For some time, the Black Mountain phase in the Mimbres area has represented one of the more enigmatic cultural manifestations in the Southwest. The Black Mountain phase dates from around A.D. 1150 through A.D. 1300 and was initially differentiated from the preceding Classic period (ca. A.D. 1000-1150) by the appearance of new ceramic traditions; the cessation of Mimbres Black-on-white pottery production; new architectural styles that incorporate the use of coursed adobe; an apparent change in mortuary patterns where individuals are increasingly interred as secondary cremations; and changing settlement patterns. Subsequent interpretations of these patterns have resulted in two main interpretations regarding the relationship between the Classic period and Black Mountain phase inhabitants of the area. On one side of the spectrum are researchers who see a substantial disconnect between the inhabitants of the Mimbres area during these time periods. These researchers argue that the Mimbres Mogollon cultural sequence ends with the end of the Classic period. Conversely, there are some researchers who see a considerable amount of similarity between patterns present during the Black Mountain phase and those present during earlier time periods. These researchers argue that there is continuity between peoples living during the Classic period and those inhabiting the Mimbres area during the Black Mountain phase.
Indeed, much of the literature mentioning this time period in the Mimbres area has struggled with interpreting how the cultural manifestations witnessed during the Black Mountain phase correspond to local and regional developments. This time period, from about A.D. 1150 through A.D. 1300, represents one of major cultural
transformations across the larger Southwest. While contemporaneous occupations have seen relatively intense investigation in the Ancestral Pueblo and Hohokam areas (e.g. Abbot 2003; Crown and Judge 1991; Doyel et al. 2000; Kohler 2004; Kohler et al. 2012; Lekson 2006), mid-12th century occupations in southwestern New Mexico and
southeastern Arizona have seen relatively scant investigation. Perhaps the best documented of these investigations are those that have been conducted as part of the
Eastern Mimbres Archaeological Project (Hegmon and Nelson 1994; Nelson 1999; Nelson and Hegmon 1993). However, as Hegmon and others (1999) demonstrate, the occurrences taking place in this section of the larger Mogollon culture area may not mirror those of the surrounding region. Thus, while the Eastern Mimbres Archaeological Project increased our knowledge of cultural processes occurring along the eastern slopes of the Black Range, these processes and their underlying theories cannot easily be extended to other areas.
Addressing the relationship between Black Mountain phase peoples and groups inhabiting the Mimbres area during preceding periods served as one of the key agendas of my research. While there has been a growing amount of research suggesting continuity between Classic period and Black Mountain phase peoples, much of this research relies on the presence or absence of specific traits between time periods as a basis of support (Creel 1999; Hegmon et al. 1999). This research has demonstrated that certain
characteristics originally believed to have originated during the Black Mountain phase were actually present earlier in the Mimbres cultural tradition (e.g. coursed adobe
architecture, circular clay-lined hearths, secondary cremations, distinct ceramic traditions, etc.). However, these same data have been used to argue for discontinuity between
Classic period and Black Mountain phase inhabitants of the Mimbres area (Shafer 1999). It was for these reasons that I decided to focus on social aspects of Mimbres culture and how these differed through time. I believe that while the outward expression of material culture is easily susceptible to change under certain circumstances, the mechanisms responsible for this outward expression (i.e. social and technological organization) are less so. It was my intention to use these investigations to further the recent research endeavors that have focused on the social aspects of the prehistoric inhabitants of the Mimbres area (see papers in Powell-Marti and Gilman 2006 as well as Roth 2010a).
To date, the only excavated Black Mountain phase site in the Mimbres valley that has been reported in any amount of detail is the Old Town ruin (Creel 1999, 2006). Preliminary efforts were taken to report the work the Mimbres Foundation conducted at the Black Mountain phase Walsh and Montoya sites (LeBlanc 1976, 1977; Ravesloot
1979). However, no formal report of these investigations has been prepared. Because of this, our understanding of the daily lives of individuals during this time period is perhaps the most limited of all those in the Mimbres Mogollon cultural sequence.
It was under these circumstances that the Black Mountain phase component at Old Town was targeted for investigation beyond the modest efforts in the 1990s. From July through August of 2006 and June through July of 2007 test excavations were conducted by the University of Texas at Austin in Area C (the Black Mountain phase area) at the Old Town site (LA 1113) in Luna County, New Mexico. The objectives of these excavations were to (1) further explore the nature of the Black Mountain phase inhabitants at the site, (2) gain insights into the daily lives of the Black Mountain phase peoples within the Mimbres area, (3) explore the organization of household practices during the Black Mountain phase, and (4) contribute to the discourse surrounding the potential abandonment of the Mimbres area and collapse of the Mimbres Regional System during this time period.
Data obtained from these studies could then be compared to data obtained from the numerous excavated earlier pithouse and pueblo period structures in the Mimbres area. This was done in order to compare the patterns observed in Black Mountain phase material culture to patterns present in proceeding time periods. I believed that this was one of the more fruitful ways to investigate the alleged abandonment of the area during the Black Mountain phase. Any archaeologist knows that material culture waxes and wanes in popularity as time progresses and that a multitude of social processes can account for observed patterns in the archaeological record. However, the processes responsible for the production of these material items are less resistant to change and are instilled in the traditions handed down in communities of practice. Thus, if
archaeologists wanted to identify the abandonment of an area, their primary focus should not be on the appearance of new types of material items during a specific time period, it should instead be centered on how the practices responsible for these new items’
In the following pages I attempt to delve into the original research agenda outlined above. This research can be broken down into two parts. The first part,
encompassing Chapters 2 through 6 serve as background to the research that I conducted. The second part, encompassing Chapters 7 through 12, presents the data used to address the apparent abandonment of the Mimbres area during the Black Mountain phase.
Chapter 2 is aimed at providing a theoretical background for my research. While I was first interested in issues concerning the abandonment of the Mimbres area during the Black Mountain phase, my research design changed, over the course of the years, to focus more on how technologies were organized during the Black Mountain phase. Understanding this aspect of social life necessitated, in my mind, an understanding of how households and communities were organized as well. This was primarily the result of two realizations. The first of these was the fact that all changes in social systems are negotiated at smaller analytical levels. It is the actions undertaken by individuals as collectives that influence how the larger social system is structured. However,
individuals take on many roles in their social life. These include members of households and all the social roles engendered in their relationships, as well as members of various communities. All of these relationships act upon the individual and condition their actions. Thus, when looking at how technologies are organized, we need to understand the other social influences that allow technological organization to take its form.
The second realization dictating my current theoretical approach concerned the fact that the manner in which technologies are organized is often informed by the manner in which communities of practice are organized as well. In these social constructs
individuals are taught not only the specific skills necessary to participate in the group’s communal undertakings, but are also instilled with a more general set of rules that dictate their behaviors and mannerisms. It is through an intricate process of “legitimate
peripheral participation” that communities not only substantiate and perpetuate their own existence but also by necessity instill their members with a sense of identity in the larger social world.
With this in mind, it makes sense that if a new social group occupied an
essentially abandoned area, as some propose the Mimbres valley was by the end of the Classic period, then the manners in which communities of practice were organized would essentially change as well. This is due to the fact that the actions undertaken by these collectives inform the identity of their practitioners. If a new ethnic group occupied an abandoned valley one would expect there to be marked differences in the manner in which communities of practice organized their productive processes.
Chapter 3 serves as an introduction to the environmental setting in which the inhabitants of Old Town were enmeshed. Overviews of the local physiography, soils, climate, vegetation, and fauna are presented. To the extent possible, temporal shifts in these phenomena are also presented with attention given to conditions present during the site’s Black Mountain phase occupation. While these data give the reader a sense of the local conditions surrounding portions of the Mimbres valley, certain analyses were conducted based on comments I received from various attempts to obtain funding to conduct my research. Specifically, many reviewers noted that the use of identified chemical compositional groups might reflect local geological variations and not, as I proposed, reflect conscious decisions of groups to target specific geological deposits through time. Unfortunately, available data pertaining to the correlation of sourced clay raw material specimens with particular geologic formations is insufficient to allow me to adequately address this issue.
Chapter 4 presents a brief overview of the culture history of the area. The general cultural patterns for the Mimbres area have been dealt with in sufficient detail elsewhere, so only an overview of temporal trends is offered. These general trends are presented and augmented with more current research that has taken place since their original
formulation.
In Chapter 5, I present a more detailed overview of work concerning the Black Mountain phase and other contemporaneous cultural manifestations in the southern Southwest that have influenced how the Black Mountain phase has been interpreted. A brief history of the research culminating in our current understanding of the Black
Mountain phase is presented and what little research has been conducted at Black Mountain phase sites is also discussed. The chapter concludes with a discussion of the schism that at one time divided interpretations of the Black Mountain phase and the conditions that influenced these interpretations.
Chapter 6 provides a detailed discussion of the Black Mountain phase
architectural remains that have been excavated at Old Town (LA 1113). Each individual room and room/suite is discussed, as are other features that may have been used during the site’s Black Mountain phase occupation. These data are then compared to features present in other time periods to see if there were shifts in the manners in which space was organized through time. The results of these analyses indicate that while some features are unique to the Black Mountain phase (e.g. raised box hearths) other types of features common to the Black Mountain phase appear earlier in the Mimbres sequence (e.g. circular clay-lined hearths, coursed adobe architecture, etc.). Similarly, analyses confirm the Mimbres Foundation’s assertion that room size increases through time. However, these data also demonstrate that the size of room-suites does not vary significantly through time. This indicates that the culturally defined space needed for a coresidential unit remained fairly constant from the Classic period through the Black Mountain phase.
In Chapter 7, I present a general discussion of lithic technology and follow this with a comparative analysis of lithic debitage recovered from excavated (and reported) archaeological sites in the Mimbres area. As one can imagine, the comparability of these datasets rests on different analysts recording similar information for excavated
assemblages. Unfortunately, the amount of comparable data across excavated
assemblages is limited. Thus, only raw material variability and cortical variation present on flakes is analyzed in a comparative fashion across assemblages. Because the datasets used in this analysis encompass all of the periods/phases in the Mimbres chronological sequence, they provide insight into changes in procurement patterns and reduction strategies through time.
The results of these analyses indicate that raw material procurement patterns and reduction strategies varied through time, between contemporaneous sites, and between
contemporaneous rooms within sites. While much of the variability in the datasets is likely a result of the raw material variability present in the natural environment, there are some patterns worth noting. These results show that the people inhabiting the area during the Cliff/Salado phase preferred fine-grained chalcedony to all other materials while the inhabitants of earlier time periods tended to procure coarse-grained materials (e.g. andesite/basalt and rhyolite) over other more fine-grained materials that were likely less available as time progressed. This observation is based on the proportional increase in flakes struck from andesite/basalt cores from the Late Pithouse period through to the Classic period as well as a proportional decrease in flakes struck from chalcedony cores during this same time span.
I then shift my attention to the intra-site variability present within assemblages recovered from excavated rooms in the Black Mountain phase component at Old Town. These analyses indicate that there is substantial variability within the lithic assemblages recovered from excavated rooms. I suggest that this variability is the result of a
continuation of practices present during the preceding periods and results from a local adaptation of lithic technology that was organized at the household level. This adaptation focused on the production of a maintainable generalized tool kit that allowed individuals to efficiently exploit the local resources that were predictable in both time and space.
In Chapter 8, I focus my attention on the formal chipped stone tool assemblages recovered from excavations at Old Town as well as patterns present in the sourced obsidian assemblage. These data point to a different level of organization in the procurement of raw materials used in the manufacture of projectile points. It is shown that the majority of the area’s projectile point assemblage is manufactured from materials that are not available locally. This pattern increases where it reaches its peak during the Classic period. However, the same networks utilized during earlier periods are also utilized during the Black Mountain phase. Because the diversity of obsidian source groups utilized in the production of projectile points decreases through time, I believe that obsidian procurement was something that was organized at a level above that of the household and could represent a phenomenon that was organized at the regional level.
Again, the available data suggests that there is a considerable amount of continuity between the Black Mountain phase and earlier periods with respect to the manner in which the procurement of obsidian projectile points is organized.
In Chapter 9, I present a brief outline of the operational sequence associated with ceramic technology and follow this with a discussion of the organization of ceramic production. I characterize the production of ceramics during the Late Pithouse and Classic periods using available data. This analysis later serves as the point of comparison for my analysis of Playas ceramic production (Chapter 10). Until recently, discussions of how Mimbres pottery production was organized have relied on somewhat limited data and conclusions were often drawn with consideration of only one line of evidence. Recent synthesis of the extant INAA dataset for the region allows for a more thorough analysis of how pottery production was organized during the Pithouse and Classic periods in the Mimbres area (Speakman 2013). I use Costin’s (1991) organization of production parameters to analyze this dataset. These analyses suggest that there were two methods of organizing production during the Pithouse and Classic periods. Specifically, initial analyses using Speakman’s compositional groups demonstrate that the production those compositional groups composed primarily of plainwares and early-decorated ceramics (e.g. Mogollon Red-on-brown and Three Circle Red-on-white) was organized differently from the production of Mimbres Black-on-white Style III ceramics. My analyses suggest that the production of plainwares and early-decorated ceramics was organized as
household specialization where production was aimed at meeting local demands. Conversely, the production of Mimbres Black-on-white ceramics became increasingly organized at the community level through time. With Mimbres Black-on-white ceramics, production was aimed at meeting regional demands by some production groups and was aimed at meeting local demands with others.
I follow this discussion with an analysis of ceramics recovered from assemblages associated with rooms excavated in the Black Mountain phase component at Old Town. These analyses demonstrate that there is considerable variability between assemblages recovered from roof and floor contexts associated with these rooms. I interpret this
variability as resulting from both social and temporal causes. Using these data, I suggest that distribution/consumption practices were organized at the household level and reflect the negotiation of social relations by individual households. I also suggest that these patterns were fairly resistant to change throughout the Black Mountain phase.
In chapter 10, I discuss the efforts taken to refine the Playas INAA dataset. To facilitate these efforts 102 new samples were submitted from excavated rooms/room- suites at Montoya, Old Town, and Walsh. A total of 11 compositional groups were established in these analyses, some of which correspond to the compositional groups established by Speakman (2013) in his analysis of the Mimbres INAA dataset. The results of these analyses demonstrate that there were multiple areas of production for Playas ceramics, many of which were located in the Mimbres valley. Ceramics originating from these production zones were somewhat widely distributed but most appear to be locally consumed. I suggest that this pattern represents the organization of production at the household level. Current evidence indicates that the organization of production for one compositional group, Playas Red 2, was organized at the community level. I interpret this as a response to existing practices associated with the manner in which production was organized for ceramics belonging to the El Paso brownware (or polychrome) series.
While considerable variability was present between sites with respect to the proportion of ceramics originating from different Playas production zones, less variability is present between individual excavated Black Mountain phase structures. I interpret this pattern as resulting from household practices associated with the construction and
maintenance of distinct social relations.
In Chapter 11, I present a brief discussion of mortuary patterns present at Black Mountain phase sites that have been excavated in the Mimbres area. These data are slightly augmented by the recovery of two flexed inhumations and one cremation from