Pushing Boundaries in Southwestern Archaeology: Chronometry, Collections, and Contexts

By Stephen E. Nash

Pushing Boundaries in Southwestern Archaeology draws together the proceedings from the sixteenth biennial Southwest Symposium. In exploring the conference theme, contributors consider topics ranging from the resuscitation of archaeomagnetic dating to the issue of Athapaskan origins, from collections-based studies of social identity, foodways, and obsidian trade to the origins of a rock art tradition and the challenges of a deeply buried archaeological record.
 
The first of the volume’s four sections examines the status, history, and prospects of Bears Ears National Monument, the broader regulatory and political boundaries that complicate the nature and integrity of the archaeological record, and the cultural contexts and legal stakes of archaeological inquiry. The second section focuses on chronological “big data” in the context of pre-Columbian history and the potential and limits of what can be empirically derived from chronometric analysis of the past. The chapters in the third section advocate for advancing collections-based research, focusing on the vast and often untapped research potential of archives, previously excavated museum collections, and legacy data. The final section examines the permeable boundaries involved in Plains-Pueblo interactions, obvious in the archaeological record but long in need of analysis, interpretation, and explanation.
 
Contributors: James R. Allison, Erin Baxter, Benjamin A. Bellorado, Katelyn J. Bishop, Eric Blinman, J. Royce Cox, J. Andrew Darling, Kaitlyn E. Davis, William H. Doelle, B. Sunday Eiselt, Leigh Anne Ellison, Josh Ewing, Samantha G. Fladd, Gary M. Feinman, Jeffrey R. Ferguson, Severin Fowles, Willie Grayeyes, Matthew Guebard, Saul L. Hedquist, Greg Hodgins, Lucas Hoedl, John W. Ives, Nicholas Kessler, Terry Knight, Michael W. Lindeman, Hannah V. Mattson, Myles R. Miller, Lindsay Montgomery, Stephen E. Nash, Sarah Oas, Jill Onken, Scott G. Ortman, Danielle J. Riebe, John Ruple, Will G. Russell, Octavius Seowtewa, Deni J. Seymour, James M. Vint, Adam S. Watson
 
 

• Language: English
• Publisher: University Press of Colorado
• Release date: Apr 7, 2023
• ISBN: 9781646423620

Book preview

Cover Page for Pushing Boundaries in Southwestern Archaeology

Pushing Boundaries in Southwestern Archaeology

Proceedings of the Southwest Symposium

The Archaeology of Regional Interaction: Religion, Warfare, and Exchange across the American Southwest and Beyond

edited by Michelle Hegmon

Archaeology without Borders: Contact, Commerce, and Change in the US Southwest and Northwestern Mexico

edited by Maxine E. McBrinn and Laurie D. Webster

Contemporary Archaeologies of the Southwest

edited by William Walker and Kathryn R. Venzor

Engaged Archaeology in the Southwestern United States and Northwestern Mexico

edited by Kelley A. Hays-Gilpin, Sarah A. Herr, and Patrick D. Lyons

Exploring Cause and Explanation: Historical Ecology, Demography, and Movement in the American Southwest

edited by Cynthia L. Herhahn and Ann F. Ramenofsky

Identity, Feasting, and the Archaeology of the Greater Southwest

edited by Barbara J. Mills

Interaction and Connectivity in the Greater Southwest

edited by Karen G. Harry and Barbara J. Roth

Movement, Connectivity, and Landscape Change in the Ancient Southwest

edited by Margaret C. Nelson and Colleen A. Strawhacker

Pushing Boundaries in Southwestern Archaeology: Chronometry, Collections, and Contexts

edited by Stephen E. Nash and Erin L. Baxter

Traditions, Transitions, and Technologies: Themes in Southwestern Archaeology

edited by Sarah H. Schlanger

Pushing Boundaries in Southwestern Archaeology

Chronometry, Collections, and Contexts

Edited by

Stephen E. Nash and Erin L. Baxter

UNIVERSITY PRESS OF COLORADO

Denver

© 2023 by University Press of Colorado

Published by University Press of Colorado

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All rights reserved

The University Press of Colorado is a proud member of the Association of University Presses.

The University Press of Colorado is a cooperative publishing enterprise supported, in part, by Adams State University, Colorado State University, Fort Lewis College, Metropolitan State University of Denver, University of Alaska Fairbanks, University of Colorado, University of Denver, University of Northern Colorado, University of Wyoming, Utah State University, and Western Colorado University.

ISBN: 978-1-64642-361-3 (hardcover)

ISBN: 978-1-64642-362-0 (ebook)

https://doi.org/10.5876/9781646423620

Library of Congress Cataloging-in-Publication Data

Names: Southwest Symposium (1988– ) (16th : 2018 : Denver, Colo.), author, issuing body. | Nash, Stephen E. (Stephen Edward), 1964– editor. | Baxter, Erin, editor.

Title: Pushing boundaries in southwestern archaeology : chronometry, collections, and contexts / edited by Stephen E. Nash and Erin Baxter.

Other titles: Pushing boundaries in Southwestern archaeology | Proceedings of the Southwest Symposium.

Description: Louisville : University Press of Colorado, [2022] | Series: Proceedings of the Southwest Symposium series | Includes bibliographical references and index.

Identifiers: LCCN 2022058934 (print) | LCCN 2022058935 (ebook) | ISBN 9781646423613 (hardcover) | ISBN 9781646423620 (ebook)

Subjects: LCSH: Indians of North America—Southwest, New—Congresses. | Bears Ears National Monument (Utah)—Congresses. | Southwest, New—History—Congresses. | Southwest, New—Antiquities—Congresses.

Classification: LCC E78.S7 S576 20 (print) | LCC E78.S7 (ebook) | DDC 979/.01—dc23/eng/20221220

LC record available at https://lccn.loc.gov/2022058934

LC ebook record available at https://lccn.loc.gov/2022058935

The University Press of Colorado gratefully acknowledges the support provided by the Denver Museum of Nature & Science toward the publication of this book.

Cover illustrations. Front, top to bottom: Petroglyphs in Comb Ridge area, Bear Ears National Monument, photograph © Colin D. Young/Shutterstock; Ruins IV in Fish Creek Canyon, Bear Ears National Monument, photograph © Matthew Miller/istockphoto; Pueblo Bonito in Chaco Culture National Historical Park, photograph © miralex/istockphoto; Montezuma Castle, Camp Verde, Arizona, photograph © lightphoto/istockphoto. Back: Sandal images courtesy of the American Museum of Natural History.

For Saul Luther Hedquist (1980–2018): Archaeologist. Collaborator. Husband. Father.

Thank you, dear friend, for your mentorship, inspiration, and dedication.

Photograph by Leigh Ann Ellison.

Contents

List of Figures

List of Tables

Introduction: Pushing Boundaries: Papers of the 16th Biennial Southwest Symposium

Stephen E. Nash and Erin L. Baxter 3

Part I: Bears Ears National Monument

1. Bears Ears National Monument: Advocating to Protect Heritage on a Landscape Scale

William H. Doelle, John Ruple, Willie Grayeyes, Octavius Seowtewa, Terry Knight, and Josh Ewing

Part II: Chronological Big Data and Pre-Columbian History in the US Southwest

2. Out of Sight but Not Out of Mind: Insights from a Deeply Buried Archaeological Record in West-Central New Mexico

Jill Onken

3. The Promise and Peril of Seductively Large Tree-Ring Date Distributions

Stephen E. Nash

4. Chronometric Data Synthesis and the Late Holocene Archaeological Record of Southern New Mexico and Western Trans-Pecos Texas

Myles R. Miller

5. Modeling Time from 2100 BC to AD 1450 in Central and Southern Arizona

James M. Vint and Michael W. Lindeman

6. An Introduction to Wiggle-Match Dating and an Examination of Its Potential Impact on Chronological Studies in the Southwest

Gregory Hodgins, Nicholas Kessler, Matthew Guebard, and Lucas Hoedl

7. Theory, Technique, and Performance: Time for Renewal in Southwestern Archaeomagnetic Dating

Eric Blinman and J. Royce Cox

Part III: A Return to Context: Advancing Collections-Based Research in the US Southwest

8. Pushing the Boundaries of Clothing Research: A Preliminary Look at Twined Sandals in Relation to Social Identities in the Chaco and Post-Chaco Eras

Benjamin A. Bellorado

9. Shelves to Knowledge: Museum Collections and Southwest Archaeology in the Twenty-First Century

Saul L. Hedquist, Leigh Anne Ellison, and Will G. Russell

10. Obsidian Use and Circulation in the Greater Reserve Area in the American Southwest: New Analysis of the Martin Collection at the Field Museum

Danielle J. Riebe, Gary M. Feinman, Stephen E. Nash, and Jeffrey R. Ferguson

11. Dating Early Pueblo I Villages in Southeastern Utah: Insights from Collections, Archives, and Fieldwork

James R. Allison

12. Using Old Collections to Gain New Insights on Totah Social Identity: Ornaments, Age, and Status at Aztec Ruin

Hannah V. Mattson

Note: This chapter contains images of artifacts recovered from burial contexts.

13. Secret Ingredients: Using Collections to Address Foodways and Their Social Dynamics

Sarah Oas

14. Reassessing a Century of Excavation Data and Faunal Remains from Chaco Canyon

Katelyn J. Bishop, Samantha G. Fladd, and Adam S. Watson

Part IV: Expanding Perspectives on Plains-Pueblo Interactions

15. Reach: Athapaskan Origins and Interactions in the American Southwest

B. Sunday Eiselt, John W. Ives, and J. Andrew Darling

16. Of Cotton Blankets and Bison Hides: Cuyamungue and Plains-Pueblo Exchange

Scott G. Ortman

17. The Rio Grande Origins of the Plains Biographic Tradition

Severin Fowles and Lindsay M. Montgomery

18. Social Mechanisms of Plains-Pueblo Economics: Analysis of Smoking Pipes at Pecos Pueblo

Kaitlyn E. Davis

19. The Xoum-Ma-No Pueblos: Where They Come Often to Trade

Deni J. Seymour

Index

About the Authors

Figures

0.1. The late Saul Hedquist in an undated photograph at the Grand Canyon

1.1. Trump’s Reduced Bears Ears National Monument

2.1. Location of Carrizo Wash study area showing locations where arroyo walls were surveyed for buried archaeological deposits

2.2. Scatter graph showing relationship between feature age and depth below surface

2.3. Geomorphic categorization of study area and comparison of the distribution of early and late buried and surface sites

2.4. Bar graphs comparing number of prehistoric surface sites, buried site components, and buried features

2.5. Photograph of two Late Archaic buried thermal features situated 3.34 m below the present ground surface at LA 172583

3.1. Study area for the Village Ecodynamics Project II run by Crow Canyon Archaeological Center

3.2. Bar chart of 7,611 cutting dates from the northern Four Corners and Rio Grande regions, AD 600–1599

3.3. Bar chart of 1,819 cutting dates from Mesa Verde National Park, AD 600–1300

3.4. Bar chart of 3,246 cutting dates from the northern Four Corners region, AD 600–1599

3.5. Northern Four Corners date distribution, minus 341 dates from Sand Canyon Pueblo Structures 501, 102, and 1501, and Kiva I from 5MT1253

3.6. Bar chart of 2,511 cutting dates from the Rio Grande valley between AD 1100 and 1599

3.7. Rio Grande valley date distribution, minus 255 dates from five rooms at Tijeras Pueblo

4.1. Map of the Southwest

4.2. The comprehensive regional radiocarbon record of southern New Mexico and western Trans-Pecos Texas as revealed through the SPD for 5,680 age estimates

4.3. Summed probability distributions for three subregions compared against a theoretical exponential growth model

4.4. Multiple SPDs illustrating changes in landscape use and architecture in southern New Mexico, AD 0 to 1600

4.5. SPDs for domestic hearths and plant baking pits from the Jornada region

4.6. Paired histograms comparing radiocarbon dates for plant baking pits and maize

4.7. Radiocarbon SPDs for plant baking pits and maize

4.8. Comparison of SPDs and Bayesian phase models

5.1. Southern Arizona and the study area

5.2. Distribution of radiocarbon ages in the analyzed database

5.3. Modeled starting and ending transitions between phases and summed probability distributions of modeled ages within each phase

5.4. Concordance of median dates for OxCal modeled phases with Tucson and Phoenix Basin phases

5.5. Median spans for modeled phases superimposed on the IntCal13 calibration curve

5.6. Plot of modeled ages for the settlement history of AZ AA:12:46

5.7. Plots of modeled phase transitions between the terminal San Pedro phase and Early Cienega phase occupations at Las Capas

6.1. The most recent 2,000 years of the calibration curve IntCal13 plotted using OxCal 4.3

6.2. Calibration curve slope determines calibrated date precision

6.3. An illustration of wiggle-matching by eye

6.4. Wiggle-matching using OxCal

6.5. Site Location, Montezuma Castle cliff dwelling, and a schematic of the structure

6.6. University of Arizona AMS dates from Montezuma Castle

6.7. Bayesian wiggle-match for a roof beam 26 from Room 4-1

6.8. Bayesian wiggle-matches for two shorter-lived timbers from Room 4-1

7.1. Movement of the VGP between AD 1940 and 2020 as seen from corner positions of a geographic rectangle within the Southwestern region

7.2. SV curves currently in use in the Southwestern United States

7.3. Steps in the development of the SWCV2000 dating curve

7.4. Example of the graphical approach to AM date range estimation

7.5. Example of the statistical approach to AM date range estimation

7.6. Dating report components with added calibration point labels for ISM-48

7.7. Dating report components with added calibration point labels for ISM-60

7.8. Archaeomagnetic VGPs for ISM-48 and ISM-60 plotted on the Wolfman Southwest curve

7.9. AM results for features characterized as exclusively Late Rincon phase from Honey Bee Village

7.10. Archaeomagnetic results from NM22 features plotted on the Wolfman southwest curve and SWCV2000

8.1. Variation of fibrous yucca sandal types used in the San Juan Basin during the Chaco and post-Chaco eras; variation of twined sandal styles over time in the region

8.2. Distribution of twined sandals in the northern Southwest during the Chaco and post-Chaco eras

8.3. Plan view maps of Pueblo Bonito, Aztec West, and Antelope House

8.4. Box and whisker plots showing minor variation of complete adult-sized twined sandal lengths

8.5. Planview map of Pueblo Bonito showing locations of twined sandals with round-toe, contoured-toe, and jogged-toe shapes; examples of twined sandal toe-shape variation from select rooms at Pueblo Bonito

8.6. Pie charts of twined sandal to shape variation across the San Juan Basin in the Chaco and post-Chaco eras

8.7. Examples of common use-wear and repair patterns of twined sandals

9.1. Study area, showing locations of archaeological sites providing collections for analysis

9.2. Saul Hedquist interviewing Cornell Tsalate at the A:shiwi A:wan Museum and Heritage Center in Zuni Pueblo

9.3. Known distribution of turquoise-red stone mosaic forms, Western Pueblo region

10.1. Archaeological sites included in this study with the Greater Reserve area

10.2. Bivariate plot with yttrium and zirconium illustrating the ppm compositional data for archaeological samples and geological sources

10.3. Chart depicting local versus non-local obsidian artifacts at each site

10.4. Chart depicting the chronological breakdown of the obsidian assemblage at O Block Cave

10.5. Chart depicting the chronological breakdown of the obsidian assemblage at Tularosa Cave

11.1. The Mesa Verde region showing the locations of early Pueblo I villages mentioned in the text

11.2. Map of the early Pueblo I village at Alkali Ridge Site 13, showing the distribution of tree-ring dates

11.3. Orthophotograph of rooms excavated in 2012 and 2013

11.4. Monument Village site map compiled from several maps, showing the distribution of provenienced tree-ring dates

11.5. Excavation photos of Monument Village Component A

11.6. Mean ceramic dates for various proveniences at Alkali Ridge Site 13 and Monument Village

12.1. Map of Aztec West Ruin showing locations of adult and subadult burials with personal ornaments

12.2. Illustration of composite bead from Burial 16, Room 41

12.3. Strand of small shale disc beads from Burial 16, Room 41

12.4. Conus sp. shell tinklers

12.5. Assorted bone tubes from Aztec West Ruin

12.6. Travertine beads from Burial 14, Room 52

12.7. Jet biconvex beads from Burial 25, Room 111

13.1. Map of the greater Cibola region in the US Southwest with settlement subregions listed in text

13.2. Notched box plot displaying maize ubiquity values in the Cibola region AD 900–1400

13.3. Ubiquity of cultigens, weedy annuals, and wild economic plants AD 900–1400

13.4. Cibola region artiodactyl and turkey index values AD 900–1400

13.5. Cibola corrugated cooking jar volume histogram plots by subregion and period

13.6. Proportion of large cooking jars at Cibola sites

14.1. East/west division of carnivore remains and articulated birds at Pueblo Bonito

14.2. Distribution of macaw, eagle, and turkey remains at Pueblo Alto, Pueblo Bonito, and Pueblo del Arroyo

14.3. Distribution of macaw, eagle, and turkey remains at Bc 57 and Bc 58

15.1. Distribution of Athapaskan languages

15.2. The terminological equations built up through the logic of symmetrical or bilateral cross-cousin marriage, as occur with Dravidian crossness

15.3. The terminological equations for parallel relatives built up with Dravidian crossness

15.4. Intergenerational dynamics of idealized Local Group Growth versus Local Group Alliance options

15.5. University of Alberta graduate student Aileen Reilly recovering a bison limb during 2013 excavations in Promontory Cave 1

15.6. Promontory moccasin recovered in 2011 excavations; promontory moccasin recovered in 2014 excavations

15.7. The highly defensible, sheer cliffs against which Promontory Caves 1, 2, and 3 were formed

16.1. The village and gravel-mulch fields at Cuyamungue (LA38)

16.2. Relationship between population and the density of gravel-mulch fields surrounding Cuyamungue and other Middle Classic communities of the Northern Rio Grande

16.3. Relative abundance of pottery types in the village versus upland field assemblage at Cuyamungue

16.4. A field shrine in association with a gravel-mulch field at Cuyamungue

16.5. Relationship between fields and shrines on an agricultural terrace at Cuyamungue

17.1. Traditional distribution of Plains Biographic Tradition rock art, along with major sites mentioned in the chapter

17.2. The Rocky Coulee Battle Scene panel at Writing-on-Stone in southern Alberta

17.3. Biographic Tradition rock art in Chaco Canyon; detail of the faintly scratched imagery

17.4. Map of the Rio Grande Gorge and the surrounding Taos region, highlighting major rock art sites and Colonial era settlements

17.5. Apache Biographic Tradition imagery in the Rio Grande Gorge (LA 78951)

17.6. Apache Biographic Tradition imagery in the Rio Grande Gorge (La Vista Verde Site, LA 75747)

17.7. Apache Biographic Tradition imagery in the Rio Grande Gorge (LA 102343)

17.8. Comanche Biographic Tradition imagery in the Rio Grande Gorge (La Vista Verde Site, LA 75747)

17.9. Detail of a horse capture panel in the Rio Grande Gorge

17.10. Comanche Biographic Tradition imagery from La Vista Verde Site in the Rio Grande Gorge; Blackfeet Biographic Tradition imagery from Writing-on-Stone in southern Alberta

17.11. Comanche Biographic Tradition imagery in the Rio Grande Gorge (LA 75747)

17.12. Outlined detail of the Segesser I hide painting

18.1. Generalized depiction of Plains-Pueblo interaction in Phase 1, AD 1250–1450

18.2. Generalized depiction of the major groups in Phases 2 and 3 of Plains-Pueblo Interaction AD 1450–1700

18.3. The most common pipe form categories found at Pecos

18.4. Pecos, with the largest density (frequency) of smoking pipes among Rio Grande villages

18.5. The site areas of Pecos Pueblo (LA625), in order from north to south

19.1. Regional map showing the location of Jumanos noted in the sixteenth century

19.2. Petroglyph from Alamo Mountain in southern New Mexico possibly depicting the distinctive haircut and hair ornaments described for the Jumano

19.3. Striped body in petroglyph from Alamo Mountain in southern New Mexico possibly representing a tattooed or painted Jumano

Tables

2.1. Buried sites and site components

2.2. Chronometric data associated with buried features

5.1. Phoenix and Tucson Basin chronologies in current use

5.2. Chronological terminology used in this chapter and the corresponding phase names in the Tucson and Phoenix Basins

5.3. Modeled period transitions

5.4. Dating of periods based on the medians of OxCal-generated transitions

5.5. Modeled beginning and ending dates for AZ AA:12:46 (ASM), their modeled duration, and the time between them

8.1. Twined sandal collections data including area and sites

8.2. Summary statistics of complete lengths for adult- and immature-sized twined sandal size classes

10.1. Southwestern geological obsidian sources included in the study

10.2. List of sites, site type, occupation period, and number of obsidian artifacts analyzed

10.3. Published regional chronologies

11.1. Previously reported tree-ring dates from Site 13

11.2. Site 13 tree-ring specimens analyzed by the Laboratory of Tree-Ring Research in 2009

11.3. Tree-ring specimens analyzed by the Laboratory of Tree-Ring Research from 2012–2013 excavations at Alkali Ridge Site 13

11.4. Tree-ring specimens from Monument Village

11.5. Ceramic counts from Alkali Ridge Site 13

11.6. Percentages of gray ware, white ware, and red ware from different kinds of contexts at Alkali Ridge Site 13 (post-Pueblo I types excluded)

11.7. Ceramic counts from Monument Village ceramic reanalysis, grouped by the components defined by the excavators

11.8. Percentages of gray ware, red ware, white ware, post-900 types, Mancos gray, and post-Abajo red wares in the Monument Village ceramic assemblages

12.1. Composition of burials in Aztec West Ruin by age and sex

12.2. Ornament types from Aztec West ruin burials

12.3. Summary of ornaments associated with adult burials, Aztec West Ruin

12.4. Summary of ornaments associated with subadult burials, Aztec West Ruin

14.1. Quantities of turkey, eagle, and macaw remains

16.1. Calculation of potential cotton textile production at Cuyamungue

16.2. Distribution of large mammal specimens by time period in the Cuyamungue collection

16.3. Stone artifacts identified in the Wendorf collection from Cuyamungue in 2017

18.1. Site selection location of pipe forms at Pecos

18.2. Location of pipe materials at Pecos

18.3. Pipe forms at Pueblo and Plains sites, highlighting Pecos

18.4. Pipe forms with surface decoration at Pecos Pueblo

18.5. Connection of pipes with surface decoration to ceremonial structures at Pecos

18.6. Use-Wear by pipe form at Pecos Pueblo

18.7. Use-Wear relative to pipe surface decoration at Pecos Pueblo

Pushing Boundaries in Southwestern Archaeology

Introduction

Pushing Boundaries

Papers of the 16th Biennial Southwest Symposium

Stephen E. Nash and Erin L. Baxter

The Southwest Symposium

The first Southwest Symposium took place at Arizona State University in Tempe, Arizona, in 1988. As described on its website,

the goal of this first conference was to create a venue where archaeologists working in the greater Southwest could gather to present and discuss work focused on broad questions of regional, theoretical, and methodological significance facing the field as a whole . . . It was designed to spur archaeologists working in the region to broaden their horizons to consider the Southwest as a whole and to recognize the similarities in the processes and trajectories marking the long and diverse occupation of this region. (Anonymous 2019)

The Southwest Symposium has been held in every even-numbered year since 1988 in cities across the greater Southwest from Albuquerque (1990, 2012) to Tucson (1992, 2002, 2016), Santa Fe (2000) to Las Vegas (NV; 2014), Hermosillo (Sonora, Mexico; 1998, 2010) to Chihuahua City (Chihuahua, Mexico; 2004), and from Las Cruces (NM; 2006) to Tempe (1994, 1996, 2008).

Southwest Symposium organizers and volume editors have assiduously published the symposia in complex, multidisciplinary, and important volumes that document and shape the direction of our discipline (see Fish and Reid 1996; Harry and Roth 2019; Hegmon 2000; Herhahn and Ramenofsky 2016; Lekson 1995; McBrinn and Webster 2008; Mills 2004; Minnis and Redman 1990; Nelson and Strawhacker 2011; Schlanger 2002; Spielmann 1995; Villapando 2002; Villapando and McGuire 2014; Walker and Venzor 2011; Wills et al. 1994).

Although each of the Southwest Symposium publications contain chapters on a wide range of specific, thematic, and relevant topics, volume themes have focused mostly on regional archaeology and interactions (see Harry and Roth 2019; Hegmon 2000; Villapando 2002; McBrinn and Webster 2008; Nelson and Strawhacker 2011; Villapando and McGuire 2014). Other volumes have focused on identity and feasting (Mills 2004), ancient communities (Wills et al. 1994), migration (Lekson 1995), and gender archaeology (Spielmann 1995), to name a few. Southwest Symposium edited volumes therefore offer a fascinating smorgasbord of archaeological topics. It is not a stretch to say that these volumes could form the basis for a compelling series of graduate-level seminars. Their legacy endures and continues to be negotiated.

Rising Tides?

In a 1963 speech, President John F. Kennedy declared a rising tide lifts all boats, a pithy phrase speechwriter Ted Sorenson adopted from the New England chamber of commerce, which apparently acquired the phrase from northeastern anglers. At the time, Kennedy and Sorenson hoped to persuade skeptical constituents that the construction of a controversial dam was not simply a matter of pork barrel politics; it was going to enhance the regional economy as well.

Kennedy and Sorenson’s metaphor rests on a commonsense but simplistic understating of tides—everyone knows that tides either rise or fall. What they fail to acknowledge is what all sailors know: oceans are dynamic entities with variously (un-)predictable waves, crests, swells, chops, and currents that complicate the effect of any given tide, whether rising or falling.

A similarly reductionist and commonsensical understanding of science would have it that the development of knowledge, method, and theory is inexorable, for science is cumulative. As sociologists of science, epistemologists, and historians know all too well, science, like any other human endeavor, is subject to the whims, fancies, biases, agendas, and insecurities of its practitioners. As such, the progress of science, and by proxy archaeology, necessarily ebbs and flows. Complicating matters, research follows money, so we know more about topics, sites, and regions that obtain funding (Killick 2008; see Nash, chapter 3 in this volume). Progress happens, but it happens in fits and starts.

As previous Southwest Symposium volumes attest, Southwestern archaeology is a wonderfully multidisciplinary science willing to adapt and adopt analytical methods, techniques, and theories from a wide range of disciplines so long as they advance our understanding of the pre- and post-Columbian regional history.

Returning to Kennedy and Sorenson’s maritime metaphor, and while fully acknowledging the irony in our beloved, landlocked, semiarid region, there is and has been no great, singular tide lifting Southwestern archaeology over the last 150 years. Instead, our discipline advances in fits and starts through conceptual and analytical waves, crests, swells, chops, and currents (see Webb 2002). When a radically new analytical technique, such as tree-ring or radiocarbon dating, is added to our intellectual repertoire, the effects can be immediate, dramatic, and long lasting; the analytical tide lifts the entire discipline (Nash 1999; Taylor and Bar-Yosef 2014). (Other dating techniques, such as obsidian hydration or archaeomagnetic dating [see Blinman and Cox, chapter 7 in this volume], can suffer an opposite fate.) The analysis of legacy collections and archives can lead to new and re-interpretations of important archaeological sites in light of new theoretical developments. For instance, reanalysis of archives and collections from Aztec Ruin illuminates a more nuanced understanding of the turbulent last days at that site and the collapse of the Chacoan system writ large (Baxter 2016; see Mattson, chapter 12 in this volume, and other chapters in part III). These are indeed specific case studies but each can form an important wave in a rising tide of archaeological understanding.

More broadly, theoretical debates can rage for decades on topics that arguably (and empirically) should have been settled rapidly. As but one example, the debate regarding the legitimacy of Mogollon as an ancient culture group should not have taken decades to resolve (see Haury 1985; Whittlesey et al. 2010). The debate’s staying power says more about individual and institutional rivalries and power structures than it does about the archaeological record (see Snead 2000). The Grasshopper–Chavez Pass debate of the 1970s and 1980s, which pitted the University of Arizona against Arizona State University, was as much about the institutions and personalities involved as it was about Mogollon social organization (see Reid and Whittlesey 2005). Similarly, debates about the New Archaeology raged for decades but eventually faded (more or less) into oblivion. Now some of the central tenets of the New Archaeology (e.g., hypothesis testing, statistical analysis and reasoning, and cultural ecology) are de rigueur and unstated gospel today in Southwestern archaeology (see O’Brien, Lyman, and Schiffer 2005). That said, thirty-two years after the passage of the Native American Graves Protection and Repatriation Act, the discipline is slowly but surely embracing a greater emphasis on collaboration with tribes that should arguably have occurred long ago (Nash and Colwell 2020).

The 2018 Southwest Symposium: Pushing Boundaries

This volume presents twenty chapters resulting from the 16th Biennial Southwest Symposium held at the Denver Museum of Nature & Science (DMNS) January 4–6, 2018 (Nash 2018). By any stretch of the measuring tape, Denver lies outside the presumptive, if not de facto boundaries of the American Southwest. Disciplinary lore suggests the American Southwest extends from Durango, Colorado, on the north to Durango, Chihuahua, Mexico, on the south and from Las Vegas, Nevada, on the west to Las Vegas, New Mexico, on the east. Denver is more than 300 mi. from the closest of those cities; it is decidedly not within the traditional geographic boundaries of the American Southwest or the Cartesian network of previous locations for the Southwest Symposium.

Nevertheless, Denver enjoys a certain pride-of-place within the history of Southwestern archaeology, and DMNS in particular has helped push the boundaries of Southwestern archaeology for nearly a century. On August 29, 1927, paleontologists from the Colorado Museum of Natural History (now DMNS) discovered a projectile point embedded in the ribs of an extinct form of bison at Folsom, New Mexico. A coterie of famous archaeologists, who happened to be less than 200 mi. away attending the first Pecos Conference in Pecos, New Mexico (see Woodbury 1993), verified the Folsom discovery in the field, confirmed that Native Americans were present in North America during the last Ice Age. A chronological and disciplinary boundary was broken.

In 1935, the Museum hired Hannah Marie Wormington, a BA degree–holding archaeologist from the University of Denver. Over the next three decades, Wormington established herself as a central scholar, sage, and broker of Paleoindian research across the American West. She served in that capacity until her death in a house fire in 1994. She pushed Paleoindian, Archaic, and gender-related archaeological boundaries across North America (Nash 2013); Cynthia Irwin-Williams served as a teenage volunteer for Wormington in the 1950s before going on to push gender- and research-related boundaries of her own (Nash 2014).

Fast forward to 2014, when DMNS opened the Morgridge Family Exploration Center, a 120,000 ft.² expansion on the south side of the main Museum building. Aboveground, the addition includes classrooms and workshops, a new entrance for schoolchildren, the Discovery Zone for young children and their families, and a new temporary exhibition gallery. Belowground, the new building contains the 60,000 ft.² Avenir Collections Center, a state-of-the-art facility for DMNS’s entire scientific collection, including anthropology and archaeology. Simply put, DMNS archaeologists believed it was time to share this wonderful new collections facility with our archaeological colleagues, so we offered to host the 2018 symposium. The Southwest Symposium board of directors readily agreed to the proposal and allowed us to pursue a theme focused on Pushing Boundaries.

Symposium Sessions

In keeping with the Pushing Boundaries theme of the Symposium, the first session of presented papers focused on Expanding Perspectives on Plains-Pueblo Interaction, organized by Scott Ortman of the University of Colorado Boulder and Michele Koons of DMNS. The Plains region has traditionally not received its fair share of attention from Southwestern archaeologists even though scholars have long known that Plains and Pueblo folk interacted and that those interactions were extensive and have great time depth. The Plains-Pueblo session contained ten papers, five of which are included in this volume.

Presented as a forum rather than a series of formally written and presented papers, the second session focused on Bears Ears [National Monument]—Stories of an Effort to Protect Heritage on a Landscape Scale. The Bear Ears boundaries are quite literally being pushed and pulled by politicians and the courts as we type. Organized by Bill Doelle of Archaeology Southwest, the Bears Ears session pushed all of our epistemological and ontological boundaries by demanding that we consider the political, cultural, legal, ethical, and moral underpinnings of our work and the sites, resources, and people whose archaeology we wish to protect.

The third session of presented papers, entitled A Return to Context: Advancing Collections-Based Research in the U.S. Southwest, offered just that: a series of collections-based archaeological research papers. It would have been unseemly for us to convene archaeologists in a major natural history museum for two days while ignoring the vast and still often untapped research potential of previously excavated museum collections. Crow Canyon Archaeological Center laboratory director Benjamin Bellorado and his colleague and friend, the late Saul Hedquist, organized the symposium; seven of these papers are included in this volume.

The fourth and final symposium session focused on Chronological ‘Big Data’ and Pre-Columbian History in the Southwest. Almost a century after the first Pecos Conference, it is remarkable that the Pecos Classification remains mostly intact, especially given the fact that its architects did not have absolute calendar dates available to guide their work. It is equally remarkable that we sometimes forget the exquisitely rich archaeological record in the American Southwest can lull us into a sense of complacency with respect to chronometry and chronology. Myles Miller of Versar, Inc., and Steve Nash of DMNS challenged archaeologists to consider the potential for chronometric Big Data to affect archaeological inquiry. Nine papers were presented in the symposium; six are included in this volume.

Beyond the formal, oral presentations, two poster sessions offered eighteen groups of symposium participants a chance to present updates on collections- and field- or site-based research.

Finally, during lunch each day of the symposium, we offered practical workshops. Professional comedian and public-speaking consultant Jay Mays and comedian Ben Kronberg, both of PitchLab, Inc., offered a workshop on effective public speaking. Allyson Carter of the University of Arizona Press and Jessica d’Arbonne of the University Press of Colorado offered a workshop on Getting Your Book Published. Amanda Mascarelli, managing editor of Sapiens.org, and Susan Moran, a freelance writer from Boulder, Colorado, offered their insights on writing for the public, a topic that becomes more and more important by the day. If nothing else is evident as we enter the third decade of the twenty-first century, it is clear that the nature of scholarly communication has changed, and changed radically, especially since the introduction of the first iPhone on January 9, 2007. These three professional skills workshops pushed boundaries by helping archaeologists develop the tools they need to communicate in new, different, and more effective ways.

This Volume

As we compiled these papers for publication, we realized that we needed to change the publication sequence from the order in which the papers were presented orally (Nash 2018). In order to privilege Indigenous perspectives, we decided to put the Bears Ears contribution first, followed by chronology papers second, collections-based papers third, and Plains-Pueblo interaction papers last (see interchapters between each section).

Conclusion

This volume presents twenty research papers resulting from the 16th Biennial Southwest Symposium. One section focuses on the status, history, and prospects of and for Bears Ears National Monument, thereby examining the push-pull of regulatory and political boundaries that may, or may not, have to do with the nature and integrity of the archaeological record. Six chapters push the boundaries of chronometric analysis by testing where, and when, we can make sound, empirically derived interpretations about events and processes in the past. Seven chapters push us back into the collections and repositories that we never should have left behind. Finally, five chapters in the Plains-Pueblo section remind us yet again that geographic boundaries, particularly modern ones, need not be absolute; rather, they are permeable like membranes, with an ebb and flow through time and across space.

Does a rising tide lift all boats? Yes, it does, but the development of archaeological knowledge, method, and theory enjoys the waves, crests, swells, chops, and currents that make the scholarly enterprise so interesting and challenging. We believe the twenty chapters in this volume build on archaeological precursors and raise the collective tide and push the boundaries of Southwestern archaeology. We hope you agree.

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Acknowledgments. Many institutions and individuals came together to ensure this Southwest Symposium was a success. Taylor Foreman and Nash of DMNS did the heavy lifting of symposium organization and logistics. Frank Krell of DMNS edited and designed the symposium program (Nash 2018). DMNS senior leadership provided space-fee waivers and other measures of support. Benjamin Bellorado, Bill Doelle, Saul Hedquist, Michele Koons, Myles Miller, Steve Nash, and Scott Ortman organized and managed the various symposium sessions.

Financial sponsorship and other considerations were provided by the Amerind Museum, Anthropological Research, LLC, the Department of Anthropology at Brigham Young University, Department of Anthropology at the University of Colorado Boulder, the Department of Anthropology at the University of Colorado at Denver, the Denver Museum of Nature & Science, Desert Archaeology, the Laboratory of Tree-Ring Research at the University of Arizona, Logan Simpson, Metcalf Archaeological Consultants, Inc., PaleoCultural Research Group, Paleowest Archaeological Consulting, the Department of Anthropology at the University of Notre Dame, and the Utah Professional Archaeological Council, among others.

References

Anonymous. 2019. Southwest Symposium website. https://southwestsymposium.org/about/.

Baxter, L. Erin. 2016. A New Archaeological History of Aztec Ruins, New Mexico: Excavating the Archives. Anthropology Graduate Theses and Dissertations. 57. Boulder: University of Colorado. https://scholar.colorado.edu/anth_gradetds/57.

Fish, Paul R., and J. Jefferson Reid, eds. 1996. Interpreting Southwestern Diversity: Underlying Principles and Overarching Patterns. Tempe, AZ: ASU Anthropological Papers 48.

Harry, Karen G., and Barbara J. Roth, eds. 2019. Interaction and Connectivity in the Greater Southwest. Boulder: University Press of Colorado.

Haury, Emil W. 1985. The Mogollon Concept. In Mogollon Culture in the Forestdale Valley, East-Central Arizona, ed. Emil W. Haury, xv–xix. Tucson: University of Arizona Press.

Hegmon, Michelle. 2000. The Archaeology of Regional Interaction: Religion, Warfare, and Exchange across the American Southwest and Beyond. Boulder: University Press of Colorado.

Herhahn, Cynthia L., and Ann F. Ramenofsky, eds. 2016. Exploring Cause and Explanation: Historical Ecology, Demography, and Movement in the American Southwest. Boulder: University Press of Colorado.

Killick, David. 2008. Archaeological Science in the USA and in Britain. In Archaeological Concepts for the Study of the Cultural Past, ed. Alan Sullivan, 40–64. Salt Lake City: University of Utah Press.

Lekson, Stephen H., ed. 1995. Migration in the Southwest. Journal of Anthropological Archaeology 14 (2): 99–250.

McBrinn, Maxine E., and Laurie D. Webster, eds. 2008. Archaeology without Borders: Contact, Commerce, and Change in the U.S. Southwest and Northwest Mexico. Boulder: University Press of Colorado.

Mills, Barbara J., ed. 2004. Identity, Feasting, and the Archaeology of the Greater Southwest. Boulder: University Press of Colorado.

Minnis, Paul, and Charles L. Redman, eds. 1990. Perspectives on Southwestern Prehistory. Boulder: Westview Press.

Nash, Stephen E. 1999. Time, Trees, and Prehistory: The Development of Archaeological Tree-Ring Dating 1914–1945. Salt Lake City: University of Utah Press.

Nash, Stephen E. 2013. Woman, Myth, Legend: Hannah Marie Wormington and North American Archaeology. Kiva 78 (3): 247–278.

Nash, Stephen E. 2014. Hannah Marie Wormington (1914–1994) and Cynthia Irwin-Williams (1936–1990). In The Great Archaeologists, ed. Brian Fagan, 233–237. London: Thames and Hudson.

Nash, Stephen E. 2018. Pushing Boundaries: Program and Abstracts of the 16th Biennial Southwest Symposium. Denver Museum of Nature and Science Reports 9 (4): 1–34.

Nash, Stephen E., and Chip Colwell. 2020. NAGPRA at 30: The Effects of Repatriation. Annual Review of Anthropology 49:225–239.

Nelson, Margaret C., and Colleen A. Strawhacker, eds. 2011. Movement, Connectivity, and Landscape Change in the Ancient Southwest. Boulder: University Press of Colorado.

O’Brien, Michael J., R. Lee Lyman, and Michael B. Schiffer. 2005. Archaeology as a Process: Processualism and Its Progeny. Salt Lake City: University of Utah Press.

Reid, Jefferson, and Stephanie Whittlesey. 2005. Thirty Years into Yesterday: A History of Archaeology at Grasshopper Pueblo. Tucson: University of Arizona Press.

Schlanger, Sarah H., ed. 2002. Traditions, Transitions, and Technologies: Themes in Southwestern Archaeology. Boulder: University Press of Colorado.

Snead, James E. 2001. Ruins and Rivals: The Making of Southwest Archaeology. Tucson: University of Arizona Press.

Spielmann, Katherine A., ed. 1995. The Archaeology of Gender in the American Southwest. Journal of Anthropological Research 51 (2): 91–186.

Taylor, R. E., and O. Bar-Yosef. 2014. Radiocarbon Dating: An Archaeological Perspective. 2nd ed. Walnut Creek, CA: Left Coast Press.

Villapando, Elisa, ed. 2002. Boundaries and Territories: Prehistory of the U.S. Southwest and Northern Mexico. Tempe: ASU Anthropological Papers 54.

Villapando, Elisa, and Randall H. McGuire, eds. 2014. Building Transnational Archaeologies: The 11th Southwest Symposium, Hermosillo, Sonora. Tucson: Arizona State Museum Archaeological Series 2009.

Walker, William, and Kathryn R. Venzor, eds. 2011. Contemporary Archaeologies of the Southwest. Boulder: University Press of Colorado.

Webb, George E. 2002. Science in the American Southwest: A Topical History. Tucson: University of Arizona Press.

Whittlesey, Stephanie M., J. Jefferson Reid, and Stephen H. Lekson. 2010. Introduction. Kiva 76 (2): 123–140.

Wills, W. H., Robert D. Leonard, Ben A. Nelson, Elizabeth A. Brandt, Dean J. Saitta, eds. 1994. The Ancient Southwestern Community: Models and Methods for the Study of Prehistoric Social Organization. Albuquerque: University of New Mexico Press.

Woodbury, Richard B. 1993. Sixty Years of Southwestern Archaeology: A History of the Pecos Conference. Albuquerque: University of New Mexico Press.

Part I

Bears Ears National Monument

The Bears Ears chapter deserves a prominent role in this volume.

Compiled by Bill Doelle on behalf of five coauthors (including three tribal leaders), this chapter serves as a reminder of the ongoing challenges and affronts that Native American tribes face while endeavoring to preserve (if not enhance) their national sovereignty and protect sacred sites and landscapes. The Bears Ears chapter sets the stage to remind us of how far society, elected officials, and our legal systems must go to honor tribal priorities, insights, and opinions. Despite archaeologists’ myriad efforts to collaborate more fully with Indigenous people, such collaborations are often an afterthought to the real research, which is neither fair nor right. To counter that trend, we therefore placed this chapter first in the volume, to remind us all of several key challenges. First, archaeological research happens on sites that have deep meaning to many stakeholders beyond archaeologists and land managers (Dongoske 2020). Second, archaeological research happens, or doesn’t, within a complicated and deep legal context that has ramifications for many people (Douglass and Manney 2020). Third, we need to keep pushing our ontological boundaries, for as Jim Enote of Zuni Pueblo is so fond of saying, there are many ways of knowing.

References

Dongoske, K. 2020. Making Mitigation Meaningful to Descendant Communities: An Example from Zuni. Advances in Archaeological Practice 8 (3): 225–235.

Douglass, J., and S. Manney. 2020. Creative Mitigation: Alternative Strategies for Resources, Stakeholders, and the Public. Advances in Archaeological Practice 8 (3): 213–219.

1

Bears Ears National Monument

Advocating to Protect Heritage on a Landscape Scale

William H. Doelle, John Ruple, Willie Grayeyes, Octavius Seowtewa, Terry Knight, and Josh Ewing

When we gathered in Denver during early January of 2018, it had been barely a month since President Donald Trump issued a proclamation under the Antiquities Act of 1906 that removed over 1.1 million acres from the Bears Ears National Monument in southeastern Utah.

Just a year earlier, President Barack Obama had used that same Antiquities Act to establish the national monument and thereby protect 1.35 million acres of cultural and scientific treasures. While President Obama pushed boundaries and certainly fit the conference theme, President Trump crushed them (figure 1.1). Although that was a source of deep discouragement, each of us was already involved in one of the three lawsuits filed almost immediately following Trump’s proclamation.

Figure 1.1. President Trump’s Reduced Bears Ears National Monument, in shaded areas. Map by Catherine Gilman.

We and our lawyers believe that President Trump’s action exceeded his authority, making it therefore illegal, and that the monument reduction should be, and likely will be, reversed. The outcome of legal challenges, however, are never guaranteed, and pending litigation is unlikely to be resolved by the time this book is in the readers’ hands. Herein, our goal is to highlight our belief that advocacy is a responsibility of nonprofit organizations—and for individual professionals. We believe that the story of Bears Ears is of broad importance for tribes, archaeologists, anthropologists, environmentalists, and the American citizenry, who today are the owners of our nation’s public lands.

Nonprofits, the Antiquities Act, and Advocacy

Professional archaeology in the American Southwest dates to the 1880s and 1890s (Bandelier 1892; Fewkes 1896; Haury 1945; Nordenskiöld 1893; Snead 2001). Counting in twenty-five-year generations, that is more than five. In the first generation of professional archaeology, a great effort was invested to establish a national law that extended federal control over the nation’s ancient heritage on our public lands. Those efforts led to the Antiquities Act of 1906. Archaeologist Edgar Lee Hewett worked for the national nonprofit Archaeological Institute of America; he played a pivotal role in crafting the language of the Antiquities Act and getting it passed by Congress. Hewett’s close relationship with Iowa congressman John F. Lacey, the lead sponsor of the bill, was particularly valuable (Conard 2006; Lee 2006; Thompson 2000). Hewett spent most of the remainder of his career as the head of the nonprofit organization based in Santa Fe that is now known as the School for Advanced Research (SAR), and he continued as an advocate and educator throughout his life (Snead 2001).

Chip Colwell-Chanthaphonh (2010, 86) argues that the Antiquities Act was partly about creating a national story and promoting science—but mainly it was about ensuring that scholars had control and authority over the archaeological past. That view gives too little recognition to the power that the act gives to the president to proclaim national monuments on federal lands for their historical and scientific values. The ways this power have been applied have evolved over time. The Bears Ears proclamation represents an important advance, as it was the first time that the Antiquities Act was invoked as the result of a tribally led campaign, not just of one tribe, but a coalition of five sovereign Native American nations. The members of the Bears Ears Inter-Tribal Coalition are the Navajo Nation, Pueblo of Zuni, Hopi Tribe, Ute Mountain Ute, and Ute Indian Tribe.

The Bears Ears proclamation honored the values and priorities of Native peoples—peoples whose past suffuses the monument’s lands. Furthermore, President Obama’s Bears Ears National Monument proclamation gave those tribes a powerful voice in managing and protecting those lands. It was for the diverse values embodied in the resources of Bears Ears that the tribes and nonprofits represented in this chapter advocated for increased protection of this nationally significant cultural landscape.

The organizers of the 2018 Southwest Symposium established the theme of Pushing Boundaries. Given that goal, they were willing to have this session organized in a forum format rather than as a set of formal papers. At the Denver meeting we brought together a legal perspective, three tribal perspectives, and two views from nonprofit advocates. Each invitee had a chance to speak; we then shifted to a discussion format. To create this written paper, Doelle asked John Ruple to prepare a written section on the legal history of the Antiquities Act and its relationship to Bears Ears. For the other participants, Doelle used the conference video and transcribed the presenter’s words with follow-up editing. The resulting package was shared with all presenters and comments were again integrated by Doelle. It has been a satisfying way to assemble a written paper that allows diverse perspectives and values and information to be shared in an efficient, and we hope interesting, manner.

The Legal Framework, by John Ruple

Congress enacted the Antiquities Act of 1906 largely in response to looting of Native American sites across the American Southwest (Lee 2006). Congress realized that it was ill equipped to identify threatened public lands and resources, or to swiftly develop the site-specific protections those lands required. In passing the Antiquities Act, Congress therefore delegated to the president the discretionary authority to declare by public proclamation historic landmarks, historic and prehistoric structures, and other objects of historic or scientific interest that are situated on land owned or controlled by the Federal Government to be national monuments . . . The limits of the parcels shall be confined to the smallest area compatible with the proper care and management of the objects to be protected (Antiquities Act [1906] 2016, § 320301). Congress also endowed the president with the power to withdraw national monument lands from availability for future mineral development, homesteading, and other forms of disposal.

On September 24, 1906, President Roosevelt utilized the Antiquities Act to designate Devils Tower in Wyoming as our nation’s first national monument. Since 1906, sixteen presidents, Republicans and Democrats alike, have used the act to designate 157 national monuments across every region of the country. Monuments have been expanded forty-eight times and elevated to a more protective status, normally that of a national park, on thirty-eight occasions.

Many national monuments—such as Canyons of the Ancients, Casa Grande, Effigy Mounds, Hovenweep, Montezuma Castle, and Navajo National Monuments—were designated to protect sites of historic and cultural importance to Native Americans. Chaco Canyon and Tumacacori began as national monuments before being elevated to national park status. And national treasures such as the Grand Canyon, the Statue of Liberty, and Pearl Harbor (now World War II Valor in the Pacific National Monument) all began as national monuments. Bears Ears was the first national monument designated at the request of sovereign Native American governments.

Although some national monuments—Grand Teton and the Grand Staircase–Escalante, for example—were controversial at the outset, local communities generally grow to embrace the economic opportunities and the amenities that monuments provide. Indeed, monuments can be important economic engines for rural communities that embrace the opportunity. Monuments that stand to displace extractive activities such as mining, logging, oil and gas development, or livestock grazing have however, provoked the ire of some local communities.

On eight occasions, monument designations have been challenged in court—and every challenge has failed. These lawsuits generally focused on whether the objects identified in the proclamation fell within the intended scope of the Antiquities Act and whether the monuments were confined to the smallest area needed to protect those resources. In 1920, for example, the United States sued Ralph Cameron, a local miner who would go on to represent Arizona in the US Senate, to invalidate his claim to a mine within the 808,000-acre Grand Canyon National Monument and to prevent him from interfering with the use of the monument. Mr. Cameron countered that the canyon was neither a historic landmark, nor an object of historic or scientific interest in the sense intended by Congress. He also argued that because of the monument’s size, it was clearly not confined to the smallest area compatible with the proper care and management of the canyon.

The US Supreme Court made quick work of his arguments, invalidating his mining claim because he failed to demonstrate that his claim included valuable ore and affirming that the Grand Canyon is an object of unusual scientific interest, the majority opinion ruled. It is the greatest eroded canyon in the United States, if not in the world, is over a mile in depth, has attracted wide attention among explorers and scientists, affords an unexampled field for geologic study, [and] is regarded as one of the great natural wonders (Cameron v. United States, 2020, 455–56).

Fifty-six years later, in the only other national monument challenge to reach the Supreme Court, objects of historic or scientific interest were again given a broad reading. In Cappaert v. United States (1976, 142), the Court held that endemic fish and the pool they inhabited within the Death Valley National Monument in California were objects of historic or scientific interest under the Antiquities Act and therefore appropriately protected by a national monument designation. Other federal courts have held that ecosystem services and scenic vistas can be protected under the Antiquities Act (Tulare County v. Bush 2002, 1142).

Although some national monument designations have been criticized as too big, and therefore inconsistent with congressional intent to restrict monuments to the smallest area compatible with the proper care and management of the objects to be protected, these arguments have never found traction with Congress or in the courts. By 1936, presidents had designated six monuments in excess of 1,000 mi.² without congressional objection. And as noted, the Supreme Court had no issue with the size of the Grand Canyon National Monument.

The breadth of a president’s authority under the Antiquities Act creates an opportunity to tailor each monument proclamation to local issues and needs, and since 1996 presidents have taken advantage of that authority. Recent monument proclamations, for example, are likely to recognize state primacy in water rights permitting and wildlife management; the ability to continue livestock grazing; and the importance of creating management plans in consultation with state, local, and tribal governments to ensure that those closest to the land have a strong voice in how that land is managed. Recent monument proclamations also specifically address Native American use of forest products, firewood, and medicinal plants, where those issues have regional significance.

But flexibility and recognition of local concerns are not always enough to avoid controversy. On April 26, 2017, President Trump directed Secretary of the Interior Ryan Zinke to review all large national monuments designated since 1996 for conformity with the Antiquities Act and administration policy. After reviewing twenty-seven monuments, Secretary Zinke recommended boundary and management reductions for six monuments, and management changes for four additional monuments. On December 4, 2017, and at the behest of Utah politicians, President Trump carved the 1.9 million acre Grand Staircase–Escalante National Monument in Utah into three smaller monuments that together protect just over half of the original monument’s area. The Grand Staircase–Escalante National Monument had been created by President Clinton twenty-one years earlier. President Trump also shrank the 1.35 million-acre Bears Ears National Monument, also in Utah, by approximately 85 percent. Bears Ears was but a year old, having been established at the behest of five Native American tribes shortly before President Obama left office.

President Trump’s actions reflect the largest reductions to a national monument ever made by a president, and they open lands excluded from the monuments to mineral exploration and development. The five Native American tribes that had proposed Bears Ears—as well as multiple scientific, conservation, and environmental organizations—quickly sued to invalidate President Trump’s reductions to Bears Ears. Legal challenges to the reductions to the Grand Staircase–Escalante National Monument also came almost immediately, setting up a battle over the authority granted to the president in the Antiquities Act. This battle appears destined for the Supreme Court.

Efforts to resolve questions of the president’s authority must begin with the US Constitution. The Constitution’s Property Clause is clear: "The Congress shall have Power