New Perspectives on Site Function and Scale of Cerro de Trincheras, Sonora, Mexico PDF Download

Author: Maria O'Donovan
Publisher: Arizona State Museum
ISBN:
Category : Social Science
Languages : en
Pages : 134

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Book Description
The 1991 survey of Cerro de Trincheras provided information on broad scale patterning of artifacts and architecture. This information indicates that there are three general areas of the site domestic, ritual, and agricultural. Domestic areas contain extensive refuse, including shell debitage and jewelry. The distribution of shell within domestic space indicates that some households were more involved in this production than others, suggesting some social inequities. Controlled access to ritual areas and secrecy surrounding ritual knowledge also suggest inequalities within social organization. These inequalities may tie to Cerro de Trincheras' role within the region and perhaps in inter-regional relations. Taken as a whole, the evidence from Cerro de Trincheras clearly refutes theories that focus on defensive aspects as a primary factor in site type formation. Cerro de Trincheras was the product of a complex web of social relations operating at multiple scales, not solely for defensive needs."

Author: Suzanne K. Fish
Publisher: University of Arizona Press
ISBN: 0816539340
Category : Social Science
Languages : en
Pages : 353

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Book Description
The intriguing hilltop archaeological sites known as cerros de trincheras span almost three millennia, from 1250 BC to AD 1450. Archaeologists have long viewed them as a unitary phenomenon because they all have masonry architecture and occur mostly on low volcanic peaks. Scattered across the southwestern United States and northwestern Mexico, these sites received little comprehensive research until the 1980s. This first volume in the Amerind Studies in Archaeology series from the Amerind Foundation documents considerable variability among trincheras sites with respect to age, geographic location, and cultural affiliation. This multi-author volume integrates a remarkable body of new data representing a textbook-like array of current research issues and methodologies in the archaeology of the region. Scholars from the United States and Mexico offer original research on trincheras sites in Chihuahua, Sonora, Arizona, and New Mexico. Scales of focus range from intensive intrasite sampling to the largest contiguous survey in the region. Authors incorporate spatial analyses, artifact studies, environmental and subsistence data, ethnographic analogs, ethnohistorical records, cross-cultural comparisons, archaeology, and archival resources. The volume’s discussions contribute innovative approaches to worldwide interpretations of landscapes marked by hilltop sites. Contributors present meticulous research arguing that many trincheras sites were primarily used for habitation and ceremonial rites, in addition to previously predominant views of them as defensive refuges. Because trincheras occupations date from the late preceramic era to shortly before Spanish contact, authors relate them to early forms of agriculture, the emergence of village life, the appearance of differentiated settlement systems, and tendencies toward political and ritual centralization. Detailed maps and figures illustrate the text, and close-up aerial photographs capture the visual essence of the sites, highlighted by a section that includes color photographs and an essay by renowned photographer Adriel Heisey. Contributors: Christian E. Downum Paul R. Fish Suzanne K. Fish Robert J. Hard Adriel Heisey Stephen A. Kowalewski Randall H. McGuire Ben A. Nelson John R. Roney Judith Taylor M. Elisa Villalpando Joseph Vogel Henry Wallace David R. Wilcox J. Scott Wood

Author: William Walker
Publisher: University Press of Colorado
ISBN: 1607320916
Category : Social Science
Languages : en
Pages : 311

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Book Description
Organized by the theme of place and place-making in the Southwest, Contemporary Archaeologies of the Southwest emphasizes the method and theory for the study of radical changes in religion, settlement patterns, and material culture associated with population migration, colonialism, and climate change during the last 1,000 years. Chapters address place-making in Chaco Canyon, recent trends in landscape archaeology, the formation of identities, landscape boundaries, and the movement associated with these aspects of place-making. They address how interaction of peoples with objects brings landscapes to life. Representing a diverse cross section of Southwestern archaeologists, the authors of this volume push the boundaries of archaeological method and theory, building a strong foundation for future Southwest studies. This book will be of interest to professional and academic archaeologists, as well as students working in the American Southwest.

Author: Christine S. VanPool
Publisher: Rowman Altamira
ISBN: 0759113955
Category : Social Science
Languages : en
Pages : 277

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Book Description
Religion mattered to the prehistoric Southwestern people, just as it matters to their descendents today. Examining the role of religion can help to explain architecture, pottery, agriculture, even commerce. But archaeologists have only recently developed the theoretical and methodological tools with which to study this topic. Religion in the Prehispanic Southwest marks the first book-length study of prehistoric religion in the region. Drawing on a rich array of empirical approaches, the contributors show the importance of understanding beliefs and ritual for a range of time periods and southwestern societies. For professional and avocational archaeologists, for religion scholars and students, Religion in the Prehispanic Southwest represents an important contribution.

Author: Timothy R. Pauketat
Publisher: Oxford University Press, USA
ISBN: 0195380118
Category : History
Languages : en
Pages : 694

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Book Description
The Oxford Handbook of North American Archaeology reviews the continent's first and last foragers, farmers, and great pre-Columbian civic and ceremonial centers, from Chaco Canyon to Moundville and beyond.

Author: Michael J. Harrower
Publisher: Cambridge University Press
ISBN: 1316552926
Category : Social Science
Languages : en
Pages : 229

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Book Description
This book offers a new interpretation of the spatial-political-environmental dynamics of water and irrigation in long-term histories of arid regions. It compares ancient Southwest Arabia (3500 BC–AD 600) with the American West (2000 BC–AD 1950) in global context to illustrate similarities and differences among environmental, cultural, political, and religious dynamics of water. It combines archaeological exploration and field studies of farming in Yemen with social theory and spatial technologies, including satellite imagery, Global Positioning System (GPS), and Geographic Information Systems (GIS) mapping. In both ancient Yemen and the American West, agricultural production focused not where rain-fed agriculture was possible, but in hyper-arid areas where massive state-constructed irrigation schemes politically and ideologically validated state sovereignty. While shaped by profound differences and contingencies, ancient Yemen and the American West are mutually informative in clarifying human geographies of water that are important to understandings of America, Arabia, and contemporary conflicts between civilizations deemed East and West.

Author: Alan P. Sullivan
Publisher: University of Arizona Press
ISBN: 9780816525140
Category : Social Science
Languages : en
Pages : 312

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Book Description
Hinterlands and Regional Dynamics in the Ancient Southwest is the first volume dedicated to understanding the nature of and changes in regional social autonomy, political hegemony, and organizational complexity across the entire prehistoric American Southwest. With geographic coverage extending from the Great Plains to the Colorado River, and from Mesa Verde to the international border, the volumeÕs ten case studies synthesize research that enhances our understanding of the ancient SouthwestÕs highly variable demographic, land use, and economic histories. For this volume, ÒhinterlandsÓ are those areas whose archaeological records do not disclose the ceramic, architectural, and network evidence that initially led to the establishment of the Hohokam, Chaco, and Casas Grandes regional systems. Employing a variety of perspectives, such as the cultural landscapes approach, heterarchy, and the common-pool resource model, as well as technical methods, such as petrographic and stylistic-attribute analyses, the volumeÕs contributors explore variation in hinterland identities, subsistence ecology, and sociopolitical organization as regional systems expanded and contracted between the 9th and 14th centuries AD. The hinterlands of the prehistoric Southwest were home to a substantial number of people and were often used as resource catchments by the inhabitants of regional systems. Importantly, hinterlands also influenced developments of nearby regional systems, under whose footprint they managed to retain considerable autonomy. By considering the dynamics between hinterlands and regional systems, the volume reveals unappreciated aspects of the ancient SouthwestÕs peoples and their lives, thereby deepening our awareness of the regionÕs rich and complicated cultural past.

Author: Linda S. Cordell
Publisher: University of Arizona Press
ISBN: 0816544530
Category : Social Science
Languages : en
Pages : 209

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Book Description
The peoples of the American Southwest during the 13th through the 17th centuries witnessed dramatic changes in settlement size, exchange relationships, ideology, social organization, and migrations that included those of the first European settlers. Concomitant with these world-shaking events, communities of potters began producing new kinds of wares—particularly polychrome and glaze-paint decorated pottery—that entailed new technologies and new materials. The contributors to this volume present results of their collaborative research into the production and distribution of these new wares, including cutting-edge chemical and petrographic analyses. They use the insights gained to reflect on the changing nature of communities of potters as they participated in the dynamic social conditions of their world.

Author: Bradley J. Vierra
Publisher: University of Texas Press
ISBN: 0292773811
Category : Social Science
Languages : en
Pages : 345

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Book Description
Why and when human societies shifted from nomadic hunting and gathering to settled agriculture engages the interest of scholars around the world. One of the most fruitful areas in which to study this issue is the North American Southwest, where Late Archaic inhabitants of the Sonoran and Chihuahuan Deserts of Mexico, Arizona, and New Mexico turned to farming while their counterparts in Trans-Pecos and South Texas continued to forage. By investigating the environmental, biological, and cultural factors that led to these differing patterns of development, we can identify some of the necessary conditions for the rise of agriculture and the corresponding evolution of village life. The twelve papers in this volume synthesize previous and ongoing research and offer new theoretical models to provide the most up-to-date picture of life during the Late Archaic (from 3,000 to 1,500 years ago) across the entire North American Borderlands. Some of the papers focus on specific research topics such as stone tool technology and mobility patterns. Others study the development of agriculture across whole regions within the Borderlands. The two concluding papers trace pan-regional patterns in the adoption of farming and also link them to the growth of agriculture in other parts of the world.

Author: Matthew C. Pailes
Publisher: University Press of Colorado
ISBN: 0932839665
Category : Social Science
Languages : en
Pages : 229

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Book Description
This approachable book in the SAA Press Current Perspectives Series is a comprehensive synthesis of Northwest Mexico from the US border to the Mesoamerican frontier. Filling a vital gap in the regional literature, it serves as an essential reference not only for those interested in the specific history of this area of Mexico but western North America writ large. A period-by-period review of approximately 14,000 years reveals the dynamic connections that knitted together societies inhabiting the Sea of Cortez coast, the Sonoran and Chihuahuan Deserts, and the Sierra Madre Occidental. Networks of interaction spanned these diverse ecological, topographical, and cultural terrains in the millennia following the demise of the megafauna. The authors provide a fresh perspective that refutes depictions of the Northwest as a simple filter or conduit of happenings to the north or south, and they highlight the role local motivations and dynamics played in facilitating continental-scale processes.