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OBSIDIAN EVIDENCE OF INTERACTION AND MIGRATION FROM
THE MESA VERDE REGION, SOUTHWEST COLORADO
Fumiyasu Arakawa, Scott G. Ortman, M. Steven Shackley, and Andrew I. Duff
A growing body of evidence demonstrates that ancestral Pueblo people living in the central Mesa Verde region of the U.S.
Southwest maintained long-distance contacts with other Pueblo peoples. Questions of Pueblo interactions through time and
across space have traditionally been addressed using ceramic sourcing data. This research uses obsidian source data to
argue that, from A.D. 600 to 920, residents of the central Mesa Verde region obtained obsidian from throughout the U.S.
northern Southwest, but that from A.D. 1060 to 1280 they acquired obsidian almost exclusively from the Jemez Mountains
area of north-central New Mexico. In addition, importation of obsidian from the Pajarito Plateau increased during the
period of population decline in the Mesa Verde region, and population expansion on the Pajarito. Characteristics of the
obsidian assemblage from central Mesa Verde region sites also suggest that Jemez obsidian entered the region primarily in
the form of finished arrows, arrow points, and arrow-point preforms. We argue that these patterns reflect return migration
by early immigrants from the Mesa Verde region to the northern Rio Grande, an early stage in the development of a migration stream between the two regions.
Un creciente acervo de evidencia demuestra que las comunidades ancestrales Pueblo que vivían en la región central del sudoeste
de los E.E.U.U. mantenían relaciones a larga distancia con otras comunidades Pueblo. Preguntas sobre las interacciones
entre las comunidades Pueblo a través del tiempo y el espacio han sido tradicionalmente investigadas a través de estudios de
cerámica. Esta investigación utiliza datos de fuentes de obsidiana para argumentar que a partir del 600 d.C. al 920 d.C. los
habitantes de la región central de Mesa Verde adquirieron obsidiana a lo largo del sudoeste de los E.E.U.U, pero a partir del
1060 d.C. al 1280 d.C. esolo adquirían obsidiana casi exclusivamente en la región de las Montañas Jemez, ubicadas en la
zona norte-central de Nuevo México. Además, la importación de obsidiana de la Meseta Pajarito aumento durante el periodo
de declive poblacional en la región de Mesa Verde, y de crecimiento poblacional en la Meseta Pajarito. Características de las
colecciones de obsidiana provenientes de la región central de Mesa Verde sugieren que la obsidiana de Jemez fue introducida
primordialmente en forma de flechas, puntas de flechas, y prototipos de puntas de flecha. Nosotros argumentamos que estos
patrones reflejan migraciones de regreso de los primeros inmigrantes de la región de Mesa Verde hacia la zona norte del Rio
Grande (Bravo), lo cual fue una etapa inicial en el desarrollo de una corriente de migraciones entre estas dos regiones.
T
his paper has two primary goals. The first
is to take a critical look at the early stages
of the migration process. In recent years,
archaeologists (Anthony 1990; Arakawa 2006;
Cameron 1995; Cameron and Duff 2008; Clark
2001; Duff 1998; Ortman 2009) have begun to
consider prehistoric migration as a social process
with several stages, rather than as an event. However, research along these lines has tended to fo-
cus on detection of immigrants in the destination
area and the impact of migration on destination
area societies (e.g., Clark 2001; Stone 2003). In
other words, archaeologists have emphasized the
late stages of the migration process. We believe it
is also worthwhile to examine earlier stages of the
migration process and tackle such questions as:
how did migrants develop social contacts with
people who lived in eventual destination areas;
Fumiyasu Arakawa 䡲 Department of Anthropology, New Mexico State University, 1525 Stewart, Room 331, P.O. Box
30001, MSC: 3BV, Las Cruces, NM 88003
Scott G. Ortman 䡲 Crow Canyon Archaeological Center. 23390 Road K, Cortez, Colorado 81321-9908 and Santa Fe
Institute 1399 Hyde Park Road, Santa Fe, New Mexico 87501
M. Steven Shackley 䡲 University of California, Berkeley, California 94720-3710
Andrew I. Duff 䡲 Washington State University, Pullman, Washington 99164-4910
American Antiquity 76(4), 2011, pp. 774–796
Copyright ©2011 by the Society for American Archaeology
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how did people learn about eventual destination
areas; and who visited destination areas before the
migration stream developed?
The second goal is to use obsidian artifacts, an
under-utilized line of evidence, to investigate a
specific prehistoric migration that has often been
proposed in the literature—the movement of ancestral Pueblo peoples from the Mesa Verde region of southwest Colorado and southeast Utah to
the northern Rio Grande region of north-central
New Mexico (Cordell 1995; Kidder 1924; Kohler
2004; McNutt 1969). In the classic migration
studies in these two regions, archaeologists have
mainly investigated carbon-painted ceramics, linguistics, and architectural styles (Ford et al. 1972;
Hawley 1950; Mera 1935; Reed 1950; Trager
1967; Wendorf 1954). We illustrate that obsidian
procurement patterns provide especially compelling evidence of the early stages of this particular migration, especially return migration of
the initial scouts who acquired information about
the northern Rio Grande as a potential destination
and relayed it back to relatives in their Mesa
Verde region homeland.
The Mesa Verde region provides an ideal setting for examining migration as a social process
and for illustrating the role of long-distance,
chipped-stone artifact exchange in this process. It
is one of the most intensively studied areas in the
world and the depopulation of this region in the
late A.D. 1200s remains one of the classic problems in North American prehistory. We begin by
briefly reviewing recent approaches to migration
in archaeology. Then, we turn to archaeological
data from the central Mesa Verde region to argue
that the exchange of obsidian artifacts represents
the clearest evidence adduced to date of increasing long-distance contact between the Mesa Verde
and the northern Rio Grande regions during the
period of population movement between the two
areas.
Migration as a Social Process
Migration has once again become an important research topic in archaeology (Anthony 1990; Clark
2001; Duff 1998; Herr and Clark 1997). In his
classic article that re-framed migration as a social
process for archaeologists, Anthony (1990) distinguished between short- and long-distance
775
movements. Short-distance movements can result from post-marital residence rules or the desire
to take advantage of economic opportunities in the
local area (Anthony 1990:901). This type of
movement is relatively difficult to identify in the
archaeological record (but see Varien [1999] for
a case study of this process from the Mesa Verde
region) because the source and destination areas
are usually within the area encompassed by a single archaeological tradition and within a single resource area.
In contrast, long-distance movements can be
highly visible in the archaeological record, especially when such movements cross material culture boundaries or resource areas (e.g., Haury
1958). Anthony (1990:902–905) identified several
aspects of long-distance movement, including
scouting, return migration, migration streams,
and leapfrogging. Anthony (1990:902) defined
scouts as the initial, disproportionately young and
male migrants “who collect information on social
conditions and resource potentials and relay it
back to the potential migrants” (Anthony 1990;
Lefferts 1977; Stone 1993). Return migration
refers to the cycling of scouts or other early migrants back to the homeland to visit friends and
relatives. The information conveyed through return migration facilitates the decision-making of
others about whether migration to a certain destination is a logical and practical aim for their
families, groups, and communities. The cyclical
movement of people between homeland and destination also leads to well-developed routes of
travel between the two areas (Anthony 1990:903),
and to communication networks that encourage
migrants to follow kin and co-residents to targeted
locations where social support is already in place
(Anthony 2007:112; Ho 1993; Lomnitz 1977).
The resulting flow of people along well-defined
routes is known as a migration stream. Finally, the
information collected by scouts and other early
migrants about potential destinations often results in subsequent migrants leapfrogging undesirable or already occupied destinations, as opposed to a gradual wave of advance across the
landscape.
Several archaeologists (Burmeister 2000;
Cameron 1995; Clark 2001; Cordell 1995; Stone
2003) have applied Anthony’s insights in case
studies of prehistoric migration. For example,
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Clark (2001) examined the late stages of the migration process in the Tonto Basin of central Arizona. His great insight was to suggest that highvisibility and low-visibility material culture
attributes play different roles in archaeological
migration studies. He suggested that high-visibility attributes of artifacts and architecture tend
to send social messages, and thus reflect social relations in the post-migration destination area. In
contrast, low-visibility attributes that are created
early in artifact production (e.g., raw material selection and basic forming techniques) often do not
send social messages, and thus tend to reflect the
enculturative tradition of their makers (Clark
2001:13). This makes low-visibility attributes especially useful for identifying immigrants in the
archaeological record.
Here, we focus on earlier stages of the migration process, including scouting, return migration, migration streams, and leapfrogging. Following Anthony (1990) and Duff (1998), we argue
that large numbers of people rarely migrate to
places they know nothing about. Thus, a necessary step in the development of a migration stream
is interaction with people from the eventual destination area. Return migration by scouts is one of
the primary ways people in the homeland would
obtain information about potential destinations,
and to the extent that this process leaves material
residues, one would expect return migration to be
reflected in long-distance exchange data. We apply this perspective in the case study that follows, arguing that the movement of objects from
the northern Rio Grande back to the Mesa Verde
region, prior to the depopulation of the latter, provides crucial information about the early stages of
the proposed migration between the two regions.
To accomplish this goal, we investigate obsidian
toolstone procurement patterns (i.e., both projectile points and associated debris) in the central
Mesa Verde region through time.
Background on the Study Area
This study uses samples collected from numerous
individual sites to evaluate regional trends in obsidian procurement in the central Mesa Verde region (as defined by Varien et al. 1996) in Southwest Colorado1 (Figure 1). We summarize
information from 26 ancestral Pueblo habitation
[Vol. 76, no. 4, 2011]
sites excavated by the Crow Canyon Archaeological Center, the Dolores Archaeological Program, and the Wetherill Mesa Archaeological Project (Table 1 and Figure 2), all of which had at
least one obsidian specimen analyzed by X-ray
florescence (XRF).
Chronology
In our discussions of chipped-stone assemblages overall, we focus on four date ranges (A.D. 1060–1140,
1140–1225, 1225–1260, and 1260–1280), the last of
which corresponds to the period of actual depopulation in the late thirteenth century (Varien et al.
2007). We do not consider the period between
A.D. 920 and 1060 because population was low in
the central Mesa Verde region during this period,
and no obsidian samples dating to this period have
been sourced. Table 2 lists the corresponding date
ranges for each period and six cultural periods—
Basketmaker III, Pueblo I, early Pueblo II, late
Pueblo II, early Pueblo III, and late Pueblo III. For
our discussions of the obsidian sourcing data, we
group these six cultural periods into two broad
time periods: Early (A.D. 600–920) and Late (A.D.
1060–1280). These two broad periods correspond
to the two cycles of population increase and decrease that have been documented for the central
Mesa Verde region (Varien 1999; Varien et al. 2007;
Wilshusen 2002). Below we provide a brief
overview of the study area and its culture history
structured around these chronological and cultural
subdivisions.
Early (A.D. 600–920)
From A.D. 600 to 725, residents of the central
Mesa Verde region lived in pithouses, engaged in
hunting and gathering, and cultivated maize, beans,
and squash. People moved frequently in a settlement pattern that is best characterized as “dispersed.” In contrast, from A.D. 725 to 920, aggregated villages developed, especially in the Dolores
River valley (Figure 2). Although residents of the
central Mesa Verde region from A.D. 725 to 920
were village farmers, they continued to travel long
distances to hunt (Driver 2002). During the late
tenth century, much of the population left the central Mesa Verde region, migrating to the northern
periphery of the central Mesa Verde region (Coffey
2006), and perhaps also to the San Juan Basin and
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Figure 1. Map of the northern Southwest including study area.
the slopes of the Chuskas in northwestern New
Mexico (Wilshusen and Ortman 1999).
Late (A.D. 1060–1280)
During the eleventh century, Pueblo people established a regional cultural, political, and religious center in Chaco Canyon, south of the central Mesa Verde region (Figure 1). The so-called
Chaco Phenomenon peaked between A.D. 1040
and 1135. There is debate on the degree to which
Mesa Verde region communities participated in or
were part of the Chacoan Regional System, but
they were clearly affected by it in multiple ways
(Cameron 2009; Cameron and Duff 2008; Cordell
1997:324; Lekson 2006, 2009; Lipe 2006; Ort-
man 2008; Van Dyke 2007; Varien et al. 2008).
From A.D. 1060 to 1140, the population of the
central Mesa Verde region increased dramatically,
as residents constructed great houses and great kivas that served as community gathering places,
replicating the pattern seen in Chaco Canyon
(Cameron and Duff 2008). They also engaged in
frequent long-distance exchange (Arakawa and
Duff 2002; Lipe 1995, 2006; Neily 1983).
From A.D. 1140 to 1225, coincident with the
disappearance of the Chaco regional system, rising population levels, and an extended period of
drought (Benson and Berry 2009), large aggregated communities such as Yellow Jacket, Albert
Porter, and Shields pueblos developed in the cen-
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Table 1. Sites Included in Study, Cultural Periods, and Reference.
Sites Included in Study
Site Numbers
Crow Canyon Archaeological Center
Duckfoot
5MT3868
Albert Porter Pueblo
5MT123
Castle Rock Pueblo
5MT1825
Lester’s Site
5MT10246
Lookout House
5MT10459
Stanton’s Site
5MT10508
G & G Hamlet
5MT11338
Woods Canyon Pueblo
5MT11842
Shields Pueblo
5MT3807
Green Lizard Pueblo
5MT3901
Shorelene’s Site
5MT3918
Troy’s Tower
5MT3951
Yellow Jacket Pueblo
5MT5
Kenzie Dawn Hamlet
5MT5152
Sand Canyon Pueblo
5MT765
Dolores Archaeological Program
Tres Bobos Hamlet
5MT4545
Pozo Hamlet
5MT4613
Grass Mesa
5MT23
Tres Chapulines Pueblo
5MT4725
Rio Vista Village
5MT2182
McPhee Pueblo
5MT4475
Masa Negro
5MT4477
Escalante Pueblo
5MT2149
Wetherill Mesa Archeological Project
Dog House
5MV1676
Two Raven House
5MV1645
Badger House
5MV1452
Big Juniper House
5MV1595
Cultural Period(s)*
Reference
Pueblo I
Late Pueblo II-Late Pueblo III
Late Pueblo III
Late Pueblo III
Late Pueblo III
Late Pueblo III
Early Pueblo III
Early Pueblo III-Late Pueblo III
Late Pueblo II-Late Pueblo III
Late Pueblo III
Early Pueblo III
Late Pueblo III
Late Pueblo II-Late Pueblo III
Early Pueblo III
Late Pueblo III
Lightfoot and Etzkorn (1993)
Ryan (2004)
Kuckelman (2000 ed.)
Varien (1999 ed.)
Varien (1999 ed.)
Varien (1999 ed.)
Varien (1999 ed.)
Churchill (2002)
Duff and Ryan (2000)
Huber (1993)
Varien (1999 ed.)
Varien (1999 ed.)
Kuckelman (2003)
Varien (1999 ed.)
Kuckelman (2007)
Basketmaker III
Pueblo I
Pueblo I
Pueblo I
Pueblo I
Pueblo I
Pueblo I
Late Pueblo II
Brisbin and Varien (1981)
Nelson (1984)
Lipe et al. (1985)
Chenault (1983)
Wilshusen (1985)
Brisbin et al. (1985)
Kuckelman (1984)
White and Breternitz (1979)
Pueblo I
Late Pueblo II
Late Pueblo II-Late Pueblo III
Late Pueblo II-Late Pueblo III
Osborn (1965)
Hayes (1984)
Hayes and Lancaster (1975)
Swannack (1969)
tral Mesa Verde region (Figure 2; see also
Arakawa 2006; Glowacki 2006; Varien et al.
2007). Population continued to increase and
peaked at about 19,400 people in the Village Ecodynamics Project study area sometime between
A.D. 1225 and 1260 (Varien et al. 2007:283).2
The cliff dwellings of Mesa Verde National Park
and canyon-rim villages such as Sand Canyon,
Woods Canyon, and Castle Rock pueblos began
taking shape late in this period (Kuckelman 2010;
Lipe and Ortman 2000; Ortman and Bradley
2002; Ortman et al. 2000). The migration streams
that eventually emptied the central Mesa Verde region also formed at this time and as a result overall population declined to 10,000 by the A.D.
1260s, and to zero by shortly after A.D. 1280
(Varien 2010; Varien et al. 2007).
Duff (1998) reconstructed population densities
for the entire Pueblo area from A.D. 1050 to
1400, and Figure 3 illustrates these population
trends (also see Hill et al. 2004). It is clear from
this figure that the population density of the central Mesa Verde region was high from A.D. 1050
to 1250, but that it declined rapidly after 1250. In
addition, by A.D. 1300, population densities had
increased markedly in the northern Rio Grande region, as well as in portions of eastern Arizona and
western New Mexico. On the basis of these data,
Duff and Wilshusen (2000:185) argued that the
Pueblo inhabitants of the central Mesa Verde region migrated to destinations in the northern Rio
Grande and that this movement began before A.D.
1200. Varien (2010), using the Village Ecodynamics Project2 data set, also believes the final migrations could have begun by A.D. 1225. This
model implies that people in the central Mesa
Verde region interacted with and/or traveled to the
northern Rio Grande region over time and therefore would have had prior knowledge of this area.
More recent research (Varien et al. 2007) suggests
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779
Figure 2. Locations of habitation sites with sampled obsidian.
that the final stages of movement from the Mesa
Verde region were more rapid than Duff and
Wilshusen envisaged. Nonetheless, it appears
likely that small groups began to leave the region
in the early A.D. 1200s, if not earlier, and that
some of these would have settled into districts in
the northern Rio Grande and created the inforTable 2. Time Periods Used in This Study (after Lipe et al.
1999; Ortman et al. 2007).
Date Range
A.D. 600–725
A.D. 725–920
A.D. 920–1060
A.D. 1060–1140
A.D. 1140–1225
A.D. 1225–1260
A.D. 1260–1280
Cultural Period
Basketmaker III
Pueblo I
Early Pueblo II
Late Pueblo II
Early Pueblo III
Late Pueblo III
Late Pueblo III
Obsidian
Sourcing Group
Early
Early
No samples
Late
Late
Late
Late
mation and migration streams that facilitated later,
large-scale movements (Duff 1998:13; Duff and
Wilshusen 2000).
A recent study of climate change by Cordell et
al. (2007) also supports the idea that the inhabitants of the central Mesa Verde region had strong
affiliations with the northern Rio Grande region
through time. There are two different precipitation
patterns in the Southwest: unimodal and bimodal.
The former, which prevails in the Rio Grande region, is characterized by summer-dominant precipitation; the latter, which prevails in the central
Mesa Verde region, is characterized by both summer and winter precipitation (Cordell et al. 2007;
Dean 1996; Dean and Van West 2002). However,
at times, the summer rains are relatively more predictable and plentiful in the Rio Grande valley than
in the central Mesa Verde region. In years of low
summer precipitation in the central Mesa Verde re-
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Figure 3. Population densities by regions, A.D. 1000–1350 (adapted from Duff 1998: Figure 2.4, 2.6, and 2.7).
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gion, residents of that region may have looked to
the Rio Grande for food and other resources (Rautman 1993). Some individuals may have also
scouted out the Rio Grande as an alternative place
to live and farm. Cordell et al. (2007) thus suggest
that long-term affiliations and interactions between people in these two regions would have
contributed to maintaining and sustaining both
societies for hundreds of years prior to the thirteenth-century migrations. We believe obsidian
sourcing provides a tangible means of documenting that Mesa Verde region populations had strong
connections with the northern Rio Grande prior to
the final depopulation of the former region.
Finally, Ortman (2009, 2010) has recently buttressed the view that a significant portion of the
central Mesa Verde region population migrated to
the northern Rio Grande by compiling multiple
lines of evidence—archaeological, bioarchaeological, linguistic, and ethnohistoric—which argue that ancestral Tewa villages in the northern
Rio Grande formed primarily as a result of population movement from the Mesa Verde region
(see Boyer et. al [2010] for an opposing view).
Specifically, Ortman shows that inhabitants of
ancestral Tewa sites were more biologically similar to earlier Mesa Verde region populations than
they were to other Southwestern populations, including earlier inhabitants of the Rio Grande. He
also shows that a number of words in the Tewa
language reflect symbolic elements of the Mesa
Verde archaeological complex that are absent
from northern Rio Grande material culture. Thus,
although the large ancestral Pueblo population
of the central Mesa Verde region likely migrated
to many areas, including all of the areas where
Pueblo people live today, multiple lines of evidence suggest that a primary destination was the
northern Rio Grande region (also see Cameron
1995; Cameron and Duff 2008; Cordell 1995;
Cordell et al. 2007; Duff 1998; Duff and
Wilshusen 2000; Ford et al. 1972; Kidder 1924:
341–342; Lipe 1995, 2010).
Obsidian and Migration
On the basis of migration theory, we expect one
should be able to identify intensified interaction
between the destination and source areas of a
long-distance migration during, and perhaps even
781
prior to, the period of population decline in the
source area. Social interaction between the source
and destination areas should increase primarily
due to the development of a migration stream
along defined routes of travel, along which scouts
can return to the source area to visit relatives, relay information about their new homes, and perhaps encourage others to follow. Return migrants
may in some cases bring objects made of materials available in the destination area as tokens of its
attractiveness as a destination. One would expect
some of these objects to find their way into the archaeological record. Thus, archaeological traces
of return migration in the source area should consist of evidence for an increased flow of objects
made of materials available in the destination
area, but not in the source area. In addition, because the sex ratio of scouts and return migrants
tends to be male-biased (Anthony 1990; Lefferts
1977; Stone 1993), one might expect the objects
brought back to the source area to be objects typically made and used by males.
The objects that best meet these requirements
in this specific setting, and thus have the greatest
potential for illuminating early stages of the migration process, are artifacts made of obsidian.
There are no sources of obsidian in the Mesa
Verde region, but several major obsidian sources
occur at Mount Taylor in central New Mexico,
Government Mountain in northeastern Arizona,
and most importantly, the Jemez Mountains on the
western edge of the northern Rio Grande region.
Artifacts from these quarries can be identified reliably using XRF (Shackley 1988, 1995, 2005a).
In addition, although obsidian was never common
in central Mesa Verde region sites, the large
amount of excavation at numerous central Mesa
Verde region sites has resulted in a robust
chipped-stone artifact database suitable for analyses of obsidian procurement through time.
Obsidian Sourcing Results
On the basis of XRF analysis, Shackley (1988,
1995, 1998, 2005a) has identified more than 40
obsidian sources or source groups in the Southwest. Figure 4 illustrates 20 of these source groups.
For this project, Shackley (1999, 2002, 2005b,
2008) conducted wavelength- and energy-dispersive XRF analysis of 274 pieces of obsidian from
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Figure 4. Sources of obsidian in the American Southwest (adapted from Shackley 2005a).
the central Mesa Verde region as part of Arakawa’s
(2006) and Ortman’s (2009) dissertation projects.
All sourcing analyses were performed by the Archaeological X-Ray Fluorescence Spectrometry
Laboratory at the University of California, Berkeley. Details of the instrumental analysis are available in Shackley (2005a:193–196) and online at
http://www.swxrflab.net/anlysis.htm. Table 3 tabulates the obsidian artifacts that were analyzed by
site, time period, and source. Eighty-eight items
are tools, such as modified flakes, projectile points,
and bifaces; the remainder consists of small pieces
of debitage.3
The XRF analyses indicate that 245 of the 274
(89.4 percent) obsidian items in our dataset derive
from Jemez Mountain sources. Previous work by
Ferguson and Skinner (2003), Phagan (1985), and
Ward (2004) yielded similar results, suggesting
that almost all of the obsidian found in central
Mesa Verde region sites derives from the Jemez
Mountains (Shackley 1998, 2002, 2005a, 2005b,
2008). The dominance of Jemez obsidian in central
Mesa Verde region sites suggests that residents of
the central Mesa Verde region had direct contact
with peoples of the Jemez Mountains area, made
special trips to these sources, and/or obtained these
items through down-the-line exchange.
All other obsidian sources are relatively rare in
this dataset. Twenty-two items derive from Mount
Taylor (Grants Ridge and Horace Mesa chemical
groups), located near Grants, New Mexico.
Twelve of these are from Early (A.D. 600-920)
sites, and ten are from Late (A.D. 1060-1280)
sites. Only six Early specimens derive from Government Mountain, despite the fact that obsidian
from this source was of higher quality than Jemez
obsidian and was the most widely traded variety
in the Southwest (Shackley 2008). Finally, one
obsidian sample from a Late site was procured
from Cow Canyon in eastern Arizona. According
to Shackley (2008), this source was probably
“controlled” by Mogollon groups. The occurrence of obsidian from this source in a central
Mesa Verde region site is tangible evidence that
the Pueblo residents of the region had some kind
of contact with people in the Mogollon area during the thirteenth century, though connections do
not appear to have been strong.
Site Number
5MT4545
5MV1676
5MT2182
5MT4475
5MT23
5MT4613
5MT4477
5MT4725
5MT3868
5MV1645
5MT2149
5MT11338
5MT5152
5MT3918
5MT123
5MV1595
5MV1452
5MT5
5MT3807
5MT11842
5MT10508
5MT3901
5MT10459
5MT765
5MT3951
5MT10246
5MT1825
Total
Site Name
Tres Bobos Hamlet
Dog House
Rio Vista Village
McPhee Pueblo
Grass Mesa Pueblo
Pozo Hamlet
Masa Negro
Tres Chapulines Pueblo
Duckfoot
Two Raven House
Escalante Pueblo
G & G Hamlet
Kenzie Dawn Hamlet
Shorelene’s Site
Albert Porter Pueblo
Big Juniper House
Badger House
Yellow Jacket Pueblo
Shields Pueblo
Woods Canyon Pueblo
Stanton’s Site
Green Lizard Pueblo
Lookout House
Sand Canyon Pueblo
Troy’s Tower
Lester’s Site
Castle Rock Pueblo
Date Range
600–725
600–920
725–920
725–920
725–920
725–800
880–920
840–880
840–880
1060–1100
1060–1140
1060–1180
1140–1225
1180–1225
1060–1260
1060–1280
1060–1280
1060–1280
1100–1260
1140–1280
1225–1260
1225–1260
1225–1280
1225–1280
1260–1280
1260–1280
1260–1280
6
2
22
1
1
1
1
4
4
3
102
5
1
1
1
3
3
1
1
16
10
15
5
2
2
1
1
6
19
1
2
3
El Rechuelos
3
1
96
1
3
2
2
16
23
1
6
7
1
2
5
7
7
8
Valles
Rhyolite
4
Jemez Mountains sources
47
1
16
1
2
24
1
1
1
Cerro Toledo
Rhyolite
Total
11
1
25
20
27
5
7
2
9
1
12
27
2
2
8
1
4
21
51
1
20
2
1
9
1
1
3
274
11:22 AM
1
1
2
2
2
Government Mt.
Mt.
Taylor
4
1
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Period
EARLY
Cow
Canyon
Table 3. Obsidian Samples Analyzed by X-Ray Fluorescence.
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[Vol. 76, no. 4, 2011]
Figure 5. The interaction and/or exchange systems for obsidian connecting the central Mesa Verde region to other areas
of the Southwest during the early (Basketmaker III—Pueblo I, A.D. 600–920) and late (Pueblo II—Pueblo III, A.D.
1060–1280) periods. Line width suggests degree of interaction.
Figure 5 summarizes these obsidian source
data by time period to illustrate changes in obsidian procurement patterns through time. These results suggest that, during the Early period, around
80 percent of the obsidian deposited in central
Mesa Verde region sites came from Jemez Mountains sources in New Mexico, with lesser amounts
from Mt. Taylor and Government Mountain. These
data thus suggest that the residents of the central
Mesa Verde region had social or economic con-
nections that linked them to all these areas during
this period. During the Late period, in contrast,
more than 90 percent of the obsidian deposited in
central Mesa Verde region sites derived from Jemez sources, with the remainder deriving from Mt.
Taylor and Cow Canyon. None of the obsidian in
our Late sample derived from Government Mountain. Thus, the social and economic connections of
Mesa Verde people became increasingly focused
on the Jemez Mountains area over time.
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785
Figure 6. Topographical rendering of a portion of the Jemez Mountains, Valles Caldera, and relevant features (adapted
from Baugh and Nelson 1987; Shackley 2008; Smith et al. 1970).
Jemez Mountains Obsidian Sources
Closer examination of the specific sources of Jemez obsidian artifacts suggests increasing material flows from areas of the northern Rio Grande
where population grew most substantially as the
Mesa Verde region population declined. There
are three distinct obsidian sources in the Jemez
Mountains (Figure 6). The first source, El
Rechuelos, is located northeast of the Valles
Caldera, and erodes into the Rio Chama and ultimately the Rio Grande. The second source, Valles
Rhyolite, occurs only within the Jemez Caldera
and thus must have been procured from there.
Finally, the third source, Cerro Toledo Rhyolite,
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Figure 7. Jemez Mountains obsidian samples found in the
central Mesa Verde region, by specific source.
erodes from the eastern and southeastern flanks of
the Jemez Mountains through the canyons of the
Pajarito Plateau and into the Rio Grande. This last
material is common at sites on the Pajarito Plateau
and is available in secondary deposits along the
Rio Grande all the way to Chihuahua, Mexico
(Church 2000; Shackley 2005a, 2008). Obsidian
from all three sources makes excellent chippedstone tools, so changes in the representation of
these sources over time is more likely to reflect
changes in acquisition and interaction networks
than changes in raw material preference.
Figure 7 shows the percentages of obsidian
from the three Jemez Mountains sources for Early
(A.D. 600–920) and Late (A.D. 1060–1280) sites
in the central Mesa Verde region4. The percentages of obsidian from these sources in Early sites
exhibit a distance-decay relationship. More than
60 percent of the obsidian specimens in the Early
sample derive from El Rechuelos, the closest
source, and more than 30 percent derive from the
Valles Rhyolite source, the next closest source.
However, less than three percent of the obsidian
artifacts from these early sites derive from the
Cerro Toledo Rhyolite.
During the Late period, in contrast, it appears
that residents of the central Mesa Verde region
[Vol. 76, no. 4, 2011]
procured obsidian in more balanced quantities
from the three sources in the Jemez Mountains
(Figure 7). This implies a dramatic increase in the
importation of obsidian from Cerro Toledo, the
furthest source. In other words, during the Early
period, most of the obsidian that ended up in central Mesa Verde region sites came from the closest Jemez source, El Rechuelos. During later centuries, however, a much higher percentage of
obsidian came from the more distant Cerro Toledo
source. Although the secondary deposits of Cerro
Toledo Rhyolite can be found all the way to Mexico, the primary source is on the Pajarito Plateau.
As a result, these data suggest increasing flows of
obsidian from the Pajarito Plateau to the central
Mesa Verde region over time. This finding is important because the Pajarito Plateau was the portion of the northern Rio Grande where population
grew most dramatically during the thirteenth century, coincident with population decline in the
Mesa Verde region (Kohler and Root 2004; Orcutt
1999; Snead et al. 2004).
These changes argue against unstructured,
down-the-line exchange as the primary mechanism by which Jemez obsidian reached Late Mesa
Verde region sites. If this were the case, one
would expect the pattern seen in early sites, where
the closest sources were most common and the
furthest sources least common, to have continued
in later sites. The fact that obsidian from the furthest Jemez source, Cerro Toledo, increased in relative frequency over time suggests a corresponding increase in direct importation of obsidian
from this source. This pattern is consistent with a
model in which at least some early settlers of the
Pajarito Plateau moved there from the Mesa Verde
region and periodically returned to their homeland, bringing obsidian artifacts with them, as a
migration stream between the two areas formed
over the course of the thirteenth century.5
Obsidian Importation
Patterns Through Time
We further subdivided the Late period in our
study to investigate changes in obsidian importation in the decades immediately preceding the final depopulation of the Mesa Verde region. Figure 8 summarizes the frequency of obsidian in
chipped-stone artifact assemblages for all contexts
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Figure 8. Frequency of obsidian artifacts in total chipped-stone assemblages, by time period.
in the Crow Canyon Archaeological Center Research Database dating to: A.D. 1060–1140; A.D.
1140–1225; and A.D. 1225–1280.6 Because
nearly all obsidian in Late Mesa Verde region
sites came from the Jemez Mountains, changes in
the relative frequency of obsidian artifacts overall should approximate changes in the frequency
of contact with the Jemez Mountains region.
These data show that the flow of obsidian to the
central Mesa Verde region was strongest during
the heyday of the Chacoan regional system, A.D.
1060–1140. Long-distance exchange of a variety
of items was also relatively frequent during this
period (Lipe 1995:158), and may have been centralized through Chaco (Toll 2006). The flow of
obsidian into the region declined during the PostChacoan period, but increased again during the
A.D. 1200s. Several previous studies (Arakawa
and Duff 2002; Lipe 1995; Neily 1983) have suggested that residents of the central Mesa Verde region became increasingly isolated from other regions during the A.D. 1200s. Figure 8, however,
suggests that the flow of obsidian from the Jemez
Mountains actually increased during the period of
population decline. The correspondence of this increase in obsidian importation with regional population decline is once again consistent with a
model of return migration associated with a migration stream as the underlying mechanism.
Given that obsidian was always quite rare in
Mesa Verde region sites, however, an important
question to ask is whether the absolute quantity of
obsidian recovered from these sites reflects the
level of interaction one might expect between two
areas linked by a migration stream. Several lines
of evidence suggest that even small quantities of
obsidian likely reflect significant interaction between the central Mesa Verde and northern Rio
Grande regions. First, obsidian artifacts found in
Late Mesa Verde sites (Table 4) are most often
small projectile points, small bifaces or modified
flakes representing projectile point blanks, or tools
made from reworked projectile points. No cores
suggesting primary reduction of raw material have
been found. This pattern contrasts with that of
Dakota/Burro Canyon silicified sandstone (Kdb),
a local, high-quality material that was clearly procured as raw material and worked into a variety of
tool types. In addition, most of the obsidian debitage recovered from Late Mesa Verde region sites
consists of small pieces with no evidence of cortex, whereas larger pieces and pieces with cortex
are fairly common in Kdb silicified sandstone
debitage from these same sites (Figure 9). This ev-
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[Vol. 76, no. 4, 2011]
Table 4. Cores and Tools of Obsidian and Dakota/Burro Canyon (Kdb) Silicified Sandstone from
Late (A.D. 1060–1280) Mesa Verde Region Sites.
Obsidian
Kdb Silicified Sandstone
Artifact Category
N
%
N
%
Core
254
11.3
Modified Core
1
2.5
6
.3
Peckingstone
522
23.2
Chipped-Stone Tool
2
5.0
44
2.0
Modified Flake
6
15.0
487
21.6
Biface
3
7.5
406
18.0
Drill
2
5.0
75
3.3
Projectile Point
26
65.0
456
20.3
Total
40
100.0
2,250
100.0
Note: Data represent the total number of chipped-stone artifacts from Late (A.D. 1060–1280) Mesa Verde region sites
assigned to the given raw material category in the Crow Canyon Archaeological Center Research Database (January, 2009).
idence suggests that many obsidian pieces that
ended up in Late Mesa Verde region sites entered
these sites as complete arrows, arrow points, or arrow point blanks as opposed to chunks of raw
material. This in turn suggests that nearly every
piece of obsidian discovered from late Mesa Verde
region sites represents a separate exchange event,
whereas one would expect thousands of pieces of
chipped-stone to be deposited following a local
raw material procurement event. Therefore, even
though obsidian artifacts are small and rare, each
piece is quite significant in terms of the human behavior it represents.
In addition, it appears that the importation of
obsidian arrow points outpaced the importation of
decorated pottery vessels during the final decades
of ancestral Pueblo occupation. Figure 10 compares the proportion of obsidian projectile points
to the proportion of imported bowl sherds for
three villages with peak occupations during the
Figure 9. Attributes of obsidian and Dakota (Kdb) silicified sandstone debitage.
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Figure 10. Proportions of obsidian points and non-local bowl sherds through time.
A.D. 1225–1260 period (Shields Pueblo, Yellow
Jacket Pueblo, and Albert Porter Pueblo), and
three villages with peak occupations during the
A.D. 1260–1280 period (Sand Canyon Pueblo,
Castle Rock Pueblo, and Woods Canyon Pueblo).
The A.D. 1225–1260 period was when the Mesa
Verde region population reached its peak and began to decline, and the A.D. 1260–1280 period
was characterized by population decline associated with final emigrations (Varien et al. 2007).
These data show that the proportion of obsidian
projectile points in assemblages dating from the
period of population decline was almost twice as
high as it was in earlier times. Due to low proportions and small sample sizes, the standard errors of these proportions overlap somewhat, so it
is possible that the increase suggested by these
data was not as large as it appears here. However,
obsidian points do comprise larger proportions of
projectile point assemblages than non-local bowl
sherds do for pottery assemblages during both
periods. Indeed, it appears long-distance pottery
exchange declined during the final decades of
occupation in the Mesa Verde region, whereas
importation of obsidian projectile points, which
came almost exclusively from the Jemez Mountains region, increased.
Discussion
A comparison of the shifts in population with
changes in obsidian importation strongly suggests that obsidian procurement patterns reflect
affiliations and interactions between residents of
the central Mesa Verde and northern Rio Grande
regions. We believe these relationships facilitated
the migration of large numbers of people from the
former to the latter region in the A.D. 1200s. This
particular migration has been a topic of research
and discussion for several decades, and now ob-
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sidian importation patterns provide additional information about the social networks and patterns
of alliance that likely preceded and accompanied
this movement.
We further argue that the obsidian data summarized here illustrate several characteristics of
early stages in the migration process. First, we
propose that the increase in obsidian importation
from the Jemez Mountains region reflects the activities of young male scouts and other early migrants to the Pajarito Plateau. According to Anthony (1990:905) and other studies of migration
in agricultural societies (Lefferts 1977; Simkins
and Wernstedt 1971), the scouts who gather information on potential destination areas and relay
this information back to the homeland are disproportionately young and male. According to
ethnographic and cross-cultural studies, projectile
point manufacture and use are also strongly associated with males. For example, Burton and
others (1977:231, Table 1) used Human Relations Area Files and coded 50 different technological activities from a total of 185 agricultural
societies to identify cross-cultural patterns in the
gendered division of labor. They recorded 73 societies (40 percent of the total) that engaged in
stone-working activities. Males were the primary
producers of stone tools in 91 percent of these societies, and in the remaining societies men and
women participated equally. Although ethnographic and ethnoarchaeological studies do note
that women are occasionally involved in stone
tool production (Brandt and Weedman 2002; Burton et al. 1977; Hough 1897:191), projectile point
manufacture and use by women appears quite
rare in these studies. Also, according to Szuter
(2000:208), projectile point possession, use, and
manufacture are exclusively associated with males
in American Indian societies of the American
Southwest. Finally, ethnographic studies of the
Hopi and Zuni indicate that men were responsible
for hunting and maintaining their hunting tools,
including projectile points (Lowell 1990). Because obsidian in central Mesa Verde region sites
occurs almost exclusively as arrow points, arrow
point blanks, arrow point fragments, and flakes
from reworked arrow points, obsidian importation
can be tied to men’s activities. Thus, we argue that
the increased importation of Jemez obsidian artifacts during the final century of occupation in
[Vol. 76, no. 4, 2011]
the Mesa Verde region reflects return visits by
people who had recently migrated from the Mesa
Verde region to the Pajarito Plateau.
A final reason obsidian arrow points may have
been emphasized as tokens of return migration relates to the symbolic importance of obsidian in
Pueblo culture. According to Ford, modern
Pueblo people:
...believe that the mountains are closer to the
deities who control important meteorological
events, such as thunder, lightning, and rainfall.
Their empirical evidence is the presence of
lakes, cloud-shrouded mountains, trees firedarkened from lightning, and obsidian, which
they believe is formed by lightning striking the
ground [Ford 1992:122, emphasis in original].
In a study of the conceptual underpinnings of
Pueblo worldview, Saile (1977:76) also suggested
that the Pueblo people believe that mountains and
hills represent physical intersections between the
earth and the sky that facilitate communication
with the spirit world. Thus, mountains and hills
are sacred places. In his ethnographic study, Trimble also noted: “On the horizons stand the sacred
mountains in all their strength. They bound the
Pueblo world. They are snowy and therefore holy”
(1993:54, emphasis in original). These ethnographic descriptions suggest scouts who encountered obsidian in the Jemez Mountains and may
have drawn a connection between the presence of
obsidian and abundant lightning and rains, which
further implies the growth of maize and other
crops important to Pueblo agriculturalists. Thus,
carrying obsidian arrow points back to the Mesa
Verde region might have served as a symbolic
demonstration of the beneficial environment of
this area.
Conclusion
In this study, we have argued that obsidian artifact
procurement patterns reflect the development of
social networks between the central Mesa Verde
and the northern Rio Grande regions, and that
these networks facilitated the eventual migration
of residents from the former to the latter. We reviewed sources of obsidian in the greater Southwest and presented sourcing results for 274 obsidian samples analyzed by XRF. We also
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summarized data on obsidian artifacts in the context of overall chipped-stone artifact assemblages
from central Mesa Verde region sites. These data
suggest the following points.
First, the results suggest a change in obsidian
importation patterns over time. During the Early
period (A.D. 600–920), obsidian importation reflected connections with several areas of the
greater Southwest. During the Late period (A.D.
1060–1280), in contrast, the data suggest a
strengthening of affiliation and interaction with
people in the northern Rio Grande region. Second,
the representation of the three Jemez Mountain obsidian sources appears to have changed through
time. Prior to A.D. 920, residents of the central
Mesa Verde region procured the majority of their
obsidian from the closest source (El Rechuelos),
whereas later residents obtained a much higher
percentage from the furthest source (Cerro Toledo)
adjacent to areas of the northern Rio Grande that
were colonized during the early A.D. 1200s.
Third, the proportion of chipped-stone artifacts that were made of obsidian increased
throughout the A.D. 1200s. This indicates that interaction between the Mesa Verde region and the
Jemez Mountains area increased as populations
were declining in the former and increasing in the
latter areas. Fourth, Jemez obsidian entered the
Mesa Verde region almost exclusively as complete
arrows, arrow points, or arrow point blanks as opposed to raw material. Arrows were made and
used by men for hunting and protection, and thus
would have been carried by scouts and other early
migrants returning from the destination area. In
addition, small obsidian points or blanks would
have been appropriate objects for return migrants
to bring as gifts due to their small size, light
weight, and association with the landscape of the
destination area. Finally, the proportion of projectile points made of obsidian was greater than
the proportion of non-local bowl sherds throughout the A.D. 1200s, and appears to have increased
over time, opposite the trend in imported pottery.
All of this is consistent with a model in which return migration was a primary mechanism behind
the increased flow of Jemez obsidian into the
Mesa Verde region during the thirteenth century.7
The behaviors revealed by the obsidian artifact
data examined in this study parallel those observed in studies of prehistoric migrations
791
throughout the greater U.S. Southwest (Anschuetz
and Scheick 2006; Crown et al. 1996; Duff 1998;
Hill et al. 2004; Shackley 2005a:134–146; Snead
et al. 2004). The people of the central Mesa Verde
region were already familiar with the places they
migrated to—and with the people who had previously settled in those places. This facilitated
the development of a migration stream that resulted in a population-level movement that
leapfrogged over intervening regions. We believe
obsidian source studies, particularly those focused on migration, hold great promise for furthering archaeological understandings of migration as a social process.
Acknowledgments. This research was funded by two National
Science Foundation DDIG grants (BCS-0408793 to Arakawa
and BCS-0753828 to Ortman) and the Don Crabtree Scholarship awarded to Arakawa from the Department of Sociology,
Anthropology, and Criminal Justice, University of Idaho. This
paper has benefited from the comments of Timothy Kohler,
William Lipe, William Andrefsky, Laura Putsche, Mary Etzkorn, and Josie Chang-Order. Special thanks to the Crow
Canyon Archaeological Center, the Department of Anthropology at Washington State University, the Anasazi Heritage
Center (especially Susan Thomas), Mesa Verde National Park
(especially Carolyn Landes), and the Ute Mountain Ute Tribe
(especially Veronica Cuthair) for access to their collections.
We also thank Ana Steffen for providing the Valles Caldera
map. An earlier version of this paper was presented at the 69th
Annual Meeting of the Society for American Archaeology,
Austin, Texas.
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Notes
1. Although this study area covers only a portion of the central Mesa Verde region as defined by Varien and others (1996),
we will use the term, “central Mesa Verde region,” to reference
our study area here. Our study area covers 1,816-km2 within the
central Mesa Verde region as defined by Varien and others
(1996).
2. The aim of the Village Ecodynamics Project is to understand long-term interactions between ancestral Pueblo people and their environments (Kohler et al. 2008; Kohler et al.
2010). The Village Ecodynamics Project study area encompasses about one-quarter of our study area.
3. In this study, we excluded 31 pieces of obsidian from unknown sources and attempted to control for lithic reduction activities by counting all pieces of debitage from the same intrasite provenience and source as one. For example, 96 pieces of
obsidian were discovered from Escalante Ruin, but we only included 12 in our summary dataset because many pieces were
possibly manufactured and recycled from the same item. We
followed this rule because we wanted each piece of obsidian
in our dataset to represent an individual trade event. An alternative approach would have been to conduct refitting studies,
but due to the partial excavation of most sites we believe this
would not control for lithic reduction activities as effectively.
4. To better understand the relationship between Early and
Late obsidian importation patterns, we conducted a significance
test on the proportions of the Early and Late obsidian samples
to see whether counts of obsidian from these three quarries are
similar. The null hypothesis for this test is that there is no difference between the Early and Late assemblages. Using a Kolmogorov-Smirnov test (Shennan 1997:55–61), we compared
the Early obsidian materials in each category to determine
whether they are different from the Late obsidian samples.
Based on this result, the observed maximum difference of
[Vol. 76, no. 4, 2011]
.178 is close to the minimum required to reject the null hypothesis at the .05 level (.181). This test indicates that the observed difference in obsidian procurement from the three quarries between the Early and Late periods is statistically
significant.
5. It has been well-documented that Chaco had a major influence on the interregional movement of goods into the central
Mesa Verde region during the late Pueblo II period. An additional line of evidence that argues against down-the-line exchange comes from studies of obsidian from one of the Chaco
outliers—the Aztec Ruin complex, which was built and inhabited during our Late period (A.D. 1060-1280). Aztec is closer
to the Jemez Mountains than the central Mesa Verde region, and
most of the Jemez obsidian from Aztec derives from Valles Rhyolite, the closest source (Shackley 2009, 2010). The fact that the
Mesa Verde region is further from the Jemez Mountains than
Aztec, and yet contains a higher proportion of obsidian from the
furthest source, suggests that inhabitants of Aztec and the Mesa
Verde region obtained obsidian through distinct long-distance
interaction networks during the Late period.
6. The two latest periods—A.D. 1225–1260 and A.D.
1260–1280—were combined for this analysis in order to increase sample sizes.
7. It is important to add that, although there are alternatives
to our return migration model, the available evidence does not
support these alternatives. For example, one could propose that
obsidian projectile points were procured and used for ceremonial activities, or that aggrandizing individuals procured and
used non-local obsidian in attempts to elevate their status.
However, obsidian projectile points are not strongly associated
with ceremonial structures or high-status residences in the
Crow Canyon Archaeological Center Research Database, so it
would appear unlikely that ceremonialism and/or status competition were the dominant factors behind the flow of obsidian
into the region.
A second alternative scenario is warfare between the two
regions. In other words, residents of the central Mesa Verde region obtained large numbers of obsidian points just prior to regional depopulation because conflict between the Mesa Verde
region and the northern Rio Grande resulted in the acquisition
of Jemez obsidian by Mesa Verde populations. Although there
is abundant evidence for warfare during the period of population decline in the Mesa Verde region (Kuckelman 2002; Kuckelman and Lightfoot 2000; Kuckelman et al. 2002), comparable evidence has not been reported from the northern Rio
Grande for this period. Thus, conflict in the Mesa Verde region
was probably internal, and was not a major factor in obsidian
acquisition.
Submitted November 23, 2009; Revised February 16, 2010;
Accepted May 10, 2010.