Collaborative Research: Exploring Adaptive Social Networks in the Face of Geographic Adversity

University Of Arizona, Tucson AZ

Investigators

Abstract

The fundamental goal of this research is an understanding of how traditional groups maintain and adapt social ties over time and across large geographic areas in spite of their low population density and changing natural environment. The research is focused in the United States Southwest where significant long-term environmental changes set the scene for observing societal network changes over time. Improved understanding of how historic societies adapted provides insight into how modern-day traditional societies might adapt and maintain their own social networks. With National Science Foundation support, Dr. Barbara Mills and Dr. Jeffery Clark will collaborate with a team of researchers to look at the dynamics of social and spatial networks in the archaeology of the Chaco region of the U.S. Southwest. The research team will combine social network analysis and geographic information systems to analyze ceramic, lithic, and architectural data in the Chaco region. Chaco Canyon World Heritage Site is at the spatial center of what has been called the "Chaco World" during the 10th to early 12th centuries, and contains a concentration of architectural features known as great houses and great kivas. How it came to prominence and the social relationship of the central canyon to contemporaneous communities are enduring archaeological questions of broad interest. The research builds on a considerable amount of past research in the Chaco region by compiling a new dataset integrating architectural and material culture data from within and outside Chaco Canyon. The database will add to the Chaco World database at the Chaco Research Archive and ceramic and lithic data for the post-A.D. 1200 period from the Southwest Social Networks Project. New ceramic analyses of existing collections and obsidian provenance analyses will augment data from published and unpublished reports. These data will be used to address the following questions: (1) How were Chaco great houses related to each other? (2) Were Pueblo Bonito and other Chaco Canyon great houses socially central in the regional network? (3) How did trajectories of great house and great kiva social networks change over time? And (4) how did great houses and great kivas relate to their surrounding communities of small houses? Recent research has suggested the need to analyze data from throughout the region, without assuming it was an integrated system, to better understand the ways in which great house communities were connected to each other and the central canyon. The research has the potential to resolve several questions currently being raised in many archaeological regions, not just Chaco. These include the relationship of hierarchy and centrality, and the role of specific historical processes such as migration, social diversification, and inequality in non-state societies. The broader impacts of this research include: (1) collaboration with the Chaco Research Archive to provide updates to the Chaco World Database; (2) creation of a new database that integrates artifact data on great houses, great kivas, and selected outlier communities; (3) public talks to interested audiences throughout the region; (4) a special issue of the magazine, Archaeology Southwest, which is widely used for public outreach and in classrooms; (5) a series of journal articles; and (6) training of graduate students in the application of social network analysis to archaeological datasets.