Doctoral Dissertation Improvement Grant: Impermanent Versus Intensive Agriculture: Population, Mobility, and Village Formation on the Southern Pajarito Plateau, New Mexico.

University Of New Mexico, Albuquerque NM

Investigators

Abstract

Under supervision of Dr. Bruce B. Huckell, Robert Powers will investigate prehistoric farming practices and their impact on rapidly growing Puebloan farming communities in what is now Bandelier National Monument in northern New Mexico. The research focuses on the period from A.D. 1150 to 1400. During this era thousands of Pueblo immigrants arrived from Chaco Canyon, Mesa Verde, and other parts of the Colorado Plateau. The Puebloans faced two immediate challenges: how to successfully produce crops of corn, beans, and squash in a harsh, arid environment, and how to protect valuable farmland. The immigrants practiced a simple form of dry-land agriculture, known as "slash-and-burn," by clearing pinyon and juniper woodlands for their fields. After a few years, when yields began to decline, old fields were fallowed, and new ones were established. By the late 1200s, continuing population growth and increasing fallow reduced available farmland, creating intense competition for land. Anthropological studies of simple farming societies show one solution to this dilemma is to "intensify" agriculture -- to invest more labor and technology into making land productive. Many scholars have argued that intensification provides the necessary economic stability needed to develop sedentary villages like those that appear in Bandelier in the early 1300s. An alternative explanation also merits consideration. The Southwest has a harsh, arid climate, infamous for its droughts. If a dependable source of water cannot be guaranteed, as it cannot in Bandelier, additional labor and simple technological improvements may not be effective. It may be simpler to devise a social solution: reduce competition for land by reducing access to it. From this perspective, it is more likely that villages developed to protect agricultural land from outsiders. To learn how the Pueblos resolved their agricultural crisis, three hypotheses will be investigated: 1) simple, slash and burn agriculture was maintained; 2) agriculture was intensified by greater investment in labor and technology; 3) slash-and-burn agriculture was supplemented by intensive agriculture, resulting in a combination of farming practices. The hypotheses will be evaluated using existing information and new data from prehistoric fields indicating: 1) the time and length of use; 2) changes in location, size and technological improvements; 3) changes in soil structure and nutrients, and 4) differences in soil erosion. These key characteristics will determine whether fields were used for slash-and-burn or intensive farming. Pollen, soil and nutrient data will be collected in order to measure the effects of agriculture. The study has intellectual merit and broad impacts. If slash-and-burn farming proves dominant, as some research suggests, it is more likely that villages developed to protect member rights to land. By re-examining the role of agriculture in village development, the research will improve understanding of Puebloan society, and the factors contributing to village evolution. The research will also help National Park Service interpreters at Bandelier National Monument explain the park's prehistory to its 300,000 annual visitors. Finally, many soils at Bandelier are severely eroded, a consequence partially attributable to Puebloan farming. Improved knowledge of the farming practices which helped create this unstable landscape, may provide insights needed to heal it.