Doctoral Dissertation Improvement Grant: Community Formation, Migration, and Social Transformation in Ancestral Puebloan Society

Arizona State University, Scottsdale AZ

Investigators

Abstract

Under the supervision of Dr. Keith Kintigh, Gregson Schachner will conduct a research project aimed at understanding the formation of ancestral Puebloan villages in the El Morro Valley of west-central New Mexico during the AD 1200s. Prior to the thirteenth century, the El Morro Valley was used by nearby Puebloan populations as a resource gathering area and for sporadic, short-term habitation. However, by the late AD 1200s, thousands of migrant Puebloan farmers founded a series of villages and transformed the El Morro Valley into one of the largest population centers on the Colorado Plateau. Schachner's research will utilize analyses of regional settlement patterns and ceramic exchange in order to understand the process of migration and its resulting effects on community formation. The formation of social networks that structure social interaction on a local level is one of the key processes ensuring successful human settlements. The ubiquity of these networks in daily life makes their appearance seem unproblematic and timeless. However, it is during the formation of these networks that dramatic changes in community structure and traditions may occur. Schachner's research will examine the process of community formation during a period following the movement of migrant groups into an uninhabited area where few aspects of community or place had been previously defined. By focusing on the variety of ways in which communities formed under these circumstances, this project will explore how local social networks emerge, function, and are transformed through human interaction. Schachner's study will employ a two-pronged, comparative methodology focused on ancient El Morro Valley settlement patterns and ceramic exchange. Settlement pattern analyses will highlight the chronology, patterns of growth, and social scale of community formation in multiple villages. This project will also employ instrumental neutron activation analysis to track the exchange of two different ceramic types in order to assess the geographic origins of migrant populations, social diversity within newly founded communities, and the maintenance of external social ties that are often key channels of population movement and continuing social support. By utilizing a variety of methods and types of data, Schachner's study will contribute to a growing body of scholarship that focuses on the interplay between population movement, community formation, and pan-regional social transformations in small-scale societies. This research is a key component of the training of a young scholar and will contribute to an ongoing project that integrates graduate and undergraduate researchers. Site and ceramic data from this project will be available to other scholars in the New Mexico Cultural Resource Information System and the University of Missouri Archaeometry Lab ceramic compositional database, respectively. This project will form the basis of a Ph.D. dissertation, be summarized in professional articles, and presented in public formats. This study also focuses on a key period of ancestral Puebloan history and may be of interest to local tribal peoples. In addition, fieldwork for this research has been largely conducted on private lands and ongoing cooperation with local landowners provides an important avenue for encouraging archaeological site preservation in a rapidly developing area.