Doctoral Dissertation Research: Community and Commodity in the Pueblo III World: Exchange and Integration in the Yellow Jacket Community, A.D.1150-1300

Arizona State University, Scottsdale AZ

Investigators

Abstract

Under the direction of Dr. Michelle Hegmon, Ms Jannette Mobley-Tanaka will collect data for her doctoral dissertation. Using ceramic analysis she will reconstruct social organization in a prehistoric southwest USA Pueblo community. Analysis of community interaction has been critical to archaeologists' understanding of the abandonment of the Mesa Verde region (southwest Colorado) around AD 1300. Communities - important places on the landscape - persisted for generations, even as individuals and households shifted residences frequently, thus these communities were much more than groups of individuals. Communities also became larger and more densely packed over time, and eventually controlled access to agricultural lands and served as units of defense and conflict. This picture, while fascinating, is based almost exclusively on analyses of the interaction among communities, rather than the social dynamics within communities. Mobley-Tanaka's research will fill this gap, utilizing data from the large Yellow Jacket community in southwest Colorado to analyze intra-community interaction. Archaeologists rarely are able to undertake such detailed analyses, but they are possible in this case because of (1) many years of research at Yellow Jacket; (2) deposits that are clearly associated with individual residences; (3) the identification of three pottery-making kilns at the site. These circumstances will allow Mobley-Tanaka to determine where households obtained their domestic goods - information that can be used to trace patterns of consumption and exchange at the intra-community level. NSF funds will support analyses concerning the production and distribution of pottery. Petrographic analysis will allow identification of where the pottery was made and thus how it was distributed across the community. These data can answer questions about the nature of inter-household interaction within the community: Were households relatively independent or strongly interdependent? Were there various networks of interacting households? Results regarding intra-community dynamics will be combined with extant understandings of inter-community interaction to illuminate the role of communities in the abandonment of the Mesa Verde region and to better understand the nature of community in the past. They will also increase understanding of an important aspect of US prehistory and assist in training a promising young scientist.