and Ford 1979). The Ladder Ranch Project, directed by Margaret Nelson, began as a University of New Mexico field school, with limited excavations of two sites (LA 37690 and LA 37691, Figure I-4) and survey on Palomas Creek (Figure I-4, 16; M. Nelson 1984). Nelson, now at SUNY Buffalo, continues her research on Palomas Creek and in the Black Range. The Sierra County Rio Grande Project (Figure I-4, 15; Lekson 1989) and the Black Range Project (Figure I-4, 14; Laumbach and Kirkpatrick 1983) were HPD-sponsored surveys of, respectively, the Rio Grande Valley and the area between the river and the Gila National Forest in western Sierra County.

that total effort might produce in a single, coherent research project. This is not to suggest that CRM data are not useful or that CRM efforts are misguided; CRM plays an integral part in the preservation of our national heritage. By its goals and purpose, CRM research takes a very different tack toward the data than non-CRM research. CRM archaeology is a planning and management process integral to any land-modifying action involving Federal lands, Federal agencies, Federal permits, or Federal monies. CRM surveys are of two forms: block, covering a plot, usually rectilinear; and linear, following a right-of-way for a pipe-, power-, or communications line. Most CRM projects are limited in scope (a well pad, a gravel pit) and usually either find no sites or find sites that are recorded and then avoided by modifying the proposed construction. Some CRM projects are much larger (pipe- or powerlines, road construction). Larger projects more often involve testing of sites to determine the nature of deposits and occasionally excavation of a site when the proposed action cannot be moved or redesigned to avoid damaging it. Sites excavated as part of CRM projects are included in Table 3.1.

Research interest also revived to the south of the montane Mimbres area. Frank Findlow and Suzanne DeAtley, then of UCLA, began a large-scale survey project in southern Hidalgo County (Figure I-4, 19 and 20; DeAtley 1980). This ambitious and well-structured program began with a sample survey and testing of sites in the Animas Valley and included survey of sites around Playas Lake and testing and controlled surface collections of large Animas phase sites in the Upper (southern) Playas Valley.

By far the most frequent CRM activity is survey: that is, inspection of the construction site or affected area to discover cultural resources. CRM surveys are very different from the non-CRM surveys summarized in Table 3.2. Whereas non-CRM surveys target river valleys or areas thought by the archaeologist to be relevant to a specific set of research questions, CRM surveys are not designed to provide archaeological data so much as planning data for nonarchaeological projects. Thus CRM surveys give us a very different representation of the archaeology of southwestern New Mexico than non-CRM surveys, and the two should be complementary. While most non-CRM surveys target areas where prehistoric sites are known or expected, CRM surveys go where the work is; the route of a pipeline has no direct correlation to areas where we would expect to find prehistoric sites, although it may pass through such areas. By surveying areas we would not consider to have high site densities, CRM surveys are an excellent test of our ideas about where sites are.

A number of interesting short papers were produced (DeAtley and Findlow 1982; Findlow and DeAtley 1976, 1978; Findlow and Bolognese 1980, 1982), but, unfortunately, no final monograph appeared. A great deal of high-quality data (including many absolute dates and intensive controlled surface collections from many sites) remains in storage at Columbia University (S. DeAtley, personal communication 1989). The large Animas phase sites were recently mapped and recorded by a HPD-sponsored project (O'Laughlin 1986). Finally, New Mexico State University recently surveyed state lands in southern Grant and Luna counties as yet another HPD-sponsored project (Ackerly et al. 1988).

Three major CRM data bases cover southwestern New Mexico: the State Historic Preservation Division's (HPD) Archaeological Records Management System (ARMS), the Gila National Forest (Gila NF data base), and the Las Cruces District of the Bureau of Land Management (BLM data base). Unfortunately, there is considerable confusion among these three data bases. Sites may appear on one, two, or all three, and there is no easy clerical way to determine the degree of repetition or exclusion. Indeed, in some cases there may be no recourse other than actual resurvey to determine if sites listed in two or more data bases are identical or different.

3.B. Cultural Resource Management Surveys The Mimbres area has seen a lot of Cultural Resource Management (CRM) archaeology. Indeed, archaeological study in southwestern New Mexico during the last decade has overwhelmingly been CRM archaeology, but most of these CRM projects were of very small scale. The total effort represented by CRM research projects is substantial, but its very fragmented nature makes CRM's cumulative contribution to our archaeological knowledge only a small fraction of what

24

Two aspects of CRM survey can be easily and usefully quantified: numbers of sites found and the area surveyed. Since the locational unit common to all survey data bases is the 7.5' USGS quad this unit will be used in following discussions (Figure I-5); the number of sites per quad, and the percentage of survey coverage are shown on series of maps for each data base.

cases would require extensive field checking, beyond the scope of the present study. Only quads with both 10 or more ARMS sites and 10 or more Gila NF sites were considered. This criterion defined a sample of 13 quads, or 33% of the 39 quads with both Gila NF and ARMS sites. In this sample, only about 30% of the sites were represented on both the Gila NF and ARMS data bases; an additional 6% were not located to a specific section (square mile) and could therefore represent further shared sites. Quads with both Gila NF and ARMS sites varied significantly in the proportions of sites located in the same section. In one of the better cases (Gila Hot Springs quad), 50 sites from both the ARMS and Gila NF lists were located in identical sections, while only 22 sites were situated in nonmatched sections in either the ARMS or Gila NF listings. Thus we assume that about two-thirds of the sites in the Gila Hot Springs quad are registered on both the Gila NF and ARMS listings, while 22 nonmatched sites represent unique and different sites from both lists. At the other extreme (Allie Canyon quad), only 30 sites from both the ARMS and Gila NF lists were located in identical sections, while at least 152 sites from both lists represent unique and different sites. Note that as of December 1988, only 68 sites (or 14%) of the 476 Gila NF sites had been assigned ARMS numbers (LA numbers). (These sites with known ARMS assignments were, of course, counted as matched sites in the above analysis.)

Theoretically, the ARMS file should be the most comprehensive, for it includes both non-CRM and CRM projects. All sites located in CRM projects requiring HPD concurrence will, ideally, be listed on the ARMS data base. All Gila NF and BLM sites should, in theory, be cross-listed on the ARMS file. In practice, only some portion of those sites (those most recently recorded) are in fact on the ARMS data base. This section discusses the difficulties and ambiguities of working with the three CRM data bases and presents the survey coverages indicated by each. The three CRM data bases have very different numbers of sites: the Gila NF, 746 sites; the BLM, 1691 sites (including historic sites); and the ARMS file, 2812 sites. There is comparatively little overlap among the three major data bases. The Gila NF and BLM data bases are largely exclusive, since the former addresses sites on national forest lands while the latter lists sites on BLM- administered public lands. Since the ARMS files are designed to be inclusive, they constitute the "standard" sample against which the other data bases can be compared (Figure I-6a).

In summary, for all practical purposes, the BLM and Gila NF site data bases are exclusive. The ARMS site data base, which should be inclusive, shares only about 30-35% of the sites on the BLM and Gila NF lists. Projects by the Las Cruces BLM, the Gila NF, and the ARMS program are currently under way to create concordance between the Federal and State listings, but none of these projects will be completed in time for use in the present analysis. It should be noted, too, that in the case of the BLM concordance, with 28% of the project completed, fully 33% of the BLM sites cannot be determined as present or absent from the ARMS listings on the basis of available evidence. In these cases (one-third of the BLM data base), extensive field checking and resurvey will be necessary to resolve the concordance. A similar proportion of ambiguity can be expected in the Gila NF listings. In light of the time and costs required for such field checks, it seems likely that the Gila NF and BLM listings will never be fully resolved with the ARMS listings. Therefore, it will be useful to consider these three major data bases as separate samples of southwestern New Mexico. The Gila NF site data base can be used as a sample of the forested upland, the BLM site data base can be used as a sample of the lower desert grasslands, and the ARMS site data base represents a sample of the entire study area. A composite map, combining the highest site figures for any quad from all these sources, appears as Figure I-9a.

The BLM site data files (422 7.5' quads) are currently being correlated with the ARMS files; this is a multiyear BLM project which at this time is about one-quarter complete (J. Hart, personal communication, 1988). Based on a 28% sample of the 422 BLM quads, only 33% of the sites on those quads are known to be in both the ARMS and BLM site files. An additional 33% may be shared, but data are insufficient for unambiguous identification (J. Hart, personal communication, 1988). BLM site counts used here (Figure I-7a) include historic sites (site counts from ARMS and Gila NF are limited to prehistoric sites). No simple method was available for editing historic sites out of the data base, but it appears that historic sites make up only a small (less than 5%) proportion of the total (J. Hart, personal communication, 1988). Site totals from the Gila and Coronado National Forests are presented in Figure I-8a. The Gila NF data base should include approximately 70 full or fractional 7.5' quads; of these, 54 have sites. To compare Gila NF site totals to ARMS figures (Figure I-6a and I-8a), site locations were compared only to the section (that is, square mile); note that Gila NF and ARMS sites located in the same section need not represent the same sites, but for this initial analysis that assumption is made. Absolute identification of cross-listed sites in many

25

All three data bases include information (almost certainly incomplete) about the areas covered in CRM surveys. It would be impossible to graphically map each survey, so these data are summarized using the 7.5' quad grid (or, as described below for the Gila NF, larger administrative districts). Given the fact that the survey data are known to be incomplete for all data bases, this analysis was efficient rather than thorough; the data available are useful for quick and reasonably accurate analysis.

mapped on Figure I-9b. Note that these values are minimal; that is, the cumulative values of quads with survey data from multiple sources could total higher than the assigned values. However, even with this caveat, it is clear that most of southwestern New Mexico is seriously undersurveyed. Our knowledge of "big sites" along the streams of the Mogollon Plateau and the Transitional Zone is adequate but incomplete; our knowledge of the rest of the Mimbres region is minimal.

ARMS survey acreages were available in tabular form by project, including the total acres surveyed and the 7.5' quads involved. By far most projects were limited to a single 7.5' quad. In several cases where projects extended over multiple 7.5' quads, we decided to apportion the total acreage over all quads involved. For example, if a 1600-acre survey included lands on four quads, each quad received a value of 400 acres. Obviously, this convention introduces a certain amount of inaccuracy, but we believe this distortion is far too small to compromise the large general patterns sought here. The acreages from all surveys were then totaled, and these are the values shown on Figure I-6b. Note that some totals may include areas surveyed twice; that is, portions of some CRM surveys may have covered identical areas. However, the possibility of extensive duplication is very low, and given the known underrepresentation of CRM survey coverage in all data bases, duplication should not be a significant problem. Note that the ARMS data base includes most, if not all, BLM surveys after the mid-1980s.

3.C. Discussion Mimbres archaeology has been so crippled by the destruction of key sites and sites continue to disappear at such a heartbreaking rate that we cannot afford to eliminate data because they are not "reliable." Data are data; it has come to the point where we must accommodate our questions to the data that are left, whether unprovenienced bowls in a museum's storage vault or the outstandingly careful stratigraphic excavations of the NAN Ranch Project. Unfortunately, there are lots of unprovenienced pots but all too few excavations of the high quality of the NAN Ranch. Different data sets are appropriate for different problems. The Gila Pueblo survey, which included over 230 sites over most of the Mimbres area, was poorly documented by today's standards. At the time of the survey, good maps did not exist for much of the area, so none of the sites have good map locations. Descriptions of sites are sometimes cryptically brief. But the Gila Pueblo survey has two advantages that make it an almost (but not quite) unique data set: (1) it covered an enormous area, far greater in extent than any subsequent survey except one (discussed below) and (2) the early date of the survey means that sherd collections were made before decades of hobbyists gleaned the larger and rarer sherds. Casual surface collections have made major impacts on the surface assemblages of big sites in the Mimbres region. The Gila Pueblo collections should offer ceramic samples of big sherds, including the rarer types, from a very broad areal range. This kind of sample could be entirely appropriate for some research questions, such as pilot studies of ceramic sourcing.

The BLM data base was available only as mapped areas on USGS 7.5' quads at the Las Cruces office. These were examined, and for each 7.5' quad, the total block survey acres and the total length of linear surveys were measured. A nominal fifty-foot right-of-way was assumed for linear surveys, and the total of block and linear surveys was computed for each 7.5' unit. Survey coverage from BLM sources is shown on Figure I-7b. Survey data for the Gila NF were most readily available at the level of the ranger district rather than the 7.5' unit. The areas of districts and the tailoring necessary for use of districts as units are detailed in Table 3.3. Within each district, the total areas surveyed are apportioned over the total area within each district (Figure I-8b). The precision lost in using districts rather than 7.5' units is not as great as it might appear. In terms of 7.5' quads, the districts and portions of districts within the study area range from only 6.5 to no more than 13.8 units in size. For the Coronado National Forest, it was possible to compute survey acreage per quad, as shown in Figure I-8b.

The Gila Pueblo survey was surpassed by Arthur Jelinek's Mimbres Area Survey. Over 500 sites were recorded and collected from over the entire Mimbres area. These collections combined a search for "diagnostic" types with an attempt at representativeness. This large data base has not yet been fully analyzed. Jelinek's Mimbres Area Survey produced what is probably the single best collection for addressing large-scale regional issues. However, several of the areas which received particular attention during the Mimbres Area Survey have been resurveyed by later projects (specifically, the Mimbres Valley, the Deming area, the Cliff Valley, the Redrock Valley, and

To approximate the total survey coverage in southwestern New Mexico, values from Figures I-4, I6b, I-7b, and I-8b were compared to find the highest percentage value for each quad. These values are

26

the Upper Animas Valley). In these areas, Jelinek's 1967 collections could provide an excellent test of comparability and depletion of surface collections. Other major surveys were far smaller in scope (Table 3.2). Fitting's survey of the Cliff Valley, Lekson's surveys of the Redrock Valley and the Rio Grande, Neely's survey of the San Francisco River, Nelson and Lekson's survey of Palomas Creek, Herrington's survey of the Rio Arenas, and O'Laughlin's survey of the Rincon Valley were basically very thorough reconnaissance surveys, looking for sites in all the right places. The intensity of coverage on those "right places" varies, but the results are generally comparable. The Mimbres Foundation survey was similar in that it surveyed areas somewhat opportunistically and "sampled" after the fact (Blake, LeBlanc, and Minnis 1986), while the Lower Mimbres - Deming Plain portion of this survey was a more formal sample survey. All these surveys provide useful data bases for Ceramic stage settlement pattern work, since they all targeted later architectural sites.

useful efforts, with the Upper Gila Water Supply II survey being by far the most sophisticated of the four. A few surveys approach "complete" coverage of sizable areas. These include Lekson's Redrock survey, Graybill's Upper Mimbres survey and Peterson's Devil's Park survey. To date, very little nonsite survey has been attempted in the Mimbres area. In many ways, old surveys are more useful than old excavations. Few archaeologists working with survey worry about the fragility of surface patterns or indeed, intrasite provenience to anything finer than a room block. The surface of most sites has been so impacted and altered that tight spatial control (while desirable) is in some ways misplaced precision. One major problem is depletion, through casual collection, of rare ceramic types from surface contexts. In this case, data from older surveys may be much more useful than more recent collections. Timeless utility does not hold true for excavations, particularly of stratigraphically complex sites, because we are trying to do so much more with excavated data. From this perspective, the earliest excavations are severely limited in their modern use. For some questions, we can treat collections from older excavations on the level of site assemblages, particularly at single-component sites. Unfortunately, most large Mimbres sites are multicomponent. For the excavations of the 1920s and 1930s, most artifact classes can be ordered only by internal criteria (i.e., pottery types) which may be acceptable for some research issues but completely inappropriate for others.

The quality of the data recorded varies, generally in sequence with when the surveys were performed. It should not surprise us that the earlier surveys, such as Fitting's Cliff Valley work, recorded a bare sentence or two about each site and procured a "grab" sample of ceramics -- this was not out of line for surveys of the time, and it was the level of effort that the Upper Gila Project could afford to put into survey. The later the date of the survey, the more "up-to-date" its recording methods. Of course there are some minor atavisms, but on the whole, the survey data I have reviewed from these projects is no worse, and very often better, than contemporary efforts in other parts of the Southwest. None of it is to be despised for falling short of post facto standards, and, indeed, it forms a set of "big site" data on par with almost any other area of the Southwest. Several surveys, such as Lekson's Redrock survey and the Hidalgo Archaeological Research Project (below) had highly controlled surface data collection methods that were both innovative and -unfortunately -- never fully developed in analysis.

In most survey-based research, provenience to the site is sufficient, but almost all questions asked of excavated materials require full documentation of where those materials came from within the site. For most early excavations (with a few outstanding exceptions), this documentation is less than adequate. At some very important sites (like Treasure Hill), it is missing altogether (L. Herrington, personal communication 1989). Old excavations can still produce important results; the shining example is Anyon and LeBlanc's (1984) salvage of the Galaz site. But even at best, the older excavations fall far short of modern data requirements. There is no way, barring psychic communication with the excavators, to reconstruct these data.

Several large area sample surveys are represented in Table 3.2, starting with Findlow and DeAtley's Hidalgo Archaeological Research Project. The areal sampling design and the surface collection techniques of this project were a decade ahead of their time, as was much of the published analysis. This survey constitutes a major data set for the Animas phase and for the very poorly known Mimbres phase materials in extreme southwestern New Mexico. Unfortunately, the survey has never produced a final monograph, but the collection and documents are stored at Columbia University. Later sample surveys, such as the Black Range survey, NMSU's Grant and Luna counties survey, Accola's Middle San Francisco survey, and the Upper Gila Water Supply Class II survey, were not methodologically earthshaking, but all were solid,

Presumably, modern excavations should fill our current data specifications. Only five research projects have undertaken large-scale, multiyear excavations in the area: Fitting's Upper Gila Project, DiPeso's Wind Mountain Project, Neely's WS Ranch Project, LeBlanc's Mimbres Foundation, and Shafer's NAN Ranch Project. These excavations generally were (and are) well up to the standards of their times, and usually clearly above those standards; it is almost impossible to say more than that without final reports. Final reports

27

have traditionally been the sine qua non of excavation, but they may be a vanishing breed. Many archaeologists jump directly from interim reports to synthetic journal articles. This is not simple laziness; the dearth of final reports stems in large part from the difficulty of interesting publishers in massive, technical final reports. Final reports on the scale of DiPeso's monumental Casas Grandes (1974) may well be a thing of the past.

Museum of New Mexico, and while they reflect the hurried conditions of salvage, they appear fully useful for modern research. However, there is a nearly inviolable archaeological law: "Files deteriorate." We can be sure that the data from highway salvage are not in as good shape today as they were when they were placed in the files in the 1960s, nor as good as when I first examined these records in the 1970s. From this perspective, the reliability of previous research has decreased with time and will probably continue to do so.

Although they may be fading from the picture, final reports remain the criterion for judging excavation. To date the only volumes from recent research programs that represent final reports are both from the Mimbres Foundation: Anyon and LeBlanc's (1984) report on the Galaz site -- a badly disturbed site that was in the throes of its final destruction during the Mimbres Foundation's gallant salvage effort -- and Nelson and LeBlanc's (1986) account of limited testing at three Salado sites. Both are commendable efforts, and the field awaits the report of the Foundation's major excavation at the Mattocks site and numerous other lesser excavations. For a variety of reasons, final reports from the Upper Gila Project excavations and the Wind Mountain Project will be less than complete (Lekson 1990; P. Gilman, personal communication, 1989). Based on its excellent series of preliminary reports (e.g., Shafer 1983, 1986a, 1987, 1988b, 1990a, 1990b), the field can hope for much from Shafer's NAN Ranch work. The WS Ranch Project, at the time of writing, remains underpublished.

The final category of excavations is avocational efforts. Integration of avocational and professional archaeology peaked in the Mimbres area with the Cosgroves -- the avocational archaeologists who first interested professionals in Mimbres archaeology -- and has gone downhill ever since. Some avocationalists make maps and notes of very high quality. Other avocational archaeologists carry much of their documentation in their heads. Professional archaeologists have been hesitant to exploit these sources; but data are data, on paper or in memory, and should be utilized if possible. These data, from some extremely important sites, are often derived from technically superb excavations, since there is no better training than years of experience in local soils and local sites. Whatever their theoretical interests and practical aspirations, almost all of the recent research projects share a critical limitation: small budgets. Many have combined grant support with field school and public archaeology programs to accomplish their research goals. "Creative financing" has not prevented a great deal of first-class research, but limited resources have understandably restricted the scope of that research. Very few projects have been able to focus on more than excavation at a single site or survey in a single small valley. In the few cases where multiple sites were investigated (such as the Mimbres Foundation, the Hidalgo County Archaeological Project, and the Upper Gila Project), work at each site was necessarily limited to minimal testing.

Other excavations resulted from field schools, School of American Research projects, highway salvage, and avocational efforts. These sources achieve a greater than usual importance in the Mimbres area, where so little recent work is available. Field schools from New Mexico State University and the University of New Mexico have investigated important sites in interesting areas; field school data is notoriously difficult to deal with, but it would seem incumbent on the sponsoring schools to see these projects through to some sort of report. The Museum of New Mexico and School of American Research are responsible for major excavations in Hidalgo County. Some of these excavations were reported (Table 3.1), but others remain in the limbo of "manuscript on file."

Archaeology on the regional scale has had to come less from regionally directed research than from synthesis -and post facto synthesis of 1930s excavations and modern shoestring projects is a frustratingly difficult and uncertain process. Nevertheless, several interesting syntheses have been produced (LeBlanc and Whalen 1980; Stuart and Gauthier 1981; Phillips 1984; LeBlanc 1983; Fitting, Hemphill, and Abbe 1982), but archaeology has lacked the resources to address regional questions framed on a realistically large scale. The size of the Mimbres region is considerably larger than the study areas of any of the recent Mimbres field projects (Lekson 1986a).

Highway salvage efforts of the 1960s were not budgeted to prepare final reports, although Stanley Bussey used highway salvage data for a dissertation (Bussey 1972) and a subsequent publication (Bussey 1975). The importance of several of the highway salvage sites is obvious. The greatest expenses in excavation are the excavation itself and the initial processing of materials; descriptive reports based on those materials can be cheap, if the documentation is in order. I have examined many of these records at the

The scale of research is, of course, restricted by funding, and funding has been inadequate for primary

28

research into larger-scale regional problems. It is not possible to quantify archaeological funding, but I would suggest that in the last two decades, far fewer dollars-per- acre have been allocated to the Mimbres region than to comparable areas of the Southwest, such as the San Juan Basin, Mesa Verde, and the Phoenix Basin.

project would be a Federally sponsored research program similar to the National Park Service's Wetherill Mesa and Chaco projects. There are few other major areas in the Southwest that so badly need or that would so greatly repay such a research investment as the Mimbres region. After the Cosgroves discovered the people behind Mimbres pottery and Emil Haury developed the Mogollon sequence that preceded the Mimbres, subsequent work has largely been refinement of details and expansion of coverage. Some of the very real accomplishments of recent research projects have been discussed above and elsewhere in this report, but the sum of modern archaeological research seems strangely less than all its parts. Recent Mimbres studies have been factional and divisive to a degree sometimes approached, but seldom equalled, in other areas of the Southwest. The cast of characters has been small, but it must be admitted that cooperation between projects has been minimal. This is not an indictment, but rather a statement of a correctable problem. The scale of data we control is large -- not huge, but far from insignificant. We have not yet made use of this sizable data base. This is a shame, for until we know what we have, we can't really tell what we need; and our chances to acquire the data we need are disappearing terribly fast.

In this respect, the Mimbres region lags sadly behind many other areas of the Southwest. The narrowness of recent research in southwestern New Mexico stems, in large part, from the remarkable lack of large-scale CRM or Federally sponsored projects in the area. Large-scale CRM projects in the 1970s and 1980s have revolutionized our regional understanding of the archaeology of northwestern New Mexico, southwestern Colorado, and much of Arizona. The Mimbres area has never seen the large-scale surface modification that results in big archaeological projects, like the Dolores Project in southwestern Colorado, or the Central Arizona Project, or the Black Mesa Project in northeastern Arizona. (The open-pit mines of southwestern New Mexico predate current CRM regulations.) While the site disturbance that motivates CRM is lamentable, it is a fact that large CRM projects have been pivotal in advancing our archaeological knowledge over most of the Southwest. The only large-scale CRM projects recently contemplated in the Mimbres area were aborted reservoirs on the Mimbres (Peckham 1970) and the Upper Gila (Chapman, Gossett, and Gossett 1985) -both much smaller in scale than, for example, the Black Mesa Project in northeastern Arizona or the Navajo Indian Irrigation Project in northwestern New Mexico. Otherwise, CRM operations remain on the comparatively limited scales of narrow, linear corridors for roads, powerlines and pipelines -- such as the All American Pipeline Project (running east-west across the area at about the latitude of Lordsburg) and the Arizona Interconnection Project (running northwest-southeast from Quemado to Deming) -- and timber sales in the forested highlands of the Gila National Forest. These CRM projects have made, or could potentially make, significant contributions to Mimbres archaeology, but their scale is rather small compared to the bigger Southwestern CRM projects, probably too small to support regionally significant advances in understanding. It may seem strange for an archaeologist to say, but southwestern New Mexico -- with its history of small, underbudgeted, disparate research projects -- is an area that could really benefit from a large-scale CRM project, both to tie together its disconnected archaeology and to provide the interpretive infrastructure (dating, climatic reconstructions, geomorphology, artifact source-area studies) that are a normal part of CRM but a luxury in low- budget research. Even better than a large, destructive CRM

29

Chapter 4

infills more and more detail within the Mimbres Valley framework. That's fine: we know something about the Mimbres Valley, we are learning more, and in more detail. But when Mimbres Valley systematics is applied to the larger, and largely unknown, region, variability may be truncated in the procrustean bed of a rigid taxonomy. This has happened, to some extent, in southwestern New Mexico. Complaint was loud in the land over the LeBlanc and Whalen (1980) overview, which many perceived as unduly prescriptive (e.g., Fitting, Hemphill, and Abbe 1982).

Current Thinking About

Culture History 4.A. Dating and Systematics This section evaluates dating and systematics (taxonomy) in southwestern New Mexico. Taxonomy will be discussed with particular reference to implications for survey. Building on the original phase sequence of Haury (1936a), the Mimbres Foundation developed the currently accepted systematics for the "Mogollon-Mimbres" (Anyon, Gilman, and LeBlanc 1981) and the putatively non-Mogollon Animas and Salado horizons (LeBlanc and Whalen 1980; Nelson and LeBlanc 1986); this sequence is shown, in outline, in Table 1.2.

I am a strong admirer of the LeBlanc and Whalen overview and the Mimbres Foundation chronology (Table 1.1) that resulted from it, and also a constant critic. The Mimbres Foundation chronology (Anyon, Gilman, and LeBlanc 1981; LeBlanc and Whalen 1980, with revisions in Shafer and Taylor 1986) remains the most useful systematics, but I would like to infuse a little chaos into this admirably structured system by using only the most minimal material definitions -type- fossil ceramics and broad categories of architecture -- and treating phases more as material culture horizons than as richly detailed slices of prehistoric life. This simplification, I hope, will allow us to describe both the variabilities and the commonalities in the prehistory of southwestern New Mexico.

It is impossible to overestimate the importance of systematics. We cannot understand something we cannot describe, and systematics provides the language of first- level description. The traditional vehicle for archaeological description, in survey, is the phase. Phases start as blank chronological stages, as simple as a pair of guess dates bracketing a phenomenon of interest -- for example, a series of intriguingly large sites on Pero Loco Creek. The urge seems primal to fill that blank slate with all the information we can: pottery types, architecture, mortuary customs, dietary habits, social structure, family size, and countless other aspects of daily life -- inquiries that would have us sputtering in outrage if directed towards ourselves. Archaeological curiosity is neither modest nor satiable.

Sacrificing the rigor of detailed phase definitions for broadly defined horizons makes dating that much more important. Many of the details in phase definitions are, de facto, chronological (for example, pit house form). These are the kinds of details that we need to ignore, because they introduce a fatal circularity when they are projected back into chronology. A round pit house has no opportunity to date to any period except to the phase of round pit houses, and round pit houses with aberrant dates or ceramics must be explained away. Details that have been interpreted as chronological in the Mimbres Valley may instead be geographic facies of broader horizons (such as the Late Pit House period ceramics, discussed below).

After we find out these things, we parade our findings, with ever increasing detail, in text and table: Pero Loco phase sites have X pottery, Y architecture, and Z settlement pattern. As long as these lists remain descriptive, all is well; unfortunately, usage reifies descriptions, and they soon become prescriptions. The Pero Loco phase must have X, Y, Z, and no other. The beauty of systematics, the interaction between what we know and what remains to be learned, disappears. An archaeologist might like to write the final word on a phase or period, the definitive reference. But how can we ever know enough about the past to chisel taxonomy in stone? Fossilized systematics are matters of historical interest, but they are seldom good research tools. Phase definitions, in particular, are born to hang. They should be disposable. Unchanging systematics simply indicates a slack period in which we are not learning.

Even in this chaos, some degree of order must be maintained. There must be some framework on which to hang broad horizons, and the obvious data for this purpose are absolute dates. In this section, therefore, I focus more on absolute dates (Tables 4.1, 4.2, 4.3) than on archaeological descriptions of phases. The vast majority of archaeological energies expended in southwestern New Mexico has gone to the excavation of Mimbres phase sites (see Section 3.A). There have been almost no excavations and only spotty survey coverage of Paleo-Indian and Archaic sites; thus there is no culture history to speak of for the PaleoIndian and Archaic eras in southwestern New Mexico. Culture history, or historiography, in southwestern New Mexico begins with the Early Pit House period.

The systematics of southwestern New Mexico, I am happy to say, is marked by exciting ferment and change. The dynamics of change stem, in part, from the uneven coverage of research and efforts to equalize that unevenness. Archaeology in southwestern New Mexico has made a home in the Mimbres Valley. Phases are well defined there, and current research

30

Southwestern New Mexico is data-poor, but some periods are less impoverished than others. In particular, the Mimbres phase is relatively well known from both excavation and survey. The Pit House periods that precede it and the post-Mimbres Pueblo phases that follow it are much more mysterious. As a result, our basic understanding of the Mimbres phase, its dating and systematics, is far better developed and has fewer points of controversy than earlier and later periods. The few data from this pre- and post- Mimbres prehistory are interpreted in surprisingly different ways by different archaeologists.

Several of the dates are incompletely reported in the literature, and it is likely that unreported dates exist that are not included in this list. Obsidian hydration is currently the least important technique in southwestern New Mexico, but it has a great potential for extensive, low-cost dating. Over 200 obsidian hydration measurements were derived for San Luis and Animas phase sites in southern Hidalgo County (S. DeAtley, personal communication, 1989; DeAtley 1980: Fig. 5), but the appropriate hydration rates remain uncertain. Other applications of obsidian dating have been limited. For these reasons, obsidian dating will not be discussed at any length here.

Dating A number of techniques have been used to date sites in southwestern New Mexico, including tree-ring, carbon-14, archaeomagnetic, and obsidian hydration dating. All dates discussed here are A.D. unless specifically labelled B.C.

Compared to some areas in the Anasazi Southwest, the archaeology of southwestern New Mexico is relatively poorly dated, but dating is improving. Prior to the 1970s, there were absolute dates from only two Pit House period sites and none from any Mimbres phase (or later) sites. The Mimbres Foundation chronology (Table 1.2) incorporates many new absolute dates. Mimbres Foundation excavations provided about 80 Pit House period dates from three other sites and many Mimbres phase dates: over 240 dates from the Mattocks Ruin and 5 more dates from three other sites. About 40 additional dates have been published from the NAN Ranch Project, and recently a small number of dates have been derived for samples from the Upper Gila (Table 4.1) (This discussion does not include an extensive series of unpublished carbon-14 and archaeomagnetic dates from the Wind Mountain site.)

Tree-ring dates (Table 4.1) are the most precise of the available techniques, and by far the majority of absolute dates here are derived from tree-ring samples. Laboratory of Tree-Ring Research symbols used in connection with tree-ring dates are as in Bannister, Hannah, and Robinson (1970). Table 4.1 employs a slightly different set of symbols. Because of the paucity of cutting dates, both "r" and "v" dates are treated here as cutting dates, indicated by no added symbols (e.g., "1045" means a cutting date of 1045). All noncutting dates are indicated by the plus symbol (+) (e.g., "1045+" means a noncutting date of 1045). Table 4.1 does not present every available date; rather, each dated unit (room, pit house, etc.) is presented with its range (earliest and latest dates) and any clusters of cutting dates present. A number of new dates from the NAN Ranch Ruin and sites in the Upper Gila and Silver City areas will probably appear in the next year (J. Dean, personal communication, 1989).

These dates are an enormous advance over the previous dearth of chronology, and the broad outlines of chronology in southwestern New Mexico are now well established. But it is necessary to keep the basis of the Mimbres chronology in perspective: the void the dates fill is huge. The post-Archaic sequence stretches from at least 300 to 1300, or 1,000 years (and it may be even longer). Currently, there are about 105 tree-ring dated, 20 carbon-14 dated, and 10 archaeomagnetically dated units (rooms, pit houses, extramural features) in southwestern New Mexico -- a bare sprinkling of dated contexts for 14,400 square miles and a millennium of Ceramic era prehistory. But the dates are not evenly distributed through time. Most (about 70%) of the dates are later than 1000 -- the last 30% of the Ceramic era sequence -- and half of the dates come from a single century, 1000 -1100.

Carbon-14 dates (Table 4.2) are calibrated by reference to Minze and Becker (1986), where possible, and are discussed in terms of intercepts and 1 sigma ranges. Calibration has changed, sometimes drastically, the dates presented in the literature (e.g., LeBlanc and Whalen 1980; Fitting, Hemphill, and Abbe 1982) and provides a very new perspective on dating in southwestern New Mexico. For greater precision, when the original investigator or the site report indicated that multiple dates could be considered operationally coeval, these dates have been averaged. To my knowledge, very few of these dates are corrected for 13C/14C; most are on wood and therefore may be erroneously early values. It is likely that this list is incomplete, since there is no centralized listing of carbon-14 dates comparable to the listings of the Laboratory of Tree-Ring Research.

The Mimbres Foundation and NAN Ranch dates -while seminal -- provide only the beginnings of regional chronological control. Anyon and others noted that, at the time of the LeBlanc and Whalen (1980) overview, the chronological "data base is still far from ideal" (Anyon, Gilman, and LeBlanc:210, 1981). This assessment is still correct.

Archaeomagnetic dates (Table 4.3) are discussed in terms of dates and 2 sigma ranges, where available.

31

Dating, in all archaeological situations, is a sampling problem. Table 4.1 indicates that in the Mimbres Valley, about 60 Mimbres pueblo units (rooms) are tree-ring dated (and of these only one-third have cutting dates). These 60 rooms represent no more than 3% of the 2,000+ Mimbres phase rooms in the Mimbres Valley. The real sample fraction is probably much smaller, since the room counts are conservative. The sample is very small, and it is concentrated in only two sites, the Mattocks and NAN Ranch ruins. Obviously, the dating of Mattocks and NAN, as sites, is well developed, but the dating of the Mimbres phase is not. Sampling problems affect archaeological dating in every area of the world, but the reality of a problem must not be overlooked simply because it is ubiquitous. The dating of the Mimbres phase in the Mimbres Valley is thin, and the dating of Pit House period sites is even thinner.

place earlier than in either the San Francisco or Mimbres valleys. For almost every horizon, the contributors to the LeBlanc and Whalen volume reject these earlier dates out of hand, without noticing that they form a consistent pattern. (Fitting, Hemphill, and Abbe 1982: 57) To some extent the differences between the Upper Gila and the Mimbres result from comparing apples and oranges. Carbon-14 dates of wood tend to be earlier than tree-ring dates of the same wood. Almost all of the Upper Gila carbon-14 dates were on large burned beams. Early dates in the Gila may be, in part, a function of dating heartwood (or a mixture of heart and sap woods) rather than the outermost ring of the specimen, the target in tree-ring dating (and in more recent carbon-14 dating techniques). Calibration of carbon-14 dates has also shown that most of these dates during the period of interest are considerably older than their actual calendrical dates (Stuiver and Becker 1986). Carbon-14 dating, moreover, is itself a sampling process, and single dates cannot be treated as gospel. Fitting's complaint, that the LeBlanc and Whalen (1980) overview "forces the Upper Gila sites into the Mimbres sequence and the fit has not been congenial" (Fitting, Hemphill, and Abbe 1982: 51), was justified at that time, but the perception of disagreement between Upper Gila carbon-14 and Mimbres Valley tree-ring dates should be tempered by the considerations just discussed.

Indeed, new tree-ring dates for the Pit House period are much rarer than for the Mimbres phase. The Late Pit House period sequence established by Emil Haury (1936a) in his seminal excavations at the Harris site (in the Mimbres Valley), Mogollon Village, and the Bluff site (Haury and Sayles 1947) -- the earliest well-dated Pit House period site -- stand with little real modification. Haury demonstrated the existence and sequence of the Georgetown, San Francisco, and Three Circle phases and suggested a possible phase intermediate between Georgetown and San Francisco, which he called the San Lorenzo phase (Haury 1936b, 1940). The San Lorenzo phase has not been substantiated in subsequent work and was dropped in the Mimbres Foundation's chronology (Anyon, Gilman, and LeBlanc 1981). A handful of new tree-ring dates have allowed slightly more precise datings for phases, but otherwise Haury's sequence for the Late Pit House period stands.

Systematics Paleo-Indian and Archaic By necessity, Nelson (1980) summarized the PaleoIndian stage of southwestern New Mexico by reference to areas to the north, west, and east. A handful of Paleo-Indian points have been reported in the literature, and a couple of possible Paleo-Indian sites have been tested (Fitting and Price 1968; Wendorf 1959); that is all. M. Nelson (1980:38) complained that "the paucity of published data from the study area makes reference to a broader data base necessary." Since nothing of consequence has been published since she made that observation, the reader is referred to her able summary.

Absolute dating in southwestern New Mexico outside the Mimbres Valley is thin to nonexistent. The very few tree- ring dates (from the Upper Gila and Berrenda Creek) agree, in general, with the Mimbres Valley dates for the Mimbres phase. The carbon-14 date series from the Animas Valley (DeAtley 1980: table 3) have, for some reason, been underutilized in the regional literature.

Minnis (1980) had the same difficulties in summarizing the Archaic period archaeology of southwestern New Mexico: for the Early and Middle Archaic, there is nothing to summarize. A few Archaic sites have been tested, and many presumably Archaic sites have been found in survey, but the basis for systematics from and for southwestern New Mexico is not there. All recent summaries of the Early and Middle Archaic in southwestern New Mexico simply extrapolate data from surrounding regions (e.g., Ackerly et al. 1988: 11-18). The Late Archaic is a little better known and is discussed in the following section.

A major problem in the literature concerns attempts to compare carbon-14 dates from the Upper Gila with the Mimbres Valley dates. Dates from the Upper Gila (Fitting, Hemphill, and Abbe 1982) confirm in general the Mimbres Valley chronology, but they appear to differ in significant ways. There are fewer dated sites [in the Upper Gila] than in the San Francisco and Mimbres valleys. What work has taken place indicates that there is a distinctive pattern of cultural development . . . with certain changes taking

32

Southeastern Arizona, adjacent to and west of the study area, has been an important arena for the definition of the Cochise tradition of the Archaic (summarized in Bronitsky and Merrit 1986). South-central New Mexico, adjacent to and east of the study area, has seen recent developments in the definition of a Chihuahua tradition Archaic (MacNeish and Beckett 1987). North of the study area, Wills has recently summarized the Archaic of the Mogollon Highlands (Wills 1988, 1989). The reader is referred to these sources for systematics that might, or might not, apply to southwestern New Mexico and to Minnis's (1980) excellent discussion of the environmental context of the Archaic in the area.

time- intensive. Few Archaic points were found, and Findlow (personal communication 1989) very reasonably concluded that this series of extensive lithic and fire-cracked-rock scatters were post- Archaic and perhaps Mimbres phase in age. Undoubtedly, some of the visible archaeology around Playas Lake dates to post-Archaic times, but Formby's earlier collection of hundreds of Archaic points from around the lake (Formby 1986: fig. 1; Roth 1986) suggests a significant Archaic use of this feature and demonstrates the huge impact of casual collection on surface archaeology. The missing Archaic points were in Formby's collections.

In the absence of significant excavations and absolute dates, our knowledge of the nature and dating of PaleoIndian and Archaic horizons is limited to cross-dating of projectile points (see Wills 1988: 71-89 for a recent analysis of Archaic points from north of southwestern New Mexico, MacNeish and Beckett 1987 for points found east of the area, and Bronitsky and Merritt 1986 for point styles west of the area). Paleo-Indian and Archaic projectile points are the major temporal tool in both excavation and survey and can be considered like tree-ring dates in later periods. Unfortunately, there is some reason to doubt the cross-datings assigned to some point styles. Specifically, the temporal span of the San Pedro-style point, which ends at about 200 B.C. in southeastern Arizona, recently has been extended almost 1,500 years in south-central New Mexico (Upham et al. 1986), where this point style apparently remains common until 500 and is found in contexts dating as late as 1050. A difference on the order of a millennium in the dating of a major point style, between the regions immediately east and west of southwestern New Mexico, brings into question the validity, for southwestern New Mexico, of culture history, taxonomics, and chronology "borrowed" from other areas.

Late Archaic (Aceramic) Pit House Sites As Minnis (1980) noted, aceramic pit houses are known from the Sulphur Springs Valley (Arizona), the Hay Hollow Valley (Arizona), the Moquino site (central New Mexico), and Tumbleweed Canyon (Arizona), suggesting that similar features should be present in southwestern New Mexico as well.

There are other, operational problems with point-based systematics. Points are collectible, so points walk. Probably the most extensive collection of points from southwestern New Mexico was made over a series of years by Donald Formby (deceased). His collections total over 10,000 pieces from sites in New Mexico, Arizona, and elsewhere (Roth 1986). How many of these came from southwestern New Mexico is unknown, but the number is large. Over 500 "Pinto-Gypsum" points from southwestern New Mexico are discussed in Formby (1986). The potential for using private collections to refine Paleo-Indian and Archaic projectile point systematics is great, but of course the collections must first be studied.

Two other aceramic pit house components were tentatively identified at sites excavated during the Cliff Highway Salvage Project (Hammack, Bussey, and Ice 1966). At the large Salado phase Ormand site, "a late Archaic manifestation (possibly late San Pedro Phase of the Cochise) is postulated on the basis of small shallow pit houses and a large number of pits. These houses contain no pottery and only a few chips of stone and bone" (Hammack, Bussey, and Ice 1966: 36).

Fitting (1972b) briefly reported the excavation of the Eaton site, a Late Archaic pit structure site on a low terrace of the Gila River near Cliff. A more complete report on the Eaton site appeared in Hemphill (1983). The pit structure at this site was a shallow basin-shaped feature some 3 m in diameter and 20 cm deep, with a central posthole and a hearth. This structure dates to 383 B.C. (401-208 B.C.). A second Late Archaic pit house site, located on a very low terrace of the Gila, was excavated in 1980 (Laumbach 1980). Excavations at this site, LA 29397, documented an aceramic pit house with an associated roasting pit; a late Cochise-style point was associated with the house, and corn was found in the roasting pit. Both house and roasting pit produced carbon-14 dates that suggest occupation about 408 (258-533).

A pit structure at the Powers Ruin, on the Upper Gila in Arizona, may represent an aceramic pit house. The structure dates to 134-209 (66-233); brownware ceramics were recovered in the room fill and on the floor, but the excavator believes that these might represent trash fill (C. Shaw, personal communication 1989).

At the same time casual collections impact and degrade the resource. Playas Lake is a case in point. Findlow and DeAtley's Hidalgo survey recorded about 25 sites on the old beach lines around the lake, a prime location for Archaic materials. The survey was careful and

Similar remains were also found beneath a Mimbres phase room block at the nearby Dinwiddie site. Thus

33

there are at least four excavated aceramic pit house sites in the Upper Gila drainage. In a sample survey of the Upper Gila, Chapman, Gossett, and Gottett (1985:353) discovered 17 pit house sites that were thought to be aceramic Early Pit House period or preceramic Archaic.

understood: aceramic pit house sites, developing into brownware and pit house sites, developing into brownware-and-redware pit house sites. LeBlanc (1982b: 110-11) discusses the possibility of such a progression, noting that good evidence for the pre-redware horizon is currently lacking.

Late Archaic pit house sites, similar to the Eaton site and LA 29397, have been documented along one other major stream in southwestern New Mexico. On a low terrace of the Rio Grande, the Caballo site, a Late Archaic aceramic pit house site, was excavated in the early 1960s (Honea 1965); later survey documented other such sites along the river (Lekson 1989a). Aceramic pit houses are also known from the Middle San Francisco River (James A. Neely, personal communication 1987; W. H. Wills, personal communication 1988).

Thus, the Early Pit House period ceramic assemblage is characterized by plain brownwares and a thinly slipped or self-slipped redware (LeBlanc 1982b), both of which have not yet been fully described. The following Late Pit House period Georgetown phase is characterized by an identical ceramic assemblage with the addition of a more refined, slipped-and- polished redware, San Francisco Red. Needless to say, it is often very difficult in survey to distinguish sandblasted and weathered San Francisco Red from the poorly known earlier type, and in practice many archaeologists use the term "Early Pit House" for any site with plain brownwares and redwares but lacking any later decorated types.

While aceramic pit house sites are almost common on terraces along the Upper Gila River and are present on the Rio Grande, they have not been reported for the Mimbres Valley (see, e.g., Minnis 1980). However, site survey records from the Mimbres Foundation indicate that a number of sites with pit structure depressions but without ceramics were located during that survey. Two of these sites were tested, but these excavations have not yet been reported (B. Nelson, personal communication 1989). It appears that aceramic pit house sites are found along most of the streams later occupied during the Mimbres phase.

Intriguingly, the Mimbres Foundation survey (Blake, LeBlanc, and Minnis 1986: 442) found that the components of the three Late Pit House period phases (Georgetown, San Francisco, and Three Circle) were indistinguishable in survey. This position is in sharp contrast to that of many (and I daresay most) other archaeologists, who have trouble distinguishing the Early Pit House period from the Late Pit House Period Georgetown phase, but little trouble distinguishing San Francisco and/or Three Circle phase assemblages (with decorated pottery) from the two earlier, plain brownware taxons. Perhaps the early redwares of the Mimbres Valley lend themselves to unusually precise chronological resolution, but it also appears that to some extent, physical location becomes a necessary aspect of Early Pit house Period definition, as discussed below. The following discussion of Early Pit House period dating and systematics focuses on the preGeorgetown material but concludes that this distinction may be less useful than previously suggested (e.g., by Anyon, Gilman, and LeBlanc 1981).

Simply because a site lacks ceramics does not automatically consign it to the Archaic. The aceramic sites discussed above are Archaic, but other aceramic pit house sites may actually be Apachean or an aceramic aspect of Pit House or Pueblo period land use. Indeed, this last might explain the apparent anomaly of nearly identical dates from the Early Pit House period Winn Canyon site (393 B.C.) and the nearby Eaton site (383 B.C.); however, I will suggest below that the 393 B.C. date from Winn Canyon may not date the Early Pit House period at that site. LA 29397, an aceramic site in the Redrock Valley, dates to about 408 (258-533), considerably after the beginning of the Early Pit House period in some areas of southwestern New Mexico.

All Early Pit House period sites in southwestern New Mexico are dated by carbon-14 (Table 4.2). Only two Early Pit House period sites are tree-ring dated, and both are outside southwestern New Mexico as defined here; these are the Bluff site in Arizona and the SU site near Reserve, New Mexico. Despite being well beyond the pale (Arizona and Catron County, New Mexico), both the Bluff and SU sites enter into the following discussion, as will two other carbon-14 dated Early Pit House period sites just outside the arbitrary limits of southwestern New Mexico.

Early Pit House Period Early Pit house period phases have been defined in the Mimbres (LeBlanc 1980a), Gila (Fitting 1973), San Francisco (Wills 1989), and Rio Grande (Morenon and Hays 1984) drainages largely on the basis of single site excavations. Early Pit House period sites consist of shallow pit houses, much like the Late Archaic pit houses described above, with plain brownware and very minor amounts of redware pottery. As discussed below, there may be an earlier, pre-redware horizon which would complete the logical progression that marks the Mimbres Mogollon ceramic development, as it is currently

The dating of the Early Pit House period has generated a fairly substantial debate over very few dates, most of which range from about 300 to 700. A close approximation of the dating of the Bluff site, near Show Low, Arizona is 300. Dates from Bluff range from

34

238vv to 322vv, with a single cutting date at 303rB. The two dated units at the site date to sometime after 298 and 322, but the cutting date at 303 suggests that the actual date is not too much later. Thus, 300 is a useful marker date for the site; the dated units are almost certainly no earlier than 300.

Room 2 was superimposed. Feature 10 was a basin-shaped depression, 3.6-4.3 m in diameter and 0.6 m deep, with a central fire pit and a series of postholes around its interior circumference. Fitting (1973a:13) describes Feature 10 as "in effect, a pit room within a pit room." The floor of Room 2 continued over Feature 10, and a posthole that was part of the Room 2 roofing was excavated into Feature 10 fill from this upper floor level.

The Bluff site is the only well-dated (i.e., tree-ring dated) early Early Pit House period site in the Mogollon area. Although it should not be assumed that horizons such as the Early Pit House period are precisely contemporary across the broader Mogollon area, less precise dating techniques (i.e., carbon-14 dating) must be assessed against more precise techniques (i.e., tree-ring dating). Thus, even though the Bluff site is over 100 km from the study area (and 250 km from the Mimbres Valley), it offers the datum against which other early Early Pit House period dates must be compared. Four sites in Table 4.2 appear to date prior to 300 (not including the Eaton site, a late Archaic pit house village). (A series of very early carbon-14 dates, of about 800-1000 B.C., have been reported from Pine Lawn phase contexts at O-Block Cave, just north of the study area, but discussion of these dates must await more information on context; Peterson 1988.)

Fitting reconstructed the sequence in Room 2 as follows: the larger unit (Room 2) was built first; the smaller pit room (Feature 10) was then constructed, used, abandoned, and floored over; and the larger Room 2 continued in use until it, too, was abandoned. From Fitting's (1974) description, it also seems possible that Feature 10 preceded Room 2. This alternate sequence better fits the two carbon- 14 dates from this unit, the early date from Feature 10 and a later 411 date from probable roof material in Room 2. The Feature 10 date of 393 B.C. is almost precisely the same as the intercept of the carbon-14 date (383 B.C.) of the late Archaic Eaton site, about one mile away on the opposite side of the Gila River, discussed above. Late Archaic pit structures similar in form to Feature 10 appear to be relatively common in the Upper Gila and have been found under later pueblo sites there (Hammack, Bussey, and Ice 1966). Direct superimposition is not unknown on pit house sites, and perhaps this was the case with Room 2 and Feature 10 at Winn Canyon. Room 2 could be an Early Pit House period room built directly over an earlier Late Archaic unit.

Winn Canyon presents the biggest anomaly, with by far the earliest suggested date for the Early Pit House period, an uncalibrated date of 350 B.C. (this date was unfortunately mistakenly published as A.D. 350; Anyon, Gilman, and LeBlanc 1981: table 3). The early Winn Canyon date has a large calibrated date of 393 B.C. with a large 1-sigma range of 757-170 B.C.-- even earlier than its original published value (Fitting, Hemphill, and Abbe 1982).

At least three aspects of Feature 10 may argue against this interpretation. The size and depth of Feature 10 (diameter of 3.6 - 4.3 m and depth below present ground surface of 1.6 m) are considerably greater than similar measures at the pit structure at the Eaton site and other Late Archaic pit house sites. Second, the location of Feature 10 almost at the center of Room 2 suggests that Feature 10 was a part of the design for the larger unit. Finally, a dozen sherds, presumably indicating a Late Pit House, rather than Late Archaic, temporal assignment, were recovered from the fill of Feature 10, although their position in the fill is not described (analysis sheets, on file, Maxwell Museum).

The early Winn Canyon date, almost seven centuries before 300, is pretty darned early. LeBlanc (1980a: 120), noting the very large sigma value, very reasonably rejected this date as "unreliable." Even with its large 1-sigma range, there is no overlap with any later Early Pit House dates. Fitting (Fitting, Hemphill, and Abbe 1982) countered that the date was reliable and indicates an extraordinarily early dating of the Early Pit House period in the Cliff Valley. While I agree with LeBlanc that the date may be too early for the Early Pit House period, I refrain from condemning any date merely on the appearance of unreliability. There exists a third alternative (possibly a red herring): the date is correct, but the feature it dates is not correctly assigned to the Early Pit House period.

The range of sizes and functions in Archaic period building is poorly known; it is not impossible that larger pit structures ("Great Holes-in-the-Ground"?) were present in this period as in the later, Early Pit House period. Could Feature 10 be such a structure? The placement of Room 2 directly over Feature 10 (if my interpretation is correct) might be used to argue that Feature 10 was in fact such an unusual structure, the location of which may have influenced the location for Room 2, an Early Pit House period "Great Hole-in-the-Ground." Room 2 may have been placed

The early Winn Canyon date came from Feature 10 in Room 2. Room 2 was an Early Pit House period Great Kiva or communal structure. Strangely, LeBlanc (1982: 28) claims that this date "is not from a structure." The date certainly did come from a structure, but it is possible that Feature 10 may represent an earlier, preceramic pit structure over which

35

over Feature 10 precisely because Feature 10 was a recognizable "Great Hole-in-the-Ground" at the time of Room 2 construction -- either to utilize a substantial existing excavation or, perhaps, for more esoteric reasons.

years separates the two intercepts, but at 1 sigma, there is overlap between the two ranges at about 250-315. It would be possible to argue (1) that the two dates (intercepts) span too long a period for a single pit structure use-life or (2) that both dates can be reconciled at about 300.

I recognize that this reconstruction is a trifle fanciful, but there is the ugly fact of that 393 B.C. date. Absolute dates are far too rare in southwestern New Mexico to dismiss any date lightly. My just-so story may not be correct, but there are additional reasons to question the validity of this early date. Compare the early date to the later Winn Canyon date, 411, from the roof of the same pit structure. If both of these dates are correct, then Pit House 2 at Winn Canyon was in use for at least 400 years (minimum 1 sigma), or perhaps 800 years (intercepts), or even 1,300 years (maximum 1 sigma). Now, 400 years is a long time for any building; 1,300 years is phenomenal. There is increasing evidence that pit structure use-life is more on the order of a decade, not a millennium or half a millennium (Cameron 1990). Unless Early Pit House period structures had monumentally long use-lives, one of these two dates must be wrong. Consistency with other Dated Early Pit House sites suggests that the "incorrect" date is the earlier of the two. In any event, the correct dating of Early Pit House period Pit House 2 appears to be about 411.

The third pre-300 date is a date of 134-209 (66-321) from a pit structure at the Powers Ruin. As discussed above, this structure may be an aceramic pit house with later, Early Pit House period trash fill (C. Shaw, personal communication, 1989). This date is potentially of great importance, since it closely matches the early date from the nearby Mesa Top site, just discussed. Two dates are hardly a pattern, but these two dates from nearby sites may indicate an earlier Early Pit House period horizon on the Arizona segment of the Upper Gila than in southwestern New Mexico. The last pre-300 date from southwestern New Mexico is from Pit House 8 at the McAnally site on the Mimbres River, which produced at date of 245 (134-340). The ceramics associated with this unit included a redware, either self- slipped or slipped (LeBlanc 1980a). With a range of 130 to 340, there is a good chance that the early McAnally date is in fact 300 or later, consistent with the range of other Early Pit House period dates discussed below. Recall that the temporal datum of 300 is based on tree-ring dates from the Bluff Ruin, a site hundreds of kilometers away from southwestern New Mexico. It is certainly possible that the Early Pit House period began prior to 300 in southwestern New Mexico (or even, for that matter, in east-central Arizona where the Bluff site is located). But, in my opinion, the carbon-14 evidence for a pre-300 beginning of the Early Pit House period in southwestern New Mexico is problematic. The possibility of an early pre-redware horizon should be considered in both survey and excavation, but for the present a pre-redware horizon cannot be demonstrated.

The early date from Winn Canyon is by far the most troublesome of the early (pre-300) carbon-14 dates. Three other Early Pit House dates in Table 4.2 fall earlier than 300. The earliest of these dates, 130 (34-233) from the Mesa Top site (outside the study area, on the Upper Gila near Duncan, Arizona; Berman 1978), is an averaged value from two proveniences (here called Mesa Top I), suggested by the excavator as a possible pre-redware component. The basis of this suggestion is an assemblage from the lower floor of Pit House 2, which produced a carbon-14 date of 78-125 B.C. (89 B.C. - A.D. 315). No redware was present in the assemblage associated with the lower floor, but that level totaled only 24 sherds (Berman 1978: table 15). While the lack of redware in this level and the associated early date are intriguing, the low number of sherds in the assemblage led Berman to suggest that "the data derived from the Mesa Top site are not sufficient to definitely conclude that a pre-red ware horizon existed, but we can suggest the existence of such a horizon" (Berman 1978: 124).

Table 4.2 indicates that all other dated Early Pit House units in southwestern New Mexico probably postdate 300. Two dates with large sigmas (Winn Canyon and LA 29397) range as early as 250; but other dates have much smaller ranges, and these span a period from the mid-300s through the 400s, 500s, and even the 600s. These sites include the important Placitas Arroyo sites (Morenon and Hays 1984), near Hatch, New Mexico. Averaging of Placitas Arroyo dates follows Morenon and Hay's (1984) suggestions regarding operational contemporaniety, and a single averaged value of all dates (less one aberrant date, Morenon and Hays 1984: table 6.1) is included in Table 4.2. This master averaged Placitas Arroyo date, combining six dates to produce a calibrated date of 415 (392-525), is undoubtedly the strongest (i.e., most reliable) carbon-14 dating from any Early Pit House period context in southwestern New Mexico. The suite of later dates from Mesa Top II falls into the later Early Pit House period. Also included in

The early Mesa Top I date conflicts with a later date from the same structure. The averaged 130 date comes from two features, an aceramic hearth and the lower floor of Pit House 2 (Table 4.2). The aceramic hearth does not shed much light on the beginnings of the Early Pit House period. The early date from the lower floor of Pit House 2 can be compared to a much later date from the upper floor of the same unit (included in the Mesa Top II average, Table 4.2). A span of over 500

36

Table 4.2 are dates from the Duncan site, a second Early Pit House period site near Duncan, Arizona (Lightfoot 1984). Averaging dates from Pit House 11 at the Duncan site produces a calibrated value of 645 (612-665), late in the Early Pit House period. Finally, Pit House 11 at the McAnally site dates to about 645.

300 is problematic at best and weak at worst. In my opinion, A.D. 300 is a reasonable beginning date for this period. Some Early Pit House period sites (McAnally, Duncan) may date as late as the mid-600s, a topic discussed further below. Early Pit House period systematics presents some unique problems for survey. Early Pit House period sites are often found on high bluffs or isolated mesas. This pattern is evident over most of the Mogollon region. Early Pit house Period sites on high isolated mesas occur along the Upper Gila (Lekson 1982), the Rio Grande (Lekson 1989a), the east slopes of the Black Range (Laumbach and Kirkpatrick 1983), and, of course, the Mimbres (LeBlanc 1983). LeBlanc (1980, 1983) argues that this settlement pattern is exclusive; that is, Early Pit House villages occur only on isolated knolls or mesa tops.

The tree-ring dates from the SU site are the best chronological evidence for the middle or later portions of the Early Pit House period. Tree-ring dates from SU suggest that most pit houses there date no earlier than the mid-to-late 400s. The tree-ring dating, however, does not tell the whole story. The range of carbon-14 dates from SU mirrors the range of all Early Pit House period dates in Table 4.2. Only the calibrated ranges, and not the intercepts, are given for these four dates, as follows: 410 - 207 B.C., 94 B.C. - A.D. 46, 390 - 650, and 537 - 637 (Wills 1989: table 1). The two earliest dates are associated with aceramic features; the two later dates with Early Pit House period features. Thus the range of carbon-14 dates from SU generally agrees with the dates and interpretations offered above, but the tree-ring dates fall solidly in the mid-to-late 400s.

In the Mimbres chronology, the location of Early Pit House sites becomes one (and perhaps the most important) criterion used for defining the period, at least for survey. Details of pit house size and shape cannot be determined from surface depressions, so ceramics are the only means of dating pit house sites. The distinctions between the Early Pit House period (which encompasses the Cumbre phase in the Mimbres area, the Winn Canyon phase in the Cliff area, and the Pine Lawn phase in the Reserve area) and the first Late Pit House period phase (the Georgetown phase, in all areas) are very minor differences in the surface finish and proportions of redwares. As Stuart and Gauthier (1981: 186) note, proportions of redwares may reflect functional, as well as temporal, dimensions. Indeed, there is no good reason to assume that the diagnostic redware type (Saliz Red) will occur on Early Pit House sites of all sizes and functions or in all areas, and in my opinion -- and it can only be an opinion, since the ceramics of this period are poorly described and understudied -- it does not.

The Bluff site, dated to about 300, anchors the beginning of the Early Pit House period, while the SU site (also outside the study area), with tree-ring dates in the mid-to-late 400s, falls, presumably, near the upper end of the period. Curiously, the younger end of the Early Pit House period may be less well dated than its beginning. The accepted end date of 550 was based on two (uncalibrated) carbon-14 dates from Pit House 11 at the McAnally site in the Mimbres Valley, supported by (uncalibrated) early-to-mid 500s dates from the Mesa Top and Placitas Arroyo sites (Anyon, Gilman, and LeBlanc 1981: 214). Calibration and reanalysis of these dates (Table 4.2) indicate that Mesa Top II and PA 2 at Placitas Arroyo do support a dating in the earlyto-mid 550s, but McAnally appears to date to almost a century later, 645 (612-665). The averaged dates from the McAnally site Pit House 11 are in close agreement and offer a reasonably strong date for the Early Pit House period, second only to the Placitas Arroyo suite of dates.

Many (and probably most) archaeologists working in southwestern New Mexico employ an alternate criterion for recognizing the Early Pit House period. This criterion is essentially negative: the absence of later decorated or textured ceramics types in a surface assemblage defines an Early Pit House site (see, e.g., Fitting 1972; Laumbach and Kirkpatrick 1984; Lekson 1989a; see also Peterson 1988 for an interesting discussion from the perspective of the Georgetown phase). This definition, in effect a return to the arguments of Bullard (1962), combines ceramic assemblages of the Georgetown phase with sites of the earlier, but nearly identical, Early Pit House period, which may cause those devoted to the Pine Lawn and Cumbre phases to recoil in horror. But I submit that the combination, in survey, of the Early Pit House period and the Georgetown phase has two real advantages over the Mimbres Foundation usage.

The latest carbon-14 dates for Early Pit House period sites (e.g., Duncan Pit House 22, McAnally Pit House 11, and possibly SU feature 4A) are younger than the tree-ring dates of 624 for two Late Pit House period units (22 and 28) at Harris Village (Table 4.1). Things begin to look very hazy, and it appears that the temporal boundary between the Early and Late Pit House Periods might make more sense if discussed from the perspective of the latter. This topic will be reserved for the section on Late Pit House Period dating and systematics. To summarize, there are dates as early as 393 B.C. which may apply to the Early Pit House period, but the evidence for the Early Pit House period prior to A.D.

37

First, the ceramic markers of the two taxonomic units are generally unworkable in survey. Redwares are so very similar that it is often impossible to determine if one is looking at a nice Early Pit House redware or a bad San Francisco Red -- and if those distinctions really mean anything. Good San Francisco Red is a definable type, but good San Francisco Red is rare on singlecomponent pit house sites out in the real world of survey. Almost inevitably, the fieldworker is confronted with a sandblasted redware of untypeable dreariness.

into a flat plain. There is absolutely no topographic break between the site and the plain. I cannot imagine how Winn Canyon's setting could be considered "defensive." Chapman, Gossett, and Gossett (1985) documented a number of sites similar to Winn Canyon on the Upper Gila and then tried to relate this pattern to "defensive" Early Pit House period settlement: Early Pit house sites are located at the edges of high terraces or benches overlooking major drainage flood-plains . . . This locational pattern stands in clear contrast to surrounding regions . . . where similar sites appear to be situated on high prominences away from the major valley floodplains. It has been suggested that this latter tendency may reflect defensive siteplacement. If so, the pattern clearly does not denote similar settlement behavior in the Upper Gila Study areas. (Chapman, Gossett, and Gossett 1985: 355).

Second, I remain completely unconvinced that Early Pit House settlement is limited to defensive locales at some distance from major streams (Lekson 1989a). But with the Mimbres Foundation scheme, I fear we are locked into systematics that almost guarantees that those remote "defensive" locales are the only places where we will be able to find, or at least recognize in survey, Early Pit House sites. The general working criterion for the Early Pit House period is the absence of later decorated types. As in any negative definition, this presents an insurmountable problem in multicomponent sites. If a site continued to be used into the Late Pit House period, the surface "evidence" for Early Pit House period occupation would simply vanish.

The Placitas Arroyo sites (Morenon and Hays 1984) do not appear defensive. Duncan Village is on a landform almost identical to Winn Canyon. It would be difficult to argue that Duncan Village is on a defensive location, and, in fact, defense is not even mentioned in the report (Lightfoot 1984). Finally, the SU site, the original Early Pit House period site, is located on a low, gentle hill that could never be considered defensive. Thus, of the seven dated Early Pit House period sites discussed above (the Early Pit House period sites in Table 4.2, plus Bluff and SU), four, at least, are located in nondefensive positions.

It seems likely that Early Pit House period sites do, indeed, disappear in survey. Early Pit House sites on lower terraces would almost certainly be obscured by later occupations, since there is a strong pattern of reuse of low terrace locales (i.e., multicomponency) in the Mimbres Mogollon area, as discussed below. Most large Mimbres pueblos are built over earlier Late Pit House period villages. At the same time, there is a clear tendency towards both more and larger sites from Early Pit house through Classic Mimbres. These factors -- multicomponency on low terraces and increasing numbers and increasing size of structural sites -- almost guarantee the archaeological disappearance of Early Pit House period sites on lower terraces, at least in survey, if they do indeed exist. Recognizable Early Pit House sites are located in survey on high buttes and isolated knolls simply because those locations were not reused during later periods. Thus, the pattern, from survey, of Early Pit House period sites located on high knolls becomes somewhat circular, and the systematics tend to insure that new evidence will support the hypothesis behind the systematics.

Isolated, "defensive" Early Pit House period sites are real, but they may simply represent the most easily recognized sites from this period and not the only (or even the most important) Early Pit House site locations. On the Gila and the Rio Grande (and probably elsewhere in southwestern New Mexico), pit houses of periods immediately preceding and immediately following the Early Pit House period are found on low terraces. Thus it would be reasonable and prudent at least to suspect a similar settlement pattern for the Early Pit House period as well. The problem is one of recognition in survey. The difference in surface patterns (and Early Pit House period systematics) between the Mimbres Valley, on the one hand, and the Gila and Rio Grande, on the other, may reflect patterns of later archaeological periods (Lekson 1989a). In the Mimbres Valley, the settlement pattern in the Mimbres phase is one of many medium to large sites, usually built over earlier Pit House period settlements. In the Gila Valley and the Rio Grande, a single huge site dominates each valley segment; that is, there may be less ubiquitous reoccupation of locales that previously were occupied by Pit House period villages. Thus, Early Pit House period use of nondefensive locales may be archaeologically more visible in areas outside the Mimbres Valley.

Early Pit House period sites are expected to be on isolated buttes or mesas. They often are, but at least a few Early Pit House period sites are not. Of the dated sites discussed here, several are examples of nondefensive settings. The Winn Canyon site is located on both sides of the broad mouth of Winn Canyon; part of the site (excavated by Fitting) is on a semi-isolated terrace finger, but most of the site is located on a low terrace surface that grades imperceptibly, to the west,

38

types, while the Three Circle phase should have Three Circle Red-on-white and Boldface Black-on-white (Style I). These three decorated types are thought to be sequent, with a steady evolution from Mogollon Red-on-brown through a short-lived Three Circle Red-on-white to Boldface Black-on-white (Anyon 1980b; LeBlanc 1982b; Shafer and Taylor 1986: 44).

Late Pit House Period The Late Pit House period is divided into three phases: the Georgetown phase (A.D. 550-650), the San Francisco phase (A.D. 650-750), and the Three Circle phase (A.D. 750-1000). These phases were established by Emil Haury's seminal excavations at Mogollon Village and the Harris site and to a lesser extent by Paul Martin's work in the Reserve area (Martin 1943; Martin and Rinaldo 1940, 1947). A number of new phases and new names have been proposed for the Late Pit House period, but the Mimbres Foundation chronology (Table 1.2) retains Haury's original terminology, with a few important modifications (Anyon 1980; Anyon, Gilman, and LeBlanc 1981). Haury demonstrated a sequence of Georgetown, San Francisco, and Three Circle phases and suggested a possible phase intermediate between Georgetown and San Francisco, which he called the San Lorenzo phase (Haury 1936b, 1940). The San Lorenzo phase has not been substantiated in subsequent work (although there has been little subsequent work in sites of the appropriate period), and it has been dropped in the Mimbres Foundation's chronology (Anyon, Gilman, and LeBlanc 1981). The Mangas phase, mentioned but not defined by Haury (1936a), has also been put out to pasture (Anyon, Gilman, and LeBlanc 1981); winded and weary, it returns in the next section.

There is reason (and I believe good reason) to question whether Mogollon Red-on-brown, Three Circle Red-on-white, and Boldface Black-and-white form an evolutionary sequence. If they do in fact form a sequence, I also question whether the archaeological resolution is sufficiently fine to recognize and use that sequence in survey. Recall that the typological sequence was developed from an unscreened sample of ceramics from a handful of pit houses at two widely separated sites (Mogollon Village and the Harris site), at a time of one-type/one-phase systematics (as at Snaketown). It would be remarkable if that tiny sample, reexamined under the less categorical paradigm of the eighties, could not produce different conclusions. Arnold Withers has recently reexamined the data and has drawn different conclusions. He argues that Three Circle Red-on-white was a contemporary variant of Mogollon Red-on-brown (Withers 1985b), a conclusion that seems to ignore Mogollon Village, where Mogollon Red-on-brown was found with only the slightest smattering of Three Circle Red-on-white (Haury 1936a; P. Gilman personal communication 1989). Withers (1985a) further argues that there is no good case for Mogollon Red-on-brown prior to 700, and I believe that his second proposition is correct.

There has been very little (reported) excavation of Late Pit House sites since Haury's time. The most influential recent data come from the Mimbres Foundation's salvage of a number of Late Pit House period structures at the Galaz site (Anyon and LeBlanc 1984), a large multicomponent Mimbres site. As LeBlanc (1986) points out, pit houses overlain by large Mimbres pueblos seldom provide strong cases for defining or refining Pit House period chronology. Pit house sites that are not extensively disturbed by superimposed Mimbres phase pueblos are preferable for cultural history and systematics; to date the only major reports on "single-component" Late Pit House period sites are Haury's. Three of the most important Late Pit House period excavations have never been fully reported: Three Circle Village, Lee Village, and Wind Mountain (all three are large pit house villages without huge Mimbres pueblo overlays).

The only good (i.e., tree-ring) evidence for pre-700 Mogollon Red-on-brown comes from a single house (28) dated at 624 at the Harris site, a multicomponent site that was occupied into the late 800s. As Withers notes, only four sherds of the type were found in possible association with the house, and "it is unsportsmanlike to use these four sherds to establish such a rigid boundary between the Georgetown and San Francisco phase" (Withers 1985a: 18). This early date for Mogollon Red-on-brown can be questioned on grounds other than pure sportsmanship. A second house (25) at Harris is also dated to 624; this is a round structure with one flattened side and no Mogollon Red-on-brown (Haury 1936a). As Anyon (1980: 155) had earlier noted, "Because the depositional history of floor fill of either house is not explained (Haury 1936a), any number of factors could have caused the Mogollon Red-on-brown in House 28." The comparison can extend beyond the two pit structures at Harris. In size and shape, House 25 at Harris closely resembles Pit House 11 at the nearby McAnally site (about 2 km away; LeBlanc 1977), which has a calibrated carbon-14 date of 645 (612-665). There are some differences of detail (there are always

The distinctions between the Early Pit House period and the Georgetown phase (the initial Late Pit House period phase) were discussed above. Recall that the Early Pit House period is marked by a poorly finished redware. Georgetown ceramic assemblages lack decorated types but include San Francisco Red -presumably, a refinement of Early Pit House period redwares (LeBlanc 1982). The arrival of new phases is heralded by the addition of a series of decorated ceramics to the basic Georgetown phase brownwares and redwares: the San Francisco phase should have Mogollon Red-on-brown (in effect, a decorated variety of San Francisco Red) but no later

39

differences of detail in handmade buildings), and the McAnally pit house is associated with a ceramic assemblage of Alma Plain and "proto-San Francisco red" (LeBlanc 1977: 2); but the two structures are very similar, contemporary, and lack Mogollon Red-on-brown. A similar, but somewhat larger structure (Unit 8) at the Galaz site had Georgetown phase ceramics (Anyon and LeBlanc 1984: 121) and produced a comparable carbon-14 date of 682 (648-798).

individual layers or proveniences at other sites may have produced San Francisco phase ceramics, but Mogollon Village appears to be the only large excavated site from this period. Searching through the literature, one begins to wonder if Mogollon Village is unique -- an alarming thought for Mimbres systematics. From the various survey records (for large sites with sizable surface samples), several Mogollon Redon-brown sites are reported from the Upper Gila (see section 4.A), but none have been excavated. Two excavated sites near Reserve (outside the study area) have decorated ceramic assemblages that are predominantly (but not exclusively) Three Circle Red-on-white. These are the Turkey Foot Ridge site, dating to the late 700s (Martin and Rinaldo 1950), and the Wheatly Ridge site, some part of which is dated to the late 800s (Lowe 1947 cited in Withers 1985a; dates from Bannister, Hannah, and Robinson 1970). Three Circle Red-on-white is rare in the surveys; only one site with predominately Three Circle Red- on-white (associated with Boldface Black-on-white) is on record, in the Redrock Valley.

Thus, the only candidate for a pre-700 context with Mogollon Red-on-brown is House 28 at Harris, but three other pit houses, at Harris and the nearby McAnally and Galaz sites, are either precisely or approximately contemporary to Pit House 28 and have only plainwares and redwares. In my opinion, the evidence rules pre-700 decorated pottery off the field. If the Harris site is eliminated, the earliest well-dated context for Mogollon Red-on-brown is Mogollon Village, where four pit houses with Mogollon Red-on-brown date from no earlier than 736 to at least 755 (Table 4.1). (Boldface Black-on-white also occurs at Mogollon Village, but only in one structure, welldated to 898; Table 4.1.) Thus, the possible span for the sequential evolution of three types is collapsed into the abbreviated period from the early 700s to sometime prior to the early 800s, when almost exclusively Boldface Black-on-white assemblages appear. This is a very short period for an evolutionary sequence of three types, perhaps impossibly short. Withers (1985a:23) concluded: "The myth of the evolution of these early Mogollon pottery types may now be laid to rest."

One of the most important sites for addressing this question is Lee Village, a large (50-unit) pit house site (Bussey 1975). Over 30 pit structures were excavated at Lee Village. Ceramic counts in an earlier, unpublished discussion of the site (Bussey 1972) demonstrate a consistent association, in all units, of Three Circle Red- on-White with Boldface Black-on-white; Mogollon Red-on-brown is present, but in extremely low frequencies. One major component of the Lee Village assemblage was Cliff Black-on- white, a "black-on-white" variety intermediate between Three Circle Red-on-white and Boldface Black-on-white; the "black" paint ranges in color from "blood red to a deep chocolate brown" (Bussey 1975: 9). Although the typological description of the ceramics is uncertain, it is clear that red-on-white types make up a very large proportion of the Lee Village assemblage.

While Withers is probably partly correct, he overstates the case. The types may appear in sites in a rapid temporal sequence -- a tight schedule challenging the coarse archaeological resolution of southwestern New Mexico. We may be trying to do time sprints with a sundial, and even that doomed hope is clouded by the strong possibility that geography, as well as time, structures the ceramic typology. Bussey (1975: 42-49) suggested that Mogollon Red-on- brown and Three Circle Red-on-white were more common (i.e., archaeologically visible) in the western half of southwestern New Mexico than in the eastern (Mimbres Valley) portion, and the survey data tend to support his observation. It seems possible that the three Late Pit House period decorated types have a geographic, as well as (or perhaps instead of) a temporal, dimension.

The earliest dated appearance of Mogollon Red-on-brown is at Mogollon Village, where it occurs without Three Circle Red-on-white or Boldface Black-on-white. Red-on-brown types remain a constant part of Upper Gila ceramic assemblages through the Mimbres phase (Lekson 1990). Sites with high proportions of Three Circle Red-on-white are known from the western, but not the eastern, half of the area. Apparently, there are no single-component Mogollon Red-on- brown or Three Circle Red-on-white sites recorded for the Mimbres Valley, and, indeed, clearly defined Mogollon Red-on-brown and Three circle Red-on-white components have not yet been defined there at multicomponent sites (such as Harris Village, Haury 1936a; Galaz, Anyon and LeBlanc 1984; and NAN Ranch, Shafer and Taylor 1986). Bussey's observation that these types are more visible in

There do not appear to be large "single-component" San Francisco and early Three Circle phase sites in the Mimbres and Rio Grande drainages. While not common, such sites are at least found in the western (Gila and San Francisco) drainages. Mogollon Village is a case in point. I am not aware of any other excavated site that has produced the ceramic assemblage found at Mogollon Village. A few

40

the archaeology of the western half of southwestern New Mexico than in the eastern half may be correct.

later phases, the San Francisco and Three Circle? They should be defined by the presence of Mogollon Red-on-brown (San Francisco phase) and the presence of Three Circle Red-on- white (early Three Circle phase) and, later, Boldface Black- on-white (late Three Circle phase). These distinctions seem theoretically straightforward.

Dates from two Upper Gila sites, MC 110 and SaigeMcFarland (Pit House 1), are of interest here (Table 4.2). Both carbon-14 dates have intercepts of 672, and both are associated with Boldface Black-on-white assemblages. At MC 110, the assemblage associated with the date contains almost equal amounts of Mogollon Red-on-brown, Three Circle Red-on- white, and Boldface Black-on-white. The Saige-McFarland context includes all three decorated types but is dominated by Boldface Black-on-white. The date of 672 is about a century earlier than Boldface Black-on-white's beginnings in the Mimbres Valley (generally dated at about 750, as discussed below). These assemblages either indicate earlier development of Boldface Black-on-white on the Gila than on the Mimbres (as Fitting argued) or require some other explanation. The sanctity of the Mimbres Valley chronology can be preserved if the ranges, rather than the intercepts, of these dates are considered. The MC 110 date has a large range (602-864), while the Saige-McFarland date's range is more restricted (645770). The last third of the MC 110 range conforms to the Mimbres Valley chronology. The Saige-McFarland date requires rather more specialized pleading, since the 1-sigma range barely encompasses the Mimbres Valley Boldface start-up date of sometime after 750. I have argued elsewhere (Lekson 1990) that the nature of this sample (the interior portion of a burned beam) may have produced an erroneously early date.

In practice, this division is difficult and often impossible. Most sites show continuity from Georgetown though Three Circle (and often later) phases. Very few pit house sites in the survey files have only one of the decorated types in the supposed evolutionary sequence; in surface contexts, all Late Pit House period sites have all three Late Pit House period decorated types. These types are also found at almost all large multicomponent sites that lasted into the Mimbres phase and beyond. An identical situation was encountered at many sites in the Upper Gila Water Supply Project Class II survey (Chapman, Gossett, and Gossett 1985: 356). Presumably, similar difficulties led Blake, LeBlanc, and Minnis (1986: 442) to treat the Late Pit House period as a unit in survey analysis and not to apportion surveyed sites into phases. Indeed, the various site files discussed in section 4.B demonstrate the inappropriateness of the Late Pit House phase system for survey data. These data sets could only be understood by lumping the two later Late Pit House phases together in systematic opposition to the combination of Early Pit House period and Georgetown phase: an Early Pit House period of pit structures with plain brownwares and redwares (Early Pit House period and Georgetown phase) versus a Late Pit House period with pit structures, plain brownwares, and various combinations of decorated red-on-brown, red-on-white, and Style I (Boldface) Black-on-white decorated types (San Francisco and Three Circle phases).

Fitting, no doubt, would decry these arguments in support of the Mimbres Valley chronology as strained (cf. Fitting, Hemphill, and Abbe 1982), and there is no reason why Boldface Black-on-white might not have begun earlier on the Gila than on the Mimbres -- but perhaps not quite as early as the intercepts of these two dates would suggest. If nothing else, MC 110 provides a convincing assemblage with equal proportions of all three Late Pit House period decorated types.

Viewed this way, the Late Pit House period begins about A.D. 700 -- less a change in the dating of this period than a revision of its systematics and content. When does it end? By definition, the Pit House period should end with the inception of pueblo architecture (LeBlanc and Whalen 1980), a topic discussed under the Mimbres phase. Tree-ring (Mogollon Village and Harris site), carbon-14 (Black's Bluff), and archaeomagnetic dates (NAN Ranch Ruin) from Late Pit House period contexts span the 700s and 800s. Late Pit House tree-ring dates range up to 900 (898 at Mogollon Village) and perhaps into the mid-900s in Room 37 at the Wheaton-Smith site and Room 286 at Mattocks. The tree-ring samples from Wheaton-Smith were recovered from fill in a pit house, but may have originated in the overlying Mimbres phase pueblo; apparently there are similar doubts about the single 900s date from the Mattocks site (Anyon 1980: 156). Good (tree-ring) dates for the Late Pit House period stop at about A.D. 900.

In any event, Late Pit House period ceramics are less well understood than we might wish. The Three Circle, Lee, and Wind Mountain sites might do much to resolve the uncertainties that plague the period. At the very best, it is difficult or impossible to structure research questions for survey around the traditional Late Pit House phase sequence. If phase distinctions are uncertain in excavation, are they useful for survey? Many archaeologists have problems with them. The difficulties of separating the Early Pit House period from the Georgetown phase were discussed above; the de facto resolution appears to have been the combination of Early Pit House period and Georgetown phase plain brownware and redware ceramic assemblages, which does violence to the systematics but reflects field reality. What of the two

41

Early Pueblo Period The Early Pueblo period refers to the archaeology of about A.D. 1000 to 1150 (LeBlanc and Whalen 1980). In southwestern New Mexico, this period is dominated by the Mimbres phase, but around its edges other phases spill into the area: to the east and southeast, the Mesilla Phase; to the southwest, the San Luis phase; and to the north, the Reserve phase. These phases will be discussed, briefly, after a more lengthy consideration of the star of the show, the Mimbres phase.

Mimbres whitewares. Recognizable Style I, II, and III pottery can be identified throughout southwestern New Mexico, but it would be remarkable indeed if all the pottery across this vast area was homogeneous. When does Mimbres cease to be Mimbres and become some other thing? Archaeological knowledge of southwestern New Mexico is so focused on the Mimbres Valley that at this point we cannot begin to describe the variation of black-on-white pottery in the region that surrounds it.

The Mimbres phase is more closely identified with its pottery than any phase of any other Southwestern culture, and the main recent developments in Mimbres systematics concern ceramic typology. The initial typology of Mimbres black-on-white pottery consisted of two types: Boldface and Classic Mimbres. The two types were technologically identical, and the distinction was made entirely on the basis of design. Building on the insights of Richard Ellison of Silver City, Mimbres Foundation typologists have defined an intermediate style between the two (Anyon and LeBlanc 1984). The sequence of types has been named Boldface, Transitional, and Classic, but more commonly they are referred to by numbers: Styles I, II, and III (respectively). The series is chronological, but Style II is rarely found without Style I or III in excavated layers or surface assemblages. Style II deposits have been defined at the NAN Ranch Ruin (H. Shafer, personal communication 1987), but in general it appears as elusive as the earlier Three Circle Red-on-white. Style II represents designs that previously would have been called Boldface, a matter of some importance when evaluating discussions of Boldface Black-on-white in literature published before the definition of the Style I-II-III series. The Style I-II-III series has been adopted by most workers in the area; unfortunately, it has never been fully defined in print. The styles are best defined on whole vessels or rim sherds, which presents an enormous problem in survey. I have used the Style I-II-III system for surveys on the Rio Grande and the Gila, and an alarming proportion of sherds winds up in nonspecific categories.

Architectural technology can also define a region. There are many ways to build with river cobbles, but a limited (and characteristic) series of techniques can be observed in ruins from the Rio Grande (Lekson 1989a), the Mimbres Valley (Anyon and LeBlanc 1984; Cosgrove and Cosgrove 1932; Shafer and Taylor 1986), and the Rio Arenas (Herrington 1979), to the Upper Gila (Lekson 1978a, 1990), and on to the Duncan area (Shaw and Bernard-Shaw 1986). The cobble walls are arranged in a variety of site plans, and the sites themselves are arrayed on the landscape in different ways; but the basic architectural technology is consistent. Together, typologically similar pottery and technologically similar architecture define a region that covers the northern half, at least, of southwestern New Mexico. But around the fringes of this region are sites with Mimbres ceramics and no architecture, and sites with Mimbres architecture and non-Mimbres ceramics. Both are important to understanding adaptations and prehistory in southwestern New Mexico. There is no easy solution to region definition, but, in general, the Mimbres region is as well (or ill) defined as any comparable unit in Southwestern archaeology (Lekson 1986b). Drawing a line around an area does not mean that a single chronology or sequence of prehistory will suffice for that area. As discussed below, different valleys within the Mimbres area appear to have slightly different prehistories. But the region is an appropriate scale for the poor resolution of survey.

Shafer and Taylor (1986) suggest finer divisions within the Mimbres Classic end of the series (again, based on rim decoration) that may allow temporal resolution to as fine an interval as fifty years, but the application of the these divisions, defined at the NAN Ranch Ruin, to other sites and other areas has not yet been demonstrated.

The archaeology of the Mimbres phase is by far the most visible and most completely known of any period in southwestern New Mexico. But we still don't know enough. For example, when does the Mimbres phase begin? We do not know. Conventionally, the beginning date has been set at about A.D. 1000, but -with one notable exception (Room 76 at the NAN Ranch Ruin) -- there are no good dates between 900 (the last good tree-ring date for the Late Pit House period) and the 1060s. Disregarding Room 76 at NAN, the earliest Mimbres phase unit dated by a "r" or "v" date is Room 23B/63AB at the NAN Ranch Ruin with a date of 1064. Construction at the Mimbres Valley pueblos undoubtedly began earlier than that: cutting dates in the 1040s come from rooms dated to 1060 or

Mimbres is Mimbres is Mimbres. Or is it? Many workers have remarked that Mimbres black-on-white pottery outside the Mimbres Valley is in some way "different" (e.g., H. Shafer, personal communication, 1989; P. Gilman, personal communication, 1988); these observations are simply impressions, but they are valuable insights in that they define an important research problem. We need regional studies of

42

later, and many "vv" dates in the 1020s, 1040s, and 1050s scattered throughout Mattocks and NAN may indicate construction during these decades (but note Unit 410 at Mattocks Ruin, a rectangular Mimbres pit structure with a 1020vv tree-ring date and an archaeomagnetic date of 1172).

Mangas phase in the Upper Gila, but a history of imprecise definitions and muddled developmental schemes, along with the ever-present social dynamic that drives archaeology as much as any other discipline, obscures their commonalities. The Mangas phase is supposed to be stage of small pueblos, or pueblos and pit houses, with late Style I or Style II pottery, intermediate between the Late Pit House period and the large Mimbres phase pueblos (Lekson 1988). Chronologically, it should fall somewhere in the dating void between 900 and the 1060s. Since some of the "vv" dates in the 1020s, 1040s, and 1050s at the large pueblos probably represent construction in the mid-1000s, the most likely span for the Mangas phase would be in the late 900s and early 1000s. The Mangas has a long, if checkered, history on the Upper Gila (Fitting 1972; Fitting, Hemphill, and Abbe 1982; Lekson 1990), but it has no friends in the Mimbres Valley (Gilman 1980; LeBlanc, 1982, 1986b; Shafer 1988).

From 900 to 1060, cutting dates range from scarce to nonexistent. Room 76 at the NAN Ranch Ruin produced two cutting dates at 1008. Their context repays close study. Room 76 was a possible granary, with a stone floor and upright slab walls: The ruins of Room 76 were very near the surface; the floor was considerably higher than that of Room 89, a transitional-early Classic Mimbres room bordering Room 76 to the south. . . . Room 76 was built after Room 89 was in ruin. . . . Two possible explanations are offered for the early dates: first, they accurately date construction of this room; second, the beams used in the room construction were salvaged from an earlier structure. . . . if the dates accurately mark the construction of Room 76, then we can place the beginning of Mimbres surface architecture [in Room 89] as early as the late 900s. Unfortunately, it is not possible to assess which of these explanations is more accurate. (Shafer 1987: 14)

The two best-documented examples of small pueblos with Boldface and Transitional pottery from the Upper Gila are the Black Bluff's site and Room Block A at the Saige- McFarland site. Black's Bluff is a large multicomponent site just below Cliff on the Gila River; there are about ten room blocks, a "Great Kiva," and an unknown number of pit structures. One room was excavated in a small masonry room block (Brunett 1972). This room produced over 1,000 painted sherds; "over 72% of this total were Mimbres Boldface Black-on-white with Mimbres Black-on-white representing less than 1%" (Klinger 1972), and almost all of these Mimbres Classic sherds were from upper levels of room fill.

If the dates of 1008 in fact are associated with Room 76, then Room 89 may be one of the earliest Mimbres aboveground (pueblo-style) structures. Room 89 was unusual: "The walls were not constructed in a typical Classic Mimbres fashion. They were made up of layers of small fist-sized cobbles set in compact adobe mortar" (Shafer 1986: 18). The use of small cobbles, rather than the larger cobbles and boulders typically used in later Mimbres masonry, may reflect the early development of masonry technology, consistent with an early dating of the room. Burial ceramics associated with the room were Style II and "early Style III" (Shafer 1986: 18, 1987: 14), again consistent with a late 900s or early 1000 dating.

Room Block A at the Saige-McFarland site was a crudely built, six-room masonry unit that produced over 550 typeable Mimbres whiteware sherds. Of these, 37% were Style I (Boldface), 20% were Style II (Transitional), and 43% were Style III (Classic Mimbres) Black-on-white; but these proportions do not include 15 Style I and II vessels in a burial unambiguously associated with Room 4 of Room Block A. This burial demonstrates that Room Block A was initially constructed with an associated ceramic assemblage of Styles I and II; the Style III black-on-white sherds and a date for a late addition to the room block of 1127vv show that the unit continued to be used through the Mimbres phase (Lekson 1990).

In its developmentally "early" masonry and ceramic associations, Room 89 resembles Room Block A at the Saige-McFarland site. Room Block A lacks dates for its initial construction, but that construction was associated with a Style I and II ceramic assemblage (described at more length later in this section). This room block at Saige- McFarland has been called a Mangas phase unit (Lekson 1990).

The Upper Gila Water Supply Study Class II survey seems strangely ambiguous on the issue of the Mangas phase. In the discussion of ceramics and ceramic assemblages, W. J. Gossett follows the Mimbres Foundation party line, presumably at the advice of Roger Anyon, "consultant for ceramic type identification and regional prehistory" (Chapman, Gossett, and Gossett 1985: 8). Gossett concludes: "The

The Mangas phase is a very minor matter in Southwestern archaeology, but even minor matters can trigger hot debate (pro: Lekson 1988; con: Shafer 1988; Anyon 1988). The "Transitional" stage in the Mimbres Valley is probably the same general thing that I call

43

concept of a 'Mangas Phase'. . . cannot be substantiated on the basis of the present survey data" (W.J. Gossett, in Chapman, Gossett, and Gossett 1985: 152). Yet, later in the report, Chapman describes precisely the kind of archaeology that Fitting and others have called Mangas phase: "surface architectural construction may well have begun during the Late Pit house phase . . . . 14 sites with Late Pit house ceramics exhibit no pit house depressions but do contain surface architecture" (Chapman, Gossett, and Gossett 1985: 357). Chapman, at least, was seeing the same archaeology that Fitting called Mangas phase (R. Chapman, personal communication 1984). He introduces the interesting taxonomic notion of "Early Mimbres":

demonstrates that at one Mimbres Valley site, at least, "the shift was not sudden or abrupt as some have assumed (Anyon et al. 1981; LeBlanc 1983), but was a gradual process" (Shafer 1988: 4). Since this was precisely the point I was trying to make with my arguments about the Mangas phase (Lekson 1988), I welcome "Transitional," or "Early Mimbres," or whatever tag we need to allow us to recognize and understand this late Late Pit House/early Mimbres phenomenon. I welcome further analysis of Transitional architecture, particularly of rooms in Mimbres phase pueblos that are associated with burials with Style II pottery, because I suspect that at the center of the largest Mimbres pueblos lie one or more nasty little Mangas phase units, like Room Block A. Dating the beginning of the Mimbres phase must wait until that happens.

The Early Mimbres phase is recognized by the presence f Mimbres Black-on-white (Mimbres Style I and II Black-on-white designs) and is characterized by the first concerted use of masonry and jacal construction for building surface rooms and room blocks. Dates posited to bracket this period of construction are A.D. 750-1000. (Chapman, Gossett, and Gossett 1985: 357).

The Mimbres phase has more absolute dates than any other phase or period in southwestern New Mexico. The dating of the Mimbres phase at Mattocks is well established, with 345 dates ranging from about 1050 to about 1120 (LeBlanc and Whalen 1980: appendix B). A very important series of dates from the NAN Ranch site (Shafer and Taylor 1986) supports and extends the Mattocks chronology; Mimbres phase dates at the NAN Ranch Ruin range from noncutting dates in the 1020s to 1128. Carbon-14 dates from the Upper Gila (Villareal II, Saige-McFarland) conform to this range. The Mimbres phase in the Mimbres Valley clearly spans the mid-1000s to the early 1100s, and there is no good reason to doubt that these dates apply to Mimbres sites outside the valley.

The Upper Gila Water Supply Class II survey avoided the terminological entanglements of "Mangas phase" and coined a new and therefore neutral designation, "Early Mimbres phase". As the last active partisan of the Mangas phase, I can say: Early Mimbres phase is fine with me. Mangas can shuffle off into the sunset if its retirement allows useful comparisons on the regional scale. There may be much to compare, because I believe that "Early Mimbres" (read "Mangas") equates to what Shafer and Taylor (1986) have termed "Transitional."

When does the Mimbres phase end? The generally accepted date is between A.D. 1130 and 1150 (Anyon, Gilman, and LeBlanc 1981), based on terminal cutting dates of 1117 at Mattocks and supported by latest dates of 1128 at the NAN Ranch Ruin and a date of 1126vv at Saige-McFarland. The end date for the Mimbres phase has implications for the systematics of the Late Pueblo period, and we will return to this topic in the next section.

Although the Mimbres Foundation originated the use of the term "Transitional" for a ceramic style (II) intermediate between Boldface and Classic, the architecture associated with Style II was never described in published accounts of the foundation's work. The NAN Ranch Ruin provides the first analysis of Transitional architecture in the Mimbres Valley (Shafer and Taylor 1986: 50-51). Transitional architecture at NAN consists of postholes on surfaces and cobble-and-adobe walled rooms. These units were defined through stratigraphic relationships, but I would like to see this analysis extended to all rooms with initial Style II associations, particularly those incorporated into later Mimbres pueblo room blocks.

The Mimbres phase shares the stage with several other taxonomic units: to the east and southeast, the Mesilla phase; to the southwest, the San Luis phase; and to the north, the Reserve phase. The Mesilla phase is a pit house horizon of the Jornada Mogollon; Mimbres pottery occurs either as trade wares or possibly (and controversially) as indigenous types (Lekson 1989b). Mesilla phase sites are found in the southeastern corner of southwest New Mexico.

The Mimbres Foundation, as described in section 4.C, was committed to a model of a rapid shift from large pit house villages to large pueblos, without an intermediate stage of small pueblos (a theoretical position that explains much of their hostility toward the Mangas phase, but a stance much at odds with LeBlanc's "core rooms," discussed in section 4.C). The definition of Transitional architecture at the NAN Ranch

The San Luis phase of the Upper (southern) Animas Valley is not well defined (Findlow 1980, personal communication 1976, 1989). It is tentatively dated from 750 to 1175; a single carbon-14 date from the Stewart Ranch site provides a late San Luis phase (with Mimbres Black-on-white) date of 1070- 1154

44

(1024-1209); and two dates from HS-15 apparently date an early San Luis (plainwares only) occupation -983 (894-1017) and 1070-1154 (1024-1209). Starting in the mid-1000s, some San Luis phase sites with adobe or adobe-and-cobble walls may reach sizes of up to 100 rooms. The ceramic assemblage is almost exclusively plainwares; very small numbers of Mimbres Black-on-white sherds apparently indicate trade wares, perhaps from large Mimbres sites in the lower (northern) Animas Valley (Findlow, personal communication 1989, 1980: 176, note 1).

Southwest New Mexico really might have been a frontier during this period, but to some extent its balkanization surely stems from the history of research (Lekson 1989b). As a result of unconnected research, the terminology of the post-Mimbres period is a terrible muddle. The earliest named post-Mimbres temporal unit was the Animas phase, a putative Chihuahuan intrusion into extreme southern Hidalgo County. "Animas phase" first appeared in Gladwin and Gladwin's (1934) compendium of phases, stages, roots, and branches and saw its first real use as a result of Sayles's (1936a) survey of Chihuahua for Gila Pueblo. The phase, defined by the Gladwins and Sayles as an extension of the Casas Grandes sphere, was almost immediately redefined by the excavation of the Pendelton Ruin, the Animas phase type site, which "proved not to be a typical Chihuahuan ruin at all" (Kidder, Cosgrove, and Cosgrove 1949: 117).

The Reserve phase has been studied in and named for the area near the town of Reserve, northwest of the study area (see, e.g., Martin and Rinaldo 1950). The Reserve phase is characterized by small masonry pueblos, often associated with a pit structure, clustered into communities around Great Kivas. Reserve Black-on-white is the major decorated type, but Classic Mimbres Black-on-white is common (and, in fact, is listed as indigenous by Bluhm [1957]). The Reserve phase is contemporary with the Mimbres phase, but its precise dates are not well established (there are no reported tree-ring dates). Suggested dates for the Reserve phase range from the late 900s to the late 1100s.

No one knew quite what to do with the Pendelton Ruin, so people just ignored it. The Animas phase remained an orphan in the literature until it was restored to the Chihuahuan lineage in the late 1970s (DeAtley 1980; Deatley and Findlow 1982). In the meantime, "Animas phase" had been misapplied by Fitting (1972, 1973b) and Lekson (Lekson and Klinger 1973b) to sites that had no pretensions at all to Chihuahuan status. These sites were called Animas simply because they appeared to come after Mimbres and before Salado (and in one case, even this thin justification was false; Lekson 1978b). LeBlanc (1980b) considered using "Animas phase" for sites of similar age in the Mimbres Valley but prudently decided to coin a new term, the Black Mountain phase. (There is no safety in the post-Mimbres; I will argue below that even LeBlanc's prudent path is fraught with taxonomic dangers.) In a recent review, Douglas (1987:39) concluded that "'Animas phase' is meaningless."

There is a curious twist to the systematics of the Reserve phase that can only be briefly mentioned here. In both the Mimbres and Reserve areas, Boldface Black-on-white is considered indigenous. Reserve and Mimbres Black-on- white types both follow Boldface in their respective series. Both types employ very similar geometric designs, and both types are associated with the inception of pueblo-style building. In the Mimbres area, Classic Mimbres Black-on-white is hailed as the artistic culmination of a long, local development. In the Reserve area, Reserve Black-on-white is interpreted as an intrusion of Anasazi people or Anasazi ceramic traditions (LeBlanc 1982: 112). Think about it.

Roughly contemporary with the Animas phase (whatever that might be), southwestern New Mexico was host to sites which are termed Tularosa phase, El Paso phase, and Mesa Verde-like (Lekson 1986a, 1989a). It's a real mess.

Late Pueblo Period Following the Mimbres phase, the systematics of southwestern New Mexico becomes fragmented and confused (or more accurately, confusing). Southwestern New Mexico had been the center of the Mimbres Mogollon development, but after the Mimbres phase, the area in effect becomes a frontier between archaeological entities defined in adjoining portions of southeastern and west-central New Mexico, northern Chihuahua, and southern Arizona. Lines drawn around these neighboring centers spill over into southwestern New Mexico, and several contemporary phases carve out various portions of what was previously the Mimbres region. Systematics that attempt to synthesize post-Mimbres archaeology in southwestern New Mexico are doomed to frustration.

"Salado" also has a convoluted history that (thankfully) I cannot begin to summarize here (see Doyel and Haury 1976, and Nelson and LeBlanc 1986: 1-14), but it is a major and probably final prehistoric presence in southwestern New Mexico. The Salado phase, marked by a distinctive polychrome series, was thought to follow the Chihuahuan- flavored Animas phase. Everyone was surprised when DiPeso's excavations at Casas Grandes revealed that great amounts of Gila Polychrome (and locally made "imitation" Gila Polychrome) made up a sizable portion of the Casas Grandes assemblage, along with the more abundant Chihuahuan polychromes. Four large "Animas phase" sites have been excavated in southwestern New Mexico. At three of these sites, Salado polychromes

45

make up a significant proportion of the decorated ceramics (Kidder, Cosgrove, and Cosgrove 1949; McCluney 1962; Carpenter 1988; Di Peso, Rinaldo, and Fenner 1974). Only at Clanton Draw (McCluney 1962: table 1) were Salado polychromes a minor part of the small assemblage (1 Gila Polychrome out of 177 decorated sherds). The co-occurrence of Salado and Chihuahuan polychromes is an established fact, but modern usage of the Animas phase seems to assume that the former preceded the latter (e.g., DeAtley 1980; O'Laughlin 1986). Compounding this catalogue of confusion, the Animas phase, as revived by Findlow and DeAtley, spills over into the Salado period. Looking at many of the same sites, O'Laughlin (1986) defines separate Animas and Salado phases.

probably need a name, and El Paso phase is the best available candidate. For purposes of this overview, I will refer to eastern (Mimbres Valley and Black Range) sites with El Paso Polychrome and Chupadero Black-on-white as El Paso phase. Animas phase will be reserved for the sites of the Upper Animas and Playas valleys. The El Paso (Black Mountain) phase dates from about 1200 to 1400 (Lekson 1989a); since these sites lack Gila Polychrome, they should date to the first half of this span, i.e., 1200-1300 -- a dating consistent with the archaeomagnetic and carbon-14 dates from the Walsh site. Discounting the aberrant date from Room 18, lower hearth, the Walsh archaeomagnetic dates range from 1232 to 1270 (Ravesloot 1979: 41), in close agreement with the carbon-14 date of 1278 (1258-1284).

Full discussion of the dating and taxonomy of each neighboring tradition is clearly beyond the scope of the present study; this section will be limited to major issues of systematics within the study area.

The dating of the Animas phase is tied to the dating of Casas Grandes. The dating and redating and redating of Casas Grandes have an extensive literature (and an intriguing parallel social history); indeed, the story of the dating of this site might make a good topic for a thesis or a drawing- room comedy. Various revisions of the Casas Grandes chronology, culminating in the definitive (one hopes) reanalysis of the tree-ring dates (Dean and Ravesloot 1988), have come so fast that it would have been difficult to keep Animas systematics up to date, had anyone cared to try. Prior to the last series of Casas Grandes revisions, O'Laughlin (1986) dated the Animas phase to about 1200 to 1350, followed by a Salado phase from about 1300 to 1400. The overlap in this dating reflects a fundamental problem in Animas phase systematics: the co-occurrence of Chihuahuan polychromes and Salado types in surface assemblages was interpreted (quite reasonably, given the Casas Grandes dating of the moment) as indicating two separate, but very nearly contemporary, components. DeAtley (1980) dated the Animas phase, defined as including both Chihuahuan and Salado polychromes, to the late 1100s through the early 1400s. The recent revision of the Casas Grandes tree-ring dates (Dean and Ravesloot 1988; Ravesloot, Dean, and Foster 1986) establishes the dating of Casas Grandes to a span beginning no earlier than 1300 and continuing as late as 1500. With any luck, that's the last word.

The Animas, Black Mountain, and El Paso Phases The Black Mountain phase of the Mimbres sequence is the Mimbres Valley equivalent of the Animas phase. Despite the neutral term "Black Mountain," LeBlanc (1980b; LeBlanc and Nelson 1986: 246) interprets both the Animas and Black Mountain phases as closely integrated elements of the Casas Grandes (Chihuahuan) regional system. On one level, he is probably correct (see Minnis 1984; Schaafsma 1979; and discussion in section 4.C below), but the Black Mountain phase is only a most attenuated version of the Animas phase, which itself is a pale reflection of Casas Grandes. The Animas phase of the Animas Valley is characterized by relatively abundant Chihuahuan pottery (and sizable quantities of Salado pottery as well, which muddies the issue) and other Chihuahuan things, like ball courts (DeAtley 1980; Carpenter 1988; O'Laughlin 1986). The Black Mountain phase has neither; indeed, with only 14 sherds of Chihuahuan polychromes from the nearly 1,500 decorated sherds recovered in Mimbres Foundation excavations at Black Mountain sites (Ravesloot 1979: table 3), one wonders what all the excitement is about. The Black Mountain phase ceramic assemblage (El Paso Polychrome, Chupadero Black-on-white, Playas Red) and the adobe pueblo- style architecture can be accommodated in the homegrown El Paso phase, a Jornada Mogollon taxonomic unit (Lekson 1989a). From the perspective of the Mimbres Valley, the Jornada is across the Rio Grande, but it is closer to home than Casas Grandes (Lekson 1989b). The El Paso phase also ceramically encompasses the Animas phase as it was used on the Upper Gila (Fitting 1973b), although Jornada archaeologists will undoubtedly reject this western extension of El Paso. A number of adobe pueblo sites in southwestern New Mexico with (predominately) El Paso Polychrome and Chupadero Black-on-white

The new dating of Casas Grandes is consistent with all the carbon-14 dates from Animas contexts (Table 4.2) with the exception of the middle date from the Stewart Ranch site. This site has a substantial Mimbres component and may be of critical importance in understanding what came between the San Luis or Mimbres phases and the full-dress Animas phase. If the Animas phase ceramic assemblages are in fact characterized by both Chihuahuan and Salado polychromes, then the phase dates to the 1300s and

46

later and is contemporary with the Salado and not the early El Paso (Black Mountain) phase.

Ravesloot 1988). These dates are contemporary with at least part of the Animas phase.

Salado The Salado period in southwestern New Mexico has been termed the Cliff phase (LeBlanc and Nelson 1976; Nelson and LeBlanc 1986) because of the concentration of big Salado sites around Cliff, New Mexico. Cliff phase sites are adobe pueblo sites with relatively high frequencies of Salado polychromes and only a smattering of Chihuahuan types. Salado sites are more common on the Upper Gila than in the Mimbres Valley: "during this phase the Mimbres Valley was exceedingly peripheral" (LeBlanc and Nelson 1976: 75). At least one large Salado site is known from the Middle San Francisco area (Laumbach 1980; James Neely, personal communication 1986).

Tularosa Phase The Tularosa phase is a very minor part of the archaeology of southwestern New Mexico as defined here. However, the only National Park Service unit in southwestern New Mexico showcases a Tularosa phase site, the Gila Cliff Dwellings (Anderson et al. 1986). The Tularosa phase's importance in public interpretation, if not prehistory, requires at least some consideration of its place in southwestern New Mexico systematics. Tularosa Black-on-white, the signature of the Tularosa phase, was originally thought to be centered in the Upper Tularosa River Valley (e.g., see, Kidder 1927:98). However, the Gladwins (1930) argued that the type was not an index of the "Upper Gila [i.e., Tularosa] culture," but rather a marker of the "Little Colorado culture"; that is, Gladwin argued that the origins and development of Tularosa Black-on-white were centered not in the Tularosa Valley, but in the Upper Little Colorado drainage. He was at least partly correct. Only one or two really large Tularosa phase sites are known from the Tularosa Valley (e.g., the Delgar group, Hough 1907:73); by far the largest Tularosa phase sites are located not in the Tularosa Valley, but to the west in the White Mountains of Arizona (e.g., Turkey Creek Pueblo, Lowell 1988) or to the north in the Zuni-Acoma region (e.g., Site 616, McGimsey 1980; sites of ceramic complexes B, C, and D, Kintigh 1985). As the Tularosa style also incorporates types such as Roosevelt Black-on-white, Pinedale Black-on-white, Kowina Black-on-white, and Klageto Black-on-white, the Tularosa sphere may be very large indeed. Tularosa phase sites in southwestern New Mexico, such as Gila Cliff Dwellings and LA 923 near Winston, New Mexico, represent the southeasternmost extension of a widespread ceramic horizon of the middle Southwest that stretches from Acoma on the east to the Tonto Basin on the west.

The Salado phase is perhaps the most spectacularly evident archaeology of the Upper Gila. Mangas-Mimbres sites such as Woodrow Ruin may be as large as the largest Salado phase sites in the Cliff Valley, but the in situ deposition of whole pots, metates, and entire room furnitures at many Upper Gila Salado sites produces an unparalleled archaeological record for this time period. As LeBlanc (1980b: 316) correctly noted, that record is unfortunately the least studied and least published of any time period so far discussed for the project area. The concept of "Salado" comes from Arizona; it has been assumed that the Cliff phase Salado people did too, in a migration from the Salado homeland (LeBlanc and Nelson 1976). This position has been greatly modified (Nelson and LeBlanc 1986); continuity with the preceding Black Mountain and Mimbres phases suggests other scenarios, discussed in section 4.C. If Salado is seen as intrusive into southwestern New Mexico, it is reasonable to separate it, taxonomically, from the contemporary Animas phase (which also boasts lots of Salado polychromes); if the Salado intrusion is reevaluated, it may someday become useful to reconsider the relationship between the Cliff and Animas phases.

Martin (and most other researchers) believed that Reserve Black-on-white and Tularosa Black-on-white in the Pine Lawn and Reserve valleys were either inspired by or brought in by Anasazi people from the north. In summing up his 1940s and 1950s work in the Pine Lawn and Reserve areas, Martin suggested that Reserve Black-on-white was an Anasazi type "possibly from Klageto or the Puerco River Valley" (Martin 1974: 17).

There are very few absolute dates for Cliff phase sites in southwestern New Mexico. One carbon-14 date of 1414 (1328-1434) was obtained from a Mimbres Valley site; a series of archaeomagnetic dates from Mimbres and Cliff Valley sites "produced only two really useful dates and five other marginally informative ones" (Nelson and LeBlanc 1986:107). These dates indicated a "brief occupation in the late 1300s, possibly spanning into the early 1400s" (Nelson and LeBlanc 1986:108). Two tree-ring dates of 1243 from a site on Duck Creek that reportedly had Gila Polychrome (Bannister, Hannah, and Robinson 1970) are problematic, given the generally accepted post-1300 dating of Gila Polychrome (Doyle and Haury 1976; Dean and

Danson (1957: 93, Table 19) considered Reserve Black- on-white and Tularosa Black-on-white to be Anasazi types derived from the La Plata - White Mound - Kiatuthlanna series. He balked, however, at Emil Haury's suggestion that these Anasazi types were actually imported into the area that gave them their names:

47

During the Pecos Conference of 1950 at Flagstaff, Arizona, Haury raised the question of whether black-on-white pottery was ever produced in the mountain country of central Arizona and New Mexico . . . . He also questioned whether Tularosa and Reserve black-on-white wares were made in the Tularosa-Reserve country and whether they might not have been traded into that country from the north. If so, then Tularosa and Reserve Black-on-white would represent trade from the Upper Little Colorado Valley. (Danson 1957: 90)

any historical group has remained extremely difficult" (LeBlanc 1980b: 316). A number of cremations were associated with a single room block at Hawikuh; eleven of these were in Gila Polychrome vessels, suggesting that portions of the Salado population (which extended from Cliff into central Arizona) may have joined the protohistoric Zuni (Smith, Woodbury, and Woodbury 1966: 203-5). There is little doubt about Western Pueblo use of (if not settlement on southwestern New Mexico in the early Historic period. Historically, the Zuni hunted and gathered in the northernmost portions of southwestern New Mexico (Ferguson and Hart 1985). Presumably, the area was also used by the Rio Grande glaze paint groups, in particular, the Piro Pueblos. However, the nearest Glaze A sites, at Ojo Caliente and Milligan Draw, are well north of the study area. No early glaze ceramics are known from the Rio Grande and Mimbres drainages in southwestern New Mexico; possible sherds have been reported from late Salado sites on the Upper Gila. The best documented protohistoric use of the area is Apache (e.g., see, Schroeder 1962; Thrapp 1974). To date very few identifiable Apache sites have been recorded (Fitting n.d.; Lekson 1978a; Lekson and Wilson 1985; Chapman, Gossett, and Gossett 1985; LeBlanc and Whalen 1980), but aceramic sites with "rock circles" are relatively common in the survey records. Sites with Apachean ceramics have been recorded on the Upper Gila near the Gila Cliff Dwellings (Anderson et al. 1986), near Winston (Karl Laumbach, personal communication 1988), and in the Florida Mountains (Mimbres Foundation survey notes, Laboratory of Anthropology).

In a recent review of Mogollon ceramics, LeBlanc repeated this suggestion: "It must be remembered that the actual locus of production of much of this pottery has never been determined . . . . it has never been shown that Reserve [and by extension, Tularosa] Black-on-white of the Reserve area was a local product" (LeBlanc 1982: 116). LeBlanc's seems to be an extreme statement of current understanding of the Reserve-Tularosa series: Tularosa is the result of some unspecified process originating in the Anasazi area. Sorting out Tularosa Black-on-white's pedigree is beyond the scope of this study (and perhaps beyond our current ceramic paradigms). Intriguingly, Roosevelt Black-on-white (affinis Tularosa) precedes Salado assemblages at a number of sites in the Tonto Basin, the Salado "heartland." In southwestern New Mexico, the two types are spatially discrete; no Tularosa Black-on-white is found beneath Salado sites, nor are Salado polychromes found in late contexts at Tularosa sites.

Discussion Only one Tularosa phase site has been dated in southwestern New Mexico (as defined here), and it is by far the best-dated site in southwestern New Mexico: the Gila Cliff Dwellings, which date to the 1280s. This date is consistent with the dating of the Tularosa phase (from tree-ring datings, late 1100s to early 1300s) at WS Ranch and at Quemado and Zuni area sites to the north (Bannister, Hannah, and Robinson 1970).

The length of the preceding discussion may seem to contradict my earlier statement that the archaeology of southwestern New Mexico is poorly dated and imperfectly systematized. The broad patterns of prehistory can be related to our calendar, but, on the whole, the region is poorly dated. There are many tens of thousands of prehistoric sites in southwestern New Mexico. Less than fifty of these sites have dates of any kind, and of these, just four (Harris, Mattocks, NAN, and Gila Cliff Dwellings) have more than a handful of dates per site. Only Gila Cliff Dwellings (like so many cliff dwellings) can actually be called well dated; unfortunately, it is a site with few implications for regional prehistory. Dated units at Harris, Mattocks, and NAN represent from one- tenth to one-third of the total estimated rooms and pit houses at those sites. One-tenth to one-third are excellent sample proportions for single sites, and those dates, when combined with careful excavation and fortunate preservation, should allow reasonably detailed evaluations of architectural growth at those sites (e.g., Shafer and Taylor 1986). Regional chronology, at best, remains on the phase or horizon level, with, as the poet said, only a few

Protohistoric The late occupation of the Salado site of Kwilleylekia (with a rumored archaeomagnetic date in the 1500s) is a matter of profound interest to the Protohistoric period in southwestern New Mexico. The chronology of Kwilleylekia is poorly understood, and the site is all but undocumented. Beyond very brief suggestions of late ceramic types at this site (e.g., Jeddito Black-on-yellow, Zuni glazes and Rio Grande Glaze A mentioned in Hammack, Bussey, and Ice 1966: 34) and the rumored archaeomagnetic dating, there is little of substance that can be said . . . but people say Kwilleylekia is an ancestral Zuni site. LeBlanc suggests possible identification of the Cliff phase Salado with historically documented groups, but notes: "Relating the Salado to

48

"tussocks of empirical certainty to guide our speculation across the fen of time" (the poet was Earl Morris). In the next section, I will discuss the operational difficulties of using phases in survey. Even the relatively coarse temporal resolution of phase systematics fails us on the regional scale.

multicomponent sites. Most of the quantitative data we need for regional demographics are locked up in sites we do not yet know how to read from the surface. Blake, LeBlanc, and Minnis (1986: 449, 459) correctly identify this dilemma; their solution will be discussed in the next section.

Chronological resolution and realistic use of chronology has implications for many research interests in the Mimbres area, but they particularly affect studies of demography. Estimating population and growth rates requires relatively high chronological precision. Demography has been a constant theme in recent Mimbres studies (e.g., Fitting 1972; Lekson 1978a: 35, 1989b; Herrington 1979: 150-56, Anyon and LeBlanc 1984: 187-92; Minnis 1985; Blake, LeBlanc, and Minnis 1986; Shafer 1988: 55-59). Demographic studies have focused on two levels: site and "region" (invariably, a river valley or valley segment).

Fortunately, two of the four well-dated sites are multicomponent sites of this type. At the NAN Ranch and Mattocks, the possibility for fine-scale temporal resolution is real, and it is being admirably exploited (Shafer and Taylor 1986; Shafer 1988). At the level of the site, we may be able to control time well enough to study demography -- at least at these two sites. In southwestern New Mexico, demography only makes sense at the site level (e.g., Anyon and LeBlanc 1984; Shafer 1988). Single-site studies will form the basis for increased understanding of site structure and settlement history at large, multicomponent sites. With additional studies at these sites and extensive testing at other sites, we may someday be able to attempt studies of regional demographics. Today, I believe that such studies are premature.

The foregoing discussion makes clear that the tight chronological controls needed for successful demographic modeling on the regional scale simply are not there. In my opinion, regional demographic studies (including my own) are interesting hypothetical exercises, but not much more. Long chains of tenuous chronological assumptions underlie regional demography -- and there must be assumptions, because there are very few data. Not unnaturally, assumptions about chronology, contemporaneity, and structure use-life directly reflect the archaeologist's conception of Mimbres area prehistory, and the resulting population curves, growth rates, etc., simply reinforce the systematics that structured the whole process in the first place.

4.B. The Survey Record In 1980, Paul Minnis admirably synthesized surveys from southwestern New Mexico. At that time, there were five major surveys which had recorded about 1,000 sites (Minnis 1980). As of 1990, there are 11 major surveys, with a total of almost 2,000 sites. There is a great deal of new data and some very useful reworkings of old data. In many important ways, the archaeology of southwestern New Mexico today is very different than it was in 1980. The past is not what it used to be.

Compare population histories of the Mimbres Valley (Blake, LeBlanc, and Minnis 1986) and the entire Mimbres region (Lekson 1989b) to see how different archaeologists make different assumptions about fundamental chronological issues, based on very different versions of prehistory (e.g., LeBlanc 1983; Lekson 1989b). These differences do not mean that either Blake and his colleagues or I, myself, are playing fast and loose with figures. Blake, LeBlanc, and Minnis are not crooks; I am not a crook. Decisions and assumptions have to be made, and those assumptions are honestly based on the reality that each archaeologist sees. The problem is not that we are fast and loose with figures, but that the figures we have to work with are too fast and too loose for the kinds of analyses we wish to pursue.

Before we can reconstruct prehistory, we have to describe, empirically, the material patterns in the surface archaeology. What does the archaeology of southwestern New Mexico actually look like? This paper describes the surface archaeology -- what's actually out there -- through a synthesis of major surveys of southwestern New Mexico archaeology. Our reading of that surface archaeology hinges on several factors -- scale, temporal resolution, comparability -- but most of all on circumstances of multicomponency. After describing the surface archaeology of southwestern New Mexico, this paper will address Mimbres multicomponency and its implications for Mimbres prehistory. The discussion focuses on post-Archaic, architectural sites, but non-architectural sites sneak in occasionally. There are two reasons for an architectural focus. The first is practical. Architectural sites are much better reported in the survey records. From existing records, non-architectural sites cannot be usefully synthesized or even summarized on the regional scale. Second, in my opinion, architectural sites form the basic framework

The main cause for my pessimistic conclusion is that we do not have the tools to translate visible surface archaeology into chronologically useful population data. As discussed in Section 4.B, most of the visible prehistoric settlement in southwestern New Mexico (measured by rooms, architectural mass, or whatever) is contained in a relatively few large, very complex,

49

around which our understanding non-architectural sites must be structured.

of

later

surveys, and I simply assume that they are approximately comparable to Boldface and Classic categories in the few surveys with vanished collections.

Southwestern New Mexico (Fig. I-1) comprises three natural areas: the Mogollon Uplands, the basin-and-range deserts, and a narrow transitional zone in between. Most post-Archaic settlement appears to have been in the transition zone, along creeks that run out of the mountains and into the desert, and the distribution of major surveys reflects this fact. Most of the large-scale surveys have targeted the transitional zone, while only a few large surveys have sampled the uplands and deserts. These surveys considered here are listed in Table 3.2 and shown in Figure I-4. The surveys represent a very admirable coverage of territory and combination of strategies: CRM and other sample surveys in the uplands and deserts complement settlement pattern surveys in areas of heaviest occupation, the river valleys of the transition zone. I would never suggest that no more surveying is needed, but I do think that we have enough survey data to begin mapping the prehistoric world of southwestern New Mexico.

Site Size Raw counts of sites or components are deceptive. One large site may represent much more "archaeology" (architectural mass, numbers of features, quantities of artifacts, datable materials, stratigraphic contexts, and data in general) than a dozen small sites. The survey data can be better described by adding a dimension of size or scale to simple site or component counts. I do not insist that larger sites are more "important" than smaller sites, but for the Mimbres region, this case can and will be made, below. The only measure of site size common to the surveys considered here is room count (surface rooms and pit structures). Room counts will not allow us to completely avoid arbitrary archaeology because they were estimated in different ways: in some surveys, room counts were simply a guess; in others, room counts were estimated by dividing the mapped architectural area by an average room size; in still others, room counts were estimated during the mapping of each site. Despite these differences, room counts are a consistent index of sites relative to each survey data set and, I believe, a reasonable comparative measure between surveys. Despite hand-wringing concerns over comparability, room counts are also Hobson's Choice: they are the only available common measure.

Chronological Control Minnis's (1980) synthesis was crippled by the lack of comparability between the phase sequences used in the various surveys (Minnis 1980: 484, 490). Because chronological phases were defined differently in the different surveys, a system of ceramic assemblages, similar to others developed for the Mimbres area (Lekson 1989a, 1990; Mills 1986), provides a reasonable tool to evaluate both the survey data and their limitations. These assemblages are summarized in Table 4.5.

In two surveys, room counts were not estimated for all Pit House period sites. A pair of constants for Early and Late Pit House period sites was estimated from sites with visible depressions in five surveys (Rio Grande, Mimbres, Upper Gila Water Supply Class II, Cliff, and Redrock). The average number of visible depressions for Early Pit House sites in these surveys was about 10 (x = 9.9, sd = 4.1, N = 51) and for Late Pit House period sites, the average was about 25 (x = 25.7, sd = 19.0, N = 9). These constants were used when field estimates were absent, as noted in following tables.

The assemblage approach requires sherd count data. For most surveys, it was possible to use original sherd counts (and sometimes the original collections) to insure a degree of typological (if not sampling) comparability. I reanalyzed the decorated ceramics from several surveys which predated the Mimbres Style I-II-III system (developed in the mid-1970s by scholars associated with the Mimbres Foundation), but decorated sherds from some of the earlier surveys could not be relocated and reanalyzed. Rather than exclude these very important early surveys, I use the older Boldface - Classic typology as the common ceramic denominator in Mimbres series decorated ceramics.

Summaries of Surveys by Environmental Zone The archaeology of each zone -- mountain uplands, transition, and desert basin-and-range -- will be described in turn, from higher to lower. Each zone is represented by different sets of archaeological survey data. In general, the upland zone conforms to the Gila National Forest (and the Gila National Forest's archaeological data base); the deserts are largely administered by the Bureau of Land Management (BLM Las Cruces District); the transitional zone is a mixture of Gila National Forest, BLM, and -- most importantly -- private lands. At the time of this research, the Gila National Forest and BLM data bases

Style I is Boldface, Style III is Classic, and almost all Style II would originally have been classified as Boldface Black-on-white (Anyon and LeBlanc 1984: 152). To make the I-II-II comparable with older Boldface - Classic typologies, Styles I, I-II, and II are considered to be Boldface Black-on-white, and Styles II-III and III are considered to be Mimbres Black-on-white. My reanalyses insure that these categories are (to some degree) comparable across most

50

had not been fully incorporated into the Archaeological Records Management System (ARMS) in Santa Fe. Thus there were three major data bases: Gila National Forest and BLM, which are largely exclusive, and ARMS, which combined portions of both Gila National Forest and BLM data with many other non-Federal surveys. Most important for the transition zone were a number of non-CRM surveys, listed in Table 3.2. The principal investigators of these surveys, whom were extremely generous in sharing data, are listed in the acknowledgements.

unassigned Pit House period. The majority of these sites are very small, with only about 20 sites larger than 10 rooms, and no sites larger than 50 rooms. The Pueblo period is much better represented in the mountain sample, with over 400 architectural sites. Most sites are small (less than 10 rooms): about 60 sites in the Gila National Forest records are larger than 10 rooms, but only four of those are larger than 50 rooms (one problematic Tularosa phase site on the Gila East Fork, and Mimbres sites on Diamond Creek, Turkey Creek, and Stevens Creek). Mimbres sites outnumber Reserve sites by a ratio of almost 15:1. Of later phases, Tularosa phase and Salado (or Animas-Salado) phase sites are about equal, with about six and eight sites respectively.

Upland Zone Surveys The Mogollon Uplands are largely contained in the Gila National Forest. About 1.3% of the Gila National Forest in southwestern New Mexico has been surveyed (a total surveyed area of 45-50 square miles). Over 975 sites were listed on Gila National Forest computer inventories as of 1989. This number would represent a site density of about 20 sites per square mile, but many of these sites were not recorded as part of formal inventory surveys. The actual site density is probably much lower than this figure.

Despite sampling problems, the Mimbres phase is clearly the major archaeological presence in the Gila National Forest. It is represented almost exclusively by small sites. The numerical dominance of small Mimbres phase sites agrees with the Graybill's (1975) findings on the Upper Mimbres; of course, many of the small Mimbres sites in the Gila National Forest listings are from this survey.

The Gila National Forest sites represent a problematic sample. Many sites in the Gila National Forest inventory were recorded as parts of non-CRM projects (some of which focussed on Transitional Zone drainages), or small-scale CRM projects such as timber sales, road construction, etc. Two large-scale "research" projects surveyed upland mountain parks; these will be discussed in more detail below. The Gila National Forest sites almost certainly do not constitute a "valid" sample of forest lands or the Mogollon uplands, but they do represent the single largest array of sites from the mountain zone.

Two non-CRM projects surveyed upland or mountain parks, a very important environment for Mogollon Uplands archaeology. Mountain parks are "upland zones that have especially good drainage and flat land ... parkland areas with wide fertile valleys or open basins at high altitudes" (Blake, LeBlanc, and Minnis 1986: 447). The Mimbres Foundation surveyed Rabb Park (northeast of Mimbres, 1.3 square miles, approximate elevation 6950'), and the University of Texas, Austin surveyed Devil's Park (northeast of Alma, 11.6 square miles, approximate elevation 6600'). The surveys covered 100% of each park.

About 60 sites have insufficient data for description, but the remainder can be categorized in various ways. One-fifth of the sites represent caves, rock art, and agricultural features (mainly check dams). Discounting these sites and the 60 unknown sites, the total number of sites is about 735, including both architectural sites and non-architectural artifact scatters.

Published data from Rabb Park (Fig. I-4, northeast section of area 10) are confusing. The survey is reported in Blake and others (1986); 12 sites are shown on their map, but only seven sites are listed in their Tables 5 and 6. These indicate a total of one Late Pit House period room and 149 Mimbres phase rooms at Raab Park. LeBlanc (1983: 153) suggests that upland Mimbres phase sites were generally small, but it appears that some or all of the Rabb park sites were substantial (149/7 = 21 rooms per site; 149/12 = 12 rooms per site). Unfortunately, it is not possible to resolve these problems with primary Mimbres Foundation data, available at Arizona State Museum and the Museum of New Mexico, or data summaries provided by Michael Blake.

Only about 30% of these 735 sites are non-architectural. Of non-architectural sites, two-thirds are sherd and lithic scatters (some of which may represent pit house sites) and one-third are lithic sites (including only seven identified Archaic sites). Of the architectural sites, one-fifth are Pit House period, one-half are Mimbres or Reserve phase, and two-tenths are Tularosa, Animas, or Salado phase (one-tenth are unassigned Pueblo period -- probably Mimbres or Reserve phase).

The Devil's Park data (Fig. I-4, 3) were published by Peterson (1988). I have calculated room counts from symbols and keys on a series of maps of site distribution at Devil's Park, and minor errors are likely. About 120 sites were located; one-third of these were

Pit House period sites include about 15 Early Pit House, 30 Late Pit House, 25 Late Pit House-Mimbres, and 60

51

non-architectural, including 30 lithic, sherd-and-lithic scatters, and a number of agricultural features. The Pit House period is represented at Devil's Park by only three possible Early Pit House sites. The Late Pit House period was conspicuously absent, and Peterson (1988) suggests a nearly complete hiatus in occupation between the limited use of Devil's Park in the Early Pit House period and later extensive use of the area in the Reserve phase. Sixty-six Reserve phase structural sites, with a total room count of about 160, were found. Almost all were less than 10 rooms. One apparently central 20+ room site was associated with a Great Kiva (Peterson 1988; Jay Peck, personal communication 1989). No post-Reserve phase prehistoric use of the area was evident.

Rio Grande The Rio Grande survey (Fig. I-4, number 15), incorporating Lekson's (1989a) Sierra County survey and part of Nelson's (1984, 1989) Palomas Creek survey, covered about 65 miles of the Rio Grande and the lower five to six miles of six of its major tributary creeks in western Sierra County. Over 200 sites were recorded. Ceramic analysis utilized the Style I-II-III typology. Room counts at pueblo sites were estimated by dividing total structural area by an average room size, and at pit houses by observation of depressions. Most of the survey was a reconnaissance, but coverage of riverside terraces was nearly complete (Lekson 1989a). Black Range The Black Range survey (Fig. I-4, number 14) was a sample survey of state lands in western Sierra County, not directed specifically toward river or creek valleys (Laumbach and Kirkpatrick 1983, 1986). Instead, the survey sampled state lands stratified by landform and vegetation. This survey recorded 32 structural sites and 32 non-architectural sites (excluding historic sites) in a wide variety of settings. The sampling strategy of the Black Range survey was completely different than other large-scale surveys in the Transition Zone. It provides broad data on settlement patterns and land use that are not yet available in other portions of the Transition Zone, but it is not directly comparable to settlement pattern data from other large-scale surveys. The Black Range survey will not be discussed further in this section.

The patterns in Devil's Park are supported by a sample survey of the Middle San Francisco (Accola 1981, discussed at greater length as a Transitional Zone survey, below). The Middle San Francisco sample survey (Fig. I-4) located about 46 prehistoric sites (both architectural and non-architectural) in upland areas. One site was Early Pit House, two were Late Pit House, six were Late Pit House-Reserve, and 38 were Reserve phase. No evidence was found for Tularosa phase use of uplands (Accola 1981). The Late Pit House period is more strongly represented in the Middle San Francisco survey than in the Devil's Park survey. Late Pit House period sites were found in mountain, parkland, and plateau settings (but recall that some of these may be non-architectural sites). Thus, although not present in Devil's Park, it appears that Late Pit House period populations occupied upland areas in the Middle San Francisco; but, as at Rabb Park, this occupation appears to be very much smaller than the succeeding Mimbres and Reserve phases.

Mimbres Valley Three recent surveys have covered the Mimbres Valley from its upper reaches to the end of the river's channel in the deserts near Deming. Graybill's Upper Mimbres and the Mimbres Foundation's survey of the Middle and Lower Mimbres are discussed here. Unpublished primary data from the third survey, the NAN Ranch Project's survey of a segment of the Middle Mimbres (Fig. I-4, number 11), were graciously provided by Harry Shafer and Darrell Creel. These data have been used in the summary tables and maps, but are not used in this analysis.

Both the Rabb Park and Devil's Park surveys demonstrate major (nearly exclusive) use of these upland park areas during the contemporaneous Reserve and Mimbres phases. This pattern is supported by the Gila National Forest and Middle San Francisco sample surveys. Transitional Zone Surveys

Upper Mimbres The uppermost (northernmost) survey was Graybill's (1975) Upper Mimbres survey (Fig. I-4, 9), covering over 25 square miles of the three forks of the upper drainage, which is partly in forested uplands. This survey focused on the river valleys, which are, of course, at lower elevations than the wooded hillslopes that flank them, and it is included here with transitional area surveys. Coverage was very nearly complete (D. Graybill, personal communication, 1989), and 186 sites were recorded. Original ceramic counts were available (Graybill 1975: Appendix II). Pueblo room counts were computed by dividing architectural area by average room size. No room counts are provided for pit

Surveys in the Transitional Zone, with one exception, have focused on river valleys (the exception being the Black Range sample survey, discussed below). They provide good settlement pattern data for the major drainages, but data are scarce for surveys away from permanent streams. The data, and their difficulties, will be briefly discussed for each survey, working approximately from east to west: The Rio Grande, Black Range, Upper Mimbres, Mimbres Valley, Rio Arenas, Gila Cliff Dwellings, Cliff Valley, Upper Gila Water Supply Study Class II, Redrock Valley, and Middle San Francisco.

52

house sites, and the constants described above are to estimate room counts for Pit House period sites.

available for pit house sites. Room counts for pit house sites were estimated using the same constants discussed above for the Upper Mimbres survey. Herrington's survey on other drainages adjacent to the Rio Arenas (Herrington 1982) has not been included here.

Mimbres Valley The Mimbres Foundation surveyed the Middle (Fig. I4, number 10) and Lower (Fig. I-4, number 12) Mimbres Valley. In some respects, the Middle and Lower valley surveys can be considered as two separate surveys, but for this analysis, settlement data from the two are combined. Over 500 sites were recorded in the Middle Mimbres, the Lower Mimbres (Deming Plain), and in a number of smaller ancillary surveys.

Gila Cliff Dwellings The Gila Cliff Dwellings area (Anderson and others 1986), while on the uppermost Gila, is 20 airline miles away from the Cliff Valley, separated by the rugged Mogollon Mountains (Fig. I-4, number 4). Although surrounded by mountains, the Gila in this area is at a relatively low elevation, at about 5,500'. Thus the Gila Cliff Dwellings area may be considered an isolated patch of the Transitional Zone. The Gila Cliff Dwellings area was recently re-surveyed by the NPS, recording or rerecording 43 prehistoric sites. The data from the more recent survey are used here (Bradford 1989). Note that this survey was mainly limited to the area included in the Monument proper.

The Middle Mimbres Valley extends from the lower boundary of Graybill's Upper Mimbres survey to just south of Taylor Mountain, where the river's riparian vegetation ends and it becomes an intermittent desert drainage. This survey, its coverage, and methods, are reported in detail by Blake and others (1986). Over 360 sites were recorded in the Middle Mimbres Valley. The Middle Mimbres survey covered over 35 square miles. Due primarily to access problems, coverage was irregular. Blake and others' (1986) report is by far the most explicit and systematic treatment of uneven coverage and post-facto sampling in the southwestern New Mexico literature. A great deal of effort was expended in developing projections from the sample to the entire Middle Mimbres. I do not use Blake and others' estimated site and room counts for two reasons. First, as discussed below, their solution to the problem of the large, multicomponent site is not consistent with other data sets (this does not imply their solution is incorrect, only that it is not comparable with other data sets). Second, since other surveys do not attempt to project settlement patterns from samples to a larger landscape, the use of a sample-based projection from one survey is not appropriate.

Upper Gila Three major projects have surveyed the Upper Gila in the Transition Zone (i.e., below its exit from the Mogollon Mountains). The first and most extensive was James E. Fitting's Upper Gila Project survey along the Gila and its tributaries in the Cliff Valley (Fitting 1972; Fitting, Hemphill, and Abbe 1982). The second was Lekson's survey of the Gila Valley in the vicinity of Redrock (Lekson 1978a, 1982). The third, and most recent, was the Upper Gila Water Supply Study Class II survey, a sample survey of the Cliff Valley for a proposed dam (Chapman, Gossett, and Gossett 1985). Fitting's Upper Gila Project survey (Fig. I-4, number 5) continued the University of Michigan Mimbres Area Survey, which visited several Cliff Valley sites in 1967. Fitting returned to the Cliff Valley in 1971. Along with a number of major excavations, site-oriented survey began in that year and continued through 1973. Fitting recorded over 225 sites in the 21-mile-long Cliff Valley (from where the river leaves the Mogollon Mountains to its narrows through the Big Burro Mountains) and a number of its tributaries: Mogollon Creek, Duck Creek, Lobo Creek, Sycamore Creek, Mangas Creek, Greenwood Canyon, and Bear Creek. The total area surveyed approached 100 square miles; the density of sites was thus less than three per square mile, reaching four sites per square mile only along the Gila River valley itself. A brief article (Fitting 1972) summarized the initial survey (including only 79 sites), but analysis of the full data set has never been presented in print. I have used the unpublished site records from Fitting's survey in the present analysis. Ceramic data from Timothy C. Klinger's 1970s analysis were framed in the Boldface-Classic typology of that time; efforts to relocate these collections for reanalysis using the current Style I-II-III typology were, unfortunately, unsuccessful.

The Lower Mimbres' course through the desert Deming plain was surveyed as a separate project with a different sampling strategy (Blake and Narod 1977.) Data on settlements along the Mimbres River's course are included in this analysis, but the larger Deming Plain survey is discussed below, with desert area surveys. As we shall see, the addition of Lower Mimbres settlement data to the Middle Mimbres data changes interpretations based on Middle Mimbres Valley data alone. The Mimbres Valley data presented in Tables 4.6, 4.7 and 4.8 were very kindly provided by Michael Blake; they include settlement data from both the Middle and Lower Mimbres. Rio Arenas The Rio Arenas survey data come from Herrington (1979). The Rio Arenas survey (Fig. I-4, number 8) was a long-term study that approached complete coverage, with over 100 sites recorded. Ceramic counts are not included in this source. Room counts are included for pueblo structures, but only limited data are

53

The Upper Gila Water Supply Study Class II (UGWSSII) was a well-designed 15% sample of a total study area of about 90 square miles of the Gila in the Cliff Valley and the Burro Mountains narrows, Duck Creek, and Mangas Creek, completed in 1983 (Fig. I-4, number 6). About 90 prehistoric sites were recorded, or a site density of about seven per square mile. About 15% of these sites had been discovered by Fitting's Upper Gila survey, but the UGWSSII records and maps of these sites are far more useful than the original notes. The Upper Gila and Redrock surveys targeted landforms along the river valley, but the UGWSSII survey included samples of uplands away from the river valley. UGWSSII data used in this analysis come from the published report (Chapman, Gossett, and Gossett 1985) and the field ceramic counts (on file at the Bureau of Reclamation Offices in Phoenix).

defined by non-archaeological, engineering requirements before this area was sampled. As with any sample survey, some of the variation in the sites recorded may be attributed to the vagaries of sampling. For example, the high number of Salado sites recorded by the UGWSSII reflects the inclusion in the sample of a small enclave of Salado sites on Duck Creek. Comparison with Fitting's survey data demonstrate that Salado sites in the Cliff Valley are less abundant, as a whole, than might be suggested from the 15% UGWSSII sample. Conversely, the large number of aceramic pithouse sites on a minor side drainage of Duck Creek are not represented in either Fitting's or Lekson's surveys, perhaps because similar areas were not investigated by the Upper Gila or Redrock projects. The UGWSSII survey is a fine modern survey, and can perhaps best be used for the "fine tuning" of Fitting's much less rigorous survey of the same area and as a healthy corrective to riverine-focused surveys.

The Redrock survey (Fig. I-4, number 6), in 1974, was an attempt at 100% coverage of about 22 square miles along a 16.5 mile reach of the Gila Valley above and below the town of Redrock (Lekson 1978a). About 175 sites were recorded, for a site density of about eight sites per square mile. My unrealistically detailed ceramic chronology (Lekson 1978a, 1982) discouraged subsequent comparative use of these data. By way of penance, I have resorted the decorated ceramics from the Redrock Survey into the Style I-II-II typology and re-assigned the sites into more useful chronological groupings based on assemblages.

Middle San Francisco The Middle San Francisco River may appear to be an upland, even montane, setting, but the elevation of the valley bottom is lower than the Mimbres (the elevation at Alma is about 4900', and at Swarts about 5400'). Two recent surveys have sampled the Middle San Francisco: a regional sample survey (Fig. I-4, number 1) (Accola 1981) and a more intensive survey of a 15-mile reach of the San Francisco between Reserve and Alma (Fig. I-4, number 2) (Peterson 1986, 1988). Room counts are only available from the latter. The sample survey was a 2% nonrandom (judgmental) sample of about 540 square miles; 12 one-square mile sections were surveyed. Six of the units were located along the river in "floodplain-terrace" settings. Room counts are not available, but the assemblages of the approximately 50 sites (including both architectural and non-architectural sites) located along the river can be determined from the published report as follows: Archaic, 2%; Early Pit House, 16%; Late Pit House, 2%; Late Pit House-Reserve, 14%; Reserve, 20%; Tularosa, 4%; Undatable lithic scatters, 42%. The Reserve phase sites are small (3 to 15 rooms) while the single Tularosa phase architectural site may have had as many as 100 rooms (Accola 1981).

Upper Gila Surveys Compared These three surveys of the Upper Gila were all slightly different in method and focus (see also Lekson 1990: 84-88). Fitting's Upper Gila Project survey was by far the most extensive, but probably the least rigorous in method. Fitting's survey could be described as an intensive reconnaissance, with reasonably complete discovery of structural sites along the terraces of the Gila and its tributaries. (The UGWSSII survey later confirmed that ceramic period structural sites are almost exclusively found on these land forms.) Site recording was minimal, limited to a brief description, estimated room counts, and a grab-sample of ceramics. The data from the Upper Gila Project survey are very useful for "big-picture" questions, but less useful for more detailed analyses.

Data from the survey of the Reserve-Alma segment of the Middle San Francisco are more readily compared to other surveys. As described by Peterson (1986) this survey actually began below San Francisco Plaza, and ended about seven miles above the town of Alma, but I refer to this reach as "Reserve-Alma" for easier map reference. The survey was an intensive reconnaissance of the terraces along the river. A total of 53 sites were recorded, of which 13 were lithic scatters of possible Archaic age. Approximate room count percentages (from Peterson 1988) are given in Table 4.6. "Several" Early Pit House sites were found, but no room counts are available. No Tularosa sites were located in this length of the San Francisco. Sites of the Tularosa phase

The Redrock survey also focused on river valley landforms, but attempted to be more complete in coverage and more systematic in recording. Sites were carefully mapped, and large, proportionate samples of lithics and ceramics were recorded. This survey should provide reasonably complete data on the Gila Valley at Redrock, but did not include tributaries or non-riverine areas. The methods and field techniques of the UGWSSII survey were most rigorous of the three surveys, but it must be remembered that the UGWSSII study area was

54

appear to be located only on the largest pockets of arable land, as in the Cruzville and Alma segments. No comparable areas of arable land are found on the Reserve-Alma segment.

I have indicated elsewhere (Lekson 1989a) I very firmly believe that extensive Early Pit House components are present (but invisible to survey) on lower terraces. Therefore I am not too excited about survey data for this period.

Synthesizing Transition Zone Archaeology

Single component Late Pit House period sites (i.e. sites without later, overlying pueblo components) are surprisingly rare. In all surveys with real data, the number of Late Pit House rooms ranges from only 2.0% to 5.2% of the total room counts. Higher values, for the Upper Mimbres and Rio Arenas, do not represent real data, but were computed from average room counts, as explained in Table 4.6. Most Late Pit House sites have all three Late Pit House pottery types (Mogollon Red-on-brown, Three Circle Red-on-white, and Boldface Black-on-white).

Data from all these surveys have been recast into ceramic assemblages (presented in Table 4.5) and room counts, a process which required many hundreds of miles of travel, reams of correspondence, hours of phone calls, weeks of ceramic reanalysis, and months of Sisyphean archival work. All this effort was required to compile Table 4.6, which may seems a puny get for such great labor. Table 4.6 may be little, but I am rather proud of it. Table 4.6 represents the actual surface settlement archaeology along almost all of the major drainages in the Transitional Zone of southwest New Mexico, translated into comparable systematics and measures. These data have never before been available, and a number of intriguing ideas and conclusions can be developed from them.

Multicomponent Pit House-Mimbres sites (and multicomponent Pit House, Mimbres, and post-Mimbres sites) make up by far the largest subdivision of archaeology, as measured by room counts, in southwestern New Mexico. For all of southwestern New Mexico, rooms at Pit House-Mimbres (and Pit House-Mimbres-El Paso) sites total about one-third of all the rooms recorded (all surveys, all sites, all periods). For sites with Mimbres phase occupations only (i.e. discounting single component Pit House period and post- Mimbres sites), this proportion approaches one-half.

For each survey, room counts (the available dimension of site size) were totaled for each assemblage. Thus, the data in Table 4.6 do not reflect sites, but the rather the total area of visible archaeology that can be assigned to each assemblage. Room counts for each assemblage have then been reduced from absolute to relative values by presenting rooms counts for each assemblage as percentages of the total room counts recorded for each survey. For example, a survey that recorded room counts that doubled with each of three temporally sequent assemblages (A, B, and C) would have a percentage distribution of total room counts (100%) of Assemblage A, 14.2%; Assemblage B, 28.6%; and Assemblage C, 57.2%.

Mimbres phase components are relatively easy to see and map at these sites, but the underlying Pit House period remains are usually completely obscured. We know from early excavations at Mimbres sites (Anyon and LeBlanc 1984; Cosgrove and Cosgrove 1932; Bradfield 1929) that large Mimbres pueblo ruins often mask sizable pit house villages, but we cannot know from the surface just how big those buried pit house village really were. The answer to that question is pivotal to our interpretation of Mimbres cultural history. It is fair to say that the resolution of multicomponency is one of the most important issues in Mimbres archaeology today. It will be addressed in a later section.

I made no attempt to partition total site counts between various phases at sites with multiphase assemblages. Indeed, in my reanalysis I have re-combined some survey data that attempted to do just this. Different archaeologists use very different formulas and conventions for decomposing multicomponent sites. The idiosyncratic variety of approaches suggests that we do not have accurate tools or techniques for apportioning the archaeology at multiphase sites, a problem discussed at great length below.

The archaeology of the Mimbres phase is much clearer than the archeology of where Mimbres came from and the issues surrounding Mimbres multicomponency. The problems of deposition and systematics that obscure the late Pit House period are much less important in later, pueblo archaeology. For later periods, we can begin to use room count and site data to mount arguments without over much concern for uncontrolled bias. The arguments we make may still be wrong, but they are more likely to be wrong for the right reasons.

Early Pit House sites are generally limited to those sites in isolated, "defensive" positions. Early Pit House period room totals range from 0.7% to 8.0% of total rooms in each area. Because of the very specific "defensive" locales of these sites and the varying coverage of these situations in both survey and survey reports, the three surveys which are most comparable are the Mimbres, Cliff, and Redrock surveys. These three have a much tighter range from 4.3% to 5.2%. As

The Mimbres phase, including Mimbres components at multicomponent sites, presents a set of data of

55

particular interest. Mimbres phase data have been distilled from the various surveys and are presented in Tables 4.7 and 4.8. The "typical" (i.e. most common) Mimbres site does not have 100+ rooms like Swarts (optimistically labeled a "typical Mimbres site" by its excavators, Cosgrove and Cosgrove 1932). In fact, two-thirds to three-fourths of all Mimbres sites have ten rooms or less (Table 4.7). The Mimbres Foundation considers all sites of less than seven rooms to be seasonal or special-use sites (Nelson and others 1979; Blake and others 1986). If this interpretation is correct, then the "typical" Mimbres site might be in the 11-50room class, which in the more extensive surveys range from about 20-25% of the total. (The Black Range and Cliff Dwellings surveys were the two smallest samples, and the patterns of site and room distributions differ markedly from more extensive surveys of the same or similar areas; recall also that the UGWSSII survey was a sample.)

4.8). One 500-room site obviously includes more rooms than 300, 350, or 400 one-room sites. The difference between 300 sites and 400 sites might appear impressive, but it may in fact contribute very little to differences in room counts. Small percentage differences in the number of small sites are not as significant as the same percentage differences in larger sites. Room count distributions (Table 4.8), therefore, can best be understood with reference to larger site size classes. Three basic patterns are evident in large site distributions: first, a pattern of no 50-100-room sites and only about 20% of all rooms in larger 100+ sites (Upper Mimbres, Rio Arenas). Second, a pattern of about 20% of all rooms in the 51-100-size class and 20-20% of rooms in 100+ sites (Rio Grande, Mimbres Valley, and Cliff). And third, two-thirds of all rooms in very large 100+ sites (Redrock). In effect, larger sites are an important, but minor, part of the settlement pattern in the Upper Mimbres and Rio Arenas. They are a major (and perhaps the major) part of settlement in the Rio Grande, Mimbres, and Cliff valleys, and large sites are almost the whole settlement pattern in the Redrock Valley.

The proportions of small (1-10-room) and medium (11-50-room) sites are fairly similar in the various surveys, but the larger site classes, while much less frequent, are potentially of great importance. Most surveys located no sites in the 51-100-room class. The Upper Mimbres, Rio Arenas, and Redrock surveys are probably of the most interest in this regard (the Black Range and Cliff Dwellings surveys, again, representing small samples). Sites in 51-100-room range were found in the Rio Grande, the Mimbres, and the Cliff Valley (both Fitting's Cliff Valley and UGWSSII), the three largest drainages in the area -- but not, it must be noted, in the Redrock Valley of the Upper Gila.

The similarity between the Mimbres and Cliff valleys is reinforced by the distribution of rooms in sites of different size classes (Table 4.8). Naturally, these mirror the site size class distributions in Table 4.7. There was life after Mimbres. El Paso/Black Mountain assemblages (which I consider identical) were present in the Rio Grande and the Mimbres valleys (Table 4.6). They were also present in the Black Range survey, which sampled some of the area between the Rio Grande and the Mimbres Valley (Laumbach and Kirkpatrick 1983). The rooms associated with El Paso/Black Mountain and multicomponent El Paso/Black Mountain-Mimbres sites include about 50% of the Rio Grande total and 40% of the Mimbres. El Paso was a major presence on the Rio Grande. The Mimbres total for El Paso/Black Mountain rooms is in fact lower than that figure. With later Pueblo period archaeology, it is possible to obtain better estimates of the actual room counts of Mimbres versus El Paso/Black Mountain at multicomponent sites. From the Mimbres Foundation data supplied by Michael Blake, El Paso/Black Mountain rooms make up about 20% of the room count total.

All of the larger surveys located sites in the very largest class, 100+ rooms, but the proportions of these sites varies from 1.5% (Upper Mimbres) to 6.4% (Redrock Valley). The 10% figure from the Cliff Dwellings survey may be discounted; this small survey of the NPS holdings around the Cliff Dwellings specifically incorporated the only very large site in the three forks area of the Gila, the TJ Ruin. One remarkable aspect of site size-class distribution (Table 4.7) is the near identity of the Mimbres Valley and Cliff data. The distribution of site size classes is almost exactly the same in the two valleys, a revelation that may shock many archaeologists. It certainly surprised me. I have, in the past, made the argument that the settlement patterns in the two areas were very different, with a much higher degree of aggregation (rooms concentrated in large sites) on the Gila than on the Mimbres (Lekson 1984b). The new, more comparable data, indicate that the two valleys are much more alike than I had thought.

The number of El Paso/Black Mountain rooms is of some importance because the reduction in numbers of rooms from Mimbres to Black Mountain phases is the main evidence offered for the famous Mimbres collapse (LeBlanc 1980b, 1983). All of sudden, it seems like everybody's left. In the survey of the Middle Mimbres Valley (north of 32o30'), Black Mountain-phase rooms represented only about 10% of the Mimbres room count total -- certainly, a dramatic reduction. But when sites

A difference of 5% may not be dramatic in small or medium-sized sites, but it becomes very important in the larger site class categories. This importance is more obvious when comparing actual room counts (Table

56

on the Mimbres south of 32o30' (the Deming plains portion of the survey) are included, this proportion changes remarkably. For the entire Mimbres (north and south of the arbitrary cut-off of Blake and others 1988), Black Mountain phase rooms represent slightly over one-third of the Mimbres-phase room count total (from data supplied by Michael Blake). Clearly, there is a reduction in the number of rooms from Mimbres phase to El Paso/Black Mountain phase, and just as clearly there is a settlement shift from the Middle Mimbres to lower desert settings.

hearths, stone circles, rock art, etc.) constitute surprisingly varied proportions of the various Transitional Zone surveys. (Note that data on non-architectural sites were not available from all surveys.) The percentage of all sites which were not architectural ranges from a low of 10% (Cliff Valley) to a high of about 75% (Redrock Valley), with most surveys falling between 30% and 50% (UGWSSII, Rio Grande, Mimbres, and Black Range). To some extent, higher proportions of non-architectural sites reflect larger areas of non-riverine lands included in the sample. The Mimbres survey (with its extensive sample of the Deming Plain) and the Black Range survey (which did not specifically focus on riverine areas) had two of the highest proportions of non-architectural sites (45% and 50%, respectively). Note, however, that the Redrock survey, with the highest proportion of non-architectural sites (75%) was a riverine survey. The Redrock Valley also displayed the most highly aggregated settlement patterns of any survey area (Table 4.8), and it is possible that high proportions of non-architectural sites represent limited activity sites associated with the highly concentrated architectural sites.

Since the desert portion of the Lower Mimbres (the Deming plains) has been much less fully sampled than the Middle and Upper Mimbres Valley, it is entirely possible (and in fact likely) that more El Paso/Black Mountain-phase sites will be added to the survey data. It is much less likely that many more large Mimbres phase sites will be found. When the dust settles, the dramatic 90% reduction of the Mimbres Valley will be considerably reduced. I doubt that Mimbres and El Paso will ever reach parity in the Mimbres drainage, as they do on the Rio Grande, but I am very confident that the famous Mimbres collapse, the legendary reduction from Mimbres to Black Mountain phases, should be reexamined very critically. It's even possible that it never happened.

Desert Zone Surveys

Significantly, the El Paso or El Paso/Black Mountain phase is almost absent in the Gila River surveys. El Paso Polychrome and Chupadero Black-on-white occur on the Gila, but in such ephemeral contexts that no room counts were assigned to this assemblage.

Three recent large-scale projects have surveyed the desert area: the Mimbres Foundation's Deming Plain Survey (Blake and Narod 1977), New Mexico State's Grant and Luna County State Land Survey (hereafter, the Grant-Luna Survey) (Ackerly and others 1988), and the Hidalgo Archaeological Research Project (Findlow and DeAtley 1978, DeAtley and Findlow 1982). The first two projects both surveyed the desert plains around Deming; the third project surveyed the basin between the Peloncillo and Animas mountains.

The Tularosa phase is present in only one survey, and at only one major site: the Gila Cliff Dwellings. Intriguingly, the percentage of Tularosa phase rooms to Mimbres rooms at Gila Cliff Dwellings is comparable to El Paso/Black Mountain rooms in the Mimbres Valley, but the nature of the Cliff Dwellings survey sample precludes any further conclusions from this observation. (Tularosa sites are, of course, present in the montane surveys discussed above and in portions of the Black Range Survey (Laumbach and Kirkpatrick 1983).

Both the Deming Plain Survey (Fig. I-4, number 12) and the Grant-Luna Survey (Fig. I-4, number 13) were sample surveys of the vast plains west and south of and around Deming. The Deming Plain Survey sampled 6% of over 880 square miles and recorded 96 sites. The Grant-Luna Survey was a 2% sample of about 1150 square miles and recorded 48 sites. The two surveys targeted the same landscape, and indeed one-fifth of the two survey areas overlapped, although it does not appear that any sample units were redundant. While these surveys do not represent two samples of precisely the same universe, they are samples of the same major physiographic zone, and should provide a good test of sampling in the desert zone. Two aspects of these surveys will be compared: the kinds of sites recorded and the densities of sites discovered.

Salado and late El Paso phases (comparable in time and -- dare I say it? -- comparable in many other ways, too) are absent in the Upper Mimbres, Gila Cliff Dwellings, and Rio Arenas. They are phenomenally well represented in the UGWSSII sample -- in fact, overrepresented as a function of sample error (Lekson 1990). From the Rio Grande, Mimbres, Cliff, and Redrock surveys, sites of the Salado and Late El Paso period make up between 4.2% and 17.9% of the total room counts. This time period is least evident in the Mimbres Valley.

The Deming Plain Survey recorded sites from Cochise Archaic through Salado. About half of the sites were lithic or brown ware sherd and lithic scatters. Based on survey evidence, it was not possible to definitely assign

Non-architectural Sites in the Transition Zone Non-architectural sites (artifact scatters, isolated

57

any sites to the Pit House periods, but Blake and Narod (1977: 13) suggested that some of the brown ware scatters may be of "pre-Classic Mimbres age, or perhaps early Mogollon". Subsequent excavations at one Deming Plain Survey site demonstrated a substantial Late Pit House period occupation (Minnis and Wormser 1984), and it seems likely that more of these generic Mogollon sherd scatters, located throughout the Deming Plain Survey area, will prove to be Pit House period sites.

strategy and site definition may play roles. In both surveys, sample units were not randomly located. The Deming Plain Survey sample was structured by environmental stratification and land access (Blake and Narod 1977), and the Grant-Luna Survey sample (limited to State lands) was "judgmentally selected" in relation to environmental strata similar to those used in the Deming Plain Survey (Ackerly and others 1988:5). It appears that both surveys placed similarly disproportionate samples along the Mimbres River (25% of the sample for the Deming Plain Survey, 30% of the sample for the Grant-Luna Survey) and distributed the remaining sample units over similarly defined major environmental zones.

Starting with the Mimbres phase, the surface record of the Deming Plain Survey shows major use of the Mimbres River bottom during the Mimbres, Animas, and Salado phases. About one-fifth of the sites of these periods were pueblos located along the Mimbres, including a large Mimbres pueblo, a cluster of large Animas pueblos, and the largest Salado pueblo in the Mimbres drainage. A range of non-architectural site types included artifact scatters, stone circles, rock piles, pictographs, mortars, and a quarry.

The main difference in the environmental stratifications of the two surveys was the Deming Plain itself. The Deming Plain formed the center of the Deming Plain Survey area but was not included in the Grant-Luna Survey area, and it was notably devoid of sites. However, removing the Deming Plain from the Deming Plain Survey sample increases site density only slightly, to about 1.9 sites per square mile.

The range of site types and time periods represented in the smaller Grant-Luna Survey sample was much more restricted. All but two of the 48 sites recorded in the Grant-Luna Survey were artifact scatters, with or without fire-cracked rock. One site had a possible pit house depression, and one had evidence of both pit structures and possible surface structures. Both architectural sites dated to the Late Pit House period, with one assignable to the Three Circle phase on the basis of decorated ceramics. No Mimbres, Animas, or Salado sites were recorded.

The Deming Plain Survey sampled the lower elevation plains south of Deming, while the Grant-Luna Survey covered the slightly higher pediment of the Burro Mountains northwest of Deming. The pediment of the Burros is known to have locally heavy concentrations of sites along minor creeks, such as Burro Cienega (Jelinek's Mimbres Area Survey records), and it is possible that this portion of the desert zone has, in fact, a higher density of sites. A single 40-acre unit (Unit 7) on the Burro pediment had 12 sites, but even without Unit 7, the highest density unit in the sample, site density in the Grant-Luna Survey was over 12 sites per square mile. Moreover, the Deming Plain Survey extensively sampled similar pediment fans around the Cooke's, Floridas, and Tres Hermanas ranges. From the survey reports, it is difficult to determine differences in sampling that would account for the differences in site density.

Both surveys recorded a very high proportion (90-95%) of non-architectural sites, most of which were non-specific lithic or brown ware and lithic scatters. Beyond that (very significant) similarity, the kinds of sites recorded could hardly be more different. The Deming Plain Survey recorded Mimbres and post-Mimbres sites (although, as noted above, Late Pit House period use of the Deming Plain Survey area has subsequently been demonstrated). The Grant-Luna Survey recorded Pit House period sites. Differences in the kinds of architectural sites recorded in the two samples represent very few sites: two architectural sites in the Grant-Luna Survey, and eight in the Deming Plain Survey. Both surveys indicate that architectural sites are rare in the desert zone, and the small sampling fractions of these two surveys could be expected to turn up very different samples of rare site classes. Thus the differences in the kinds of sites recorded may tell us less about the two survey areas than the inherent limitations of small fraction sample surveys.

It is possible that different tactics and criteria for defining sites may explain this difference. Neither survey recorded very many architectural sites, and large zones of artifact scatters are notoriously difficult to separate (or combine) into sites. The southern half of Unit 7 of the Grant-Luna Survey had about 10 sites and 10 IOs. This density can be understood as one site or IO at every intersection of grid on 65 meter centers, over an area of 80,000 sq m. That's a lot of little sites and IOs. If all sites in this survey were small and closely spaced, we might be justified in attributing differing site densities to site definition tactics. But not all Grant-Luna Survey sites are small. A single site was defined that covered about 200,000 within the 40-acre sampling unit, and a considerable area outside the unit. Nor are all small sites closely spaced (Ackerly and others 1988). Similarly, site size on the Deming Plain

The density of sites per square mile varies dramatically, even alarmingly, between the two surveys: the Deming Plain Survey recorded 1.8 sites per square mile and the Grant-Luna Survey recorded 19.2 sites per square mile. What could explain this ten-fold difference? Sampling

58

Survey varied from less than 1,000 sq m to well over 20,000 sq m. "The range of site size is extremely wide and the accuracy of site measurement is enhanced by the general lack of vegetation throughout the survey area" (Blake and Narod 1977: 24). While differing site definitions may account for some of the difference in site density, this factor probably does not explain a ten-fold difference in site density (c.f. Ackerly and others 1988: 165).

ceramics. Within the formal sample area, at least 68 sites were recorded, with about 70% being "limited activity" sites and 30% "habitation" sites (Findlow and DeAtley 1978: Table 3). Site density was about five (or less) per square mile. At the Animas phase peak, Findlow and DeAtley (1976: 40) suggest a population of 1,300 (and a population density of 0.96 people per square mile), computed using "Longacre's (1975) method for estimating prehistoric population size". Working back through Longacre's formula, this suggests a total of 620 Animas-phase rooms in the Hidalgo Project survey area.

It does not appear that marked differences in sampling scheme and site definition will explain the differences in the kinds of sites or site density recorded by these two surveys. I suspect that we are seeing simple sampling error -- statistical, not archaeological. Samples of only 2% and 6% are very small and are subject to large sampling errors.

The high proportion of non-architectural ("limited activities") in the Hidalgo Project survey is similar to desert zone surveys (Deming Plains and Grant-Luna); site density is intermediate between the low Deming Plain Survey value and the very high Grant-Luna Survey value. Obviously, the cultural historical content of the Hidalgo Project survey is markedly different from both of the other desert zone surveys. Three well-designed samples of the desert zone produced three very different culture histories. Is this remarkable? In the case of the Deming Plain and Grant-Luna surveys, sample error may explain the differences. For the Hidalgo Project survey, however, sampling was a different cultural historical universe. This conclusion is based on independent knowledge of the area gained from earlier reconnaissance surveys (such as the Cosgroves' Survey, the Gila Pueblo Survey, and Jelinek's Mimbres Area Survey, Table 3.2), that demonstrated a fundamentally different culture histories in northern and Bootheel southwestern New Mexico. The differences between the Hidalgo Project survey and the other two are probably real.

The Hidalgo Archaeological Research Project (hereafter, Hidalgo Project) is a "desert" project by virtue of its extreme southern location (Fig. I-4, number 19). But like many southern Arizona valleys, the upper Animas, Playas, and San Luis valleys are slightly higher and better watered than the desert plains to their north. Many of the sites recorded by the Hidalgo Project survey were located on creeks (such as Cloverdale and Deer creeks), where those creeks flow through the pediments of the Animas and Peloncillo mountains into the intermontane basins. The situation is analogous to the larger Transition Zone, but the Animas and Peloncillo ranges are much smaller uplifts than the Mogollon Plateau and, consequently, these creeks are much more ephemeral than major streams such as the Gila and the Mimbres. The Hidalgo situation is most similar to minor drainages in pediments, like Burro Cienega, and thus this survey belongs with other desert surveys.

4.C. Mimbres Multicomponency, Mobility, and the Survey Record

Primary records for the Hidalgo Project survey are not available; we can only estimate site totals and sample strategies from the subsequent papers and reports produced (e.g., Findlow and DeAtley 1978, DeAtley and Findlow 1982, Deatley 1980). The Hidalgo Project survey apparently covered a 2% stratified random transect sample of a 520-square mile area in the Upper Animas and San Luis valleys, which together form a basin between the Animas and Peloncillo mountains. The sample area included the lower slopes, pediments, and bottom of the intermontane valley. Other surveys outside the formal sample area covered most of the Playas Lake shoreline and selected sites in the Upper Playas and Lower Animas valleys. This discussion is limited to the sampled area of the Upper Animas-San Luis valleys.

As noted above, the resolution of Mimbres multicomponency is one of the most important issues in Mimbres archaeology today. Mimbres-phase pueblo-like architecture is relatively easy to see and map at sites, but the underlying Pit House period remains are almost always obscured. We know from early excavations at Mimbres sites (Cosgrove and Cosgrove 1932; Bradfield 1929) that large Mimbres pueblo ruins often mask sizable pit house villages; but we cannot know from the surface just how big those buried pit house village really were. From the surface, it's easy to see the pueblo, but it's very hard to see the pit houses, and that is the crux of the problem. The Constant Pit House Paul Minnis reviewed the regional survey data ten years ago (1980), and he concluded that estimating the size of Late Pit House period components at multicomponent sites was "extremely difficult". In my opinion, he might just as well have said it is impossible. I differ markedly from Michael Blake, Steve LeBlanc, and Paul

Two phases were defined by the Hidalgo Project survey: the San Luis phase, with brown wares and, in the late San Luis phase, limited amounts of Mimbres Black-on-white; and the Animas phase, consisting of large adobe pueblos with Chihuahua and Salado

59

Minnis, who later looked at Mimbres valley survey data in more detail (Blake and others 1986). They are much more optimistic about estimating the number of pit houses at big multicomponent sites:

Two sites (in my analysis) or three sites (in the initial Mimbres Foundation work) or even six sites (including Galaz, Mattocks, and Three Circle) do not represent a very large sample, particularly given the large range evident at Mimbres Valley sites. The ratios at all six Mimbres Valley sites, in sq m per pit structure, are: 50, 185, 195, 225, 250, and 800. These average around 215, but the "outlier" extremes are impressive. Does an average value of about 215 represent a constant?

These estimates were made by computing the ratio of pit houses to site area (in sq m) for all excavated sites in the region that had late Pit House period pit houses and then dividing this figure into the total site area [of surveyed sites] to determine the number of structures. This measure was utilized because of the relatively constant density of pit houses on excavated sites: one pit house for every 213.5 sq m (+ _30.4 sq m) of site area (Blake and others 1986: 457).

A Newer, Shiftier Model The search for a constant assumes that there was a consistent relationship between Late Pit House and Mimbres phase village plans, which would be required by the Mimbres Foundation model of the Mimbres pit house-pueblo transition, which posits an almost seamless shift from big pit house villages to big pueblos (discussed further, below). Given more-or-less steady population growth and an in-place transition, the size of a pueblo ought to consistently be X times the size of its preceding pit house component. If that is so, the range may represent the inevitable random error around the mean, and the precision of the constant can be improved by simply adding more and more sites to the sample.

So, according to Blake and his colleagues, there should be one pit house per about 215 sq m of site. Several years earlier, I had attempted a similar analysis based on a very small sample (two sites) from the Gila Valley, and arrived at a figure of about 445 sq m per pit house (Lekson 1978a). There is a big difference between 215 and 445: a factor of two. Despite my misgivings about sample size, this difference was enough of a difference to send me back to the Mimbres Valley data to reevaluate the 215 sq m "constant".

But should we assume that such a constant exists, waiting to be found? It may be useful to consider the two horizons, Late Pit House and Mimbres, as two separate systems, using the same landscape in similar but not identical ways. The locational relationship between the two may be very nearly random, within the spacial limits set by the occurrence of live water (i.e. rivers and creeks), the clear settlement magnet in all time periods.

The Mimbres Valley figure of 215 comes from Anyon and LeBlanc's (1984) Galaz Ruin report. It was derived from just three sites: Harris, Cameron Creek, and Swarts. Galaz was an independent test, and had a density of 195 sq m per pit structure -- very close to the 215 sq m figure, which was nice. But in calculating the original constant of 215, data from yet another site, the Three Circle site, were rejected because the density of pit houses there was about one per 50 sq m -- Anyon and LeBlanc thought that was anomalously high or dense, and decided to leave Three Circle out. Even more curious, data from the Mimbres Foundation's own excavations at the Mattocks site were also excluded in the calculation of the 215 sq m constant. Mattocks was a big site, with 200 rooms, but it had a very limited Pit House period occupation, with only about 12 pit structures from all periods (P. Gilman, personal communication, 1990). Using a very conservative site area of about 9600 sq m for Mattocks (LeBlanc 1983: Fig. 18), 12 pit houses indicates about 800 sq m per pit structure. Both Patricia Gilman (who is writing up the site) and Steven LeBlanc suggest that there may be additional pit structures outside the major site area. But if we expand Mattocks to include these possible pit structures, we increase the total site area enormously, and I doubt that the ratio of area to pit structure at Mattocks will drop very much. The Mattocks figure, of about 800 sq m per pit structure, is much higher than the Mimbres Valley convention of 215 sq m per structure.

Consider a broader sample of excavated sites. There are several very large Late Pit House sites which lack any significant later Mimbres pueblo overlays. These include the Three Circle site and the very large site of Lee Village, in the Gila Valley. Conversely, there appear to be one or two very large Mimbres sites that have very small Pit House period components. Mattocks doesn't have much of a pit house showing and the Carr site (near Deming) may be another example of a large Mimbres site without a substantial pit house component. Moreover, a number of substantial Mimbres pueblos exist that appear to have no earlier pit house components at all. For example, the Heron Ruin (in the Gila drainage) with 50 plus rooms had no pit house component. There appears to be a range of large Pit House and Mimbres sites, with extremes ranging from "pure" Late Pit House sites, on the one hand, to "pure" Mimbres pueblo sites, on the other. In between lies a range of configurations: Pit House sites with small Mimbres components (Saige-McFarland), large sites with substantial Pit House and substantial Mimbres

60

components (Swarts, Galaz, Cameron Creek) and Mimbres sites with very small Pit House components (Mattocks).

observed, empirical pattern that along a streams course, the very largest sites and densest clusters of sites are almost always immediately above or below constrictions of the flood plain (Lekson 1978a, 1986c; Nelson 1986; Laumbach and Kirkpatrick 1986). Why this is so may be a matter for study, but one reason seems obvious: constrictions force subsurface flow up, ensuring easily obtained drinking water. In good years and good seasons, water will be available all along the stream but in dry times, water will be reliable mainly at constrictions up and down the stream's length. Thus, some spots were simply more attractive for any settlement, permanent or not, along the stream's length.

Is it possible to model Mimbres multicomponency predicated on what is, in effect, the null hypothesis to the accepted view of big sedentary pit house villages turning into big pueblos? That is, building from the counterassumption that the change from pithouse to pueblo indicates a shift from short-term and mobile settlement to longer term, more sedentary settlement. If so, then pithouse site structure would be significantly different than pueblo site structure.

The simulation assumes that there were 70 potential spots for sites; this is the number of kilometers of the Mimbres Valley within the Mimbres Foundation Survey (Blake and others 1986), and a reasonable approximation of the grain appropriate to settlement prediction. It further assumes that there were 10 very favorable locations and 10 moderately favorable locations within those 70. These figures correspond to some degree to a cursory topo-map-and-car-trip study of the topography of the Mimbres Valley.

Jamming Round Numbers into Square Deals For purposes of modeling, pit house settlement can be thought of as random relative to later Mimbres settlement, but both were tethered to the riverine landscape. Mimbres architecture, if it indeed signals increasing sedentism, would not be random relative to the latest Pit House settlement patterns; big Mimbres sites would have to grow, in place, from the final settlements of the preceding Pit House period. The model should, of course, simulate the archaeology that we actually see, not the settlement patterns or demography that we infer from it. Thus, the simulation should calculate cumulative structures at sites and not momentary population or contemporary settlement. Internal growth must be a dimension of the model, but it should operate on numbers of structures and features rather than population per se. I have constructed a prototype of such a model or simulation.

The Mimbres Foundation estimated a total of about 1,215 Late Pit House period pit structures in the Mimbres Valley. That figure, 1215, is the first target for the simulation. The Late Pit House period, for purposes of this model, runs from A.D. 700 to 1000. Every 25 years, the simulation picks up the pit structures, shakes them in a bag, and drops them back down on along the river -- recall that some locations have higher probabilities of having a pit house land on them than others. Twenty-five years is a realistic estimate of pit house use-life (cf. Ahlstrom 1985; Cameron 1990). With a 0.3% annual increase, and with a use-life of 25 years, 60 initial pit structures turn into a cumulative total of 1,210 Late Pit House period pit structures (Table 4.9) -- close enough to the Mimbres Foundation estimate. Thus, my model begins with an initial Late Pithouse population of about 60 pit structures (note that 60 pit houses is not the figure offered by Michael Blake, Steven LeBlanc, and Paul Minnis (1986) who assume a much longer pit house use life). The important difference between my model and the Mimbres Foundation estimates is that with a beginning population of 60 and a 25-year use life, by the year 1000, my simulation says that the number of pit structures actually in use is only 150, less than onefourth the Mimbres Foundation estimates of 640 (Blake and others 1986).

In the simulation, the basic temporal parameters for the Pit House period mimic mobility on a moderate span with moderate internal growth. Every 25 years, everyone gets up and goes, randomly, and relocates somewhere else -- like musical chairs. After another 25 years, a slightly larger group (increased by internal growth) does it again, over and over until the time expires and the players leave the field. The model uses an annual growth rate of 0.3%, which agrees with previous assumptions made for the Mimbres Foundation analysis (Blake and others 1986). (References hereafter to the Mimbres Foundation are to Blake, LeBlanc, and Minnis 1986 and Anyon and LeBlanc 1984.) If 0.3% is in error, it errs on the side of too rapid growth, contrary to my ideas about lower population levels and more mobility. An error in favor of too rapid growth stacks the deck against the argument I will attempt to make with the simulation data.

Ten runs produced a strong pattern of cumulative site size (Table 4.10). That is, the number of pit structures we would find at a site today, not in a settlement in prehistory. Remember that the simulation models cumulative site structure -- what we actually see at a site -- and not demography or settlement or momentary population. Table 4.10 indicates the size distribution of

The basic spatial parameters modeled two salient aspects of prehistoric settlement in the Mimbres area. First, settlement was riverine; that is, closely tethered to the rivers and creeks of southwestern New Mexico. That much is very apparent in the survey data. Second, not all spots along a river are created equal. It is an

61

Late Pithouse sites. Note that these are the cumulative totals of pit structures at sites after 300 years -- they are not contemporary structures. The distribution from the model, which has pit houses marching to a random drummer and jumping around every 25 years, closely matches the distributions observed and projected at sites in the Mimbres Valley (from Blake and others 1986). This is particularly true if the smallest two size classes (1-9, 10-24) are combined into a single "less-than-25" category, a not unreasonable manipulation given the vagaries of survey observation. The simulation duplicates, through a simple model that assumes randomized movement and short-term occupation, a site record that has been generally and conventionally interpreted as sedentary, long-term villages.

from the small Late Pit House settlements suggested by my model.

Sedentary, long-term villages are also assumed for the Mimbres phase, from about A.D. 1000 to 1150. Sometime around AD 1000, pit houses change into pueblos, and there must be some currency between the two. For this model, one pithouse equals four surface rooms. This equation was suggested by early pueblo sites in the Gila Valley and particularly at the Dinwiddie site, where four to five surface rooms are associated with single pit structures in a very kiva-like way (Lekson 1988, 1990).

We assume that the shift from pit structure to pueblo signals increasing sedentism and turn off the model's random movement generator. By 1150, 40 rooms will increase in place to about 240 Mimbres-phase rooms -of which only a maximum of 60 were occupied at any one time. A total of 240 surface rooms is a bit high for the largest Mimbres Valley sites, which are usually estimated to have between 150 to 200 rooms. I suspect that mobility did not cease, abruptly and forever, at midnight of the year in which Late Pithouse turned to Mimbres (about A.D. 1000). The transition may have been sharp in archaeological perspective, but it must have taken at least one or two generations of real time. A little fuzziness at the transition -- decreasing mobility for a generation or two from 1000 to 1050 -- would lower the total number of rooms at large sites from 240 down to something approaching 150 to 200.

The largest final Late Pithouse period sites in the simulation consist of only 9 to 12 pit structures -- for convenience, I will say 10 pit structures. (Compare this figure to Anyon and LeBlanc's (1984) estimate of 96 pit houses for the final Late Pithouse component at Galaz - a ten-fold difference.) Given my assumption that one pit structure equals four pueblo rooms, a large final Late Pit House village of 10 pit structures turns into 40 above-ground rooms (perhaps the three- and four-room "core rooms" noted as the initial elements of large Mimbres sites by LeBlanc 1983, and Anyon and LeBlanc 1984).

If one pit structure equals about four above-ground rooms, the transition from 150 pit structures would produce about 600 rooms (if everyone everywhere bailed out of pit structures and built themselves pueblo rooms). Blake, LeBlanc, and Minnis projected a total of about 4,620 rooms in Mimbres Pueblo in the Mimbres Valley (Table 4.9). They assumed, for reasons which appear to me to be rather questionable, a use-life of 75 years for above-ground rooms. Mimbres walls were built out of very nicely rounded river cobbles, set in lots of mud. Mimbres building technology was a lot like stacking up ball bearings. Twenty-five to 30 years is probably a more realistic figure (arrived at after conversations with Catherine Cameron and Richard Ahlstrom).

The Meaning of Models Ten runs of the simulation produced 10 to 12 really big, multicomponent Mimbres sites precisely like the pattern we actually see in the Mimbres Valley (Blake and others 1986). The fit between simulation and what's really out there is very close. The major problem with the simulation, in my opinion, is that it is not random enough: it does not model the range of variability in pit house components that is evident in the record. I suspect that this may be a function of the implicit assumption that the hydrology of the Mimbres remains unchanged for over 450 years -- that is, that the same spots remain equally attractive over that period. This assumption is obviously incorrect, and it can be corrected in future programming to make the simulation more realistic.

The model assumes a use-life of 30 years for above-ground rooms -- longer than pit structures, but not by much -- and, again, 0.3% annual growth. With these assumptions and starting with an initial seeding of only 600 rooms, it is quite possible to generate the Mimbres Foundation's number of pueblo rooms in the Mimbres Valley (4,620) from my final Pit House totals (150 pit rooms) in the short, happy span of the Mimbres phase.

This model was first presented at the Denver SAA meetings in 1990. As is often the case with things I think are desperately interesting, only a few people cared to comment. But their reaction was unanimous: Nonsense! Hocus-pocus! The model was stacked to produce results that I wanted to get.

Structure use-life has no necessary implications for sedentism. Houses can be rebuilt every year, but if they are rebuilt in one spot, the settlement is sedentary. I suspect that is what happened in the Mimbres phase. If we make that assumption, it is very easy to model the large Mimbres phase sites like Swarts and Mattocks

62

My reply to this criticism is: Of course; that's how models work. I took pains to pre-determine what the end result should be. The surface archaeology of the Mimbres Valley has been well-documented by the Mimbres Foundation and the NAN Ranch projects. A model that leads to something other than reality is not a very useful model. The point of the exercise was to achieve reality with entirely different assumptions than Blake, LeBlanc, and Minnis employed in their model -which was also, of course, predetermined to yield reality as they knew it. By contrasting those basic assumptions, we can locate points of real importance in Mimbres archaeology.

Decisions and assumptions have to be made, and those assumptions are based honestly on the reality that each archaeologist sees. The problem is not that we are fast and loose with figures, but that the figures we have to work with are too fast and too loose for the kinds of detailed analyses we wish to pursue. My pessimistic conclusions stem primarily from our lack of tools to translate visible surface archaeology into chronologically useful population data. The majority of the visible prehistoric settlement in southwestern New Mexico (measured by rooms, architectural mass, or whatever) is contained in relatively few large, very complex, multicomponent sites. Most of the quantitative data we need for regional demographics are locked up in sites we do not know how to read from the surface. Blake, LeBlanc, and Minnis (1986: 449, 459) correctly identify this dilemma, and they apparently believe that they can correct it by finer and finer manipulations of the data. I envy their optimism, but I cannot share it.

It is clear (to me, at least) that the archaeological record of the Mimbres Valley is compatible with an interpretation of short-term, moderate mobility -essentially random within a tethered linear environment -- through the Late Pit House period, with a shift to sedentism in the Mimbres phase. Recall that the conventional (Blake and others 1986) view of the shift from Late Pit House to Mimbres phase is simply a change of clothes, with all other business as usual. The simulation suggests that the shift from pit house to pueblo was not simply a change of clothes, but instead marks a profound change in the basic patterns of land use and adaptation in the Mimbres Valley. The model suggests, but does not prove. That's not what models are for. Models exist only to make evident the key relationships between our data and our thinking.

More data or new ways of stroking old data may someday solve the problems posed by a fuzzy record. Positivism holds no guarantees; we cannot specify what new data and what new manipulations will break through the circle of ambiguity and give us focus and clarity. We should accept that the data are fuzzy and diffuse and are likely to remain so. And we must then fashion different tools -- larger, blunter instruments -- to read those data: put down the scalpel and pick up the mallet.

Dire Conclusions Chronological resolution and realistic use of chronology have implications for many research interests in the Mimbres area, but they particularly effect demography. Building population estimates and growth rates empirically requires high chronological precision. The tight chronological controls needed for successful demographic modeling, on the regional scale, simply are not there. Indeed, there are only four sites in the Mimbres area with anything like chronological control (Mattocks, Harris, NAN, Gila Cliff) and of these, one is a Pit House period site and one is post-Mimbres. Thus, we are left with only two Mimbres sites which even approach chronological control. In my opinion, regional demographic studies (including my own early attempts) are interesting exercises, but not much more. Long chains of tenuous chronological assumptions underlie regional demography -- and there must be assumptions, because there are few data. Not unnaturally, assumptions about chronology, contemporaneity, and structure use-life directly reflect each archaeologist's conception of Mimbres area prehistory, and the resulting population curves, growth rates, etc. simply reinforce the systematics that structured the whole process in the first place.

63

followed contemporary ethnographic assumptions about the typicality of the single community or village. When the normative framework was questioned in the late 1960s and early 1970s, the small drainage achieved near-mythical status after the hydrographic unit was defined as an appropriate scale by Lewis Binford in his "Consideration of Archaeological Research Design." Ideas about scale seem to have solidified on this level, abetted by the size of the largest CRM operations: reservoirs, land reclamations, major strip mining operations -- all were addressable in terms of the small hydrologic unit.

Chapter 5 Research Issues and Historic Texts Research issues and the data needed to address them are discussed throughout this report. In this section, the range of research issues are analyzed as they relate to regional survey, and a series of "historic contexts" are developed to guide National Register activities. Much of what most people want to know about the prehistory of southwestern New Mexico, and particularly the Mimbres, isn't there in survey data. Iconography, world views, religion -- you can't get any of that from survey. Research issues and historic contexts reflect my crass materialist perspective, and are tailored specifically to National Register survey.

Only recently have the (relatively) enormous scales of some Southwestern developments, such as Chaco and the Classic period Hohokam, been recognized and systematically documented. Chaco and the Classic Hohokam are probably only the most obvious or most easily recognized of large-scale Southwestern systems. Hunter-gatherer systems, in particular, probably covered enormous areas, and since the distribution of wild resources did not change simply because the human component of the ecosystem adopted agriculture, the ever-present hunter-gatherer elements of Puebloan agricultural subsistence could also be expected to cover similarly large areas. Yet the large scale of hunter-gatherer and mixed hunter-gatherer subsistence systems does not seem to have been incorporated into many archaeological models of Southwestern subsistence.

5.A. Research Issues The contributors to LeBlanc and Whalen (1980) suggested a number of issues for future research, as did Stuart and Gauthier (1981). Most of these issues were appropriate to excavation, but not to survey. Where possible, research suggestions from these two very insightful sources have been incorporated here. Research issues relevant to survey generally share themes of environment, culture history, demographics, settlement patterns, and subsistence (or use of the landscape). With the increasing refinement of dendroclimatological reconstructions for southwestern New Mexico (Shaw, n.d.), we are achieving much more precision in this area than we can claim for culture history, demographics, settlement patterns, and subsistence. Culture history has been discussed at length in Section 4. Demographics, settlement patterns, and subsistence are all research themes with a common element: scale. The treatment of these research domains for various time periods and by various authors can be organized by their appropriate areal scales.

It will be helpful to have realistic ideas about the scale of the system(s) being investigated. Appropriate scales, on this pragmatic level, have less to do with theory than with general anthropological knowledge. For example, compare Minnis's (1985) reconstruction of Mimbres subsistence with the documented resource area of Zuni (Ferguson and Hart 1985). Minnis suggests that during the Classic Mimbres phase in the Mimbres Valley, slightly over 4,000 people utilized an area of some 4,300 square kilometers. The Zuni -- certainly more intensive agriculturalists than the Mimbres -- numbered at most about 5,000, but they used a documented resource area of over 100,000 square kilometers -- a twenty times greater area per capita than Minnis's Mimbres model! This remarkable disparity in scale should be an immediate flag that Minnis's theoretically generated scale may be unrealistically small.

Throughout the history of Southwestern archaeology, ideas of appropriate scale have changed. The first Southwestern archaeologists often thought of sites as an appropriate scale; pueblo sites were seen as self-contained, self-sufficient farming villages. Later, archaeological horizons opened as far as the drainage. Research questions expanded to the district or region: an area characterized by a number of similar village sites, or an area about the right size for one research project, or both. Most recently, "world systems" scenarios have expanded the scale to the continent (or at least a large part of the continent), thus giving a theoretical legitimacy to the long-standing historical interest in Mesoamerican- Southwestern interaction. To a very great extent, archaeological ideas about scale paralleled larger anthropological developments: emphasis on the single site, in a normative framework,

A number of scales have been proposed as appropriate for demographics, settlement patterns, and subsistence in southwestern New Mexico. This sections discusses research issues for the Paleo-Indian stage, Archaic stage, Early Pit House period, Late Pithouse period and Mimbres phase, Animas phase, and Salado (Cliff) phase using scale as a central focus. In southwestern New Mexico, research issues and the theories behind them are generally associated with individuals or groups of scholars who have cooperated in major projects. For this reason, much of the discussion will

64

be structured around individuals. This approach should not be construed as ad hominem. Rather than a review of personalities, this discussion simply illustrates the range of scales and research issues current for southwestern New Mexico. Not every archaeologist who has thought about or written about the archaeology of southwestern New Mexico is mentioned here; those omitted may thank their lucky stars.

Late Archaic and Early Pit House period sites (Chapman, Gossett, and Gossett 1985). Late Pithouse and Mimbres Research Issues Over the past fifty years, a number of different reconstructions of Pithouse period and Mimbres phase subsistence and economic systems have been proposed. This section reviews several current positions. Mimbres sites were originally seen as prehistoric versions of modern Pueblos. The Cosgroves (1932) described Swarts Ruin as a "typical" Mimbres site. "The Swarts village appears to have been a typical Mimbres community. . . . They were provided with sufficient fertile land and other natural resources, causing them to be primarily agricultural. . . . The Mimbrenos were apparently a peace-loving people and were also relatively isolated" (Cosgrove and Cosgrove 1932:107-9). In short, Swarts was just a little farming village, very much like the mid-1930s stereotype of a Pueblo. At the time, the Mogollon Culture was only beginning to emerge as a regional subdivision of the Southwest; since the concept of the cotradition had not yet been accepted, it would have been hard for the Cosgroves to imagine Swarts as anything other than a Pueblo.

Paleo-Indian and Archaic Stages The basic research issue for these periods is purely empirical: what is the record? We have almost no knowledge of these periods in southwestern New Mexico. After an empirical record is obtained, it is likely that the appropriate scales for interpreting demographics, settlement patterns, and subsistence will extend far beyond the boundaries of southwestern New Mexico. But in the absence of data, speculation on substantive research issues (such as scale) is obviously premature. Late Archaic Stage and Early Pit House Period The transition from the Late Archaic stage to the Early Pit House period may or may not be tied up in the adoption of agriculture and the transition to sedentism. LeBlanc (1980a) argues that this is the case; moreover, the distinctive Early Pit House settlement pattern on "defensive" buttes and mesas suggests that competition played a key role in this transition. The scale on which this transition should be studied will depend on the scales of the system before and after the change occurred. Thus it is necessary to have an understanding of Middle and Late Archaic site distributions, on the one hand, and a firm grasp of Early Pit House scales, on the other. The Archaic is largely a closed book, but we have begun to recognize Late Archaic pit house sites in the Transitional Zone. Early Pit House settlement patterns are better defined, but as I argued in Section 4.A, the visible Early Pit House sites may represent only a portion of the scale necessary for understanding Early Pit House settlement patterns.

Minnis Minnis (1985) presents a comprehensive view of Mimbres subsistence, focusing on organizational responses to what he perceives as prehistoric food stress. He defines a scale of the Mimbres Valley and the Deming Plain (an area of about 4,300 square kilometers) for a model of wild plant productivity, calculated from a theoretical model of net primary productivity modified by a series of rather arbitrary values of the edible, collectible, and digestible fractions of that productivity. He concludes that wild plants in this area could support the estimated population of any phase or period except the Mimbres phase peak (Minnis 1985: Figs. 29 and 30). Despite the theoretical suggestion of a Mimbres Garden of Eden, Minnis believes that most of the Mimbres sequence is characterized by heavy reliance on corn agriculture:

Most authors agree that a very large scale is appropriate to the research issues of this transition. LeBlanc (1980a, 1982) reminds us that reliance on agriculture, sedentism, and ceramics may form an adaptive complex of ultimately Mexican origins -- a large scale indeed. Recent, more localized ecological approaches also employ or argue for very large scales. Wills (1989) indicates that a scale larger than southwestern New Mexico is appropriate, and Hunter-Anderson's (1986) comparative analysis of the Pine Lawn area also suggests that understanding of the transition requires a scale larger than southwestern New Mexico.

After reviewing ethnographic information and data from southwestern coprolite studies, I suggest that, for the prehistoric periods in the study area except the early pithouse period, cultivated plants constituted approximately 50 percent of the diet on the average. Based on weaker inferences, I assigned a figure of 35 percent to the domesticated plant contribution to the Early Pithouse period diet. (Minnis 1985: 151)

Within southwestern New Mexico, survey may locate sites and districts which appear to offer relatively good opportunities to study this transition. The Cliff Valley has been identified as one such area, with extensive

Minnis then models a population-resource imbalance in the Classic Mimbres, which ended with the famous Mimbres "Collapse":

65

...during the population zenith of the Classic Mimbres period there was not enough floodplain land to support the population. Similarly during this period there was insufficient water to sustain the complete cultivation of the floodplain. Both these sets of calculations strongly suggest that the Classic Mimbres period sites had to become dependent upon fairly unreliable farming strategies. (Minnis 1985: 188) We should see more inclusive responses culminating during some part of the Classic Mimbres period or that a lack of hierarchical sequences should be correlated with system extinction or radical change. . . . The Classic Mimbrenos do not appear to have increased their economic network outside the study area. The Classic Mimbres period system did become extinct. (Minnis 1985: 189)

major Mimbres developments occurred along the Chaco-Casas Grandes trail, in the Mimbres Valley. More recent statements supplement this position in several ways. Although the Early Pit House period and Georgetown phases are still characterized as agricultural, population density is seen to be so low as to suggest that the Georgetown phase "valley population could almost have sustained itself on wild foods alone" (Anyon and LeBlanc 1984: 264; cf. Stuart and Gauthier 1981). By Three Circle phase, it is argued that irrigated farming would have been necessary (and sufficient) for subsistence (Anyon and LeBlanc 1984: 264); by Classic Mimbres times, irrigated farming would no longer be sufficient alone, and farmlands were developed in upland locales. Thus most of the subsistence elements of LeBlanc's (1983) model are maintained (the long-distance trade economic elements are not discussed). Indeed, the 1983 model is thought to be confirmed by more detailed analysis of survey data (Blake, LeBlanc, and Minnis 1986 440, 462-64).

In short, Minnis sees Mimbres population outstripping wild food and agricultural resources in the Mimbres Valley; since the Mimbres subsistence/economic scale was limited to that valley and the nearby Deming Plain, the theoretical options available to the Mimbres were to expand that scale to incorporate sufficient resources to support the high population levels or to become extinct. They became "extinct," as indicated by the famous Mimbres Collapse. Minnis' scale is bounded by the hydrographic unit of the Mimbres Valley itself, which opens into a desert plain where the Mimbres River disappears near Deming.

Anyon and LeBlanc (1984: 266-67) discuss the chronology of the shift from mobile hunting and gathering to subsistence farming, particularly in light of Rice's (1975) suggestion that this shift took place at the pit house-pueblo transition elsewhere in the Mogollon area. They reject this notion for the Mimbres area but concede the possibility that the shift came at the Georgetown to Three Circle transition (Anyon and LeBlanc 1984:267-68); they conclude that the question "must remain open for the present." What is an appropriate scale for looking at the Mimbres adaptation? In the discussion of possible mobility in the later stages of the Late Pit House period, Anyon and LeBlanc note a seasonally used site near Deming but reject a "seasonal-round adaptation" because "there do not seem to be adequate numbers of them [seasonally utilized sites], nor do they seem to have the amount of deposition to represent a major aspect of the activity pursuits on an annual cycle" (Anyon and LeBlanc 1984: 267).

LeBlanc and others Based on the extensive researches of the Mimbres Foundation, LeBlanc (1983) concludes that all phases from the Early Pithouse period on are primarily agricultural; that population rose steadily from Early Pit House through Classic Mimbres; that increased population required intensification of agriculture through the adoption of irrigation (probably during the Mimbres phase) and extensification through the development of marginally arable lands in uplands; that the Mimbres rise was the result of their being middlemen on the major trade route between Chaco Canyon and Mesoamerica and that the Mimbres fall was the result of both Chaco's collapse and Casas Grandes's rise (LeBlanc 1983: 158-9); and that the valley was depopulated following the Mimbres phase, with the Mimbres people being assimilated into the Casas Grandes core area in northern Chihuahua (LeBlanc 1983; 1986). (These conclusions are not supported by all Mimbres Foundation scholars.)

The appropriate scale, as indicated by LeBlanc (1983), Anyon and LeBlanc (1984), and Blake, LeBlanc, and Minnis (1986), is clearly the small hydrologic unit, in this case the Mimbres Valley, its adjacent uplands, and the immediate desert plain into which it empties. For LeBlanc's historical mode of explanation (e.g., LeBlanc 1983, 1986a), the economic scale expands enormously to include Chaco and Casas Grandes. There is no middle ground: subsistence is understandable from the local river valley but economy encompasses (very nearly) the world.

LeBlanc's scale for Mimbres subsistence is very much the "sedentary agricultural village" and at most extends to a series of such self-sufficient villages in a small river valley. His scale for the Mimbres economy, on the other hand, ranges as far as Chaco and Casas Grandes in his historical treatment of long-distance trade. The

Fitting Fitting (1972; Fitting, Hemphill, and Abbe 1982) does not offer extensive subsistence/economic reconstructions. However, it is clear that the scale Fitting

66

finds of interest is considerably larger than either the Upper Gila Valley or the Mimbres Valley by themselves. Fitting was perhaps the first to note and suggest demographic complimentary between the Upper Gila and the Mimbres (Fitting, Hemphill, and Abbe 1982: 79-80). Although explanation of this phenomenon is not offered, Fitting may have been correct in identifying it as a critical problem; importantly, it is a problem which would not be perceived on the single-drainage or single-site scales.

population replacement at a much lower level by a different Animas phase population.

Shafer Harry Shafer's NAN Ranch Project has intensively investigated the large NAN Ranch Ruin, and the scale of his major publications naturally is that of the single site (Shafer 1982a, Shafer and Taylor 1986). In a more synthetic paper, Shafer (1982) discusses research issues over a broader area. He sees the Early Pit House period as marking the first important use of domesticates:

Shafer's research is ongoing and of course has expanded considerably on his 1982 article. Recent developments primarily involve a reappraisal of Mimbres expansion and intensification of agriculture in secondary drainages, such as Gavilan Canyon (Shafer 1986, personal communication 1988, 1989; Creel and Adams 1986).

Shafer argues that the appropriate scale for Mimbres subsistence/economy is first the site and its immediate environs and then the Mimbres Valley. His model centers on an agricultural "rise and fall" within the valley, with the Mimbres phase as an "agricultural climax," and largely discounts external factors and the larger region outside the Mimbres Valley.

Herrington For practical as well as theoretical reasons, Herrington's (1979, 1982) estimate of the appropriate scale is the small drainage. Her reports of surveys of several secondary drainages between the Mimbres and the Upper Gila (Herrington 1979, 1982) focus on prehistoric water-control and irrigation features. The drainages escaped historic disturbance, and watercontrol features are thus unusually well preserved. Interest in these rarely preserved features leads quite understandably to the hydrologic unit as an appropriate scale. Herrington concludes that Classic Mimbres phase farmers first intensively utilized all arable/irrigable land in the floodplains of the larger drainages (such as the Mimbres and the Rio Arenas) and then expanded into the uplands and "marginal" areas:

The commitment to cultivating domestic plants triggered a combination of changes. . . . These changes included a gradual increase in population, qualitative changes in the technology, evolution of hybrids in the domesticates (especially corn) and a stronger emphasis on sedentation [sic]. . . . This commitment to agriculture also required the people to be "tethered to the fields." (Shafer 1982b: 7) Shafer sees the Classic Mimbres phase as a culmination of dependence on agriculture causally intertwined with a population peak in the Mimbres Valley sequence. The appropriate scale for the Classic Mimbres phase is the individual site: "a very inward, conservative, self-sustaining farming community, which shared resources among nearby contemporary communities but only occasionally engaged in interregional contact" (Shafer 1982b: 13). There was, however, an informal intercommunity network for the organization of labor required for irrigation.

It is concluded that marginal land was modified in an attempt to develop additional arable land when the floodplain land was no longer enough to provide sufficient flood for the population. . . . Movement to the upland appears to have been initiated well into the Classic phase . . . and to have been a short-lived venture in some parts of the region. (Herrington 1982:88)

Classic Mimbres population outstripped available farm lands, and settlement was extended to less secure agricultural lands away from the main valley. . . . the failure of the Classic Mimbres adaptation was largely internal, brought about by the unavailability of arable lands, which prevented further development beyond a weak pueblo structure. Possible abuse of these lands, either through overuse . . . poor maintenance, or successive years of low productivity, may have proved fatal to the Classic Mimbres. (Shafer 1982b: 15)

The appropriate scale is thus a small hydrographic unit: the creek or small river. Herrington suggests an in situ development with steady population growth from the Pit House period through the Classic Mimbres phase in the minor drainages, paralleling an identical development in the Mimbres Valley. She emphatically rejects "overemphasis on trade as a major subsistence measure" (Herrington 1982: 89), dismissing altogether large-scale movement of people, foodstuffs, and pochtecas.

The Classic Mimbres "failure" was followed by the traditionally accepted abandonment and then by

67

regimes (Stuart and Gauthier 1981: 185, 198ff). They would characterize the Mimbres as "classic" only in the Mimbres Valley; following LeBlanc and Whalen's 1980 synthesis, they see Mimbres sites in other areas of southwestern New Mexico as smaller--"the average size of recorded sites diminishes by a factor of 3 and sites of the largest scale are not found at all" (Stuart and Gauthier 1981: 204). This misconception limits their scale primarily to the Mimbres Valley, with the remainder of southwestern New Mexico simply reflecting developments there. Only in the Animas phase is their scale significantly enlarged, but here again they follow LeBlanc: "we think the idea that remnant [post-Classic Mimbres] populations were encroached upon both demographically and economically makes some sense" (Stuart and Gauthier 1981: 207).

Stuart and Gauthier One of the most provocative views of Mimbres subsistence/economics appears in a research design for Historic Preservation surveys in New Mexico (Stuart and Gauthier 1982). Stuart and Gauthier strive for the broad view and the big picture. The basic data for their analyses are a series of federally funded Class I overviews, including the Mimbres Foundation's contribution (LeBlanc and Whalen 1980); however, Stuart and Gauthier's interpretations are occasionally at odds with those of the Mimbres Foundation staff who prepared that overview (R. Anyon, personal communication 1984; P. Gilman, personal communication 1984). Following "most sources," though with serious reservations due to lack of data, Stuart and Gauthier (1981:84) suggest that the Early Pit House period is characterized by "a substantial reliance on hunting and gathering, coupled with maize agriculture." They question, however, whether sedentism is a reasonable assumption, given very low population densities for the Early Pit House period (as indicated by Mimbres Valley survey data). This caution is also extended to the early Late Pit House period; the lack of "Georgetown phase" sites suggests a population decline from Early Pit House levels and even less reason to assume sedentism. However, in the following San Francisco and Three Circle phases, increasing numbers of sites and in situ site growth suggest to Stuart and Gauthier both sedentism and greater reliance on cultigens. (Recall the discussion in Section 4.A of the difficulties inherent in using the phases of the Late Pit House period in regional studies.)

Stuart and Gauthier's interpretations follow directly from Stuart's theoretical application of the concepts of power and efficiency. In this view, human populations are thought to be capable of very rapid adjustment to environmental shifts, such as shifts from winter-dominant to summer-dominant rainfall. These adjustments occur in both size and its population dispersal over the landscape. Thus Stuart's view is one of a complex, up-and- down population history and repeated cycles of dispersion and aggregation, with outside input from Chaco and Casas Grandes as explanations of the Mimbres collapse and the Animas phase, respectively. DiPeso In an unpublished paper written prior to the excavation of the Wind Mountain site on Mangas Creek near Cliff, DiPeso (n.d.) outlines a complex economic development for the Mimbres area. His sequence is roughly equivalent to that proposed by LeBlanc (above), with the introduction of agriculture by A.D. 1. In DiPeso's terms, "stabilized soil parasites" (i.e., subsistence farmers) continued in an essentially steady state until the rise of a major trading center at Casas Grandes (about A.D. 1060 by DiPeso's dating) resulted in the reorganization of Mimbres settlement to support large-scale mining of turquoise at the White Signal Mining District. This reorganization included an overhaul of the "stabilized soil parasite" horticulture-specifically the introduction of a "semi-complex hydraulic system" (i.e., ditch irrigation). DiPeso sees this reorganized socioeconomic system as the archaeological Classic Mimbres phase. Due to lack of data, the following Animas/Salado period is not characterized in this paper.

Up to this point, Stuart and Gauthier are in general agreement with the Mimbres Foundation view (LeBlanc and Whalen 1980); however, beginning with the end of the Late Pit House period, they part company with the foundation. They argue that the chronological gap between the Three Circle phase and the Classic Mimbres phase suggests an intermediate dispersed, small-site adaptation: "This line of thinking again points towards the Mangas phase" (Stuart and Gauthier 1981: 198). We could revise this [Mimbres Foundation] scheme to suggest two such episodes of dispersal and relative decline in occupation at larger sites, followed by subsequent collapse inward to aggregated conditions, one at A.D. 950-1050 and again from A.D. 1125-1175 (the final aggregation being Animas in character). (Stuart and Gauthier 1981: 198)

DiPeso's scale, as always, is enormously larger than that of most other researchers; he sees the inception of the Classic Mimbres phase as explicable only in terms of developments at Casas Grandes. In scale and in historicism, DiPeso's views parallel the economic scenarios of LeBlanc discussed above.

As in the earlier Pit House periods, Stuart and Gauthier identify a roller-coaster population history in the Pueblo period paralleled by settlement dispersal and aggregation, both of which are related to shifts between winter-dominant and summer-dominant rainfall

68

1959), and almost every Apache group in southern New Mexico and southeastern Arizona moved hundreds of miles, up to five degrees latitude north-to-south. The horse was not significant in this movement; warriors had horses but the vast majority of the population (elders, women, children) walked.

Lekson In Section 4.C, and elsewhere, I have offered a radically different view of Mimbres subsistence, based largely on historically documented hunting-and-gathering and subsistence agricultural societies in the Mimbres area, and have expressed dissatisfaction with the archaeological basis of the Mimbres "collapse" (Lekson 1978a, 1982, 1984, 1987, 1989). In summary, I argue that the Early and Late Pit House periods represent primarily hunting-gathering societies and that the Mangas and early Mimbres phases mark the transition, over a relatively short period (150 to 200 years), from hunting and gathering to reliance on irrigation agriculture. The rapid and relatively late shift from mobile hunter-gatherer strategies to sedentary agricultural settlement explains the disparity in numbers, noted throughout the Mimbres area, between the many Mimbres phase sites and the fewer post-Mimbres sites. Thus, there is no Mimbres "collapse" but, rather, a reorganization of subsistence that is directly and very dramatically reflected in the archaeological record (Lekson 1989b).

Apache movement was seasonal. Their mountain "homelands" -- the Sacramentos, the Black Range, and the Mogollons -- evidently lacked reliable, storable floral resources in sufficient quantities to carry even the small Apache populations (2,000 to 3,000) over the winter. So every winter, the Apaches moved south, to trans-Pecos Texas or northern Mexico, and ate agaves and acorns (Lekson and Wilson 1985). In a fascinating observation about the Apache of the Mimbres area, one Spanish official noted that "this group maintains a sort of capital in [the] Los Mimbres mountains where their chief . . . stays with many families as long as the season allows" (Lafora, about 1767; in Kinnard 1958: 79). The distribution of both architectural and open sites with Mimbres pottery is almost identical to the historically identified Warm Spring Apache range. Conversely, there is a very close correlation between the total number of Mimbres phase rooms and the area of irrigable land in the streams of southwestern New Mexico (Lekson 1986b). These two patterns suggest either of two very different reconstructions. First, as I have argued, the Mangas and Mimbres phases may record a transition between hunting and gathering and agriculture; the large ceramic distribution reflects the earlier part of this transition, and the correlation of Mimbres rooms and irrigable land reflects the completed transition. Second, the extensive distribution of Mimbres sites may represent the hunting-andgathering component of Mimbres agrarian subsistence; as noted above, we know that historic Pueblos, such as Zuni, hunted and gathered resources over large area. We may be able to distinguish between these two strategies by the chronology of the sites (if the extensive distribution of Mimbres sites is limited to the Mangas phase, then the first scenario would be supported); by the types of sites (residential sites vs. logistical camps); and by combinations of these two dimensions.

This reconstruction questions both the traditional population reconstructions and the evidence for heavy reliance on agriculture in the Mimbres Valley and elsewhere in southwestern New Mexico. In brief, Mimbres Valley population estimates are based on the numbers and areas of architectural sites; both these measures must overrepresent prehistoric population unless corrected for (1) contemporaneity and (2) mobility. The thin chronological basis for the Mimbres sequence has been discussed in Section 4.A; site contemporaneity is effectively unknowable, but it is simply assumed in Mimbres Foundation population estimates (e.g., Blake, LeBlanc, and Minnis 1986). Mobility late in the prehistory of the Southwest is a concept familiar to students of the western (Arizona) Mogollon (Rice 1975; Pool 1985; Lightfoot 1984), Anasazi (Powell 1983); and Hohokam (Haury 1950; Teague 1984), but it is foreign to the intellectual traditions of Mimbres archaeology. If most or all of the Mimbres sequence reflects hunting-gathering strategies, what is the appropriate scale for hunter-gatherer subsistence in the Mimbres area? Recent reconstructions of hunter-gatherer subsistence for southern New Mexico have been framed in rather small scales: from a mountain range 20 or 30 miles to an adjacent playa (Whalen 1981; Hard 1986) or from an upland valley 20 or 30 miles to a desert plain (Minnis 1985). Those are not large distances; in fact, 20 miles is only a long day's walk. These distances and areas are unrealistically small.

These odd ideas have not met with a warm reception among Mimbres area archaeologists, and they probably will not appear on most lists of hot topics in the prehistory of southwestern New Mexico. Post-Mimbres Research Issues The Black Mountain/El Paso phase has been seen as representing a replacement population, connected with Casas Grandes, which repopulated the abandoned Mimbres Valley (LeBlanc 1980b), a view only grudgingly modified in Nelson and LeBlanc (1986). I have argued that the Mimbres and Black Mountain/El

The most useful frame of reference is not theoretical, but historical. We can look to the ethnographic record for an appropriate scale. What did hunter-gatherers actually do on this landscape? The resident hunter-gatherers were Apaches (Opler 1941; Basehart

69

Paso populations were precisely the same people--they changed only their clothes (Lekson 1989b).

Nelson and LeBlanc (1986) have presented an interesting view of Salado subsistence in southwestern New Mexico, which they label "short term sedentism" and which leads directly to Nelson's (1988) larger geographic treatment, discussed above. They argue that the Cliff phase sites in the Mimbres Valley were occupied for only a short time, and perhaps sequentially, by a small, agricultural population; they imply that this may have been the case for the Cliff Valley Salado sites as well (Nelson and LeBlanc 1986). The evidently low Cliff phase population levels present a quandary. Nelson and LeBlanc suggest that this relatively small population could have supported itself easily by hunting and gathering. Why didn't this occur? They argue, in effect, that in-place water-control systems, left over from the Mimbres phase, made farming too easy and too profitable for the hunting-andgathering alternative to be considered (Nelson and LeBlanc 1986: 249-50).

The post-Mimbres era was characterized by confusing cultural dynamics. The outlines of culture history are complex, and much of southwestern New Mexico appears to be at the edge of pottery distributions centered outside the region. Laumbach and Kirkpatrick (1985) present the complex cultural-historical relationships of the east part of the area. A major research issue for this period is simply mapping the distributions of pottery types, architectural forms, and archaeological cultures. Perhaps the most interesting new development in postMimbres research is Ben Nelson's concept of short-term sedentism and regional mobility (Nelson 1988). For the period from 1150 to 1400, Nelson (1988: 14) suggests that "a small population, probably a few hundred people, [moved] periodically, perhaps every 10-20 years, to keep itself situated in an essentially pristine resource area"; so there was movement from valley to playa to valley over much of southwestern New Mexico. In this view, the appropriate scale for post-Mimbres archaeology is the entirety of southwestern New Mexico, and Nelson suggests that even this very large area may be too small.

The appropriate scale for Salado subsistence appears to be the local valley, with the adaptation centering on irrigation agriculture. But the appropriate scale for Salado, taken broadly, must be much larger, incorporating both southern Arizona and northern Mexico. Whatever "Salado" is, it operated on a much larger regional scale than any other Ceramic period in southwestern New Mexico.

Salado The literature on Salado subsistence/economics is very much smaller than that on the Mimbres. This reflects the general perception that the Salado is an Arizona problem, while the Mimbres Mogollon and their subsistence systems are uniquely New Mexican. The well-known (if underdocumented) Salado sites in the Cliff area prompted the participants of the 1967 Salado Redware Conference to designate the Cliff area of the Upper Gila as a "possible region of [Salado] colonization" (Lindsay and Jennings 1968: 4). This view was later supported by LeBlanc, who suspected "that the entire Cliff phase phenomenon represents a case of migration from the middle Gila area" (LeBlanc and Nelson 1976: 76), and who later added that

Casas Grandes plays a critical, if largely unspecified, role in LeBlanc's view of the Salado (Nelson and LeBlanc 1986; LeBlanc 1980b, 1986a). LeBlanc suggests that the Cliff (Salado) phase may reflect the rise and fall of Casas Grandes. "Both the temporal rhythm and the stylistic content of these changes point to Casas Grandes, and not to the Salado phenomenon as traditionally conceived" (Nelson and LeBlanc 1986:247). The Saladoan sites of southwestern New Mexico do not exhibit a completely new or radically altered pottery assemblage (Lekson and Klinger 1973b; Nelson and LeBlanc 1986); the appearance of the Salado polychromes is the most conspicuous change. The Salado of southwestern New Mexico probably had a distinctive local history, reflecting the development of new regional integrative mechanisms on a pre-existing regional system. The major research issue of the Salado period is defining the nature of that regional system, calling for a research scale far larger than southwestern New Mexico.

the population in this [Cliff] area represents an expansion of the Salado population in southeastern Arizona. It may be that as the Salado population along the Gila River near Safford and nearby tributaries such as the San Simon grew, there was movement upstream resulting in a large population in the Cliff area. (LeBlanc 1980b: 313)

5.B. Historic Contexts "Salado" subsistence, as known from the Classic period of the Hohokam, obviously includes canal irrigation on a scale unknown in southwestern New Mexico. LeBlanc assumes extensive irrigation for the Salado phase in the Mimbres Valley (LeBlanc 1980b: 310), and there seems to be general agreement that the Salado period was one of big-time agriculture.

This section identifies and summarizes cultural themes that are exemplified by the cultural history of southwestern New Mexico and develops those themes for historical contexts relevant to survey. This report cannot embrace all possible historic contexts for southwestern New Mexico, but attempts to provide a

70

wide range of contexts for structuring National Register nominations from HPD-sponsored survey. Presumably, historic contexts developed on the state level will eventually supercede regionally based first approximations.

These broad themes potentially incorporate most culture history research issues. But southwestern New Mexico also is a source of themes with more specific research implications. Southwestern New Mexico exemplifies a number of cultural processes relevant to the prehistory of the American Southwest and of interest to general anthropology. In some cases, the archaeology of the area seems well suited to address general questions; in others, the particular nature of southwestern New Mexico data suggests processes that may not be so readily investigated in other areas.

The historic context format is relatively new and is untried in southwestern New Mexico. A reasonable concern is that historic contexts might become some sort of rigid "cook book," fixing the range of sponsored research and the kinds of properties sought for the National Register. It is hoped that whatever the ultimate role of historic contexts, they will be open-ended, flexible, and subject to revision and change. To ensure that the historic contexts presented here include a suitable range of potential sites and research topics, I have included a series of deliberately broad contexts -- catchall historic contexts -- as well as more specific concerns.

11. The Transition from Hunting and Gathering to Agriculture in Southwestern New Mexico, 2000 B.C. to 1500 A.D. The transition from hunting and gathering to agriculture is a central issue both in southwestern New Mexico and in general anthropology. Southwestern New Mexico is appropriate for studies of the adoption, not the origins, of agriculture. Agriculture did not originate in the Mimbres area, but in Mexico. The prehistoric peoples of southwestern New Mexico undoubtedly knew about cultivated plants for a considerable length of time before they began to rely on those plants for subsistence. Measuring reliance on, rather than the simple presence of, agriculture is a major methodological question in southwestern New Mexico archaeology. How can we tell, from archaeological remains, whether corn was simply present or important? Southern New Mexico has already contributed to methodological development in this area (Hard 1986; Mauldin 1988) and will continue to do so. Beyond methodology, southwestern New Mexico should prove to be an excellent case study in the adoption of agriculture, in part because current arguments over the prehistory of the area hinge precisely on this point.

A historic context is a body of information about historic properties organized by theme, place, and time, according to the National Park Service. An example of an archaeological historic context is The Hopewell Complex of the Southern Ohio Watershed, ca. 200 B.C. to A.D. 600. Fully developed historic contexts contain thematic and chronological information, geographical limits, known and expected resources, distribution of those resources, and evaluation criteria (keyed to the National Register). In this section, themes, places, and times are developed. The distribution of known and expected resources is, in every case, southwestern New Mexico. The evaluation criterion is criterion D of the National Register: properties "that have yielded or may be likely to yield, information important in prehistory." On the broadest level, the basic culture history of southwestern New Mexico can be described by a number of very broad historic contexts (note that the dates are deliberately broad and inclusive): 1. Paleo-Indian Occupation and Use of Southwestern New Mexico, 20,000 B.C to 5000 B.C. 2. Archaic Occupation and Use of Southwestern New Mexico, 9000 B.C. to A.D. 400 3. The Early Mogollon Culture of Southwestern New Mexico, A.D. 100 to A.D. 1000 4. The Mimbres Mogollon Culture of Southwestern New Mexico, A.D. 950 to A.D. 1200 5. The Black Mountain-El Paso Culture of Southwestern New Mexico, A.D. 1150 to A.D. 1350 6. The Salado Culture of Southwestern New Mexico, A.D. 1250 to A.D. 1500 7. The San Luis Culture of Southwestern New Mexico, A.D. 150 to 1100 A.D. 8. The Animas Culture of Southwestern New Mexico, A.D. 1000 to A.D. 1500 9. Apache Occupation and Use of Southwestern New Mexico, A.D. 1500 to A.D. 1900 10. The Mogollon Culture of Southwestern New Mexico, A.D. 100 to A.D. 1500

12. Aggregation and Dispersion in the Mimbres Culture, Southwestern New Mexico, A.D. 300 to A.D. 1200. Aggregation is a matter of major theoretical interest in the Southwest and elsewhere. Why do people gather into towns? What are the cultural prerequisites and effects of aggregation? We have considerable data on aggregation in later time periods, and the received view of Southwestern prehistory has aggregation being a gradual process, culminating in these later sites. But the Mimbres phase is a very early case of significant aggregation in the Southwest. Outside of Chaco Canyon, the big Mimbres sites are the largest (i.e., most aggregated) villages of their time period, or any earlier period, in the Southwest. The Mimbres sites are thus seminal to studies of Southwestern aggregation. That they failed adds interest to the case; we have a compressed sequence of aggregation and dispersion that will make an excellent comparative case for the

71

later Southwestern examples and for larger studies of world samples.

as a reflection of sedentism and agricultural dependence (Gilman 1987a) is a key point in Mimbres prehistory (Lekson 1988, 1989c) and in much broader studies of architecture. 17. Socio political Integration in the Mimbres, Black Mountain/El Paso, and Salado Cultures, Southwestern New Mexico, A.D. 100 to A.D. 1500

13. Population Grown and Decline in Southwestern New Mexico, A.D. 100 to A.D. 1500. Demographic processes may underlie both the transition to agriculture and aggregation. Because of the importance of burials in Mimbres archaeology (recall that Mimbres pots are usually found with burials), much skeletal data exist. Anyon and LeBlanc (1984), Blake, LeBlanc, and Minnis (1986), Shafer (1988), and Stuart and Gauthier (1981) have all shown a keen interest in the demographic processes of southwestern New Mexico and have suggested how important these processes are to the area's prehistory. Refinement of regional chronology and use of the extensive survey data available will allow continued development of research into demographic processes in southwestern New Mexico.

Processes of sociopolitical integration have claimed the attention of many Mimbres scholars. While the general view is that the Mimbres and earlier phase societies were egalitarian, LeBlanc (1983) has suggested at least the beginnings of social differentiation during the Mimbres phase. Southwestern societies appear to have reached the brink of sociopolitical complexity on several occasions; whether they ever crossed that threshold is a subject of major archaeological debate. Perhaps the most likely case of sociopolitical complexity is Casas Grandes (Minnis 1988). Given southwestern New Mexico's probably close connection to the evolution of Casas Grandes, the study of sociopolitical integration in this area is of extra interest.

14. Development of Irrigation and Agricultural Technology in the Mimbres Mogollon area, A.D. 100 to A.D. 1500.

18. Trade and Exchange in the Mimbres, Black Mountain/El Paso, and Salado Cultures, Southwestern New Mexico, A.D. 100 to 1500

Study of the development of irrigation and agricultural technology is a widespread anthropological interest, in part because of the possible sociopolitical implications of this technology. Like agriculture, irrigation technology may be a secondary phenomenon in southwestern New Mexico--that is, the principles and perhaps the technology of irrigation may have been acquired from contact with long-established Hohokam systems. It may be possible to frame a comparative study contrasting Hohokam low-desert, medium-sized stream systems to Mimbres montane, small-stream systems. An integral component of such investigations should be ethno-archaeological studies of modern, simple irrigation systems in Sonora and Chihuahua (William Doolittle, personal communication 1988) and historic, nonpump systems in the American Southwest.

Processes of trade and exchange played an important role in shaping the archaeology of southwestern New Mexico. Our impression of the Mimbres phase is one of a relatively self- contained people, with ocean shell constituting the major exotic import item. To our knowledge, materials produced in the Mimbres area did not travel far; certainly, Mimbres Black-on-white did not get very far outside the Mimbres region. However, the Mimbres region was the source of several gem minerals and ores that did travel, at least in later times. Specifically, copper minerals and especially turquoise were mined prehistorically and presumably were traded out of the area. Despite a great deal of interest, our understanding of mineral trade in the prehistoric Southwest is in its infancy. Since these types of artifacts are retained in museum and private collections, we can expect important developments in the study of trade and exchange of minerals without significant additional fieldwork.

15. Social Adaptation to Food Stress, Southwestern New Mexico, A.D. 100 to A.D. 1500 Allied to both demography and irrigation agriculture is the broader issue of social adaptation to food stress, the subject of an important monograph by Minnis (1985). In addition to the substantive advances Minnis brings to this problem, his work also demonstrates the suitability of southwestern New Mexico as a case study for cultural processes of very broad interest.

The post-Mimbres periods are marked by an enormous increase in trade and exchange, particularly of ceramics. At least that is what we believe, based on studies of ceramic styles and types. This interpretation may not be correct. Gila Polychrome is the marker type for the Salado or Cliff phase, and it has long been considered a traded type; but recent studies suggest that Gila Polychrome may have been made locally over most of the Mimbres area (Crown and Bishop 1987). This conclusion has incisive implications for the study of trade and exchange. How accurate are our determinations of local and traded pottery? And what are the implications of local production of "foreign"

16. Architectural Change in the Mimbres, Black Mountain/El Paso, and Salado Cultures, Southwestern New Mexico, A.D. 100 to A.D. 1500 Architectural change is a process that combines specific culture history questions with much broader issues. In particular, the shift from pit house to pueblo,

72

pottery types? We are only recently coming to grips with these problems, and they promise to greatly change our conceptions of trade and exchange in the Mimbres region.

22. Regional Integration in the Mimbres, Black Mountain/El Paso, and Salado Cultures, Southwestern New Mexico, A.D. 100 to A.D. 1500 On a different scale, there has been little analysis of regional integration within southwestern New Mexico. Gilman (1980), Shafer (1982), and others suggest that Mimbres phase towns were largely independent entities, self-sufficient agrarian villages. Given the relatively high population densities, the relatively high degree of aggregation suggested for the Mimbres area (compared to contemporary Southwestern groups), and the presence of irrigation systems that probably involved intervillage coordination, some form of regional integration seems likely. If not a hierarchy of settlement and its attendant sociopolitical apparatus, perhaps a nonhierarchical integrating device, similar to the Hohokam ball court regional system, may have been present. Processes of regional integration are of interest in the Mimbres case, even if they are absent. Indeed, if regional integration is truly absent, this somewhat surprising lack would be of major theoretical interest.

19. Prehistoric Abandonments in Southwestern New Mexico, ca. A.D. 1150. 20. Prehistoric Abandonments in Southwestern New Mexico, ca. A.D. 1400-1500 According to the guide book, the Mimbres area was wholly or partially abandoned up to three times: after the Mimbres phase, after the Black Mountain phase, and after the Cliff phase. As discussed in Section 4, this view of prehistory is currently being revised, but the process of abandonment remains a major research issue in southwestern New Mexico. Certainly, the archaeological remains suggest a major abandonment following the Mimbres phase. Large sites and large areas of the Mimbres region appear to have been depopulated. Why? We have various scenarios, but we need both (1) a better empirical handle on what really happened in Mimbres prehistory and (2) studies formulating a general theory of abandonment for aridland agriculturalists. Nelson (1988) and I (Lekson n.d.) suggest that the processes of abandonment work on a series of different scales: a site may be abandoned, but that may not signal the abandonment of the entire valley; a valley may be abandoned, but not the entire region. Mimbres archaeology seems poised for major advances in our thinking on the processes of abandonment.

23. Frontiers and Boundaries in the Tularosa, Black Mountain/El Paso, Animas, and Salado Cultures, Southwestern New Mexico, A.D. 1000 to A.D. 1500 Finally, southwestern New Mexico in the post-Mimbres periods became an area of frontiers and boundaries. From being the center of a major Southwestern cultural development, this area changed to a land on the peripheries and edges of cultural developments apparently centered (or at least better defined) in other regions. Anthropological interest in frontiers is matched by the unique archaeological possibilities of a frontier area.

21. Cultural Adaptations to the Mogollon Uplands and Chihuahuan Desert by the Mimbres, Black Mountain/El Paso, and Salado Cultures, Southwestern New Mexico, A.D. 100 to A.D. 1500

5.C. Alternate Archaeological Strategies The use of larger scales suggests an interesting intersection of ecology and culture history: the process of differing cultural adaptations to the same environment. The southwestern New Mexico sequence is one of changing uses of the landscape: hunter-gatherers to apparently self-contained subsistence agriculturalists to agricultural settlements incorporated into much larger pan-regional systems. Minnis (1981, 1985) has developed the important concept of human modification of the Mimbres landscape. We are well aware of modern impacts on the landscape, but human degradation of the environment may have also had an important impact on prehistoric groups and on sequent reoccupations of the same landscape. The study of this process is only beginning in other areas of the Southwest, and the Mimbres region is well suited to lead in its development.

In the process of interviewing archaeologists with research interests in southwestern New Mexico, I posed the question, "What low-cost projects, other than traditional survey, would aid in the identification and evaluation of National Register quality sites, assist in historic preservation, and at the same time address significant anthropological research issues?" This question elicited a variety of responses, but there was general consensus that the suggested projects were all worthwhile -- that is, each archaeologist had a pet project, but all archaeologists recognized the worth of others' ideas. Given the very disparate nature of research in southwestern New Mexico (see Section 3.A), this was a very heartening response. We seem to agree on our many areas of archaeological weakness. The suggestions I received ranged from strictly archaeological projects to interdisciplinary studies, small meetings, media efforts, and other proposals even more remote from traditional surveys. The proposals

73

find a common theme in preservation of the resources, and many have direct implications for National Register concerns. They can be grouped in several categories: National Register, Public Relations, Cultural Resource Management, and Facilitating Research.

potential sites ("para-sites"?) should be maintained, probably as part of the LA files but perhaps as an ancillary part of the state register listings. 5. A number of old excavated, but unreported (or underreported) sites are likely candidates for the National Register, and the nomination process could be used as a structure to bring the data from the sites to the profession. Examples include the Three Circle and Cameron Creek sites and sites excavated by the School of American Research in Hidalgo County. Minimally, an inventory of the collections and records could be assembled for the nomination, as a preliminary to further work funded from other sources. A similar situation exists with a number of highway salvage projects (such as the very important Cliff Highway Salvage Project), which would produce nominations for the excavated sites, but which could also be used to provide contexts for evaluation of related, unexcavated sites. For example, the very important Ormand site, excavated during the Cliff Valley Highway Salvage Project, could provide excellent context for evaluation of a thematic Cliff Valley Salado nomination. Small grants from the HPD could support initial inventories and sample analyses, preparatory to further work funded by other sources.

National Register 1. Interview senior avocational archaeologists. Many residents of southwestern New Mexico have years of experience with local archaeology. Individuals such as Richard Ellison and Mary Alice and John King could provide more locations of more National Register quality sites in five minutes than most archaeologists could discover in five weeks. These individuals are a major archaeological resource, and it is imperative that the extensive knowledge they have acquired thorough years of fieldwork be preserved for future archaeology. A small HPD grant could support interviews and provide a reasonable consultation fee for the avocational archaeologists. Unfortunately, many of these individuals are currently reluctant to talk to archaeologists. See suggestions for Public Relations, below. This project could be combined with item 24, below. 2. Interview (survey) ranchers. Ranchers know their land, and interested ranchers know where both large and small sites are located on their properties. These individuals could be interviewed; but it will be difficult to make such a program productive in the current climate of distrust and misinformation. The right person or persons are critical for the success of this project; probably, a local person with strong community ties would have more success than an "outsider." The HPD could support the survey and its analysis. Recording of these sites might be structured as a separate project, but access to the sites might be easier at the time of the survey than in a subsequent revisit.

6. Analysis of materials from older surveys, such as Jelinek's Mimbres Area survey, Fitting's Cliff Valley survey, Gila Pueblo surveys, Martin and Rinaldo's surveys in the San Francisco River area, and Graybill's Upper Mimbres survey. These surveys will identify potential National Register sites that may then be found again, evaluated, and recorded. Small grants could support evaluation of these materials (pending permission and cooperation of the principal investigators). 7. Small grants for periodic inspection of National Register sites and sites identified as eligible for the Register. Similar programs exist in Arizona.

3. Use of field schools for testing potential National Register sites. HPD funding for preparing National Register forms on identified properties could be used as "seed money" for field schools.

Public Relations Public relations/education concerns are justified in a State Plan for southwestern New Mexico as a critical aspect of preservation.

4. A National Register "hot line." In the course of various projects, Federal (and non-Federal) archaeologists may discover or be shown sites with National Register potential but cannot record these sites as part of their projects. There is currently no central clearing house for sites which have poor descriptions but high potential. The LA file properly frowns on the kinds of incomplete descriptions referred to here, and archaeologists are properly hesitant to submit these kinds of data to a high-quality data base. Sometimes archaeologists can revisit and record these sites, but more often they cannot. As a result, these sites are relegated to the personal knowledge of the individual and enter the larger archaeological network, if at all, as rumors. A central listing of poorly recorded, but high-

8. Establishment of a resident archaeologist. Compared to many areas in New Mexico, southwestern New Mexico lacks a professional archaeological presence. Many of the problems currently undermining preservation efforts stem from a long history of archaeological neglect of both the region and its people. The archaeologists of the Gila National Forest are highly visible and interact with the community in many positive ways, but their professional commitment is to the Forest. Other Federal and CRM archaeologists are based in Las Cruces and places even more distant. A resident archaeologist, preferably at Western New Mexico University in Silver City, could more easily

74

deal with public education and sites on private lands. The HPD could provide funding for grant preparation to support such a position and lobby the university to aid in its establishment.

problem; errors, uncontrolled overlap, and unrecognized redundancy will be present, and we need to develop strategies for systematic estimation of the degree of error and possible tactics for correction. Again, a small conference organized by the HPD, should address this problem. At the conference, a consulting statistician with expertise in sampling and quality control would be an excellent addition to the data base managers and representative users of the data bases.

9. Public meetings, outreach, publicity. Meetings and other methods of communication could dispel current misconceptions about preservation efforts in southwestern New Mexico. One promising way to approach the community would be through a series of newspaper articles, explaining laws and their intentions, archaeological qualifications, and the history and economics of pothunting; a small grant could support production of these articles. The HPD might coordinate with the Humanities Council to support these activities, but the administration of them should be controlled by the HPD.

Facilitating Research There are plenty of sites to nominate to the National Register. We could nominate these sites from now until doomsday and not learn a thing -- and wind up protecting many of the wrong sites while important sites go unrecognized. The potential for learning and anthropological gain from the National Register process comes from developing contexts for evaluation of significance. Intelligent contexts require critical thinking and growth of knowledge. The HPD can encourage and support a number of nonsurvey projects that would contribute tremendously to our ability to provide intelligent contexts for evaluation. Some of these projects are listed below.

10. Closer coordination with the Grant County Archaeological Society. The Grant County Society is the obvious local organization that should be concerned with archaeological preservation. While the HPD has no control over the Archaeological Society, the society should be encouraged to adopt a preservation ethic by participation in the National Register nomination process. The society's members know a great deal about sites and collections. This fund of knowledge and energy should be incorporated into the State Plan as much as possible, to the extent that the society's goals and actions are consistent with the HPD's mission. A trial project, such as specifically including the society in the preparation of a nomination of a well-known site (e.g., Cameron Creek), might establish the value to the HPD of such an alliance.

As noted in Section 3.A, the archaeology of southwestern New Mexico has been hampered by lack of coordination. The cumulative effect of many financially restricted research efforts has been less than the sum of their parts. The HPD can help maximize our research efforts and our ability to evaluate potential National Register sites by encouraging and helping to sponsor small meetings and seminars to coordinate research efforts that overarch individual projects. The archaeologists consulted were nearly unanimous in their belief that projects and conferences like those listed here would do more for meaningful preservation than comparable investments in sample surveys of State Lands.

Cultural Resource Management The State Plan must interface with CRM concerns, and some specific concerns have been identified for southwestern New Mexico. 11. Management and research potential of fire-cracked rock features and sites with extensive fire-cracked rock. The HPD could support a small conference on the topic, bringing together land-managing agencies, State Preservation staff, and archaeologists.

14. Ceramic typology conference. Although a great deal has been written about Mimbres ceramic art, surprisingly little has been written about Mimbres ceramic typology. Typology has been communicated largely by illustration, example, and word-of-mouth; without published, systematic descriptions, typology varies even within the small network of Mimbres ceramicists. Ceramic analysis has concentrated on the Mimbres black-on- white types, to the virtual exclusion of earlier decorated types, redwares, textured utility types, and the ubiquitous "Alma Plain." Analyses of these types should also be coordinated. A small conference bringing together the handful of people who deal with Mimbres ceramics would ensure that everyone knows what everyone else is talking about and might lead to publication of more complete type descriptions and coordinated studies of non-whitewares.

12. Nonsite archaeology, isolated occurrences, and the National Register. Resolution of management conflicts and ambiguities concerning nonsite approaches, isolated occurrences, and National Register concerns should be the subject of a small working conference, planned and supported by the HPD. 13. Coordination of survey records between Bureau of Land Management, Forest Service, and ARMS data bases. Efforts are currently ongoing between ARMS and Federal agencies to transfer records from the latter to the former. Unresolved, at this time, is a policy for dealing with ambiguities and uncertain site records (see Section 3.B). This is essentially a quality control

75

15. Ceramic sourcing conference. Chemical and petrographic sourcing of ceramics is rapidly overtaking traditional typology as the principal tool in ceramic analysis. In southwestern New Mexico, these studies are just beginning. A conference to pool information, techniques, and map out a general strategy for pursuing these studies would ensure that funds and energies are efficiently used. A small conference, including Ron Bishop of the Smithsonian Institution, one or more petrographic specialists, one or more ceramic technologists, and archaeologists could coordinate these efforts at this early stage. Currently, typological description fulfills the standards for archaeological reporting for compliance, etc.; this conference should also discuss, with the HPD, the increasing importance of sourcing studies, possible requirements and standards for ceramic sourcing in the compliance process, and the evaluation of archaeological reports for compliance.

materials should be inventoried, critical datable specimens identified, and these specimens dated. The HPD could support an inventory and identification program, preparatory to actual dating funded from other sources. In effect, the HPD would support the preparation of a well-structured proposal for a grant to date carefully selected materials from southwestern New Mexico. 20. Geomorphology. Site visibility and site preservation are major issues in the basin-and-range Desert Zone and along very active floodplains, such as that of the Rio Grande. What areas might contain buried sites? What areas lack surfaces of sufficient age for Paleo-Indian and Archaic sites? What areas would be most likely to have sites of these early periods (e.g., playa beach levels)? In addition to issues of site preservation and visibility, the geomorphology of Transitional Zone drainages has implications for later, ceramic-era agriculture. Geoarchaeological studies of cutting and filling can be outlined and coordinated. A small conference, with support for one or more consulting geoarchaeologists, could outline archaeological concerns and coordinate future geomorphological work.

16. Lithics. Material types and formal typology vary from area to area and (more importantly) project to project. A small conference to pool knowledge on point-specific resources, quarries, formal typology, and analytical approaches would coordinate our efforts. A small meeting, with possible support for one or more geologists, would be very useful.

21. Rock art. The rock art of southwestern New Mexico is understudied. The content and style of rock art may give us information on cultural boundaries, an important issue in southwestern New Mexico. A small rock-art conference could pool information and outline future studies.

17. Obsidian. Obsidian offers a cheap, ubiquitous, datable material for survey and excavation. Background research to fully describe local sources (Gwinn Canyon, Mule Creek, Antelope Wells), calibrate hydration rates (both experimentally and by associated C14), and establish soil temperature conditions could, potentially, result in a very effective means of providing temporal contexts for sites on survey. Pooling of resources and an informed structure for this background research will maximize our efforts to develop this important tool. A small planning meeting, including a geologist and one or more hydration specialists, would coordinate these efforts.

22. Site structure of large, multicomponent sites. The structure of large sites was identified as a critical research issue in Sections 4 and 5. A small conference, bringing together archaeologists with knowledge of large, complex sites in southwestern New Mexico and one or more archaeologists who have dealt with this problem elsewhere, could pool our current knowledge of this important site class and outline future research in southwestern New Mexico. In particular, strategies for determining the structure of large sites outside the Mimbres Valley (e.g., on the Gila and on the Rio Grande) could be formulated as a research program, research which has direct implications for evaluating context for National Register significance.

18. Dating/chronology. Section 4.A describes the paucity of dates from southwestern New Mexico. Every absolute date is important; unfortunately, the majority of our absolute dates come from sites that are undescribed or underdescribed (for example, Mattocks, Wind Mountain, the Hidalgo Project sites). The profession knows too little about the context of these dates. A small conference, bringing together the archaeologists who can describe contexts and dates from their sites and who would like to know about contexts and dates from other sites, would maximize the value of the few dates we have. Comparisons of chronology from the Mimbres and the Upper Gila would be one issue discussed at such a conference.

23. Burials. Burials from southwestern New Mexico sites should be inventoried and assessed, and a program of skeletal studies should be formulated. Skeletal materials provide unique and valuable data about subsistence and demography, two major research issues in southwestern New Mexico. Current political and philosophical debate clouds the future of skeletal studies; this adds an element of urgency to the inventory and to formulation of a research program. A small planning conference, directing the inventory, should produce a draft of a research proposal for

19. Inventory of datable materials. As stated above, absolute dates are rare. Datable materials from excavated sites exist in museum collections. These

76

carrying out skeletal studies while these materials are still available for study.

provide baseline data on the late prehistoric landscape. The study could be combined with item 26, above.

24. Studies of private collections. Photographic recording and analysis of private collections can provide a great deal of data at very low cost. In particular, Mimbres pots not currently represented in the Mimbres Archives (at the Maxwell Museum, University of New Mexico) should be recorded and added to the archives. Projectile points form a major part of many private collections, and these could provide important typological and distributional data. This project could be coordinated with general interviews, as in item 1, above.

28. Formation of a regional advisory committee. The State Plan should incorporate the establishment of a regional committee to advise on proposed HPD-supported projects and to revise the State Plan on a yearly or biyearly basis. This committee should include archaeologists working in southwestern New Mexico and adjacent areas. A committee will ensure that the State Plan and the HPD's interpretation of the plan are current, dynamic, and effective. Periodic review of historical contexts and survey strategies will also ensure that archaeology in southwestern New Mexico is not conducted by a "cook book" State Plan.

25. History of pothunting. Southwestern New Mexico is world renowned for pothunting. Pothunting on this scale cannot be ignored by archaeologists; it is a major factor in the nation's support of archaeology in this area, how archaeology is accomplished in southwestern New Mexico, our archaeological knowledge of the area, and site formation. The HPD should support a study of pothunting, to document the history of pothunting while individuals with knowledge of early periods can still be interviewed. Beyond historical narrative, statistics on the pace, extent, and economics of pothunting would be of interest. Pothunters' behavior is useful archaeological knowledge: where did successful pothunters work and why? The goals and perspective of avocationalists and pothunting techniques should be recorded; these are very important to future archaeologists as an element of site formation. The HPD should consider support for such a study. 26. Study of historical springs, cienegas, etc. Groundwater and upper level groundwater conditions have changed dramatically in the recent past. A historical study of springs, seeps, cienegas, wetlands, etc., will identify target areas for archaeological reconnaissance for National Register sites and establish a baseline for understanding the late prehistoric landscape. The study could be combined with item 27, below. 27. Study of historical agriculture. The distribution of prepump, gravity-controlled irrigation has direct implications for prehistoric agricultural settlement. Many areas of southwestern New Mexico were farmed, using simple irrigation techniques, in the late 1800s and early 1900s. Today, most of these areas have been abandoned for agriculture. A historical study, using census data, Land Office records, business guides, etc., could establish areas of historical agriculture and describe irrigation technology, areas farmed, crops grown, and success and failure rates. Parts of southern Hidalgo County also supported extensive dry farming in the first half of this century; these areas should be plotted and described. These data could guide reconnaissance survey for National Register sites and

77

properties are likely to be found, while the anthropological approach samples to see what the range of properties really is. (All survey is sampling, but the term is a useful tag for representative sampling.) Anthropological sampling will be discussed in Section 6.B, while preservationist targeting approaches will be discussed in Section 6.C.

Chapter 6

Strategies for Survey, Nomination, and Site Protection 6.A. Introduction The State Plan should (1) explain the philosophy or rationale behind the program, (2) report on current status, (3) evaluate effectiveness, and (4) project future plans. This report is not intended to establish preservation philosophy and rationale at the state level, although some of these aspects of the existing State Plan (Stuart and Gauthier 1981) will be discussed from the perspective of southwestern New Mexico. Current status and effectiveness of the existing State Plan will be discussed in Sections 6.A and B. Future plans will be considered in Sections 6.C, and D.

In HPD surveys of southwestern New Mexico, these two very different approaches are compromised (in both senses of the word) by an extraneous consideration: emphasis on New Mexico State Lands. As discussed below, HPD-supported surveys of State Lands have all of the bad qualities of both anthropological and preservationist approaches, with few of the good. (It should be noted, however, that HPD concerns for State Lands reflects a recognition that no other vehicle exists to perform archaeological survey outside the immediate CRM framework on these lands.) Thus surveys operate in two modes: first, we sample the landscape to see how it was used, and, second, we sample the landscape for sites. Complicating the clarity of these distinctions is a third operational consideration, sampling administrative subdivisions of the landscape, such as State Lands.

The motors driving the State Plan are National Historic Preservation Act, the Secretary of the Interior's standards and guidelines, and -- in my opinion, the most significant -- the National Register, which directs activities relating to cultural properties, regardless of their eligibility for inclusion on the register itself. The criteria for inclusion on the National Register are curiously divided between historic and prehistoric properties. Historic criteria are very clearly intended to select extraordinary properties, properties associated with famous events, famous people, major historical themes, the rare, the fine -- in a phrase, the upper percentiles. The single archaeological criterion (D) simply requires a site potentially to yield important knowledge. Archaeologists argue that important knowledge can be gained from almost any site and that knowledge about past cultures inherently requires preservation of the entire range of properties, large, medium, and small -- the great unwashed.

6.B. Undersurveyed Areas and Areas Subject to Development This section discusses undersurveyed areas with high site potential -- a phrase, from the scope-of-work for this project, which says much about the disparate goals of the State Plan. Concern with "undersurveyed areas" reflects the philosophy of the current State Plan (Stuart and Gauthier 1981: 396), which proposed sample surveys of 1.5% of the entire state, beyond existing surveys as of 1980-81, as mandated by NHPA. Concern for "high site potential" represents a very different philosophical direction, sampling for sites. The phrase "undersurveyed areas with high site potential" thus represents an amalgam of the anthropological-preservationist dichotomy and contains the underlying conflicts of that dichotomy.

A history of the attempts to reconcile these two antithetical positions is well beyond the scope of this report; it is sufficient to note that reconciliation between upper percentiles and the great unwashed is still incomplete. The current balance favors the upper percentile approach. A superbly prepared National Register nomination might gain admittance for a scatter of fire-cracked rock, but even a mediocre nomination might succeed with Cliff Palace.

Ten years ago, Stuart and Gauthier (1981: map IX:1) estimated that about 1% of southwestern New Mexico had been surveyed and 1,871 sites recorded. I now estimate that at least 1.9% of the area has been surveyed (Figure I-9b) and at least 3,823 sites have been recorded (Figure I-9a). This increase represents both real progress and a much more inclusive analysis of existing survey data. Although the area surveyed has almost doubled, the area still falls short of the State Plan's goal.

The recommendations in this section reflect the dual purposes of the Register, which can be tagged the anthropological and preservationist approaches. Neither term is pejorative, nor are they exclusive; but they are different. If half of southwestern New Mexico were to be turned into a landfill, the preservationist would save the Mimbres Valley and let the Deming Plain go, while an anthropologist would save half of each. By the differing criteria in the National Register, both would be right. In effect, the two different approaches call for two different strategies: targeting and sampling. The preservationist approach targets remarkable properties and areas where remarkable

All areas of southwestern New Mexico contain sites (Figure I-9a); densities of sites, of course, vary. Site density varies, in part, with intensity of survey coverage (Figure I-9b), but there evidently are real differences in site density, with the highest site densities in the

78

Transitional Zone, second highest in the Upland Zone, and lowest in the Desert Zone. This difference is best demonstrated along the north-south corridor along the Mimbres drainage. Figure I-9b indicates that combined survey coverage from north to south is both relatively constant and the most complete for any comparable area in southwestern New Mexico; Figure I-9a indicates that combined site totals are highest in the Transitional Zone, second highest in the Uplands, and lowest in the Desert. The patterns evident on Figures I-9a and I-9b are supported by site density statistics for the Upper Mimbres (Figure I-4, 9), Middle Mimbres (Figure I-4, 10), and Deming Plain (Figure I-4, 12) surveys. Sites per square mile are: Upper Mimbres, 6.2; Middle Mimbres, 9.3; Deming Plain, 1.8. From this perspective, "areas with high site potential" can be defined as those quadrangles in the Transitional Zone; "undersurveyed areas with high site potential" are those Transition Zone quadrangles with relatively less survey coverage. These can be ranked in order of increasing survey coverage. First priority could be assigned to those quads with less than 1% coverage, followed by those with 1-2% coverage, and so forth.

nonsite approaches to the regional level. Anthropological sampling attempts to acquire a representative sample of the landscape, stratified by completely arbitrary grids (e.g., UTM blocks or quarter-quarter sections), or by some deus ex machina scheme like soil maps or Brown and Lowe's (1980) biotic zone map (Figure I-2), or by some anthropologically based framework that factors subdivisions of the landscape through a theory of human land use. The latter comes perilously close to sampling for sites, discussed below, but with the significant difference that theoretically based stratification would still require proportionate sampling to test the validity of the theory: sections of the landscape that, hypothetically, should lack evidence of human use will be sampled at the same level as areas of the landscape that, hypothetically, should be crawling with sites. Sampling fractions, sampling patterns, etc., are technical problems that have been addressed in the extensive literature of biogeography and need not be discussed at all here. The basic issue in this discussion is not practical but conceptual: in rigorous anthropological sampling, it is the landscape that is being surveyed, not the sites on it.

This scheme has the virtues and defects of simplicity, but, in my opinion, the defects far outweigh the virtues. It is too simple, and I will discuss much more effective ways of defining undersurveyed areas with high site potential at greater length in section 6.C. The rest of this section will more closely examine the first part of that phrase: undersurveyed areas.

The fundamental problem in anthropological sampling is not practical or technical difficulties, but the quandary posed by boundaries. When rigorous sampling has been employed in the real world, boundaries have been defined by natural areas (that may or may not make sense for prehistoric systems, but it at least takes this difficult problem out of our hands, placing it instead on the laps of the naturalists), prior archaeological knowledge, or theoretically based models. The first (natural) boundary criterion may or may not be relevant, while the latter two criteria run an obvious risk of fatal circularity. Empirical and theoretical boundaries imply prior knowledge of distributions, adaptations, scale, and systems that should be the end product of anthropological inquiry in an area as poorly known as southwestern New Mexico. But without content-laden boundary definition, the sample landscape could grow to North America, the Western Hemisphere, or Earth.

All areas of southwestern New Mexico contain sites; more important, all areas of southwestern New Mexico contain data for anthropological sampling surveys. This distinction is important, because people do not live in sites; they live on landscapes, and often (but not invariably) leave sites behind. In sampling the landscape we look for evidence of prehistoric use or nonuse of different environments. From the anthropological perspective, undersurveyed areas are not limited to areas with known or presumed high site densities. Archaeological taxonomy (culture history, chronology, etc.) has been defined almost exclusively from sites. Taxonomy structures the kinds of questions asked and answered by survey; thus sample survey must incorporate and ultimately refer to sites, even if sites are not represented in a particular sample. Sites will remain the central matter of archaeology (not to mention historic preservation), but from the anthropological perspective, sites are only one (albeit the most important) form in which archaeological data are packaged. Siteless, empty areas are data, too, as are low-density artifact distributions. Nonsite approaches (technically well-suited to much of the archaeology of southwestern New Mexico) are philosophically congruent with anthropological sampling. Anthropological sampling can be seen as an extension of

In practice, surveys are almost always bounded by either arbitrary or irrelevant criteria (the two are not the same). For example, a latitude is arbitrary; a modern political boundary is (usually) irrelevant to prehistoric systems. (Southwestern New Mexico, as defined here, is bounded by arbitrary borders.) Within southwestern New Mexico, it is possible to delimit natural or content-laden boundaries (for example, the Mimbres Valley), and it is always possible to draw arbitrary boundaries; but the boundaries most often seen are the least useful type, irrelevant. Almost all CRM surveys are bounded by criteria irrelevant to prehistory, and some "research" surveys area similarly limited. Of particular importance for this discussion,

79

major surveys have been limited to lands of particular ownership or stewardship, for example, HPD-supported surveys of State Lands such as the Black Range and Grant-Luna surveys (Figure I-4).

like the Gila and Mimbres.) Portions of the Transitional Zone are comparatively undersurveyed, particularly (with the exception of Palomas Creek) the drainages on the east slopes of the Black Range, the small drainages between the Rio Arenas and the Gila, and the area between the Gila and the San Francisco rivers. Sadly, this list is not very different from the general discussion of Stuart and Gauthier (1981: 397), and it agrees with the current archaeological consensus.

The Black Range and Grant-Luna surveys were fine surveys, within the limits imposed by the requirement of surveying State Lands. That requirement, however, precludes anthropological sampling (except for post-facto use of State Lands as an arbitrary unit). Both the Black Range and Grant-Luna surveys were very low fraction samples of State Lands within administratively bounded areas. Both surveys subdivided the landscape within these irrelevant boundaries and then sampled those divisions with disproportionately high samples of environmental zones thought to have higher probabilities of sites. (Stuart and Gauthier [1981: 399] recommended block surveys of large [1 square mile or more] units located on ecotones.) What was being sampled in this situation? Not the landscape, since the distribution of State Lands has no direct relationship to environment or prehistoric systems' use of the landscape. Not the State Lands' portion of the landscape; that would require proportionate sampling of the zones enclosed by this irrelevant boundary. These surveys sampled for sites, with emphasis on zones considered likely to contain sites.

Listing undersurveyed areas is of interest if we are sampling the landscape. To sample the landscape, we are talking about a sample of at least 10% of the 14,415 square miles of southwestern New Mexico. There is nothing sacred about 10%, but it represents the very minimum sample that people might begin to take seriously. In the last two decades, 1.9% of the area has been surveyed, at a rate of about 14 square miles per year. It will take about a century to reach even a 10% sample at that rate. A sustained rate of 14 square miles per year seems unlikely; the majority of the surveyed acreage comes from large research projects (e.g., the Mimbres Foundation survey), which have finite lives. Currently, only a limited amount of research is going on in southwestern New Mexico. Regional research interest comes in cycles, and southwestern New Mexico is currently on a down cycle. This could change. Any of several of plausible events could trigger the next wave of archaeological fad: the acquisition of the Gray Ranch, the creation of a Mimbres National Monument, any very large scale CRM project (Hooker Dam, for example) could lead to a frenzy of renewed academic interest.

There is, of course, nothing wrong with sampling for sites. But if sites are the target, why bother with small samples of zones considered to have low site densities? Decreasing sample size is no way to discover rare targets. It is possible that chance discoveries will result from sampling low site density zones, but both statistically and economically, such a strategy makes little sense.

Without new research surveys, increased survey coverage will come from the constant grind of small-scale CRM projects: range work, timber sales, communication and power corridors, etc. These kinds of projects are recorded by the ARMS file, which lists 120 square miles of survey for the last twenty years, or (very approximately) about 6 square miles a year. At that rate, without significant new non-CRM work, we might see a 10% sample in two centuries.

If we are sampling the landscape, it should first be understood that all of southwestern New Mexico is undersurveyed; less than 2% of the entire area has been surveyed. Only 20 of the 256 quadrangles in Figure I9b have sampling fractions higher than 5%, and two-thirds of the quads have sampling fractions of less than 1%. The relative degree of undersurvey can be ranked. Indeed, it is the precise reverse of the intensity of survey coverage shown in Figure I-9b. Three very large blocks of the Desert Zone are largely unsurveyed: first, the area west of longitude 108oW and south of latitude 32o30'N; a second block east of the Florida Mountains and Cooke's Range and south of old Highway 90; and third, the plains between the Black Range and the Rio Grande. (All archaeologists interviewed in the course of preparing this report agreed that the desert area was very undersurveyed.) In the Mogollon Uplands, most of the Black Range and wilderness districts and the north half of the Mimbres district are undersurveyed. (Again, most archaeologists agreed that the uplands were undersurveyed, particularly upland areas away from major drainages

To achieve any kind of representative sample of the landscape, almost all survey in southwestern New Mexico for the next two centuries would have to be in the Desert and Upland Zones. Should the HPD commit its limited resources to small fraction sample surveys of the basin-and-range forever? Probably not. Where sampling surveys might make sense is in areas subject to development, which in most cases represent a sample of the landscape. In southwestern New Mexico, development generally means urban (or other residential) development, mining, and what might be called alternative land use. Urban expansion, primarily through Sun belt dynamics, is probably the most serious threat to sites. The various communities of southwestern New Mexico are growing and

80

suburbanizing. This growth is particularly notable around the larger communities, such as Silver City, Deming, Lordsburg, and Truth-or-Consequences. Both Silver City and Truth-or-Consequences are located in areas where high densities of sites can be assumed. Silver City itself was built in and around an old cienega, and its suburbs are extending over prime archaeological country along the creeks and foothills of the Pinos Altos and Little Burro ranges. Truth-or-Consequences, on the Rio Grande, is also located among a major concentration of sites. In both cases, important archaeological sites are within the city limits. Deming and Lordsburg, located in relation to railroads and not drainage features, might be expected to pose less of a threat to sites, but major Mimbres, Black Mountain/El Paso, and Salado sites are known in and around Deming, while Pleistocene megafauna have been found on the beach lines of Lordsburg playa, on the northern outskirts of town. All these communities will continue to grow, mirroring Sunbelt growth.

Minimally, surveys could record sites before they vanish; more optimistically, cooperative management and preservation programs, modeled on the (few) successful developer-preservationist programs in Albuquerque, Santa Fe, Tucson, and Phoenix, might be arranged on a case-by-case basis. The implication of predevelopment surveys would be a shift from the existing State Plan. These surveys would represent remedies to short-term preservation problems, but they have a much longer-term importance in that the properties surveyed include many that belong on the State and National Registers. We can't effectively sample for either landscape or sites if the landscape with the sites is destroyed by a housing development. The second area of major potential development in southwestern New Mexico includes expansion of mining. Significant expansion currently appears unlikely, but if I could predict copper prices, I would be making money in mining stock and not starving in archaeology. If copper and other mining in southwestern New Mexico expands, cultural resource concerns will normally be controlled through any of a number of Federal regulatory mechanisms. The major exception to this statement is, of course, the nonmining concerns of the major copper-mining organizations in southwestern New Mexico. These companies own huge expanses of ranch and riverine lands, not subject to mining, that could be affected by diminished copper prices. Specifically, lands in and around the urban areas discussed above could be developed or sold for development. A preemptive program of National Register nomination surveys might be arranged through the upper levels of these mining corporations.

Smaller agricultural communities, such as the little towns along the Mimbres, Gila, and San Francisco rivers, are located precisely in the same areas heavily used and occupied prehistorically. These, too, are beginning to experience both Sunbelt and recreational development. The Mimbres Valley north of old Highway 90 is an alarming case in point: the terraces, the locations of most of the large prehistoric sites, are filling up with trailer homes. A similar situation is obvious in the Cliff Valley and in the series of small towns along the San Francisco River. All these developments involve private lands. Indeed, potential residential/recreational development in southwestern New Mexico can be projected for all private lands in the Transitional Zone, along the Rio Grande, and immediately adjacent to Deming and Lordsburg. If HPD survey is directed towards potential development, these lands, not State or Federal lands, should receive the highest priority for sample survey for two reasons. First, State and Federal lands that may be developed already enjoy varying levels of CRM protection (albeit very limited on State lands). And second, patented private lands in the Transitional Zone are most often along the best-watered creeks -precisely the locations we expect (and routinely find) major site concentrations. The best candidates for the National Register are probably on private lands.

The final category of development concerns "alternative land uses," such as the proposed interstate landfill in the lower Burro Cienega drainage, east of Lordsburg. These unusual development plans must be handled on a case-by-case basis, but a channel of information between local governments (i.e., countylevel government) and the HPD could be instituted so one-off development projects could be subject to reactive sample surveys by the HPD. This is not the philosophy behind the current State Plan, and it is not the place of a regional summary, such as this, to implement major revisions of planning philosophy, but the nature of potential development in southwestern New Mexico prompts the suggestion.

Survey of these lands presents huge difficulties in both access and implication. As discussed in Section 6.D, landowners in southwestern New Mexico, as a class, are no longer sympathetic to archaeology, and developers can naturally be expected to share this lack of sympathy. Archaeological preservation must be made part of local agendas, not simply part of a State Plan, through coordinated efforts with local chambers of commerce, realty boards, and major industrial landholders (i.e., copper mining companies).

A major threat (and perhaps the major threat) to National Register quality sites in southwestern New Mexico is not the result of development, but of pothunting. This problem is so severe that it merits a separate discussion (Section 6.D). (Sample surveys are not an appropriate response to pothunting.) In summary, anthropological sampling, i.e., sampling of the landscape, does not appear to be a very effective

81

strategy for the State Plan, except for areas of potential development of private lands. I do not preclude wellstructured, sample surveys of very limited areas (e.g., a transect sample of a Desert Zone basin and its surrounding ranges), but as a general philosophy, attempts to create a reasonable sample of the enormous landscape of southwestern New Mexico seem unrealistic. In single surveys (such as the Grant-Luna County sample survey), we can only obtain minuscule (and probably useless) samples of huge areas. These tiny samples accumulate, but it will be many decades before the combined samples approach any useful size. Alternately, we can sample for sites. As discussed above, sampling for sites has been an added, seemingly out-of-place component of several HPD sample surveys in southwestern New Mexico. The next section will discuss the advantages and disadvantages of sampling specifically for sites.

nearest large bush without tripping over a new, potentially eligible site. The question is not quantity -we have quantity -- but quality. What sorts of sites do we want to nominate? And what kinds and quality of data do we need to nominate them successfully? I will argue that judicious selection of sites and collection of high-quality data for their nomination will serve two purposes: (1) to ensure a high-quality representation of sites from southwestern New Mexico on the National Register and (2) to provide important new data for structuring and answering anthropological research problems. The title of this section, "areas likely to contain National Register sites," comes from the scope-of-work and indicates the HPD's mission to identify, evaluate, and nominate National Register quality properties. At the most basic level, the State Plan should provide a strategy for identifying and nominating an open-ended list of National Register eligible properties. The process of nominating a property to the National Register and getting it accepted is a big job. I do not know the average amount of labor, time, and money represented by a successful National Register nomination, but based on the nominations I know personally, the labor involved is not insignificant. A single nomination is a lot of work, and thematic nominations are a major investment. The actual process of nomination and the data it requires cannot be overlooked in building a State Plan, and I will argue that this process should be central to our strategy for survey.

6.C. Areas Likely to Contain National Register Sites In southwestern New Mexico, there are 41 prehistoric sites on the State Register and only 12 on the National Register. Prehistoric sites on the National Register include 1 site in Catron County (Gila Cliff Dwellings), 7 sites in Grant County, 1 site in Luna County, and 3 in Sierra County. Four-fifths of the sites on the State Register resulted from HPD-sponsored surveys, and 7 of the 12 National Register sites were nominated as a result of HPD-sponsored surveys (the Sierra County Rio Grande survey and the Mimbres Foundation survey, both partially funded through the HPD). We can take it for granted that there are more than 12 National Register quality sites in southwestern New Mexico.

A successful nomination may reflect less the quality of the property than the quality of the nomination. This observation is not a facile dig at the National Register and its staff, because evaluation of the quality is not a simply bureaucratic hurdle. A good nomination serves very real purposes in both maintaining the high standards of the register and providing sufficient data so the site may be properly evaluated. This latter aspect, context for evaluation, is the key to reconciling the programmatic need to crank out nominations with the anthropological concerns that must ultimately structure the State Plan. Since the site and its nomination are evaluated largely on anthropological criteria (within the wonderfully broad spectrum of criterion D), the data required for a high-quality register nomination can be (and often are) valuable for many purely anthropological interests. A good nomination will include a package of good anthropological data.

A survey of archaeologists working in southwestern New Mexico produced a list of undersurveyed areas that almost certainly will contain potential National Register sites. In no particular order, these areas include the Rincon Valley of the Rio Grande, the Lordsburg and Animas playas, San Luis Lake, the Gila below Redrock to the state line (the Duncan-Virden Valley, including important rock art on Canador Peak), Mule Creek, the secondary drainages of the Gila (e.g., Mogollon Creek, Bear Creek, Duck Creek, Blue Creek) and the Mimbres (e.g., Sapillo Creek), the Glenwood-Pleasanton reach of the San Francisco River, and the San Francisco from Pleasanton to the state line. These areas would keep a large survey team busy for several decades. And this list is by no means exhaustive; it is presented here mainly to indicate that identifying areas with high site potential is not a problem.

Thus the National Register process can be addressed on two levels: first, preservationist concerns for the protection the National Register affords to significant properties and the HPD's concomitant mission to nominate properties; and, second, anthropological aims that coincide with the National Register process.

In this section, I will argue that finding sites to nominate to the National Register is a false issue. We already know of thousands of sites that are, potentially, eligible, and over much of southwestern New Mexico, an archaeologist cannot walk from the truck to the

82

There is no lack of sites to nominate. Most of the 3,823 sites currently known from southwestern New Mexico are probably eligible for nomination to the National Register under the accommodating criterion D. For discussion, let us assume that only one-third of these sites are eligible; that is, over 1,000 sites (far more, I suspect, than the keeper of the Register wants from four and one-quarter counties in New Mexico).

judge anthropological utility, since different types of sites will have variable importance for different anthropological questions. For some research issues, small single-component sites may be far more useful than large, complex, multicomponent sites. Similarly, sites without features may have more relevance to some research questions than sites with many features. These are scientific issues that must be judged on a case-by-case basis for each research design. As discussed in Section 6.A, I decline to impose a narrow research orientation on preservation efforts in southwestern New Mexico. Without imposing a ruling research design, data content appears to be the most workable way to structure the State Plan for National Register nominations.

Since the formulation of the State Plan (Stuart and Gauthier 1981), we have placed 41 sites on the State Register and 12 on the National Register; at this rate we have already identified enough potentially eligible sites to last us for at least two centuries of nominations to the State Register and more than six centuries of nominations to the National Register. We do not, however, have enough data either on these sites themselves or (more importantly) on their contexts for evaluation to allow us to prepare those nominations. Nominations that would clear the preliminary filter of the State Register require a great deal more data than we find on a LA survey form, and the National Register requires still more data, more work, and more thought. And this is the crux of the issue: to prepare nominations, do we invest our limited resources in survey to discover new sites, or in gathering the data necessary to prepare nominations for known sites, or in some mixture of both strategies? I believe a mixture of strategies is most appropriate. The State Plan should emphasize nomination of known, high-quality properties and districts and reconnaissance of undersurveyed areas to locate new, high-quality properties.

For the various historical contexts outlined in Section 5 (and others that may be developed), the relative significance of known sites can be initially ranked by data content. Other National Register factors, such as integrity, can be used as a second set of criteria for selection of sites for nomination. Within a historical context, a series of sites can be determined by these criteria and then evaluated. That step, providing the context for evaluation, can be anthropologically productive. It is possible to nominate and succeed in placing sites on the National Register with the minimum effort and minimum data. Many archaeologists view nominations as an annoyance, a bureaucratic exercise ancillary to real research (I testify from personal experience). This attitude is reflected in the low number of National Register nominations from southwestern New Mexico and the fact that most of those few nominations resulted from HPD-supported projects, not CRM or "research" efforts. Many nominations (in southwestern New Mexico and elsewhere) are simply "pretty" site forms, with redrafted maps and some boilerplate culture history, but no new data and little new thinking. New data and new thinking should be encouraged in nominations, both in the actual recording of the property (accurate maps to replace field sketch maps, etc.) and in the "context for evaluation." Providing a context requires a thorough evaluation of the significance of the nominated property (or properties) and a synthesis of similar or related properties. The range of activities that could contribute to evaluation of significance and context is broad; can such activities support primary research and be a valuable store of anthropological data for future research unrelated to the State Plan.

Working with Known Sites What is a "high-quality" property? Recall that in this section, we are discussing properties, or sites; landscape (nonsite) issues have been discussed above. Thus the question may be rephrased, what is a "high-quality" site? Under criterion D, significance is judged by demonstrated or potential "information important in prehistory." The information content (i.e., data) of sites can be very simply quantified, by numbers of artifacts, numbers of features, numbers of datable specimens, numbers of associational contexts, numbers of stratigraphic situations, and so forth. All these dimensions of data are directly related to site type and size. Larger sites with more features will contain more important information than smaller sites with fewer features. Multicomponent sites will contain more information than single-component sites; of single-component sites, larger sites will contain more information than smaller sites.

Specifically, large, complex, multicomponent sites can be described minimally, with a sketch map and a list of pottery types, or these sites can be tested, providing real data on site chronology and structure. Previous collections can be simply listed, or they can be analyzed. We can call this a thorough, as opposed to minimal, approach to National Register nominations. A wide range of activities can be justified for thorough

This approach should allow selection, from the thousands of potential sites, of those sites which clearly should be nominated to the National Register (and, consequently, those sites for which the HPD should support additional work, discussed further below). This method of measuring data content is not intended to

83

evaluation of significance and for providing a context for that evaluation. These kinds of studies can be encouraged and supported, fully or partially, by the HPD as part of the State Plan. They would provide the data base for very high-quality nominations and at the same time would provide very badly needed anthropological data.

Other examples of possible thematic or district nominations with obvious research potential were suggested by archaeologists working in southwestern New Mexico. In no particular order, these include: rock shelters and caves (evaluation of intact deposits); the Archaic to Early Pit House transition (perhaps most usefully approached in survey in the Cliff Valley); the Cliff Valley and Mule Creek Salado; upland park settlement (comparing Reserve and Mimbres use of upland parks and the timing of this upland expansion relative to larger riverine settlements); boundaries and frontiers (Mimbres-Reserve, Mimbres-Jornada, and the very complex post-Mimbres situation); water control (targeting private lands to avoid confusion with CCC features); high-altitude sites (shrines and subsistence use of high-altitude resources and areas); and Apaches (both as a theme and a technical question: how do we distinguish Apache from prehistoric sites?).

Three examples will demonstrate the potential applications of a thorough evaluation of context. The site of Old Town, in the Lower Mimbres Valley, has been known and illegally excavated for almost a century. It is reputed to be one of the largest sites in the Mimbres Valley, but we know almost nothing about its structure and chronology. Little can be determined from the surface, but recent testing sponsored by the BLM demonstrates that extensive intact architecture and midden deposits remain. Manuscript maps of the site, prior to the extensive pothunting that obscured its plan, exist. Extensive collections exist in private and public collections. A relatively small grant could support analysis of archival data and inventory of existing collections, additional testing to refine chronology and site plan, absolute dating, and thorough evaluation of integrity, significance, and context.

All of these projects should produce excellent nominations, at a price of perhaps half-a-dozen conventional, minimal nominations; but that price would bring more than just outstanding nominations. Rather than a minimal, "pretty" site form nomination, we would have a high-quality nomination and a package of extremely valuable anthropological data.

Similarly, Fort West Hill, in the Cliff Valley, represents one of the largest Late Pit House period sites in southwestern New Mexico; as of 1989, we can say little more than that. A portion of the site was excavated during a highway salvage project, under the name Lee Village, but these excavations were never fully reported. Reanalysis of a sample of these collection, inventory of datable materials, limited testing at both the Lee Village and Fort West Hill localities, and a thorough evaluation of the site's context would produce a very high-quality nomination.

The kinds of data required for National Register evaluations and context are generalized and descriptive, and for that very reason, their long-term utility is ensured. Dating and detailed description are always useful for any research. These data might be presented in articles or reports, or they might remain in the nomination, to be cited in that form. It is unusual to see citations of National Register nominations in the southwestern New Mexico archaeological literature, and that is a sad statement on the content of nominations.

Finally, research directed towards contexts for evaluation of significance need not be limited to a single property or district. Thematic and district nominations can contribute importantly to anthropological knowledge and are more appropriate for many anthropological problems. For example, a long-standing problem in Mimbres archaeology concerns Early Pit House settlement patterns. Many Early Pit House sites are located on high bluffs, which appear defensive. Providing a thorough evaluation of context for a nomination of an Early Pit House site, or a thematic nomination of such sites, would require survey to evaluate this settlement pattern. The precise design of the survey and the technical difficulties in dating Early Pit House period sites need not be discussed in detail here, but the general approach would produce a fine nomination. (I would sample bluffs and "typical" Early Pit House settings, revisit known brownware pit house sites in nondefensive settings, and collect obsidian for a series of cheap, first approximation dates; but other archaeologists might approach this problem differently.)

A notable exception is the recent Animas Thematic Nomination (O'Laughlin 1986). Previously, our knowledge of these important (one might say legendary) Animas phase sites was limited to one-line descriptions in early reports and frustratingly elliptical survey-card descriptions. The thematic nomination systematically reevaluated existing data from these sites and gathered high-quality new data (site maps, detailed descriptions, etc.) for 30 of the most important sites in southwestern New Mexico. Hopefully, these data will be incorporated in publications, but even if they are not, they now exist and can be used and cited (and they have been, in this report). Evaluations of the archaeological context of known sites can provide both very high-quality nominations and important new anthropological information (the main archaeological criterion for National Register significance). Nominations should be viewed in the State Plan not as the by-product of research, but as the focus of research.

84

no need for theory. If a theoretically based predictive model is correct, then it would be an extremely efficient basis for finding the kinds of sites we seek for the National Register. In my opinion, it is too early in the game to adopt a particular predictive model and too early to state with any assurance that theoretically based predictive models are an appropriate goal for the State Plan.

Finding New Sites We can identify many National Register quality sites in southwestern New Mexico, but we obviously have not found all sites that should be considered for nomination. Southwestern New Mexico is an area where large, National Register quality sites are in extreme jeopardy from pothunting. Sites that may have been the local equivalents of Rome might burn while we fiddle with better-known sites. An active program seeking previously unknown or very poorly known National Register quality sites must accompany nomination of known sites.

Most predictive models proceed from empirical generalizations, building patterns and correlations of known site locations and observed environmental variation. In areas of relatively high survey coverage, such as the Transitional Zone, this may be an appropriate technique and might be useful to the State Plan. For example, I have explored the relationship between area of irrigable land and total number of Mimbres phase rooms in various drainages in the Transitional Zone (Lekson 1986b); this is a primitive form of predictive modeling, applicable to the Transitional Zone. But do we need predictive models to locate previously unknown National Register quality sites in the Transitional Zone? The fact that a sufficient empirical base exists to correlate environment and site location suggests that we already know a great deal about site distribution in the Transitional Zone, and, indeed, we do. I submit that we do not really need "finding guides" for the Transitional Zone; where we really need help is for the areas we know least, most notably the basin-and-range Desert Zone. Thus there is an unfortunate "catch-22" regarding empirically based predictive models: they are best developed and (presumably) most accurate in areas where we need them least.

How do we find "areas likely to contain National Register sites?" We could institute formal sampling programs. We could invest in predictive modeling. We could build on our existing expertise, both professional and nonprofessional. Formal sampling offers the comfort of a familiar, "scientific" method that looks good on paper, continues an archaeological practice hallowed by a respectably long history, eliminates many potential ambiguities by following a ponderous system, and thus precludes many possible criticisms. Formal sampling is safe, but formal sampling is a ridiculous, inefficient way to discover rare targets. The National Register was designed for rare targets, "upper percentile" properties, and I have argued that the State Plan should direct National Register nomination towards anthropological research at the largest, most complex sites. How do we discover these kinds of sites? Not by simple sampling. Sampling, such as in the Black Range and Grant-Luna surveys, will discover sites that may be eligible for the National Register, because southwestern New Mexico is lousy with sites that are potentially eligible for nomination to the National Register. They are not rare. But small fraction samples have very low probabilities of finding the rare, big, complex sites that have the best claim for National Register status and that have research interest. If we continue sample surveys as a discovery tactic, we can be statistically certain that we will generate National Register nominations for second- and third-rate sites, while more important sites remain largely unrecorded and unnominated.

Most of the desert is terra incognita. We have good data from the Deming Plain and the potential for good data from the Upper Animas valley, and these two sets of data might provide the basis for predictive modeling in the Desert Zone. Reanalysis and evaluation of the Hidalgo Archaeological Project's data should be a high-priority goal for the State Plan; synthesis of this large-scale sample survey with the Deming Plain survey would provide a good analysis of landscape-use issues and the basis for more precise "big site" prediction. Such an analysis will take time and money, but by using existing data sets, both the time and money will be efficiently spent. Ultimately, such models can be expected to define zones of potentially higher and lower site density, but there is no assurance that such models will locate the approximate locations of large, complex sites.

Predictive modeling seeks to determine the environmental dimensions that determine zones and, in some cases, precise locations for sites. Predictive models can be theoretically or empirically based. There are problems with investing a great deal of the State Plan's energies in either.

For the shorter term, I suggest that the best return will come not from spinning our wheels with purely theoretical predictive models or allocating support to more hopeful, empirically based predictive models. Instead, the immediate threats to large, complex sites in southwestern New Mexico dictate that we use the most expedient means for locating these kinds of sites. I

Some predictive models are based on theories of human land use; by the very fact that they are based on theories, these models must be unproven and controversial -- if there was no controversy (i.e., disagreement on how the world works), there would be

85

submit that the most efficient means for locating big sites in the Desert Zone will come from the expertise of professionals and nonprofessionals. Reconnaissance is the closest formal term for survey directed by "expertise." Reconnaissance targeting large sites in undersurveyed areas should produce the quickest direct return for our money.

and Archaic sites, based on "site pattern recognition" developed from adjacent areas. A limited number of archaeologists (e.g., Bruce Huckell, Richard Windmiller, Richard MacNeish, Pat Beckett, Steadman Upham) have developed considerable knowledge of site location and the geomorphology of these early periods in adjacent areas, and the expertise of this group could be used to structure a reconnaissance targeting likely areas for these underrepresented periods.

Most archaeologists who have worked in an area will, if confronted with a quad map, pick out areas where they think large sites will be found. This process can be formalized through a process of interview (initiated in this report), but some basic common thinking is already evident. All archaeologists consulted for this report agree that large sites will be located near water sources. Just as large sites in the Transitional Zone are located along well-watered drainages, water sources should predict the location of many (perhaps most) large complex sites in the Desert Zone. The U.S. Geological Survey is preparing a study of springs of New Mexico. This document is not yet ready for public use, but it should be consulted for (and could form the basis of) reconnaissance in the desert area. At the very least, USGS quadrangle maps and old New Mexico highway department quads could be checked for springs, cienegas, and other water-related features. Perhaps as important are historic accounts of springs, cienegas, and wet spots, since many of these have changed in historic times. Satellite imagery can also provide an efficient and accurate basis for targeting modern springs and wetlands (Eidenbach, in Chapman, Gossett, and Gossett 1985).

In summary, I suggest that the most efficient shortterm strategy for finding and identifying large complex sites in undersurveyed areas will be intelligently structured reconnaissance, incorporating available expertise prior to fieldwork. Because of the threatened status of large sites in southwestern New Mexico, the short term must take precedence over longer-term strategies. At the same time, longer-term research frameworks must be developed. Predictive modeling for the poorly known Desert Zone should be begun by analysis of existing data bases, complemented with data from similar environments in the nearby, better-surveyed Jornada and southeastern Arizona areas. It probably is premature for the HPD to support a full-blown predictive modeling at this time, but periodic small meetings or symposia at regional conferences could be used to discuss new data and new ideas and finally to determine when such an effort is appropriate. 6.D. Pothunting, Integrity, and the National Register The most obvious, and by far the most dangerous, impact on Mimbres and post-Mimbres phase sites is pothunting. Pothunting is endemic in southwestern New Mexico; for over a century, local families have dug in sites as a hobby, as a cottage industry or income supplement, and finally, as a profession. The issue is not elimination but control. Sites on Federal and (to a lesser degree) State lands are nominally protected. Sites on private land are not. Unfortunately, most large Mimbres sites are on private lands. Unless effective protection is afforded to large Mimbres and post-Mimbres phase sites, the pool of National Register eligible sites will steadily diminish.

Equally important, local people (ranchers, miners, etc.) should be consulted; no archaeologist can ever know the archaeological landscape as well as an interested rancher. The expertise of nonprofessional locals may be very important to the success of a reconnaissance, but local cooperation cannot be assumed in southwestern New Mexico. Reconnaissance is most appropriate to the vast, unknown expanses of the basin-and-range Desert Zone, but it could be a useful strategy in the Upland Zone as well. In the Upland Zone, any private landholdings along creeks and any relatively low-elevation upland parks would almost certainly repay reconnaissancelevel survey with National Register quality sites. Here, again, local expertise will be invaluable. Ranchers, outfitters, and Gila National Forest personnel (both archaeological and nonarchaeological) should be consulted to determine known, but undocumented, sites and areas of permanent water or parklike situations not evident on existing maps.

Recent efforts to protect sites in southwestern New Mexico have had mixed results. The recently passed "Burial Bill" may present a way to control excavation, but it may be possible to protect sites in less direct ways. Laws prohibiting or restricting exportation of antiquities out of New Mexico could be revived. More direct action against known commercial pothunters might involve agencies not usually concerned with preservation, such as the Internal Revenue Service. But these kinds of actions probably do not belong in a State Plan. The National Register process, the central matter of the plan, can be used as a means to encourage local pressure against pothunting. This section will discuss pothunting, the related National Register issue of

Reconnaissance surveys can be framed in thematic or geographic terms. For example, a reconnaissance of cienegas or upland parks would be a reasonable focus. Time-specific themes will also be appropriate: for example, a survey of the desert area for Paleo-Indian

86

integrity, and ways to involve the local population in a positive manner through the preparation of National Register nominations.

Dwellings National Monument was an early (and is still the only) National Park Service unit in southwestern New Mexico.

Casual pothunting and Sunday afternoon surface collection are much less destructive than commercial pothunting, but they have a significant impact on archaeological resources. These impacts could be somewhat alleviated by a program of public education. When the local populace is convinced that intact Mimbres sites are more desirable than the pots those sites contain, local pothunting will be greatly reduced. An HPD effort demonstrating the heritage and commercial values of intact sites might help to instill a conservation ethic among the local population. This would serve the desirable end of curtailing pothunting by nonlocals by making it more difficult for out-of-state relic hunters to obtain permission to work on locally owned lands.

Out in the real world, cliff dwellings are a very small part of the archaeological record. A cursory examination of the various site listings for Arizona and New Mexico shows that cliff dwellings make up much less than 1% of the site totals. Without question, the largest and most important sites in the Southwest (whatever the criteria for importance) are open sites, not cliff dwellings. Southwestern New Mexico is no exception. The famous Gila Cliff Dwellings are dwarfed into insignificance by the huge Mimbres sites like Old Town and Woodrow and large contemporary Tularosa sites such as LA 623. The ruling criterion of "integrity" has favored cliff dwellings in the history of public interpretation in southwestern New Mexico and has thereby presented the public with a visually exciting, easily interpreted, but unfortunately very false, version of the area's prehistory. Unless postcard aesthetics are our yardstick, we must recognize that the visually spectacular ruins are only a small fraction of our cultural resources with potential national significance.

Surface collection is the least disastrous impact related to pot or relic hunting. When confronted with literally millions of potsherds on the surface of a large site, we may have difficulty envisioning any serious impact from the casual collection of potsherds. What's ten thousand sherds, more or less, from an ocean of broken crockery? Unfortunately, much casual collection targets pretty and unusual sherds, and these are often precisely the sherds most useful to archaeologists for dating sites from surface ceramics. We have surface collections made in the 1930s; revisiting and recollecting the same sites demonstrate that the rarer types (usually the prettier and more interesting sherds) present in the earlier collections are nowhere to be seen today (Lekson and Wilson 1985). Decades of casual collection have eliminated these critical types from surface assemblages. A similar problem exists in regard to projectile points (as discussed for the Archaic in Section 4.A)

National Register nominations will require careful evaluation of the concept of integrity and a balance of integrity against other criteria for significance. Few if any large Mimbres and post-Mimbres sites have escaped modern vandalism. At what level does pothunting eliminate integrity? In southwestern New Mexico, pothunting has certainly damaged integrity. Some sites have been completely destroyed by mechanized pothunting, but others, pothunted only by hand, retain a great deal of their original fabric -- that is, the integrity of open archaeological sites. Re-excavation of partially pothunted sites by the Mimbres Foundation, the NAN Ranch Project, the Upper Gila Project, and NMSU's Berrenda Creek Project have shown that despite the difficulties resulting from pothunting, much remains to be learned at most Mimbres sites. Even pothunted sites retain integrity and research value.

Eligibility of sites for the National Register is judged, in part, on integrity. National Register sites should possess a high degree of integrity. Nowhere in New Mexico has pothunting been as catastrophic as in southwestern New Mexico. Looting sites for pots has a long history in the area and is now endemic; it could be said, with some truth, that pothunting was invented in southwestern New Mexico. Because pothunting has been severe and widespread in later (Mimbres and post-Mimbres phase) sites, the quality of integrity is a key issue in southwestern New Mexico.

For archaeological sites, integrity must be seen as a relative value. Some southwestern New Mexico sites are in better condition than others, but the sad fact remains that any Mimbres phase site has an infinitely higher level of integrity than the Swarts Ruin or the Galaz Ruin or the Baca site, all of which have been bulldozed out of existence.

Archaeological sites, as ruins, can never have complete integrity. They can only have relative integrity, compared to other archaeological sites. The only possible exceptions to this statement are cliff dwellings, where natural overhangs have sheltered prehistoric structures from rain and wind, the natural forces that have leveled open archaeological sites. Cliff dwellings are often nearly pristine. Understandably, the Gila Cliff

A very great deal remains to be learned from the excavation of Mimbres and post-Mimbres phase sites. Compared to many other parts of the Southwest, relatively little research have been done in southwestern New Mexico. As described in Section 3, the decades

87

between the 1930s and the 1970s passed with almost no scientific study in the Mimbres area. In part, this lack of scientific interest reflected the widely held view that Mimbres archaeology had been destroyed by pothunting, but we now know that this dismal dismissal was overly pessimistic. Excavations in the 1970s by the Upper Gila Project, the Mimbres Foundation, and the NAN Ranch Project demonstrated the wealth of data that remained. For example, the Mattocks Ruin, dug in the 1930s by Beloit College, pothunted for four decades, and then excavated by the Mimbres Foundation, remains about one-quarter intact (P. Gilman, personal communication 1989). These recent excavations of sites that all had been disturbed to varying degrees have produced widely acclaimed scientific publications, such as LeBlanc's (1983) The Mimbres People, published in the internationally famous "New Aspects of Antiquity" series; Anyon and LeBlanc's (1984) landmark The Galaz Ruin monograph; and articles in journals of international importance, such as Shafer and Taylor's (1986) study of "Mimbres Mogollon Pueblo Dynamics" in the prestigious Journal of Field Archaeology. These are only three of many recent Mimbres publications listed in the bibliography of this report. Clearly, the sites of southwestern New Mexico offer superlative opportunities for scientific study, on a nationally and internationally significant level. Mimbres archaeology could absorb ten times the level of research effort it has received over the last two decades and not approach diminishing returns.

One collector "has in the past been very cooperative with the professional archaeological community, but because of his hatred of HB 57 (fostered by the very successful disinformation campaign of other organized pot-hunters) [he] recently stated in an executive board meeting of the Grant County Archaeological Society that he would rather see his collection 'in dust' before he would loan it to any museum. The line has been drawn and reconciliation will be difficult" (Andrew Gulliford, personal communication, 1989). The long-term effects remain to be assessed. The most apparent long-term loss has been the increased alienation of local, nonarchaeological support for archaeology. The local community must come to believe that intact sites are of more value than the pots those sites contain. As things currently stand, this is not a believable proposition. In fact, it is false. Intact sites are worth nothing -- indeed, they are often a nuisance -- while their contents are worth a very great deal of money. There is no rational, dollars-and-cents reason for the public to preserve sites. Appeals to an abstract national heritage will not counter dollar amounts and treasure lust. Despite the good efforts of many individual archaeologists, educators, and local and state institutions, we are obviously losing this battle. Our current tactics for reaching the local population are almost entirely "educational" in the weakest sense -- posters, newspaper articles, etc. -- and they are not working. Perhaps educational tactics would work with significant increases in funding, but I do not see sources for additional funding. Moreover, education is a long-term process, and the threat to the resource is immediate and pressing.

The archaeological opportunities are huge for current field methods, and the development of new techniques that can wring even more out of partially damaged sites can be confidently expected in the future. The data are there; however, mechanized pothunting adds a new urgency to the archaeology of southwestern New Mexico. While we can recover staggering quantities of high-quality data from hand pothunted sites, nothing we can do will cope with the wreck left by bulldozers.

Intact sites and a cessation of pothunting will become desirable to the local population if they can be linked to the local economy. That linkage might come through the creation of a Mimbres National Monument. Tourism talks in a 1990s copper-and-ranching economy, and a Mimbres National Monument would be the biggest boon to tourism in southwestern New Mexico since Billy the Kid. An NPS monument is by no means a certainty, and increased tourism alone will not change local perceptions of archaeological sites. That will require a solid demonstration that intact sites and tourism -- in particular, the potential tourist's perception of the area -- are linked. This linkage can be provided by mass media.

The short-term effects of the recent "Burial Bill" (House Bill 57, which became law on June 17, 1989) were dramatically negative. Between the passage and the effective date of this bill, "pothunting in southwest New Mexico intensified and reached a frenzy in early June, 1989. Over fifty sites were dug on private land near Reserve, New Mexico, and at least a portion of the contents of those sites were purchased by Japanese investors. In the Mimbres Valley, a previously unknown site which borders Forest Service land was divided into three parcels and bulldozed by all three property owners" (Andrew Gulliford, personal communication, 1989).

Media and publicity can be a legitimate part of the State Plan. The national media can be fed horror stories of a national treasure trashed by an uncaring local populace (which, in the cruelest reading, is just what has happened). Stories of rack and ruin could be followed by more upbeat, laudatory accounts of individual efforts to preserve the Mimbres legacy (again, true to the facts). Moralistic messages of this kind, if they show up on the national news, have infinitely more effect

When the bill went into effect, this orgy of destruction apparently ceased. But the bill also furthered the existing polarization between local avocational collectors and the archaeology preservation community.

88

than any number of antivandalism pamphlets or schoolroom lectures.

seen again, than all the miners who ever worked the Mogollons. There is more than a little truth in this judgment. The recently passed "Burial Bill" has, apparently, exacerbated this enmity. The major loser in this friction is the resource. If the State Plan incorporates and encourages local avocationalists, while maintaining professional standards, it will be a major victory for the cultural resources of southwestern New Mexico.

One article-length condemnation (followed by some Mr. Do-Bee examples) in the New York Times travel section will carry more clout, locally, than any fire-and-brimstone editorial in the Grant County Herald. And a visit by Charles Kerault would do more for preserving the Mimbres culture than the combined good efforts of every archaeologist in New Mexico. Willard Scott? The mind boggles. And if high-profile media coverage is achieved, that coverage should be made a news story on the state level. If the local community sees itself portrayed nationally, and sees that the rest of New Mexico knows about both the good and the bad, the message will remain long after the short-term excitement is over.

Control of casual pothunting -- pothunting by individuals who are neither commercial nor avocational archaeologists, but who just go out and dig up a site once in a while -- may be beyond calculated planning. Presumably, we could reach these individual over time, perhaps through increased public education. But these individuals are not the real problem; the real problem is commercial pothunting. If, by great good chance, we can curtail (or even halt) commercial pothunting through efforts such as the "Burial Bill" and instill a local preservation ethic for archaeological sites, we will have plenty of time to worry about weekend pothunting. Local archaeological societies and avocationalists should be encouraged to participate in National Register nominations, and it should be possible to make this goal one of the stated objectives of any proposed HPD-sponsored project.

Public relations could have a vital and immediate effect on cultural resource management crises, but only if the moralizing is linked to a palpable community good: tourism dependent on the archaeological resource. This strategy would not, of course, halt pothunting. However, I believe that properly handled media coverage would instill a local sense of value for intact Mimbres sites, and that might help decrease the rate of site destruction. But local support would have to be developed further by a strong local educational program. Closecooperation with local avocational archaeologists, such as members of the Grant County Archaeological Society, could channel the great energies and local knowledge of these avocational archaeologists into the State Plan. Avocational archaeologists should be welcomed into the State Plan as the unique local resource they are. Indeed, cultural resources are not just places and sites. The information on a hundred excavated sites is contained in the notes, photographs, and memories of local avocationalists. The sites may have been excavated to the point of exhaustion, but something can be saved by a program of interviewing and archiving. Private collections in southwestern New Mexico should be inventoried, registered, and studied. Management of these cultural resources -- and they are cultural resources -- must walk a fine line between encouraging further uncontrolled avocational digging and further alienating avocationalists. A long-standing enmity exists between local avocationalists and professional archaeologists in southwestern New Mexico. It should be evident from this discussion that most professionals consider avocationalists in the Mimbres area a problem, but avocationalists have good cause to dislike the pros. In local lore, "some professor from the university" has dug more without permission, and left his diggings in worse condition, and taken more loot back East never to be

89

ENVOI Mimbres is bigger than southwestern New Mexico. We have come some little way from the original state plan, which concluded that Mimbres was classic only in the Mimbres Valley, but we still have a long way to go. Mimbres extends west into Arizona, east across the Rio Grande, and south into Chihuahua (Lekson 1986b). It's interstate; it's international. And to understand the cultural dynamics that created the archaeological pattern we call "Mimbres," we must in fact consider the even larger adaptive opposition of Chaco Anasazi and Sedentary Hohokam, which Mimbres most certainly -in some very important, if as-yet-not-understood, way - reflects. To frame intelligent, useful, non-trivial research questions, we must incorporate those larger scales in our thinking. Can that happen in a state plan?

90

1932b

Geometric Designs on Mimbres Bowls. Art and Archaeology 33(3):136-158. 1941 Eislel Collection Catalogued. El Palacio 48:258. 1956 Earl H. Morris, 1889-1956. Southwestern Lore 22(3):31-39. Anyon, Roger 1980 Late Pithouse Period. In An Archeological Synthesis of South-Central and Southwestern New Mexico, edited by Steven A. LeBlanc and Michael E. Whalen, pp. 142-204. Office of Contract Archaeology, University of New Mexico, Albuquerque. 1984 Mogollon Settlement Patterns and Communal Architecture. Unpublished Master’s thesis, University of New Mexico, Albuquerque. 1988 The Mangas Phase in Mimbres Archaeology (So What Part III). Paper presented at the 5th Mogollon Conference, Las Cruces. Anyon, Roger, Patricia A. Gilman, and Steven A. LeBlanc 1981 A Reevaluation of the Mogollon-Mimbres Archaeological Sequence. The Kiva 46:209-225. Anyon, Roger, and Steven A. LeBlanc 1980a The Architectural Evolution of MogollonMimbres Communal Structures. The Kiva 45:253-277. 1980b Preliminary Report on the Bradsby Site (Y:4:35). Ms. on file, U.S. Forest Service, Albuquerque. 1984 The Galaz Ruin. University of New Mexico Press, Albuquerque. Baker, Charles Michael 1979 Mimbres-Mogollon Lithic Assemblage Variability. Unpublished Ph.D. dissertation, University of Georgia, Athens. Baker, Gayla S. 1971 The Riverside Site, Grant County, New Mexico. Southwestern New Mexico Research Reports No. 5. Department of Anthropology, Case Western Reserve University, Cleveland. Baker, William E., and T. N. Campbell 1960 Artifacts from Pre-ceramic Sites in Northeastern and Southern New Mexico. El Palacio 67(3):78-86. Bandelier, Adolph F. 1884 Reports by A. F. Bandelier on His Investigations in New Mexico During the Years 1883-84. Archaeological Institute of America, Fifth Annual Report of the Executive Committee. 1892 Final Report of Investigations among the Indians of the Southwestern United States, Carried on Mainly in the Years from 1880 to 1885, Part II. Papers of the Archaeological Institute of America, American Series IV.

ARCHAEOLOGICAL REFERENCES FOR SOUTHWESTERN NEW MEXICO Accola, Richard M. 1981 Mogollon Settlement Patterns in the Middle San Francisco River Drainage, West-central New Mexico. The Kiva 46:155-168. Accola, Richard M., and James A. Neely 1980 Mogollon Settlement Patterns in the Middle San Francisco River Valley Drainage, West Central New Mexico: A Report of the Reconnaissance of Selected Areas in 1979. Ms. on file, Gila National Forest, Silver City. Ackerly, Neal W., Cody B. Browning, Mary G. Canavan, and Michael Johnson 1988 Preliminary Evaluation of Prehistoric Settlement Patterns in Grant and Luna Counties, New Mexico: Results of a Sample Survey on State of New Mexico Lands, 2 vols. Center for Anthropological Research, Report No. 657. New Mexico State University, Las Cruces. Acklen, John C., Jack B. Bertram, Amy C. Earls, David J. McGuire, and Karen Kramer 1987 Report of Class III Survey and Testing of Cultural Resources at Cuchillo, New Mexico. Mariah Associates, Albuquerque. Ahlstrom, Richard Van Ness 1985 The Interpretation of Archaeological Tree Ring Dates. Unpublished PhD dissertation, Department of Anthropology, University of Arizona, Tucson. Alexander, Robert K. 1966 Archaeological and Historical Survey Along New Mexico Highways. Museum of New Mexico Research Records No. 2. Santa Fe. Anderson, Keith M., Gloria J. Fenner, Don P. Morris, George A. Teague, and Charmion McKusick 1986 The Archaeology of Cliff Dwellings. Publications in Anthropology No. 36. National Park Service Western Archaeological and Conservation Center, Tucson. Anonymous 1916 Explorations and Field-work of the Smithsonian Institution in 1915. Smithsonian Miscellaneous Collections 66(3):84-89. 1930a Archeological Field Work of the University of Minnesota in 1930. Science 72:622-623. 1930b In the Field: University of Minnesota. El Palacio 29:150-151. 1930c Pottery of Mimbrenos and Gila. Bulletin of the Minneapolis Institute of Arts 19(33):162-165. 1931a Cats Were Wild in the Ancient Southwest. Science News Letter 20:551:280. 1931b The Significance of Mended Bowls in Mimbres Culture. El Palacio 31:151-172. 1932a Architectural Plans of Geometric Art on Mimbres Bowls. El Palacio 33:21-64.

91

Bannister, Bryant, John W. Hannah, and William J. Robinson 1970 Tree-Ring Dates from New Mexico M-N, S, Z: Southwestern New Mexico Area. Laboratory of Tree-Ring Research, University of Arizona, Tucson. Basehart, Harry W. 1959 Chiricahua Apache Subsistence and Socio-political Organization. Ms. on file, Department of Anthropology, University of New Mexico, Albuquerque. Beckett, Patrick H. 1973a Cochise Cultural Sites in South Central and North Central New Mexico. Unpublished Master's thesis, Department of Anthropology, Eastern New Mexico University, Portales. 1973b Gardner Springs Site. Awanyu 1(2):45-47. Beckett, Patrick H. (editor) 1982 Mogollon Archaeology: Proceedings of the 1980 Mogollon Conference. Acoma Books, Ramona. 1991 Mogollon V. COAS Publishing and Research, Las Cruces. Beckett, Patrick H., D. P. Brethauer, and Floyd (Twister) Geery 1975 A Reconnaissance of the Gila Planning Unit, with Emphasis on the Lightning Dock Geothermal Resource Area and the Playas Valley Land Exchange Area. Cultural Resources Management Division Report No. 28. New Mexico State University, Las Cruces. Benson, Charlotte, and Steadman Upham (editors) 1986 Mogollon Variability. University Museum Occasional Papers 15, New Mexico State University, Las Cruces. Berman, Mary Jane 1978 The Mesa Top Site: An Early Mogollon Village in Southeastern Arizona. Cultural Resources Management Division Report No. 280. New Mexico State University, Las Cruces. Blake, Michael 1978 Relative Population Change in the Central Mimbres Valley from A.D. 1 to A.D. 1425. Ms. on file, Mimbres Foundation, Maxwell Museum of Anthropology, University of New Mexico, Albuquerque. Blake, Michael, Steven A. LeBlanc, and Paul E. Minnis 1986 Changing Settlement and Population in the Mimbres Valley, Southwest New Mexico. Journal of Field Archaeology 13:439-464. Blake, Michael, and Susan Narod 1977 Archaeological Survey and Analysis in the Deming Region, Southwestern New Mexico. Paper presented at the 42nd Annual Meeting of the Society for American Archaeology, New Orleans. Bluhm, Elaine A. 1957 Patterns of Settlement in the Southwestern

United States, A.D. 500-1200. Unpublished Ph.D. dissertation, Department of Anthropology, University of Chicago. 1960 Mogollon Settlement Patterns in Pine Lawn Valley, New Mexico. American Antiquity 25:538-546. Bradfield, Wesley 1923a Preliminary Report on Excavating at Cameron Creek Site. El Palacio 15:67-73. 1923b Summary of Cameron Creek Site, Mimbres Section. El Palacio 15:53-54. 1925 Pithouses of Cameron Creek. El Palacio 19:173-177. 1927 Notes on Mimbres Culture. El Palacio 22:550-559. 1927-8 Field Notes of the Three Circle Ruin Excavations. Ms. on file, Laboratory of Anthropology, Museum of New Mexico, Santa Fe. 1928 Mimbres Excavation in 1928. El Palacio 25:151-160. 1929 Cameron Creek Village: A Site in the Mimbres Area in Grant County, New Mexico. The School of American Research, Santa Fe. Bradfield, Wesley, L. B. Bloom, and K. M. Chapman 1928 A Preliminary Survey on the Archaeology of Southwestern New Mexico. El Palacio 24:99-112. Bradford, James E. 1991 Archeological Survey Gila Cliff Dwellings National Monument, Southwest Cultural Resources Center Professional Papers, Santa Fe, New Mexico. (In press.) Bradford, James E., and Peter J. McKenna 1986 TJ Ruin, Gila Cliff Dwellings National Monument, New Mexico. Ms. on file, National Park Service Southwest Regional Office, Santa Fe. Brady, James E. 1977 A Reexamination of Late Mimbres Hunting Patterns in Southwestern New Mexico. Paper presented at the Southwestern Anthropological Association Meetings, San Diego. Brand, Donald D. 1938 Aboriginal Trade Routes for Sea Shells in the Southwest. Yearbook of the Association of Pacific Coast Geographers, vol. 4. 1943 The Chihuahua Culture Area. New Mexico Anthropologist 6-8:115-158. Breternitz, David A. 1966 An Appraisal of Tree-Ring Dated Pottery in the Southwest. Anthropological Paper of the University of Arizona No. 10. Tucson. Brethauer, D. 1977 An Archaeological Survey of a Proposed 345 KV Powerline from Deming, New Mexico, to El Paso, Texas. Cultural Resources Management Division Report No. 111. New Mexico State University, Las Cruces.

92

Brody, J. J. 1977 Mimbres Art: Sidetracked on the Trail of a Mexican Connection. American Indian Art 2(4). 1977 Mimbres Painted Pottery. University of New Mexico Press, Albuquerque. Brody, J. J., Catherine J. Scott, and Steven A. LeBlanc 1983 Mimbres Pottery. Hudson Hills Press, New York. Bronitsky, Gordon, and James D. Merritt 1986 The Archaeology of Southeast Arizona: A Class I Cultural Resource Inventory. Cultural Resource Series No. 2. Bureau of Land Management, Phoenix. Brook, Vernon R. 1977 A Courtyard and Two Rooms at Red Rock, New Mexico. Transactions of the 12th Regional Archaeological Symposium for Southeastern New Mexico and Western Texas. Brown, David E. (editor) 1980 Biotic Communities of the American Southwest--United States and Mexico. Desert Plants 4(1-4). Brown, David E., and Charles H. Lowe 1980 Biotic Communities of the Southwest [map]. General Technical Report RM-78. USDA Forest Service, Tempe. Brown, Kenneth n.d. Saige-McFarland: 1971 Summer Excavations. Ms. on file with James E. Fitting, Jackson, Michigan. Brunett, Fel V. 1972 Preliminary Report of 1972 Excavations at the Blacks Bluff Site, MC144, Gila National Forest, near Cliff, New Mexico. Ms. on file with the Gila National Forest, Silver City, and James E. Fitting, Jackson, Michigan. 1986 Excavations at the De FausellKarshner-Lewis Site (LA 34779) at Gila, New Mexico. Paper presented at the 4th Mogollon Conference, Tucson. Bryan, Bruce 1927a The Galaz Ruin in the Mimbres Valley. El Palacio 23:323-337. 1927b The Mimbres Expedition. The Masterkey 1(4):19-30. 1931a Excavation of the Galaz Ruin. The Masterkey 4(6):179-189. 1931b Excavation of the Galaz Ruin. The Masterkey 4(7):221-226. 1931c Excavation of the Galaz Ruin, Mimbres Valley, New Mexico. Art and Archaeology 32(1-2):35-42. 1961 Initial Report on Galaz Sherds. The Masterkey 35(1):13-18. 1962 An Unusual Mimbres Bowl. The Masterkey 36(1):29-32. 1971 Mimbres Site Tested by Curator. The Masterkey 45(4):151-153.

Burns, Peter E. 1972 The Heron Ruin, Grant County, New Mexico. Southwestern New Mexico Research Reports No. 7. Department of Anthropology, Case Western Reserve University, Cleveland. Bussey, Stanley D. 1972 Late Mogollon Manifestation in the Mimbres Branch, Southwestern New Mexico. Unpublished Ph.D. dissertation, University of Oregon. University Microfilms, Ann Arbor, Michigan. 1975 The Archaeology of Lee Village: A Preliminary Report. Center of Anthropological Study, Monograph No. 2. Las Cruces. Bussey, Stanley D., and Patrick H. Beckett 1975 An Archaeological Survey of a Proposed 345 KV Power Transmission Line Corridor from Deming, New Mexico, to Greenlee County, Arizona. Cultural Resources Management Division Report No. 12. New Mexico State University, Las Cruces. Bussey, Stanley D., and D. Beth Bussey 1977 Excavation of a Small Prehistoric Site in Whitewater Canyon near Glenwood, Catron County, New Mexico. Cultural Resources Management Division Report No. 157. New Mexico State University, Las Cruces. Butcher, Russell D. 1968 Winged Messengers. El Palacio 75:39-43. Cameron, Catherine M. 1990 The Effect of Varying Estimates of Pit Structure Use-Life on Prehistoric Population Estimates in the American Southwest. The Kiva 55(2):155-166. Carlson, Roy L. 1965 Four Mimbres Sites: The Earl Morris Excavations of 1926. Ms. on file, University of Colorado Museum, Boulder. 1982 The Mimbres Kachina Cult. In Mogollon Archaeology: Proceedings of the 1980 Mogollon Conference, edited by Patrick H. Beckett, pp. 147-155. Acoma Books, Ramona, California. Carpenter, John P. 1988 The Joyce Well Site: Orienting Animas Settlement within the Chihuahua Culture. Ms. in possession of the author. Carr, Patricia 1979 Mimbres Mythology. Southwestern Studies 56. Texas Western Press, El Paso. Chapman, Kenneth M. 1922 Life Forms in Pueblo Pottery Decoration. Art and Archaeology 13(3):120-122. Chapman, Richard C., Cye W. Gossett, and William J.Gossett 1985 Class II Cultural Resources Survey, Upper Gila Water Supply Study, Central Arizona

93

Project. Report Submitted to Bureau of Reclamation, Phoenix, Arizona. Collie, George L. 1930 In the Field: Logan Museum. El Palacio 29:151-152. Cordell, Linda 1984 Prehistory of the Southwest. Academic Press, Orlando. Cosgrove, C. B. 1923 Two Kivas at Treasure Hill. El Palacio 5:19-21. 1947 Caves of the Upper Gila and Hueco Areas in New Mexico and Texas. Papers of the Peabody Museum of Archaeology and Ethnology, 24(2). Harvard University, Cambridge. Cosgrove, C. B., and W. E. Felts 1927 At Work on the Mimbres. The Masterkey (3):21-24. Cosgrove, H. S., and C. B. Cosgrove 1924-7 Field Notes on the Excavation of the Swart site, Mimbres Valley, New Mexico. Ms. on file at the Peabody Museum, Harvard University, Cambridge. 1926-30 Field Notes on the Survey of Southwestern New Mexico. Ms. on file at the Peabody Museum, Harvard University, Cambridge. 1932 The Swarts Ruin: A Typical Mimbres Site in Southwestern New Mexico. Papers of the Peabody Museum of American Archaeology and Ethnology 15(1). Harvard University, Cambridge. Creel, Darrell 1989A Primary Cremation at the NAN Ranch Ruin, with Comparative Data on Other Cremations in the Mimbres Area, New Mexico. Journal of Field Archaeology 16:309-329. Creel, Darrell, and Bradley Adams 1986 Investigation of Water Control Features at NAN-20. In The NAN Ranch Archaeology Project 1985 Interim Report, edited by Harry J. Shafer, pp. 50-66. Anthropology Laboratory Special Report No. 7, Texas A&M University, College Station. Cress, J. P. n.d. Partial Report on a Group of Mimbres Phase Rooms. Ms. on file, the Gila National Forest, Silver City. Crown, Patricia L., and Ronald L. Bishop 1987 The Manufacture of the Salado Polychromes. Pottery Southwest 14(4): 1-3. Danson, Edward 1957 An Archaeological Survey of West Central New Mexico and East Central Arizona. Papers of the Peabody Museum of Archaeology and Ethnology. Harvard University, Cambridge. Dean, Jeffrey S., and John C. Ravesloot 1988 The Chronology of Cultural Interaction in the Gran Chichimeca. Paper presented at Culture

and Contact: Charles C. DiPeso's Gran Chichimeca, Amerind Foundation, Dragoon. DeAtley, Suzanne P. 1980 Regional Interaction of the Animas Phase Settlements on the Northern Casas Grandes Frontier. Unpublished Ph.D. dissertation, Department of Anthropology, University of California, Los Angles. DeAtley, Suzanne P. and Frank J. Findlow 1982 Regional Integration of the Northern Casas Grandes Frontier. In Mogollon Archaeology, edited by Patrick H. Beckett, pp 263-277. Acoma Books, Ramona. Dietz, W. H. 1936 A Few Mimbres Bowls. Bulletin of the Central Texas Archaeological Society 2:60-63. Dinwiddie, Douglas M. 1982 History of the Eisele Collection. In Mogollon Archaeology: Proceedings of the 1980 Mogollon Conference, edited by Patrick H. Beckett, pp. 157-165.Acoma Books, Ramona, California. DiPeso, Charles C. 1974 Casas Grandes: A Fallen Trading Center of the Gran Chichimeca, vols. 1-3. Northland Press, Flagstaff. 1976 Proposal to the National Science Foundation. On file, Amerind Foundation, Dragoon. DiPeso, Charles C., John B. Rinaldo, and Gloria Fenner 1974 Casas Grandes: A Fallen Trading Center of the Gran Chichimeca, vols. 4-8. Northland Press, Flagstaff. Dockall, John Edward 1991 Chipped Stone Technology at the NAN Ruin, Grant County, New Mexico. Department of Anthropology, Texas A&M University, College Station. Doolittle, William E. 1984 Settlements and the Development of "Statelets" in Sonora, Mexico. Journal of Field Archaeology 11:13-24. 1985 The Use of Check Dams for Protecting Downstream Agricultural Lands in the Prehistoric Southwest: A Contextual Analysis. Journal of Anthropological Research 41:279-305. 1988 Prehistoric Occupance in the Valley of Sonora, Mexico. Anthropological Papers of the University of Arizona No. 48. University of Arizona Press, Tucson. Douglas, John E. 1987 Late Prehistoric Archaeological Remains in the San Bernadino Valley, Southeastern Arizona. The Kiva 53:35-51. Doyel, David E., and Emil W. Haury (editors) 1976 The 1976 Salado Conference. The Kiva 42(1):1-134.

94

Draine, Richard P. n.d. Saige-McFarland Pit-house No. 3. Ms. on file with James E. Fitting, Jackson, Michigan. Duff, U. Francis 1902 The Ruins in the Mimbres Valley. American Antiquarian 24:397-400. Duran, Meliha S. 1984 Patterns of Prehistoric Land Use in Dona Ana County, New Mexico. In Recent Research in Mogollon Archaeology, edited by Steadman Upham, Fred Plog, David G. Batcho, and Barbara E. Kauffman, pp. 215-228. University Museum Occasional Papers No. 10. New Mexico State University, Las Cruces. Evans, Roy H., R. Evelyn Ross, and Lyle Ross 1985 Mimbres Indian Treasure: In the Land of Baca. Lowell Press, Kansas City. Everitt, Cindi 1973 Black on White Mimbres Pottery--A Bibliography. The Artifact 11(4):69-89. Everitt, Cindi, and John V. Davis 1974 The Cruz Tarin Paleo Site. Awanyu 2(4):17-24. Fenner, Gloria J. 1977 Flare-Rimmed Bowls: A Sub-Type of Mimbres Classic Black-on-white. The Kiva 43:129-141. Ferguson, T. J., and E. Richard Hart 1985 A Zuni Atlas. University of Oklahoma Press, Norman. Fewkes, Jesse W. 1914 Archaeology of the Lower Mimbres Valley, New Mexico. Smithsonian Miscellaneous Collections 63(10). 1915 Prehistoric Remains in New Mexico: Explorations and Field-work of the Smithsonian Institution in 1914. Smithsonian Miscellaneous Collections 65(6):62-72. 1916 Animal Figures in Prehistoric Pottery from Mimbres Valley, New Mexico. American Anthropologist (n.d.) 18:535-545. 1923 Designs on Prehistoric Pottery from the Mimbres Valley, New Mexico. Smithsonian Miscellaneous Collections 74(6). 1924 Additional Designs on Prehistoric Mimbres Pottery. Smithsonian Miscellaneous Collections 76(8). n.d. Field Notes on Mimbres Ruins and Artifacts in the Vicinity of Deming, New Mexico. Ms. No. 4408 on file at the National Anthropological Archive, Smithsonian Institution, Washington, D.C. Findlow, Frank J. 1978 A Computer Printout of Artifacts Recovered in Hidalgo County, New Mexico. Ms. on file at the Department of Anthropology, Columbia University, New York. 1979 A Catchment Analysis of Certain Prehistoric Settlements in Southwestern New Mexico. Journal of New World Archaeology 3(3):1-15.

1980

A Catchment Analysis of San Luis Phase and Animas Phase Sites in Southwestern New Mexico. In Catchment Analysis: Essays on Prehistoric Resource Space, edited by F. J. Findlow and J. E. Ericson, pp. 158-178. Anthropology UCLA. Findlow, Frank J., and Marisa Bolognese 1980 An Initial Examination of Prehistoric Obsidian Exchange in Hidalgo County, New Mexico. The Kiva 45:227-251. 1982 A Preliminary Analysis of Prehistoric Obsidian Use within the Mogollon Area. In Mogollon Archaeology: Proceedings of the 1980 Mogollon Conference, edited by Patrick H. Beckett, p. 297. Acoma Books, Ramona, California. 1984 Economic Aspects of Prehistoric Quarry Use: A Case Study from the American Southwest. In Prehistoric Quarries and Lithic Production, edited by Jonathan E. Ericson and Barbara A. Purdy, pp. 77-82. Cambridge University Press, Cambridge. Findlow, Frank J., and Linda Confeld 1980 Landsat Imagery and the Analysis of Archaeological Catchment Territories; A Test of Method. In Catchment Analysis: Essays on Prehistoric Resource Space, edited by Frank J. Findlow and Jonathon E. Ericson. Anthropology UCLA 10(1-2):31-52. Findlow, Frank J., and S. P. DeAtley 1976 Prehistoric Land Use Patterns in the Animas Valley: A First Approximation. Anthropology UCLA 6(2):1-57. 1978 An Ecological Analysis of Animas Phase Assemblages in Southwestern New Mexico. Journal of New World Archaeology 2(5):6-18. Fitting, James E. 1970 Preliminary Notes on Some Southwestern New Mexico Lithic Industries. The Kiva 36:15-21. 1971a The Burris Ranch Site, Dona Ana County, New Mexico. Southwestern New Mexico Research Report No. 1. Department of Anthropology, Case Western Reserve University, Cleveland. 1971b Excavations at MC110, Grant County, New Mexico. Southwestern New Mexico Research Report No. 2. Department of Anthropology, Case Western Reserve University, Cleveland. 1971c The Hermanas Ruin, Luna County, New Mexico. Southwestern New Mexico Research Report No. 3. Department of Anthropology, Case Western Reserve University, Cleveland. 1972a Chipped Stone from the 1967 Mimbres Area Survey. Southwestern New Mexico Research Report No. 8. Department of Anthropology, Case Western Reserve University, Cleveland, Ohio. 1972b Preliminary Notes on Cliff Valley Settlement Patterns. The Artifact 10(4):15-30.

95

1973a

An Early Mogollon Community: A Preliminary Report on the Winn Canyon Site. The Artifact 11(1-2):1-94. 1973b Four Archaeological Sites in the Big Burro Mountains of New Mexico. Center of Anthropological Study Monograph No. 1. Las Cruces. 1974 The Preceramic Eaton Site. The American Philosophical Society Year Book 1973. The American Philosophical Society, Philadelphia. n.d. Survey Notes, Cliff Valley Survey. Ms. on file, Laboratory of Anthropology, Santa Fe. Fitting, James E., David G. Anderson, and Timothy C. Klinger 1972 Archaeological Survey and Excavation in Dark Thunder Canyon. Southwestern New Mexico Research Reports No. 9. Department of Anthropology, Case Western Reserve University, Cleveland. Fitting, James E., Claudia B. Hemphill, and Donald R. Abbe 1982 Class I Survey: Cultural Resources of the Upper Gila Water Supply Study Area. Hemphill Associates, Springfield, Oregon. Fitting, James E., and Theron D. Price 1968 Two Late Paleo-Indian Sites in Southwestern New Mexico. The Kiva 34(1):1-8. Fitting, James E., James L. Ross, and B. Thomas Gray 1971 Preliminary Report on the 1971 Intersession Excavations at the Saige-McFarland Site (MC146). Southwestern New Mexico Research Reports No. 4. Department of Anthropology, Case Western Reserve University, Cleveland. Fitting, James E., and Lyle M. Stone 1969 Distance and Utility in the Distribution of Raw Materials in the Cedar Mountains of New Mexico. The Kiva 34:207-212. Formby, D. E. 1986 Pinto-Gypsum Complex Projectile Points from Arizona and New Mexico. The Kiva 51:99-127. Fowler, Andrew 1990 Archaeological Studies Along the Arizona Interconnection Project Transmission Line Corridor. Research Series 5. Zuni Archaeology Program, Zuni. Funk, Dory Boyd 1983 Investigations at Three Small Classic Mimbres Sites, Grant County, New Mexico. Unpublished Master's thesis, Department of Anthropology, Texas A & M University, College Station. Giammettei, Victor Michael, and Nanci Greer Reichert 1975 Art of a Vanished Race: The Mimbres Classic Black-on-white. Dillon-Tyler, Denver. Gillespie, William B. 1987 Vertebrate Remains from LA 5421, the

Saige-McFarland Site. Ms. on file, Laboratory of Anthropology, Santa Fe. Gilman, Patricia A. 1978 Analysis of the Mogollon Sherds from Sites in the Mimbres Valley, New Mexico. Ms. on file, Mimbres Foundation, Maxwell Museum of Anthropology, University of New Mexico, Albuquerque. 1980 The Early Pueblo Period--Classic Mimbres. In Archaeological Synthesis of South-Central and Southwestern New Mexico, edited by Steven A. LeBlanc and Michael E. Whalen, pp. 205-270. Office of Contract Archeology, University of New Mexico, Albuquerque. 1987a Architecture as Artifact: Pit structures and Pueblos in the American Southwest. American Antiquity 52:538-564. 1987b The Wind Mountain Site. Ms. on file, Amerind Foundation, Dragoon. 1988 Households, Communities, and Painted Pottery in the Mimbres Region of Southwestern New Mexico. Paper presented at the 1988 Chac Mool Conference, Calgary. 1989 Household, Communities, and Painted Pottery in the Mimbres Region of Southwestern New Mexico. In Households and Communities, edited by Scott MacEachern, David J.W. Archer, and Richard D. Garvin, pp 218-226. The Archaeological Association of the University of Calgary, Calgary. 1990 Social Organization and Classic Mimbres Period Burials in the SW United States. Journal of Field Archaeology 17:457-469. Gladwin, Harold S. 1934 A Method for the Designation of Cultures and Their Variations. Medallion Papers No. 15. Gila Pueblo, Globe. Gladwin, Winifred, and Harold S. Gladwin 1930 Some Southwestern Pottery Types. Medallion Papers No. 8. Gila Pueblo, Globe. 1934 A Method for Designation of Cultures and Their Variations. Medallian Papers No. 15. Gila Pueblo, Globe. Gomolak, Andrew R. 1982 The S Bar and X and Other Important Sites along the Black Range Front: Don't Count Your Cultural Overview before the Sites are Hatched. In Mogollon Archaeology: Proceedings of the 1980 Mogollon Conference, edited by Patrick H. Beckett, p.55. Acoma Books, Ramona, California. Gomolak, Andrew R., and Dabney Ford 1979 Reclamation of a Vandalized Prehistoric Settlement Site: Berrenda Creek Project 1976. Ms. on file, Department of Anthropology, New Mexico State University, Las Cruces. Gordon, G. H. 1935 Report on Gila Cliff Dwellings National Monument. Ms. on file, Western

96

Archaeological Center, National Park Service, Tucson. Graybill, Donald A. 1973 Prehistoric Settlement Pattern Analysis in the Mimbres Region, New Mexico. Unpublished Ph.D. dissertation, University of Arizona, Tucson. 1974 Measurement of the Amount and Rate of Site Destruction in Southwestern New Mexico. Paper presented at the 39th Annual Meeting of the Society for American Archaeology. 1975 Mimbres-Mogollon Adaptations in the Gila National Forest, Mimbres District, New Mexico. Archaeological Report No. 9. U.S. Forest Service, Southwestern Region, Albuquerque. Halbirt, Carl D. 1978 Preliminary Analysis of Pollen Samples from the Mimbres Valley, New Mexico. Ms. on file, University of New Mexico, Albuquerque. Hall, Stephen A. 1985 Quaternary Pollen Analysis and Vegetational History of the Southwest. In Pollen Records of Late-Quarternary North American Sediments, edited by Vaughn M. Bryant, Jr., and Richard G. Holloway, pp. 95-123. American Association of Stratigraphic Palynologists Foundation, Austin. Hammack, Laurens C. 1962 Highway Salvage Excavations Near Lordsburg, New Mexico. Laboratory of Anthropology Notes No. 7. Museum of New Mexico, Santa Fe. 1965 The Mangus Highway Salvage Project. Laboratory of Anthropology Notes No. 34. Museum of New Mexico, Santa Fe. 1966 Diablo Highway Salvage Archaeology. Laboratory of Anthropology Notes No. 41. Museum of New Mexico, Santa Fe. Hammack, Laurens C., Stanley D. Bussey, and Ronald Ice 1966 The Cliff Highway Salvage Project, assembled by Alfred E. Dittert. Ms. on file, Laboratory of Anthropology, Museum of New Mexico, Santa Fe. Hard, Robert J. 1986 Ecological Relationships Affecting the Rise of Farming Economies: A Test Case from the American Southwest. Unpublished Ph.D. dissertation, University of New Mexico, Albuquerque. Hart, Jeanie, and Neal W. Ackerly 1990 The 1990 ROPES Review: Identification of Research and Funding Priorities in the Mimbres Resource Area. Center for Anthropological Research, Las Cruces. Hastorf, Christine A. 1977a The Changing Use of Food Resources in the Prehistoric Mimbres Valley, New Mexico. Paper presented at the 42nd Annual Meeting

of the Society for American Archaeology, New Orleans. 1977b A Predictive Model for Changing Food Resources in the Prehistoric Mimbres Valley, New Mexico. Unpublished Master’s thesis, Department of Anthropology, University of California, Los Angeles. 1980 Changing Resource Use in Subsistence Agricultural Group. In Modeling Subsistence Change in Prehistoric Economies, edited by T. D. Earle and A. L. Christenson, pp 79-120. Academic Press, New York. Haury, Emil W. 1936a The Mogollon Culture of Southwestern New Mexico. Medallion Papers No. 20. Gila Pueblo, Globe. 1936b Some Southwestern Pottery Types, Series IV. Medallion Papers No. 19. Gila Pueblo, Globe. 1940 Excavations in the Forestdale Valley, Eastcentral Arizona. University of Arizona Bulletin 11(4), Social Science Bulletin 12. 1956 Speculations on Prehistoric Settlement Patterns in the Southwest. In Prehistoric Settlement Patterns in the New World, edited by G. R. Willey, pp. 3-10. Viking Fund Publications in Anthropology No. 23. Wenner-Gren Foundation for Anthropological Research, New York. Haury, Emil W., and E.B. Sayles 1947 An Early Pit House Village of the Mogollon Culture, Forestdale Valley, Arizona. University of Arizona Bulletin 18(4), Social Science Bulletin 16. Hawley, F. M. 1950 Field Manual of Prehistoric Southwestern Pottery Types. Rev. ed. University of New Mexico Bulletin No. 291. University of New Mexico, Albuquerque. Hemphill, Claudia B. 1983 The Eaton Site: Late Archaic in the Upper Gila. Unpublished Master’s thesis, University of Oregon, Eugene. Hendrickson, Dean A., and W. L. Minckley 1984 Cienegas--Vanishing Climax Communities of the American Southwest. Desert Plants 6(3). Henshaw, Henry W. 1879 Cliff-House and Cave on Diamond Creek, New Mexico. Reports upon Archaeological and Ethnological Collections from Vicinity of Santa Barbara, California, and from Ruined Pueblos of Arizona and New Mexico, and Certain Interior Tribes, edited by Frederick W. Putnam, pp. 370-371. Report upon United States Geographical Surveys West of the One Hundredth Meridian Vol. 7. Government Printing Office, Washington, D.C. Herrington, Selma LaVerne 1977 Prehistoric Field and Irrigation Systems of the Rio De Arenas and Cameron Creek Drainages, Grant County, New Mexico.

97

Paper presented at the 42nd Annual Meeting of the Society for American Archaeology, New Orleans. 1979 Settlement Patterns and Water Control Systems of the Mimbres Classic Phase, Grant County, New Mexico. Unpublished Ph.D. dissertation, University of Texas at Austin, Austin. 1982 Water Control Systems of the Mimbres Classic Phase. In Mogollon Archaeology: Proceedings of the 1980 Mogollon Conference, edited by Patrick H. Beckett, pp. 75-90. Acoma Books, Ramona, California. Herrington, Selma Laverne, and Darell Creel 1991 Treasure Hill: An Agricultural Center and Type Site Revisited. In Mogollon V, edited by Patrick H. Beckett, pp. 50-61. COAS Publishing and Research, Las Cruces. Hibben, Frank C. 1938 A Cache of Wooden Bows from the Mogollon Mountains. American Antiquity 4:36-38. Hogg, Don Jack 1977 Report on the Excavation of Three Mogollon Pit Houses on the Upper Mimbres River, New Mexico. Unpublished Master’s thesis, Department of Anthropology, Eastern New Mexico University, Portales. Honea, Kenneth H. 1965 The Caballo Highway Salavage Project. Laboratory of Anthropology Note No. 35. Museum of New Mexico, Santa Fe. Horne, Sam N. 1937 A Mimbres Cremation Burial and an Effigy Pot. Central Texas Archeologist 3:49-50. Hough, Walter 1907 Antiquities of the Upper Gila and Salt River Valleys in Arizona and New Mexico. Bureau of American Ethnology Bulletin No. 35. Washington, D.C. 1914 Culture of the Ancient Pueblos of the Upper Gila River Region, New Mexico and Arizona. U.S. National Museum Bulletin No. 87. Washington, D.C. Huckell, Bruce B. 1972 A Fragmentary Clovis Point from Southwestern New Mexico. The Kiva 37:114-116. 1982 The Distribution of Fluted Points in Arizona: A Review and an Update. Archaeological Series No. 145. Arizona State Museum, Tucson. Huckell, Bruce B., and Lisa W. Huckell 1988 Crops Come to the Desert: Late Preceramic Agriculture in Southeastern Arizona. Paper presented at the 53rd Annual Meeting of the Society for American Archaeology, Phoenix. Human Systems Research, Inc. 1973 Training Bulletin, Tularosa Valley Project, 1972 Excavations at Fresnal Shelter. Human Systems Research, Inc., Tularosa, NM.

Hunter-Anderson, Rosalind L. 1986 Prehistoric Adaptations in the American Southwest. Cambridge University Press, Cambridge. Hurst, C. T. 1936 Some Interesting Mimbres Bowls. El Palacio 40(7-9):37-41. 1937 The Gunnison Collection-VI. Southwestern Lore 3(3):48-52. 1938a The Gunnison Collection-VII. Southwestern Lore 4(1):14-17. 1938b The Gunnison Collection-VIII. Southwestern Lore 4(3):54-57. 1940a Geometric Designs on Mimbres Bowls (The Gunnison Collection-IX). American Antiquity 6:107-114. 1940b The Gunnison Collection-IX. Southwestern Lore 5(4):79-81. 1942 The Gunnison Collection-X. Southwestern Lore 8(3):36-40. 1944 The Gunnison Collection-XI. Southwestern Lore 10(3):42-44. 1947 The Gunnison Collection-XII. Southwestern Lore 13(3):45-49. Ice, Ronald J. 1968 West Fork Ruin: A Stratified Site near Gila Cliff Dwelling National Monument, New Mexico. Laboratory of Anthropology Notes No. 48. Museum of New Mexico, Santa Fe. Janes, Joseph B., and Charles Reeves 1974 The Lagoon Archeological Survey Site. Ms. on file, Gila National Forest, Silver City. Janes, Joseph, Margaret Rugge, and Steven A. LeBlanc n.d. The Excavation of an Isolated Georgetown Phase Communal Structure. Field Notes and Ms. on file, Gila National Forest, Silver City. Jelinek, Arthur J. 1961 Mimbres Warfare? The Kiva 27:28-30. Jenks, Albert E. 1928a Field Notes of the University of Minnesota/Minneapolis Institute of Arts Excavation at the Warm Springs Site, North of Deming, New Mexico. Ms. on file, University of Minnesota, Minneapolis. 1928b The Institute's Expedition to the Mimbres Valley. Minneapolis Institute of Arts Bulletin 17:98-100. 1928c The Mimbres Valley Expedition. Minneapolis Institute of Arts Bulletin 17:154-159. 1929a Archaeological Field Work in North America During 1928: New Mexico. American Anthropologist 31:352. 1929b Cremation among the Mimbres Valley Folk. Art and Archaeology 27(1):47. 1929c Science News Item. Science 70(1819): Supplement p. xiv. 1929-31 Field Notes of the University of Minnesota-Minneapolis Institute of Arts Expedition to the

98

Galaz Site, Mimbres, New Mexico. Ms. on file, University of Minnesota, Minneapolis. Jett, Stephen C., and Peter B. Moyle 1986 The Exotic Origins of Fishes Depicted on Prehistoric Mimbres Pottery from New Mexico. American Antiquity 51:688-720. Kabotie, Fred 1949 Designs from the Ancient Mimbrenos with a Hopi Interpretation. Grabhorn Press, San Francisco. Kaplan, Lawrence 1963 Archeoethnobotany of Cordova Cave. Economic Botany 17:350-359. Kelley, J. Charles 1959 The Desert Cultures and the Balcones Phase: Archaic Manifestations in the Southwest and Texas. American Antiquity 24:276-288. Kessell, John L. 1971 Campaigning on the Upper Gila, 1756. New Mexico Historical Review 46:133-160. Keyser, Robert Waugh 1965 The Architecture of the Galaz Site. Unpublished Master’s thesis, Department of Anthropology, University of Minnesota, Minneapolis. Kidder, A. V. 1927 Peabody Museum Expedition to the Mimbres Valley, New Mexico, Season of 1927. Ms. on file, Library of the Laboratory of Anthropology, Museum of New Mexico, Santa Fe. 1932 Introduction. In The Swarts Ruin: A Typical Mimbres Site in Southwestern New Mexico, by Harriet and C.B. Cosgrove. Papers of the Peabody Museum of American Archaeology and Ethnology 15(1). Harvard University, Cambridge. 1957 Harriet and Burton Cosgrove: An Appreciation of the Pioneer Explorers of Mimbres Culture. New Mexico Quarterly 27(1-2):52-55. Kidder, A. V., H. S. Cosgrove, and C. B. Cosgrove 1949 The Pendleton Ruin, Hidalgo County, New Mexico. Contributions to American Anthropology and History No. 50. Carnegie Institute Publication 585. Washington, D.C. King, Dale S. 1955 Report of Trip to Gila Cliff Dwellings National Monument. Ms. on file at the Western Archaeological Center, National Park Service, Tucson. Kinnard, Lawrence 1958 The Frontiers of New Spain. Quivira Society, Berkeley. Kintigh, Keith 1985 Settlement, Subsistence, and Society in Late Zuni Prehistory. Anthropological Papers of the University of Arizona 44. Tucson.

Kirkpatrick, David T., Sharon Metzler, and Roger Duewel 1982 Mogollon Pithouse Architecture. In Mogollon Archaeology: Proceedings of the 1980 Mogollon Conference, edited by Patrick H. Beckett, pp. 123-135. Acoma Books, Ramona, California. Klinger, Timonty C. 1972 Ceramics from the Blacks Bluff Site. Ms. on file with author. n.d. Ceramic Counts, Cliff Valley Survey. Ms. on file with author. Klinger, Timothy C., and Stephen Lekson 1973 A Bead Cache from Saige-McFarland: A Mimbres Site in Southwestern New Mexico. The Artifact 11(4):66-68. Koerner, Betty 1966 A Yucca Bag from the Mimbres. The Artifact 4(2):5-7. Laboratory of Anthropology, Museum of New Mexico n.d.a Excavations of the Baca Ruin in the Mimbres Valley, New Mexico. Ms. on file, Laboratory of Anthropology, Museum of New Mexico, Santa Fe. n.d.b Field Notes and Manuscripts for the Excavation of LA 9071, Bobcat Cave. On file at the Laboratory of Anthropology, Museum of New Mexico, Santa Fe. n.d.c Field Notes for the Excavation of LA 1118, Faywood Highway Salvage. On file at the Laboratory of Anthropology, Museum of New Mexico, Santa Fe. n.d.d Field Notes on the Excavation of LA 3639, Pine Creek Highway Salvage. On file at the Laboratory of Anthropology, Museum of New Mexico, Santa Fe. Lambert, Marjorie F. 1956 Some Clay and Stone Figurines from the Mogollon-Mimbres Area, Luna County, New Mexico. El Palacio 63:259-283. Lambert, Marjorie J., and J. Richard Ambler 1961 A Survey and Excavation of Caves in Hidalgo County, New Mexico. School of American Research Monograph No. 25. Santa Fe. Lancaster, James 1983 An Analysis of Manos and Metates from the Mimbres Valley, New Mexico. Unpublished Master’s thesis, Department of Anthropology, University of New Mexico, Albuquerque. 1984 Groundstone Artifacts. In The Galaz Ruin, by Roger Anyon and Steven A. LeBlanc, pp. 247-262. Maxwell Museum of Anthropology and University of New Mexico Press, Albuquerque. Landrum, Jean 1983 Archaeological Investigations of the Midden B Extramural Activity Surfaces at the WS Ranch Site, West-Central New Mexico. Ms. on file, Gila National Forest, Silver City.

99

Larralde, Signa 1986 Archaeological Investigations at Alma Bridge: Long-term Multiple Occupation in the San Francisco Valley. Office of Contract Archeology, University of New Mexico, Albuquerque. Laumbach, Karl W. 1976 A Preliminary Report on Excavations at LA 12778. Cultural Resources Management Division Report No. 48. New Mexico State University, Las Cruces. 1978 Excavations of LA 12778. Cultural Resources Management Division Report No. 100. New Mexico State University, Las Cruces. 1980 Emergency Survey and Excavation in Southwestern New Mexico. Cultural Resources Management Division Report No. 354. New Mexico State University, Las Cruces. 1982 Perennial Use of Late Mimbres Small House Sites in the Black Range: A Reflection of Extended Economic Relationships or a Radical Shift in Settlement. In Mogollon Archaeology: Proceedings of the 1980Mogollon Conference, edited by Patrick H.Beckett, pp. 103-110. Acoma Books, Ramona, California. Laumbach, Karl W., and David T. Kirkpatrick 1983 The Black Range Survey. Cultural Resources Management Division Report No. 566. New Mexico State University, Las Cruces. 1985 The Black Range Project: A Regional Perspective. In Proceedings of the Third Jornada Mogollon Conference, edited by M. S. Foster and T. C. O'Laughlin, pp. 23-39. The Artifact 23(1 & 2). LeBlanc, Catherine J. 1977 Design Analysis of Mimbres Pottery. Paper presented at the 42nd Annual Meeting of the Society for American Archaeology, New Orleans. LeBlanc, Steven A. 1975 Mimbres Archaeological Center: Preliminary Report of the First Season of Excavation, 1974. The Institute of Archaeology, University of California, Los Angeles. 1976 Mimbres Archeological Center: Preliminary Report of the Second Season of Excavation, 1975. Journal of New World Archaeology 1(6):1-23. 1977 The 1976 Field Season of the Mimbres Foundation in Southwestern New Mexico. Journal of New World Archaeology 2(2):1-24. 1978 Mimbres Pottery. Archaeology 31(3):6-13. 1980a The Early Pithouse Period. In Archeological Synthesis of South-Central and Southwestern New Mexico, edited by Steven A. LeBlanc and Michael E. Whalen, pp. 142-204. Office of Contract Archeology, University of New Mexico, Albuquerque.

1980b

The Post-Mogollon Periods in Southwestern New Mexico: The Animas/Black Mountain Phase and the Salado Period. In Archeological Synthesis of South-Central and Southwestern New Mexico, edited by Steven A. LeBlanc and Michael E. Whalen, pp. 271-316. Office of Contract Archeology, University of New Mexico, Albuquerque. 1982a The Advent of Pottery in the Southwest. In Southwestern Ceramics in Comparative Review, edited by Albert H. Schroeder, pp. 27-51. The Arizona Archaeologist No. 15. Arizona Archaeological Society, Phoenix. 1982b Temporal Change in Mogollon Ceramics. In Southwestern Ceramics in Comparative Review, edited by Albert H. Schroeder, pp. 107-127. The Arizona Archaeologist No. 15. Arizona Archaeological Society, Phoenix. 1983 The Mimbres People. Thames and Hudson, London. 1986a Aspects of Southwestern Prehistory: A.D. 900-1400. In Ripples in the Chichimec Sea, edited by Frances Joan Mathien and Randall H. McGuire, pp. 105-134.Southern Illinois University Press, Carbondale. 1986b Development of Archaeological Thought on the Mimbres Mogollon. In Emil W. Haury's Prehistory of the Southwest, edited by J. J. Reid and D. E. Doyel, pp. 297-304. University of Arizona Press, Tucson. LeBlanc, Steven A., and Carole Khahil 1976 Flare-rimmed Bowls: A Sub-type of Mimbres Classic Black-on-white. The Kiva 41:289-298. LeBlanc, Steven A., and Ben A. Nelson 1976 The Question of Salado in Southwestern New Mexico. The Kiva 42:71-79. LeBlanc, Steven A., and Michael E. Whalen (editors) 1980 An Archaeological Synthesis of South-Central and Southwestern New Mexico. Office of Contract Archeology, University of New Mexico, Albuquerque. Lehmer, Donald J. 1948 The Jornada Branch of the Mogollon. University of Arizona Bulletin 19(2), Social Science Bulletin 17. Lekson, Stephen H. 1978a Settlement Patterns in the Redrock Valley, Southwestern New Mexico. Unpublished MA thesis, Department of Anthropology, Eastern New Mexico University, Portales. 1978b The Villareal Sites, Grant County, New Mexico: Documentation of the 1972 and 1973 Season. Ms. on file with author, Laboratory of Anthropology, Santa Fe. 1982 Architecture and Settlement Plan in the Redrock Valley of the Gila River, Southwestern New Mexico. In Mogollon Archaeology: Proceedings of the 1980 Mogollon Conference, edited by Patrick H.

100

Beckett, pp. 61-74. Acoma Books, Ramona, California. 1984a The Dating of Casas Grandes. The Kiva 50:55-60. 1984b Mimbres Settlement Size in Southwestern New Mexico. In Recent Research in Mogollon Archaeology, edited by Steadman Upham, Fred Plog, David G. Batcho, and Barbara E. Kauffman, pp. 68-74. University Museum Occasional Papers No. 10. New Mexico State University, Las Cruces. 1984c Prehistoric Settlement in the Middle Palomas Drainage, Southern New Mexico. In Ladder Ranch Research Project, edited by Margaret C. Nelson, pp. 15-23. Maxwell Museum of Anthropology Technical Series No. 1. University of New Mexico, Albuquerque. 1986a Mesa Verde-like Ceramics Near T-or-C, New Mexico. Pottery Southwest 13(4):1-3. 1986b The Mimbres Region. In Mogollon Variability, edited by Charlotte Benson and Steadman Upham, pp. 147-155. University Museum Occasional Paper No. 15., New Mexico State University, Las Cruces. 1986c Mimbres Riverine Adaptations. In Mogollon Variability, edited by Charlotte Benson and Steadman Upham, pp. 181-189. University Museum Occasional Paper No. 15. New Mexico State University, Las Cruces. 1988 The Mangas Phase in Mimbres Archaeology. The Kiva 53:129-145. 1989a An Archaeological Reconnaissance of the Rio Grande Valley in Sierra County, New Mexico. The Artifact 27(2). 1989b Regional Systematics in the Later Prehistory of Southern New Mexico. In Forth Jornada Conference: Collected Papers, edited by Meli Duran and Karl W. Laumbach, pp 1-37. Human Systems Research, Las Cruces. 1990 Mimbres Archaeology of the Upper Gila, New Mexico. University of Arizona Anthropological Paper No. 52. University of Arizona Press, Tucson (in preparation). Lekson, Stephen, and Timothy Klinger 1973a A Mimbres Stone Effigy Vessel. The Artifact 11(4):5-7. 1973b Villareal II: Preliminary Notes on an Animas Phase Site in Southwestern New Mexico. Awanyu 1(2):33-38. Lekson, Stephen H., and Barbara Mills 1983 The Ladder Ranch Surveys: An Evaluation of Method. Paper presented to the Society of Independent Anthropologists, Albuquerque. Lekson, Stephen, James L. Ross, and James E. Fitting 1971 The Stailey Cave Collection. Southwestern New Mexico Research Reports No. 6. Department of Anthropology, Case Western Reserve University, Cleveland. Lekson, Stephen H., and John P. Wilson 1985 History and Prehistory of the Rio Grande and

Its Tributaries in Sierra County, New Mexico. New Mexico Historic Preservation Division, Santa Fe. Lightfoot, Kent G. 1984 The Duncan Project: A Study of the Occupation Duration and Settlement Pattern of an Early Mogollon Pithouse Village. Anthropological Field Studies No. 6. Office of Cultural Resource Management, Arizona State University, Tempe. Lindsay, Alexander J., and Calvin H. Jennings 1968 Salado Red Ware Conference: Ninth Southwestern Ceramic Seminar. Museum of Northern Arizona Ceramic Series 4. Flagstaff. Lister, Robert H. 1946 Survey of Archaeological Remains in Northwestern Chihuahua. Southwestern Journal of Archaeology 2:433-453. Longacre, William J. 1975 Population Dynamics at Grasshopper Pueblo, Arizona. In Population Studies in Archaeology and Biological Anthropology, edited by Alan Swedlund, pp 71-74. Memoirs of the Society for American Archaeology 30. Lowell, Julie C. 1988 The Social Use of Space at Turkey Creek Pueblo: An Architectural Analysis. The Kiva 53(2):85-100. MacNeish, Richard S., and Patrick H. Beckett 1987 The Archaic Chihuahua Tradition. COAS Monograph No. 7. COAS Publishing, Las Cruces. Margolin, Lisa n.d. The Montezuma Site. Ms. on file, Mimbres Foundation, Maxwell Museum of Anthropology, University of New Mexico, Albuquerque. Marrs, Otis 1953 Some Mimbres Pottery Finds. Central Texas Archeologist 6:88-101. Marshall, Michael P., and Henry J. Walt 1984 Rio Abajo Prehistory and History of RioGrande Province. Historic Preservation Division, Santa Fe. Martin, Paul S. 1943 The SU Site: Excavations at a Mogollon Village, Western New Mexico, 1941. Field Museum of Natural History, Anthropology Series No. 32(2). Chicago. 1954 The Mogollon Culture in Western New Mexico. Southwestern Lore 20(1):1-4. 1974 Early Development in Mogollon Research. In Archaeological Researches in Retrospect, edited by Gordon R. Willey, pp. 3-29. Winthrop, Cambridge. Martin, Paul S. 1963 The Last 10,000 Years: A Fossil Pollen Record of the American Southwest. University of Arizona Press, Tucson.

101

Martin, Paul S., and John B. Rinaldo 1940 The SU Site: Excavations at a Mogollon Village, Western New Mexico, 1939. Field Museum of Natural History, Anthropology Series 32(1). Chicago. 1947 The SU Site: Excavations at a Mogollon Village, Western New Mexico. Field Museum of Natural History, Anthropology Series 32(3), Chicago. 1950 Sites of the Reserve Phase, Pine Lawn Valley, Western New Mexico. Fieldiana: Anthropology 38(3). Martin, Paul S., John B. Rinaldo, and Eloise R. Barter 1957 Late Mogollon Communities, Four Sites of the Tularosa Phase, Western New Mexico. Field Museum of Natural History, Anthropology Series 49(1). Chicago. Mauldin, Raymond 1988 Mano Size and Agricultural Intensification in the Mogollon Highlands. Paper presented at the 5th Mogollon Conference, Las Cruces. McCluney, Eugene B. 1962 Clanton Draw and Box Canyon. School of American Research Monograph No. 26. Santa Fe. 1968 A Mimbres Shrine at the West Baker Site. Archaeology 21(3):196-205. n.d.a The Excavation at the Joyce Well Site, Hidalgo County, New Mexico. Ms. on file, School of American Research, Santa Fe. n.d.b The West Baker Site: A Mimbres Village in Southwestern New Mexico. Ms. on file, School of American Research, Santa Fe. McGimsey, Charles R., III 1980 Mariana Mesa: Seven Prehistoric Settlements in West-Central New Mexico. Papers of the Peabody Museum of Archaeology and Ethnology 72. Harvard University, Cambridge. McKenna, Peter J., and James E. Bradford 1989 The TJ Ruin, Gila Cliff Dwellings National Monument. Southwest Cultural Resources Center Professional Paper 21. National Park Service, Santa Fe. Mera, H. P. 1931 Chupadero Black-on-white. Laboratory of Anthropology Technical Series Bulletin No. 1. Museum of New Mexico, Santa Fe. Mills, Barbara J 1986 Temporal Variability in the Ceramic Assemblages of the Eastern Slope of the Black Range, New Mexico. In Mogollon Variability, edited by Charlotte Benson and Steadman Upham, pp. 169-180. University Museum Occasional Paper No. 15. New Mexico State University, Las Cruces. Mills, Jack P., and Vera M. Mills 1970 A Carved Stone Head and Other Material from a Storage Room at the Dinwiddie Site. The Artifact 8(2):11-13.

1972a

The Dinwiddie Site: A Prehistoric Salado Ruin on Duck Creek, Western New Mexico. The Artifact 10(2):1-50. 1972b The Pitts Site: A Prehistoric Mimbres Village in Western New Mexico. The Artifact 10(4):31-54. 1977 The Red Rock Site: A Mimbres Village on the Gila River, Grant County, Western New Mexico. Transactions of the 12th Regional Archeological Symposium for Southeastern New Mexico and Western Texas. Mimbres Foundation 1974 Field Notes on the Excavation of the Mitchell Site, LA 12076, Mimbres Valley, New Mexico. On file, The Mimbres Foundation, Maxwell Museum of Anthropology, University of New Mexico, Albuquerque. 1974-5a Field Notes for the Janss Site (LA 12077). On file, The Mimbres Foundation, University of New Mexico, Albuquerque. 1974-5b Field Notes for the McAnally Site (LA 12110). On file, Mimbres Foundation, University of New Mexico, Albuquerque. 1974-7 Field Notes on the Excavation of the Mattocks Site (LA 676), Mimbres Valley, New Mexico. On file, Mimbres Foundation, University of New Mexico, Albuquerque. 1975a Field Notes on the Beauregard Site (Z:1:27), Mimbres, New Mexico. On file, Mimbres Foundation, University of New Mexico, Albuquerque. 1975b Field Notes on the Montezuma Site (Z:1:30), Mimbres, New Mexico. On file, Mimbres Foundation, University of New Mexico, Albuquerque. 1975-6a Field Notes for the Stailey Pueblo (Z:1:78). On file, Mimbres Foundation, University of New Mexico, Albuquerque. 1975-6b Field Notes of the Mimbres Foundation Excavations at the Galaz Site, Mimbres, New Mexico. On file, Mimbres Foundation, University of New Mexico, Albuquerque. 1976-7a Field Notes on the Mimbres Foundation Excavations on the Montoya Site (Z:5:112). On file, Mimbres Foundation, University of New Mexico, Albuquerque. 1976-7b Field Notes on the Mimbres Foundation Excavations on the Walsh Site (Z:5:80). On file, The Mimbres Foundation, University of New Mexico, Albuquerque. 1976-7c Field Notes on the Mimbres Foundation Excavations on the Wheaton-Smith Site (Z:1:46) near the Mimbres Valley, New Mexico. On file, Mimbres Foundation, University of New Mexico, Albuquerque. 1977a Field Notes for the Thompson Site (Z:5:35). On file, Mimbres Foundation, University of New Mexico, Albuquerque. 1977b Field Notes on the Excavation of the Ernestine Site (Z:1:126) near the Mimbres Valley, New

102

Mexico. On file, Mimbres Foundation, University of New Mexico, Albuquerque. Minnis, Paul E. 1977 The Analysis of Wood Charcoal and Population Dynamics in the Mimbres Drainage, New Mexico. Ethnobotanical Laboratory Report No. 495. University of Michigan, Ann Arbor. 1978 Paleoethnobotanical Indicators of Environand Status of Ethnobotany, edited by Richard I. Ford, pp. 347-366. Museum of Anthropology, Anthropological Paper No. 67. University of Michigan, Ann Arbor. 1980a The Archaic in Southern New Mexico. In An Archaeological Synthesis of South-Central and Southwestern New Mexico, edited by Steven A. LeBlanc and Michael E. Whalen, pp. 53-102. Office of Contract Archaeology, University of New Mexico, Albuquerque. 1980b Prehistoric Population and Settlement Configuration in Southwestern New Mexico: An Analysis of Systematic Archaeological Surveys [Appendix A]. In An Archeological Synthesis of South-Central and Southwestern New Mexico, edited by Steven A. LeBlanc and Michael E. Whalen, pp. 460-505. Office of Contract Archaeology, University of New Mexico, Albuquerque. 1981 Economic and Organizational Responses to Food Stress by Non-stratified Societies: An Example from Prehistoric New Mexico. Unpublished Ph.D. dissertation, University of Michigan, Ann Arbor. 1984 Regional Interaction and Integration on the Northeastern Periphery of Casas Grandes. American Archaeology 4(3):181-193. 1985 Social Adaptation to Food Stress: A Prehistoric Southwestern Example. University of Chicago Press, Chicago. 1989 Domesticating Plants and People in the Greater Southwest. In The Origins of Plant Husbandry in North America, edited by R. I. Ford. University of New Mexico Press, Albuquerque. Minnis, Paul E., and Steven A. LeBlanc 1979 The Destruction of Three Sites in Southwestern New Mexico. In Vandalism of Cultural Resources: The Growing Threat to Our Nation's Heritage, edited by Dee F. Green and Steven A. LeBlanc, pp. 69-78. USDA Cultural Resources Reports 28, USDA Southwest Regional Office, Albuquerque. Minnis, Paul E., and Alan J. Wormser 1984 Late Pithouse Period Occupation in the Deming Region: Preliminary Report of Excavations at the Florida Mountain Site (LA 18839). In Recent Research in Mogollon Archaeology, edited by Steadman Upham, Fred Plog, David G. Batcho, and Barbara E. Kauffman, pp. 229-249. Museum Occasional

Papers No. 10.New Mexico State University, Las Cruces. Moore, James L. 1988 Archaeological Test Excavations at the Cherry Creek Site Near Tyrone, Grant County, New Mexico. Laboratory of Anthropology Notes 462. Museum of New Mexico, Santa Fe. Morenon, E. Pierre, and T. R. Hays 1976 Archaeological Resources at Placitas Arroyo, Southern New Mexico, December 1976. Archaeological Mitigation at Placitas Arroyo, Southern New Mexico, June 1976. Carbon-14 Dates from Placitas Arroyo. Ms. on file, Archaeological Program Institute of Applied Sciences, North Texas State University, Denton, Texas. 1978 New Evidence from the Jornada Branch: Excavations in the Placitas Arroyo. Paper presented at the Annual Meeting of the Society for American Archeology, Tucson. 1984 Archaeological Investigations in the Placitas Arroyo, New Mexico. Archaeology Program, Institute of Applied Sciences, North Texas State University, Denison. Morris, Don P. 1968 A Preliminary Report of a Survey of Gila Cliff Dwelling National Monument and a Portion of the Gila National Forest, New Mexico. Ms. on file, District Office, Gila National Forest, Silver City. Moulard, Barbara L. 1982 Mimbres Iconography: A Study in Methodology and Interpretation. Unpublished Master’s thesis, Arizona State University, Tempe. 1984 Form, Function and Interpretation of Mimbres Ceramics Hemispheric Vessels. Phoebus 4. 1981 Within the Underworld Sky: Mimbres Ceramic Art in Context. Twelve trees Press, Pasadena. Moyer, Patsy 1980 The King Collection. Privately printed. Neely, James A. 1978-9 Bound Letter Reports, Short Papers, etc., on the WS Site. Ms. on file, Gila National Forest, Silver City. 1978 The Archaeology of the W.S. Ranch Site, West Central New Mexico: The 1977 Season. Paper presented at the 43rd Annual Meeting of the Society for American Archaeology, Tucson. Neely, James A., and Eric J. Brunnermann 1988 Field Report, 1986 Season of the HO-Bar (WS-17) Site Project: The Study of a Prehistoric Occupational Sequence at an Archaic and Early Mogollon Village in West Central New Mexico. Ms. on file, Gila National Forest, Silver City.

103

Nelson, Ben A. 1980 Cultural Responses to Population Change: A Comparison of Two Prehistoric Occupations of the Mimbres Valley, New Mexico. Unpublished Ph.D. dissertation, Department of Anthropology, Southern Illinois University, Carbondale. 1988 Valley vs. Region: Occupational Histories in Southwestern New Mexico, A.D. 1150-1400. Paper presented at the 5th Mogollon Conference, Las Cruces. Nelson, Ben A., and Steven A. LeBlanc 1986 Short-term Sedentism in the American Southwest: The Mimbres Valley Salado. University of New Mexico Press, Albuquerque. Nelson, Ben A., and Patricia A. McAnany 1984 The Mogollon Culture Area as a Frame of Reference for Predictive Modeling. In Recent Research in Mogollon Archaeology, edited by Steadman Upham, Fred Plog, David G. Batcho, and Barbara E. Kauffman, pp. 28-44. University Museum Occasional Papers No. 10. New Mexico State University, Las Cruces. Nelson, Ben A., Margaret C. Rugge, and Steven A. LeBlanc 1978 LA 12109: A Small Classic Mimbres Ruin in the Mimbres Valley. In Limited Activity and Occupational Sites: A Collection of Conference Papers, edited by Albert E. Ward, pp. 191-206. University of New Mexico Press, Albuquerque. Nelson, Bonnie K. 1977 A Spatial Analysis of the Classic Mimbres Sites along the Rio Mimbres of Southwestern New Mexico. Unpublished Master’s thesis, Department of Geography, Florida State University, Tallahassee. Nelson, Margaret C. 1980 The Paleo-Indian Period. In An Archaeological Synthesis of South-Central and Southwestern New Mexico, edited by Steven A. LeBlanc and Michael E. Whalen, pp. 38-62. Office of Contract Archaeology, University of New Mexico, Albuquerque. 1981 Chipped Stone Analysis in the Reconstruction of Prehistoric Subsistence Practices: An Example from Southwestern New Mexico. Unpublished Ph.D. dissertation, Department of Anthropology, University of California, Santa Barbara. 1986 Occupational History of Palomas Drainage, Western Sierra County, New Mexico. In Mogollon Variability, edited by Charlotte Benson and Steadman Upham, pp. 157-168. University Museum Occasional Paper No. 15. New Mexico State University, Las Cruces. 1992 Changing Occupational Patterns Among Prehistoric Horticulturalists in Southwestern

New Mexico. Journal of Field Archaeology 19(4). Nelson, Margaret C. (editor) 1984 Ladder Ranch Research Project. Maxwell Museum of Anthropology Technical Series No. 1. University of New Mexico, Albuquerque. Nelson, Nels 1912 Deming Region. Field notes on file, American Museum of Natural History, New York. Nesbitt, Paul H. 1931 The Ancient Mimbrenos, Based on Investigations at the Mattocks Ruin, Mimbres Valley, New Mexico. Logan Museum Bulletin No. 4. Beloit. 1938 Starkweather Ruin. Logan Museum Publications in Anthropology, Bulletin 6. Beloit. O'Laughlin, Thomas C. 1985a Early Formative Ceramic Assemblages in the Mesilla Valley of Southern New Mexico. In Views of the Jornada Mogollon: Proceedings of the Second Jornada Mogollon Conference, edited by C.M. Beck pp 54-67. Contributions in Anthropology 12. Eastern New Mexico University, Portales. 1985b Jornada Mogollon Occupation in the Rincon Valley, Southern New Mexico. In Proceedings of the Third Jornada Mogollon Conference, edited by Michael S. Foster and Thomas C. O'Laughlin, pp 41-57. The Artifact 23(1-2). 1986 Animas Phase Sites of Southern Hidalgo County Thematic Group. National Register Nomination on file, State Historic Preservation Division, Santa Fe. O'Laughlin, Thomas C., Michael S. Foster, and John C. Ravesloot 1984 An Archaeological Survey of Animas Phase Sites in Hidalgo County, New Mexico. Paper presented at the 1984 Mogollon Conference, Las Cruces. Opler, Morris E. 1941 An Apache Lifeway: The Economic, Social, and Religious Institutions of the Chiricahua Indians. University of Chicago Press, Chicago. 1983 Chiricahua Apache. In Southwest, edited by Alfonso Ortiz, pp. 401-418. Handbook of North American Indians, vol. 10. Smithsonian Institution, Washington, D.C. Osborne, D., and A. Hayes 1938 Some Archaeological Notes from Southern Hidalgo County, New Mexico. New Mexico Anthropologist 3(2):21-23. Palmer, Paul E., Jr. 1973 Introduction: The Mimbres Branch of the Mogollon. The Artifact 11(4):1-4.

104

Parsons, Francis B. 1955 A Small Ruin Near Silver City, New Mexico. El Palacio 62:283-289. Paul, John R. 1938 Report to the Secretary of the Smithsonian Institution Describing Some Preliminary Archaeological Explorations Carried Out during May and June 1938, in and near the Gila National Forest, Grant County, New Mexico. Ms. on file, Anthropology Library, Smithsonian Institution, Washington, D.C. Peckham, Stewart 1970 Proposal for the Salvage Excavation of Archaeological Sites in the Mimbres Reservoir District. Unpublished proposal, site forms, and maps on file at the Laboratory of Anthropology, Museum of New Mexico, Santa Fe. Peckham, Stewart, Fred Wendorf, and Edwin N. Ferdon Jr. 1956 Excavations Near Apache Creek, New Mexico. In Highway Salvage Archaeology 2, edited by Fred Wendorf, pp 17-86. Museum of New Mexico, Santa Fe. Peterson, John A. 1986 A Survey of the Middle San Francisco River from the Reserve Sawmill to the LH Ranch, West-Central New Mexico. Ms. on file, Gila National Forest, Silver City. 1988a Change or Continuity? Pit House to Pueblo Transition along the Middle San Francisco River, West Central New Mexico. Paper presented at the 53rd Annual Meeting of the, Society for American Archaeology, Phoenix. 1988b Excavations at O-Block Cave, Reserve, New Mexico. Ms. on file, Gila National Forest, Silver City. 1988c Settlement and Subsistence Patterns in the Reserve Phase and Mountai Mogollon: A Test Case in Devil's Park, New Mexico. The Kiva 53:113-127. Peterson, John A., Holley Mullins, and John Arthur 1986 Archaeological Testing at the Eva Faust Site (LA 33704), Alma, New Mexico. Ms. on file, Gila National Forest, Silver City. Phillips, David A., Jr. 1984 Prehistory and History of the Upper Gila River, Arizona and New Mexico: An Archaeological Overview. New World Research, Inc., Tucson. Pool, David Michael 1985 The Western Apache Settlement System and Its Implications for the Prehistoric Early Mogollon Period. Unpublished Master’s thesis, University of Texas at Austin, Austin, Texas. Powell, Shirley 1983 Mobility and Adaptation. Southern Illinois University Press, Carbondale.

Powell, Susan 1977 Changing Subsistence Patterns as Reflected in Faunal Remains from the Mimbres River Area, New Mexico. Unpublished Master’s thesis, Department of Anthropology, University of California, Los Angeles. Powell, Susan, and Paul Langenwalter 1977 Changes in Prehistoric Hunting Practices in the Mimbres River Valley. Paper presented at the 42nd Annual Meeting of the Society for American Archeology, New Orleans. Provinzano, James 1968 The Osteological Remains of the Galaz Mimbres Amerinds. Unpublished Master’s thesis, University of Minnesota, Minneapolis. Ravesloot, John C. 1979 The Animas Phase: The Post Classic Mimbres Occupation of the Mimbres Valley, New Mexico. Unpublished Master’s thesis, Southern Illinois University, Carbondale. Ravesloot, John C. (editor) 1988 Archaeological Resources of the Santa Teresa Study Area, South-central New Mexico. Cultural Resource Management Division, Arizona State University, Tempe. Ravesloot, John C., Jeffrey S. Dean, and Michael S. Foster 1986 A New Perspective on Casas Grandes Tree-Ring Dates. Paper presented at the 4th Mogollon Conference, Tucson. Reed, Erik K. 1938 Archaeology of the Mimbres Valley, New Mexico. Central Texas Archeologist 4:8-20. 1939 Bibliography of the Mimbres Valley and the Mogollon Culture. Boletin Bibliografico de Antropologica Americana 3(2):125-133. 1948 The Dating of Early Mogollon Horizons. El Palacio 55:382-386. 1957 Human Skeletal Remains from Some Highway Salvage Excavations in New Mexico. Highway Salvage Archaeology, vol. 3. Museum of New Mexico, Santa Fe. n.d.a Archaeological Report on the Upper Gila Investigation Area. Ms. on file, Western Archeological Center, National Park Service, Tucson. n.d.b A Review of Upper Gila Prehistory. Ms. on file, Western Archeological Center, National Park Service, Tucson. Reid, J. Jefferon (editor) 1988 Fourth Mogollon Conference. The Kiva 53(2):83-209. Rice, Glen E. 1975 A Systematic Explanation of Mogollon Settlement Pattern Change. Unpublished PhD dissertation, University of Washington. Richert, Roland 1955 Correspondence Concerning Surface Collections from Eight Sites in the Gila Cliff Dwellings Area. Ms. on file, Western

105

Archeological Center, National Park Service, Tucson. Rinaldo, John B. 1941 Conjectures on the Independent Development of the Mogollon Culture. American Antiquity 7:5-19. Robinson, David G., and Heather B. Trigg 1988 Chronology and Archaeobotany: Pueblo Period Subsistence Practices in the Middle San Francisco River Valley, West Central New Mexico. Paper presented at the 53rd Annual Meeting of the Society for American Archaeology, Phoenix. Rodeck, Hugo G. 1932 Arthropod Designs on Prehistoric Mimbres Pottery. Annals of the Entomological Society of America 25:688-690. 1976 Mimbres Pottery. American Indian Art 1(4):44-53. Rose, Martin 1970 Deming Ranchette Site Survey. The Artifact 8(4):9-28. Roth, Barbara 1986 Report on Examination of Collections Made by Donald Formby. Ms. on file, Arizona State Museum, Tucson. Rugge, Dale 1977 A Petrographic Study of Ceramics from the Mimbres River Valley New Mexico. Paper presented at the 42nd Annual Meeting of the Society for American Archaeology, New Orleans. 1985 Petrographic Analysis of Ceramic Technology. In Archaeological Testing at the Fairchild Site (LA 45732), Otero County, New Mexico, edited by Roger Anyon, pp. 121-135. Office of Contract Archeology, University of New Mexico, Albuquerque. Rugge, Margaret C. 1977 Some Preliminary Statements of Temporal Variation in Chipped Stone, Mimbres Valley, New Mexico. Paper presented at the 42nd Annual Meeting of the Society for American Archaeology, New Orleans. 1978 AR-03-06-08-16: A Chipped Stone Surface Scatter, Mimbres Valley, Gila National Forest. Archeological Report No. 21, Paper No. 23. U.S. Forest Service, Southwestern Region, Albuquerque. Sanburg, Delmer, Jr. 1972 Notes, Charts, and Maps of LA 5336 Excavations. Ms. on file with author, Education Section, Los Angeles County Museum of Natural History. 1976a LA 5256: An Introduction and Discussion of the Ceramic Materials. Paper presented at the Society for California ArchaeologySouthwestern Anthropology Association Meetings, San Diego.

1976b

LA 5336: An Introduction and Discussion of the Ceramic Materials. Paper presented at the Society for California ArcheologySouthwestern Anthropology Association Meetings, San Diego. Sandor, J. A., and P. L. Gersper 1988 Evaluation of Soil Fertility in Some Prehistoric Agricultural Terraces in New Mexico. Agronomy Journal 80:846-850. Sandor, J. A., P. L. Gersper, and J. W. Hawley 1986 Soils at Prehistoric Agricultural Terracing Sites in New Mexico. Soil Science Society of America Journal 50:166-180. Sauer, Carl, and Donald Brand 1930 Pueblo Sites in Southeastern Arizona. University of California Publications in Geography 3:415-458. Sayles, E. B. 1936a An Archaeological Survey of Chihuahua, Mexico. Medallion Papers No. 22. Gila Pueblo, Globe, Arizona. 1936b Some Southwestern Pottery Types. Medallion Papers No. 21. Gila Pueblo, Globe, Arizona. 1945 The San Simon Branch. Medallion Papers No. 34. Gila Pueblo, Globe, Arizona. Schaafsma, Curtis 1979 The "El Paso Phase" and Its Relationship to the "Casas Grandes Phenomenon." In Jornada Mogollon Archaeology, edited by Patrick H. Beckett and Regge N. Wiseman, pp. 383-388. New Mexico State Historic Preservation Division, Santa Fe. Schroeder, Albert H. 1962 A Study of the Apache Indians, Part 4: The Mogollon, Copper Mine, Mimbres, Warm Spring, and Chiricahua Apache. Ms. on file, University of New Mexico Library. Sciscenti, Jim 1960 A Farm House of the Mimbres Phase. Ms. on file, Laboratory of Anthropology, Museum of New Mexico, Santa Fe. Shafer, Harry J. 1982a Classic Mimbres Phase Household and Room Use Patterns. The Kiva 48:17-37. 1982b Prehistoric Agricultural Climax in Southwestern New Mexico: The Classic Mimbres Phase. In Southwestern Agriculture, Pre-Columbian to Modern, edited by Henry C. Dethloff and Irvin M. May, Jr. pp 3-15. Texas A&M University Press, College Station. 1983 The NAN Ranch Archaeological Project, 1982 Season. Texas A&M University Archaeological Laboratory, Special Series 5:1-58. 1985 A Mimbres Potter's Grave: An Example of Mimbres Craft Specialization? Bulletin of the Texas Archaeological Society 56:185-200.

106

1986a

The NAN Ranch Archaeology Project, 1985 Interim Report. Anthropology Laboratory Special Report No. 7. Texas A&M University, College Station. 1986b Review of The Mimbres People (LeBlanc) and The Galaz Ruin (Anyon and LeBlanc). The Kiva 52:75-78. 1987 The NAN Ranch Archaeology Project, 1986 Interim Report. Texas A & M University, College Station. 1988a Classic Mimbres Architectural and Mortuary Patterning at NAN Ranch Ruin (LA 15049), Southwestern New Mexico. Paper presented at the 53th Annual Meeting, of the Society for American Archaeology, Phoenix. 1988b Archaeology at the NAN Ranch Ruin, 1987 Season. Department of Anthropology, Texas A&M University, College Station. 1990a Archaeology at the NAN Ranch Ruin, 1989 Season. Department of Anthropology, Texas A&M University, College Station. 1990b Archaeology at the NAN Ranch Ruin, 1984 Interim Report. The Artifact 28(4):5-27. 1991a Archaeology of the NAN Ranch Ruin (LA 15049), 1985 Interim Report. The Artifact 29(1):1-29. 1991b Swarts Ruin Revisited: An Assessment of the 1920s Excavation and Data Potential. The Artifact 29(1):31-41. 1991c Archaeology of the NAN Ranch Ruin: 1986 Interim Report. The Artifact 29(2):1-42. 1991d Archaeolgy of the NAN Ranch Ruin: 1987 Interim Report. The Artifact 29(3):1-43. 1991e Archaeology of the NAN Ranch Ruin: 1989 Interim Report. The Artifact 29(4):1-43. 1991f Classic Mimbres Architectural and Mortuary Pattering at the NAN Ranch Ruin (LA 15049), Southwestern New Mexico. In Mogollon V, edited by Patrick H. Beckett, pp 34-61. COAS Publishing and Research, Las Cruces. Shafer, Harry J., and Darrell Creel n.d. Field notes, NAN Ranch survey. Shafer, Harry J., and R. E. Murray 1978 A Summary of the 1978 Archaeological Investigations at the Hinton Ruin, Grant County, New Mexico. Texas A&M University Archaeological Laboratory, Special Series 2:1-12. Shafer, Harry J., and Anna J. Taylor 1986 Mimbres Mogollon Pueblo Dynamics and Ceramic Style Change. Journal of Field Archaeology 13:43-68. Shafer, Harry J., A. J. Taylor, and S. J. Usrey 1979 Archaeological Investigations at the NAN (Hinton) Ranch Ruin, Grant County, New Mexico. Texas A&M University Archaeological Laboratory, Special Series 3:1-57. 1981

Shaffer, Brian S. 1990 The Modified Rabbit Pelvis: A Newly Discovered Tool Type for the Mimbres. The Artifact 28(2):7-14. Shaw, C.W., Jr. n.d. July Drought Estimates for the Cibloa and Mimbres Regions of West-central and Southwest New Mexico. Ms. in possesion of the author. Shaw, C. W., Jr., and Mary C. Bernard-Shaw 1986 Archaeological Investigations Along the Middle Gila/Lower San Francisco in Southeastern Arizona: The Question of Cultural Connections with the Mimbres Region during the Late Pithouse, Classic Periods. In Mogollon Variability, edited by Charlotte Benson and Steadman Upham, pp. 191-202. University Museum Occasional Paper No. 15. New Mexico State University, Las Cruces. Shepard, Anna O. 1956 Ceramics for the Archaeologist. Publication No. 609. Carnegie Institution, Washington, D.C. Sides, Dorothy S. 1936 Decorative Art of the Southwestern Indians. Fine Arts Press, Santa Ana, California. 1961 Decorative Art of the Southwestern Indians. Dover Publications, Inc., New York. Skinner, Elizabeth 1974 Similarity of Lithic Industries in the Burro Mountains and the Cliff Valley of Southwestern New Mexico. The Artifact 12(3):26-44. Snodgrass, O. T. 1973a A Major Mimbres Collection by Camera: Life among the Mimbrenos, as Depicted by Designs on Their Pottery. The Artifact 11(4):9-63. 1973b A Mimbres Ornament. The Artifact 11(4):64-65. 1977 Realistic Art and Times of the Mimbres Indians. Privately printed. Stallings, William S., Jr. 1931 El Paso Polychrome. Laboratory of Anthropology, Technical Series Bulletin No. 3. Museum of New Mexico, Santa Fe. Stone, Tammy Theresa 1984 Mogollon Corrugated Pottery: A Distributional and Functional Study. Unpublished Master's thesis, University of Texas, Austin. 1986 An Examination of Mogollon Corrugated Pottery. In Mogollon Variability, edited by Charlotte Benson and Steadman Upham, pp. 191-202. University Museum Occasional Paper No. 15. New Mexico State University, Las Cruces. Stuart, David E., and Rory P. Gauthier 1981 Prehistoric New Mexico: Background for

107

Survey. Historic Preservation Bureau, Santa Fe. Sudar-Laumbach, Toni 1982 Observations on Mimbres Whiteware. Mogollon Archaeology: Proceedings of the 1980 Mogollon Conference, edited by Patrick H. Beckett, pp. 137-145. Acoma Books, Ramona, California. Sudar-Laumbach, Toni, and Karl W. Laumbach 1976 An Archaeological Reconnaissance in West Dona Ana County. New Mexico State University Report No. 41. New Mexico State University, Las Cruces. 1981 Analysis and Commentary on a Ceramic Sample from the Bruton Bead Site. In 407 Miles of Archaeological Transect Sampling in the Basins of Southern New Mexico, by John Hilley, Appendix A. Cultural Resources Management Division Report No. 475. New Mexico State University, Las Cruces. Sullivan, Norman C., and Deborah Berg 1983 Faunal Remains at the Kartchner Site: A Mimbres-Mogollon Pueblo in Southwestern New Mexico. The Kiva 49:105-110. Taylor, William 1898 The Pueblos and Ancient Mines near Allison, New Mexico. American Antiquarian 20:258-261. Thompson, Marc 1981 Kingston Pueblo: Historic Reoccupation of a Mimbres Dwelling. Paper presented at the 54th Pecos Conference, Taos. Thrapp, Dan L. 1974 Victorio and the Mimbres Apaches. University of Oklahoma Press, Norman. Turpin, Solveig A., and James A. Neely 1978 Temporal and Spatial Variability in Prehistoric Great Kivas of the Mogollon Region. Paper presented at the 43rd Annual Meeting of the Society for American Archaeology, Tucson. U.S. Bureau of Land Management 1984 Photogrametric Map of Oldtown Ruin. On file, Bureau of Land Management Las Cruces District Office, Las Cruces. Upham, Steadman 1984 Adaptive Diversity and Southwestern Abandonment. Journal of Anthropological Research 40:235-256. Upham, Steadman, Fred Plog, David G. Batcho, and Barbara E. Kauffman (editors) 1984 Recent Research in Mogollon Archaeology. University Museum Occasional Papers 10. New Mexico State University, Las Cruces. Upham, Steadman, Christopher M. Stevenson, Richard E. Newton, and Michael Johnson 1986 Chronometric Dating of San Pedro Style Projectile Points in Southern New Mexico. In Mogollon Variability, edited by Charlotte Benson and Steadman Upham, pp. 79-87.

University Museum Occasional Paper No. 15. New Mexico State University, Las Cruces. Usery, Steven J., and Harry J. Shafer 1982 The Nan Ranch: A Classic Mimbres Pueblo. In Mogollon Archaeology: Proceedings of the 1980 Mogollon Conference, edited by Patrick H. Beckett, pp. 91-102. Acoma Books, Ramona, California. VanAsdall, Willard, Pat Fall, and Charles H. Miksicek 1982 Corn, Chenopodium, and Century Plant: Mogollon Subsistence in the Mangus Valley. In Mogollon Archaeology: Proceedings of the 1980 Mogollon Conference, edited by Patrick H. Beckett, pp. 167-178. Acoma Books, Ramona, California. Wallis, George A. 1928 Who Were the Prehistoric Mimbrenos of New Mexico? Scientific American 139:132-133. Warnica, James M. n.d. Mimbres Sites on the Upper Gila River: A Preliminary Report. Ms. on file, Agency for Conservation Archaeology, Eastern New Mexico University, Portales. Wasley, William W. 1960 Temporal Placement of Alma Neck Banded. American Antiquity 25:599-603. Watson, Editha L. 1927 Some New Mexico Ruins. El Palacio 23:174-234. 1929 Caves of the Upper Gila River, New Mexico. American Anthropologist (n.s.) 31:299-306. 1931 Two Mimbres River Ruins. American Anthropologist 33:51-55. 1932 The Laughing Artists of the Mimbres Valley. Art and Archaeology 33:189-193, 224. Webster, Clement L. 1891 Preliminary Notes on the Archeology of Southwestern New Mexico. The American Naturalist 25:768-770. 1893 Among the Cliff Dwellers. The American Naturalist 27:435-438. 1912a Archaeological and Ethnological Researches in Southwestern New Mexico, Part I. The Archaeological Bulletin 3(4):101-115. 1912b Some Burial Customs Practices by the Ancient People of the Southwest. The Archaeological Bulletin 3(3):69-79. 1913a Archaeological and Ethnological Researches in Southwestern New Mexico, Part II. The Archaeological Bulletin 4(1):14-20. 1913b Archaeological and Ethnological Researches in Southwestern New Mexico, Part III. The Archaeological Bulletin 4(2):43-48. 1914a Archaeological and Ethnological Researches in Southwestern New Mexico, Part IV. The Archaeological Bulletin 5(2):19-26. 1914b Archaeological and Ethnological Researches in Southwestern New Mexico, Part V. The Archaeological Bulletin 5(3):44-46.

108

Wendorf, Fred 1956 Some Distributions of Settlement Patterns in the Pueblo Southwest. In Prehistoric Settlement Patterns in the New World, edited by G. R. Willey, pp. 18-25. Viking Fund Publications in Anthropology No. 23. Wenner-Gren Joundation for Anthropological Research, New York. 1957 A Mimbres Pueblo Near Glenwood, New Mexico. Highway Salvage Archaeology vol. 3. Museum of New Mexico, Santa Fe. 1959 Folsom Points from Deming, New Mexico. El Palacio 66(3): inside back cover. Whalen, Michael E. 1985 A Rapid Technique for Three-Dimensional Site Mapping. North American Archaeologist 6:193-211. Whalen, Norman 1973 Agriculture and the Cochise. The Kiva 39:89-96. Whalen, Michael E. 1981 Cultural-ecological Aspects of the Pit Houseto-Pueblo Transition in a Portion of the Southwest. American Antiquity 46:75-92. Wheat, Joe Ben 1955 Mogollon Culture Prior to A.D. 1000. American Anthropological Association Memoir No. 82 Wills, W. H. 1988 Early Prehistoric Agriculture in the American Southwest. School of American Research Press, Santa Fe. 1989 Patterns of Prehistoric Food Production in West-Central New Mexico. Journal of Anthropological Research 45:139-157. Wiseman, Regge N. 1991 Prehistoric White Signal: Archaeological Testing and Evaluation of Two Sites and Data Recovery Plan for LA 83772 Along NM 90, Southwest of Silver City, New Mexico. Archaeology Notes 60. Museum of New Mexico, Santa Fe. Withers, Arnold 1985a The Short, Happy Life of Mogollon Red-on-brown. In Prehistory and History in the Southwest, edited by Nancy Fox, pp. 15-18. Papers of the Archaeological Society of New Mexico No. 11. Ancient City Press, Santa Fe. 1985b Three Circle Red-on-white: An Alternative to Oblivion. In Southwestern Culture History, edited by C. H. Lange, pp. 15-26. Papers of the Archaeological Society of New Mexico No. 10. Ancient City Press, Santa Fe. Wyman, Leland C. 1952 A Prehistoric Naturalist. Plateau 24:128-129.

109

Table 1.1. Land status in square miles, southwestern New Mexico. Minor Federal and State holdings not shown, areas approximate. _______________________________________________________________ FOREST COUNTY SERVICE BLM STATE PRIVATE TOTAL ---------------------------------------------------------------S. Catron

1132

--

--

12

1144

Grant

1521

471

606

1372

3970

W.Sierra

581

911

444

419

2355

Hidalgo

96

1300

554

1497

3447

Luna

--

1228

836

893

2957

W. Dona Ana

--

404

90

48

542

TOTAL %

-------------------------------------------3330 4314 2530 4241 14415 23.1 29.9 17.6 29.4 100.0

_______________________________________________________________

110

Table 1.2. Mimbres Foundation chronology. Mimbres Valley population from Blake, LeBlanc, and Minnis 1986: Table 12. _______________________________________________________________ MAJOR

MIMBRES

PERIOD

PHASE

DATES

ARCHITECTURE

KEY CERAMICS

POPULATION

============================================================================================================ === Cliff

1300 - 1450

Adobe pueblos

(Salado)

Gila Polychrome Tonto Polychrome

240

-----------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------Pueblo

Black Mountain

1180 – 1300

Adobe pueblos

Chupadero Black-on-white

(Animas, El Paso)

El Paso Polychrome

1145

Chihuahua Polychrome Playas Red -----------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------Mimbres

1000 - 1150

Cobble masonry pueblos

Mimbres Black-on-white (Style III)

5133

=================================================================== Transitional Black-on-white============= (Style II)

| |

Three Circle

750 - 1000

Rectangular and square pit houses

Boldface Black-on-white (Style I)

| | |

Late Pit house

Three Circle Red-on-white

|

--------------------------------------------------------------------------------------| San Francisco

650 - 750

Rectangular

Mogollon Red-on-brown

3200

|

pit houses with

|

rounded sides

|

--------------------------------------------------------------------------------------| Georgetown

550 - 650

Circular and

San Francisco Red

|

D-shaped

|

pit houses

|

============================================================================================================ == Early

Cumbre

A.D. 200 - 550

Pit house

Circular/oval

Red slip, not polished

pit houses

Fugitive red wash

830

============================================================================================================ === ARCHAIC

6000 B.C. - A.D. 200

STAGE

Circular

Absent

--

pit houses

=========================================================================================================== PALEOINDIAN

10000 B.C. - 6000 B.C.

?

Absent

111

--

Table 3.1. Excavations in southwestern New Mexico. For locations, refer to Figure I-4 except for starred sites, which could not be located. _______________________________________________________________ INSTITUTION/ LA #

SITE

INDIVIDUAL

YEAR

SITE TYPE

MAIN REFERENCE

53

Three Circle

MNM

1927-28

Pithouse

Bradfield 1927-28

190

Camecon Creek

MNM

1923

Mimbres

Bradfield 1929

635

Galez

Southwest Mus

1927

Mimbres

Anyon and LeBlanc 1984

“

“

U. Minnesota

1929-31

“

“

“

“

“

“

Mimbres Found.

1975-76

“

“

“

“

676

Mattocks

Beloit College

1929-31

“

“

Mimbres Found.

1974-77

Mimbres “

Nesbitt 1931 LeBlanc 1983

923

Winston

NMSU

Tularosa

1082

Rio Vista

NMSU

Mimbres

O-Laughlin

1113

Old Town

C. Webster

Mimbres

Webster 1912a, 1912b

“

Smithsonian

“ 1117

“Site near Allison” W. Taylor

1912(?) 1914

Mimbres

Fewkes 1914

ca.1989

Mimbres

Taylor 1989

1118

Rock House

MNM

Mimbres

LA n.d.a.

1369

Pendelton

Peabody

1933

Animas

Kidder et al. 1948

1691

Swarts Ruin

Peabody

1924-27

Mimbres

Cosgrove

1867

Harris

Gila Pueblo

1934

Pit House

Haury 1936

2454

Woodrow

Grant Cty Arch

1960s

Mimbres

none

2465

NAN (Hinton)

Texas A&M

1978-

Mimbres

Shafer and Taylor 1986

3099

WS Ranch

U Texas Austin

1977-

Tularosa

3278

MNM

1957

3639

MNM

and

Cosgrove

1932

4051

Baca

MNM

Mimbres

Wendorf 1957

Pithouse

LA n.d.b.

1959

Mimbres

LA n.d.c.

“

“

R. Evans

4937

Kwilleylekia

R. Ellison

1960s-

Salado

none

4979

Clanton Draw

SAR

1962

Animas

McCluney 1962

4980

Box Canyon

SAR

1962

Animas

McCluney 1962

CSU-LA

1972

Mimbres

Sandburg 1972

Mimbres

5356

“

5416

Redrock Village

V. Brook

1977

“

“

J. & V. Mills

1977

5421

Saige-McFarland

Upper Gila

1971-73

MNM

1960(?)

Grant Arch Soc

1955(?)

5677

“ Mimbres Mimbres

Brook 1977 Mills and Mill 1977 Lekson 1990 Sciscenti 1960

5677?

Montoya Ranch

5689

U-Bar Cave

SAR

1960

Cave

Lambert and Ambler 1965

5690

Buffalo Cave

SAR

1960

Cave

Lambert and Ambler 1965

5691

Pinnacle Cave

SAR

1960

Cave

Lambert and Ambler 1965

MNM

1962

Mogollon

Hammack 1962

5754*

Mimbres

Evans et al. 1985

Parsons 1955

5778?

Heron

Upper Gila

1971

Mimbres

Burns 1972

5778

Lee Village

MNM

1965-66

Pit House

Bussey 1975

5793

Ormand

MNM

1965-66

Salado

Hammack et al. 1966

MNM

1966

Mimbres

Hammack 1966

Diablo Village

MNM

1966

Pit House

Hammack 1966

1965-66

Mimbres

Hammack et al. 1966

1966

Mimbres

Ice 1968

6537 6538 6783 8675

Diwiddie(CliffHWS) MNM West Fork

MNM

112

Table 3.1. (continued). _______________________________________________________________ 6881

Cabello

MNM

1964-65

MNM

1965

9071

Bobcat Cave

SAR

11568

Mogollon Village

Gila Pueblo

1933

11609

Burro Springs #2

Upper Gila

1972

11823

Joyce Well

SAR

1963

Animas

Mimbres Found

1976

Pit House

LeBlanc 1975, 1977

Mimbres Found

1976

Pit House

LeBlanc 1975, 1977

6882

Pit House

Honea 1965

Mimbres

Hammack 1965

Cave

LA n.d.d

Pit House

Haury 1936

Pit House

Fitting 1973 McCluney n.d.a, Carpenter 1988

12109 12110

McNally

12076

Mitchell

Mimbres Found

1974

Mimbres

LeBlanc 1975

12077

Janss

Mimbres Found

1974

Salado

Nelson and LeBlanc 1986

NMSU

1976

Mogollon

Laumbach 1976

12992

Berenda Creek

NMSU

1976

Mimbres

Gomolak and Ford 1978

14976

Thompson Z:5:35

Mimbres Found

1977

Pit House

14983

Dike Z:5:42

Mimbres Found

Animas

15021

Disert Z:5:10

Mimbres Found

Salado

Nelson and LaBlanc 1986

Walsh Z:5:80

Mimbres Found

Animas

Ravesloot 1979

12778*

15044?

1976

15075

Montoya Z:5:112

Mimbres Found

1976

Animas

Ravesloot 1979

16241

Treasure Hill

H.&C. Cosgrove

1919-22

Mimbres

Cosgrove 1923

L. Herrington

1968-71

“

“

Herrington and Creel 1991

18811

Z:13:1

Mimbres Found

18837

Z:14:3

Mimbres Found

Mimbres

18339

Florida Mountain

Mimbres Found

18840

Z:14:7

Mimbres Found

?

18855

Z:14:31

Mimbres Found

Mimbres

18888

Beauregard Z:1:27

Mimbres Found

1975

Pit House

LeBlanc 1976

18890

Montezuma Z :1 :30

Mimbres Found

1974-75

Mimbres

LeBlanc 1976

18903

Wheaton-Smith Z:1:46 Mimbres Found

1976

Mimbres

LeBlanc 1977

18939

Stailey Z:1:78

Mimbres Found

18984

Hadji Baba Z:1:126

Mimbres Found

19017

Z:9:19

Mimbres Found

19059

Ernestine Z:1:203

Mimbres Found

19074

Y:4:5

ENMU

Mimbres

19075

Y:4:6

ENMU

Pit House

Hogg 1977

19821

Martin

Mimbres Found

Pit House

Hogg 1977

29386*

Virden 3 #3

NMSU

1979

Mogollon

Laumbach 1980

29397?

Redrock 1 #1

NMSU

1979

Pit House

Laumbach 1980

29398?

Redrock 2 #1

NMSU

1979

Mimbres

Laumbach 1980

34787

Blacks Bluff

Chippewa NatCent 1972

Mimbres

Brunett 1972

34793

Villareal I

Peabody

Mimbres

Cosgrove and

“

“

Chippewa NatCent 1973-74

“

34794

Villareal II

Upper Gila

1972-73

Salado

Lekson 1978

34800

Eaton

Upper Gila

1973

Archaic

Hemphill 1983

34813

Winn Canyon

Upper Gila

1972

Pit House

Fitting 1973

37690

Anderson

UNM

1982-83

Mimbres

Nelson 1984

UNM

1983

El Paso

Nelson n.d.

Mimbres 1976, 1982 Pit House

1975 1977

Minnis and Wormser 1984

Mimbres-Animas Salado

Nelson and LeBlanc 1986

Mimbres 1977

193?

Animas

Cosgrove 1932

37691

“

113

Table 3.1. (continued). _____________________________________________________________ 39184*

Caballo Dam

MNM

1983

Mogollon

Seaman 1983

54548

Cuchillo GK

Mariah

1985

Mimbres

Acklen et al. 1987

1985

53483

Mariah

Mimbres

Acklen et al. 1987

53486*

Mariah

1985

Mogollon

Acklen et al. 1987

53488*

Mariah

1985

Mogollon

Acklen et al. 1987

UNM

1986

Mogollon

Larralde 1986

Mariah

1985

Mimbres

Acklen et al. 1987

53643*

Alma Bridge

50547 68160

(WS archaic)

U Texas

A*

Osborn

E. Osborn

ca. 1910 Mimbres

Fewkes 1914

C*

Swarts No.2

U Colorado

1926

Mimbres

Carlson 1965

D*

Eby (A)

U Colorado

1926

Mimbres

Carlson 1965

E*

Eby (B)

U Colorado

1926

Mimbres

Carlson 1965

F

McSherry Z:5:85

U Colorado

1926

Mimbres

Carlson 1965

G*

C-F

Smithsonian

1938

Pit House

Paul 1938

J*

West Baker

SAR

1963

Mimbres

McCluney n.d.b,

K

Hill Top

Mim/Salado

Cosgrove and

L

Doolittle Cave

Peabody

1926

Cave

Cosgrove 1947

M

Greenwood Cave

Peabody

1929

Cave

Cosgrove 1947

“

“Stailey Cave”

Chip Nat Cent

1974

“

Lekson et al. 1971

N

Steamboat Cave

Peabody

1929

Cave

Cosgrove 1947

O

Wind Mtn. Y:7:1

Amerind Found

P*

Burris Ranch

U. Michigan

1967

Mimbres

Fitting 1971a

Q

MC 110

Upper Gila

1970

Mimbres

Fitting 1971b

R*

Hermanas

Upper Gila

1970

Mimbres

Fitting 1971c

S

CF Springs

Upper Gila

1972

Mim-Salado

Fitting 1973

T

Willow Creek

Upper Gila

1972

Salado

Fitting 1973

U

Burro Springs #1

Upper Gila

1972

Mimbres

Fitting 1973

V

Dark Thunder (GNF) Upper Gila

1972

Caves

Fitting et al. 1972

W

DeFausel/Kartchner F. Brunett

1974-86

Mimbres

Sullivan and Berg 1983

AA

Pitts

J. & V. Mills

1970

Mimbres

Mills and Mills 1983

BB

Dinwiddie (Duck)

J. & V. Mills

1966-70

Salado

Mills and Mills 1972a

CC

Lagoon

Gila NF

1974

Pit House

Janes et al. n.d.

DD

Gila Cliff Dwell.

NPS

1942-68

Tularosa

Anderson et al. 1986

EE*

Twin Pines

Grant Cty Arch

Mimbres

Cress n.d.

GG

Bradsby Y:4:33

Mimbres Found

Mimbres

KK

Y:4:7

ENMU

Pit House

Hoff 1977

LL

NAN-4

Texas A & M

1982

Mimbres

Funk 1983

MM

NAN-5

Texas A & M

1982

Mimbres

Funk 1983

NN

DELK-1

Texas A & M

1982

Mimbres

Funk 1983

OO

Kingston

NMSU

1980

Mimbres

Thompson 1981

PP*

Whitewater Canyon

NMSU

1977

Mimbres

Bussey and Bussey 1977

QQ-VV

PA-1,2,4,5,7,8

N. Texas St. U

1976

Archaic/EPH

Morenon and Hays 1976

WW

Tony’s Bead (GNF)

U Texas Austin

XX

FS Road (GNF)

U Texas Austin

ZZ

Riverside

Upper Gila

1971

Mim-Salado

Baker 1971

McCluney 1968 Kidder and Cosgrove

Cosgrove 1932

Table 3.2.

Major surveys.

Pit House

For locations, refer to Figure 3.2.

114

Site = site

oriented survey.

survey;

Sample=

SURVEY

area

sample

TYPE

survey;

Inventory

REFERENCE

=

ACRES

complete

area

SITES

-----------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------

General reconnaissance

Site

Bandelier 1892

General reconnaissance

Site

Duff 1902

n.a.

60+

General reconnaissance

Site

General reconnaissance

Site

Fewkes 1914

n.a.

10+

Hough 1907

n.a.

28

General reconnaissance

Site

General reconnaissance

Site

Nelson 1912

n.a.

38

Gladwin and Gladwin 1935

General reconnaissance

Site

Watson 1927

n.a.

101

General reconnaissance

Site

Cosgrove and

n.a.

158

Cave survey

Site

Cosgrove 1947

n.a.

52

General reconnaissance

Site

Jelinek p.c.

n.a.

500+

1

Middle San Francisco

Sample, 2%

Accola 1981

7710

101

2

Middle San Francisco

Site

Neely p.c.

n.a.

3

Devil's Park

Inventory

Peterson 1988

7403

156

4

Gila Cliff Dwellings

Site

Anderson et al.

2453

106

Cosgrove 1932

53+

1986 5

Cliff Valley (Up. Gila Proj.)

Site

Fitting 1972

n.a.

288

6

Cliff Valley (Upper Gila

Sample, 15%

Chapman et al.

8650

154

14080

177

6400

105

Water Supply Study Class II)

1985

7

Redrock Valley

Inventory

Lekson 1978

8

Rio Arenas (-Cam. Creek)

Site

Herrington 1979

9

Upper Mimbres

Site, Sample

Graybill 1975

17300

186

10 Middle Mimbres

Sample, 11%

Blake et al. '86

24744

360+

11 NAN Ranch survey

Site

Creel n.d.

12 Lower Mimbres/Deming Plain

Sample, 6%

Blake and Narod

n.a.

103

565430

96

1600

48

3578

62

1977 13 Grant & Luna Counties

Sample, 2%

Ackerley et al.

State Land 14 Western Sierra County State

1988 Sample, 2%

Laumbach and

Land (Black Range)

Kirkpatrick 1983

15 Rio Grande

Site

Lekson 1989

9135

208

16 Palomas Creek

Site & sample

Nelson 1986

n.a.

243

17 Cuchillo dam

Inventory

Acklen et al.

1108

20

18 Rincon Valley

Site

O'Laughlin 1985

6100(?)

74

19 Hidalgo Archaeological

Sample, 5%

DeAtley 1980

8300(?)

85(?)

Site

Findlow p.c.

n.a.

23(?)

21 SAR Animas survey

Site

McCluney 1962

n.a.

20

22 Alamo Hueco caves

Site

Lambert and

n.a.

17

23 Animas Playa and Playas Lake

Site

Formby 1986

24 Animas (Nat. Reg. nomin.)

Site

O'Laughlin et al.1984

1987

Research Project 20 Hidalgo Archaeological Research Project

Ambler 1961

115

n.a.

30

Table 3.3. Gila National Forest survey coverage by district. _______________________________________________________________ Total Surveyed Sample District Acres Acres Fraction -----------------------------------------------------2*

552,866

5,118

0.925 %

4**

427,770

9,267

2.166 %

5

463,162

3,729

0.805 %

7

405,257

8,427

2.079 %

8

259,407 1,182 0.456 % -----------------------------------------

TOTAL

2,108,462

27,723

1.315 %

_______________________________________________________________ * District 2 figures include approximately 124,160 acres (about 22% of the district) outside the study area, at the north end of the Black Range. ** District 4 figures include approximately 64,640 acres (about 15% of the district) outside the study area, in the vicinity of Saliz Pass, Spurgeon Mesa and Devil's Park -- an area which has received a high level of archaeological survey. Note:

Districts

included

in

approximately

3

and

the

study

600

acres

6,

not

area. of

the

shown

here,

District study

area.

are 3

partially

constitutes District

6

constitutes about 68,480 acres of the study area; 68,480 acres represents less than 12% of District 6 and approximately 3% of the Gila NF within the study area.

116

Table 4.1. Tree-ring dates. NAN Ranch Ruin dates published as of August 1989 (Shafer 1982, 1986, 1987, 1988; Shafer and Taylor 1986). All other dates from Bannister, Hannah, and Robinson (1970), LeBlanc and Whalen (1980), and Lekson (1990). _______________________________________________________________ Earliest Clusters, Latest Total Date r and v Date Dates -------------------------------------------------------------SU Site Pithouse Pithouse Pithouse Pithouse Pithouse Pithouse Pithouse TT-27 Pithouse

N W Z S D G Q T

415+

350+ 373+ 479+ 379+

460 477

400+ 436+ 448+ 477+ 481+ 481+ 484+ 487+ 497+

1 2 1 1 1 11 7 2 8

2 @ 736 736+ 748 755+ 17 @ 898

4 1 4 1 25

582+ 624 624 635+ 686+ 708+ 716+ 759+ 801+ 838+ 856+ 858+ 861 13 @ 877

1 2 2 1 1 1 1 1 1 2 1 1 5 30

936+ 964+ 1020+

1 3 4

Mogollon Village House House House House House

4 5B 8 1 2

728+ 712+ 786

2 @ 897 Harris Site

House 14 House 25 House 28 House 22 Rubbish Mound House 18 House 26 House 33 House 4 House 23 House 17 House 13 House 15 House 10

593+ 608+

836+ 593+ 736+ Wheaton-Smith

Room 286 Unit 37 Room 410

953+ 963+

117

Table 4.1 (continued). _______________________________________________________________ Galaz Room Room Room Room

26 1 18 29

Unit Unit Unit Unit Unit Unit Unit Unit Unit Unit Unit Unit Unit Unit Unit Unit Unit Unit Unit Unit Unit Unit Unit Unit Unit Unit Unit Unit Unit Unit Unit Unit Unit Unit Unit

286b 410 300 490 122 431 201 235 100 350 233 430 106 230 200 114 427 232 127 137 112 435 425 237 126 70 116 231 125 80 433 111 115 426 438

848+ 780+ 788+ 825+

4 @ 859, 861

2 @ 852+ 5 @ 858 866+ 893+

3 28 9 39

936+ 1020+ 1022+ 1026+ 1028+ 1041+ 1042+ 1046+ 1048+ 1048+ 1051+ 1056+ 1060+ 1067+ 1074+ 2 @ 1079 1080+ 1085+ 1087+ 1090+ 1091+ 1092+ 1095 1095 1095 1095+ 1095+ 1096+ 1097+ 1100+ 1100+ 1105+ 9 @ 1107 1109+ 2 @ 1117

1 4 3 1 1 1 1 1 1 2 2 3 1 1 3 4 4 22 6 9 1 8 1 4 23 1 6 16 9 1 36 4 42 9 9

1065+

1

966+

1

Mattocks 963+ 992

1045+ 1020+ 1020+ 1032+ 1076+ 1065 995+ 1050+ 1050+

1084

990+ 1010+ 1013+ 1045+ 978+ 1047+ 1038+ 991+ 942+ 1066+ 1078+

1089 7 @ 1079 1105, 7 @ 1106 1095 1095 Mitchell

Unit 67 Bradsby Unit 1

118

Table 4.1 (continued). ________________________________________________________________ Baca-Frost Surface

1091+

1

1104

2

McSherry Surface

1099+ NAN Ranch Ruin

Room Room Room Room Room Room Room Room Room Room Room Room Room Room Room Room Room Room

76 63 23B/63AB 18 9 85 79 11/22 29 46 25B 35/16 58 41 49 28 94 84

1066+ 1060+ 1041 2 @ 1066 1080+ 1089

1085, 4 @ 1086 1096, 1099

1103+ 2 @ 1098

2 @ 1008 1062+ 1064 1068+ 2 @ 1071 1073 1079 1087+ 1088 1088+ 1099 1099+ 1105+ 1107 1107+ 1109 1109 1128

2 1 1 2 2 1 2 2 8 2 5 1 1 1 2 1 3 1

1110 1116+

2 3

1105+

1

1100+ 1108+

1 8

NAN 15 Room 5 Room 8

1101+ 1072+ Berenda Creek

6,8 DeFausall D-19 D-16

1063+

1102 Saige-McFarland

Room 6

1126+

119

Table 4.1 (continued). _________________________________________________________________ Gila Cliff Dwellings Cave 2 Room 3 Cave 3 Room 10 Room 9 Room 10A misc. Cave 4 Room 20 Room 17 Room 18 Room 23 Cave 4 misc. Cave 5 Room A Room B Room 24 Misc.

1276

1

1284 1286 1286 2 @ 1286

1 11 2 2

1264 1270

3 @ 1283, 3 @ 1284, 1285

1259+ 1269 1283 1284+

1284 1285 2 @ 1286 1284

1284 1287 1287 2 @ 1287 1285

1 5 3 5 3

1268, 1282, 1285

1282 1285 1287 2 @ 1286

1 1 2 7

2 @ 1243

2

1239+ 1255+

Duck Creek Ruin Misc.

120

Table 4.2. Calibrated carbon-14 dates. Averaged, as indicated. AD unless specified. * indicates uncorrected corn date. _______________________________________________________________ SITE

UNIT

SAMPLE

INTERCEPT

(1 SIGMA)

All dates

CONTEXT

--------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------

Winn

PH 2, Fea 10

N-1555

393 BC

(757-135 BC)

Archaic/Early Pit House pit

383 BC

(401-208 BC)

Archaic pit structure

str. Eaton Mesa Top I

Powers

PH2, lower floor

UGA 1678

|

Extram. hearth

UGA 1674

| 130

(34-233)

Extramural hearth

134-209

(66-321)

Archaic/Early Pit House

Pit House

Early Pit House pit structure

pit str. McAnally

Pit House 8

UCLA-1953c

245

Placitas

PA8, PH5, post

TX 2619

|

PA8, PH5, post

TX 2622

|345-380

PA8, PH4, subfl.

TX 2621

|

Y:4:6 LA 29397

(134-340)

Early Pit House pit structure |

(259-408)

| Early Pit House pit structure |

409

(259-533)

Early Pit House pit structure

oven

|

pit house

| 408

(258-533)

Early Pit House pit structure

411

(262-532)

Early Pit House pit structure

Winn

PH2, roof

Mesa Top II

PH1

UGA 1676

|

Early Pit House pit structure

PH3, upper floor

UGA 1679

|

Early Pit House pit structure

Placitas

extram. hearth

UGA 1675

| 437-533

PH2, upper floor

UGA 1677

|

PA2, PH1, post

TX 2613

|

PA2, PH1, subfl.

TX 2616

| 436-533

PA2, PH1, subfl.

TX 2615

|

Double Adobe Duncan

McAnally

N-1556

Extramural hearth

UCLA 1948E

(427-556)

Extramural hearth Early Pit House pit structure |

(427-544)

| Early Pit House pit stucture |

578*

(432-645)

PH20

|

PH22

| 580-595

(442-643)

| Early Pit House pit structure

(612-665)

| Early Pit House pit structure

PH11

UCLA-1953d

|

PH11

UCLA-2153a

| 645

Unknown rock shelter |

|

121

-

Table 4.2 (continued). _______________________________________________________________

SITE

UNIT

SAMPLE

INTERCEPT

(1 SIGMA)

CONTEXT

----------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------MC 110

Fe 1, roof

MC 146

PH1, roof

Galaz

Unit 8

Black's Bluff Dark Thunder

M-2374

672

(602-864)

Three Circle pit structure

Beta-20512

672

(645-770)

Three Circle pit structure

UCLA-2153b

682

(648-798)

Georgetown pit structure

728-800

(687-938)

Three Circle pit structure

902-975

(781-997)

Mimbres (?) rock shelter

N-1554 Cave 1

HS 15

UCLA-2122f

983

(894-1017)

San Luis

UCLA-2122g

1070-1154

(1024-1209)

San Luis

1023

(984-1157)

Mimbres pit structure

Villareal II

PH1, roof

MC 146

Rm 11, subfl.

Beta-20513

1070-1154

(1024-1209)

Mimbres pueblo

Stewart Ranch

(Mimbres)

UCLA-2122b

1070-1154

(1024-1209)

Mimbres

MC 146

Rm 8, floor

Beta-20514

1212*

(1074-1260)

Mimbres (?) or El Paso (?)

UCLA-2122e

1160

(1033-1219)

Unknown rock shelter

UCLA-2122c

1219

(1160-1275)

Animas

SM-951

1223

(1030-1280)

Unknown rock shelter

1257

(1075-1280)

Mimbres extramural hearth

HS-65 Stewart Ranch

(Animas)

Bobcat Cave

N-1588

Hermanas

Feature 1

M-2373

Walsh

18

A-1942

|

10

A-1943

| 1278

(1258-1284)

1279

(1258-1285)

Animas pueblo

(1283-1412)

| Animas pueblo

Maddox

UCLA-1948a

Joyce Well

Culberson

|

ASR-776

|

ASR-2574

| 1325-1389

ASR-1657

|

| Black Mountain pueblo

| |

UCLA-2122h

1334-1403

(1311-1423)

Animas pueblo

Stailey

Rm 2

UCLA-1968a

1414

(1328-1434)

Cliff pueblo

Stewart Ranch

(Animas)

UCLA-2212a

1426

(1335-1442)

Animas pueblo

122

Table 4.3. Archaeomagnetic dates. _______________________________________________________________ PROVENIENCE DATE ANALYST ---------------------------------------------------------------Room 1

MC-110 (3) 760 +/- 34

NAN Ranch Ruin (6) Room 52 840 +/- 20 Feature 87-5, Burial 175 850 (+/- ?) Small room block

Powers Ranch (7) 930 +/- 45

Unspecified pithouse

Lee Village (4) 950 (+/- ?)

Feature 11 Feature 11 Feature 6 Feature 4 Feature 7 410-5s-6H 286-7f-10h 286-4-9R

DuBois Sternberg (6) Eighmy (2) U of Az DuBois

Riverside (3) 1155 +/- 24 1175 +/- 23

DuBois DuBois

Berenda Creek (5) 1180 (+/-?) 1190 (+/-?) 1215 +/- 27

DuBois DuBois DuBois

Mattocks (1) 1172 +/- 40 1252 +/- 20 1386 +/- 20

123

U of Az U of Az U of Az

Table 4.3 (continued). _______________________________________________________________ Room 18, lower hearth Room Room Room Room Room

18, 18, 10, 10, 10,

middle hearth upper hearth lower hearth middle hearth upper hearth

Walsh (1) 1110 +/- 30 or 1366 +/- 30 1232 +/- 40 1270 +/- 60 1250 +/- 23 1255 +/- 20 1270 +/- 20 Janss (1) 1350 +/- 13 or 1277 +/- 13 1310-1480

Room 2-5-4 Room 31-7-7h

Staily (1) 1260-1445 1325-1435 Disert (1) 1325-1430

Room 2-4-10h Room 10-3-12h Room 401-1f-9h House 2, Room 26 House 2, Room 9

Dinwiddie (1) 1330 +/- 13 1240-1355

U of Az U U U U U

of of of of of

Az Az Az Az Az

Wolfman Wolfman Wolfman Wolfman Eighmy Eighmy Eighmy

--------------------------------------------------------------1. 2. 3. 4. 5. 6. 7.

Nelson and LeBlanc 1986: Table 5.1 Shafer 1988: 22 Fitting et al. 1982: 59, 76 Bussey 1975: 17 Gomolak and Ford 1976: 129 Shafer and Taylor 1986: 50 Shaw and Bernard-Shaw 1986: 195; C. Shaw, personal communication, 1989

124

Table 4.4. ARMS site-components in southwestern New Mexico, as percentages of total number of components. ______________________________________________________________ PERCENTAGE OF COMPONENTS Early Pit House

2.8

Late Pit House

14.8

Mimbres

64.5

Reserve

0.3

Black Mountain/El Paso

12.4

Tularosa

0.6

Animas

0.7

Salado

3.9 ------1065

TOTAL COMPONENTS

125

Table 4.5.

Ceramic assemblages of southwestern New Mexico.

ASSEMBLAGE

DECORATED CERAMICS

Early Pit House Late Pit House R/Br

No decorated ceramics (0-5% Redware, 95-100% Alma series) 0-5% Boldface (Style I) B/W 95-100% Mogollon R/Br

R/Br & R/W

0-5% Boldface (Style I) B/W, 20-50% Three Circle R/W, 20-50% Mogollon R/Br

R/Br, R/W, B/W

80-90% boldface (Style I) B/W, 0-10% Three Circle R/W, 0-10% Mogollon R/Br

Pit House-Mimbres (multicomponent) Pit House Period types (Mogollon R/Br, Three Circle R/W, Boldface (Style I) B/W) and Mimbres phase types (Transitional (Style II) B/W, Classic (Style III B/W), various proportions Pit House-Reserve (multicomponent) Pit House Period types (Mogollon R/Br, Three Circle R/W, Boldface (Style I) B/W), Reserve B/W Mimbres Phase I,II, II, B/W (Mangas Phase?) III,

0-5% Boldface (Style I) B/W, 60-65% Transitional (Style I-II, II) B/W, 30-35% Classic (Style IIIII) B/W

III B/W

0-5% Boldface (Style I) B/W, 0-5% Transitional (Style I-II, II), 95-100% Classic (Style II-III, III)

Mimbres-Early El Paso Phases (multicomponent) Pit House- Mimbres and Mimbres phase ceramics, and Early El Paso phase types. Mimbres phase types predominant. Reserve phase

Reserve B/W

Early El Paso & Black Mountain phases Early El Paso Polychrome, Chupadero B/W Mimbres-Salado (multicomponent) Mimbres phase and Salado series types (see below); very rarely, Pit House period types. Various proportions, with Salado series predominant Tularosa

Tularosa B/W, St Johns Polychrome

Magdalena (?)

affinis Magdalena B/W, late El Paso types

Late El Paso/Salado

Late El Paso Polychrome, St Johns Polychrome, Salado and Chihuahua polychromes

Animas phase

Chihuahua and Salado polychromes, Late El Paso Polychrome

126

Table 4.6. Surface archaeology in the Transitional Zone expressed percentage of room count totals for each survey. _______________________________________________________________

RG

MIM

MIM

GCD

ARN

CLI

UGW

as

RR

SF

----------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------Late Archaic

+

+

Early Pit House

0.7

4.5

Late Pit House

6.7*

+

-

4.6*

4.3

8.0

5.2

+ -

-

-

4.9

7.6**

-

-

-

R/Br

-

-

-

-

-

-

4.1

-

-

R/Br & R/W

0.9

-

-

-

-

-

-

-

-

R/Br, R/W, I B/W

3.0

2.0

-

-

-

3.0

-

5.2

Pit House - Mimbres

9.9

13.9

7.7

48.1

Pit House - Reserve

-

-

-

33.7

-

-

-

-

4.6

-

-

65.4

Mimbres I, II & III B/W III B/W

20.0

13.7**

+

79.4

-

34.0

43.5

33.3

-

-

-

-

-

-

-

-

7.6

6.4

5.0

-

-

-

19.8

53.8 -

21.5

14.7

6.0

18.6

-

Reserve

-

-

-

-

-

-

-

-

65.4

PH - Mim - El Paso/Blk Mtn

-

20.9

-

-

-

-

-

-

-

Mimbres - El Paso/Blk Mtn

35.1

2.7

-

-

-

-

-

-

-

El Paso/Blk Mtn

15.8

18.1

-

-

-

-

-

-

-

Tularosa

-

-

-

15.7

-

-

-

-

-

Mimbres - Salado

-

-

-

-

-

7.1

35.8

2.4

-

Late El Paso/Salado

9.6

4.2

-

-

-

4.6

2.7

15.5

-

Unknown/Unassigned

5.0

-

1.9

-

-

8.4

3.7

-

-

-----------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------TOTAL ROOM

* **

1505

5034

1305

316

Room count estimate = N sites x 10 Room count estimate = N sites x 25

127

571

3340

874

1291

136+

Table 4.7. Percentage distribution of Mimbres architectural sites by size class. Includes Mimbres, Mimbres multicomponent, and unknown/unassigned (generally one- and two-room units). _______________________________________________________________

SITE SIZE CLASS (number of rooms)

TOTAL 1-10 11-50 51-100 100+ SITES ---------------------------------------------------------------Rio Grande

77.1

18.1

2.7

2.0

110

Black Range

96.5

3.5

-

-

29

Mimbres Valley

66.5

25.2

4.9

3.4

206

Upper Mimbres

75.9

22.6

-

1.5

137

Rio Arenas

76.3

19.9

-

3.6

55

Cliff Dwelling

80.0

10.0

-

10.0

10

Cliff Valley

65.8

25.2

4.8

4.3

187

UGWSSII

79.5

17.9

2.6

-

39

25.8

-

6.4

31

Redrock Valley

67.8

128

Table 4.8. Percentage distribution of Mimbres rooms by size class. Includes Mimbres, Mimbres multicomponent, and unknown/unassigned (generally one- and two-room units). _______________________________________________________________ SITE SIZE CLASS (number of rooms)

TOTAL 1-10 11-50 51-100 100+ ROOMS --------------------------------------------------------------Rio Grande

23.8

36.8

Black Range

76.5

23.5

Mimbres Valley

13.3

33.0

Upper Mimbres

31.5

50.1

Rio Arenas

23.9

Cliff Dwelling

17.8 -

-

1130 70

31.6

3010

-

18.4

1305

39.2

-

18.4

680

11.8

6.4

-

81.1

253

Cliff Valley

12.9

33.7

20.7

32.7

2540

UGWSSII

31.6

28.9

9.4

30.1

265

20.1

-

67.6

957

Redrock Valley

12.3

129

22.1

21.6

Table 4.9. Data and estimates used in simulation. _______________________________________________________________

PIT HOUSE MIMBRES -----------------------------------------------------------DATA(1) Total rooms 1214 4619 Years in period 300 150

MODEL(2) # of structures Beginning Ending Cumulative Annual growth rate Years in span # of spans

60 150* 1210

600* 940 4560

0.3%

0.3%

25 12

30 5

---------------------------------------------------------------(1) From Blake, LeBlanc, and Minnis 1986: Table 5; excludes sites outside Mimbres valley (i.e. sites in mountain parks and side canyons.) (2) Values used in simulation model and cumulative totals of pit structure and above-ground room counts generated by model. Annual growth rate from Blake, LeBlanc, and Minnis 1986. *1 pit structure = 4 above-ground pueblo rooms (see text).

130

Table 4.10. Late Pit House site sizes. _______________________________________________________________ NUMBER OF PIT STRUCTURES 1-9 10-24 25-49 50-124 TOTAL --------------------------------------------------------------Simulation (avg. 10 runs)

34

4

7

10

55

Mimbres*

23

12

7

9

51

--------------------------------------------------------------* Blake, LeBlanc, and Minnis 1986: Table 5, give the total projected number of Late Pit House sites as 51. In Table 14, however, this total is 138; it is not entirely clear to what this "estimated sites" refers. The data, discussed below, indicate that the total in Table 5 is correct. Site size distribution data from Blake et al. 1986, Table 14 are therefore normalized to a total of 51. Raw data provided by Blake indicate 22-27 Late Pit House sites actually recorded, which agrees with the total given in Blake et. al 1986. If the size distribution of these sites is normalized to a total of 51, the array is almost precisely that given for the Mimbres above.

131

132

133

134

135

136

137

138

139

140

141