Att_11_-_Research_Design_PaleoWest_2013_Final.pdf

NAVAJO-GALLUP WATER SU PPLY PROJECT

ARCHAEOLOGICAL RESEARCH AND SAMPLING DESIGN

Prepared by:

James M. Potter Dennis Gilpin

Jason P. Chuipka

With contributions by:

Nancy Akins

Kirk Anderson Eric Blinman Pam McBride James Moore Scott Ortman Mark Varien Dean Wilson

Prepared for:

Bureau of Reclamation, Western Colorado Area Office, Durango Field Office

Technical Report 12-06

PaleoWest Archaeology 115 West Main Street

Farmington, New Mexico 87401

January 10, 2013 ii

TABLE OF CONTENTS

Introduction Research Themes

The Cultural Landscape The Natural Environment Constructed Places and the Built Environment

Movement Identification Causes Effects

Identity Native American Perspectives and Participation

Data Domains Paleoenvironments Chronologies Subsistence

Subsistence Mix Human Impacts on Environment Cuisine and Feasting

Settlement, Household, and Community Organization Settlement Patterns Household Composition Community Organization

Occupation Durations and Momentary Population Estimates Artifact and Ecofact Distributions Ritual Behaviors The Built Environment Indigenous Archaeology

Period-Specific Research Class I Results and Estimates of Site Density and Site Types Paleoindian

Landscape Identity Movement Indigenous Perspectives

Archaic Landscape and Movement Identity Indigenous Perspectives

Basketmaker II Landscape Identity Movement Indigenous Perspectives

Basketmaker III iii

Movement Landscape Identity Indigenous Perspectives

Pueblo I Movement Landscape Identity Indigenous Perspectives

Pueblo II Identity Landscape Movement Indigenous Perspectives

Gallina Landscape Movement Identity Indigenous Perspectives

Pueblo III Landscape Movement and Identity Indigenous Perspectives

Pueblo IV Protohistoric

Research Issues Historical Archaeology: The Archaeology of the Reservation Period

Chronology Previous Research Research Questions Historical Overview Ethnographic Study Archaeology

Traditional Cultural Properties and Sacred Sites Global Climate Change and the NGWSP

Conclusion References Cited Appendix A: Past Projects ......................................................................................................... A-1 Appendix B: NGWSP Sampling Design ................................................................................... B-1 Appendix C: NGWSP Data Recovery Methods Manual ........................................................... C-1 Appendix D: Analysis Methods ................................................................................................. D-1 Appendix E: Previous Excavation Projects ................................................................................ E-1 Appendix F: Class III Inventory Methods Field Manual ............................................................ F-1 iv

LIST OF FIGURES

Figure 1. Project location map Figure 2. Map of most likely travel routes through the San Juan Basin Figure 3. Distribution of Archaic and Basketmaker II sites Figure 4. Distribution of Basketmaker II transition and Basketmaker III sites Figure 5. Geographic distribution of dominant whiteware at Chacoan sites Figure 6. Basketmaker II settlement groups Figure 7. Map of the Chaco Regional System and the NGWSP project area

LIST OF TABLES

Table 1. Estimated Site Density and Site Frequency per Reach Table 2. Distribution of Site Types by Reach in Class I Database Table 3. Distribution of Components in Class I Database Table 4. Estimated Site Frequency by Cultural-Historical Class Table 5. Prehistoric Site Distributions by Time Period Table 6. Distribution of Formative Sites by Pecos Classification and Site Type Table 7. Estimated Distribution of Formative Sites by Pecos Classification and Site Type Table 8. Distribution of Navajo Sites by Time Period and Site Type Table 9. Distribution of Navajo Sites by Time Period and Site Type Table 10. Summary of Excavations at Reservation Period Sites in the San Juan Basin Table 11. Summary of Excavations at Reservation Period Sites on the Manuelito Plateau

INTRODUCTION

If one had the luxury of devising a 270-mile-long, linear sample of the northern San Juan Basin with the explicit goal of addressing some of the most important questions regarding the prehistoric and historic past of the northern American Southwest, the proposed locations of the Navajo-Gallup Water Supply Project (NGWSP, or the Project) line reaches might very closely approximate this sample. Along the western San Juan Basin in New Mexico, the Project extends from near Farmington to points south and east of Gallup, and along the eastern edge of the basin, it extends from Cutter Reservoir to near the southwestern corner of the Jicarilla Reservation.

Because of the way the Project samples the San Juan Basin, data recovered as part of the Project will provide crucial information on environmental and cultural variation across the basin, from the Paleoindian through the Historic periods (about 12,000 years). Most importantly, the Project will require investigation of archaeological sites in areas immediately north, south, east, and west of (a kind of “halo” around) Chaco Canyon (Figure 1), providing an unprecedented sample of sites around the periphery of the canyon.

The San Juan Geologic Basin (referred here as simply the San Juan Basin) encompasses 12,000 square miles. It is bounded on the west by the Chuska Mountains, on the east by the Jemez Mountains, on the north by the La Plata Mountains, and on the south by the Zuni and San Mateo Mountains, and includes parts of the Rio Grande and San Juan River watersheds. It is a unique landscape in that it is characterized by a semiarid climate, but is ringed by mountains that provide high elevation resources such as timber and large game, as well as higher rainfall and relatively dense vegetation. The San Juan Basin was particularly important for Archaic hunter-gatherers and early farmers and is an area that has the potential to yield unprecedented data on the transition from hunting and gathering to a farming lifeway. It was of course also an important landscape for the development of complex Prehispanic pueblo cultures, including the Chaco regional system. These developments did not occur in a vacuum, however; there was interaction and population movement between adjacent areas, such as the Mesa Verde Region, the Middle San Juan region, the Cibola region and, importantly for this project since much of the Project extends through it, the Chuska Valley along the eastern slopes of the Chuska Mountains. The basin is also an important part of the homeland for the Navajo people and was integral in the history of Navajo culture.

The San Juan Basin has drawn attention from archaeologists since the first reports of Lt. J. H. Simpson in 1849, regarding the ruins of Chaco Canyon. Since that time, thousands of archaeological investigations have been conducted by universities, museums, federal, state, and tribal agencies, and professional cultural resource management firms (see Appendix A). A major surge of archaeological data from the region in the past 50 years is mostly attributable to the historic preservation legislation enacted in the late 1960s. Given that the San Juan Basin is a major focus of natural resource extraction, compliance with these laws has entailed a number of survey and excavation projects. Additional work has been completed for infrastructure associated with development such as roads, reservoirs, transmission lines, and the expansion of modern settlements.

Research in the San Juan Basin has followed, and also influenced, many of the larger theoretical trends in American archaeology. In the 1960s, the region became a testing ground for many of

Figure 1. Project location map.

the concepts of the New Archaeology. The cultural ecology approach favored during this period resulted in paleoenvironment and subsistence being the major focus of many investigations.

These cultural-ecological data were used to formulate models that sought to explain how and why prehistoric settlement changed over time. Since the 1990s and the mandates of the Native American Graves Protection and Repatriation Act (NAGPRA), more attention has been paid to issues of cultural affiliation, identification of traditional cultural properties, and ethnohistory.

More recent studies have included consideration of how the natural and built environments are conceptualized today and may have been in the past. This research has also begun to acknowledge that people of the past (like today) were not entirely driven by optimization of economy, but sometimes did things for social and ideological reasons as well.

This research design is an attempt to guide research such that all of the important developments, interactions, and movements of people are captured in the archaeological record recovered as part of the NGWSP. The research design will provide a framework for survey, testing, and data recovery efforts for the entire project. Pedestrian survey is primarily governed by land-owner statutes; the Navajo Nation and the Bureau of Land Management have their own recording standards and definition for a site, for example. To facilitate the recording of sites in a consistent manner across the project area and in a way that supports the goals of the research design, PaleoWest has developed survey methods that adhere to and surpass these land status–specific methods.

The following outlines the basic research themes that will structure the long-term research efforts of the Project. Four interrelated research themes have been identified for the Project.

Cultural Landscape: the natural and built environment and how it structured past social, symbolic, and economic behaviors.

Movement: population movements and the social reorganization(s) they fueled.

Identity: how individuals and groups negotiated various aspects of social identity within the context of the social and natural environment.

Native American Perspectives and Participation: how descendant communities view the Project archaeology in terms of landscape, movement, and identity.

These themes were chosen for their relevance to current archaeological research in the Prehispanic Southwest, their potential for increasing our understanding of many of the processes underlying the history of the San Juan Basin, and their explicit significance to descendant communities (e.g., Adler and Bruning 2008; Colwell-Chanthaphonh and Ferguson 2008; Naranjo 1995; Price and Morrow 2006; Sheehan and Lilley 2008; Zimmerman 2008).

Each of these theoretically bound issues will be informed by data recovered as part of eight primary data domains: 1) paleoenvironments, 2) chronologies, 3) subsistence, 4) settlement, household, and community organization, 5) occupation durations and momentary population estimates, 6) artifact and ecofact distributions, 7) ritual behaviors, 8) the built environment (e.g., architectural variation and the form and distribution of high-status and/or communal architecture), and 9) indigenous archaeology. The four research themes are briefly discussed below, followed by strategies for targeting data related to the nine data domains. This is followed by a presentation of period-specific research that will be conducted as part of the NGWSP.

This document concludes with six appendices. Appendix A outlines a representative sample of past archaeological projects conducted along the NGWSP area and in the greater San Juan Basin.

The project sampling design for excavations and excavation methods manual are Appendices B and C, respectively. These will be employed in the field to recover data to both fulfill compliance obligations and address the issues raised in the research design. Appendix D contains laboratory analysis methodologies and research questions that are specific to particular artifact/ecofact classes. Appendix E is an extensive (if not comprehensive) list to date of excavated sites in the San Juan Basin and references for these excavations. And Appendix F is the survey methods manual for the project.

RESEARCH THEMES

The four interrelated research themes of landscape, movement, identity, and Native perspectives are each structured by several sub-themes. These themes are outlined here and followed by discussions of the domains that will guide data collection and analysis.

The Cultural Landscape The cultural landscape comprises both the natural environment—its features and its resources— and the built environment (constructed places). Landscape and the natural and cultural resources composing it both constrain and enable human action. It is perceived, experienced, contextualized, and given meaning by people and their actions. The cultural landscape is therefore created by human activity and structured by the distribution of resources on the land and the cultural perceptions of human relationships to those resources (Anschuetz et al. 2001;

Ashmore and Knapp 1999; Potter 2004).

The Natural Environment One important element of the cultural landscape is the natural environment. Cordell (1997:31) notes that compared with many areas of the world, “the environmental constraints of the Southwest are relatively harsh.” She points out the general lack of moisture and its effect on the abundance of vegetation, game, and areas suitable for agriculture, as well as the short growing season and poorly developed soils throughout the region.

The natural environment and its “harsh” attributes have figured prominently in Southwestern archaeology since the advent of the New Archaeology in the 1960s and its emphasis on dendroclimatology. Archaeology done within this ecology-driven paradigm in Southwestern archaeology—what Lekson (2008:147) terms “Anasazi Cyber-Ecology”—explained everything from mobility and subsistence mix to the construction of social alliances as behavioral adaptations to environmental variables, usually climatic changes (see, for example, Euler et al.

1979; Gumerman 1988). Lekson (2008:148) refers to this climate-centric model in the Southwest as the “fungus model”: sprinkle the right amount of moisture on the right kind of soil and up pops a pueblo. Dry it out and the pueblo vanishes.

Although the cultural-ecological approach was never as simplistic as the Lekson quip would suggest (consider, for example, Hack’s [1942] and Bradfield’s [1971] documentation of the ingenious and complex Hopi farming practices), the post-processual critique countered over-simplification that did exist in focusing on human–environment relations, beginning in the 1980s and hitting its paradigmatic stride in the 1990s. Moreover, the passing of NAGPRA in 1990 forced archaeologists to consider the cultural affiliation of sites. As a result, the social processes of migration and diffusion became the favored explanations of variation in the material record, rather than in situ adaptational responses to changing environmental conditions. Expunging the notion of environmental “adaptation” (the tautological proposition that past peoples rarely had choices, particularly in harsh climates) was a welcome shift in the discipline. But as a result of the pendulum swinging away from “Cyber-Ecology,” models incorporating the natural environment—its resources and the fundamental role it played in the choices people did make— also diminished in importance. By 2000, this trend had pervaded most of the discipline, not just Southwestern archeology. As Varien and Potter (2008:11) note:

The post-processual critique viewed adaptationist-social-evolutionary theory as focusing virtually exclusively on exogenous factors as the source of culture change. The post-processual critique was justified, but it has led to the near exclusion of ecology (and cognitive ecology) by social theorists as they theorize about social change. (Shennan 1993:58)

From our perspective, this is unfortunate. One stratagem to rectify this trend is to invoke theory that does not rely on notions of adaptation to environmental stresses to explain culture change, but also doesn’t deny the importance of the natural environment in explanations of the past.

Notions of the cultural landscape—as “networks of natural and constructed places perceived and made meaningful by particular human communities” (Fowles 2010:455)—are useful in accounting for the effects of natural resources in structuring decision-making and action in the past. Moreover, natural resources are fundamental not just to the construction of meaningful places but also in the construction of social power. “Natural resources are an integral part of the structure that strategic actors draw upon as they exhibit their agency” (Varien and Potter 2008:11). In this sense, the conception of the role of resources differs from Cordell’s, which views the natural environment—particularly in the Southwest—as a suite of “constraints” on behavior (Cordell 1997:31). In contrast, resources are here also viewed as “enablers” that facilitate social action. Integrating notions of the cultural landscape with an acknowledgement of the importance of natural resources in the realm of social action brings us closer to understanding how these resources were perceived and access to them (including their meaning[s]) structured.

The natural resources aspect of the cultural landscape described here parallels Ashmore and Knapp’s (1999) idea of the conceptualized landscape, which is characterized by “powerful religious, artistic, or other cultural meanings invested in natural features rather than in material culture or monuments” (Ashmore and Knapp 1999:11). Conceptualized landscapes often take shape through assigning meaningful names to places on the land and linking them with significant deities, stories, or past events. Here we include not just topographic features but also areas containing important natural resources—hunting grounds, distant forests, lithic quarries, marshes, agricultural soils, etc.—as these were undoubtedly conceptualized as meaningful and important places by the people who used them, and who structured experience on, and perception and meaning of, the landscape. This was not done in isolation, however, but rather through interaction and integration with another aspect of the cultural landscape, the built environment.

Constructed Places and the Built Environment While natural resources, including notable land formations and features, were important in the foundation of cultural landscapes, at least by the Basketmaker III period (A.D. 600) (and perhaps earlier) the built environment became increasingly important in processes of constructing social memory, identity, social differentiation, and history. Importantly, the built environment is much more malleable and adaptable than natural resources to the political and symbolic needs of the agent. “Hills and horizons may be permanent—from the brief perspective of a human life—but the built environment is much more changeable” (Snead 2008:155).

Constructed landscapes involve the building of culturally meaningful features on the land, often in the vicinity of notable natural landmarks (Lekson 1996). Constructed landscapes, for example the Chacoan landscape, often have a formal "ideological" structure to them and operate as built environments that both constrain and enable social action. In this way, constructed places, including houses, villages, towers, fields, great houses, and great kivas (and the roads and trails that connected these places), confer meaning on the social interactions associated with places.

Further, like natural resources, they can be a resource that agents actively draw upon as they exhibit their agency and as such are an active element in the construction, enhancement, and legitimization of social power, social differentiation, and social change (Van Dyke 2004). This notion of the active landscape (rather than a passive backdrop) parallels Giddens’(1979:206–

207) theorization of locale as “the setting of interaction…routinely drawn upon by social actors in the sustaining of communication” (see Potter and Yoder 2008).

Van Dyke’s (2007, 2009) analysis of the relationships among human perception, Chacoan architecture, and the varied landforms of the Colorado Plateau is a good example of how constructed places and natural features composed a unified cultural landscape. In her view, the Chacoan polity was headed by elites whose power derived largely from their control over an elaborate ritual landscape. She argues, in particular, that (McElmo style) monumental architectural was designed and used by elites to legitimize political power by referencing a past (see Wills [2009] for an alternate view). “This leads her to consider the manner in which monuments in the landscape would have consciously indexed prior world orders, transforming taken-for-granted worldviews into overt political ideologies” (Fowles 2010:463).

As discussed, planned architecture on a monumental scale can be an important, and highly visible and politically and symbolically charged, facet of the constructed landscape; it facilitates a social memory of an imagined past and is a tangible narrative that describes historical knowledge. It is important to recognize that residential architecture is another important element of the cultural landscape. Residential architecture, from the single-family house to the large pueblo, is socially produced and results in a built environment that reflects cultural schemas and ideologies through design, construction, and intended use (Hegmon 1989; Ryan 2008:70).

Architecture reinforces cultural identities spatially by creating bonded settings for social interaction and symbolically by utilizing a particular construction style. It promotes the persistence and repetition of activities by fixing them in space and providing a context for these actions. Buildings and settlements as the locations of activities become an integral part of the cultural landscape and they are also containers for memories of important events that happened there (Potter 2002; Ryan 2008).

Landscapes, then, operate and structure experience at a variety of scales, from “the geography closest-in” (Rich 1984) in the context of a house, to a mountainscape far-off on the horizon (Potter 2004:325). This scalar aspect of landscape manifests itself quite apparently in the built environment of Chaco. Chacoan great houses, like Mormon temples and Mesopotamian temples, appear to be metaphorical extensions of the domestic house writ large, mapping onto a domain of human experience rooted in daily practice. In the Chacoan case, the built environment of the great house has been interpreted as making the reference "community as household" (Ortman 1998).

For the NGWSP, then, we recognize explicitly that ancient communities in the San Juan Basin were strongly associated with places—loci of lived experience and social construction, where people made a concrete living and developed experiential understandings of nature (Ortman 2008:126; Varien and Potter 2008). These places were situated within a larger conceptualized and constructed landscape—comprising both natural and cultural resources—that structured social action and provided resources for political action. As Snead (2008:157) notes, “placemaking is less a consensual activity and more a political strategy for establishing historical precedent with sacred overtones.” Effort then will be directed not only toward recreating the structure of landscapes as the context for social action, but also in the pursuit of archaeological evidence for “the conscious manipulation of ideas of place” (Snead 2008:158).

Moreover, Native American perspectives will be imperative on this project to effectively address issues related to the cultural landscape. There is now widespread recognition of the importance of collaboration with Native groups and the use of native knowledge to find meaning in the past, as well as to explore how and why meanings change, particularly with regards to the meaning of landscape features (Sheehan and Lilley 2008). This use of the direct historical approach is what Cajete (2000, quoted in Fowles 2010:464) refers to as “native science.” The goal on the NGWSP will be to incorporate this knowledge, when available and appropriate, into a comprehensive approach to the environment (natural and built) such that “ecological or systemic analyses [are linked] with more humanistic lines of inquiry, rather than privileging one over the other” (Fowles 2010:464). As one example, Dongoske (2005) incorporated a landscape perspective in investigating Zuni use of the Fort Wingate Military Depot Activity east of Gallup.

Movement Movement includes long-distance mobility patterns of foragers (seasonal rounds), short-distance mobility patterns of foragers and collectors (logistic mobility), and short-distance (residential) and long-distance (migration) moves by farmers. The discussion here pertains to the latter, as it most closely relates to the other research themes of this research design. Forager mobility patterns are discussed in more detail in the relevant sections of the culture history.

In the last few decades, large-scale population movement and its role in identity construction, social interaction at a regional level, and community reorganization has become an important research theme in Southwestern archaeology (Bernardini 1998, 2005a; Duff 1998, 2002; Kohler et al. 2010; Lipe 2010; Lyons 2003; Mills 1998; Ortman 2010; Potter 2010; Spielmann 1998;

Wilshusen and Ortman 1999; Wilshusen and Van Dyke 2006). This shift in interest, spurred by legal requirements to consult with affiliated Native groups, grew equally out of an appreciation that communities did not “evolve” in isolation, cut off demographically from adjacent and even distant areas. Most significant, perhaps, was the recognition that large-scale migrations truly occurred in the past and that they had dramatic effects on every aspect of community life. It is estimated that the average prehistoric Southwesterner likely migrated at least once in his or her lifetime, and would have been aware of the movements of his or her parents and grandparents through oral traditions (Bernardini 2005b:36; Naranjo 1995).

Identification Before the social effects of a group migration can be measured, the migration must be identified.

Large demographic shifts that exceed expected changes due to local increases in mortality or birth rates are a first step in documenting population movements. In addition to population influx and corresponding declines in other areas, identifying sites that closely resemble those of the source area can also be considered evidence of a migrant community. The “site unit intrusion” (Rouse 1958) is a relatively rare documented occurrence archaeologically and ethnographically (Cordell 1997:405). Point of Pines (Haury 1934:6) and Mummy Cave (Cordell 1995; Morris 1938) are two of the best-known cases in the Southwest. Roney (1995) has argued that Prieta Vista on the Rio Puerco of the East reflects this kind of immigration from Mesa Verde in the early 1200s, and that Gallina Springs and three sites on the Palomas drainage represent post- 1300 site unit intrusions from the Mesa Verde area into areas already occupied (see also Lekson et al. 2002). The late 1200s occupation of Guadalupe Ruin in the middle Puerco Valley exhibits several Mesa Verde elements, including bowls and mugs decorated in the Mesa Verde Black-on-white style and south-oriented kivas with benches and pilasters, and may represent another example of site unit intrusion (Lipe 2010; Pippin 1987). Interestingly, all of these sites are located well east (and often south) of the San Juan Basin, the location of the NGWSP. Within the San Juan Basin, a number of sites have been identified as Mesa Verdean, including CGP-54-1 and CGP56-OL on the Coal Gasification Project (CGP) (Reher 1977:79, Figures 2.37 and 2.38), Shash Hááyahi at Tocito (Gilpin et al. 1996:8, Figure 13), Crumbled House (Marshall et al.

1979), Mesa Tierra (Marshall et al. 1979), Raton Well (Wait 1983:182–184, Figure 43), and late Chacra Mesa sites. But a synthesis of this evidence for migration has never been compiled. The NGWSP presents a unique opportunity to revisit the possibility of migrant groups from the Mesa Verde area. In addition to these late migrations, there are documented early migrations from the Mesa Verde area to the San Juan Basin (Wilshusen and Van Dyke 2006) and migrations out of the San Juan Basin (e.g., Clark and Reed 2011; Lipe 2006; Reed 2011a). The NGWSP will contribute additional data points for these episodes and help refine the demographic history of the San Juan Basin.

Long-distance migration is typically a multi-stage process that takes place over a period of time, rather than a discrete event, and can include return migration, migration streams, and “leapfrogging” (Anthony 1990; Arakawa 2006; Arakawa et al. 2011; Cameron 1995; Cameron and Duff 2008; Duff 1998; Ortman 2009), as well as serial migration (Bernardini 2005b). A common pattern of migration in the ethnographic literature is for family groups to follow separate migration paths, integrating themselves into established communities where they have ties of kinship or trade partnerships (Cordell 1997:405). “People generally have detailed knowledge about the places to which they choose to relocate, and they usually move to places where they have existing relationships” (Duff and Wilshusen 2000:169). Archaeologically this form of migration would be visible as a regional increase in population, the presence of items from the recipient area, and similarities of ceramic styles between donor and recipient areas that predate abandonment and migration (Roney 1995). Return migration by early immigrants, as an early stage in the development of later migration streams between two regions, may be evident in homelands, most noticeably in sourced lithic materials (Arakawa et al. 2011).

Characteristics of the built environment may also be used to identify the movement of people from donor to recipient areas. Ortman (2008) documents similarities in the cultural landscapes between Castle Rock Pueblo, a late 1200s village in southwestern Colorado, and the landscape of Ohkay Owingeh (San Juan Pueblo) along the Rio Grande in New Mexico. In both landscapes the village is placed at the center from which a series of shrines, low hills, and finally, mountains radiate outward toward the cardinal points (Ortiz 1969:18–25; Ortman 2008:138). Ortman (2008:138) suggests that the close parallels in the shrine systems surrounding Ohkay Owinge and Castle Pock Pueblo “makes a strong case that the schemas, discourses, and practices attached to the Castle Rock system are directly ancestral to those maintained by historic Tewas.”

Architectural style and attributes have also been used to infer migratory connections between distant areas or the sudden influx of immigrants to an area. Ortman (2010), for example, has pointed out that the “bowl shape” of Yucca House, one of the latest occupied villages in southwestern Colorado, and its associated rectilinear plaza-enclosure indicate the site as being an ancestral Tewa village. Wills (2009) postulates, based on the disjuncture of styles between Classic- and McElmo-style architecture in Chaco Canyon, and other lines of evidence, that immigrants from north of Chaco moved into the canyon in the twelfth century A.D. and established residences in and among older Classic-style great houses and surrounding domestic structures (contra Van Dyke 2009).

Rock art and compositional analyses have allowed Bernardini (2005b) to identify migrations, both donor and recent populations. He documents with rock art and the diversity of clan symbols present that Anderson Mesa and Homol’ovi villages were composed of multiple groups with diverse origins. Ceramic compositional analysis is then used to trace the movement of pottery from a particular Hopi village to a particular Anderson Mesa or Homol’ovi village, which he interprets as evidence of interaction between possible host and migrant groups.

Finally, Washburn and Reed (2011) have proposed a core-periphery model of migration for the movement of people from Chaco to the Middle San Juan Region in the twelfth century A.D., rather than the migration stream or leapfrog models that have been proposed for many large-population movements in the Southwest. Their data, consisting of design and paste-temper data, suggest a directed one-way movement of a group of people from a central node, the core in Chaco Canyon centered at Pueblo Bonito, to a number of great houses and small pueblo sites in the Middle San Juan region.

This is by no means an exhaustive list of techniques for identifying migrations, but rather an acknowledgement that the NGWSP will provide data on many of the most significant population shifts in the northern Southwest, drawing upon multiple lines of evidence. Using all of the means available, the NGWSP will allow migratory connections between various parts of the San Juan Basin and surrounding areas to be established and refined. Once this is done, the causes and effects of identified population movements can be assessed.

Causes Most Southwestern archaeologists would agree that subsistence farmers in the past responded to inter-annual variation in rainfall and were attuned to short-term precipitation trends. Yet, as Wills (2009:311) notes, those same researchers probably would hesitate to interpret population movement solely as a result of temporal climate patterns. Social conflict, over-hunting and over-gathering, soil depletion, social and economic connections with distant areas, and new ritual formations can all play a dynamic role in a family’s or a group’s decision to migrate. Recently, temperature has been emphasized as a factor motivating groups to move from higher to lower areas or vice versa (Anderson 2008; Peterson 1984; Potter 2010; Salzer and Kipfmueller 2005), particularly during the Basketmaker and Pueblo I periods (Potter 2010; Toll and Wilson 2000).

Technological innovations such as corn agriculture may have motivated some movement into areas which were not possible to inhabit prior to the advent of agriculture (Ortman 2012).

Migrants are often motivated both by “push” factors in their home environment and “pull” factors in the migration target area (Cameron 1995; Lipe 2010). Refining climatic data and chronological control is important for understanding the timing of migrations, but it is also necessary to understand the social context of movement and the multitude of factors that motivate decisions to move.

Effects There are a number of social effects of migration that can be modeled. Briefly, depending on the size and organization of donor and recipient populations, migrants can 1) become well-integrated into established communities (Lipe 2010), 2) remain segregated (Lyons et al. 2008; Potter and Yoder 2008), or 3) completely dominate and transform recipient communities (Wills 2009).

Lyons et al. (2008) document two distinct outcomes of migration in two separate areas of the Southwest, the San Pedro Valley and the Tonto Basin. In the Tonto Basin, immigrants entered a community with a densely concentrated local population and an established land-tenure system limiting newcomers’ access to key resources. In the San Pedro Valley, by contrast, immigrants were able to exploit an open and productive niche. Lyons et al. (2008) argue that the different demographic situations and agricultural opportunities encountered by each group of immigrants account for their ability, in the San Pedro case, or inability, in the Tonto Basin case, to overtly express their identities within the context of the larger social landscape. The marginal status of those who immigrated to the Tonto Basin is evidenced in the lack of high-visibility indicators of an intrusive ritual system. In contrast, the immigrants of the San Pedro Valley openly expressed their native ritual traditions in the form of kivas. As a result, integration was more successful along the San Pedro than in the Tonto Basin. This is indicated by the relative dearth of evidence of violence in the San Pedro record and the abundant and compelling evidence for it in the Tonto Basin record.

A similar situation to the Tonto Basin example may have resulted from migrations from the central Mesa Verde Region to the northern Rio Grande in the A.D. 1200s, “where large numbers of migrants were augmenting rapidly growing indigenous populations” (Lipe 2010:282).

Clark (2001) suggests that even when migrants do not adopt a social strategy of visibly displaying ethnicity, their origins may be recorded in low-visibility technological attributes of material culture. Lipe (2010), for example, notes that Mesa Verde groups, like Kayenta migrants into the Tonto Basin, may be recorded in low-visibility technological attributes of material culture and points out that the shrine system identified by Ortman (2008) at Castle Rock and Ohkay Owinge are evident, but more visible types of artifacts and structures that would identify Mesa Verde migrants are not. Indeed, Mesa Verde migrants exhibit such low visibility, that the occurrence and identification of the migration is still disputed (Boyer et al. 2010).

Lipe (2010:282) proposes implications for the effects of migration using two basic models, what he terms the “stand out” and “blend in” models. Migrants should stand out (i.e., preserve distinctive cultural patterns) to the extent that they move to unoccupied areas or areas with low competition for land and other resources;

are farmers displacing foragers;

move as whole communities or large social groups;

do not share a basic way of life and beliefs with host populations;

numerically overwhelm host populations;

are significantly unequal in social status or power vis-à-vis host populations (e.g., conquerors vs. conquered); and use visible ethnicity as a social strategy.

On the other hand, migrants should blend in with a host culture to the extent that they share a basic way of life and beliefs;

are attracted to a host’s ideology;

follow earlier migrants as a part of long-term migration flows;

are viewed by the hosts as social equals;

do not use visible ethnicity as a social strategy;

fit into a host culture’s practices of integrating newcomers (e.g., shared clan or religious society’s affiliations); and must compete for land and other resources with existing populations.

A third scenario not accounted for in Lipe’s distinction between “stand out” and “blend in” strategies involves immigrants who are allowed into a community are but kept unequal, at least for a time, until they can prove themselves. This obviously applies to many immigrant groups in U.S. history, but the Hopis also have a tradition of allowing immigrant groups to live at the outskirts of the existing village until they can integrate themselves. Settlement clustering of groups with distinct social identities and variable social standings within a single community may indicate this type of first-comer/late-comer situation (Potter 2010:296–299).

Cosmological transformations may also occur in the context of large-scale migration and population coalescence. Duwe (2011), for example, analyzed data collected from architectural mapping, pottery analysis, ceramic compositional analysis, and dendrochronology, and he documents cosmological shifts in the Chama drainage in northern New Mexico. He interprets patterns in natural and cultural features (shrines and rock art) within a ritual landscape as reflecting cosmological changes associated with migration into a nearby Tewa village. The methods developed by Duwe may prove useful in analyzing migration-induced changes in cultural landscapes (as a result of cosmological shifts) in the San Juan Basin.

Migration played a large role in the history of the San Juan Basin and surrounding regions as well as with descendant communities (Dongoske 2005; Naranjo 1995). Refining our identification and understanding of the processes and effects of migration through time and across the basin will feature prominently in the NGWSP archaeology project. In particular, migration is an ideal context for the study of cultural identity because changes in residence force both participants and observers to evaluate understandings of personal and collective identity (Barth 1969; Bernardini 2005b; Rouse 1991).

Identity The construction of social identities is one of the most universal of human goals and many of the choices that people make relate to defining and negotiating their identities. In small-scale societies this occurs primarily through social interaction in the context of community life (Varien and Potter 2008). Identities are constructed through interaction between people, and the process by which we acquire and maintain our identities requires choice and agency (Díaz-Andreu and Lucy 2005:2). It is through agency, then, that we signal and define who we are (and who we are not). Yet selecting and actively creating membership in the groups with which we want to identify is always constrained by structure. Identity construction is thus a good example of the process of structuration (Giddens 1984).

The term “identities” is here used interchangeably with “identity,” since identity is always multifaceted—no one has just one identity. Identities can be hybrid or multiple and different types of identities can intersect and cross-cut each other—for example, the gender of an individual, that person’s membership in a particular household, medicine society, clan, or community, or their participation in a particular ideational system. Elements such as these compose the identity of an individual, and particular elements may be emphasized in different contexts of social interaction. Identities are relational; they are constructed in particular social contexts and in relation to others. Identities are memberships of similarity and difference, and they define us as belonging to certain groups and not others. Moreover, this type of social categorization requires recurrent and active engagement. One’s identity, and the groups one belongs to, is never fixed, but rather is continually negotiated. It is thus a large constituent of any individual’s decision making and behavioral repertoire and ultimately the material culture they create, manipulate, associate with, and leave behind.

For this project, we will focus on the choices and actions of individuals or groups as they engage in the process of constructing their identity. This includes the material culture patterning that results from identity construction. It is clear that some identity construction and maintenance is non-discursive and is grounded in habitus (Bourdieu 1990). But identities are also constructed through intentional strategic action. In particular, we view ethnicity as a form of identity construction that is actively created and maintained. Strategic action is at the forefront of ethnicity, a perspective that is in contrast to the classic notion, which views ethnicity as something that individuals passively inherit (Jones 1997). Rather than viewing it as something with which people are born, ethnicity is instead seen as more a way of behaving than a thing, and as something that is fluid over an individual’s lifetime and in the various contexts in which people interact (Lucy 2005:86).

Recent research in the Southwest has shown identity construction operating at a variety of scales (both geographical and social) in the American Southwest: the individual, the household, the clan or subclan, the community, the ethnic group, the region, the culture area, and beyond (see for example Bernardini 2005a, 2005b; Duff 2002; Lekson 2008, 1999; chapters in Mills 2004;

chapters in Varien and Potter [eds.] 2008). Because the scale of the NGWSP is so extensive, data will be collected from a number of areas represented by distinct regional traditions. The NGWSP is thus an opportunity to study identity construction at a variety of scales, from the household to the region (however that is defined), and within a very large comparative framework.

The issue of scale in the analysis of identity is not a trivial, academic one (nor is it only an archaeological one; living Native American groups have much to say and contribute on the subject). As questions over cultural patrimony and ownership of archaeological sites and artifacts persist in the Southwest, the accuracy of archaeological reconstructions of identity is particularly important to the claims of descendant communities. Reconstructing prehistoric landscapes, evaluating identities at a variety of scales (not just the archaeological culture area), and identifying patterns of movement—three interrelated research themes identified here—comprise important strategies for potentially evaluating issues of overlapping cultural affiliation (Adler and Bruning 2008; Bernardini 2005b:48–49).

The focus here has been on “ethnic” and cultural identities (Lucy 2005). In addition, the NGWSP affords the opportunity to investigate issues surrounding other types of identity, including gender identity (Díaz-Andreu 2005), identities of ritual specialists and perhaps other types of specialists (potters, for example; Edwards 2005), and status identity (Babić 2005). For example, are gender and status evident in burials (Potter and Perry 2011)? Is gender evident in how different areas of sites and dwellings are used?

Finally, biological relatedness is an important facet of identity. Recent analyses of dental traits (McClelland 2010) and osteometric cranial traits (Douglas and Stodder 2010; Ortman 2010) have been used rather successfully to demonstrate biological relatedness among populations. Ortman’s study is particularly intriguing. Using a method developed by Relethford and Blangero (1990), he analyzed 12 craniofacial measurements that are unaffected by cradleboarding to estimate relationship directly from osteometric data. It should be stressed that these data collection methods are non-destructive in nature but can provide crucial data for identifying biologically related groups of people, and in some cases migrants (Ortman 2010).

Native American Perspectives and Participation For many years, Native Americans have expressed dissatisfaction with the ways archaeologists and other scholars have designed their research without any input from the descendants of the people being studied (Colwell-Chanthaphonh et al. 2010; Denetdale 2007; Dongoske et al. 2000;

Swidler et al. 1997; Thompson 2011). Much archaeological research seems irrelevant or even derogatory to Native Americans. Moreover, many non-Native Americans accord archaeologists with the privileged status of experts on Native Americans and Native American history. In response to these types of criticisms, archaeologists and Native Americans have increasingly sought to develop indigenous archaeology to involve Native Americans in the design and practice of archaeological research (Colwell-Chanthaphonh and Ferguson 2008; Dongoske et al.

2000; Silliman 2008; Swidler et al. 1997; Watkins 2000). Thompson (2011) cites Nicholas (2008:1660) for a list of the goals of indigenous archaeology:

[To] (1) make archaeology more representative of, responsible to, and relevant for Indigenous communities; (2) redress real and perceived inequalities in the practice of archaeology; and (3) inform and broaden the understanding and interpretation of the archaeological record through incorporation of Aboriginal worldviews, histories, and science.

Archaeological research on the NGWSP will incorporate Native American perspectives and Native American participation. This research design incorporates Native American research perspectives and interests. The Bureau of Reclamation has a programmatic agreement (PA) for compliance with historic preservation laws. The PA establishes a Programmatic Agreement Workgroup, which includes representation from consulting tribes, as well as participating federal agencies and the New Mexico State Historic Preservation Office. Through the PA Workgroup, tribes will have the opportunity to prepare tribal ethnographic reports describing their historical association with the project area, identifying traditional cultural properties in the project area, and expressing their concerns about the treatment of historical and cultural properties during the Project. Through the PA Workgroup, tribes will also have the opportunity to comment on and contribute to the archaeological research. Native Americans will participate in the fieldwork, analysis, and report preparation.

Many of the papers presented in the above studies (and others) have been programmatic statements about how archaeologists need to involve Native Americans in research, accounts of how agencies consult with tribes, or discussions about how tribal historic preservation programs operate. A number of studies now exist, however, which have involved Native Americans in all phases of research and which have incorporated Native American research issues, including cultural affiliation studies (Adams 1991; Bernardini 2005a; Ferguson and Lomamvaya 1999;

Gilpin 2000; Hays 1989, 1992, 1994; Hays-Gilpin 2002, 2004:127–146, 2006:67–73, 2010;

Hays-Gilpin and Hill 1999, 2000; Hays-Gilpin and Sekaquaptewa 2006; Hays-Gilpin et al. 2010;

Schaafsma 1994; Sekaquaptewa and Washburn 2004, 2006, 2010; Webster et al. 2006; Williams et al. 2006).

The Bureau of Reclamation’s Grand Canyon research (Gilpin 2000) allowed the tribes to design their own research programs and control confidential data. The tribes’ involvement consisted of progress meetings, conferences, river trips, library research, report preparation, and report review. River trips were conducted to acquire and compile data on traditional cultural properties and ethnobotany. The Hopi Tribe and Pueblo of Zuni also completed some archaeological testing and data recovery, and the Pueblo of Zuni conducted some site stabilization.