PLAYAS AND PEOPLE: EXAMINING RELATIONSHIPS BETWEEN WATER AVAILABILITY AND CULTURAL BEHAVIOR IN THE TULAROSA BASIN, NEW MEXICO

In the Tularosa Basin, New Mexico, playas have been identified as being significant landforms for a number of reasons. First, playas are culturally significant because they are the only appreciable source of available surface water throughout the basin floor. Secondly, they represent a small number of exposed sediments containing sufficient clay content to permit cohesion for puddled adobe used in construction of habitation and in manufacturing ceramics during the latter part of the prehistoric period (i.e. the Formative period spanning from 1850 to 500 B.P.). Finally, playas are significant in that they can contain fine-grained laminated sediments capable of preserving a variety of types of climatic and biotic data that can provide us with clues to past environmental conditions. Here I present a geoarchaeological assessment of Buried Lake, an excavated paleo-lake/playa, and the surrounding archaeological and geomorphological region identified as Training Area 11 which is located in the northern portion of McGregor Range, Fort Bliss. This lake dates to the transitional period between the Late Pleistocene and Early Holocene periods (ca. 10,000 B.P.) and the beginning of the Paleo-Indian cultural occupation. This geomorphological site along with archaeological and geomorphological data gathered from the surrounding region yield the potential to provide insight on the natural and cultural interactions over the past 10,000 years.

The principle objective of this investigation is to examine how the availability of surface water of regional playas determined site settlement and affected culture change through time. I will present how methods such as chronometrics, palynology, stable carbon isotope analysis, and diatom analysis, were used to reconstruct the paleoenvironment at Buried Lake. I will also discuss what environmental changes at this locale can infer about prehistoric cultural responses to the changing environment near Buried Lake. By analyzing these archaeological site patterns to playa locations surrounding Buried Lake, this study reveals data gaps between geomorphological and archaeological records and targets future research to ultimately improve the knowledge of site distribution and influences of cultural change in the basin setting of the Jornada Mogollon region throughout prehistory.