Ecological Variability and Agricultural Specialization among the Protohistoric Pueblos of Central New Mexico

Archaeologists working in central New Mexico have proposed economic models for the late prehistoric period that entail specialized production and exchange between pueblos and between Pueblo and Plains groups. Some aspects of these models have been demonstrated with archaeological materials, but agricultural production has been difficult to measure using materials that are often more indicative of consumption than production. Cotton and corn are two agricultural products that are essential to the models proposed but whose production has yet to be demonstrated with archaeological data. A combination of historical, ethnographic, and GIS data is used here to support the hypotheses that: 1) cotton was produced by specialists in the Rio Abajo and traded to Eastern pueblos and beyond; 2) corn was produced by specialists among the Salinas pueblos for exchange to the Great Plains; and 3) the production of cotton by Rio Abajo farmers did not interfere with subsistence production but was complementary to it.