Ancient Puebloan Southwest

Abstract

Ancient Puebloan Southwest traces the evolution of Puebloan society in the American Southwest from the emergence of the Chaco and Mimbres traditions in the AD l000s through the early decades of contact with the Spanish in the sixteenth century. The book focuses on the social and political changes that shaped Puebloan people over the centuries, emphasizing how factors internal to society impacted cultural evolution, even in the face of the challenging environment that characterizes the American Southwest. The underlying argument is that while the physical environment both provides opportunities and sets limitations to social and political change, even more important evolutionary forces are the tensions between cooperation and competition for status and leadership. Although relying primarily on archaeological data, the book also includes oral histories, historical accounts, and ethnographic records as it introduces readers to the deep history of the Puebloan Southwest.

Pilgrimage as costly signal: Religiously motivated cooperation in Chaco and Nasca

“…Canyon great houses contained hundreds of rooms, many outfitted with what appear to be sleeping platforms (Lekson, 2007b). By all appearances, by the middle of the 11th century, Chaco Canyon was a major pilgrimage center (Jordan, 2002;Kantner, 2004;Malville and Malville, 2001;Renfrew, 2001), with a core area of monumental architecture measuring approximately 150 hectares. The central question that has stymied archaeologists for decades is, Why did Chaco Canyon-of all places-become a pilgrimage center?…”

“…In the case of Chaco Canyon, for example, the conventional explanation for its collapse is that extended droughts, especially in the early 1100s (Fig. 3), undermined the authority of the center's priestly leadership and eroded the belief system (e.g., Kantner, 2004). This almost certainly played a role in Chaco's collapse, but many archaeologists have noted the long perseverance of most material symbols of Chaco, even as the center lay mostly empty (Duff and Lekson, 2006;Kantner, 2006).…”

Faunal changes in farming communities from Basketmaker II to Pueblo III (A.D. 1–1300) in the San Juan Basin of the American Southwest

“…The Basin is bounded in the south by the Zuni Mountains in New Mexico, and in the east by the Nacimiento Uplift (Lipe, 2006: 312). The San Juan Basin coincides more or less with the Chaco culture region (Vivian, 1990), although some great house and villages thought to be part of the Chacoan world occur beyond the Basin (Kantner, 2004).…”

“…At about A.D. 900 (Pueblo II, A.D. 900-1100), communities in Chaco Canyon began to construct large multi-roomed structures called great houses. The emergence of great houses is thought to be linked to greater social complexity, as they are often situated among less formal structures, perhaps occupied by people of different status (Kantner, 2004;Lekson, 1999). Pueblo Bonito is the largest of these great houses in Chaco Canyon (Judd, 1964).…”

“…The farming communities that occupied these stone ruins and earlier pithouses have since then received a great deal of attention from archaeologists. Diverse topics such as architecture, settlement patterns, population estimates, migrations, social organization, warfare, ceramics, lithics, geomorphology, hydrology, paleoclimate, paleoenvironment, chronologies, ethnoarchaeology, archaeobotany and zooarchaeology have received consideration (references in Cordell, 1997;Kantner, 2004;Kantner and Mahoney, 2000;LeBlanc, 1999;Lekson, 1986Lekson, , 1999Lekson, , 2006Longacre, 1973;Mathien, 2005;Neitzel, 2003;Plog, 1997;Reed, 2004;Stuart, 2000;Varien, 1999;Vivian, 1990).…”