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Migration was a key social process contributing to the creation of the ‘Chaco World’ between AD 800 and 1200. Dynamic social network analysis allows for evaluation of several migration scenarios, and demonstrates that Chaco’s earliest ninth-century networks show interaction with areas to the west and south, rather than migration to the Canyon from the Northern San Juan. By the late eleventh century, Chaco Canyon was tied strongly to the Middle and Northern San Juan, while a twelfth-century retraction of networks separated the Northern and Southern San Juan areas prior to regional depopulation. Understanding Chaco migration is important for comprehending both its uniqueness in U.S. Southwest archaeology and for comparison with other case studies worldwide.

Archaeologists have pointed to certain architectural or decorative designs as representing “elite styles” that mark status distinctions. We look at one such style—Dogoszhi—that was applied to several pottery wares across the Chaco World of the northern Southwest. Using a large database of ceramics, we test whether this style comprised an elite style or whether it signaled participation in a broader Chaco social network. We compare the distribution of Dogoszhi style to measures of settlement importance, including site size and network centrality, and we investigate whether this style occurs differentially at Chacoan great houses as opposed to small houses, or by subregion. We also compare its spatial distribution to an earlier style, called Black Mesa style, similarly applied to a number of different wares. Our results indicate that both styles were consistently distributed within Chaco communities (whether great houses or small houses) but variably distributed across subareas and most measures of settlement importance. We conclude that Dogoszhi style was used to mark membership in social networks that cross-cut great house communities, a pattern more typical of heterarchical rather than hierarchical social structures. Such variation questions the uniform category of “elites” and points to the ways that representational diversity may be used to interpret different regional histories and alliances.

Ancestral Pueblo people created painted murals within their homes and ceremonial buildings to express important messages about their shared identities. Over the course of a century of archaeological work, several rare examples of these important features have been documented at Gallina Phase sites. Discussions of these murals, however, have received little attention. In this article, I draw together new and existing data about the content and context of the Gallina murals and, using dendrochronology, establish the temporal ranges of the structures decorated with murals. I discuss variation in mural imagery and context in the Gallina sites, and then turn to a regional view of mural arts in the region before AD 1300. By comparing the Gallina murals to contemporary examples from the Mesa Verde and larger San Juan Basin regions, and later northern Rio Grande examples, I discuss the role that building murals appear to have played in Gallina society.

The archaeology of the northern Southwest is often thought to have been typified by the events that occurred in the Central Mesa Verde and Chaco Canyon areas. In fact, these areas represent only portions of the larger region inhabited by Ancestral Puebloan peoples. The collection of articles in this issue focuses on recent research of Ancestral Puebloan lifeways in the Eastern Mesa Verde area of the northern Southwest, a region that has received little synthesis in recent decades in spite of the large number of CRM projects and academic research programs that have been conducted in the area. The articles in this issue draw upon diverse scientific frameworks and data sets to illuminate the dynamics of ancient Puebloan lifeways and cultural histories that unfolded uniquely within the confines of the Eastern Mesa Verde region. The primary issues discussed include social identity formation and maintenance, demographic movement and population histories, inter- and intra-regional interaction, settlement patterns, land use, and human responses to climatic events. Though synthesis for the region is far from complete, these articles greatly enhance our knowledge and understanding of the nature of the archaeological record in this corner of the Mesa Verde world. This introduction describes the theme of this issue, summarizes recent research in the area, and briefly summarizes each of the articles that follow.

This dissertation investigates how people in the northern US Southwest used clothing and representations of clothing in other media to signal aspects of social identities in the Chaco and post-Chaco eras (AD 850–1300). This was a time when communities were first organized into a large regional system and later fractured into smaller organizational entities focused at the site cluster and village levels. In the aftermath of the Chaco reorganization, social inequalities appear to have burgeoned across the greater San Juan River drainage, and not long after these developments, the entire region was depopulated. Understanding the development and transformation of identity during this pivotal period is critical for explaining the social mechanisms that contributed to the major reorganization of communities in the post-Chaco era. To better understand identity expression during these tumultuous times, I perform technological and stylistic design analyses of attributes used to create and decorate ornately woven, twined yucca sandals, in addition to cross-media and proxemic analyses of sandal representations in building murals, rock art, and portable media. Technological and stylistic analyses show that some communities consistently made and used sandals with specific sets of attributes that expressed shared village-level identities. At the same time, other communities favored more diverse repertoires of design attributes that signaled aspects of identities shared across a much larger area. During the Chaco era, twined-sandal styles became highly variable and appear to have indicated positions in social hierarchies. During the following post-Chaco era, the stylistic variability of the sandals declined across the region and may have come to signal a leveling of the social hierarchies. In both time periods, ornate geometric designs woven into the soles of the sandals indicated the home communities or sodality groups to which their wearers belonged. Sandal imagery in rock art was placed to mark major travel routes and boundaries between communities that expressed shared identities. Depictions of sandals in other media closely matched their woven counterparts and show that these images were potent symbols of group affiliations and identity politics in the post-Chaco era. Although this research focuses on clothing, it also addresses broader issues of adaptation and identity, providing new information about societal disruption and reformation in the ancient US Southwest.

In this paper we present evidence through a cross-media and contextual comparison approach that cotton textile production had major economic and ideological importance to Ancestral Pueblo peoples living in the greater Cedar Mesa area during the Woodenshoe and Redhouse Phases (A.D. 1165-1270). First, we present the current data available for direct evidence of cotton textile production from archaeological contexts. Then, we use a cross-media approach to look for evidence of cotton textile production in the media of pottery and kiva mural design motifs. Given the extensive nature of cotton textile production at several sites in the area and the pervasive cotton-textile-based designs on pottery and in kiva murals in the area, we argue that the greater Cedar Mesa area was an important gateway for cotton technologies and imagery between the Kayenta and Mesa Verde areas that afforded the peoples greater access and control over cotton textile production and distribution.

In this paper we present evidence through a cross-media and contextual comparison approach that cotton textile production had major economic and ideological importance to Ancestral Pueblo peoples living in the greater Cedar Mesa of Utah area during the Woodenshoe and Redhouse Phases (A.D. 1165-1270). First, we present the current data available for direct evidence of cotton textile production from archaeological contexts. Then, we use a cross-media approach to look for evidence of cotton textile production in the media of pottery and kiva mural design motifs. Given the extensive nature of cotton textile production at several sites in the area and the pervasive cotton-textile-based designs on pottery and in kiva murals in the area, we argue that the greater Cedar Mesa area was an important gateway for cotton technologies and imagery between the Kayenta and Mesa Verde areas that afforded the peoples greater access and control over cotton textile production and distribution. [Publication Abstract]

Maize agriculture is dependent on two primary environmental factors, precipitation and temperature. Throughout the Eastern Mesa Verde region, fluctuations of these factors dramatically influenced demographic shifts, land use patterns, and social and religious transformations of farming populations during several key points in prehistory. While many studies have looked at the influence climate played in the depopulation of the northern Southwest after A.D. 1000, the role that climate played in the late Basketmaker III through the Pueblo I period remains unclear. This article demonstrates how fluctuations in precipitation patterns interlaced with micro- and macro- regional temperature fluctuations may have pushed and pulled human settlement and subsistence patterns across the region. Specifically, we infer that preferences for certain types of farmlands dictated whether a community used alluvial fan verses dryland farming practices, with the variable success of each type determined by shifting climate patterns. We further investigate how dramatic responses to environmental stress, such as migration and massacres, may be the result of inherited social structures of land tenure and leadership, and that such responses persist in the Eastern Mesa Verde area throughout the Pueblo I period.