The Relationship Between Ground Stone and Agricultural Intensification in Western New Mexico

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Abstract
This paper uses recent experimental, ethnographic, and ethnohistoric work to develop arguments that link grinding surface area of manos, frequency of multi-sided manos, and changes in metate forms, to the intensity of agriculture. I use these measures to monitor changes in agricultural processing at archaeological sites in western New Mexico. The patterns identified suggest that the importance of agriculture fluctuated through time, increasing substantially only in the Late Pueblo period. Comparisons of grinding assemblages among sites show marked differences in the amount of agricultural products processed at a given location within a given time period. These component-specific patterns may reflect different settlement types, or variable levels of agricultural dependence on a short temporal scale.

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