This is an important book. For far too long, archaeologists working in the southwestern United States and northwestern Mexico (SW/NW) have considered the Jornada part of the Mogollon region to be peripheral to almost everything. The Jornada is indeed on the eastern edge of the Mogollon in southeastern New Mexico, far western Texas, and northeastern Chihuahua, and perhaps its archaeological remains have seemed like a faint reflection of the “core” SW/NW. This book demonstrates that the Jornada is anything but peripheral.
The editors have selected authors and topics that cover the post-Archaic periods well. The chapters consider the better-documented Western Jornada in and around the Tularosa and Hueco Basins northeast and east of El Paso along with the lesser-known Eastern Extension, which borders the Plains. There is even a chapter on the Jornada in northeastern Chihuahua. The main point of the authors is significant: these people had lives that were complicated in ways that we archaeologists often do not imagine. As the editors emphasize in the first chapter, the lifeways of the people living in the Jornada region were not a pale reflection of other lifeways in the SW/NW.
Because of the intensive cultural resource management done in parts of the Jornada region, archaeologists there have assembled huge and detailed databases, especially of radiocarbon dates taken using the most modern methods. These databases are some of the largest in the SW/NW. In the second chapter, however, Rocek reminds us that this kind of coverage is restricted to a subset of the Jornada, mostly in the western basins and mountain ranges.
The first section of the book, following the two introductory chapters, focuses on farming in the Jornada lowlands—that is, the basins between the mountain ranges. Miller and Kenmotsu use the results of 1,120 flotation samples, another example of the very large datasets available, to show that the use of agriculture increased after AD 1150, along with the use of cacti and succulents. The latter decreased after AD 1300 with increasing agriculture and aggregation into pueblos. Miller and Kenmotsu also use the sources of more than 1,600 pieces of obsidian to show that nonlocal obsidian decreased through time, presumably related to increasing sedentism. Condon and Vasquez consider 170 ethnobotanical samples, each with a radiocarbon date, from 83 sites. They find, contrary to Miller and Kenmotsu, a continued heavy use of wild plants after AD 1300, although they too see evidence for increased agriculture after that date. Railey and Turnbow examine early agriculture in southern New Mexico and determine that it was not a late development in the Jornada, as has been proposed. While there is little evidence of maize agriculture in the basins until AD 1000, the highlands show the use of agriculture several centuries before AD 500.
The next section of the volume focuses on mobility. Miller, Graves, Ernst, and Swanson provide an elegant study of trails using the linear distribution of ceramics recorded through intensive survey and GIS mapping. Lynch and Rocek analyze geological sources, distance to them, and lithic debitage to consider their relationships to different kinds of mobility. Boggess, Yost, Hill, Cummings, and Malainey analyze the contents of a complete in situ bowl from a site in the Eastern Extension. The bowl was probably made 200 km to the west, and it contained a sophisticated mix of foods, possibly including fish. Hill examines the circulation of ceramics in the Eastern Extension and finds that more than 75% of the sherds were made in the Western Jornada.
The final section of the book considers the borders of the Jornada. In an excellent summary of a little-known region, Kenmotsu views the Jornada from La Junta de los Rios to the southeast on the Rio Grande. The chapter by Cruz Antillón, Maxwell, and MacWilliams on the Jornada in Chihuahua emphasizes the involvement with those in the adjoining Casas Grandes area, which had the presence of elites. There was substantial ideological sharing between the two, but their identities remained distinct. Miller and Montgomery provide a summary of ubiquitous plant-baking facilities. Using excavation data from 66 such features, they suggest that people collected 180 metric tons of rocks to construct these features, a substantial labor investment that may emphasize the importance of fermented beverages for feasting and social events. Railey uses more than 1,288 radiocarbon dates from 421 sites to track population movement and to show that people in far southeastern New Mexico were not static hunter-gatherers during the second millennium AD. Because of significant differences across the region, Wiseman suggests that the people in the Jornada were not a single culture, particularly after AD 1200.
When I read this book, I learned that I knew very little about the Jornada, and now I want to know more. I hope that the editors and authors will compile another edited volume that builds on these chapters, especially the social dimensions presented in many chapters, which includes ideological data and interpretations.
