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MORE THAN JUST JEMEZ PUEBLO OBSIDIAN: COMMENT ON LIEBMANN'S “… LANDSCAPES OF SIGNIFICATION IN THE AMERICAN SOUTHWEST”
Published online by Cambridge University Press: 16 October 2018
Abstract
Liebmann's (2017) essay on the relationship between Jemez Pueblo and the Valles Caldera of northern New Mexico seems to imply that the Jemez Pueblo had an exclusive relationship with the caldera, particularly Redondo Peak, and the major obsidian source Cerro del Medio (CDM). This is curious given that abundant obsidian provenance studies from the region exhibit equal to or nearly equal proportions of Cerro del Medio obsidian that are not considered ancestral to Jemez Pueblo. Liebmann's regional perspective based on landscape theory appears flawed by a lack of regionally specific data.
El ensayo de Liebmann (2017) sobre la relación entre Jemez Pueblo y los Valles Caldera del norte de Nuevo México parece implicar que Jemez Pueblo tenía una relación exclusiva con la caldera, particularmente Redondo Peak, y la principal fuente de obsidiana de Cerro del Medio. Esto es curioso, dado que abundantes estudios de procedencia de obsidiana llevados a cabo en la región muestran proporciones casi iguales de obsidiana de Cerro del Medio en sitios que no se consideran ancestrales a Jemez Pueblo. La perspectiva regional de Liebmann basada en la teoría del paisaje parece defectuosa por la falta de datos regionales específicos.
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References Cited
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Shackley and Moore supplementary material
Shackley and Moore supplementary material 1
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Recently Matthew Liebmann's (Reference Liebmann2017) essay on regional landscape has linked the Walatowa-Pueblo of Jemez's relationship to the Valles Caldera of northern New Mexico, and particularly Cerro del Medio (CDM), a major source of obsidian raw material in the Southwest and western North America (Steffen Reference Steffen2016). That relationship is based on the oral history of the Pueblo of Jemez, not disputed here. The other leg of the argument is based on a dominance of CDM obsidian that is seen as foremost in sites claimed by the Pueblo of Jemez. To the latter we restrict our review.
Three archaeological areas outside Valles Caldera that are not claimed as part of Jemez ancestral lands—Gallina, the Pajarito Plateau, and the Pojoaque Valley west, north, and east, respectively—exhibit various proportions of CDM obsidian artifacts, in some cases equal to that reported by Liebmann for Jemez. Most of these projects have been published for some time (Shackley Reference Shackley1999, Reference Shackley2005, Reference Shackley, Vierra and Schmidt2008, Reference Shackley2009, Reference Shackley2012a, Reference Shackley2015; see the chronology in Supplemental Text 1 and Supplemental Figures 1–3).
Gallina
The Gallina region is located to the west of Valles Caldera obsidian sources in the Jemez Mountains (see the 2017 issue of Kiva [Vol. 83], including Kocer and Ferguson's [Reference Kocer and Ferguson2017] study of 25 obsidian points from Coalition period contexts). Shackley's (Reference Shackley1999) earlier study of artifacts (n = 62) from Coalition period sites indicated that over 50% of the obsidian artifacts were produced from CDM obsidian about 40–80 km distant and the remainder were made from El Rechuelos, only ~20 km distant (see Supplemental Figure 1). Kocer and Ferguson's (Reference Kocer and Ferguson2017) examination of obsidian projectile points from Gallina Coalition period sites exhibits about the same proportion of Cerro del Medio obsidian (see Supplemental Figures 2 and 3).
Pajarito Plateau
The long-term study by Vierra and Dilley (Reference Vierra, Dilley, Vierra and Schmidt2008) of the Pajarito Plateau abutting the eastern boundary of the Valles Caldera further demonstrates the dominance of CDM obsidian in the region, even though Cerro Toledo obsidian nodules are available in the Bandelier Tuff, in many cases on-site (see Supplemental Figures 1–3). These areas dating from the Coalition period (AD 1200–1325, n = 90, 41% CDM) through the Classic period (AD 1325–1600, n = 73, 29% CDM) contain many sites claimed as part of San Ildefonso Pueblo ancestry (see Anscheutz and Merlan Reference Anscheutz and Merlan2007; Vierra and Dilley Reference Vierra, Dilley, Vierra and Schmidt2008).
Pojoaque Valley
The long-term study of mainly Developmental period (AD 900–1200, n = 453) sites in the northern Rio Grande valley approximately 35 km east of Cerro del Medio exhibits over 30% CDM obsidian at sites. Yet both Cerro Toledo obsidian (35%) and El Rechuelos (34%) obsidian are readily available nearby in Rio Grande Quaternary alluvium (Shackley Reference Shackley2012b, Reference Shackley2015; see Supplemental Figures 1–3).
Discussion
Thousands of obsidian artifacts have been assigned to sources in the northern New Mexico region. This sample of more than 700 obsidian artifacts from three areas east, west, and northeast of the caldera—none of which are ancestral Jemez Pueblo sites—all exhibit substantial amounts of CDM obsidian, used by Liebmann (Reference Liebmann2017) to posit an “indexical” link between the Jemez and the Valles Caldera. Given the profusion of archaeological evidence in the Valles Caldera region, we would rewrite Liebmann's sentence on page 654 to more accurately reflect the “landscapes of signification” thus: “The abundance of Cerro del Medio obsidian at ancestral pueblos in northern New Mexico and beyond attests to the extensive ties that existed between many of the regional pueblo villages and Valles Caldera generally and Cerro del Medio specifically.” While the importance of this source to the Jemez is demonstrated by Liebmann's analysis, it remained important to most other pueblos in the northern Rio Grande as well.
Supplemental Materials
For supplementary materials accompanying this article, visit https://doi.org/10.1017/aaq.2018.51.
Supplemental Text 1. Note on the Chronology.
Supplemental Text 2. M. Steven Shackley, 1999, Source Provenance of Archaeological Obsidian from Prehistoric Sites in the Gallina Region, northwest New Mexico. Report prepared for Roger C. Green, Department of Anthropology, University of Auckland, New Zealand.
Supplemental Text 3. M. Steven Shackley 2008, Source Provenance of Obsidian and Basalt Artifacts from the Land Conveyance and Transfer Project Data Recovery Program. In The Land Conveyance and Transfer Data Recovery Project: 7000 Years of Land Use on the Pajarito Plateau, edited by Bradley J. Vierra, and Kari M. Schmidt, pp. 387–398. Cultural Resources Report No. 273, Vol. 3: Artifact and Sample Analyses, Los Alamos National Laboratory, Los Alamos, New Mexico.
Supplemental Text 4. M. Steven Shackley, 2015, Source Provenance of Obsidian Artifacts from the Pojoaque Corridor Study, northern New Mexico. Report prepared for James Moore, Office of Archaeological Studies, Museum of New Mexico Center for New Mexico Archaeology, Santa Fe, New Mexico.
Supplemental Figure 1. Satellite photo of Jemez Mountains source locations (in capitals), and area/site locations Gallina, Jemez Pueblo, Pajarito Plateau, and Pojoaque Valley.
Supplemental Figure 2. Frequency distribution of obsidian sources in all sites from the three areas discussed: Gallina, Pajarito Plateau, and Pojoaque Valley.
Supplemental Figure 3. Frequency distribution of obsidian sources from Coalition and Classic Period sites on the Pajarito Plateau by time period (a); Frequency distribution of obsidian sources from noted time periods at Gallina (Kocer & Ferguson and Shackley studies combined) and Pojoaque Valley (b).