The Merchant Site: A Late Prehistoric Ochoa Phase Settlement in Southeastern New Mexico, reprinted in PBQ vol4no4 Dec

The Merchant site (LA 43414) is a Late Prehistoric Period pueblo settlement located in the southeastern corner of New Mexico near the boundary where the basin-and-range region merges with the southern Plains. The Merchant site is reprsentative of the Ochoa phase, a poorly understood time period of southeastern New Mexico dating from around A. D. 1300/1350 to 1450. The Ochoa phase, and the El Paso and Late Glencoe phases of the closely related Jornada Mogollon region to teh west, are contemporaneous with the Pueblo IV period of the greater Southwest, the Antelope Creek phase of the southern Plains, and the Toyah phase of Central Texas. As such Merchant and other Ochoa phase settlements were part of the widespread patterns of opulation aggregation, migrations, and diasporas, and accompanying developments in social and ritual organization that occurred throughout Southwest , northern Mexico, and southern Plains during the fourteenth and fifteenth centuries.