Bruce Huckell and the Folsom Record of the West Mesa, New Mexico

The West Mesa is an expansive Eolian plain atop a basalt-capped terrace of the Rio Grande in central New Mexico. Seminal work carried out in the 1960s–1970s led to the identification of an abundant Paleoindian record across the surface; Bruce Huckell initiated a program of renewed investigation in the region in the late 1990s. He, along with students and volunteers, conducted archaeological surveys and excavations at Rio Rancho, Boca Negra Wash, and Deann’s Folsom sites and demonstrated the information and interpretative potential of these relatively shallow and poorly preserved sites. In addition to training a generation of future archaeologists, Bruce and his collaborators identified and described a Folsom occupation operating in the northern Southwest, recovered sparse but meaningful faunal and environmental records from these poorly preserved sites, and demonstrated that interpretable spatial patterning is preserved in these deflated contexts.