Culture and History of the Southwest: Archaeological Perspectives #1 Lecture Series

Jeremy Sabloff, Past President and External Professor, Santa Fe Institute

• Introduction to the Lecture Series

George T. Crawford, Director, Blackwater Draw, National Historic Landmark

• Early Peoples of New Mexico and the Southwest: First Peoples through the Initial Adoption of Maize
• Archaeological research is rapidly expanding our knowledge of the earliest human groups that occupied the Southwestern United States. The Paleoindian periods of Clovis and Folsom were preceded by widespread earlier peoples whose dating and lifeways are just beginning to be understood. Lifeways changed with the transition to a postglacial environment, bringing higher population densities and adaptations to smaller and smaller territories. Maize was integrated into the Archaic subsistence systems 3,500 to 4,000 years ago on a region-by-region basis, eventually effecting population, settlement and territorial decisions, and setting Southwestern peoples on the path to a Formative way of life.

Eric Blinman, Director, Office of Archaeological Studies

• Formative Foundations of Puebloan Cultures through AD 900
• Increasing dependence on agriculture, equivalent to the Neolithic revolution of the Old World, created a patchwork of cultural adaptations in the Southwest. Feedback between environment, population density, and technological innovation resulted in distinctive agricultural adaptations across the broad sweep of the Southwest, from canal-based irrigation to dry farming at high elevations. These economic adaptations coincide with the generalized culture areas of Southwestern archaeology, and internal differentiation in stylistic variables appear to reflect underlying ethno-linguistic variety within those areas. Although still subject to the vagaries of climate variation, ancestral Puebloan peoples honed a resilient lifeway that forms the cores of Pueblo cultures.

Sundays, March 19 and 26, 2017 – Santa Fe Women’s Club, 1616 Old Pecos Trail 1:00 – 4:00 PM, $75 for both dates, $45 for one date. Reservations will be accepted by calling and leaving a message on (505) 982-7799 ext. 5 after 7 a.m. on February 14, 2017.