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Between 1969 and 1980, Soviet archaeologists conducted excavations of Mesopotamian villages occupied from preagricultural times through the beginnings of early civilization. The results of their work were published primarily in Soviet journals and in the English-language journals Sumer and Iraq. This volume brings together translations of these Russian articles along with newly commissioned work to make the results of this research accessible for the first time to the Western world. In addition to eight articles available here for the first time in English, a concluding chapter by Norman Yoffee offers new insights on cultural interaction based on the research at hand. The research conducted by the Soviets helped transform our knowledge of the early post-Paleolithic prehistory of Mesopotamia.

In this volume, contributors demonstrate the real-world application of Indigenous theory to the work they do in their own communities and how this work is driven by urgency, responsibility, and justice-work that is from the skin . In From the Skin , contributors reflect on and describe how they apply the theories and concepts of Indigenous studies to their communities, programs, and organizations, and the ways the discipline has informed and influenced the same. They show the ways these efforts advance disciplinary theories, methodologies, and praxes. Chapters cover topics including librarianship, health programs, community organizing, knowledge recovery, youth programming, and gendered violence. Through their examples, the contributors show how they negotiate their peoples' knowledge systems with knowledge produced in Indigenous studies programs, demonstrating how they understand the relationship between their people, their nations, and academia. Editors J. Jeffery Clark and Elise Boxer propose and develop the term practitioner-theorist to describe how the contributors theorize and practice knowledge within and between their nations and academia. Because they live and exist in their community, these practitioner-theorists always consider how their thinking and actions benefit their people and nations. The practitioner-theorists of this volume envision and labor toward decolonial futures where Indigenous peoples and nations exist on their own terms. Contributors Randi Lynn Boucher-Giago Elise Boxer Shawn Brigman J. Jeffery Clark Nick Estes Eric Hardy Shalene Joseph Jennifer Marley Brittani R. Orona Alexander Soto

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)).

In 2014, Joe Shirley, Jr. and Christopher L. Clark Deschene secured the first and second place positions, respectively, in the Navajo Nation presidential elections by defeating fifteen other candidates. Ten days into the general election race, Deschene's campaign was thwarted when two former candidates, Hank Whitethorne and Dale E. Tsosie, filed grievances with the Navajo Nation Office of Hearings and Appeals claiming that Deschene did not meet the language fluency requirement outlined in the election code. A critical moment in the controversy was the Supreme Court of the Navajo Nation's October 9 ruling that language fluency was a reasonable regulation of the candidate's right to political liberty. Months later, Deschene was eventually removed from the ballot. This article examines the critical discourse within and around the October 9, 2014 Supreme Court ruling to illustrate the ways language, identity, and leadership are discursively and legally constituted among Diné people. This study shows how the debates about leadership, language, and identity factor into Dinéness and the shared concern with enactments of sovereignty to secure a Diné future. This article demonstrates how tribal sovereignty is closely tied to the colonial mandate of eliminating Indigenous peoples, especially in the Supreme Court's deployment of tradition to create and enforce boundaries of inclusion and exclusion.

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.

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.

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.

In the final centuries prior to the arrival of the Spanish, the southwest United States and northwest Mexico underwent two major sociodemographic changes: (1) many people coalesced into large villages, and (2) most of the villages were depopulated within two centuries. Basic epidemiological models indicate that village coalescence could have triggered epidemic diseases that caused the observed demographic decline. The models also link this decline to a global phenomenon, the Neolithic Demographic Transition. En los últimos siglos antes de la llegada de los españoles, el suroeste de los EE. UU. y el noroeste de México experimentaron dos transformaciones sociodemográficas: (1) una gran parte de la población se incorporó en aldeas grandes; y (2) la mayoría de las aldeas se despoblaron en menos de dos siglos. Modelos básicos de la epidemiología indican que la formación de aldeas grandes pudo haber provocado epidemias que causaron una disminución demográfica. Los modelos también proporcionan un enlace teórico entre los cambios regionales y un fenómeno global, la Transición Demográfica del Neolítico.

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.

[...]we discuss indicators of migration and social diversity in oral traditions and the archaeological record, emphasizing the importance of interplay between social and ecological factors. There was sufficient land and water to support continued occupation of the lower Salt, but as the social and ecological relationships among settlements along canal systems changed, it became increasingly difficult to sustain profitable cultivation near canal intakes. [...]it was not the magnitude of degradation that doomed Classic period irrigation systems along the lower Salt, but the location of those effects in relation to vital system components, attempts to keep these large systems going in a context of declining population, and the arrival of populations with divergent historical traditions and motivations.