Communities of soil and stone: An archaeological investigation of population aggregation among the Mesa Verde region Anasazi, A.D. 900--1300.

Abstract

This research seeks to redirect the present approaches to population aggregation, particularly the study of village development, to include a broader consideration of the roles of community organization within politically non-stratified, or tribal societies. A model is developed that addresses infracommunity and community organization, particularly in regard to land tenure and the social definition of access rights to necessary resources. The model, which focuses on the dynamics of community formation, population growth, residential aggregation, and changes in the social landscape among sedentary, pre-state societies, is assessed from two complementary perspectives. First, a cross-cultural approach is used to evaluate the model. Data from world-wide and regional samples support the existence of significant relationships between the intensity of labor invested in subsistence strategies, the demographic scale of social groups that define access to important resources, and demographic limits on the scale of communities and resource access groups within politically non-stratified societies. Additional ethnographic data demonstrate how social integrative architecture such as meeting houses and communal structures serve to integrate social groups both at and below the community level in these societies. These ethnographically supported expectations of the model are tested on archaeological data from the Mesa Verde region of southwestern Colorado. Survey and excavation data from the Montezuma Valley support relationships between regional population growth, intensification of labor investment in subsistence practices, increases in the size of co-residential groups sharing primary access to resources, and increases in community size through time. Survey data indicate that between at least A.D. 600-1300, the northern Anasazi utilized specialized architectural structures to integrate social groups below the community level, as well as to symbolize community cohesion and interdependence within the regional social landscape. Thus, while changes occurred in the demographic scale of Anasazi social groups, spatial organization of residential settlement patterns, and Anasazi subsistence strategies, the community served as a salient organizational entity throughout this period of Anasazi occupation in the northern Southwest.