The making of made people: The prehistoric evolution of hierocracy among the Northern Tiwa of New Mexico.

Abstract

This study examines the evolution of a hierocratic system among the ancestral Northern Tiwa peoples of New Mexico. Building from a reanalysis of the social organization of Taos Pueblo (drawn largely from the unpublished ethnographic notes of Matilda Cox Stevenson), Northern Tiwa hierocracy is defined as <italic>a system of governance in which a corporation of priests dominated the structures of group decision-making and prestige by virtue of their control of the ritual labor upon which the community was dependent</italic>. It is argued that this system emerged at the large village of T'aitona (Pot Creek Pueblo) at the close of the 13<super>th</super> century AD following, and largely in response to, a period of immigration and ethnic conflict. To this end, I present the results of a large-scale ceramic study involving stylistic and compositional (INAA and petrography) analyses that refine the local chronological sequence and bring to light a period of immigration at the end of the 12<italic>th</italic> century. I report on new as well as existing survey work in order to document settlement pattern and demographic changes, and to examine the structure of an elaborate network of shrines associated with T'aitona's occupation. Analyses of T'aitona's architecture and layout are also undertaken to explore the ritual grammar underlying the village's growth and to document the local initiation of a moiety system. The results of the excavation of a D-shaped kiva further highlight how the new moiety system served as a structuring principle in religious symbolism. Through additional material culture studies, I also present new evidence for a transformation in katsina ritual in the early 14<super>th</super> century. I argue that religious elaboration in the Northern Tiwa tradition co-occurred with, and was responsible for, population decline and village instability. The traditional position---that Pueblo religion necessarily enhanced integration and social solidarity---is therefore found to be incorrect. Northern Tiwa religious practices are interpreted instead as a form of intracommunity political competition that, in the early 14<super>th</super> century at least, led to community <italic>dis</italic>integration. In conclusion, I consider the implications of Northern Tiwa hierocracy for the evolution of governance in small-scale or tribal societies generally.