Strontium isotopes reveal distant sources of architectural timber in Chaco Canyon, New Mexico.
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TLDR
The use of trees from both the Chuska and San Mateo mountains, but not from the San Pedro Mountains, as early as A.D. 974 suggests that selection of timber sources was driven more by regional socioeconomic ties than by a simple model of resource depletion with distance and time.Abstract:
Between A.D. 900 and 1150, more than 200,000 conifer trees were used to build the prehistoric great houses of Chaco Canyon, New Mexico, in what is now a treeless landscape. More than one-fifth of these timbers were spruce (Picea) or fir (Abies) that were hand-carried from isolated mountaintops 75–100 km away. Because strontium from local dust, water, and underlying bedrock is incorporated by trees, specific logging sites can be identified by comparing 87Sr/86Sr ratios in construction beams from different ruins and building periods to ratios in living trees from the surrounding mountains. 87Sr/86Sr ratios show that the beams came from both the Chuska and San Mateo (Mount Taylor) mountains, but not from the San Pedro Mountains, which are equally close. Incorporation of logs from two sources in the same room, great house, and year suggest stockpiling and intercommunity collaboration at Chaco Canyon. The use of trees from both the Chuska and San Mateo mountains, but not from the San Pedro Mountains, as early as A.D. 974 suggests that selection of timber sources was driven more by regional socioeconomic ties than by a simple model of resource depletion with distance and time.read more
Citations
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Dissertation
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The cleaning of burned and contaminated archaeological maize prior to 87Sr/86Sr analysis
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First Archaeological Evidence for Old World Crops in the Caribbean: The Presence of Barley on the Island of Barbuda
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Archaeology. Tree trail to Chaco Canyon.
TL;DR: Strontium isotopes have been used to identify the sources of timber in buildings around one thousand years old and can now help to solve a range of other problems.
References
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Journal ArticleDOI
Applied historical ecology: using the past to manage for the future
TL;DR: A montane grassland restoration project in northern New Mexico is described that was justified and guided by an historical sequence of aerial photographs showing progressive tree invasion during the 20th century, and a south- western network of fire histories illustrates the power of aggregating historical time series across spatial scales.
Journal ArticleDOI
Mesoscale Disturbance and Ecological Response to Decadal Climatic Variability in the American Southwest
TL;DR: In this paper, the authors predict a wide array of biogeographic phenomena, including soil carbon pools, vegetation physiognomy, species range, and plant and animal diversity, by modulating the frequency, magnitude, and spatial scales of natural disturbances.
Book
Strontium Isotope Geology
Gunter Faure,James L. Powell +1 more
TL;DR: In this paper, the Rubidium-Strontium Isochron method was used to measure the geologic time of a given sample, which was then used to calculate the initial 87Sr/86Sr ratio of the sample.
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