US Bureau of Reclamation, NM

Harris Environmental supported the Bureau of Reclamation’s Pojoaque Basin Regional Water System Project in northern New Mexico with cultural resource services. We developed treatment and monitoring plans, undertook pedestrian surveys of selected areas, and created a predictive model to explain prehistoric settlement in the basin to assist Reclamation’s engineers in the construction process so as to avoid as many cultural sites as possible. The predictive model included an analysis of settlement patterns for the Pojoaque Basin and specifically linked the location of remnant Holocene alluvial terraces to archaeological potential. Using GIS, we incorporated large data sets into a holistic model that met Reclamation’s needs and furthered our understanding of the regional archaeology. This effort helped to predict the location of sites between 1500 BC and AD 1200 (Late Archaic to Developmental Periods). It also challenged traditional models for the interpretation of northern Río Grande prehistory.