This interactive map brings H.P. Mera's 1940 study, Population Changes in the Rio Grande Glaze-paint Area, into the digital age.
Using ceramic typologies to track settlement shifts over time, Mera mapped 205 archaeological sites across eight cultural regions in the Middle Rio Grande Valley.
Our project lets you explore these patterns across five time periods and view some site details --all while preserving the integrity of sensitive site locations.
Bandelier, Adolph (1910). Documentary History of the Rio Grande Pueblos of New Mexico. Archaeological Institute of America.
Jennings, J. D., Reed, E. K., Griffin, J. B., Kelley, J. C., Meighan, C. W., Stubbs, S., Wheat, J. B., & Taylor, D. C. (1956). The American Southwest: A Problem in Cultural Isolation. Memoirs of the Society for American Archaeology, 11, 59-127.
Mera, H.P. (1940). Population Changes in the Rio Grande Glaze-Paint Area. Laboratory of Anthropology, University of New Mexico.
O'Donnell, L.Meyer, J.V., & Ragsdale, C.S. (2020) Trade Relationships and Gene Flow at Pottery Mound Pueblo, New Mexico. American Antiquity, 85(3), 492-515.
Peckham, S. (1984). The Anasazi culture of the northern Rio grande rift. Rio Grande Rift (Northern New Mexico). https://api.semanticscholar.org/CorpusID:54069470
Wendorf, Fred and Erik Reed (1955). Alternative Reconstruction of Northern Rio Grande Prehistory. El Palacio, 62,131-173.
The objective of the present study is to gain a general idea of the movements and shifts in a population, in some ways diverse in composition, but which, on the other hand, possessed in common certain cultural features that may be used as indices. It is on one of these features, a series of ceramic developments, that considerable reliance will be placed to indicate time intervals and spatial distribution.
The area in which the events to be discussed took place was centered largely in the valley of the Rio Grande in central New Mexico, with extensions principally to the east. Boundary lines for the whole, as well as those used in delimiting its several sub-areas, are shown on map 1. This region is sometimes referred to as Rio Grande Glaze-paint territory.
A period extending from about the middle of the 14th century to the beginning of the 18th covers the time interval involved.
Source material was obtained from the results of an archaeological survey conducted by the Laboratory of Anthropology. Nearly ten years were spent in the undertaking, during which time many hundreds of ruins were visited and studied, before it was felt that enough information had been gained upon which to base even the outline here presented.
The several chronological implications that appear herein are based on dates s~cured from such dendrochronological studies as were applicable, or, for later years, on authoritative historical data.
Due to the difficulty of treating the area as a whole because of its size, it has been deemed expedient to create a number of arbitrary sub-divisions. To these names have been applied which are derived from the linguistic groups known to have inhabited corresponding sections of country in the 17th century. It must be emphasized, however, that there is no intent to imply that these groups might have occupied the same territories prior to that date, although such a possibility may exist . The names are used largely as a matter of convenience.
In so large a tract there is naturally a great diversity in topography. As this subject may have some value in picturing environmental factors under which there existed a closely similar economic system, attention will be very briefly _directed to the topographical and ecological features of each division.
Because pottery types, by reason of their presence or absence at any given site, will be used to trace changes in centers of population, it is necessary that the reader be acquainted with their position in a previously proven and generally accepted sequence.
Previous to the first half of the 14th century only black-on-white wares were being produced in the region covered by this paper. Later a red ware, an adaptation of a western style originating in the Little Colorado cultural area, with decorations in a glaze paint, became dominant. Following this, polychromes appeared that continued the use of glaze paint up to the beginning of the 18th century after which time this kind of pigment appears to have been discontinued.
As the matter of adoption of western red-ware styles (Heshotauthla Polychrome)1 and their replacement of local black-on-white fashions has previously been discussed elsewhere it will not be repeated here. After this period and following the establishment of a local red-ware glazepaint type, there ensued a continuous series of bowl rim developments that may serve to broadly distinguish time horizons. These developmental steps were first brought to attention by the Kidders in 1917,3 Still later, the same subject has received further notice, 4 with the result that the series is now familiar enough to students of Southwestern archaeology to require no additional explanation.