Working, Living, and Dying Together: Rethinking Marginality, Sex, and Heterarchy in Kayenta Communities (AD 900-1150)

Summary

This is an abstract from the "Cooperative Bodies: Bioarchaeology and Non-ranked Societies" session, at the 84th annual meeting of the Society for American Archaeology.

Pueblo groups living in the Kayenta region of northern Arizona differ remarkably from their contemporaries in adjacent regions. At Mesa Verde and Chaco to the northeast and southeast respectively, there is compelling evidence for rigid hierarchical and political systems of trade, governance, and decision-making that generated inequalities across localities and sex, age, and status groups. In the Kayenta region, communities formed alliances and kin networks across vast spaces, while trading local items within Kayenta boundaries. This study examines patterns of disease, enthesial changes, robusticity, and trauma in adult males and females from the Kayenta region. The comparable distribution of these skeletal markers across sex and age groups suggests a unique form of heterarchy foundational to the people occupying what has been described as a marginal and challenging place to survive as farmers. These data have implications for understanding the successes of the Kayenta populations in terms of health outcomes and growth compared to other groups. What explains this island of heterarchy in a sea of hierarchy? Utilizing Gidden’s notion of ontological security, it can be argued that by focusing inward and developing a subculture of equity and security through inclusiveness, Kayenta communities put their faith in collaboration and innovation.

This Resource is Part of the Following Collections

• Cooperative Bodies: Bioarchaeology and Non-ranked Societies   •
• Society for American Archaeology 84th Annual Meeting, Albuquerque, NM (2019)

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Record Identifiers

Abstract Id(s): 23988