SERVING UP HISTORY THROUGH PROTEIN ANALYSIS: AN INVESTIGATION OF THE SHELL (LA 20241) AND PECAN (LA 38597) SITES, NEW MEXICO

Abstract

Poor faunal preservation in Southeast New Mexico (SENM) has left a gap in the archaeological record for this region. What plant and animal food resources were collected, processed, and/or consumed by the site’s indigenous inhabitants in this area during the Archaic and Early Formative Periods? A way to fill that informational gap is with multidisciplinary analyses such as pollen, phytoliths, starch grains, and residues through the Fourier-transform infrared spectroscopy (FTIR) method. These analyses have been applied successfully in excavation projects in the Southeast New Mexico SENM region.This study aims to investigate what plants and animals were processed at Archaic period to the Early Formative sites LA 20241 and LA 38597 through protein residue analysis. This region is quickly being consumed by the oil field industry and it is imperative that as much information about the area and its past peoples be gathered, before the history is erased forever. This thesis presents the methods, results, and findings from a protein residue analysis study using tools from these sites and demonstrates the use of protein residue analysis within this region. Despite this being a rather costly process, a programmatic agreement established between agencies operating in the area can allow for higher budgets for cultural resource management work. Protein residue analysis is at least a three-day process that included extracting the proteins from the tools, creating the gels to run through the cross electrophoresis, pressing and drying, and lastly staining and drying the gels for reading the results. Thirty tools were tested using Cross-electrophoresis (CIEP) to find what tools reacted with which antisera (proteins) to the family level. The results present the range of reactions with the strongest positives being, chicken, mouse, yucca, and agave. The analysis presents the use and importance of all the resources identified in this study. This data allows us to know what plants and animals were processed at the shell (LA 20241) and the pecan (LA 38597) sites providing a broader glimpse into the lives of the people who thrived in this region. It also stands to be a useful technique to be applied in SENM answering broader research questions.