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The late pre-Hispanic period in the US Southwest (A.D. 1200–1450) was characterized by large-scale demographic changes, including long-distance migration and population aggregation. To reconstruct how these processes reshaped social networks, we compiled a comprehensive artifact database from major sites dating to this interval in the western Southwest. We combine social network analysis with geographic information systems approaches to reconstruct network dynamics over 250 y. We show how social networks were transformed across the region at previously undocumented spatial, temporal, and social scales. Using well-dated decorated ceramics, we track changes in network topology at 50-y intervals to show a dramatic shift in network density and settlement centrality from the northern to the southern Southwest after A.D. 1300. Both obsidian sourcing and ceramic data demonstrate that long-distance network relationships also shifted from north to south after migration. Surprisingly, social distance does not always correlate with spatial distance because of the presence of network relationships spanning long geographic distances. Our research shows how a large network in the southern Southwest grew and then collapsed, whereas networks became more fragmented in the northern Southwest but persisted. The study also illustrates how formal social network analysis may be applied to large-scale databases of material culture to illustrate multigenerational changes in network structure.

Scholars of the past frame the ‘origins’ or evolution of inequality, usually using archaeological or anthropological evidence as a basis for their arguments, as an intentional, inevitable, important step towards the development of states, implicitly framed as the pinnacle of human political and economic achievement. Anarchist archaeologies reject the idea of hierarchy as a positive or inevitable evolutionary outcome underlying the path to civilization. We argue instead for a radical reorientation towards archaeologies of equality. We propose a prefigurative archaeology that celebrates the myriad ways that human beings have actively undermined and resisted hierarchical social arrangements. We aim to reorient archaeology's focus towards societies that purposefully prevented or constrained the emergence of inequality. To demonstrate the potential of archaeologies of equality we present case examples from Oceania, Britain, West Asia and the American Southwest. Highlighting the accomplishments of societies of equals in the past demonstrates the contingency and problematic nature of present forms of inequality. It allows us to explore a different set of pasts and thus enact different presents as we imagine different futures.

Archaeological research on the Gallina (AD 1100-1300) inhabitants of the region west of the Rio Chama and centered on the Llaves valley has focused on constructing a culture history and examining functional characteristics of artifacts and architecture. Limited research has attempted to understand who the residents of the Gallina heartland were. In this article, using new findings and historical contexts, we argue that the Gallina people had a complicated identity forged around resistance and a deep connection to their past. To better understand them we need to move past previous binary categories used to describe them and perceive them not as isolated or connected, aggressors or victims, traditionalists or innovators, but as an intersectional mix of these axes of identity.

Archaeologists have regarded social networks as both the links through which people transmitted information and goods as well as a form of social storage creating relationships that could be drawn upon in times of subsistence shortfalls or other deleterious environmental conditions. In this article, formal social network analytical (SNA) methods are applied to archaeological data from the late pre-Hispanic North American Southwest to look at what kinds of social networks characterized those regions that were the most enduring versus those that were depopulated over a 250-year period (A.D. 1200-1450). In that time, large areas of the Southwest were no longer used for residential purposes, some of which corresponds with welldocumented region-wide drought. Past research has demonstrated that some population levels could have been maintained in these regions, yet regional scale depopulation occurred. We look at the degree to which the network level property of embeddedness, along with population size, can help to explain why some regions were depopulated and others were not. SNA can help archaeologists examine why emigration occurred in some areas following an environmental crisis while other areas continued to be inhabited and even received migrants. Moreover, we modify SNA techniques to take full advantage of the time depth and spatial and demographic variability of our archaeological data set. The results of this study should be of interest to those who seek to understand human responses to past, present, and fliture worldwide catastrophes since it is now widely recognized that responses to major human disasters, such as hurricanes, were \"likely to be shaped by pre-existing or new social networks\" (as reported by Suter et al. (Research and Policy Review 28:1-10, 2009)).

The Pueblo Revolt is characterized as one of the most successful acts of indigenous resistance. Yet just as the historical record of European colonial powers in the North American Southwest has biased archaeological understandings of contact situations by overlooking contact between indigenous groups, so, too, has the Pueblo Revolt overshadowed those cultural movements the documentary record overlooks. Culture contact situations were common in the Southwest prior to the arrival of the Spanish, and acts of resistance and social movements were likely frequent as well. In this chapter, using the Gallina region of northern New Mexico (figure 4.1) as an example,

Analyzing historical trajectories of social interactions at varying scales can lead to complementary interpretations of relationships among archaeological settlements. We use social network analysis combined with geographic information systems at three spatial scales over time in the western U.S. Southwest to show how the same social processes affected network dynamics at each scale. Theperiodwe address, A.D. 1200-1450, was characterized by migration and demographic upheaval. The tumultuous late thirteenth-century interval was followed by population coalescence and the development of widespread religious movements in the fourteenth and fifteenth centuries. In the southern Southwest these processes resulted in a highly connected network that drew in members of different settlements within and between different valleys that had previously been distinct. In the northern Southwest networks were initially highly connected followed by a more fragmented social landscape. We examine how different network textures emerged at each scale through 50-year snapshots. The results demonstrate the usefulness of applying a multiscalar approach to complex historical trajectories and the potential for social network analysis as applied to archaeological data. El análisis multi-escalar de interacciones sociales y sus trayectorias históricas pueden producir interpretaciones complementarias acerca de las relaciones entre asentamientos arqueológicos. Utilizamos el análisis de redes sociales en combinación con sistemas de información geográfica mediante tres escalas espaciales a través del tiempo en el oeste de la región del Suroeste Norteamericano para demonstrar cómo procesos sociales similares afectaron la dinámica de redes en cada escala. El período de interés, A.D. 1200-1450, se caracterizó por la migración y el desorden demográfico. El tumultuoso siglo trece fue seguido por la coalescência de poblaciones diversas y por el desarrollo de extensos movimientos religiosos en los siglos catorce y quince. En el Suroeste meridional estos procesos resultaron en una red altamente conectada que atrajo miembros de diferentes asentamientos dentro y entre diferentes valles que habían sido previamente diferenciados. En el Suroeste septentrional las redes inicialmente estuvieron muy conectadas pero fueron sucedidas por unpaisaje social fragmentario. Finalmente, examinamos cómo diferentes texturas de redes emergieron en cada escala en períodos de 50 años. Los resultados demuestran la utilidad del análisis multi-escalar para investigar trayectorias históricas complejas y el potencial del análisis de redes sociales para el estudio de datos arqueológicos.

Recent theoretical approaches in archaeology have focused on “big data” that is the production of large and varied datasets reflective of advances in scientific methods and data science. While such data are now more common, the need for “thick data”, qualitative and contextual information, has also become significant. Particularly for ceramic research where big data from neutron activation analysis is combined with thick data from petrography, the juxtaposition has revealed issues of interpretation. Through a regional case study of painted ware and unpainted utility ware from AD 1200 to 1450 settlements in southern Arizona and southwestern New Mexico, three areas of concern were identified. These centered around issues of scale: (1) number of samples (sometimes in the thousands); (2) geographic area (often necessarily extensive); and (3) organization of production (potters can be centralized and/or dispersed on the landscape). Interestingly, only the combined datasets reveal these issues, which highlights why they work well together and are necessary for more accurate explanations. Once the specifics of the disjunction between compositional “big data” interpretations and those arrived at through petrographic thick data are accounted for, a more contextual approach can be taken in reconstructing past behavior.

This dissertation uses a relational approach and a contentious politics framework to examine the archaeological record. Methodologically, it merges spatial and social network analyses to promote a geosocial archaeology. Combined, the articles create a counter-narrative that highlights how environmentally focused investigations fail to explain how and why societies in the Southwest often reorganize horizontally. The first article uses geosocial networks, which I argue represent memory maps, to reveal that the socially important, and sophisticated, act of forgetting was employed by people in the Gallina region during A.D. 1100–1300. A concomitant community level, settlement pattern analysis demonstrates similarities between the arrangement of Gallina and Basketmaker-era settlements. These historically situated settlement structures, combined with acts of forgetting, were used by Gallina region residents to institute and maintain a horizontally organized social movement that was likely aimed at rejecting the hierarchical social atmosphere in the Four Corners region. The second article proposes that as ideologically charged material goods are consumed, fissures within past ideological landscapes are revealed and that these fissures can demonstrate acts of resistance in the archaeological past. It also contends that social and environmental variables need to be combined for these conflicting religious and political practices to be correctly interpreted. The third article applies many of the ideas outlined in the second article to a case study in the Greater Southwest during A.D. 1200–1450. Fractures in the ideological landscape demonstrate that the Salado Phenomenon was a religious social movement formed around, and successful because of, its populist nature. Based on variations in how the Salado ideology interacted with contemporaneous hierarchical and non-hierarchical religious and political organizations it is probable that the Salado social movement formed around desires for the open access to religious knowledge.

Life beyond the Boundariesexplores identity formation on the edges of the ancient Southwest. Focusing on some of the more poorly understood regions, including the Jornada Mogollon, the Gallina, and the Pimería Alta, the authors use methods drawn from material culture science, anthropology, and history to investigate themes related to the construction of social identity along the perimeters of the American Southwest. Through an archaeological lens, the volume examines the social experiences of people who lived in edge regions. Through mobility and the development of extensive social networks, people living in these areas were introduced to the ideas and practices of other cultural groups. As their spatial distances from core areas increased, the degree to which they participated in the economic, social, political, and ritual practices of ancestral core areas increasingly varied. As a result, the social identities of people living in edge zones were often-though not always-fluid and situational. Drawing on an increase of available information and bringing new attention to understudied areas, the book will be of interest to scholars of Southwestern archaeology and other researchers interested in the archaeology of low-populated and decentralized regions and identity formation.Life beyond the Boundariesconsiders the various roles that edge regions played in local and regional trajectories of the prehistoric and protohistoric Southwest and how place influenced the development of social identity. Contributors :Lewis Borck, Dale S. Brenneman, Jeffery J. Clark, Severin Fowles, Patricia A. Gilman, Lauren E. Jelinek, Myles R. Miller, Barbara J. Mills, Matthew A. Peeples, Kellam Throgmorton, James T. Watson