Distinctive Places, Suitable Spaces: Conceptualizing Mobile Group Occupational Duration and Landscape Use

While extreme mobility and ensconced sedentism can be easily distinguished in the archeological record, effective means are lacking of discriminating between degrees of mobility that may range from seasonal shifts by farmers to recurrent moves across the landscape as a way of life. Fortunately, site layout and the way space is used are related to expectations regarding length of stay, and though they are not quantifiable measures, they provide linkages between the active and material realms. Short stays elicit a search for distinctive characteristics of a place rather than investing in the modification of a place. The quest for suitable spaces is a matter of fact among mobile groups, whereas sedentary groups, or those expecting to stay in one place for an extended period, tend to build their environment to suit their needs, even formalizing spaces in consistent ways from place to place. By understanding the ramifications of these concepts it is possible to distinguish between differing degrees of mobility of groups occupying similar environmental zones in the southern portion of the American Southwest in the protohistoric and early historic periods and to apply these to wider contexts.