Mesa Verde Centers and Regional Analyses: Good Stuff!

Summary

This is an abstract from the "Attention to Detail: A Pragmatic Career of Research, Mentoring, and Service, Papers in Honor of Keith Kintigh" session, at the 84th annual meeting of the Society for American Archaeology.

Beginning with his dissertation, Kintigh’s research in the Zuni/Cibola region has focused on the formation, organization, and distribution of large ancestral Pueblo villages. His methods and the Zuni historical models he developed have notably influenced how we have approached research on large sites (aka community centers) and regional-scale analyses in the Mesa Verde region (CE 600-1280). Recent comparative evaluation of VEP II output with the known archaeological data for each center has highlighted the need to further improve large site data and modify analytical algorithms to better account for biases introduced by surface remains when assessing multicomponent sites among other issues. These newly updated data and the output of estimated households per period from the refined algorithms are used to examine the spatial and temporal dimensions of continuity and change among large Mesa Verde villages. We explore intraregional variation in key dimensions such as the timing of construction, occupation and population history, and use of farmland, and are particularly interested in the period from CE 880-1180/1200 when social dynamics are affected by the ebb and flow of Chaco and Aztec influence in the region.

This Resource is Part of the Following Collections

• Attention to Detail: A Pragmatic Career of Research, Mentoring, and Service, Papers in Honor of Keith Kintigh   •
• Society for American Archaeology 84th Annual Meeting, Albuquerque, NM (2019)

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Record Identifiers

Abstract Id(s): 23460