An Evaluation of Virgin Branch Social and Political Complexity through Painted Ceramic Design and Style

Summary

This is an abstract from the "SAA 2023: Individual Abstracts" session, at the 88th annual meeting of the Society for American Archaeology.

Social complexity in pre-Hispanic societies within the North American Southwest has been studied through a variety of research avenues. Among the Virgin Branch people within the Moapa Valley of southern Nevada, archaeologists have pursued this topic through the study of architecture, burials and associated grave goods, and exchange networks. Among Virgin Branch archaeologists working in the Moapa Valley has been the competing notion of whether Virgin Branch society was egalitarian (Lyneis 1992) or ranked (Rafferty 1990). This study re-visits this long dormant debate through the lens of a research medium not previously used to explore the nature of Virgin Branch social complexity—namely, painted design and style complexity on pottery. Inspired by a cross-cultural study conducted by Peter Peregrine (2007), this paper presents an exploratory assessment of Virgin Branch social complexity, through an adaptation of Peregrine’s (2007) methods, using painted ceramics recovered from Adam 2 and the Main Ridge community. This study uses a comparative statistical approach to evaluate social complexity at Adam 2 and the Main Ridge community against Peregrine’s (2007) findings as a means of assessing the utility of this analytical approach to the study of social complexity in the Virgin Branch region.

This Resource is Part of the Following Collections

• SAA 2023: Individual Abstracts   •
• Society for American Archaeology 88th Annual Meeting, Portland, OR (2023)

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Record Identifiers

Abstract Id(s): 36898.0