A Frontier in Bloom: Social Implications of Architectural Diversity and Conformity during the Colonization of the San Juan Region of the Northern Southwest

Summary

Behavioral conformity and, its inverse, behavioral diversity are social adaptations wielded by small scale agricultural societies faced with change. By the sixth and seventh centuries A.D., the Basketmaker III period, long standing conflicts in the San Juan region of the northern Southwest had abated and new territories opened to agricultural colonization. Frontier colonization is by nature a contentious process that usually results in violence, displacement, and the reinforcement of factions. In contrast, the San Juan Region saw an unprecedented period of peace and integration during colonization. This study demonstrates how Basketmaker III populations mitigated conflict by signaling solidarity and common identity in the Frontier through architectural conformity at community centers while allowing for architectural variation and expression at single family farmsteads. These practices, in turn, may have set the stage for the development of kinship and non-kinship based institutions in the Ancestral Pueblo world.

This Resource is Part of the Following Collections

• Society for American Archaeology 82nd Annual Meeting, Vancouver, BC (2017)   •
• Architectural Studies in the U.S. Southwest: Theory, Methods, and Data

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Record Identifiers

Abstract Id(s): 15883