Benefits of Niche Construction in Northern Rio Grande Pueblo Agriculture: Modeling Cotton, Maize, and Wheat Cultivation

To understand agricultural intensification as a form of niche construction, researchers need to be able to distinguish passive agricultural niches, where agronomic parameters were met by environmental conditions, from spaces where societies had to exert additional effort to augment the landscape to enable crop growth. The authors present an agricultural potential model that identifies passive agricultural niches and niches that required additional constructed effort and assesses the differential success of these areas for different crops by generating yield estimates. These estimates are then situated in cultural context of population, redistribution requirements, etc. to assess the sustainability of the system. The model is demonstrated through a case study in the Northern Rio Grande region of New Mexico, focusing on maize, cotton, and wheat, important crops for Ancestral Pueblo people. We use the PaleoCAR framework to assess locations where growing requirements for maize, cotton, and wheat were met, and what estimated yields (productivity) could have been in each agricultural catchment relative to the associated village population of four case study villages. The model suggests that the maize niche was relatively stable in the region while wheat production was more marginal, and cotton had a very limited niche that required additional agricultural technologies called gravel mulch fields. These results are supported by archaeobotanical data and provide an additional line of evidence to support a slower adoption of wheat relative to maize versus a quicker adoption of sheep (wool) relative to continued cotton cultivation by Ancestral Pueblo communities in the Northern Rio Grande. The model also identifies which villages may have been better positioned to meet Spanish taxation requirements.