North America - Southwest (Geographic Keyword)
726-750 (899 Records)
Drawing on George Kubler's theoretical treatise, The Shape of Time, as well as more recent epistemological reflections by art historians such as Georges Didi-Huberman and Alexander Nagel and Christopher Wood, this paper explores the potential for objects to contribute to their own interpretation. The imagery painted on Mimbres vessels often playfully responds to or incorporates their hemispherical shape. There are also instances where the imagery seems to resonate with the holes that were...
The Setting: Location, Environment and Excavation History (2015)
Antelope Cave is a large limestone cavern sunk beneath the rolling hills of the Uinkaret Plateau in northwestern Arizona. Native Americans lived in the cave intermittently for 4000 years during the Archaic and Puebloan periods. Environmental conditions over those thousands of years appear to have changed little. This paper addresses the variety and abundance of local resources available to the cave's inhabitants who lived in this semi-arid region north of the Grand Canyon. Flora in the vicinity...
Settlement Dynamics in the Margins of Hohokam Villages in Canal System 2: Recent Investigations at La Ciudad (2015)
Recent excavations at La Ciudad highlight settlement and socioeconomic changes along the margins of the larger village during the Pre-Classic period, especially the Pioneer-Colonial period transition. High-resolution chronological evidence was obtained based on a combination of radiocarbon, archaeomagnetic, and luminescence assays, including an unprecedented 34 optically and thermally stimulated luminescence assays from ceramic sherds. In addition, 36 archaeomagnetic assays from an early...
Settlement patterns of Salado period occupations in the Duncan/York Valley on the Upper Gila River (2017)
The Salado period occupation sites have become the focus of substantial discussion in the Southwest as it relates to broader regional migrations, population fluctuations as well as sociocultural changes. Unfortunately many of these important sites have suffered from decades of destruction and continued looting. Comparing early site notes from the Gila Pueblo and other early researchers in the Duncan/York Valley to the University of Texas at San Antonio Southwest field project survey notes, this...
Settlement Structure at La Villa: A Preclassic Hohokam Village (2015)
For roughly 400 years after La Villa was founded, around A.D. 500, the village would have been one of the largest in the Phoenix Basin, rivaling, perhaps, the great centers of Snaketown and Grewe on the Middle Gila River. Recent excavations at the site by Desert Archaeology Inc. combined with a series of previous investigations provide intriguing new information about the organization of settlement at Hohokam villages. The work at La Villa has resulted in the identification of two large plazas...
Sex-Related Differences in Dental Caries Prevalence in the Prehistoric American Southwest (2017)
This research comprises a comprehensive study of oral health from three Prehistoric Southwest sites in order to identify sexual differences in the prevalence of dental disease after the onset of agriculture. Dental pathologies, such as dental caries and antemortem tooth loss (AMTL), directly relate to an individual’s diet, therefore indicate disparities in subsistence and dietary patterns. Previous studies have found that females exhibit higher rates of caries compared to males. These...
Shape Shifters, Spirit Guides, and Portals to Other Worlds in Puebloan Rock Images of the Southwest (2016)
Rock imagery in the puebloan region of the southwestern United States often combines elements from different animal, human, and plant sources. Blended elements may depict or refer to other-wordly states of being. Beings made from combined elements shift from shapes familiar in the present world and transport the frame of reference to the spirit world. Specific animal forms may be selected because they are spirit guides, have specific powers, or are guardians of cardinal directions from mythical...
Shifting North: Social Network Analysis and the Pithouse-to-Pueblo Transition in the Mogollon Highlands (2015)
This poster examines the changes in the social networks of the Mogollon Highlands that accompanied the transition to pueblo architecture around A.D. 1000 using Social Network Analysis (SNA). SNA offers a set of formal methods in which ties and relations between sites can are examined. Using the proportions of decorated ceramics within a site’s assemblage, social networks are created for 50-year intervals, allowing for changes in the networks to be observed before and after the pithouse-to-pueblo...
Shifting Perceptions: An Examination of Landesque Capital and Landscape Perceptions within Hohokam Canal System 1 (2016)
The Hohokam that occupied the area now covered by the present city of Phoenix, Arizona and surrounding cities, constructed one of the largest canal systems in the ancient world. Of the systems operated by the Hohokam, Canal System 1 was the largest irrigation system built and maintained by the Hohokam. Despite its size, it is the least understood of the major irrigation systems within the lower Salt River Valley, the area often identified as the Hohokam core. Recently, a project to reconstruct...
Shifting Social Networks and Identity along the Southeastern Edge of the Cibola World (2017)
The work reported here represents the initial results of recent NSF supported field research near Mariana and Cebolleta mesas in west-central New Mexico. These investigations targeted previously known Pueblo II and Pueblo III communities on both public and private lands for detailed mapping and in-field artifact analysis. While the ware-level diversity of ceramic assemblages in the region has long been known, our work employed new methods of analysis of corrugated vessel forming techniques,...
Sight Communities in the American Southwest (2015)
Communities can be conceptualized along a number of dimensions – spatial, demographic, economic, ritual, among others. This study proposes that it may also be productive to consider communities organized around vision. It is well established that people construct mental representations or "cognitive maps" of their surroundings to organize spatial information and experiences and for spatial orientation and navigation. Populations who shared significant portions of their cognitive maps are...
The Sinagua and the Western Pueblo Tradition: Perspectives from Bioarchaeology (2015)
Genetic and cultural relationships among ancient and historic populations in the American Southwest have long been of interest to archaeologists, and more recently to descendant communities. Documentation of more than 1500 human remains and 4000 associated funerary objects from US Forest Service land in anticipation of repatriation under NAGPRA provides abundant new information to address this topic. This poster discusses research using metric and nonmetric skeletal data and discrete skeletal...
The Sinagua and the Western Pueblo Tradition: Perspectives from Material Culture and Burial Practices (2015)
The highland country of central Arizona has historically been interpreted as a region peripheral to the more dominant Hohokam, Kayenta, and Mogollon traditions that surrounded it. However, peripheries are defined by ones perception of where the center is located. Our case in point is the prehistoric Sinagua, which has been the subject of a five-year long study and documentation of more than1500 human remains and 4000 funerary objects that have been repatriated to the Hopi Tribe by the...
Site analysis and excavation of the Gila River Farm Site in Cliff, New Mexico (2017)
Archaeology Southwest and the University of Arizona’s Upper Gila Preservation Archaeology (UGPA) field school excavations at the Gila River Farm Site (LA 39315) produced interesting results from the 2016 field season. The Gila River Farm Site is a Cliff Phase (A.D. 1300 – 1450) Salado site located on the first terrace of the Gila River, in southwestern New Mexico. It was recorded by archaeologists in the 1980s but had never been excavated. Although now protected on land owned by the New Mexico...
The Site as a Moving Target: Forty Years of Change on the Dynamic Landscape of Black Mesa (2017)
In the context of surface archaeological inventory, sites are typically regarded as static entities about which numerous inferences can be made regarding function, temporal affiliation, and potential for subsurface deposits. These inferences are often the primary tool used to inform National Register of Historic Places eligibility recommendations, as well as guide testing and/or data recovery strategies ahead of various development or other federal undertakings. In many regional areas and with...
SKOPE: Bringing Continent-scale, Local Paleoenvironmental Data to Researchers and the Public (2016)
This is a copy of the PowerPoint presentation from the SAA Annual Meeting symposium. Interest in the impacts of environmental change on human societies is increasing—and, given the latest IPCC projections, without a moment to spare. Archaeologists are engaging this interest by interpreting past human experiences with environmental change, often by reconstructing environments at local spatial and temporal resolutions most relevant to humans. Crucial tasks ahead include generalizing the plethora...
Social Diversity and Public Interaction Space in Classic and Postclassic Mimbres (2015)
In the Mimbres region of the US Southwest there is a substantial increase in the diversity of ceramic wares between the Classic (AD 1000-1130) to the Postclassic (AD 1250-1450) periods. As an increase in ceramic diversity could indicate the presence of a more diverse community, it is possible that Postclassic settlements would experience greater challenges in creating and maintaining social relationships within a settlement. Weissner (1983) suggests that people’s sense of predictability of...
Social Inequality and Food Storage at Hohokam Platform Mound Sites in the Phoenix and Tonto Basins (2017)
Some social theorists contend that the critical threshold in the development of complex, ranked societies is the emergence and institutionalization of inequality, or a formalized hierarchical organization that is inherited and reproduced. One pathway that elites take in establishing and institutionalizing political power is by attaining control over the economy. A key strategy of establishing economic power is to mobilize and store food surpluses. For the prehistoric Hohokam of southern Arizona,...
Social Networks and the Scale of the Chaco World (2016)
Chaco Canyon in northwestern New Mexico has long been recognized as an important regional center characterized by impressive architecture and wide-spread influence across the Ancestral Puebloan region (ca. A.D. 800-1150+). Although few researchers dispute the strong similarities in construction styles and techniques most often used to track Chacoan influence, there is little agreement on what such similarities mean in terms of social, political, or economic relationships. In this paper, we...
The Social Opportunity Hypothesis (2015)
My work is motivated by the finding that the first farmers of the deserts of Northern Mexico and Southern Arizona formed settlements near and farmed reliable and productive flood plains. To understand why, I investigate to the processes that lead hunters and gatherers to invest in the low-level production of food in general. I use a dynamical systems model to investigate the effect of low-level food production on the ability of foragers to predictably allocate time to reaping the fitness...
Social Organization within a Tower Complex in Southeast Utah: A Landscape Approach (2016)
Through architecture, the Ancestral Pueblo people expressed their ideas and beliefs in many different ways. Towers have long been an enigmatic presence in the Southwest when role and function are in question, though focus should not be placed solely on a single explanation if one is to understand the people. Rather, interpreting the entirety of a site allows for a more holistic view into the social landscape. Ongoing research is being conducted at site 42SA4998 in the Alkali Ridge region of...
Social shifts in the late pre-hispanic US Southwest (2015)
The Brainerd-Robinson (BR) index is frequently used as an measure of similarity among disparate archaeological entities. We propose a number of novel alternative methods to gauge similarity among such entities. We base our analysis on similarity among sites(locations) inhabited in the US Southwest during AD (1200-1450) using a large corpus of artifacts excavated at those locations and maintained as a comprehensive database by Archaeology Southwest. In this work we first identify some vital...
The Social Value of Ornaments from Pueblo Bonito and Aztec Ruin (2015)
Ornaments are generally considered to be items of wealth, luxury, and value, and are often used as one of several indicators of social inequality. However, the value and meaning of ornaments is often assumed rather than demonstrated. Aside from power and wealth, jewelry may also relate to various aspects of social identity. It has been proposed that ornaments, turquoise, and shell may have been important symbols of status and ritual (or socially valuable goods) in Chacoan society, as they form...
Social-Ceremonial Organization, Ritual Practice, and Ritual Use of Fauna in Chaco Canyon, New Mexico (2017)
Chaco Canyon, located in northwestern New Mexico, is widely believed to have formed the religious, economic, and political core of a large regional network that thrived during the Pueblo II period. However, debate continues to surround Chacoan ceremonial and sociopolitical organization. One approach to understanding the social-ceremonial organization of Chacoan great houses is through an understanding of the nature of ritual practice and the scales at which it was organized. Pueblo peoples, past...
Some Observations on Hohokam Figurines: Implictions for Early American Southwest Connections with West Mexico (2015)
Hohokam anthropomorphic figurines differ in style, mode of manufacture, and meaning with most, if not all, other figurine traditions in the American Southwest which appear to be regional in their derivation. In contrast, clay Hohokam figurines have often been cited as evidence of early cultural relationships between southern Arizona and Nayarit and adjacent regions. Between the Formative/Pioneer Period and prior to ca. 800 CE, simple Hohokam figurines display distinctive stylistic norms that...