The Archaeology of Regional Interaction: Religion, Warfare, and Exchange across the American Southwest and Beyond

Preface

As time and space contract and seem to lose coherence in the swirling late twentieth century, our world grows ever smaller. As archaeologists living and working in this world, we cannot help but be affected by the complex interconnections that are so much a part of our lives. We see these interconnections driving through the district of maquiladoras on our way to the 1998 Southwest Symposium in Hermosillo, maquiladoras where exploited laborers produced the clothes many of us wore at the meetings. We see these interconnections when we use the World Wide Web to check references for the chapters in this book. Disciplinary trends develop and change for many reasons—including the accumulation of new data and the development of new theoretical perspectives—but I cannot help but believe that the growing archaeological interest in big pictures, in the interconnectedness of past societies, and in regional and interregional interaction is linked, at least in part, to the interconnectedness of the world around us. This volume is about that interconnectedness in the prehistoric North American Southwest. It was developed out of the fifth biennial Southwest Symposium—organized around the theme of regional interaction in the prehistoric Southwest—held on the campus of Arizona State University in Tempe. The meeting as a whole was organized by Michelle Hegmon, and the four sessions that form the basis for the parts of this volume were organized by Alison E. Rautman, Randall H. McGuire, Sarah H. Schlanger, and Kelley Hays-Gilpin. A number of people contributed to the organization of the symposium and the development of this book. Arizona State University , especially the Department of Anthropology, hosted and supported the meeting in a variety of ways. I am particularly grateful to department chairs Chuck Redman and Barbara Stark and to Sylvia Gaines, Ben Nelson, Kate Spielmann, Tiffany Clark, and Virginia Betz, who organized events and helped in innumerable other ways. Paul Fish (past chair of the Southwest Symposium Board) helped to lay the groundwork for the meeting, Linda Cordell (present chair) was instrumental in PREFACE xv xvi moving the publication process forward, and Leslie Nogue provided invaluable editorial assistance. Above all, I am grateful to the chapter authors for sticking with the project, cheerfully enduring red marks and other editorial comments, revising carefully and mostly on time, and contributing their thoughts and labor to this endeavor. I hope they are pleased with the result. Preface xvii THE Archaeology OF Regional Interaction xviii ...