ARCHAIC LANDSCAPES IN NORTHERN NEW MEXICO: A GEOARCHAEOLOGICAL APPROACH

In northern New Mexico, there has been significant work focused on environmental strategies among the agricultural communities of the Pueblo peoples, but far less is understood about the environmental impacts and challenges faced by the various communities that preceded them. In this region, fragile landscapes are experiencing heightened erosion due to a combination of modern natural and anthropogenic factors, revealing buried soil sequences that capture environmental change and human use of the landscape during the Archaic period. The specific study site of this project lies between two freshwater springs feeding wet meadows and small perennial drainages along the Cañada Corral, on the historical trade route between the villages of Dixon and Velarde. We collected sediment sequences from buried soil sequences within this landscape, and here we present a range of preliminary geoarchaeological, paleobotanical, and isotopic techniques from two sediment sequences that have been dated to the Mid to Late Holocene. These sediment sequences also contain archaeological features that date to these earliest occupations in the region. Our goal is to quantify shifting hydroclimate regimes and document human land use strategies and environmental response to during these early occupation areas in the Upper Rio Grande watershed. From these data, we will be able to address the interpretive problems of modeling change over the Holocene and reconstruct the driving cultural and environmental factors that surround human decision-making about their landscape in the face of climatic stress.