Obsidian procurement and social interaction at the Harris site, Mimbres River Valley, New Mexico

Abstract

In this paper, we use obsidian sourcing and lithic analysis data to explore obsidian use and its relationship to social interaction at the Harris site, a large pithouse village located in the Mimbres Valley of southwestern New Mexico. We also use the data to examine whether differences in obsidian procurement strategies and access to obsidian were present between households at the Harris site. The sourced assemblage is one of the largest from a single site in the American Southwest and many of the artifacts are from dated contexts that allow the examination of patterns of obsidian procurement through time as well as within and between households.