The Office of Archaeological Studies (OAS), a Division of the State of New Mexico Department of Cultural Affairs (DCA), provides a full suite of archaeological and heritage preservation sciences services. Our team of professional, full-time staff are qualified to provide a range of field and laboratory studies for historic preservation compliance, consultation, and research purposes.
The Office of Archaeological Studies (OAS), a Division of the State of New Mexico Department of Cultural Affairs (DCA), conducts cultural resource inventories and archaeological research projects throughout New Mexico. Organized in 1990 out of the Research Section of the Laboratory of Anthropology, the program had already gained a decades long record of advancing the field of Cultural Resource Management. That tradition of innovation and providing clients with the highest quality services continues today. OAS specializes in a suite of historic preservation and scientific disciplines including prehistoric and historic archaeology, historical services, Native American consultation, applied geographic information system (GIS), and applied osteological analysis and exhumation. Our clients include federal agencies, state and municipal agencies, and private companies. We hold active contracts or master service agreements with multiple agencies for which we have supplied cultural resource compliance support in facility planning and construction.
Archaeomagnetic Dating Laboratory
Archaeomagnetic dating is based on comparing the magnetic properties of burned archaeological deposits with calibration curves for the region of the earth’s surface that includes the site.
Ceramic Analysis
The ceramics lab analyzes pottery recovered from all OAS projects and conducts contractual studies for other agencies.
Chipped Stone Artifact Analysis
OAS chipped stone analysis employs a variety of mandatory and optional attributes that can be used to characterize an assemblage and help answer questions concerning residential mobility, ties to other regions, and how site occupants approached the process of making formal and informal tools out of stone.
Ethnobotany Laboratory
The Ethnobotanical Laboratory processes soil samples from all OAS excavations, as well as contracting with other agencies and individuals.
Historical Analysis
The OAS conducts archaeological investigations on historic resources throughout New Mexico.
Low Energy Plasma Radiocarbon Sampling (LEPRS) Laboratory
The Low Energy Plasma Radiocarbon Sampling (LEPRS) Laboratory is on the cutting edge of radiocarbon sampling. The ability to date extremely small amounts of organic materials through “gentle” surface oxidation has opened up a variety of dating applications difficult to address with conventional radiocarbon methods. These include the collection of stratigraphically-sequential samples from sooted rockshelter ceilings, the dating of oxalate layers both underlying and overlying rock art images, and the dating of residues from sherds.
Nondestructive Chemical Analysis Laboratory
Using portable X-ray fluorescence (pXRF), we have the capability to determine what metals heavier than potassium are present in an artifact within minutes. We have used the technique to analyze the elemental compositions of ceramic pigments, kiva wall paintings, rock paintings, adobe bricks, prehistoric painted pebbles, and other artifacts.
Osteology Laboratory
Animal bones can provide a wealth of information on how past populations lived and adapted to local and regional resources and conditions. While it is important to know which animals were utilized, much more can be learned from the more detailed information routinely recorded by the OAS analyses.