With National Science Foundation support, Dr. Katherine Spielmann, her students, and colleagues will analyze large collections of animal bones and botanical materials from seven years of excavation at three pueblo sites in the Salinas area of central New Mexico. These sites were missionized by Spanish friars in the 1620s, and provide a unique opportunity to investigate how Pueblo populations modified their subsistence practices and diets in response to Spanish demands on their labor and resources. Spanish records document that tribute in the Salinas area was taken in corn and antelope hides, and that governors of the province required Pueblos to collect and transport pinyon nuts and salt. The documents do not discuss how Pueblo people modified their hunting, gathering, and farming in light of these demands. Two possibilities are evident. On the one hand, lack of time and labor to pursue agriculture sufficiently to meet their needs may have caused Pueblo peoples to rely further on wild, collected famine foods. On the other hand, time and labor may have been increasingly focused on agricultural production, with traditional gathering practices curtailed. Hunting may have focused on large game for their hides, rather than the more abundant small game available in the area. Analyses of the kinds of plant and animal remains present in Pueblo middens before and after Spanish missionization will allow them to evaluate these possibilities. The impact of subsistence changes on Pueblo health will then be investigated through a synthesis of a number of analyses of human skeletal remains from one of the sites.
Previous interdisciplinary research in the southeastern and Plains areas of the United States has demonstrated marked variability in indigenous responses to European colonization. Thus far, however, indigenous changes in subsistence and diet have not been studied for the southwestern U.S. This project provides an unparalleled opportunity to undertake such an analysis, and to compare native responses in different environments and under different conditions of colonization across North America.
