Geochemical, economic, and ethnographic approaches to the evaluation of soil, salinity, and water management in Chaco Canyon, New Mexico

Abstract

Salinity meter, powder X-ray diffraction, inductively coupled plasma atomic emission spectroscopy, and energy dispersive X-ray fluorescence spectrometry of alluvium and anthropogenic sediments demonstrates that the salinity levels of the water and soil resources used by Ancestral Puebloan people during the Bonito Phase in Chaco Canyon, New Mexico were negligible. Salinity levels were not high enough to argue that they were deleterious to farming at Chaco Canyon. The overtly high salinity levels reported by Benson cannot be replicated. Ethnographic data show that Chaco Canyon contained more than adequate sediments (perennial stream alluvium, ephemeral rincon alluvium, aeolian sand dunes) needed to support the maize-based economy of a large Ancestral Puebloan population. The occurrence of cultigens from the Chuska Slope can be explained in terms of the economic processes of production, distribution, and exchange of goods and services that originated, sustained, enhanced, or reproduced the livelihood of Ancestral Puebloans.