Understanding Abandonments in the North American Southwest

The North American Southwest is renowned for its rich archaeological record. Thousands of prehistoric houses and ceremonial centers remain partially standing or form mounds that mark prehistoric villages that were once actively occupied and remain important to the descendants. The visibility of archaeological remains has sparked interest in questions of abandonment among archaeologists and the lay public. We explore reasons for this interest, how it is manifest in archaeological research, and how perception of that research influences popular views of the past and of native people. Our focus is on explanations for the causes of site and regional abandonment as well as on explications of the processes by which abandonments occur. Essential to our perspective is the view that abandonment is a process that involves decisions to move, which may be promoted by dire circumstances, but which are most often settlement strategies. The process of moving requires economic, social, and political decisions about the places from which people move and to which they move.     

Perspectives on North American women

Arrom, Silvia Marina. The Women of Mexico City, 1790–1857. Stanford University Press, 1985. xii + 384 pp. including photographs, appendices, bibliography, and index. $42.50 cloth.

Bataille, Gretchen M., and Kathleen Mullen Sands. American Indian Women: Telling Their Lives. Lincoln: University of Nebraska Press, 1984. ix + 209 pp. including bibliography and index. $18.95 cloth.     

The archaic prehistory of the North American Southwest

Evidence today suggests that by at least 8000 to 8500 B.P., Archaic hunter-gatherer economies were established throughout the North American Southwest. The Early Archaic seems to be a period of considerable variability across the subregions; this may be a product of currently slim knowledge of the period, or it may indicate that the region witnessed considerable flux. With the Middle Archaic period from 5500 to 3500 B.P. there seems to be greater similarity in material culture across the region and a definite increase in the number of known sites. Finally, the Late Archaic/Early Agricultural period from 3500 to 2000 or 1500 B.P. sees the establishment of a mixed farming-foraging economy in much of the Southwest with apparently major changes in subsistence-settlement systems. Preagricultural Archaic land use patterns are known in broad outline but not in detail; high mobility by small social groups in an annual round would have permitted exploitation of diverse biotic communities. In most parts of the region, significant socioeconomic change accompanies the incorporation of agriculture into the late preceramic period, as witnessed by the appearance of longer-term residential sites with pitstructures and storage features.     

Remarks on the Retreat of the North American Ice Sheet

A reply by two North American geographers to the preceding article presents some recent results of North American studies and suggests that the role of water bodies in influencing cyclogenesis is not universal. The Black Sea is cited as an example of a large water body that does not act as a major source of cyclonic activity. Other arguments are presented questioning the significance of the large proglacial lakes in influencing storm tracks near the margin of the ice sheet.     

Reflections on North American Pacific Coast prehistory

The Pacific Coast of North America was occupied by many distinctive groups of coastal hunter-gatherers at the times of early contacts with Europeans. Despite significant cultural diversity, Pacific Coast peoples shared lifeways oriented toward generally similar marine, nearshore, littoral, and estuarine habitats. In this paper, we examine some major issues that guide much of the archaeology done along the Pacific Coast, then discuss some of the theoretical and methodological problems that limit the efficacy of archaeological reconstructions. Most archaeological research conducted on North America's Pacific Coast has been oriented toward the search for the origins and development of a variety of cultural patterns. A comparative review of California and Northwest Coast sequences provides interesting parallels and discrepancies in the approaches taken in studying some of the major issues in Pacific Coast prehistory.     

Threads: Collecting Cloth in the North American French Colonies

Trade of European-produced cloth and clothing enabled indigenous and non-indigenous inhabitants of colonial New France to rethink the “hand-woven”, impacting how self could be presented through dress. At the same time, objects were being collected in New France for cabinets of curiosities and museums. These different collections resonated in different ways through history, subsequently influencing modern understandings of colonial cloth and clothing. This paper examines colonial experiences of cloth by looking at archaeological remnants of cloth and cloth production as compared to how indigenous and non-indigenous colonial peoples were and are being represented by cloth and clothing in museum collections.