Organizational Change and Intellectual Production: The Case Study of Hohokam Archaeology

Summary

Histories of archaeology increasingly focus on the role that the social context of the discipline plays in shaping its intellectual production. Of particular importance in the social context of American archaeology during the last half of the 20th century is the development of Cultural Resource Management (CRM) archaeology. The coalescence of the CRM industry has transformed archaeology—providing new sources of support, mandating new goals, and placing practitioners into newly emergent organizational environments. Drawing upon theory in the sociology of science, this project examines the case study of the recent history of Hohokam—archaeological label for the agricultural people of southern Arizona—archaeology, which has been shaped by CRM more than any other region in the United States. According to sociological expectations, such a dramatic change in the social setting of the discipline should be reflected in its intellectual production.

This dissertation documents patterns of intellectual production within Hohokam archaeology over the past century through both qualitative and quantitative means. In addition to providing a recent historical account of the region’s archaeological community, this project utilizes a range of citation analyses to elucidate patterns in a manner relatively independent of subjective assessments of the character of Hohokam discourse.

The analyses suggest that the changing organizational structure of Hohokam archaeology has impacted its basic intellectual structure. Changing patterns evident in both academic and CRM publications parallel reconfigurations in the social context of the region’s archaeology. These findings offer substance for discussions of how archaeology should conduct itself in the face of changing organizational environments to ensure that the discipline continues to achieve its primary goal—the construction of knowledge about the past—in productive and intellectually rewarding ways.

This Resource is Part of the Following Collections

• Digital Archive of Huhugam Archaeology (DAHA)

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