Obsidian Provenance Data Reveals New Insights into Archaic Lifeways in Chihuahua, Mexico

ABSTRACT

Archaeologists know less about how hunter-gatherers and early agriculturists lived during the Archaic period in the Mexican Northwest compared to the U.S. Southwest. To evaluate Archaic period mobility, lithic technology, and regional and temporal patterns in raw material procurement in northwestern Chihuahua, Mexico, we characterized the trace elemental composition of 61 obsidian artifacts from Rancho Santa María I, II, and El Peñón del Diablo using energy-dispersive X-ray fluorescence spectrometry. People predominantly used Los Jagüeyes obsidian procured locally from secondary deposits, but they also used three additional sources from upland and lowland environments in the Mexican Northwest to make dart projectile points and debitage. Also, they reduced obsidian using bipolar percussion, and there is regional and temporal variation in obsidian source use. This study contributes new insights into how mobility, raw material availability, and nodule size affected lithic technological organization in an understudied region.

KEYWORDS:

• Archaic period
• Chihuahua
• Mexico
• U.S. Southwest
• obsidian
• EDXRF spectrometry
• lithic technology

Acknowledgements

We thank Myles Miller, Emma Britton, and Jakob Sedig for providing helpful and positive comments on earlier drafts. We also thank Grant McCall and the anonymous reviewers who provided valuable recommendations. Permitting for this study was facilitated by the Consejo de Arqueología of the Instituto Nacional de Anthropología e Historia (Oficio 401.3S.16-2018/1291).

Disclosure statement

No potential conflict of interest was reported by the authors.

Data Availability Statement

The artifacts analyzed in this study are located at the Escuela de Antropología e Historia del Norte de México archaeological laboratory in Chihuahua City, Mexico. All data, including maps, analyses, and photographs in digital and paper form are available upon request to the authors. Source data are available online at http://swxrflab.net/swobsrcs.htm.

Notes on contributors

Sean G. Dolan received his PhD from the University of Oklahoma. A Registered Professional Archaeologist, Sean manages cultural resources for N3B Los Alamos at Los Alamos National Laboratory. He has authored several journal articles on the use of obsidian that answers questions related to social interaction and lithic technology in the US Southwest and Mexican Northwest.

Emiliano Gallaga received his PhD from the University of Arizona. A Mexican archaeologist from the Instituto Nacional de Antropología e Historia, Emiliano is the former director of the School of Anthropology and History of Northwest México in Chihuahua, and is an SNI level 1 researcher, and director of several archaeological projects in Northwest Mexico. He has authored numerous books and peer-reviewed papers on the prehispanic Mexican Northwest, Mesoamerica, and the US Southwest.

M. Steven Shackley is Emeritus Professor of Anthropology, University of California, Berkeley, and Director of the Geoarchaeological XRF Laboratory, Albuquerque, New Mexico. He has authored numerous books and peer-reviewed papers on geoarchaeology, lithic technology, X-ray fluorescence spectrometry in archaeology, and the North American Southwest, and is the 2019 recipient of the Society for American Archaeology's Fryxell Medal for Interdisciplinary Research.

ORCID

Sean G. Dolan http://orcid.org/0000-0001-8108-4143