Identifying the Origin of Southwestern Shell: A Geochemical Application to Mogollon Rim Archaeomolluscs

Postclassic expansion of Mesoamerican biocultural characteristics into Sonora, Mexico

“…Weigand (2008) suggests that stores of Southwest turquoise at Paquimé would have been destined for Mesoamerica, although others argue that residents at Paquimé were the ultimate (final) consumers (Di Peso 1974;Rakita 2009). Nearly four million marine shell ornaments stored at the site were largely traded in from West Mexico (Álvarez Palma 1990;Álvarez Palma et al 1988;Bradley 2000), but not likely from the Guaymas area as Di Peso and colleagues (1974) have suggested (Grimstead et al 2013;Punzo and Villalpando 2015). In addition, the founding population(s) of 500 scarlet macaw remains originally native to Mesoamerica (and/or West Mexico), and over 500 copper artifacts were brought north (Vargas 1995).…”

“…At this point of the investigation, it is difficult to know whether the people settled in the area were responsible for collecting the material or obtained it by exchange with nearshore groups (García M. 2013: 417-437), but the absence of manufacture waste or pieces in process is suggestive that the ornaments arrived to Ónavas as complete pieces, probably through trade with coastal groups. Although the nearest coast to the site is Guaymas (130 km to the southwest), it is more likely that these materials come from the northern coast of Sinaloa (Grimstead et al 2013).…”

Ancestral Pueblo Archaeology: The Value of Synthesis

“…This research focuses on a range of artifact types, including ceramics (Carter et al 2011;Cordell and Habicht-Mauche 2012;Eiselt and Ford 2007;Fowles et al 2007;Glowacki and Neff 2002;Harry et al 2013;Schachner et al 2011;Speakman and Neff 2002), obsidian (Arakawa et al 2011;Duff et al 2012;Graves 2005;Mills et al 2013a, b;Shackley 2005), and turquoise (Hull et al 2008(Hull et al , 2014Thibodeau 2012). Objects that present significant analytical and methodological challenges, such as architectural mortars and adobe (Balsam et al 2007;Rumsey and Drohan, 2011), wood (English et al 2001;Reynolds et al 2005), animal products (Grimstead 2011), shell (Grimstead et al 2013), and maize (Benson 2010(Benson , 2012Cordell et al 2008), are less frequently examined. A relatively untapped research strategy is the comparison of movement of multiple crafts, raw materials, and agricultural products within integrative systems.…”

Geochemistry of Bivalve Shells As Indicator of Shore Position of the 2^nd Century BC

“…As bivalve shells are built by the organism from chemical elements in its environment, the composition of the carbonate shell constituents can be used to reconstruct physicochemical settings of the living locality (Grimstead et al 2013;Leng & Lewis 2016;Mouchi et al 2018). In particular, the relative proportion of oxygen stable isotopes (compared to a standard value; δ 18 O) in biogenic carbonates are often used to reconstruct seawater temperature (Craig 1965).…”