Population Circulation and the Transformation of Ancient Zuni Communities

8. Population Circulation, Community Formation, and the Transformation of Thirteenth-Century Zuni Society

175 ChAPTer eIGhT Population Circulation, Community Formation, and the Transformation of ThirteenthCentury Zuni society Drawing on multiple types and scales of evidence, the research discussed in this book builds upon prior studies of mobility, community, and social change to produce a more complete depiction of social process and history in the thirteenth-century Zuni region. In addition to the contribution to regional culture history, this work also challenges more general, implicit assumptions in archaeology about the frequency and archaeological visibility of intraregional mobility, the presence of bounded, communityscale social units, and the tempo and process of social change. I begin this concluding chapter with a summary of thirteenth-century social dynamics in the el Morro Valley that highlights the role of mobility in driving social process and weaves together the insights of prior chapters. The key features of this period of change would be impossible to understand without the multiscalar, comparative analytical framework employed in earlier chapters. I then turn to a more general examination of mobility, community, and the explanation of change in southwest archaeology and beyond. I suggest that recent theoretical turns in archaeology (e.g., hegmon 2003) require archaeologists to reevaluate models of culture process and the scale of archaeological investigations of local phenomena. hopefully my work illustrates the benefits of this reevaluation and will serve as an inspiration for future archaeological studies of population circulation, community dynamics, and social change. 176 population circulation and zuni communities Movement and Settlement Dynamics in the El Morro Valley During the AD 1200s Most of the prior chapters of this book are organized around the analysis of various aspects of movement, settlement, and interaction associated with the creation of new social systems in the el Morro Valley during the AD 1200s. The following discussion summarizes the social and historical circumstances of migration into the valley and more fully situates the radical transformations in el Morro Valley social structure—especially the rapid adoption of large, nucleated pueblos that clearly mark communityscale social units—in wider developments in the Zuni region and beyond. The contextualization of particular instances of social change within larger cultural shifts and networks of social interaction is a key feature of historical-processual approaches (Cameron and Duff 2008; hegmon 2003, 2008; Pauketat 2001, 2003, 2007). The emphasis on contextualization and the particular details of a specific case is not intended to be a retreat into culturally particular explanatory goals, however. Instead, archaeologists working within this framework should also compare and contrast specific cases to both better understand their particular case and to offer more general insights into social process (e.g., Pauketat 2007; Yoffee 2005). I present a number of comparisons to other cases within the Zuni region and southwest in the following sections, before pursuing more general insights later in the chapter. Movement other than sporadic occupation by a few people residing in small, shortlived hamlets during the late Pueblo I or early Pueblo II period (AD 800– 1000), the el Morro Valley was devoid of permanent settlement prior to the first few decades of the AD 1200s. Archaeologists have not systematically explored these earliest settlements in the valley, but their residents may have been key sources of information that structured later immigration. examination of the social ties of these first settlers may shed light on how thirteenth-century Zuni population circulation was shaped by prior residential mobility networks, and I would expect that the majority of early settlements were linked to larger population centers located downstream to the west that were the primary source of later valley immigrants. The lack of early occupation in the el Morro Valley is even more striking when viewed at a regional scale. It was one of only a few habitable unoccupied zones in the Zuni region and adjacent areas during the Chaco period (AD 900–1175) (see fig. 3.3). This lack of settlement would have presented thirteenth-century immigrants with a relatively Transformation of Thirteenth-Century Zuni Society 177 open social field within which to construct new local social systems relatively unfettered by prior claims. In the early AD 1200s a few pueblos were established in scattered locations across the valley and a settlement group began to coalesce on Lookout Mesa (see fig. 6.3). This settlement group contains a number of pueblos founded prior to AD 1250 or so and may have been an important node in social networks drawing people into the valley during subsequent...