Communities through Time: Societal Continuity and Transformation in the Northern San Juan Region

Decades of archaeological research in the northern San Juan region have yielded an abundant, rich, and complex body of data regarding the Pueblo occupation of the region, which was underway by 500 B.C. and continued until the complete depopulation of the region by Pueblo peoples late in the thirteenth century. During that occupation of this challenging landscape, communities formed and evolved, varying from clusters of family farmsteads to aggregated communities to large nucleated villages, with concomitant societal adaptations and innovations. These developments were key in enabling Pueblo farming families to survive for many centuries on this semi-arid landscape plagued with climatic variability and periodic drought. Myriad facets of Pueblo society and lifeways transformed in profound ways and then coalesced into a cohesive and enduring foundation for the centuries of Pueblo culture that followed in regions to the south. The papers in this session draw upon the rich body of empirical data for the northern San Juan region to produce diachronic syntheses that elucidate―within the context and setting of the community―long-term adaptation, transformation, and continuity in settlement patterning, subsistence systems, technologies, intra- and inter-regional interactions, regional chronology, and the increasing complexity of social, political, economic, and ritual systems.