Download or read book Alternative Leadership Strategies in the Prehispanic Southwest written by Barbara J. Mills and published by University of Arizona Press. This book was released on 2015-09-01 with total page 310 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: In considerations of societal change, the application of classic evolutionary schemes to prehistoric southwestern peoples has always been problematic for scholars. Because recent theoretical developments point toward more variation in the scale, hierarchy, and degree of centralization of complex societies, this book takes a fresh look at southwestern prehistory with these new ideas in mind. This is the first book-length work to apply new theories of social organization and leadership strategies to the prehispanic Southwest. It examines leadership strategies in a number of archaeological contexts—from Chaco Canyon to Casas Grandes, from Hohokam to Zuni—to show striking differences in the way that leadership was constructed across the region. These case studies provide ample evidence for alternative models of leadership in middle-range societies. By illustrating complementary approaches in the study of political organization, they offer new insight into power and inequality. They also provide important models of how today's archaeologists are linking data to theory, providing a basis for comparative analysis with other regions. CONTENTS Alternative Models, Alternative Strategies: Leadership in the Prehispanic Southwest / Barbara J. Mills Political Leadership and the Construction of Chacoan Great Houses, A.D. 1020-1140 / W. H. Wills Leadership, Long-Distance Exchange, and Feasting in the Protohistoric Rio Grande / William M. Graves and Katherine A. Spielmann Ritual as a Power Resource in the American Southwest / James M. Potter and Elizabeth M. Perry Ceramic Decoration as Power: Late Prehistoric Design Change in East-Central Arizona / Scott Van Keuren Leadership Strategies in Protohistoric Zuni Towns / Keith W. Kintigh Organizational Variability in Platform Mound-Building Groups of the American Southwest / Mark D. Elson and David R. Abbott Leadership Strategies among the Classic Period Hohokam: A Case Study / Karen G. Harry and James M. Bayman The Institutional Contexts of Hohokam Complexity and Inequality / Suzanne K. Fish and Paul R. Fish Leadership at Casas Grandes, Chihuahua, Mexico / Michael E. Whalen and Paul E. Minnis Reciprocity and Its Limits: Considerations for a Study of the Prehispanic Pueblo World / Timothy A. Kohler, Matthew W. Van Pelt, and Lorene Y. L. Yap Dual-Processual Theory and Social Formations in the Southwest / Gary M. Feinman

Download or read book Pueblo Indians and Spanish Colonial Authority in Eighteenth Century New Mexico written by Tracy L. Brown and published by University of Arizona Press. This book was released on 2013-09-19 with total page 248 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: Pueblo people reacted to Spanish colonialism in many different ways. While some resisted change and struggled to keep to their long-standing traditions, others reworked old practices or even adopted Spanish ones. Pueblo Indians and Spanish Colonial Authority in Eighteenth-Century New Mexico examines the multiple approaches Pueblo individuals and villages adopted to mitigate and manage the demands that Spanish colonial authorities made upon them. In doing so, author Tracy L. Brown counters the prevailing argument that Pueblo individuals and communities’ only response to Spanish colonialism was to compartmentalize—and thus freeze in time and space—their traditions behind a cultural “iron curtain.” Brown addresses an understudied period of Pueblo Indian/Spanish colonial history of New Mexico with a work that paints a portrait of pre-contact times through the colonial period with a special emphasis on the eighteenth century. The Pueblo communities that the Spaniards encountered were divided by language, religion,and political and kinship organization. Brown highlights the changes to, but also the maintenance of, social practices and beliefs in the economic, political, spiritual and familial and intimate realms of life that resulted from Pueblo attempts to negotiate Spanish colonial power. The author combines an analysis of eighteenth century Spanish documentation with archaeological findings concerning Pueblo beliefs and practices that spans the pre-contact period to the eighteenth century in the Southwest. Brown presents a nonlinear view of Pueblo life that examines politics, economics, ritual, and personal relationships. The book paints a portrait of the Pueblo peoples and their complex responses to Spanish colonialism by making sense of little-researched archival documents and archaeological findings that cast light on the daily life of Pueblo peoples.

Download or read book Indian Alliances and the Spanish in the Southwest 750 1750 written by William B. Carter and published by University of Oklahoma Press. This book was released on 2012-12-04 with total page 532 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: When considering the history of the Southwest, scholars have typically viewed Apaches, Navajos, and other Athabaskans as marauders who preyed on Pueblo towns and Spanish settlements. William B. Carter now offers a multilayered reassessment of historical events and environmental and social change to show how mutually supportive networks among Native peoples created alliances in the centuries before and after Spanish settlement. Combining recent scholarship on southwestern prehistory and the history of northern New Spain, Carter describes how environmental changes shaped American Indian settlement in the Southwest and how Athapaskan and Puebloan peoples formed alliances that endured until the Pueblo Revolt of 1680 and even afterward. Established initially for trade, Pueblo-Athapaskan ties deepened with intermarriage and developments in the political realities of the region. Carter also shows how Athapaskans influenced Pueblo economies far more than previously supposed, and helped to erode Spanish influence. In clearly explaining Native prehistory, Carter integrates clan origins with archeological data and historical accounts. He then shows how the Spanish conquest of New Mexico affected Native populations and the relations between them. His analysis of the Pueblo Revolt reveals that Athapaskan and Puebloan peoples were in close contact, underscoring the instrumental role that Athapaskan allies played in Native anticolonial resistance in New Mexico throughout the seventeenth century. Written to appeal to both students and general readers, this fresh interpretation of borderlands ethnohistory provides a broad view as well as important insights for assessing subsequent social change in the region.

Download or read book The Archaeology of Tribal Societies written by William A. Parkinson and published by Berghahn Books. This book was released on 2002-03-01 with total page 348 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: Anthropological archaeologists have long attempted to develop models that will let them better understand the evolution of human social organization. In our search to understand how chiefdoms and states evolve, and how those societies differ from egalitarian 'bands', we have neglected to develop models that will aid the understanding of the wide range of variability that exists between them. This volume attempts to fill this gap by exploring social organization in tribal - or 'autonomous village' - societies from several different ethnographic, ethnohistoric, and archaeological contexts - from the Pre-Pottery Neolithic Period in the Near East to the contemporary Jivaro of Amazonia.

Download or read book Pueblo Bonito written by Jill E. Neitzel and published by Smithsonian Institution. This book was released on 2018-08-08 with total page 172 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: Pueblo Bonito is the largest and most famous ruin in New Mexico's Chaco Culture National Historical Park. Built by the ancestral Puebloan people some 1,000 years ago, the ruin testifies to one of the oldest and most complex societies ever discovered in North America. Study of the large corpus of data continues to generate new ideas about the people who lived their and their way of life. This extensively illustrated volume commemorates the recent centennial of the first large-scale excavations at Pueblo Bonito, with leading experts writing on various aspects of the site, including its setting, construction sequence and labor requirements, possible astronomical orientations and related rituals, and burials. The book probes deeply for answers to these and other perplexing questions about Pueblo Bonito and its people.

Download or read book Southwest Archaeology in the Twentieth Century written by Linda S Cordell and published by University of Utah Press. This book was released on 2005-11-10 with total page 313 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: Mesa Verde, Chaco Canyon, Canyon de Chelly, and Paquimé are well known to tourists and scholars alike as emblems of the American Southwest. This region has been the scene of intense archaeological investigations for more than a hundred years, with more research done here than in any other part of the United States. With contributions from well-known archaeologists, "Southwest Archaeology in the Twentieth Century" reviews the histories of major archaeological topics of the region during the twentieth century, giving particular attention to the vast changes in southwestern archaeology during the later decades of the century. Included are the huge influence of field schools, the rise of cultural resource management (CRM), the uses and abuses of ethnographic analogy, the intellectual contexts of archaeology in Mexico, and current debates on agriculture, sedentism, and political complexity. This book provides an authoritative retrospective of intellectual trends as well as a synthesis of current themes in the arena of the American Southwest. -- From publisher's description.

Download or read book Mimbres Society written by Valli S. Powell-Marti and published by University of Arizona Press. This book was released on 2019-11-01 with total page 224 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: The enchanting pottery created by the Mimbres people of southwestern New Mexico is considered by many scholars to be unique among all the ancient art traditions of North America. Distinguished by their elaborate hand-painted black-on-white designs, Mimbres vessels have inspired artists and collectors, and many insist that they are unrivaled in several millennia of pottery making. While the attention to the extraordinary Mimbres painted pottery is well merited, the focus on its artistry alone has obscured other equally remarkable achievements and compelling questions about this unique and sophisticated society. Was the society as truly egalitarian as it has often been suggested? Was the pottery produced by specialists? How did Mimbres architecture—among the first to break living spaces into apartment-style room blocks—reflect the relationships among individuals, families, and communities? Did aggregate housing units translate into social equality, or did subtle hierarchies exist? Tracing the way technology evolved in ceramic decoration, architecture, and mortuary practices, this collection of eight original contributions brings new insights into previously unexplored dimensions of Mimbres society. The contributors also provide vivid examples of how today’s archaeologists are linking field data to social theory.

Download or read book Landscapes of Social Transformation in the Salinas Province and the Eastern Pueblo World written by Katherine A. Spielmann and published by University of Arizona Press. This book was released on 2017-10-31 with total page 268 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: Drawing on 16 seasons of field work, this volume provides an in-depth look at New Mexico's Salinas Pueblo and explains its relevance to Southwestern archaeology--Provided by publisher.

Download or read book The Archaeology of Politics written by Andrew M. Bauer and published by Cambridge Scholars Publishing. This book was released on 2011-05-25 with total page 380 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: The Archaeology of Politics is a collection of essays that examines political action and practice in the past through studies and analyses of material culture from the perspective of anthropological archaeology. Contributors to this volume explore a variety of multi-scalar relationships between past peoples, places, objects and environments. At stake in this volume is what it is that constitutes politics, its social and cultural location, fields of analysis, its materiality and sociology and especially its position and possibilities as a conceptual and analytical category in archaeological investigations of past socio-cultural worlds. Our primary goals are twofold: the problematization and re-conceptualization of politics from its understanding as a reified essence or structure of political forms (e.g., a State) to a fluid, dynamic and culturally inflected set of practices; and, second, to consider politics’ entanglement with the materiality of socio-cultural worlds at multiple-scales through the demonstration of innovative analytical approaches to the material record. The volume is a tightly integrated group of essays exploring an assortment of case studies that offer new theoretical insight to archaeological and historical analyses of politics.

Download or read book The Social Construction of Communities written by Mark D. Varien and published by Rowman Altamira. This book was released on 2008-08-15 with total page 337 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: The Social Construction of Communities draws on archaeological research in the Southwest to examine how communities are created through social interaction. The archaeological record of the Southwest is important for its precise dating, exceptional preservation, large number of sites, and length of occupation—making it most intensively researched archaeological regions in the world. Taking advantage of that rich archaeological record, the contributors to this volume present case studies of the Mesa Verde, Rio Grande, Kayenta, Mogollon, and Hohokam regions. The result is an enhanced understanding of the ancient Southwest, a new appreciation for the ways in which humans construct communities and transform society, and an expanded theoretical discussion of the foundational concepts of modern social theory.

Download or read book Ancestors and Elites written by Gordon F. M. Rakita and published by Rowman Altamira. This book was released on 2009-05-16 with total page 221 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: Ancestors and Elites examines prehispanic ritual behaviors characteristic of the Casas Grandes region of Chihuahua, Mexico. Gordon Rakita analyzes the archaeological data from the site with respect to broader anthropological theories regarding both religious practices and the rise of complex societies. This confluence of empirical fact and general theory allows Rakita to explore in detail the complex, reciprocal relationship between ritual practices and developing social complexity at PaquimZ, one of the best-documented archaeological sites in the region.

Download or read book Mimbres Archaeology at the NAN Ranch Ruin written by Harry J. Shafer and published by UNM Press. This book was released on 2003 with total page 328 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: Following two decades of excavations and research at the NAN Ranch Ruin in southwestern New Mexico, Harry Shafer offers new information and interpretations of the rise and disappearance of the ancient Mimbres culture that thrived in the area from about A.D. 600 to 1140. The NAN Ranch site gives evidence of a fascinating restructuring of Mimbres culture and society, owing to the introduction of irrigation agriculture in the late ninth century. The social restructuring that accompanied this shift in technology resulted in changes that are visible in architecture, mortuary practices, and ceramic decoration. The NAN Ranch ruin has yielded the largest body of evidence ever gathered at a single Mimbres site and thus offers the clearest picture to date of who the ancient Mimbreños were in relation to their Anasazi and Hohokam neighbors to the north and east. Shafer introduces us to the Mimbres people, gives a history of archaeological research in the Mimbres Valley, and traces the occupation of the NAN Ranch site from pithouses to classic pueblo to abandonment. Social customs, subsistence, biological information, and the symbolism of the distinctive Mimbres designs in their ceramics, pottery, stone artifacts, textiles, and jewelry are all addressed in this comprehensive survey.

Download or read book Ancient Puebloan Southwest written by John Kantner and published by Cambridge University Press. This book was released on 2004-11-11 with total page 340 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: An introduction to the history of the Puebloan Southwest from the AD 1000s to the sixteenth century, first published in 2004.

Download or read book Western Pueblo Identities written by Andrew I. Duff and published by University of Arizona Press. This book was released on 2016-12-15 with total page 254 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: Identifying distinct social groups of the past has always challenged archaeologists because understanding how people perceived their identity is critical to the reconstruction of social organization. Material culture has been the standard measure of distinction between groups, and the distribution of ceramics and other artifacts has often been used to define group boundaries. Western Pueblo Identities argues that such an approach is not always appropriate: demographic and historical factors may affect the extent to which material evidence can define such boundaries. Andrew Duff now examines a number of other factors—relationships among settlement size, regional population densities, the homogeneity of material culture, and local and long-distance exchange—in order to trace the history of interaction and the formation of group identity in east-central Arizona and west-central New Mexico from A.D. 1275 to 1400. Using comparative data from the Upper Little Colorado and Zuni regions, Duff demonstrates differences in patterns of interaction within and between regions with different population densities. He then links these differences to such factors as occupational history, immigrant populations, the negotiation of social identities, and the emergence of new ritual systems. Following abandonments in the Four Corners area in the late 1200s, immigrants with different historical backgrounds occupied many Western Pueblo regions—in contrast to the Hopi and Zuni regions, which had more stable populations and deeper historical roots. Duff uses chemical analyses of ceramics to document exchange among several communities within these regions, showing that people in less densely settled regions were actively recruited by residents of the Hopi and Zuni regions to join their settlements. By the time of the arrival of the Spaniards, two distinct social and territorial groups—the Hopi and Zuni peoples—had emerged from this scattering of communities. Duff's new interpretations, along with new data on ceramic exchange patterns, suggest that interaction is a better way to measure identity than more commonly used criteria. His work offers new perspectives on the role of ritual in social organization and on identity formation in Pueblo IV society and is rich in implications for the study of other sedentary, middle-range societies.

Download or read book Gendered Labor in Specialized Economies written by Sophia E. Kelly and published by University Press of Colorado. This book was released on 2016-10-03 with total page 412 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: Prehistoric economic relationships are often presented as genderless, yet mounting research highlights the critical role gendered identities play in the division of work tasks and the development of specialized production in pre-modern economic systems. In Gendered Labor in Specialized Economies, contributors combine the study of gender in the archaeological record with the examination of intensified craft production in prehistory to reassess the connection between craft specialization and the types and amount of work that men and women performed in ancient communities. Chapters are organized by four interrelated themes crucial for understanding the implications of gender in the organization of craft production: craft specialization and the political economy, combined effort in specialized production, the organization of female and male specialists, and flexibility and rigidity in the gendered division of labor. Contributors consider how changes to the gendered division of labor in craft manufacture altered other types of production or resulted from modifications in the organization of production elsewhere in the economic system. Striking a balance between theoretical and methodological approaches and presenting case studies from sites around the world, Gendered Labor in Specialized Economies offers a guide to the major issues that will frame future research on how men’s and women’s work changes, predisposes, and structures the course of economic development in various societies. Contributors: Alejandra Alonso Olvera, Traci Ardren, Michael G. Callaghan, Nigel Chang, Cathy Lynne Costin, Pilar Margarita Hernández Escontrías, A. Halliwell, Sue Harrington, James M. Heidke, Sophia E. Kelly, Brigitte Kovacevich, T. Kam Manahan, Ann Brower Stahl, Laura Swantek, Rita Wright, Andrea Yankowski

Download or read book Religious Transformation in the Late Pre Hispanic Pueblo World written by Donna M. Glowacki and published by University of Arizona Press. This book was released on 2012-02-01 with total page 326 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: The mid-thirteenth century AD marks the beginning of tremendous social change among Ancestral Pueblo peoples of the northern US Southwest that foreshadow the emergence of the modern Pueblo world. Regional depopulations, long-distance migrations, and widespread resettlement into large plaza-oriented villages forever altered community life. Archaeologists have tended to view these historical events as adaptive responses to climatic, environmental, and economic conditions. Recently, however, more attention is being given to the central role of religion during these transformative periods, and to how archaeological remains embody the complex social practices through which Ancestral Pueblo understandings of sacred concepts were expressed and transformed. The contributors to this volume employ a wide range of archaeological evidence to examine the origin and development of religious ideologies and the ways they shaped Pueblo societies across the Southwest in the centuries prior to European contact. With its fresh theoretical approach, it contributes to a better understanding of both the Pueblo past and the anthropological study of religion in ancient contexts This volume will be of interest to both regional specialists and to scholars who work with the broader dimensions of religion and ritual in the human experience.

Download or read book Storage in Ancient Complex Societies written by Linda R. Manzanilla and published by Routledge. This book was released on 2016-05-20 with total page 350 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: The ability to accumulate and store large amounts of goods is a key feature of complex societies in ancient times. Storage strategies reflect the broader economic and political organization of a society and changes in the development of control mechanisms in both administrative and non-administrative—often kinship based—sectors. This is the first volume to examine storage practices in ancient complex societies from a comparative perspective. This volume includes 14 original papers by leading archaeologists from four continents which compare storage systems in three key regions with lengthy traditions of complexity: the ancient Near East, Mesoamerica, and Andes. Storage in Ancient Complex Societies demonstrates the importance of understanding storage for the study of cultural evolution.