Under the direction of Dr. Gail Fritz, MS Malaina Brown will collect data for her doctoral dissertation. She will address an important question of archaeological development in the United States Southwest and analyze plant remains recovered during the excavation of two sites. In common with many other parts of the world, prehistoric populations in this region gradually shifted their subsistence base from hunted and gathered foods to those acquired through cultivation of domestic plants. Although cause and effect is not well understood, this transformation was generally accompanied by a shift from a highly mobile to a more sedentary lifestyle. Settlement sizes increased and more complex social forms of organization also emerged. In the US Southwest this change is referred to as the "Pithouse to Pueblo" transition because groups abandoned pithouse structures which, for hundreds of years has served as basic house type, and began to construct large above ground multi-room pueblos. Archaeologists traditionally believed that this shift also marked increased reliance on agriculture. However in recent years this position has been questioned with some arguing that pithouse peoples practiced a fully agriculturally based economy and other postulating that the degree of agricultural dependence gradually increased during the Pithouse Period.
While most of the evidence marshaled thus far has been indirect, MS Brown proposed to analyze the botanical materials recovered from two sites, the NAN Ranch, and Old Town both located in New Mexico. Both contain both pithouses and pueblos which span the transition. At both sediments with abundant botanical remains have been recovered. MS Brown will use a flotation technique to separate these materials from the geological matrix and identify the range of species present. She will focus not only on known domesticates but also on weedy species which flourish in agricultural contexts and thus provide indirect information on the importance of cultivation. She will also determine whether less important domestic species such as amaranth are present. The data she produces should help to select among competing hypotheses. In conjunction with architectural analysis and study of other aspects of material culture it should be possible to gain increased insight into the development of cultural complexity in the Southwest. The project will also significantly contribute to the intellectual and professional development of a young scientist.
