Books by Myles Miller
Mogollon Communal Spaces and Places in the Greater American Southwest, 2023
Press, [2023] | Includes bibliographical references and index. | Summary: "This volume presents t... more Press, [2023] | Includes bibliographical references and index. | Summary: "This volume presents the latest research on the development and use of communal spaces and places across the Mogollon region in what is now the southwestern United States and northwestern Mexico. New data demonstrate that these spaces and places, though diverse in form and function, were essential to community development and cohesion, particularly during critical formative periods associated with increasing sedentism and farming, and during comparable periods of social change. The authors ask questions crucial to understanding past communities: What is a communal space or place? How did villagers across the Mogollon region use such places? And how do modern archaeologists investigate the past to learn how ancient people thought about themselves and the world around them? Contributors use innovative approaches to explore the development and properties of communal spaces and places, as well as how and why these places were incorporated into the daily lives of village residents. Buildings, alongside other types of communal spaces, are placed into broader cultural and social contexts, acknowledging the enduring importance of the kiva-type structure to many Native American societies of the southwestern United States and northwestern Mexico" -Provided by publisher.
Sacred Southwestern Landscapes: Archaeologies of Religious Ecology, 2024
Earth Ovens and Desert Lifeways: 10,000 Years of Indigenous Cooking in the Arid Landscapes of North America, 2023
Redacted version with site location information removed. Contact the Carlsbad Field Office, BLM... more Redacted version with site location information removed. Contact the Carlsbad Field Office, BLM or the author for complete PDF version.
Redacted version with site location information removed: contact the BLM Carlsbad Field Office o... more Redacted version with site location information removed: contact the BLM Carlsbad Field Office or lead author for an unredacted copy.
This report presents the results of the archaeological documentation and interpretation of 21 rock art sites on lands in the Guadalupe Mountains and Azotea Mesa regions administered by the Carlsbad Field Office of the Bureau of Land Management. The comprehensive documentation of rock art at 21 sites was a multidisciplinary and multiphase effort over the course of two years that involved several specialists as well as field and post-field consultations with Native American Tribal Historic Preservation Offices, elders, and other representatives.
The rock art and surrounding occupation areas of 21 sites were documented. This vast and varied panorama of rock art paintings and engravings spanned a period of at least 4,000 years. A total of 168 rock art panels with 1,045 individual elements were drawn, photographed, and described. The artistic and symbolic content of the panels include abstract paintings, zigzag elements, and polychrome paintings dating to the Archaic Period; possible representational images and masks from the Formative/Ceramic Period; and dynamic scenes of humans, horses, and other animals dating to the 1800s.
Ten pictographs were directly dated using plasma oxidation radiocarbon dating of paint samples.
In addition to the rock art, other evidence of past human interaction with the landscapes of southeastern New Mexico is presented. The rock art panels are surrounded by shrine features, cairns, rock walls, house structures, and agave baking pits. Most of the rock art is associated with distinctive natural features such as caves, rockshelters, cliffs, and boulder outcrops. When considered together, the rock art, shrines, striking vistas, and dynamic settings provide profound insights into the ways in which the past inhabitants of the canyons and mountains of the Guadalupe Mountains engaged with the natural and spiritual world.
Recent Research in Jornada Mogollon Archaeology: Proceedings from the 20th Jornada Mogollon Conference , 2019
Several attempts to systematically classify and date projectile point forms in the Jornada region... more Several attempts to systematically classify and date projectile point forms in the Jornada region have been attempted over the past 40 years. A variety of approaches were used, including quantitative typologies based on metric attributes, codes to objectively describe combinations of morphological variables, and seriations of projectile points from poorly-dated cave strata. Projectile point type names in a database of 12,110 projectile points from the Jornada finds that 275 different type names, cluster names, morphological descriptions, or general time assignments have been used to describe the Jornada points. This paper presents a simplified typology and then examines the 475 points associated with a radiocarbon date to establish objective time intervals during which certain forms were produced. Time periods before 4500 BP cannot be examined due to rarity of dates, but projectile point chronologies from the late Middle Archaic through Late Prehistoric periods can be refined on the basis of statistical analysis of radiocarbon dates. The chronological sequence also serves as a source of inquiry for examining patterns of technological change, changes in prey and raw material procurement, mobility, social organization, and other topics as related to other aspects of the prehistoric Jornada cultural sequence.
Communities and Households in the Greater American Southwest, edited by Robert J. Stokes, 2019
A study of the ways in which households combined to form larger cooperative social formations, ho... more A study of the ways in which households combined to form larger cooperative social formations, how such formations were actualized and maintained through communal and collective action, and how these were expressed at varying spatial scales in the archaeological record of pueblos and puebloan landscapes in southern New Mexico and western Texas. Addresses the problems of recognizing the manner in which suprahousehold collectivities are manifested in the archaeological record.
Interaction and Connectivity in the Greater Southwest, Proceedings of the 2014 Southwest Symposium edited by Harry and Roth, 2019
During the past four years, 77 plant baking pits and associated burned rock discard middens have ... more During the past four years, 77 plant baking pits and associated burned rock discard middens have been excavated in the southern Sacramento Mountains of New Mexico. Generally viewed as a rather mundane and uninformative type of feature, systematic study of a large sample of such features presents a new approach to understanding how inequality and leadership developed during periods of resource and demographic stress. These interpretations differ from conventional views of cultural complexity based on the interplay of agricultural production, labor, and scheduling. Several innovative quantitative and compositional techniques were applied to demonstrate that the pits were not simply a technology for food preparation, but instead served as active agents in social production. The study revealed that the features served important social and ritual functions, one of which was the fermentation of baked Agavaceae plants to produce fermented mescal. This paper explores the political economy of intensified Agavaceae exploitation and geographic expansion of plant baking facilities, developments that led to issues of labor organization, land tenure, and overexploitation of the commons. The implications of feasting, social control of mescal production and the development of leadership and inequality are explored.
Late Prehistoric Hunter-Gatherers and Farmers of the Jornada Mogollon, edited by Rocek and Kenmotsu, 2018
Review of plant baking pits (burned rock middens) in southern and southeastern New Mexico with an... more Review of plant baking pits (burned rock middens) in southern and southeastern New Mexico with an emphasis on their function in subsistence and political economies.
Life Beyond the Boundaries: Constructing Identity in Edge Regions of the North American Southwest (Harry and Herr, editors), 2018
Social and ideological developments of the Jornada Mogollon region of southern New Mexico and wes... more Social and ideological developments of the Jornada Mogollon region of southern New Mexico and west Texas are often considered peripheral to the greater Southwest. This perspective belies the fact that inhabitants of the region maintained one of the more successful and stable societies in the prehistoric Southwest. The fluorescence of Jornada style iconography in rock art, ceramics, and other media during the 14th century is well known. Recent chronometric and iconographic studies show that the underlying cosmology and ideology related to mountains and caves – the basis of Jornada ethnogenesis and identity - can be traced to as early as the 5th century AD. Over the span of several centuries Jornada social identity was also expressed through agave fermentation and feasting, acts of ritual dedication, ceramic technology, and orientations of rooms and settlements. The Jornada region offers a unique setting for the study of how identity was formed, conserved, and maintained over periods of several centuries.
Late Prehistoric Hunter-Gatherers and Farmers of the Jornada Mogollon, edited by Rocek and Kenmotsu, 2018
Review and interpretation of prehistoric trails and pathways discovered through high-resolution s... more Review and interpretation of prehistoric trails and pathways discovered through high-resolution survey methods and GIS analysis.
Redacted version to safeguard site location data. Contact the lead author or Carlsbad Field Offi... more Redacted version to safeguard site location data. Contact the lead author or Carlsbad Field Office, Bureau of Land Management, for original version.
The Merchant site is a fourteenth and early fifteenth century pueblo settlement located near Grama Ridge, a prominent escarpment near the boundary where the basin-and-range region merges with the southern Plains in the southeastern corner of New Mexico. The Merchant site is representative of the Ochoa phase, a poorly understood time period of southeastern New Mexico dating from around A.D. 1300/1350 to 1450. The Ochoa phase, and the El Paso and Late Glencoe phases of the closely related Jornada Mogollon region to the west, are contemporaneous with the Pueblo IV period of the greater Southwest, the Antelope Creek phase of the southern Plains, and the Toyah phase of central Texas. As such, Merchant and other Ochoa phase settlements were part of the widespread patterns of population aggregation, migrations, and diasporas and accompanying developments in social and ritual organization that occurred throughout the Southwest, northern Mexico, and southern Plains during the fourteenth and fifteenth centuries.
Life Beyond the Boundaries: Constructing Identity in Edge Regions of the American Southwest, 2018
Chapter discussing the origin, formation, and maintenance of social identify in the Jornada regio... more Chapter discussing the origin, formation, and maintenance of social identify in the Jornada region of southern New Mexico over the course of a millennium. Topics include placemaking, rock art and ceramic art, mountains and caves, and how the Jornada region served as a "reservoir of identity," maintaining a deeper tradition of Mogollon-Mimbres-Jornada identity.
Cover and TOC for edited volume with chapter on the Jornada Archaic period
Report for a three-year Investigation of chronometric methods for use on prehistoric and historic... more Report for a three-year Investigation of chronometric methods for use on prehistoric and historic archaeological sites in southern New Mexico, western Texas, and northern Chihuahua. Exhaustive review of obsidian hydration dating, including underlying chemistry, rate determination models, temperature controls, and other factors. Review of radiocarbon dating and calibration curve effects. The utility of other chronometric methods is also reviewed. Appendices include lists of several thousand radiocarbon and obsidian hydration dates.
Publications by Myles Miller
American Antiquity , 2024
Miller. Myles R., Darrell G. Creel, and Phil R. Geib
Abstract
This article presents radiocarbon d... more Miller. Myles R., Darrell G. Creel, and Phil R. Geib
Abstract
This article presents radiocarbon dates on 29 perishable objects deposited in shrine caves in the Jornada and Mimbres Mogollon regions of far west Texas and southern New Mexico. The dated objects include tablita fragments, effigies, prayer sticks, hafted projectile point foreshafts, and flat curved sticks. Analysis of the dates reveals three significant trends: a particular set of Indigenous ritual practices involving shrine caves in the North American Southwest was of extraordinary temporal depth and continuity; the meanings and material culture associated with shrine caves changed through time; and a signature iconographic expression of Jornada and Mimbres origin cosmologies, the Goggle-eye or “Tlaloc” entity, is older than previously understood. The dating of shrine caves and iconographic motifs provides new insights on early eras of religious expression in the southern Southwest, clarifying both the nature and time depth of foundational cosmologies and providing a deep time perspective for interpretations of how such cosmologies and their material and iconographic expressions changed through time.
Redacted version with site location information removed. Contact the Carlsbad Field Office, BLM ... more Redacted version with site location information removed. Contact the Carlsbad Field Office, BLM or the author for a full PDF version.
Kiva, 2017
Many decades of archaeological research in the Mimbres region have resulted in
hundreds of chron... more Many decades of archaeological research in the Mimbres region have resulted in
hundreds of chronometric dates obtained from contexts dating prior to A.D.
1450, but until now these data have not been compiled into a single database.
Using dendrochronological, radiocarbon, and archaeomagnetic dates, we
analyze each of the chronometric data sets to identify patterns and biases that
help us better understand the tempo and duration of fundamental transitions
in the Mimbres archaeological record. We also identify critical gaps in our knowledge
of the chronometric record that provide new research opportunities.
Muchas décadas de investigación arqueológica en la región Mimbres han resultado
en cientos de fechas cronométricas que han sido obtenidas de contextos
datando desde antes de 1450 d.C. Sin embargo, hasta ahora estos datos no
han sido compilados en una sola base comprensiva. Utilizando fechas dendrocronológicas, radiocarbónicas, y arqueomagnéticas, nosotros analizamos cada
conjunto de datos cronométricos para identificar atributos y prejuicios. Como
resultado, podemos comprender mejor el ritmo y la duración de transiciones
fundamentales en el registro arqueológico de Mimbres. También identificamos
las brechas críticas en nuestro conocimiento del registro cronométrico que proporcionan nuevas oportunidades de investigación.
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Books by Myles Miller
This report presents the results of the archaeological documentation and interpretation of 21 rock art sites on lands in the Guadalupe Mountains and Azotea Mesa regions administered by the Carlsbad Field Office of the Bureau of Land Management. The comprehensive documentation of rock art at 21 sites was a multidisciplinary and multiphase effort over the course of two years that involved several specialists as well as field and post-field consultations with Native American Tribal Historic Preservation Offices, elders, and other representatives.
The rock art and surrounding occupation areas of 21 sites were documented. This vast and varied panorama of rock art paintings and engravings spanned a period of at least 4,000 years. A total of 168 rock art panels with 1,045 individual elements were drawn, photographed, and described. The artistic and symbolic content of the panels include abstract paintings, zigzag elements, and polychrome paintings dating to the Archaic Period; possible representational images and masks from the Formative/Ceramic Period; and dynamic scenes of humans, horses, and other animals dating to the 1800s.
Ten pictographs were directly dated using plasma oxidation radiocarbon dating of paint samples.
In addition to the rock art, other evidence of past human interaction with the landscapes of southeastern New Mexico is presented. The rock art panels are surrounded by shrine features, cairns, rock walls, house structures, and agave baking pits. Most of the rock art is associated with distinctive natural features such as caves, rockshelters, cliffs, and boulder outcrops. When considered together, the rock art, shrines, striking vistas, and dynamic settings provide profound insights into the ways in which the past inhabitants of the canyons and mountains of the Guadalupe Mountains engaged with the natural and spiritual world.
The Merchant site is a fourteenth and early fifteenth century pueblo settlement located near Grama Ridge, a prominent escarpment near the boundary where the basin-and-range region merges with the southern Plains in the southeastern corner of New Mexico. The Merchant site is representative of the Ochoa phase, a poorly understood time period of southeastern New Mexico dating from around A.D. 1300/1350 to 1450. The Ochoa phase, and the El Paso and Late Glencoe phases of the closely related Jornada Mogollon region to the west, are contemporaneous with the Pueblo IV period of the greater Southwest, the Antelope Creek phase of the southern Plains, and the Toyah phase of central Texas. As such, Merchant and other Ochoa phase settlements were part of the widespread patterns of population aggregation, migrations, and diasporas and accompanying developments in social and ritual organization that occurred throughout the Southwest, northern Mexico, and southern Plains during the fourteenth and fifteenth centuries.
Publications by Myles Miller
Abstract
This article presents radiocarbon dates on 29 perishable objects deposited in shrine caves in the Jornada and Mimbres Mogollon regions of far west Texas and southern New Mexico. The dated objects include tablita fragments, effigies, prayer sticks, hafted projectile point foreshafts, and flat curved sticks. Analysis of the dates reveals three significant trends: a particular set of Indigenous ritual practices involving shrine caves in the North American Southwest was of extraordinary temporal depth and continuity; the meanings and material culture associated with shrine caves changed through time; and a signature iconographic expression of Jornada and Mimbres origin cosmologies, the Goggle-eye or “Tlaloc” entity, is older than previously understood. The dating of shrine caves and iconographic motifs provides new insights on early eras of religious expression in the southern Southwest, clarifying both the nature and time depth of foundational cosmologies and providing a deep time perspective for interpretations of how such cosmologies and their material and iconographic expressions changed through time.
hundreds of chronometric dates obtained from contexts dating prior to A.D.
1450, but until now these data have not been compiled into a single database.
Using dendrochronological, radiocarbon, and archaeomagnetic dates, we
analyze each of the chronometric data sets to identify patterns and biases that
help us better understand the tempo and duration of fundamental transitions
in the Mimbres archaeological record. We also identify critical gaps in our knowledge
of the chronometric record that provide new research opportunities.
Muchas décadas de investigación arqueológica en la región Mimbres han resultado
en cientos de fechas cronométricas que han sido obtenidas de contextos
datando desde antes de 1450 d.C. Sin embargo, hasta ahora estos datos no
han sido compilados en una sola base comprensiva. Utilizando fechas dendrocronológicas, radiocarbónicas, y arqueomagnéticas, nosotros analizamos cada
conjunto de datos cronométricos para identificar atributos y prejuicios. Como
resultado, podemos comprender mejor el ritmo y la duración de transiciones
fundamentales en el registro arqueológico de Mimbres. También identificamos
las brechas críticas en nuestro conocimiento del registro cronométrico que proporcionan nuevas oportunidades de investigación.
This report presents the results of the archaeological documentation and interpretation of 21 rock art sites on lands in the Guadalupe Mountains and Azotea Mesa regions administered by the Carlsbad Field Office of the Bureau of Land Management. The comprehensive documentation of rock art at 21 sites was a multidisciplinary and multiphase effort over the course of two years that involved several specialists as well as field and post-field consultations with Native American Tribal Historic Preservation Offices, elders, and other representatives.
The rock art and surrounding occupation areas of 21 sites were documented. This vast and varied panorama of rock art paintings and engravings spanned a period of at least 4,000 years. A total of 168 rock art panels with 1,045 individual elements were drawn, photographed, and described. The artistic and symbolic content of the panels include abstract paintings, zigzag elements, and polychrome paintings dating to the Archaic Period; possible representational images and masks from the Formative/Ceramic Period; and dynamic scenes of humans, horses, and other animals dating to the 1800s.
Ten pictographs were directly dated using plasma oxidation radiocarbon dating of paint samples.
In addition to the rock art, other evidence of past human interaction with the landscapes of southeastern New Mexico is presented. The rock art panels are surrounded by shrine features, cairns, rock walls, house structures, and agave baking pits. Most of the rock art is associated with distinctive natural features such as caves, rockshelters, cliffs, and boulder outcrops. When considered together, the rock art, shrines, striking vistas, and dynamic settings provide profound insights into the ways in which the past inhabitants of the canyons and mountains of the Guadalupe Mountains engaged with the natural and spiritual world.
The Merchant site is a fourteenth and early fifteenth century pueblo settlement located near Grama Ridge, a prominent escarpment near the boundary where the basin-and-range region merges with the southern Plains in the southeastern corner of New Mexico. The Merchant site is representative of the Ochoa phase, a poorly understood time period of southeastern New Mexico dating from around A.D. 1300/1350 to 1450. The Ochoa phase, and the El Paso and Late Glencoe phases of the closely related Jornada Mogollon region to the west, are contemporaneous with the Pueblo IV period of the greater Southwest, the Antelope Creek phase of the southern Plains, and the Toyah phase of central Texas. As such, Merchant and other Ochoa phase settlements were part of the widespread patterns of population aggregation, migrations, and diasporas and accompanying developments in social and ritual organization that occurred throughout the Southwest, northern Mexico, and southern Plains during the fourteenth and fifteenth centuries.
Abstract
This article presents radiocarbon dates on 29 perishable objects deposited in shrine caves in the Jornada and Mimbres Mogollon regions of far west Texas and southern New Mexico. The dated objects include tablita fragments, effigies, prayer sticks, hafted projectile point foreshafts, and flat curved sticks. Analysis of the dates reveals three significant trends: a particular set of Indigenous ritual practices involving shrine caves in the North American Southwest was of extraordinary temporal depth and continuity; the meanings and material culture associated with shrine caves changed through time; and a signature iconographic expression of Jornada and Mimbres origin cosmologies, the Goggle-eye or “Tlaloc” entity, is older than previously understood. The dating of shrine caves and iconographic motifs provides new insights on early eras of religious expression in the southern Southwest, clarifying both the nature and time depth of foundational cosmologies and providing a deep time perspective for interpretations of how such cosmologies and their material and iconographic expressions changed through time.
hundreds of chronometric dates obtained from contexts dating prior to A.D.
1450, but until now these data have not been compiled into a single database.
Using dendrochronological, radiocarbon, and archaeomagnetic dates, we
analyze each of the chronometric data sets to identify patterns and biases that
help us better understand the tempo and duration of fundamental transitions
in the Mimbres archaeological record. We also identify critical gaps in our knowledge
of the chronometric record that provide new research opportunities.
Muchas décadas de investigación arqueológica en la región Mimbres han resultado
en cientos de fechas cronométricas que han sido obtenidas de contextos
datando desde antes de 1450 d.C. Sin embargo, hasta ahora estos datos no
han sido compilados en una sola base comprensiva. Utilizando fechas dendrocronológicas, radiocarbónicas, y arqueomagnéticas, nosotros analizamos cada
conjunto de datos cronométricos para identificar atributos y prejuicios. Como
resultado, podemos comprender mejor el ritmo y la duración de transiciones
fundamentales en el registro arqueológico de Mimbres. También identificamos
las brechas críticas en nuestro conocimiento del registro cronométrico que proporcionan nuevas oportunidades de investigación.
help us better understand the tempo and duration of fundamental transitions in the Mimbres archaeological record. We also identify critical gaps in our knowledge of the chronometric record that provide new research opportunities.
points. People at both sites used similar sources, with a few noted exceptions. Furthermore, groups in the Jornada Mogollon and Casas Grandes regions utilized dramatically different sources.
pottery produced at communities in the Galisteo Basin and the upper
Rio Grande. Recent compositional analysis of carbon-painted ceramics from the Gallinas Springs, Pinnacle, and Roadmap sites has identified characteristic chemical signatures that suggest local production of carbon paint ceramics at all three sites and distribution of carbon paint ceramics from Gallinas Springs to Pinnacle and Roadmap in the eastern Black Range of southwestern New Mexico. Analysis of carbon paint ceramics from Madera Quemada, an El Paso Phase site in the Tularosa Basin indicates that the carbon paint wares found in El Paso Phase sites were acquired through trade connections from the Black Range rather than from more northern sources. The overall Magdalena Black-on-white production patterns are contrasted with the obsidian procurement data from the same sites to reveal a complex and divergent pattern.
discussion of the distribution of this icon beyond the Mimbres region, they mention the discovery of a Knife-wing image on an El Paso Polychrome vessel from the Jornada Mogollon region. We also note that in a previous Pottery Southwest article (Honeycutt 2015: Figures 5-7) that avian figures painted in Basketmaker III (ca. A.D. 500-750) bowls appear to represent early Knife-wing icons. Given the recent interest regarding the origins of Southwestern ideologies, cosmologies, and related symbolic expressions, it was thought that a more detailed discussion of the Jornada image would be of interest. Additionally, a technical aspect of the study introduces
the use of decorrelation stretch (DStretch) software to reveal ceramic designs obscured by sooting, fire-clouding, erosion, or by amateur attempts at vessel repair