Land Tenure, Archaeology, and the Ancestral Pueblo Social Landscape

Archaeology relies upon evidence of past human modification of the natural landscape in order to infer past human social dynamics on the site, local, and regional levels. Given the inferential linkages between past landscape use and social relationships, archaeology can benefit from an approach that more explicitly delineates relationships between systems of land use and land tenure, the social means through which people define and assert land use rights. This research outlines a set of methods for modeling prehistoric land tenure systems and developing a middle range theory of land tenure relationships that may assist archaeologists in their investigations of prehistoric resource access systems. Land tenure systems are complex risk-buffering strategies that are conditioned by the labor invested in food production, the size of groups holding direct access to productive lands and resources, and the temporal duration of land access rights. The role of these variables is supported by cross-cultural data from a worldwide sample of food-producing societies. The land tenure model is applied to data from the prehistoric Southwest to help explain local and regional changes in food production, settlement size, and community organization in southwest Colorado between 900 and 1300 A.D.     

Recent Research on Chaco: Changing Views on Economy, Ritual, and Society

Current research on Chaco Canyon and its surrounding outlier communities is at an important juncture. Rather than trying to argue for the presence or absence of complexity, archaeologists working in the area are asking different questions, especially how Chacoan political, economic, ritual, and social organization were structured. These lines of inquiry do not attempt to pigeonhole Chaco into traditional neoevolutionary types, but instead seek to understand the historical trajectory that led to the construction of monumental architecture in Chaco Canyon and a large part of the northern Southwest in the 10th through 12th centuries. This review discusses the conclusions of current research at Chaco including definitions of the Chaco region, recent fieldwork, histories of Chaco archaeology, chronology, paleoenvironmental reconstruction, demography, political organization, outlier communities, economic organization, social organization, ritual, violence, and the post-Chacoan reorganization. Although many issues are hotly debated, there is a growing concensus that power was not based in a centralized political organization and that ritual organization was a key factor in the replication of Chacoan architecture across a vast regional landscape. Exactly how ritual, social, and political organization intersected is a central question for Chaco scholars. The resolution of this problem will prove to be of interest to all archaeologists working with intermediate societies across the globe.     

Geographic Visualization in Archaeology

Archaeologists are often considered frontrunners in employing spatial approaches within the social sciences and humanities, including geospatial technologies such as geographic information systems (GIS) that are now routinely used in archaeology. Since the late 1980s, GIS has mainly been used to support data collection and management as well as spatial analysis and modeling. While fruitful, these efforts have arguably neglected the potential contribution of advanced visualization methods to the generation of broader archaeological knowledge. This paper reviews the use of GIS in archaeology from a geographic visualization (geovisual) perspective and examines how these methods can broaden the scope of archaeological research in an era of more user-friendly cyber-infrastructures. Like most computational databases, GIS do not easily support temporal data. This limitation is particularly problematic in archaeology because processes and events are best understood in space and time. To deal with such shortcomings in existing tools, archaeologists often end up having to reduce the diversity and complexity of archaeological phenomena. Recent developments in geographic visualization begin to address some of these issues and are pertinent in the globalized world as archaeologists amass vast new bodies of georeferenced information and work towards integrating them with traditional archaeological data. Greater effort in developing geovisualization and geovisual analytics appropriate for archaeological data can create opportunities to visualize, navigate, and assess different sources of information within the larger archaeological community, thus enhancing possibilities for collaborative research and new forms of critical inquiry.     

Copper Working Technologies, Contexts of Use, and Social Complexity in the Eastern Woodlands of Native North America

The creative ways in which native North American peoples of the Eastern Woodlands utilized copper throughout prehistory present provocative contrasts to models of Old World metallurgical development. Archaeological approaches that incorporate laboratory methods into investigations of indigenous metalworking practice have brought new insights and raised new questions about the development and use of techniques, sources of materials, and the social dynamics of copper consumption. This paper integrates the results of these studies into a discussion of copper use in Old Copper, Hopewellian, and Mississippian traditions that focuses on illuminating the complex relations among levels of technological sophistication in the manipulation of the material itself, the often elaborate and meaning-laden contexts in which artifacts were used, and the relative social complexity of the cultures that supported copper procurement, transformation, and use. It is suggested that ‘technological style’ approaches will assist archaeologists in efforts to flesh out culture-specific aspects of its consumption.     

Dynamic Trajectories,Adaptive Cycles,and Complexity in Culture Change

Trends in interdisciplinary research over the last two decades have opened new perspectives and pushed forward our understanding of how complex social systems function. This study explores several theories of social change that have emerged from increasingly interdisciplinary perspectives in combination with complexity theory. Resilience theory and related concepts of adaptive cycles and panarchy are now being applied extensively to the study of a variety of human social systems. However, there is still the need to further explore the implications of how human systems differ from the ecologies of other species. A case study drawn from early polity formation in Inner Asia is used to assess the effectiveness of differing approaches. Certain theoretical gaps are described and a series of concepts within a theory of dynamic trajectories are proposed that focus on high-level patterns of social change. The basic elements of the theory include dynamics of the scope and scale of polities, the probability space in which change occurs, and the strands or bundles of social and cultural characteristics that represent the substance of trajectory. As the trajectory patterns manifest, they envelop constraints and opportunities influencing future patterns. Agent-based models are used to illustrate aspects of the dynamic trajectory theory, especially economic decision-making within specific landscapes and control hierarchies in the context of competing polities. Rather than repeating cycles, the results reveal reorganization modes highlighting the significance of continuity and opportunity in social change.     

Complexity science and human geography

Complexity science has attracted considerable attention in a number of disciplines. However, this perspective on scientific understanding remains ill defined. In this paper, ideas and approaches from complexity science are reviewed. It appears that complexity science fundamentally is driven by ontological decisions on the part of the investigator. This is a result of the epistemological approach fundamental to complexity as it is currently studied, which is based on the construction of computer simulation models of reality. This methodology requires that researchers decide what exists and is important enough to represent in a simulation, and also what to leave out. Although this points to serious difficulties with complexity science, it is argued that the approach nevertheless has much to offer human geography. Drawing on complexity science, renewed engagements between physical and human geography, and between both and geographical information science seem possible, based on clearly shared concerns with the representation of geographical phenomena. In conclusion, it is suggested that seeing models as a source of geographical narratives may be a useful way to promote constructive engagement between different perspectives in the discipline.     

Hunters and gatherers past and present: Perspectives on diversity,teaching, and information transmission

This article reviews four books on hunters and gatherers. It begins with a discussion of the debates over the concept of hunter-gatherers. Theoretical approaches to hunter-gather studies are examined briefly. The view then assesses the four books and the various subjects which they address. These subjects include the issue of ethnographic analogy, diversity, evolution, and archaeological perspectives as well as understanding contemporary hunter-gatherer societies. Additional topics include land use, the assignment of meaning to landscapes, way finding, territoriality, boundary-marking, and networks. Social learning, teaching, and information dissemination are discussed, with emphasis on some of the things that are learned, such as sharing, fair treatment of others, the importance of compassion, and moral values. Hunter-gatherer studies have evolved to the point where both archaeologists and anthropologists are taking into careful consideration the need to consider both past and present in their investigations and to focus also on the non-hunter-gatherer societies with whom they are interacting. As people who defined themselves as indigenous, hunter-gatherers are well aware of the social, economic, environmental and political challenges that they are facing, and they are seeking to address these challenges along with support organizations and researchers in an attempt to ensure their long-term security and well-being.     

Current Research on Late Precontact Societies of the Midcontinental United States

Research during the past decade on Late Precontact societies (ca. A.D. 1000–1600/1700) in the Midcontinent, particularly Mississippian, Oneota, Fort Ancient, and Late Woodland, is strongly rooted in empirical approaches. While some of this work is pursued within a broadly evolutionary interpretive framework, other scholars emphasize agency and practice theory, symbolism, the historically contingent nature of human action, and cultural heterogeneity in sociopolitical organization, political economy, and subsistence. Dynamic models of the settlement systems and demography of complex societies have developed out of the recent growth in site inventories and refinements in ceramic chronologies and have come to be closely linked with theoretical treatments of sociopolitical organization. Various physical and chemical analytical techniques are commonly applied to the analysis of archaeological materials in this region, contributing to our understanding of direct and indirect exchange relationships and other forms of interaction, especially those between hierarchical and nonhierarchically organized societies, and enhancing our understanding of the kinds of foods prepared and eaten by people in the past.     

Mobility,Land Use,and Leadership in Small-Scale and Middle-Range Societies

Over the past century, the fields of archaeology and anthropology have produced a number of different theoretical approaches and a substantial body of data aimed at ways to understand hunter-gatherer, horticultural, and agropastoral societies. This review considers four recent edited volumes on foraging and food-producing societies. These books deal in innovative ways with a broad array of issues, including transitions in human prehistory and history, mobility, land use, sharing, technology, social leveling strategies, leadership, and the formation of social hierarchies. Small-scale societies include hunter-gatherers or foragers, while middle-range societies may include complex hunter-gatherer (ones with storage and delayed return systems), horticultural, and agropastoral societies, some of them with institutionalized leadership, status hierarchies, and differential access to power and resources. An important set of themes in these books includes diversity in adaptations to complex social and natural environments, the significance of (1) matter, (2) energy, and (3) information in small-scale and middle-range societies on several continents, the persistence of foraging, and the development of inequality. The roles of sharing, exchange, and leadership in small-scale and middle-range societies are explored, as are explanations for social, economic, and political transformations among groups over time and across space.     

Recent Research in the Southern Highlands and Pacific Coast of Mesoamerica

Recent research on the southern highlands and Pacific Coast of Mesoamerica has investigated topics of interest to all archaeologists. Although best known for studies on the development of early social complexity, research in the region also has addressed hunter/gatherer subsistence patterns, early sedentism, the origins of food production, the development of the state, migration, the construction of social identity, political economy, and the collapse of complex societies. Research has accelerated in the past ten years, fueled by efforts of scholars from a number of disciplines. Recent paleo-ecological studies have provided much needed data for understanding human social action against the backdrop of the natural environment, while the region also has been the scene for testing numerous innovative theories of social change. Studies of identity and its manifestation in material culture have been especially productive.     

Mortuary practices: Their social,philosophical-religious,circumstantial, and physical determinants

Recent, mainstream, American mortuary archaeology, in its paradigmatic outlook, middle-range theory, analytic methodology, and case studies, has emphasized social organization as the primary factor that determines mortuary practices. Broader anthropological and social science traditions have recognized philosophical-religious beliefs as additional, important determinants. The historical roots of mortuary archaeology's focus on the social, and the consequence of this on theory development, is reviewed. Then, through a Human Relations Area Files (HRAF) cross-cultural survey, the kinds of philosophical-religious, social organizational, circumstantial, and physical factors that affect specific kinds of mortuary practices, and the relative importance of these factors, are documented. The data are also used to test basic premises that mortuary archaeologists routinely use today to reconstruct social organization. A balanced, more holistic, and multidisciplinary approach, which considers many kinds of causes beyond social ones, is found necessary to interpret mortuary remains and to reconstruct the past from them.     

Style and information: An analysis of Susiana ceramics

Style is viewed as a mode of communication that signals social group identification and helps to maintain boundaries between social groups. A theoretical framework is developed which relates changes in social messaging in the stylistic mode to changes in the sociopolitical organization of chiefly societies. Observable changes in style are specified for situations in which sociopolitical organization becomes more complex through an increase in horizontal differentiation of social units, as well as those in which complexity increases through vertical differentiation. A methodology for quantifying changes in stylistic complexity, using two measures of redundancy and the information statistic H, is outlined. A specific proposition relating changes in sociopolitical and stylistic complexity in chiefly societies is tested using painted ceramic bowls from several late sixth and fifth millennium B.C. sites on the Susiana Plain in Iran.     

Using network expectations to identify multiple exchange systems: A case study from Postclassic Sauce and its hinterland in Veracruz,Mexico

Exchanges of material objects often play a pivotal role in the trajectories of political, social, and economic development for ancient societies, but the study can be challenging because of the complexity of exchange. Multiple forms of exchange co-exist in ancient societies including market exchange and social exchange such as gift-giving. A further complicating factor is that different exchange systems such as redistribution and central place market exchange can result in the same regional spatial patterning of artifacts. Recent innovations in identifying exchange systems use network expectations for spatial, contextual, and distributional information to help distinguish between social exchanges such as gift-giving versus market exchange using household inventories. I introduce a Monte Carlo computer simulation to evaluate network expectations for alternative exchange mechanisms, using a case study of decorated ceramics from 65 residential inventories from the center of Sauce and its hinterland during the Middle Postclassic period (1200–1350 A.D.) in southcentral Veracruz, Mexico. Using these new tools, I identify the coexistence of several exchange systems operating simultaneously. The methods developed here demonstrate the potential of using network expectations to refine existing methods to identify different exchange systems that can be applied to other complex ancient economies.     

Zooarchaeology in Complex Societies: Political Economy, Status, and Ideology

The zooarchaeology of complex societies provides insights into the interrelated social and economic relationships that people and animals created. I present a synthesis of zooarchaeological research published since the early 1990s that addresses political economy, status distinctions, and the ideological and ritual roles of animals in complex cultures. I address current approaches and applications as well as theoretical shifts in zooarchaeological practice. Research indicates there is great variability across space and time in how past peoples used animals to generate economic surplus, to establish status differentiation within societies, and to create symbolic meaning through sacrifices, offerings, and in feasts. The study of human/animal interactions in complex societies can contribute to fundamental questions of broad relevance regarding political and social life.     

Contributions of GIS and Satellite-based Remote Sensing to Landscape Archaeology in the Middle East

This article explores the coevolution of landscape approaches and geospatial tools in Middle Eastern archaeology. From the first aerial reconnaissance programs, archaeologists recognized the value of a view from above to address overarching human–environmental questions that underpin regional historical narratives. The diversity and density of visible remains in the landscape of the Middle East has required an integrative approach, encompassed in the perspective of landscape as a static artifact, landscape as built features, landscape as a system, and landscape as a dynamic construct, which cuts across modern political boundaries. Recent advances in geospatial tools and datasets have enabled archaeologists to make significant progress on four long-standing questions of how to (1) best document and manage rapidly disappearing ancient landscapes, (2) understand landscape formation processes, (3) identify and interpret economic, environmental, and social influences that result in long-term settlement and land use patterns, and (4) recognize and contextualize the interplay between environment and human agency in the evolution of ancient economies and transformations in socio-organizational complexity.     

The Production and Exchange of Marine Shell Prestige Goods

Marine shell ornaments have several characteristics that make them significant for archaeological analysis. Made from a raw material valued by cultures throughout the world and imbued with water, life, health, and fertility symbolism, shell objects have functioned as prestige goods. Shell prestige goods circulated between individuals, groups, and societies and materialized interpersonal relationships, making them valuable for archaeologists shifting focus from objects to the people in past societies. Shell ornaments had multiple roles, including ornamentation, wealth, marking status, and as ritual paraphernalia, and had varying symbolic associations even within a society. The rich ethnographic literature on shell use provides a source for archaeological model building. Marine shell artifacts often moved between societies and across long distances, offering a way for archaeologists to explore regional relationships and the interactions between ancient societies. To do this requires using several scales of analysis to investigate archaeological residues of a system that includes marine shell ornaments, the social organization of their production and exchange, and the people who made, displayed, and circulated them.     

The Archaeology of Trading Systems,Part 1: Towards a New Trade Synthesis

After almost three centuries of investigations into the question of what it means to be human and the historical processes of becoming human, archaeologists have amassed a huge volume of data on prehistoric human interactions. One of the largest data sets available is on the global distribution and exchange of materials and commodities. What still remains insufficiently understood is the precise nature of these interactions and their role in shaping the diverse cultures that make up the human family as we know it. A plethora of theoretical models combined with a multitude of methodological approaches exist to explain one important aspect of human interaction—trade—and its role and place in shaping humanity. We argue that trade parallels political, religious, and social processes as one of the most significant factors to have affected our evolution. Here we review published literature on archaeological approaches to trade, including the primitivist-modernist and substantivist-formalist-Marxist debates. We also discuss economic, historical, and ethnographic research that directly addresses the role of traders and trade in both past and contemporary societies. In keeping with the complexities of interaction between trade and other aspects of human behavior, we suggest moving away from the either/or perspective or strong identification with any particular paradigm and suggest a return to the middle through a combinational approach to the study of trade in past societies.     

Measuring the Complexity of Past Social Systems: a Task Analysis Approach to the Study of Late Prehistoric Monumentality in Iberia

In this paper, we explore the heuristic potential of a set of ideas about the structural and functional complexity of systems, proposed in the 1990s by theoretical biologist Daniel McShea. In particular, we focus on the structural aspects of the complexity exhibited by social systems organized into low- and intermediate-level functional units (i.e., groups and teams). To address this subject, we describe a methodology suited for measuring the complexity in the organization of work in such systems, which is primarily based on hierarchical task analysis. With this methodology, we approach a concrete case study: the construction of megalithic monuments in late prehistoric Iberia (ca. 3800–1800 BC). On the basis of the analysis of the three best documented, most structurally, and functionally complex monuments built within each of the three periods under study (Late Neolithic, Copper Age, and Early Bronze Age), we found that there was a trend towards less complexity in work organization related to monument building from the Late Neolithic to the Early Bronze Age. We discuss the importance of these results in light of the existing models of social complexity in European Later Prehistory, concluding that a more balanced view of social processes would be obtained if we look at complexity as a property of every different social system integrated into the whole society, and not as an exclusive property of the latter.

     

New world complex societies: Recent economic,social, and political studies

Archaeologists working on the complex societies of Latin America have made impressive empirical advances on a number of fronts during the past five years. This article focuses on economic, social, and political issues, using the following topics for organization: intensive agriculture, demography, exchange, households, urbanism, chiefdoms, and state-level polities. For each topic, I review recent archaeological research and summarize pertinent theoretical issues. Unfortunately, the heavy accumulation of new archaeological results is not matched by the conceptual advances that are needed to explore the analytical significance of the data.     

Protrusion, Bioturbation, and Settlement Detection during Surface Survey: The Lowland Maya Case

In upland settings in humid and semihumid temperate and tropical environments, bioturbation is a major factor in the burial of modest architectural remains, which are abundant components of the settlement systems of complex societies. Surface survey, favored by archaeologists of complex societies as a settlement detection method, seldom is appropriate for discovering architectural remains buried through bioturbation. Where the focus of analysis includes settlement represented by architectural remains, surface survey is appropriate only where all or a representative sample of all types of architectural remains are protrusive. Protrusion describes a relationship (affected by climate, environment, topography, and cultural variables) between the height of a ruined building and the depth of the biomantle, which is the zone of bioturbation. To enable archaeologists to assess the appropriateness of settlement detection procedures, including surface survey, I propose a scheme that classifies architectural remains in terms of their protrusion, building height, and visibility characteristics. The scheme can be employed to determine if and why architectural remains are protrusive in particular study areas. To demonstrate its analytical utility, I apply the scheme and the model of building burial through bioturbation that underlies it to the problem of Maya invisible settlement. I conclude that in the Maya lowlands of Mesoamerica, building remains buried through bioturbation are a more abundant settlement category than many archaeologists have supposed.