Paleoindians, paleolakes and paleoplayas: Landscape geoarchaeology of the Tularosa Basin, New Mexico (original) (raw)
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Paleoindian and Later Occupations along Ancient Shorelines of the San Agustín Plains, New Mexico
To better understand the residential behavior of Paleoindian (14,000–8000 CAL B.P.) and later groups (Archaic and Formative period), our project undertook an investigation of the eastern sub-basins of the high elevation (. 2070 masl) San Agustı´n Plains in west-central New Mexico. The work included pedestrian survey of 390 ha, geoarchaeological studies, an analysis of private collections consisting of 210 artifacts from 75 sites, and site-file record searches. The preliminary results from this project suggest the presence of significant Archaic and Paleoindian occupations along paleolake shorelines in the northeastern portion of the San Agustı´n Plains. Most of the archaeological sites from this area represent isolated finds of diagnostic projectile points, although a few large multicomponent sites were also identified. Functional and temporal differences between the occupations of the two sub-basins show that human use of the area shifted gradually from one focused on moderate to low-intensity habitation (Paleoindian and Archaic period) to one of short-term seasonal visits associated with special-function resource extraction activities (Formative period) in response to the disappearance of surface water features.
Paleosols in the Teotihuacan valley, Mexico: evidence for paleoenvironment and human impact
Revista Mexicana de …, 2003
The Teotihuacan valley, located in the northeastern sector of the basin of Mexico, was settled by approximately 1,100 BC. The first and largest prehistoric city in the Americas developed here in AD 350-550, reaching a population of around 125,000. The demise of the Teotihuacan state is now generally believed to have culminated between AD 600-650. Causes are attributed to global climate change, environmental degradation, economic and/or political upheaval, but no direct evidence has ever been presented to support these hypotheses. The study of paleosols contributes to the understanding of the environmental conditions that prevailed in the Teotihuacan region in order to better comprehend their potential relationship to cultural and economic events in the prehistoric past. The distribution of soils in the region is directly associated with relief. Profiles at Cerro Gordo 3,050 m a.s.l.) and Cerro Patlachique (2,700 m a.s.l.) are associated with forest conditions, where paleosols are characterized by polygenetic profiles with varying degrees of development. The older soils are represented by Luvisols. Soils in lower positions (Cerro Colorado, 2,390 m a.s.l.) are stratified and poorly developed, with evidence of colluvial deposition and erosion. Soils with fluvic properties in the alluvial plain (2,250-2,350 m a.s.l.) are also poorly developed and greatly influenced by erosive processes and intensive accumulation. Those corresponding to the Teotihuacan periods (2,000-1,350 yr BP) show multiple indicators of human impact. Micromorphological evidence indicates intensive agricultural activities (deforestation, burning, compaction, and erosion). The presence of carbonates in underlying strata is related to changes in humidity. Phytoliths identified from the same strata indicate alterations in vegetation through time that reflect variable conditions of temperature and humidity. The results clearly reflect environmental modification by human populations from the initial period of prehistoric settlement up to present. Furthermore, the evidence suggests that a major impact of the prehistoric city on the landscape resulted from unmanaged exploitation of forest resources that provoked intensive erosion and significant changes in the hydric conditions of the region.
The Water Canyon Paleoindian Site - A New Window into New Mexico's Distant Past
El Palacio, Volume 54 2012 - from a scientific point of view, New Mexico has been pivotal in the history of archaeological thought. Noteworthy finds such as the 1908 discovery of the Folsom type site (near Folsom) and the 1929 discovery of the Clovis type site at Blackwater Draw (near Portales) are the basis for our understanding of the early human presence in the New World. Information from those sites provided us a first glimpse of a world that was very different from today’s, one in which stone tools enabled hunter-gatherers to kill large animals that are now extinct. Over the intervening decades since those discoveries, archaeologists have, in fits and starts, found new windows into that ancient past and broadened our understanding of human life at the end of the late Pleistocene geological epoch and the beginning of the Holocene epoch (ca. 13,000 to 8,000 years ago).
A Paleoindian Sense of Place: Snapshots of the Early Holocene Environment of West-Central New Mexico
The Water Canyon Paleoindian site near Socorro, New Mexico is directly associated with an extensive buried wet meadow deposit. While extant across the Pleistocene – Holocene transition and into the middle Holocene, this landscape-scale deposit arguably represented a persistent, regional wetland resource, not only for plants and animals, but Paleoindian groups as well. Today it represents an important proxy data archive for environmental, climatic and archaeological reconstruction. Our recent research efforts at the site have focused largely on the period from 8300 to 9600 radiocarbon years ago, and have generated dated pollen profiles, stable carbon isotope data sets, charcoal species identifications and both faunal and macrobotanical remains. These findings provide us with provocative glimpses into the environment, climate, bison ecology, and human diet during Late Paleoindian times.
Quaternary International, 2011
A paleosol sequence in the Teotihuacan valley was studied in order to reconstruct landscape evolution during the Late PleistoceneeHolocene, in a cut belonging to a river gully (San Pablo). The sequence is constituted by 4 pedostratigraphic units labeled as SP1eSP4, separated by volcanogenic-alluvial/colluvial sediments. SP4, at the base of the sequence, has a prismatic structure, clay cutans and vertic features. SP3 shows abundant signs of zooturbation (krotovinas) and clay cutans. Both paleosols are interpreted to have formed in stable, humid, forest landscapes, during Marine Isotope Stage 3 (MIS3). However, towards the end of MIS3, these conditions alternated with the periods of contrasting seasonal climate. The overlying SP2 unit is a pedocomplex demonstrating 2 petrocalcic horizons combined with redoximorphic features. The pedocomplex merges laterally with gradually stratified gleyic channel deposits (gravels in the base to fine sand and silt in the top). The age of the lower caliche is 24,000 BP, and thus SP2 formed during MIS2, including the Last Glacial Maximum (LGM). The environmental conditions during LGM are mostly dry with stages of high humidity evidenced by gleyic processes and fluvial activity. At the end of the Pleistocene, the landscape becomes highly unstable, and pedogenesis is replaced by sedimentation. New paleochannels cut through the previously formed paleosols. These channels are infilled by poorly sorted sediments with no gradation. The configuration of all paleochannels is NNEeSSW, nearly at 90 to the modern San Pablo river flow. Geomorphic stability during the early and middle Holocene allowed the development of SP1 in a dry environment. The A horizon of this paleosol has been dated at 2900 BP. It is well developed with strong vertic features. This paleosol is thought to have formed the soil cover when the Classic period Teotihuacan culture flourished in the valley, between the first and third centuries AD. Soils above SP1 are poorly developed and erosion/deposition processes predominate over pedogenesis. Recent landscape instability is due to human activities that intensified erosion processes during the Classic and, especially, the Postclassic and Colonial periods.
Geomorphology, 2010
Building up a scenario of Late Pleistocene-Holocene environmental change and human-landscape interactions in Central Mexicoone of the key areas for the natural and cultural history of Americarequires development of local paleoenvironmental reconstructions. We studied the Tepexpan section at the edge of Texcoco a paleolake, near the mouth of Teotihuacan Valley as a multiproxy record of the environmental dynamics at the shore in the Basin of Mexico throughout the period of human occupation. The section is located in an ecotone affected by intensive and variable geomorphic processes and includes lacustrine, fluvial and volcanic sediments as well as paleosols. Our chronological scale is based on 6 AMS 14 C dates from pollen concentrates and paleosol organic matter. The lower segment of the section dominated by the lacustrine sediments yielded pollen spectra; in the upper segment the record is based on the pedogenetic characteristics of paleosols. Different proxies agree in demonstrating the general trend (although some reversals are apparent) of decreasing effective moisture since MIS3: it is reflected first in the increase of herbaceous pollen after 27 ka BP, the decrease of lake level, the cessation of lacustrine sedimentation and beginning of marsh soil development at 10 ka BP and finally, the shift from hydromorphic to dryland semiarid pedogenesis in the Late Holocene. We assume that this trend was climatically controlled, whereas the deposition of sedimentary layers enriched with tephra are related to the pulses of volcanic activity; the pedosedimentary features associated with the upper soil are human-induced. Comparing the proposed scheme of environmental change with the archaeological record we propose that the initial settlers, Late Paleolithic hunters, could have utilized the wet swampy meadows which expanded on the Basin bottom as the lake level lowered and provided the niche for large herbivores during the Pleistocene-Holocene transition. Development of agriculture and the network of permanent settlements are believed to be linked to the formation of well drained soils. In the methodological perspective the study shows the potential of ecotones as highly dynamic and sensitive systems that may archive valuable paleoecological records.
Quaternary International, 2015
In Sonora, northwest Mexico, we have recognized the existence of paleosol units of Late Pleistocene/Early and Middle Holocene age (13,000 to 4,250 Cal years BP) at several archaeological sites with Paleo-indian occupations (e.g. La Playa, Fin del Mundo, El Bajio, El Aigame and El Arenoso). The few paleoenviromental reconstructions from the region indicate that the end of the Pleistocene was dominated by temperate climate that promoted the establishment of the first people in coexistence and interaction with the Pleistocene megafauna. The study of the spatial distribution of various soil units developed during late Pleistocene in the region provides information about local environmental settings of the initial peopling of Sonora. Several pedosedimentary sequences were analyzed in the different parts of Sonora, the age control in which was provided by archaeological and paleontological findings and/or by the radiocarbon dating of carbonates and paleosol humus. Two trends of the Late Pleistocene pedogenesis have been identified. The profiles located in the south, center and north of the state are dominated by red soils (earlier referred as Big Red in the archaeological literature) whose characteristics are represented by the Red San Rafael Paleosol (SRP). The properties of SRP in the lower part of the profile (rubification, clay accumulation, hig magnetic susceptibility, illuvial carbonates, and redoximorphic features) are indicative of a more humid environment. Above them is a late Holocene polycyclic sequence of soils with morphological characteristics displaying a more incipient development. In contrast with the sequence described above, El Arenoso, north of Caborca, show a sequence of gray soils. Two paleosols were formed in alluvial sediments. At the Cantera profile (CTP) and El Arenoso profile (ARP) paleosols are represented by Bgk horizons and evidence of weathering and clay neoformation, redoximorphic processes and illuvial accumulation of carbonates. We explain the differences of northwestern profiles by specific geomorphic conditions which imply limited soil drainage and the possibility of over-wetting. These processes indicate alternating a humid environment (weathering, rubification, clay formation and redoximorphic processes); and dry periods (carbonates accumulation). Despite regional differences of the late Pleistocene paleosols, the comparison with the Holocene soils demonstrates clear trends towards desertification in the region. The first people that inhabited Sonora during the late Pleistocene found a more temperate and wetter climate than they encountered further to the north, but subsequent generations witnessed a rapid desiccation of the region with the formation of the Sonoran Desert in the early Holocene.
Folsom on the Edge of the Plains: Occupation of the Estancia Basin, Central New Mexico
PaleoAmerica, 2016
At the end of the Pleistocene, during Folsom occupation, the Estancia Basin contained the eastern-most pluvial lake in the American Southwest. The basin has a long history of archaeological research, and its story of changing lake levels has played an important part in understanding the Paleoindian occupation of the New World. Within the basin, geoarchaeological assessment at the Martin site can be used as a baseline for understanding environmental change during the late Pleistocene. The large well documented Martin and Lucy Folsom artifact assemblages provide a window into lithic technological organization. Combining these data within a broader basin-wide analysis provides a glimpse at Folsom occupation and land use between the well-studied southern High Plains and the middle Rio Grande. By combining the stories of environmental change, fluctuating lake levels, lithic variability, and human mobility, a better picture of life at the Pleistocene/Holocene transition emerges.
Quaternary International 365 (2015):135-149
In the state of Sonora, Northwest Mexico we have recognized the existence of paleosol units of Late Pleistocene/Early Holocene age (13,000 to 10,500 Cal years BP) at several archaeological sites with Paleo-indian occupation (e.g. La Playa, Fin del Mundo, El Bajio, El Aigame and El Arenoso). The few paleoenviromental reconstructions from the region indicate that the end of the Pleistocene was dominated by temperate climate that promoted the establishment of the first people in coexistence and interaction with the Pleistocene megafauna (later extinct). The study of the spatial distribution of various soil units developed during late Pleistocene in the region provides information about local environmental settings of the initial peopling of Sonora. Several pedosedimentary sequences were analyzed in the different parts of the Sonora state, the age control in which was provided by archaeological and paleontological findings and/or by the radiocarbon dating of carbonates and paleosol humus. So far two trends of the Late Pleistocene pedogenesis have been identified. The profiles located in the south, center and north of the state are dominated by red soils (earlier referred as Big Red in the archaeological literature) whose characteristics are represented by the Red San Rafael Paleosol (SRP) –identified at the archaeological site of La Playa. The properties of SRP in the lower part of the profile (e.g. rubification, accumulation of clay, higher values of magnetic susceptibility, illuvial carbonates, and redoximorphic features) are indicative of a more humid environment. Above them is a late Holocene polycyclic sequence of soils with morphological characteristics display a more incipient development. In contrast with the sequence described above at El Arenoso, north of Caborca, were identified sequence of gray soils. Two paleo-soil were formed in an alluvial sediments. At the Cantera profile (CTP) and El Arenoso profile (ARP) paleosols are represented by Bgk horizons and evidence of weathering and neoformation of clay and amorphous silica, redoximorphic processes and illuvial accumulation of carbonates. We explain the differences of north-western profiles by specific geomorphic conditions which imply limited soil drainage and possibility of overmoisturing. These processes indicate alternating a humid environment (indicated by the mineral weathering, rubification, clay formation and reductomorphic processes); and dry periods (with possible accumulation of carbonates). Despite regional differences of the late Pleistocene paleosols, the comparison with the Holocene soils demonstrate clear trend towards desertification in the region. The first people that inhabit Sonora during late Pleistocene times found a more tempered and better weather that they encounter in the north, but the next generations saw a rapid aridity of the region with the formation of the Sonoran Desert in early Holocene times.