Nieves Zedeño | University of Arizona (original) (raw)

Papers by Nieves Zedeño

This report summarizes published and unpublished historical, archaeological, and ethnographic inf... more This report summarizes published and unpublished historical, archaeological, and ethnographic information on the Native American use, history, and occupancy of the Belted Range, Nye County, Nevada.

This government-to-government consultation between the Department of Energy, Nevada Operations Of... more This government-to-government consultation between the Department of Energy, Nevada Operations Office (DOE /NV) and the Consolidated Group of Tribes and Organizations (CGTO) focused on the interpretation of 10 rock art sites; seven on the Nevada Test Site (NTS), and three on the Yucca Mountain Site Characterization Office (YMSCO). The consultation entailed a systematic ethnographic study of petroglyphs, pictographs, and other rock art manipulations. The objective of the project was to gain an understanding of the cultural significance of rock art for contemporary American Indians and its place in their traditional cultural landscapes. Research activities involved visits to rock art sites by tribal elders and tribal cultural experts. During the field visits, Indian consultants responded to standardized interviews and provided observations, comments, and recommendations regarding each of the sites under study. The project involved 14 American Indian tribes and two Indian organizations...

Earlier, the authors describe the role of generic blackbirds with successful horse raiding. Of th... more Earlier, the authors describe the role of generic blackbirds with successful horse raiding. Of the three species listed, Brown-headed Cowbirds are the only species that has a strong relationship with grazing mammals. This species is known to forage on insects disturbed by herding mammals. In addition, during the breeding season cowbirds will make daily trips between nesting sites and foraging areas (Scott et al. 1992). Therefore, it is likely that Brown-headed Cowbirds are the species associated with success in horse raiding. By incorporating more natural history they could have more thoroughly demonstrated how Indigenous knowledge, belief, and practices concerning birds have strong connections to observed phenomena.

This report presents an overview of archaeological, historical, and ethnographic information rela... more This report presents an overview of archaeological, historical, and ethnographic information relating to American Indian cultural affiliation and traditional association with Pipestone National Monument, Minnesota. The primary purpose of this overview is to provide the National Park Service (NPS) with data that will aid in the development of consultation protocols and future cultural and natural resource studies, interpretation, program objectives, and park management decisions. The present study, therefore, has been designed to establish a connection between park resources and associated past and present peoples. The data contained here are required to address the cultural affiliation and consultation requirements of the Native American Graves Protection and Repatriation Act (NAGPRA) and other legislation, policy, and regulations that address peoples traditionally associated with park resources, including, but not limited to, the National Environmental Policy Act (NEPA); the Nation...

This ethnographic overview documents the contemporary values of American Indians regarding Fajada... more This ethnographic overview documents the contemporary values of American Indians regarding Fajada Butte. The study defines which Indian tribes have traditional or historic cultural ties to Fajada Butte and Chaco Culture National Historical Park (NHP). The study was funded by the National Park Service on September 15, 1992, and was managed by the New Mexico State Historic Preservation Office. The ethnographic overview is focussed on two broad issues: (1) Fajada Butte and its significance to American Indian people and (2) the traditional use of plants and their cultural significance to American Indian people. An additional goal of this study is to contribute information about to the process of general tribal -park consultation including Native American Graves Protection and Repatriation Act. This study documented that 11 tribes and pueblos have cultural relationships with Fajada Butte and Chaco Culture NHP. American Indians feel a contemporary identification with the Fajada Butte and ...

Quaternary Research, 2021

The Northern Rocky Mountain Front (hereafter Northern Front) is a prominent geographic feature in... more The Northern Rocky Mountain Front (hereafter Northern Front) is a prominent geographic feature in archaeological models of human dispersal in the terminal Pleistocene and Early Holocene of North America. Testing those models has been arduous because of local geomorphological factors that tend to obliterate or otherwise limit access to archaeological finds of relevant age. In this paper, we present well-stratified archaeological and environmental records dating back to 14,000–13,000 cal yr BP from the site of Billy Big Spring (Blackfeet Indian Reservation, Montana), located on a glacial kettle, a type of landform that has been largely ignored by regional archaeological research to date. Findings from Billy Big Spring show the continuous use of the Northern Front foothills throughout the major climatic and environmental disturbances of the Early Holocene, and possibly the terminal Pleistocene as well. As such, Billy Big Spring contributes to refining several archaeological models of e...

Revista de Arqueologia, 2010

Discussões sobre territorialidade na pré-história que ligam propriedade, exclusão e privilégio ao... more Discussões sobre territorialidade na pré-história que ligam propriedade, exclusão e privilégio ao desenvolvimento de sistemas sociais complexos são raramente relevantes para explicar a organização territorial de caçadores-coletores. Portanto, é necessário abordar a territorialidade de caçadores-coletores de uma perspectiva que é exclusivamente voltada para seus padrões de usufruto da terra, para suas redes sociais e para a agência política dos mesmos. Através da construção de um modelo de formação territorial que incorpora, de forma explicita, a mobilidade e outros elementos chaves referentes aos modos-de-vida dos caçadorescoletores, este artigo demonstrará que políticas de territorialidade encontram-se presentes desde o momento da primeira chegada de um grupo humano a uma área desabitada, expandindo-se e desenvolvendo-se através do tempo.

Plains Anthropologist, 2019

We characterize the McKean (Middle Archaic) settlement of the Lewis Range in the Northern Rocky M... more We characterize the McKean (Middle Archaic) settlement of the Lewis Range in the Northern Rocky Mountain Front based on new excavations at the wellpreserved and multi-component Billy Big Spring site, Montana, and on a reevaluation of the regional archaeological grey literature. The study area contains numerous McKean sites despite being generally considered marginal to the McKean world. Economic strategies emphasize upland sheep hunting using probable traps or blinds and foothills bison ambush hunting near wetlands. The emergence of well-defined economic strategies during the Middle Archaic in the Northern Rocky Mountain Front coincides with the appearance of several markers of social identity in the northwestern Plains. When

Proceedings of the National Academy of Sciences of the United States of America, Jan 7, 2018

Fire use has played an important role in human evolution and subsequent dispersals across the glo... more Fire use has played an important role in human evolution and subsequent dispersals across the globe, yet the relative importance of human activity and climate on fire regimes is controversial. This is particularly true for historical fire regimes of the Americas, where indigenous groups used fire for myriad reasons but paleofire records indicate strong climate-fire relationships. In North American grasslands, decadal-scale wet periods facilitated widespread fire activity because of the abundance of fuel promoted by pluvial episodes. In these settings, human impacts on fire regimes are assumed to be independent of climate, thereby diminishing the strength of climate-fire relationships. We used an offsite geoarchaeological approach to link terrestrial records of prairie fire activity with spatially related archaeological features (driveline complexes) used for intensive, communal bison hunting in north-central Montana. Radiocarbon-dated charcoal layers from alluvial and colluvial depo...

Journal of Anthropological Research, 1998

KIVA, 2000

... Both local and non-local Pinto polychromes have been identified in late Pueblo III period sit... more ... Both local and non-local Pinto polychromes have been identified in late Pueblo III period sites in the Roosevelt, Vosberg, Globe, Silver Creek ... with the immigration of Kayenta Anasazi people at the end of the thir-teenth century (Crown 1994; Haury 1958; Lindsay 1987; Zedeflo ...

Journal of Archaeological Science: Reports, 2016

Abstract Identifying sources of variability in carcass processing activities is central to the co... more Abstract Identifying sources of variability in carcass processing activities is central to the construction of inferences about primary consumption as well as production of storable and transportable by-products. In the northwestern Plains of North America, bison harvesting and processing underwent important changes in scale and intensity in the millennium before European contact. Recent studies of surface stone architecture dating to this time period point to band- and supra-band investment in the planning and construction of elaborate hunting facilities. Site-scale butchering and carcass processing, on the other hand, are good indicators of the degree to which hunting families foresaw the need to secure foodstuffs for future consumption and trade. This report discusses the results of a magnetic survey, excavations, and faunal analysis undertaken at the Kutoyis Site (24GL366), a Late Prehistoric-period hunting complex located in Montana, to characterize processing activities associated with large-scale communal bison hunting. Positive magnetic readings across the site's floodplain, discovery of processing features, and patterned bone fragmentation across the site suggest an investment in the production of storable and transportable by-products such as pemmican, and support architectural and environmental evidence of economic intensification.

Science Across Cultures: The History of Non-Western Science, 2003

Page 125. RICHARD W. STOFFLE, REBECCA TOUPAL. AND NIEVES ZEDENO LANDSCAPE, NATURE, AND CULTURE: A... more Page 125. RICHARD W. STOFFLE, REBECCA TOUPAL. AND NIEVES ZEDENO LANDSCAPE, NATURE, AND CULTURE: A DIACHRONIC MODEL OF HUMAN-NATURE ADAPTATIONS The relationship between culture and ...

Landscapes of Movement, 2010

Current Anthropology, 2014

Studies of hunter-gatherer sociopolitical organization consistently exclude terrestrial big-game ... more Studies of hunter-gatherer sociopolitical organization consistently exclude terrestrial big-game hunters-pedestrian bison hunters, in particular-from discussions of emerging complexity. To an important extent, this exclusion stems both from the ethology of bison and its consequences for mobile hunters and from the character of their archaeological record, which lacks conventional indicators of organizational complexity such as high-status burials and long-term storage facilities. However, this record exhibits stone architecture of monumental proportions. We argue that evidence of emerging sociopolitical complexity is embodied in the hunters' ability to (1) invest extensively on landscape engineering to amass communal bison wealth for consumption, storage, and exchange, and (2) produce and reproduce ritual wealth among individuals and restricted sectors of the group. Through a multiscalar research design that integrates thousands of surface stone features with data recovered from kill site excavation, ethnohistorical records, and Blackfoot traditions, we demonstrate that Late Prehistoric bison hunters of the northwestern Plains endeavored to create conditions for permanence in their hunting territory by strategically emplacing and maintaining hunting facilities. These, in turn, would be used by ensuing generations of culturally related groups for whom the communal hunt was a formal and ritually managed act. The Pikunis were rich; meat was their staff of life, and they had plenty of it. (James Willard Schultz, Blackfeet and Buffalo [1962:30]) Pedestrian bison hunters of the North American Plains have been conventionally categorized as highly mobile, egalitarian bands whose lives and annual schedules were tethered to the behavior and environment of their resource (e.g., Binford 2001:226; Oliver 1962; Wheat 1972). On the surface, it may seem a fitting portrayal of ancient terrestrial big-game hunters but does not explain the full range of variability in their trajectories and organization. Narrowly focused on behavior and technology, this categorization excludes the existence of

American Ethnologist, 2011

The creation of Lake Sakakawea in North Dakota during the 1950s resulted in significant grief and... more The creation of Lake Sakakawea in North Dakota during the 1950s resulted in significant grief and loss for the Fort Berthold Indian community and continues to figure prominently in the collective memory of the Mandan, Hidatsa, and Arikara people. Drawing from ethnographic information pre-and postdating dam construction, we examine the lake's paradoxical identities in the Mandan, Hidatsa, and Arikara Nation worldview, as a repository of negative memory and as a locale of cultural knowledge, continuity, and meaning. The tribe's response to the construction of the lake illustrates how physical and psychological adjustments to irreparable loss can resituate negative heritage as culturally viable property.

Journal of Archaeological Method and Theory, 1997

Territories are spatial units that encompass the broadest range of a society's land-use behaviors... more Territories are spatial units that encompass the broadest range of a society's land-use behaviors as well as the history of human interactions with the natural landscape. Drawing from published documents pertaining to the North American Indian Land Claims and to the prehistory and history of land use among the Hopi Indians of Arizona, this paper integrates spatia~ materia~ and historical variables of land use behavior (1) to formulate an empirical definition of territory and (2) to develop a generalized life history of territory formation that can be applied explici@ to the archaeological record.

Trails, Paths, and Roads in Anthropological Perspective, 2010