Determining the Mobility of the Inhabitants at Dunlap-Salazar Through Analysis of Lithic Raw Materials
Date
2009-12
Authors
Journal Title
Journal ISSN
Volume Title
Publisher
University of Delaware
Abstract
This study examines the development of village life amongst Native American
populations in the prehistoric (1st millennium A.D.) southwestern United States. Early inhabitants of the area practiced a mobile way of life, leaving very little architecture in the archaeological record. Like other people throughout the world, many Native Americans transitioned to a more sedentary way of life. In the southwest, this initially consisted of living in semi-subterranean “pithouses,” although the degree to which pithouse sites represent true sedentary villages is debated. Eventually, village formation culminated with the unquestionably sedentary pueblo way of life. The continuum that incorporates the changeover from a mobile way of life to a sedentary way of life in the southwest is known as the pithouse to pueblo transition.
This study aims to assess the degree of mobility of the people who lived at the
Dunlap-Salazar pithouse site in Lincoln County, New Mexico which has been
radiocarbon dated from 550-850 A.D. I use the relative percentage of local, regional, and long distance materials and of high quality chert as measures of lithic procurement strategies, and this indirectly mobility. First, I analyzed the stone debitage, waste material broken off during the manufacture of stone tools and discarded, to determine what raw materials were used to make the stone tools. I then located the possible sources of these raw materials based on geologic records and maps to record the distances from these sources to Dunlap-Salazar. The distances represent how far Dunlap-Salazar occupants traveled to get the raw materials and show the percentage of local, regional, and long distance raw materials used. This, in turn, showed me the degree of mobility
practiced by the Dunlap-Salazar inhabitants. Comparing these values against earlier
(Archaic) and later (Pueblo) occupations across the Formative boundary, it is evident that Dunlap-Salazar, and pithouse settlements in general, fit a trend for an overall decrease in mobility over time but retained a significant level of mobility.