Lone Mountain Archaeological Services
Old Spanish National Historic Trails
Rock Art Sites
Hiener Spring and Deer House Pueblitos
CHAVES 3-D SEISMIC EXPLORATION
Chaves and Eddy Counties, New Mexico.
The Chaves 3-D Seismic is an enormous project near Carlsbad, New Mexico, conducted prior to a seismic oil and gas exploration project. The goal of the project was to document all cultural resources within the Area of Potential Effect, so that the exploration project could be conducted without impact to cultural resources. Lone Mountain archaeologists surveyed tens of thousands of acres, documenting sites that reflect intensive occupation and continuous use of the landscape by many cultural groups spanning almost the entire currency of human occupation in the Southwest (from 9000 B.C. until the present day.)
Data from this project will provide archaeologists with valuable insight into prehistoric adaptations to unique landscapes. Subsistence strategies and residential and mobility patterns in this area differ from those across the Southwest. The people utilizing this particular landscape maintained at least a semi-nomadic lifestyle even during times when others in the Southwest were adapting agricultural practices and settling into a more sedentary existence. People set up temporary domestic camps along intermittent, though dependable, water courses and exploited the abundance of game and plant foods available to them. Although there was not enough water in the area to make agriculture viable, the landscape provided ample wild resources, at least during good years or seasons.
The vast majority of sites within the project area are prehistoric, and consist of thermal features indicative of roasting. One of the most fascinating sites of the entire project contains 10 thermal features. Eight have been identified as "ring middens." Ring middens are mounds of rock in which food was roasted. After roasting, the mounds were “opened” or dug out to access the cooked food. The resulting feature resembles a ring of burned stone with a central depression. Four of the features, while exhibiting most of the traits characteristic of ring middens (feature size and shape, rock size, ash and charcoal stains, etc.), do not have the central depression common to ring middens. Instead they remain mounded. One of these four middens was damaged by bulldozing, providing researchers a unique opportunity to examine the interior of an intact ring midden without going through the process of excavation. Staining and burned bones were found in the center. Based on this observation, Lone Mountain archaeologists posit that the four middens were abandoned prior to opening. In other words, food was placed in the structure and rocks piled atop the food to create the mound, but for some reason the food was never retrieved. This provides a fascinating glimpse at a moment in prehistoric time. The burned bones are apparently remnants of a prehistoric meal. What events could have taken place at this location forcing the inhabitants to abandon their meal? These closed structures are uniquely capable of providing valuable information on subsistence and food processing, as they represent an aspect of the process not usually visible archaeologically.
