Previous research on agriculture in the American Southwest focuses overwhelmingly on archaeological survey methods to discern surface agricultural features, which, in combination with climatological, geological, and geographical variables, are used to create models about agricultural productivity in the past. However, with few exceptions, the role of floodplain irrigation and floodwater farming in ancestral Pueblo agriculture is generally downplayed in scholarly discourse. Using a variety of methods, including Unmanned Aerial Vehicles (UAV), satellite imagery, pedestrian survey, and supervised classification of remotely sensed imagery, we examine this issue through a consideration of how ancestral Ohkay Owingeh (Tewa) people solved the challenges of arid land farming in the lower Rio Chama watershed of New Mexico during the Classic period (A.D. 1350–1598). Based on acreage estimates, our results indicate that runoff and rainwater fields in terrace environments would have been insufficient to supply the nutritional needs of an ancestral Tewa population exceeding 10,000 individuals. Based on these observations, we present a case for the substantial role of subsistence agriculture in the floodplain of the Rio Chama and its associated tributaries.

As was the case throughout much of north-central New Mexico, the late twelfth and thirteenth centuries marked a period of rapid settlement pattern change in the Taos District as dispersed pithouse and small pueblo hamlets were replaced by tightly clustered pueblos and ultimately by the emergence of large aggregated villages. Here we consider the effects of this transition on the manner in which local potters procured raw clay for the production of black-on-white ceramics. Adopting the Rio Grande del Rancho drainage as our study area, we first outline the major clay sources within the drainage. We then report on neutron activation and petrographic analyses of both modern clays as well as archaeological ceramics from sites that span the settlement transition in question. These analyses suggest that settlement aggregation was accompanied by a noticeable reduction in the diversity and quality of clay sources used by local potters, most likely as a result of newly restricted procurement strategies associated with the formation of buffer zones between village aggregates. The paper concludes with a consideration of the implications of this trend with respect to the economic situation of early large villages in the area.