Suzanne Lorraine Eckert

Interests

Research

Archaeology, American Southwest, Ceramic Analysis, Identity, Gender

Teaching

Archaeology, American Southwest, Ceramic Analysis, Identity, Gender

Courses

Scholarly Contributions

Journals/Publications

• Burgess, B., Ferguson, J., & Eckert, S. (2024). Micaceous Mindsets: Chemical characterization of classic period utility wares at multiple sites along the Rio Grande. Journal of Archaeological Science: Reports, 57. doi:10.1016/j.jasrep.2024.104640
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  Micaceous utility wares are commonly found at Ancestral Pueblo villages in the Rio Grande region, yet they have received relatively little attention compared to contemporary glaze wares. This lack of attention is unfortunate, because utility wares were a common component of daily Pueblo activities and are shown to have been involved in complex exchange schemes. Neutron activation analysis is used to chemically characterize micaceous utility sherds recovered from seven Classic Period (AD 1300–1600) sites located along the Rio Puerco and Rio Grande between the modern towns of Santa Fe and Socorro, New Mexico. The resulting distribution patterns broadly indicate heterogeneous procurement and/or manufacturing practices from site-to-site over the three centuries examined; however, a shared distribution between the Rio Puerco and Central Rio Grande is distinguishable. This relationship is evaluated and interpreted under a communities of practice framework, and bears to question how the manufacture, distribution, and use of micaceous utility wares elsewhere may be explored with this approach.
• Eckert, S., Huntley, D., Habicht-Mauche, J., & Ferguson, J. (2024). Tasks, Knowledge, and Practice: Long-Distance Resource Acquisition at Goat Spring Pueblo (LA285), Central New Mexico. American Antiquity, 89(3). doi:10.1017/aaq.2024.27
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  We examine provenance data collected from three types of geological resources recovered at Goat Spring Pueblo in central New Mexico. Our goal is to move beyond simply documenting patterns in compositional data; rather, we develop a narrative that explores how people’s knowledge and preferences resulted in culturally and materially determined choices as revealed in those patterns. Our analyses provide evidence that residents of Goat Spring Pueblo did not rely primarily on local geological sources for the creation of their glaze paints or obsidian tools. They did, however, utilize a locally available blue-green mineral for creation of their ornaments. We argue that village artisans structured their use of raw materials at least in part according to multiple craft-specific and community-centered ethnomineralogies that likely constituted the sources of these materials as historically or cosmologically meaningful places through their persistent use. Consequently, the surviving material culture at Goat Spring Pueblo reflects day-to-day beliefs, practices, and social relationships that connected this village to a broader mosaic of interconnected Ancestral Pueblo taskscapes and knowledgescapes.
• Loendorf, C., Eckert, S., Medchill, B., & Kyle Woodson, M. (2023). Rio Grande cultural remains on the middle Gila River, Arizona: The Pueblo Revolt and the Eastern Puebloan diaspora. Journal of Archaeological Science: Reports, 47. doi:10.1016/j.jasrep.2022.103775
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  Data recovery investigations in the Blackwater area along the middle Gila River in south-central Arizona identified ceramic and lithic artifacts derived from the Rio Grande region. These remains were collected from GR-1425, which is located at the heading of the Blackwater canal system within the Gila River Indian Community. The site lacks evidence for permanent occupation, and instead only short-term habitation occurred. Extensive evidence for weapon manufacturing suggests that the temporary relocation was associated with conflict, and radiocarbon dates suggest that the cultural remains were deposited after the Hohokam Classic period ended circa CE 1450. The most parsimonious explanation for the data from GR-1425 is that a group of Eastern Puebloans temporarily moved to the middle Gila River around the time of the Pueblo Revolt in CE 1680. As a result of increased interactions of disparate populations brought together by the extensive population movements that occurred at this time, substantial changes in regional ceramic traditions occurred, and data from GR-1425 suggest the extent of these interactions was more wide-scale than previously recognized.
• Schaefer, J. M., Eckert, S. L., Huntley, D. L., & Ferguson, J. R. (2023).

  In-Field Obsidian XRF Analysis of Sites in the Lion Mountain Area and Gallinas Mountains of West-Central New Mexico

  . Journal of Field Archaeology, 48(5), 337-349. doi:10.1080/00934690.2023.2221520
• Eckert, S., & Huntley, D. (2022). Community Landscapes, Identity, and Practice: Ancestral Pueblos of the Lion Mountain Area, Central New Mexico, USA. American Antiquity, 87(1). doi:10.1017/aaq.2021.70
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  Landscape archaeology has been widely used as a framework for understanding the myriad ways in which people lived in their natural and built environments. In this study, we use systematic survey data in conjunction with ceramic chronology building to explore how residents of the Lion Mountain area in Central New Mexico created and sustained community landscapes over time as memories and stories became linked with specific places. We combine practice theory with the concept of social memory to show that these residents used their community landscape to both maintain and transform community identity over multiple generations. To strengthen our argument, we use a dual temporal approach, considering our data both by looking back and looking forward in time relative to the residents living on the landscape. Ultimately, we argue that residents of the Lion Mountain Community lived and died within a community landscape of their making. This community landscape, which was maintained and transformed through collective memory, included significant landmarks and entailed participation in specific networks, helping to reinforce community identity over time.
• Eckert, S. L., & Habicht-mauche, J. A. (2021).

  Coalescence and the Spread of Glaze-Painted Pottery in the Central Rio Grande: The View from Tijeras Pueblo (LA581), New Mexico

  . American Antiquity, 86(4), 752-772. doi:10.1017/aaq.2021.60
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  The concept of coalescent communities has been widely used by North American archaeologists as a framework for understanding cultural responses to social upheaval. In this article we explore how the concept of coalescence helps us understand the processes that led to the emergence of aggregated settlements in the Albuquerque district of the central Rio Grande Valley around the turn of the fourteenth century. We argue that such communities emerged as strategic local responses to disruptive social and demographic trends on a macroregional scale. Specifically, we use NAA and petrographic sourcing of Western Pueblo- and Rio Grande-style glaze-painted pottery in conjunction with settlement data from the site of Tijeras Pueblo (LA581) to explore how the amalgamation of immigrant and autochthonous people, technology, knowledge, and ritual creatively and radically transformed local and regional practices of community and identity formation.
• Eckert, S. L. (2020).

  BOOK REVIEW: Communities and Households in the Greater American Southwest: New Perspectives and Case Studies

  . KIVA, 86(2), 242-244. doi:10.1080/00231940.2020.1757216
• Eckert, S., Schleher, K., & Snow, D. (2018). Following the yellow brick road: Yellow slip clays and the production of Rio Grande Glaze Ware in north central New Mexico. Journal of Archaeological Science: Reports, 21. doi:10.1016/j.jasrep.2018.08.014
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  This provenance study of yellow-firing clays in north central New Mexico examines whether clays recovered in the vicinity of Tunque Pueblo (LA 240) may have been used as slip clays at contemporaneous San Marcos Pueblo (LA 98). A sample of 72 ceramic sherds, bricks, and clays were analyzed through chemical characterization using laser-ablation inductively coupled plasma mass spectrometry (LA-ICP-MS). We argue that Tunque potters were using a subset of clays available at their village to produce pottery. Although San Marcos potters appear to have possibly been using clay from Tunque Pueblo to slip their vessels, these clays were not the same as those used by Tunque potters. Given San Marcos potters’ apparent reliance on this slip clay over time, we argue our findings demonstrate that extremely stable social networks were developed and sustained among Rio Grande Pueblo households and communities across north central New Mexico during the late prehispanic and early colonial periods (1400–1680 CE).
• Eckert, S. L. (2017). Wrapping and Unwrapping Material Culture: Archaeological and Anthropological Perspectives. Susanna Harris and Laurence Douny, eds. Walnut creek, CA: Left Coast Press, 2014. 245 pp.. Museum Anthropology, 40(2), 159-160. doi:10.1111/muan.12142
• Eckert, S., & James, W. (2011). Investigating the production and distribution of plain ware pottery in the Samoan archipelago with laser ablation-inductively coupled plasma-mass spectrometry (LA-ICP-MS). Journal of Archaeological Science, 38(9). doi:10.1016/j.jas.2011.03.009
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  This paper presents a provenance study of 170 ceramic artifacts and 21 ceramic tiles from three islands in the Samoan archipelago using laser ablation-inductively coupled plasma-mass spectrometry (LA-ICP-MS). Our analyses confirm that LA-ICP-MS can be used to differentiate between clay formations on a single island. We identify different distribution patterns for pottery recovered from lowland and highland sites on Tutuila Island. We also examine evidence for movement of pottery between islands, and find only limited evidence for such movement. Our findings suggest dynamic patterns of prehistoric interaction and site use that need to be evaluated with further data from across the archipelago. © 2011 Elsevier Ltd.
• Eckert, S., & Clark, T. (2009). The ritual importance of birds in 14th-century central New Mexico. Journal of Ethnobiology, 29(1). doi:10.2993/0278-0771-29.1.8
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  The Pueblo IV period (AD 1300-1450/1500) in the American Southwest witnessed the development of a number of new ritual systems in both the Western and Eastern Pueblo areas. Although associated with a diverse array of material culture, one of the most prominent aspects of these religious ideologies was the adoption of a complex of icons focusing on fertility, weather control, and community well being. Key among these motifs were birds, which appear to have played a central role in the materialization of these new ideological systems. In this paper, we evaluate the changing importance of avifauna in the ritual systems that were adopted in the 14th century in the Lower Rio Puerco area of New Mexico. Relying on ceramic, architectural, and faunal data from Pottery Mound (LA 416) and Hummingbird Pueblo (LA 578), we argue that both the imagery and use of birds in ritual contexts increased substantially at the two villages during the 14th century. These developments correspond to a new religious ideology that served to integrate the diverse populations that had aggregated in the Lower Rio Puerco area in the late 1200s. © 2009 Society of Ethnobiology.
• Johnson, P., Pearl, F., Eckert, S., & James, W. (2007). INAA of pre-contact basalt quarries on the Samoan Island of Tutuila: a preliminary baseline for an artifact-centered provenance study. Journal of Archaeological Science, 34(7). doi:10.1016/j.jas.2006.09.022
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  This project presents a material-centered instrumental neutron activation analysis (INAA) characterization of 120 geologic samples selected from four fine-grained basalt quarries on the Samoan Island of Tutuila. Previous attempts at definitive differentiation of these Tutuilan quarries have utilized x-ray fluorescence (XRF). In this study, clear differentiation of each analyzed quarry was achieved using INAA. Biplots of canonical discriminant analysis (CDA) scores for the INAA data illustrate clear separation based on the variation in chemical composition between each quarry. The samples analyzed not only define quarry separation, but also provide the "core group" for a preliminary baseline necessary for future artifact-centered provenance studies. Inclusion of these "core group" samples in the baseline was confirmed by stepwise discriminant analysis. These findings suggest the ability to determine artifact quarry of origin on the island of Tutuila, which can elucidate the importance of individual Tutuilan quarries in the production, distribution and consumption of fine-grained basalt artifacts in Polynesia. © 2006 Elsevier Ltd. All rights reserved.
• Clark, T., Schachner, G., Eckert, S., Howell, T., & Huntley, D. (2006). RUDD CREEK PUEBLO: A LATE TULAROSA PHASE VILLAGE IN EAST CENTRAL ARIZONA. KIVA, 71(4). doi:10.1179/kiv.2006.71.4.003
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  Rudd Creek Pueblo is a late Tularosa phase (A.D. 1225-1300) village located in the Upper Little Colorado region south of Springerville, Arizona. In 1996, Arizona State University, in cooperation with the Arizona Game and Fish Department, conducted archaeological fieldwork at Rudd Creek. This paper summarizes the results of that field season, which included the clearing of disturbed fill from a number of looted rooms, as well as limited test excavations in two great kivas, undisturbed rooms, and extramural areas. Comparison of the archaeology of Rudd Creek Pueblo with other Tularosa phase settlements in the Mogollon highlands along the Arizona-New Mexico border highlights key dimensions of variability in thirteenth century settlement in this area. Our investigations suggest that future research focusing on Tularosa phase settlements has the potential to contribute greatly to current debates in Southwest archaeology concerning migration, exchange, and population aggregation.
• Eckert, S. (2005). ZUNI DEMOGRAPHIC STRUCTURE, A.D. 1300-1680: A CASE STUDY ON SPANISH CONTACT AND NATIVE POPULATION DYNAMICS. KIVA, 70(3). doi:10.1179/kiv.2005.70.3.001
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  Massive depopulation due to epidemic disease had important consequences for Native American groups in terms of cultural continuity. To understand the history and prehistory of a specific people, as well as to help refine our models and methods for studying demographic change throughout the New World, we must investigate the timing and scale of changes in population dynamics among different groups. This paper investigates changes in Zuni demographic structure, in the southwest United States, from A.D. 1300 to 1680. Paleodemographic statistics are generated from burial data recovered from the Zuni town of Hawikku. Results indicate that European diseases only affected populations in the Zuni area after missionization of the region.