Estimating the Scale of Social Groups in the Ancient Southwest, A.D. 650-900

Summary

The scale of social groups (such as households, lineages, moieties, factions, and clans) can have a profound effect on the development of political hierarchies. The household is an important building block of larger sociopolitical formations. Similarly, the village is theorized as an important political entity that is sometimes characterized by unequal power relations among individuals and groups. In this poster, I explore the scale of households, the architectural spaces they inhabited, and how these spaces were organized into different kinds of villages in the ancient U.S. Southwest. My evidence is drawn from rock art depicting social groups, (the Procession Panel at Comb Ridge, UT) and architecture (villages built between A.D. 750-900 in the Central Mesa Verde region). I argue that a focus on average sizes and social integration has overlooked the importance of disparities in scale and social difference in early village societies, which are important factors in the development of inequalities and differential access to power.

This Resource is Part of the Following Collections

• Society for American Archaeology 81st Annual Meeting, Orlando, FL (2016)

Keywords

Spatial Coverage