Negotiating Colonial Realities: A Lithic Analysis of Technological Change and Persistence at the Scott County Pueblo (14SC1) in Western Kansas

Abstract

The arrival of the Spanish in the American Southwest produced significant and enduring consequences that transformed the lives of Indigenous communities. As colonial actions intensified in the seventeenth century, many Puebloan communities relied on long-established practices of mobility, migration, and alliance-building to navigate these changing conditions. In one case, a group of migrants from the Northern Rio Grande moved into the Ladder Creek Valley of western Kansas where they built a seven-room masonry pueblo within the territory of local Ndee (ancestral Apache) communities. Archaeological evidence suggests that these groups formed a creolized community in which people negotiated new forms of daily practice, social relationships, and identity. This dissertation examines how Puebloan migrants and local Ndee communities negotiated technological practice through an analysis of the lithics from the Scott County Pueblo and three nearby Ndee-affiliated sites. Drawing on theories of daily practice and chaîne opératoire, this research evaluates whether interaction between these groups resulted in technological continuity, exchange, or blending through time. To do so, I conducted a detailed attribute and raw material analysis of lithic assemblages associated with occupations before, during, and after the pueblo occupation. The results indicate that lithic technology at the Scott County Pueblo remained broadly consistent across proveniences and throughout the occupation of the pueblo. The data suggest that interaction between Puebloan migrants and Ndee communities involved selective and uneven sociotechnical exchange rather than complete technological convergence or separation.