Skip to main content
SpringerLink
Log in

Intersecting Landscapes: A Palynological Study of Pueblo, Spanish, and Anglo-American Land Use in New Mexico

  • Published:
Historical Archaeology Aims and scope Submit manuscript

Abstract

The southwestern United States provides an opportunity to study the environmental impacts of culturally diverse peoples within a single geographic region. Using palynological data from a 600-year period, we examine the effects of differing land-use strategies employed by Pueblos, Spanish colonists, and Anglo-Americans around the village of La Cienega, New Mexico. The data indicate that, prior to Spanish colonization, Puebloan peoples had successful agricultural practices that created a diverse anthropogenic landscape. Successive waves of Spanish colonists, beginning in the 16th century, and Anglo-American colonists, in the 19th century, brought new plants, animals, and agricultural technologies that interacted with existing indigenous strategies. This history of the landscape of the Southwest reveals the subtle reorganization of the anthropogenic landscape resulting from the interaction and persistence of these three cultural traditions.

This is a preview of subscription content, log in via an institution to check access.

Access this article

Log in via an institution

Price excludes VAT (USA)
Tax calculation will be finalised during checkout.

Instant access to the full article PDF.

Institutional subscriptions

Similar content being viewed by others

References

  • Alden, Peter, and Peter Friederici 1999 National Audubon Society Field Guide to the Southwestern States. Alfred A. Knopf, New York, NY.

    Google Scholar 

  • American Fact Finder 2014 Profile of General Demographic Characteristics: 2000 Census, 2000 Summary File 1 (SF 1) 100-Percent Data, New Mexico. American FactFinder, United States Census Bureau, U.S. Department of Commerce < http://factfinder2.census.gov/faces/tableservices/jsf/pages/productview.xhtml?src=CF>. Accessed 25 October 2014.

    Google Scholar 

  • Anschuetz, Kurt F. 1995 Saving a Rainy Day: The Integration of Diverse Agricultural Technologies to Harvest and Conserve Water in the Lower Rio Chama Valley, New Mexico. In Soil, Water, Biology and Belief in Prehistoric and Traditional Southwestern Agriculture, H. Wolcott Toll, editor, pp. 25–40. New Mexico Archaeological Council Special Publication No. 2. Albuquerque.

    Google Scholar 

  • 2007 Room to Grow with Rooms to Spare: Agriculture and Big-Site Settlements in the Late Pre-Columbian Tewa Basin Pueblo Landscape. Kiva 73(2):173–194.

    Article  Google Scholar 

  • Barrett, Elinore M. 2002 The Geography of the Rio Grande Pueblos in the Seventeenth Century. Ethnohistory 49(1):123–169.

    Article  Google Scholar 

  • Berglund, Björn E., Urban Emanuelsson, Stefan Persson, and Thomas Persson 1986 Pollen/Vegetation Relationships in Grazed and Mowed Plant Communities of South Sweden. In Anthropogenic Indicators in Pollen Diagrams, K. E. Behre, editor, pp. 37–52. Balkema, Rotterdam, the Netherlands.

    Google Scholar 

  • Betancourt, Julio L., Kate Aasen Rylander, Cristina Peñalba, and Janet L. McVickar 2001 Late Quaternary Vegetation History of Rough Canyon, South-Central New Mexico, USA. Palaeogeography, Palaeoclimatology, and Palaeoecology 165(1):71–95.

    Article  Google Scholar 

  • Betancourt, Julio L., and Thomas R. Van Devender 1981 Holocene Vegetation in Chaco Canyon, New Mexico. Science 214(4521):656–658.

    Article  Google Scholar 

  • Blais, Jules M., Jacob Kalff, R. Jack Cornett, and R. Douglas Evans 1995 Evaluation of 210Pb Dating in Lake Sediments Using Stable Pb, Ambrosia Pollen, and 137Cs. Journal of Paleolimnology 13(2):169–178.

    Article  Google Scholar 

  • Brugam, Richard 1978 Pollen Indicators of Land-Use Change in Southern Connecticut. Quaternary Research 9(3):349–362.

    Article  Google Scholar 

  • Bryan, Kirk 1928 Historic Evidence on the Changes in the Channel of Rio Puerco, a Tributary of the Rio Grande in New Mexico. Journal of Geology 36(3):265–282.

    Article  Google Scholar 

  • Cartron, Jean-Luc E., David C. Lightfoot, Jane E. Mygatt, Sandra L. Brantley, and Timothy K. Lowrey 2008 A Field Guide to the Plants and Animals of the Middle Rio Grande Bosque. University of New Mexico Press, Albuquerque.

    Google Scholar 

  • Cordell, Linda S. 1979 Cultural Resources Overview: Middle Rio Grande Valley. U.S. Department of Agriculture, U.S. Forest Service, Southwest Region, Bureau of Land Management, New Mexico State Office, Albuquerque.

    Google Scholar 

  • Cordell, Linda S., and Maxine E. McBrinn 2012 Archaeology of the Southwest, 3rd edition. Left Coast Press, Walnut Creek, CA.

    Google Scholar 

  • Crown, Patricia L., Jan D. Orcutt, and Timothy A. Kohler 2000 Pueblo Cultures in Transition: The Northern Rio Grande. In The Prehistoric Pueblo World, AD 1150–1350, Michael A. Alder, editor, pp. 188–204. University of Arizona Press, Tucson.

    Google Scholar 

  • Cummings, Linda S. 1994 Anasazi Diet: Variety in the Hoy House and Lion House Coprolite Record and Nutritional Analysis. In Paleonutrition: The Diet and Health of Prehistoric Americans, Kristin Sobolik, editor, pp. 134–150. Southern Illinois University, Center for Archaeological Investigations, Carbondale.

    Google Scholar 

  • Damiata, Brian N., and John Southon 2012 Results of AMS Dating of Soil Samples: Leonora, New Mexico and Hass Woods, Massachusetts. Manuscript, Andrew Fiske Memorial Center for Archaeological Research, University of Massachusetts Boston, Boston.

    Google Scholar 

  • Damp, Jonathan E., Stephen A. Hall, and Susan J. Smith 2002 Early Irrigation on the Colorado Plateau near Zuni Pueblo, New Mexico. American Antiquity 67(4):665–676.

    Article  Google Scholar 

  • Davis, Owen K., and David S. Shafer 1992 A Holocene Climatic Record for the Sonoran Desert from Pollen Analysis of Montezuma Well, Arizona, USA. Palaeogeography, Palaeoclimatology, Palaeoecology 92(1):107–119.

    Article  Google Scholar 

  • Davis, Owen K., and Raymond M. Turner 1986 Palynological Evidence for the Historic Expansion of Juniper and Desert Shrubs in Arizona, USA. Review of Palaeobotany and Palynology 49(3):177–193.

    Article  Google Scholar 

  • Dean, Glenna 1995 In Search of the Rare: Pollen Evidence of Prehistoric Agriculture. In Soil, Water, Biology and Belief in Prehistoric and Traditional Southwestern Agriculture, H. Wolcott Toll, editor, pp. 353–360. New Mexico Archaeological Council Special Publication No. 2. Albuquerque.

    Google Scholar 

  • 2001 Pollen Analysis from Two Sites Near Carthage. In Excavations at Two Prehistoric Lithic Scatters along U.S. 380 in Socorro County, New Mexico, Yvonne R. Oakes and Dorothy A. Zamora, editors, pp. 57–63. Museum of New Mexico, Office of Archaeological Studies, Archaeology Notes 291. Santa Fe.

    Google Scholar 

  • Dimbleby, Geoffrey W. 1985 The Palynology of Archaeological Sites. Academic Press, Orlando, FL.

    Google Scholar 

  • Dull, Robert A. 1999 Palynological Evidence for 19th Century Grazing- Induced Vegetation Change in the Southern Sierra Nevada, California, U.S.A. Journal of Biogeography 26(4):899–912.

    Article  Google Scholar 

  • Ebright, Malcolm 1987 New Mexican Land Grants: The Legal Background. In Land, Water, and Culture: New Perspectives on Hispanic Land Grants, Charles L. Briggs and John R Van Ness, editors, pp. 15–66. University of New Mexico Press, Albuquerque.

    Google Scholar 

  • Ellis, Florence Hawley 1989 San Gabriel Del Yungue: As Seen by an Archaeologist. Sunstone Press, Santa Fe, NM.

    Google Scholar 

  • Endfield, Georgina H., and Sara L. O’Hara 1997 Conflicts Over Water in “The Little Drought Age” in Central Mexico. Environment and History 3(3):255–272.

    Article  Google Scholar 

  • Endfield, Georgina H., Isabel Fernández Tejedo, and Sarah L. O’hara 2004 Drought and Disputes, Deluge and Dearth: Climatic Variability and Human Response in Colonial Oaxaca, Mexico. Journal of Historical Geography 30(2):249–276.

    Article  Google Scholar 

  • Erdtman, Gunnar 1943 An Introduction to Pollen Analysis. Ronald Press, New York, NY.

    Google Scholar 

  • Faegri, Knut, Johannes Iversen, P. E. Kaland, and K. Krzywinski 1989 Textbook of Pollen Analysis, 4th edition. Blackburn Press, Caldwell, NJ.

    Google Scholar 

  • Fish, Suzanne K., and Paul R. Fish 1992 Prehistoric Landscapes of the Sonoran Desert Hohokam. Population and Environment 13(4):269–283.

    Article  Google Scholar 

  • Floyd, M. Lisa, Thomas L. Fleischner, David Hanna, and Paul Whitefield 2003 Effects of Historic Livestock Grazing at Chaco National Historic Park, New Mexico. Conservation Biology 17(6):1703–1711.

    Article  Google Scholar 

  • Ford, Richard I. 1972 An Ecological Perspective on the Eastern Pueblos. In New Perspectives on the Pueblos, Alfonso Ortiz, editor, pp. 1–17. University of New Mexico Press, Albuquerque.

    Google Scholar 

  • 1987 The New Pueblo Economy. In When Cultures Meet: Remembering San Gabriel del Yunge Oweenge, Florence Ellis, Myra E. Jenkins, and Richard Ford, editors, pp. 73–91. Sunstone Press, Santa Fe, NM.

    Google Scholar 

  • Forde, C. Daryll 1931 Hopi Agriculture and Land Ownership. Journal of the Royal Anthropological Institute of Great Britain and Ireland 61(2):357–405.

    Article  Google Scholar 

  • Fowler, Don D. 2000 A Laboratory for Anthropology: Science and Romanticism in the American Southwest, 1846–1930. University of New Mexico Press, Albuquerque.

    Google Scholar 

  • Graf, William L. 1986 Fluvial Erosion and Federal Public Policy in the Navajo Nation. Physical Geography 7(2):97–115.

    Google Scholar 

  • Hackett, Charles (EDITOR) 1937 Historical Documents Relating to New Mexico, Nueva Vizcaya, and Approaches Thereto, to 1773, Vol. 3, Adolph Bandelier and Fanny Bandelier, translators. Carnegie Institution of Washington, Washington, DC.

    Google Scholar 

  • Hall, G. Emlen 1987 The Pueblo Grant Labyrinth. In Land, Water, and Culture: New Perspectives on Hispanic Land Grants, Charles L. Briggs and John R Van Ness, editors, pp. 67–140. University of New Mexico Press, Albuquerque.

    Google Scholar 

  • Hall, Stephen A. 1981 Deteriorated Pollen Grains and the Interpretation of Quaternary Pollen Diagrams. Review of Palaeobotany and Palynology 32(2&3):193–206.

    Article  Google Scholar 

  • 1985 Quaternary Pollen Analysis and Vegetational History of the Southwest. In Pollen Records of Late-Quaternary North American Sediments, Vaughn M. Bryant and Richard G. Holloway, editors, pp. 95–123. American Association of Stratigraphic Palynologists Foundation, Dallas, TX.

    Google Scholar 

  • Hall, Stephen A., and T. J. Ferguson 1996 Pollen, Stratigraphy, and Chronology of the North Edge of Zuni Pueblo. Kiva 61(3):225–239.

    Article  Google Scholar 

  • Hammond, George, and Agapito Rey 1953 Don Juan de Oñate: Colonizer of New Mexico, 1595–1628. University of New Mexico Press, Albuquerque.

    Google Scholar 

  • Hansen, Barbara S., and Edward J. Cushing 1973 Identification of Pine Pollen of Late Quaternary Age from the Chuska Mountains, New Mexico. Geological Society of America Bulletin 84(4):1181–1200.

    Article  Google Scholar 

  • Hill, James, and Richard Hevly 1968 Pollen at Broken K Pueblo: Some New Interpretations. American Antiquity 33(2):200–210.

    Article  Google Scholar 

  • Iversen, Johannes 1949 The Influence of Prehistoric Man on Vegetation. Danmarks Geologiske Undersogelse, Vol. 3, No. 6. I kommission hos C.A. Reitzel, Copenhagen, DK.

    Google Scholar 

  • Jacobson, George L., and Eric C. Grimm 1986 A Numerical Analysis of Holocene Forest and Prairie Vegetation in Central Minnesota. Ecology 67(4):958–966.

    Article  Google Scholar 

  • Jones, Volney H. 1949 Notes on Some Organic Remains from Abo Mission. In The Mission of San Gregorio de Abo, J. H. Toulouse, Jr., editor, pp. 29–32. University of New Mexico Press, Monographs of the School of American Research 13. Albuquerque.

    Google Scholar 

  • Kapp, Ronald O., Owen K. Davis, and James E. King 2000 Pollen and Spores, 2nd edition. American Association of Stratigraphic Palynologists Foundation, College Station, TX.

    Google Scholar 

  • Kelso, Gerald K. 1994 Palynology in Historical Rural-Landscape Studies: Great Meadows, Pennsylvania. American Antiquity 59(2):359–372.

    Article  Google Scholar 

  • Kelso, K Gerald K., and Mary C. Beaudry 1990 Pollen Analysis and Urban Land Use: The Environs of Scottow’s Dock in 17th, 18th, and Early 19th Century Boston. Historical Archaeology 24(1):61–81.

    Article  Google Scholar 

  • Lawson, Ian T., Frederick J. Gathorne-hardy, Mike J. Church, Anthony J. Newton, Kevin J. Edwards, Andrew J. Dugmore, and Aarni Einarsson 2007 Environmental Impacts of the Norse Settlement: Palaeoenvironmental Data from Myvatnssveit, Northern Iceland. Boreas 36(1):1–19.

    Google Scholar 

  • Liebmann, Matthew 2012 Revolt: An Archaeological History of Pueblo Resistance and Revitalization in 17th Century New Mexico. University of Arizona Press, Tucson.

    Google Scholar 

  • Lightfoot, Dale 1993 The Cultural Ecology of Puebloan Pebble-Mulch Gardens. Human Ecology 21(2):115–143.

    Article  Google Scholar 

  • MacCameron, Robert 1994 Environmental Change in Colonial New Mexico. Environmental History Review 18(2):17–39.

    Article  Google Scholar 

  • Melville, Elinor G. K. 1990 Environmental and Social Change in the Valle del Mezquital, Mexico, 1521–1600. Comparative Studies in Society and History 32(1):24–53.

    Article  Google Scholar 

  • 1997 A Plague of Sheep: Environmental Consequences of the Conquest of Mexico. Cambridge University Press, Cambridge, UK.

    Google Scholar 

  • Moore, Peter D., and J. A. Webb 1978 An Illustrated Guide to Pollen Analysis. Halsted Press, New York, NY.

    Google Scholar 

  • Moore, Peter D., J. A. Webb, and Margaret E. Collinson 1991 Pollen Analysis, 2nd edition. Blackwell Scientific, Oxford, UK.

    Google Scholar 

  • Mrozowski, Stephen A. 2006 Environments of History: Biological Dimensions of Historical Archaeology. In Historical Archaeology, Martin Hall and Stephen W. Silliman, editors, pp. 23–41. Blackwell, Malden, MA.

    Google Scholar 

  • Muenchrath, Deborah A., and Ricardo J. Salvador 1995 Maize Productivity and Agroecology: Effects of Environment and Agriculture Practices on the Biology of Maize. In Soil, Water, Biology, and Belief in Prehistoric and Traditional Southwestern Agriculture, H. Wolcott Toll, editor, pp. 353–358. New Mexico Archaeological Council, Albuquerque.

    Google Scholar 

  • Nellessen, James E. 2004 Salix exigua. In Wildland Shrubs of the United States and Its Territories: Thamnic Tescriptions Volume 1, John K. Francis, editor, pp. 664–667. U.S. Department of Agriculture, U.S. Forest Service, International Institute of Tropical Forestry, San Juan, PR.

    Google Scholar 

  • Ortiz, Alfonso 1969 The Tewa World: Space, Time, Being and Becoming in Pueblo Society. University of Chicago Press, Chicago, IL.

    Google Scholar 

  • Pan, Yangdong, and Richard Brugam 1997 Human Disturbance and Trophic Status Changes in Crystal Lake, McHenry County, Illinois, USA. Journal of Paleolimnology 17(4):369–376.

    Article  Google Scholar 

  • Pearsall, Deborah M. 2010 Paleoethnobotany. A Handbook of Procedures, 2nd edition. Left Coast Press, Walnut Creek, CA.

    Google Scholar 

  • Ravesloot, John C., Andrew Darling, and Michael R. Waters 2009 Maladaptive or Resilient Societies. In The Archaeology of Environmental Change: Socionatural Legacies of Degradation and Resilience, Christopher T. Fisher, James Brett Hill, and Gary M. Feinman, editors, pp. 232–248. University of Arizona Press, Tucson.

    Google Scholar 

  • Rios-Bustamante, Antonio Jose 1976 New Mexico in the 18th Century: Life, Labor and Trade in La Villa de San Felipe de Albuquerque, 1706–1790. Aztlan: A Journal of Chicano Studies 7(3):357–389.

    Google Scholar 

  • Rothschild, Nan A. 2003 Colonial Encounters in a Native American Landscape: The Spanish and Dutch in North America. Smithsonian Institution Press, Washington, DC.

    Google Scholar 

  • Scurlock, Dan 1988 The Rio Grande Bosque: Ever Changing. New Mexico Historical Review 63(2):131–140.

    Google Scholar 

  • Snead, James 2002 Ancestral Pueblo Trails and the Cultural Landscape of the Pajarito Plateau, New Mexico. Antiquity 76(293):756–765.

    Article  Google Scholar 

  • 1 2008 Ancestral Landscapes of the Pueblo World. University of Arizona Press, Tucson.

  • Snead, James, and Robert Preucel 1999 The Ideology of Settlement: Ancestral Keres Landscapes in the Northern Rio Grande. In Archaeologies of Landscape: Contemporary Perspectives, Wendy Ashmore and A. Bernard Knapp, editors, pp. 169–197. Blackwell, Cambridge, UK.

    Google Scholar 

  • Snow, David H. 1994 Field Excavations at LA 20,000: 1980–1994. Manuscript, El Rancho de las Golondrinas, La Cienega, NM.

    Google Scholar 

  • Spielmann, Katherine A., Tiffany Clark, Diane Hawkey, Katharine Rainey, and Suzanne K. Fish 2009 “Being Weary, They Had Rebelled”: Pueblo Subsistence and Labor under Spanish Colonialism. Journal of Anthropological Archaeology 28(1):102–125.

    Article  Google Scholar 

  • Spielmann, Katherine A., Margaret J. Schoeninger, and Katherine Moore 1990 Plains-Pueblo Interdependence and Human Diet at Pecos Pueblo, New Mexico. American Antiquity 55(4):745–765.

    Article  Google Scholar 

  • Toll, Henry Wolcott (editor) 1995 Soil, Water, Biology, and Belief in Prehistoric and Traditional Southwestern Agriculture. New Mexico Archaeological Council, Special Publication No. 2. Albuquerque.

    Google Scholar 

  • Traverse, Alfred 2008 Paleopalynology, 2nd edition. Springer, Dordrecht, the Netherlands.

    Google Scholar 

  • Trigg, Heather B. 1999 The Economy of Early Colonial New Mexico, AD 1598–1680: An Investigation of Social Structure and Human Agency Using Archaeological and Documentary Data. Doctoral dissertation, Department of Anthropology, University of Michigan, Ann Arbor. University Microfilms International, Ann Arbor, MI.

    Google Scholar 

  • 2003 The Ties that Bind: Economic and Social Interaction in Early Colonial New Mexico, A.D. 1598–1680. Historical Archaeology 37(2):65–84.

    Article  Google Scholar 

  • 2004 Food Choice and Social Identity in Early Colonial New Mexico. Journal of the Southwest 46(2):223–252.

    Google Scholar 

  • 2005 From Household to Empire: Society and Economy in Early Colonial New Mexico. University of Arizona Press, Tucson.

    Google Scholar 

  • Trigg, Heather, and Kurt Anschuetz 2011 A View of La Cienega: At the Intersection of the Iberian, Tewa, and Keres Worlds in Seventeenth-Century New Mexico. Paper presented at the 76th Annual Meeting of the Society for American Archaeology, Sacramento, CA.

    Google Scholar 

  • Troels-Smith, Jørgen 1960 Ivy, Mistletoe and Elm: Climate Indicators—Fodder Plants: A Contribution to the Interpretation of the Pollen Zone Border VII–VIII. Reitzels, Copenhagen, Denmark.

    Google Scholar 

  • Van West, Carla, Thomas Windes, and Frances Levine 2009 The Role of Climate in Early Spanish—Native American Interactions in the U.S. Southwest. Paper presented at the 74th Annual Meeting of the Society for American Archaeology, Atlanta, GA.

    Google Scholar 

  • Weber, David J. 1992 The Spanish Frontier in North America. Yale University Press, New Haven, CT.

    Google Scholar 

  • Weber, David J. (editor) 1999 What Caused the Pueblo Revolt of 1680? Bedford/ St. Martin’s, Boston, MA.

    Google Scholar 

Download references

Author information

Authors and Affiliations

  1. Department of Anthropology, University of Virginia, PO Box 400120, Charlottesville, ]sVA, 22904-4120, USA

    Kyle W. Edwards

  2. Andrew Fiske Memorial Center for Archaeological Research Department of Anthropology, University of Massachusetts Boston, 100 Morrissey Boulevard, Boston, MA, 02125, USA

    Heather B. Trigg

Authors
  1. Kyle W. Edwards
    View author publications

    You can also search for this author in PubMed Google Scholar

  2. Heather B. Trigg
    View author publications

    You can also search for this author in PubMed Google Scholar

Rights and permissions

Reprints and permissions

About this article

Check for updates. Verify currency and authenticity via CrossMark

Cite this article

Edwards, K.W., Trigg, H.B. Intersecting Landscapes: A Palynological Study of Pueblo, Spanish, and Anglo-American Land Use in New Mexico. Hist Arch 50, 135–153 (2016). https://doi.org/10.1007/BF03377181

Download citation

  • Published:

  • Issue Date:

  • DOI: https://doi.org/10.1007/BF03377181

Search

Navigation