Niche Construction and Common Pool Resource Management in Marginal Environments: A Diachronic Approach (WGF - Dissertation Fieldwork Grant)

Part of the Wenner-Gren Foundation Grant Application Collection Metadata (DRAFT) project

Author(s): R. J. Sinensky

Year: 2018

Summary

This resource is an application for the Dissertation Fieldwork Grant from the Wenner-Gren Foundation.

Anthropologists have long been concerned with the immense variety of collective institutions developed by small-scale societies to foster solidarity, inculcate values, and manage resources. Long-term studies tracking the development and maintenance of such institutions would greatly benefit a range of social science disciplines, but are unfortunately rare. To this end, the proposed project will track the development and maintenance of land tenure arrangements in small-scale, early agricultural societies in the Puerco region of the American Southwest immediately prior to and following the development of sedentary villages. It achieves this goal by comparing and contrasting the settlement patterns, mobility strategies, and foodways of groups occupying lower population density areas considered marginal for maize agriculture with those of groups in population dense productive locales. Drawing on collective action theory, and niche construction theory, it is predicted that productive locales were occupied by less mobile homogenous groups that sought to maintain control over resources by restricting access exclusively to community members. Conversely, nearby low population marginal areas are expected to be occupied by socially and economically diverse mobile populations that permitted outsiders to access resources. Such an arrangement would have required mutually agreed upon rules to ensure that local populations with long-term interests and outsiders with short term interests did not come into conflict. By taking a long-term comparative perspective this project seeks to observe the process by which distinct property management arrangements were forged, maintained, and transformed.

Cite this Record

Niche Construction and Common Pool Resource Management in Marginal Environments: A Diachronic Approach (WGF - Dissertation Fieldwork Grant). R. J. Sinensky. 2018 ( tDAR id: 468729) ; doi:10.48512/XCV8468729

This Resource is Part of the Following Collections

Keywords

Culture
Ancestral Puebloan

Investigation Types
Archaeological Overview • Collections Research • Consultation • Data Recovery / Excavation • Environment Research • Ethnographic Research • Methodology, Theory, or Synthesis • Reconnaissance / Survey • Research Design / Data Recovery Plan • Site Evaluation / Testing • Systematic Survey

General
archaeobotany • Archaeology • Collective Action • common pool resources • Dissertation Fieldwork Grant • Early Agriculture • Foodways • Ground Stone Analysis • heartland • Hinterland • Landscape Modification • Land Tenure • Macrobotanical • Microbotanical • Mobility • Niche construction • Paleoethnobotany • property management • Property Rights • Resource Management • usufruct

Geographic Keywords
Apache County • Cibola County • Colorado Plateau • Colorado River Basin • East-Central Arizona • Hopituskwa • Little Colorado River Watershed • Lower Colorado River Basin • McKinley County • Navajo County • Northern Arizona • Northern New Mexico • northern US Southwest • Palavayu tradition • Petrified Forest National Park • Puerco of the West • Puerco River Valley • southwestern Colorado Plateau • U.S. Southwest • United States and Canada • west-central New Mexico • Western Pueblo • Western Puerco

Temporal Keywords
Ancestral Hopi • Ancestral Zuni • Basketmaker • Early Pueblo • Hisatsinom • Late Holocene • Motisinom • Western Pueblo

Spatial Coverage

min long: -113.537; min lat: 33.435 ; max long: -105.732; max lat: 37.889 ;

Individual & Institutional Roles

Contact(s): Wenner-Gren Foundation

Notes

Rights & Attribution: This resource is an application from the Wenner-Gren Foundation and has been approved by the grantee solely for pedagogical purposes. Please do not cite, circulate, or duplicate any part of these documents without the express written consent of the author.

File Information

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