Femoral Cross-Sectional Morphology and Lifetime Mobility....

During the 13th and 14th centuries A.D., an economic strategy developed in the American Southwest characterized by the trade of bison products from Plains groups in Texas for corn and other items from the Pueblo communities to their West.  This paper addresses the role in this trade relationship of the people who lived at two semi-contemporaneous Pueblo-like sites outside of Roswell, New Mexico – Henderson and Bloom Mound.  Previous studies of faunal and lithic assemblages from this area have implied that its residents traveled hundreds of miles annually into the plains of Texas to procure bison products for trade into the Pueblo heartland.  This study takes a comparative osteological approach to directly investigate the level of mobility near Roswell by evaluating the cross-sectional geometric properties of human femora.  These data were compared with cross-sectional data from Pecos Pueblo, New Mexico – the mobility of whose population is better understood;  the results of this comparison show significant differences in the mobility strategies near Roswell and at Pecos Pueblo which relate to their separate roles in this important economic system.