Lithic Analysis of Flaked Stone Artifacts at a 17Th-Century Rural Spanish Estancia (LA 20,000), Santa Fe County, New Mexico
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University of Massachusetts Boston ScholarWorks at UMass Boston Graduate Masters Theses Doctoral Dissertations and Masters Theses 8-2020 Form, Function, and Context: Lithic Analysis of Flaked Stone Artifacts at a 17th-Century Rural Spanish Estancia (LA 20,000), Santa Fe County, New Mexico Clint S. Lindsay University of Massachusetts Boston Follow this and additional works at: https://scholarworks.umb.edu/masters_theses Part of the Archaeological Anthropology Commons, Indigenous Studies Commons, Social and Cultural Anthropology Commons, and the United States History Commons Recommended Citation Lindsay, Clint S., "Form, Function, and Context: Lithic Analysis of Flaked Stone Artifacts at a 17th-Century Rural Spanish Estancia (LA 20,000), Santa Fe County, New Mexico" (2020). Graduate Masters Theses. 634. https://scholarworks.umb.edu/masters_theses/634 This Open Access Thesis is brought to you for free and open access by the Doctoral Dissertations and Masters Theses at ScholarWorks at UMass Boston. It has been accepted for inclusion in Graduate Masters Theses by an authorized administrator of ScholarWorks at UMass Boston. For more information, please contact [email protected]. FORM, FUNCTION, AND CONTEXT: LITHIC ANALYSIS OF FLAKED STONE ARTIFACTS AT A 17TH-CENTURY RURAL SPANISH ESTANCIA (LA 20,000), SANTA FE COUNTY, NEW MEXICO A Thesis Presented by CLINT S. LINDSAY Submitted to the Office of Graduate Studies, University of Massachusetts Boston, in partial fulfillment of the requirements for the degree of MASTER OF ARTS August 2020 Historical Archaeology Program © 2020 by Clint S. Lindsay All rights reserved FORM, FUNCTION, AND CONTEXT: LITHIC ANALYSIS OF FLAKED STONE ARTIFACTS AT A 17TH-CENTURY RURAL SPANISH ESTANCIA (LA 20,000), SANTA FE COUNTY, NEW MEXICO A Thesis Presented by CLINT S. LINDSAY Approved as to style and content by: _________________________________________________ Heather B. Trigg, Research Scientist II Fiske Center for Archaeological Research Chairperson of Committee _________________________________________________ Stephen W. Silliman, Professor Member _________________________________________________ Stephen Mrozowski, Professor Member _________________________________________________ David B. Landon, Program Director Historical Archaeology Program _________________________________________________ Stephen W. Silliman, Chairperson Department of Anthropology ABSTRACT FORM, FUNCTION, AND CONTEXT: LITHIC ANALYSIS OF FLAKED STONE ARTIFACTS AT A 17TH-CENTURY RURAL SPANISH ESTANCIA (LA 20,000), SANTA FE COUNTY, NEW MEXICO August 2020 Clint S. Lindsay, B.S., Utah State University B.S., Utah State University M.A., University of Massachusetts Boston Directed by Dr. Heather B. Trigg This thesis examines the flaked stone artifact assemblage recovered from LA 20,000, a 17th-century (ca. 1630-1680 AD) rural Spanish colonial estancia located near Santa Fe, New Mexico. Settlements like LA 20,000 were important locations of cultural interaction between Spanish colonists and local Indigenous peoples who often worked and lived together in multi-cultural households. By analyzing the procurement, production, and use of flaked stone artifacts to identify choices and activities performed at the site by the people who lived and labored there this study helps to fill gaps in the knowledge and understanding of 17th-century flaked stone artifact production and use within a distinctly colonial setting. Raw materials, reductive strategies, types and frequencies of debitage and tools, obsidian sourcing results, and iv spatial distributions are thus considered. For greater context, results are compared against data from other Spanish and Indigenous sites in New Mexico, revealing the ambiguities of materiality in colonial settings. As one of the few in-depth flaked stone artifact analyses to be conducted at an early colonial rural Spanish estancia in New Mexico this study not only provides comparative data and analysis to broaden regional understanding of flaked stone technology and use within an early colonial setting, it also allows fellow researchers to better interpret complementary data from other colonial contexts, both synchronically and diachronically. Furthermore, by combining textual evidence with archaeological data in the context of labor, this study fills a recognized need to integrate the study of Indigenous people involved in colonial labor relations into broader labor studies. While flaked stone tools in and of themselves do not signify or identify any one specific group of people, considering the socioeconomic context of early Spanish colonial New Mexico and its heavy reliance upon neighboring Puebloan and other Native American peoples for labor and trade, the flaked stone assemblage at LA 20,000 undoubtedly reflects the Spanish incorporation of Indigenous peoples, their traditions, and knowledge of flaked stone materials into daily practices situated within contexts of social labor relations where colonial inequalities were actively negotiated. v ACKNOWLEDGEMENTS I would like to thank my advisor Dr. Heather Trigg for her direction and the invaluable comments and suggestions regarding my thesis drafts. She was consistently available to answer questions and to discuss new ideas. I would also like to thank my other committee members, Dr. Stephen Silliman and Dr. Stephen Mrozowski for their indispensable feedback, suggestions, and edits. A special thanks is extended to staff at the Andrew Fiske Memorial Center for Archaeological Research for their generosity in helping me to carry out the various aspects of my research. In particular, I greatly appreciate Dennis Piechota for his help and insight with XRF obsidian analysis, Dr. Douglas Bolender for his patience and assistance with GIS, Dr. John Steinberg for help with statistical analysis, and Melody Henkel for providing many of the artifact photos. I would also like to thank James L. Moore and Dr. Bruce J. Kaiser for their time corresponding and providing me with relevant information regarding research. Jim was helpful in identifying New Mexico lithic materials and strike-a-light flint use-wear. Bruce calibrated the obsidian reference set readings used in the XRF analysis and looked over my findings and calculation conversions for the analyzed LA 20,000 obsidian samples. Finally, but certainly not least, I would like to thank my family for their support and encouragement. Particularly my wife Anh, for her constant motivation, patience, and valued advice throughout the course of my academic pursuits. vi TABLE OF CONTENTS ACKNOWLEDGEMENTS ..................................................................................................... vi LIST OF FIGURES ................................................................................................................. ix LIST OF TABLES .....................................................................................................................x CHAPTER Page 1. INTRODUCTION ...................................................................................................1 Historical Context ............................................................................................7 2. SITE BACKGROUND ..........................................................................................11 History of Archaeological Investigations at LA 20,000 ................................14 The Flaked Stone Assemblage .......................................................................16 3. METHODS ............................................................................................................19 Challenges in Flaked Stone Artifact Analysis ...............................................20 Analytical Techniques ...................................................................................21 Debitage Attribute Analysis ...................................................................21 Stone Tool Attribute Analysis ...............................................................26 Use-Wear Analysis ................................................................................27 Obsidian Sourcing Analysis ...................................................................30 Spatial Analysis .....................................................................................31 4. FLAKED STONE ANALYSIS AND RESULTS .................................................33 Assemblage Overview ...................................................................................33 Lithic Material Sources At and Around LA 20,000 ......................................35 Flaked Stone Material Analysis .....................................................................38 Debitage Analysis ..........................................................................................40 Debitage Attributes ................................................................................42 Local versus Distant Lithic Material Reduction ....................................50 Debitage Summary.................................................................................57 Flaked Stone Tool Analysis ...........................................................................58 Flaked Stone Tools ................................................................................60 Tool Reuse and Recycling .....................................................................81 Flaked Stone Tool Summary .................................................................84 vii CHAPTER Page 5. OBSIDIAN SOURCING .......................................................................................89