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Social and Behavioral Sciences Commons

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Full-Text Articles in Social and Behavioral Sciences

Envisioning Natural And Built Environments As Sacred Landscapes In Prehistoric Casas Grandes, Mexico, Michael T. Searcy, Todd Pitezel, Steve Swanson Jan 2019

Envisioning Natural And Built Environments As Sacred Landscapes In Prehistoric Casas Grandes, Mexico, Michael T. Searcy, Todd Pitezel, Steve Swanson

Faculty Publications

We develop a hypothesized cosmography in an attempt to evaluate the sacred landscapes of the Casas Grandes cultural tradition of northern Mexico. This analysis includes attention to the relationships among archaeological features and aspects of natural geography in the Casas Grandes region. We draw on previous research regarding hilltop sites, architectural features, settlement patterns, and astronomical alignments noted at Paquimé, to envision how the Casas Grandes people mapped their landscape on both the built and unbuilt environments.


Mtdna Analysis Of The Paquimé (Casas Grandes), Mexico, Population Between The Viejo And Medio Periods, Rachel Summers-Wilson, Meradeth Snow, Michael T. Searcy Jan 2019

Mtdna Analysis Of The Paquimé (Casas Grandes), Mexico, Population Between The Viejo And Medio Periods, Rachel Summers-Wilson, Meradeth Snow, Michael T. Searcy

Faculty Publications

This research project investigates the population interred at the archaeological site known as Paquimé (Casas Grandes), Mexico between two time periods known as the Viejo Period (700 - 1200 A.D.) and the Medio Period (1200 - 1450 A.D.). There was a shift in culture during the latter period marked by changes in material culture and the bringing together of larger populations near and within the city center known as Paquimé. Several scholars have suggested that this extraordinary cultural shift is principally due to migrations from other regions (for example: Di Peso 1974; Lekson 1999; Laekson 2015). The research conducted at …


Simple Statistics And Archaeological Problems, James R. Allison Jan 2019

Simple Statistics And Archaeological Problems, James R. Allison

Faculty Publications

Among Keith Kintigh’s many contributions to archaeology was his emphasis on understanding the connections among quantitative methods, archaeological problems, and what archaeologists can reasonably infer from their data. In both publications and in the classroom, he demonstrated the value of simple computer simulations to understand quantitative measures and how they behave when applied to actual archaeological data. Archaeological research increasingly incorporates analysis of large databases and quantitative methods appropriate to “big data”, but simple statistics are still important to archaeological research. This paper uses computer-intensive methods to demonstrate that archaeologists (and others) frequently misunderstand and misapply some of the simplest …


Household Variation, Public Architecture, And The Organization Of Fremont Communities, James R. Allison, Katie K. Richards, Lindsay D. Johansson, Richard K. Talbot, Scott M. Ure Jan 2019

Household Variation, Public Architecture, And The Organization Of Fremont Communities, James R. Allison, Katie K. Richards, Lindsay D. Johansson, Richard K. Talbot, Scott M. Ure

Faculty Publications

In the far-northern reaches of the greater American Southwest, diverse groups of small-scale agriculturalists, labeled “Fremont” by archaeologists, spread across the northern Colorado Plateau and eastern Great Basin. During the long history of Fremont archaeology, most projects have focused on the excavation of only one or a few residences even in large village sites. Until recently, there has been little effort to understand Fremont social organization or Fremont communities and nothing that could be called household archaeology (but see Hall 2008; Hockett 1998; Janetski and Talbot 2000, 2014; Simms 2008). In fact, for many years the prevailing view has been …