Transitions in Social Organization: A Predictive Model from Southwestern Archaeology

Modeling Group Size and Scalar Stress by Logistic Regression from an Archaeological Perspective

“…From an archaeological perspective, even though scalar stress theory has been criticized (e.g., [12] ) for overlooking the contribution of agency [13] , [14] in the process of social organization, and acknowledging the fact that indicators of scalar stress can be difficult to identify archaeologically [15] , Johnson’s findings continue to provide scholars with a useful theoretical framework for the understanding of many aspects of the life and material culture of past communities, like social organization [16] – [19] , stylistic display [15] , [20] – [22] , communal food consumption [23] – [25] , architecture and settlement layout [3] , [16] , [20] , [24] , [26] – [33] . As Ames [17] notes, scalar stress is considered one of the proximate causes of the origin and development of social inequality and complexity, since it allows leadership to emerge to ameliorate scale-related social problems (see also [16] , [18] ).…”

“…As the scholars underscore, expanding a Johnson’s idea [5] and building upon Rappaport [35] and Turner’s [36] view of ritual, inasmuch rituals can be conceived as sequences of redundant and invariant acts, they can ameliorate scalar stress by promoting an effective communication flow and by fostering in-group consensus and cohesion. Drawing upon Adler and Wilshusen’s findings, integrative facilities aimed at counteracting divisive social forces, integrating people at different levels, and promoting social bonds, have been identified by scholars working in different cultural and chronological horizons (see also [37] for an overview), like Sicily [38] , Neolithic Greece [39] , Anatolia [40] , Near East [32] , [41] – [43] , China [24] , Mongolian Steppe [27] , pre-contact North [26] , [28] , [29] , [37] , [44] and South America [3] , [31] ( Fig. 1 ).…”

“…A predictive model would so provide a framework for a better understanding and interpretation of evidences like integrative facilities or other material remains of possible integrative nature. Acknowledging that fact that the estimation of a site’s population on archaeological grounds is a thorny problem (e.g., [47] , [48] – [52] ) and that this could condition the application of the model to archaeological case, as a matter of fact archaeologists are often in the position to arrive at an estimate of the number of residents (e.g., [3] , [24] , [26] , [40] , [53] , [54] – [56] ). This makes feasible the use of the proposed model.…”

A spatial analysis of civic-ceremonial architecture in the central Mesa Verde Region, United States

“…It is important to relay what is meant by the term ‗leadership' in the context of this study. Others have used ethnographic, historical, and architectural data to infer how individual villages and larger communities may have structured local leadership at a variety of scales (Bernardini 1996;Ferguson 1989). Following Adler (1989:45), the focus of this study is on ‗higher level' leadership represented by the civic-ceremonial structures assessed here.…”

Thoughts on new approaches to combining the archaeological and historical records

“…Yet four recent considerations of analogical reasoning (Levy, 1994;Lightfoot and Upham, 1989;McGuire and Saitta, 1996;Plog, 1995) and other recent works (e.g., Wills and Leonard, 1994) do seem to agree on several important points. Each accepts that both ancient and more recent Southwestern societies were structurally diverse over space and time, that even specific prehistoric social groupings may have varied organizationally over time (e.g., Bernardini, 1996), that marked changes occurred in the Southwest following European contact, and, significantly, that the oft-cited egalitarian picture of historic-period Southwestern societies is far from uniformly accepted by ethnographers and historians (e.g., Brandt, 1994;Whiteley, 1988).…”