Hohokam Platform Mounds and Costly Signaling

Summary

This is an abstract from the "Why Platform Mounds? Part 2: Regional Comparisons and Tribal Histories" session, at the 84th annual meeting of the Society for American Archaeology.

Hohokam platform mounds (as well as ball courts and earthen "trash" mounds) are forms of monumental architecture requiring the expenditure of labor for purposes not related to shelter and subsistence. Selectionist theory predicts that economically unessential behavior (wasteful spending, superfluous activity) used for monumental architecture can contribute to group fitness by accurately signaling political power. We use the theory as modeled by Neiman to examine the ultimate function of platform mounds as a form of costly signaling that contributed to the fitness of Hohokam populations. The size of a platform mound was a function of the number of people involved in its construction, and thus a proxy measure of that community’s competitive ability in political contests. The ability to effectively judge the size of mound-using populations enabled small groups to avoid fruitless expenditures of labor and resources in political contests with larger neighbors that they were unlikely to win. We find that ecological factors are correlated with variability in platform mound size as predicted in the application of the model.

This Resource is Part of the Following Collections

• Society for American Archaeology 84th Annual Meeting, Albuquerque, NM (2019)   •
• Why Platform Mounds? Part 2: Regional Comparisons and Tribal Histories

Keywords

Spatial Coverage

Record Identifiers

Abstract Id(s): 24421