Expanding the View of Hohokam Platform Mounds

Expanding the View of Hohokam Platform Mounds
Author: Mark D. Elson
Publisher: University of Arizona Press
Total Pages: 161
Release: 2016-12-15
Genre: Social Science
ISBN: 0816536597

For more than a hundred years, archaeologists have investigated the function of earthen platform mounds in the American Southwest. Built by the Hohokam groups between A.D. 1150 and 1350, these mounds are among the few monumental structures in the Southwest, yet their use and the nature of the groups who built them remain unresolved. Mark Elson now takes a fresh look at these monuments and sheds new light on their significance. He goes beyond previous studies by examining platform mound function and social group organization through a cross-cultural study of historic mound-using groups in the Pacific Ocean region, South America, and the southeastern United States. Using this information, he develops a number of important new generalizations about how people used mounds. Elson then applies these data to the study of a prehistoric settlement system in the eastern Tonto Basin of Arizona that contained five platform mounds. He argues that the mounds were used variously as residences and ceremonial facilities by competing descent groups and were an indication of hereditary leadership. They were important in group integration and resource management; after abandonment they served as ancestral shrines. Elson's study provides a fresh approach to an old puzzle and offers new suggestions regarding variability among Hohokam populations. Its innovative use of comparative data and analyses enriches our understanding of both Hohokam culture and other ancient societies.

Ancient Burial Practices in the American Southwest

Ancient Burial Practices in the American Southwest
Author: Douglas R. Mitchell
Publisher: UNM Press
Total Pages: 284
Release: 2001
Genre: History
ISBN: 9780826334619

Prehistoric burial practices provide an unparalleled opportunity for understanding and reconstructing ancient civilizations and for identifying the influences that helped shape them.

The Social Construction of Communities

The Social Construction of Communities
Author: Mark D. Varien
Publisher: Rowman Altamira
Total Pages: 337
Release: 2008-08-15
Genre: Social Science
ISBN: 075911238X

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.

The Archaeology of Tribal Societies

The Archaeology of Tribal Societies
Author: William A. Parkinson
Publisher: Berghahn Books
Total Pages: 446
Release: 2002-03-01
Genre: Social Science
ISBN: 1789201713

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.

Tracking Prehistoric Migrations

Tracking Prehistoric Migrations
Author: Jeffery J. Clark
Publisher: University of Arizona Press
Total Pages: 140
Release: 2001-02
Genre: Social Science
ISBN: 9780816520879

This monograph takes a fresh look at migration in light of the recent resurgence of interest in this topic within archaeology. The author develops a reliable approach for detecting and assessing the impact of migration based on conceptions of style in anthropology. From numerous ethnoarchaeological and ethnohistoric case studies, material culture attributes are isolated that tend to be associated only with the groups that produce them. Clark uses this approach to evaluate Puebloan migration into the Tonto Basin of east-central Arizona during the early Classic period (A.D. 1200-1325), focusing on a community that had been developing with substantial Hohokam influence prior to this interval. He identifies Puebloan enclaves in the indigenous settlements based on culturally specific differences in the organization of domestic space and in technological styles reflected in wall construction and utilitarian ceramic manufacture. Puebloan migration was initially limited in scale, resulting in the co-residence of migrants and local groups within a single community. Once this co-residence settlement pattern is reconstructed, relations between the two groups are examined and the short-term and long-term impacts of migration are assessed. The early Classic period is associated with the appearance of the Salado horizon in the Tonto Basin. The results of this research suggest that migration and co-residence was common throughout the basins and valleys in the region defined by the Salado horizon, although each local sequence relates a unique story. The methodological and theoretical implications of Clark's work extend well beyond the Salado and the Southwest and apply to any situation in which the scale and impact of prehistoric migration are contested.

The Davis Ranch Site

The Davis Ranch Site
Author: Rex E. Gerald
Publisher: University of Arizona Press
Total Pages: 825
Release: 2019-04-30
Genre: Social Science
ISBN: 0816539936

In this new volume, the results of Rex E. Gerald’s 1957 excavations at the Davis Ranch Site in southeastern Arizona’s San Pedro River Valley are reported in their entirety for the first time. Annotations to Gerald’s original manuscript in the archives of the Amerind Museum and newly written material place Gerald’s work in the context of what is currently known regarding the late thirteenth-century Kayenta diaspora and the relationship between Kayenta immigrants and the Salado phenomenon. Data presented by Gerald and other contributors identify the site as having been inhabited by people from the Kayenta region of northeastern Arizona and southeastern Utah. The results of Gerald’s excavations and Archaeology Southwest’s San Pedro Preservation Project (1990–2001) indicate that the people of the Davis Ranch Site were part of a network of dispersed immigrant enclaves responsible for the origin and spread of Roosevelt Red Ware pottery, the key material marker of the Salado phenomenon. A companion volume to Charles Di Peso’s 1958 publication on the nearby Reeve Ruin, archaeologists working in the U.S. Southwest and other researchers interested in ancient population movements and their consequences will consider this work an essential case study.

The Archaeology of Perry Mesa and Its World

The Archaeology of Perry Mesa and Its World
Author: David R. Wilcox
Publisher: Bilby Research Center
Total Pages: 146
Release: 2007
Genre: History
ISBN:

A study intitiated by the Agua Fria National Monument and conducted by the Western Mapping Company and the Museum of Northern Arizona, explores the Perry Mesa site in Yavapai Country, Arizona, documents the collection of artifacts for permanent curation, and includes a history of the research on Perry Mesa and a review of the recent competing theories about how it was organized for war or how the landscape became ecologically degraded. The study also provides an analysis of the relevance of these data to understanding the larger interaction spheres of the Central Arizona Tradition, the Verde Confederacy, and the Hopi macroeconomy.