Key Issues and Topics in The Archaeology of The American Southwest and Northwestern Mexico

KIVA
Journal of Southwestern Anthropology and History
ISSN: 0023-1940 (Print) 2051-6177 (Online) Journal homepage: http://tandfonline.com/loi/ykiv20
Key Issues and Topics in the Archaeology of the

American Southwest and Northwestern Mexico
Stephen Plog, Paul R. Fish, Donna M. Glowacki & Suzanne K. Fish
To cite this article: Stephen Plog, Paul R. Fish, Donna M. Glowacki & Suzanne K. Fish (2015) Key
Issues and Topics in the Archaeology of the American Southwest and Northwestern Mexico,
KIVA, 81:1-2, 2-30, DOI: 10.1080/00231940.2015.1127117
To link to this article: http://dx.doi.org/10.1080/00231940.2015.1127117
Published online: 23 May 2016.
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Date: 23 July 2016, At: 13:21
kiva, Vol. 81 Nos. 12, September, 2015, 230
Key Issues and Topics in the

Archaeology of the American Southwest
and Northwestern Mexico
Stephen Plog1, Paul R. Fish2,3, Donna M. Glowacki4,
and Suzanne K. Fish2,3
Downloaded by [82.228.40.154] at 13:21 23 July 2016
Department of Anthropology, University of Virginia, Charlottesville, VA

plog@virginia.edu
2
Arizona State Museum, University of Arizona, Tucson, AZ
3
School of Anthropology, University of Arizona, Tucson, AZ
4
Department of Anthropology, University of Notre Dame, Notre Dame, IN
We review some of the most significant research trends as well as emerging

issues in the archaeology of the American Southwest and Northwest
Mexico. Among the many topics being studied that we could discuss, we
have chosen to focus on engaged archaeology, big data, the research potential of museum collections, agriculture, social organization, regional connectivity, and culture history.
Revisamos algunas de las tendencias ms significativas de la investigacin as
como temas emergentes en la arqueologa del suroeste de Estados Unidos y
noroeste de Mxico. Entre los muchos temas estudiados que podramos discutir, hemos optado por centrarnos en engaged archaeology, big data, el
potencial investigativo de colecciones de museo, la agricultura, la organizacin social, la conectividad regional e la historia cultural.
keywords Agriculture, Social organization, Big data, Engaged archaeology,
Culture history, Museum studies, Regional studies
When we were invited to write this introductory article to the volume celebrating the
100th anniversary of the Arizona Archaeological and Historical Society, our charge
from the editor was to summarize current trends in the archaeology of the American
Southwest and Northwest Mexico (hereafter Southwest/Northwest or SW/NW)
region and identify emerging issues. After multiple discussions among the authors,
we chose given space limitations to focus on a relatively small set of topics
Copyright 2016 Arizona Archaeological and Historical Society.

All rights reserved.
DOI 10.1080/00231940.2015.1127117
KEY ISSUES AND TOPICS
among the many that our colleagues are now addressing. We identified issues that
we believe likely are (or in a few cases, we suggest should be) particularly important
and hopefully also are representative of some of the many significant research questions that SW/NW archaeologists likely will examine over the next decade. In some
cases, we also consider some of the questions and challenges we may face in conducting that research. Most of the topics are necessarily broad, and given that many are
interrelated, it was sometimes hard to delineate a boundary between one subject and
another.
We selected seven topics that fall under two general groups. One section,
approaches to research and professional responsibilities, includes: (1) engaged
archaeology, which encompasses a range of issues that relate to our roles and
responsibilities as professionals, (2) big data, and (3) the potential, and increased
study of, museum collections. A second section highlights four important topics in
SW/NW research: (1) domestication and agriculture; (2) social organization,
which of necessity includes religion and complexity; (3) connectivity and interaction;
and (4) culture history with an emphasis on the fifteenth and early sixteenth
centuries.
We do not envision this paper as attempting to define a set of grand challenges
or research agendas for the future, evaluate current archaeological paradigms (e.g.,
Kristiansen 2014) or assess the current state of the art in SW/NW research. Instead,
we simply offer our thoughts on what we believe are notable current issues or important potential directions for significant new research. We acknowledge these choices
represent our own biases; other sets of archeologists might select alternative issues
and trends, although hopefully there would be some overlap.
Approaches to Research and Professional Engagement

Engaged Archaeology
Over the last few decades efforts to promote the potential of archaeology broadly,
and SW/NW archaeology in particular, to contribute to a better understanding of
contemporary issues, has increased [often called action archaeology, applied
archaeology, or engaged archaeology (e.g., McGuire 2008; Sabloff 2008)].
Engaged archaeology promotes strong linkages between the implications of findings
from archaeological research and the needs and concerns of different stakeholders,
both Native American groups and society at large. Among others, the main areas of
engagement include: (1) indigenous concerns about archaeological research and
preservation of their heritage; (2) human impact on the environment, and responses
to environmental change; and (3) the creation and ramifications of social change.
Archaeology is intrinsically related to contemporary indigenous concerns,
especially with regard to identity and cultural preservation. Efforts to work for
and with Native elders, advisors, scholars, and archaeologists have a long history,
but have increased dramatically since the implementation of NAGPRA in the
1990s, which mandated consultation and collaboration between Native peoples
and archaeologists. An important outcome of this legislation is that scholars are
now paying more attention to indigenous peoples understandings of their own
STEPHEN PLOG ET AL.
pasts (e.g., Fowles 2013). Moreover, an increasing number of tribal members are
actively involved in the conception and implementation of archaeological projects
focused on heritage conservation, and on preservation of specific cultural practices
and language, among other topics (e.g., Colwell-Chanthaphonh and Ferguson 2008;
Hedquist et al. 2015; Kuwanwisiwma 2002; Mills et al. 2008). Institutions, such as
Archaeology Southwest and Crow Canyon Archaeological Center are also providing avenues for sustained indigenous engagement through advisory councils and
other collaborations. Darling and his coauthors (this volume) discuss these vital
relationships and how they have broadened SW/NW archaeology in greater detail
and we refer the reader to that article for a more in depth discussion.
Understanding how people contend with increasing population pressure that negatively and substantially impacts resource availability, particularly as the planet experiences dramatic and anthropogenic climate change, is another key arena where the SW/
NW archaeological record contributes to modern issues. These difficult and pressing
circumstances require a nuanced understanding of the complex relationships between
people and their environment. The SW/NW landscapes are particularly well suited for
in-depth analyses of the impacts of climate change and resource scarcity on societies
due to the available long-term climatic record in a marginal environment for agriculture (see Ingram and colleagues, this issue). For example, dendrochronology has not
only improved our ability to date sites, particularly in the northern Southwest, but also
provided a year-by year record of precipitation for specific species, in specific regions.
As these data amassed over time and space, so too did the capacity to assess the effects
of low- and high-frequency climatic processes and their variability as well as the
impacts of drought and shifting patterns in the timing and amount of precipitation
on demography, behavioral adaptation, and social and cultural change (e.g.,
Benson and Berry 2009; Wright 2010). The tree-ring record is also now used to retrodict temperatures showing not only the marked warming periods in the past, but also
the undeniable warming trend we are currently experiencing (e.g., Salzer 2000; Salzer
and Kipfmueller 2005).
These and other environmental data are being incorporated into increasingly
complex models to estimate farming capacity and paleoproductivity of landscapes
(e.g., Bocinsky and Kohler 2014; Kohler 2010). The output from these models
when compared with shifts in settlement and population, reveal behaviors linked
to changes in climate and agricultural potential (e.g., Schwindt et al. 2016) that
had cascading effects on social interaction and stability in Pueblo society. These
studies in turn may also be useful for modern comparisons and applications. For
example, Bocinsky and his colleagues are applying their maize growth models to
issues of global food security by using the estimated past potential productivity of
nonirrigated Pueblo maize varieties to predict productivity over the next century.
They are then assessing the extent to which Pueblo maize varieties and farming practices can help provide more stable and sustainable subsistence in other parts of the
world with similar environments, such as southwestern Ethiopia (Bocinsky, pers
comm, 23 June 2015).
Southwest/Northwest archaeology is also providing a better understanding of the
rate and context of anthropogenic impacts on natural resources and the degree to
which it may correlate with major societal changes. Issues of soil depletion,
deforestation, overhunting, and food stress, among others, have been examined
across the SW/NW, showing great variability in range and impact (e.g., Ingram
and Hunt 2015; Schollmeyer and Driver 2013; Wills et al. 2014). These studies
demonstrate the importance of understanding the histories of landscape use,
which enables and constrains what is possible in the present.
Other instances of applying SW/NW research to contemporary issues focus on
how social problems and change were managed in the past. An example of this
type of engaged archaeology are the collaborative and comparative efforts of the
Long-Term Vulnerability and Transformation Project, with researchers from
SHESC at Arizona State University, often working in concert with researchers in
the North Atlantic Biocultural Organization. Their research focuses on using the
SW/NW archaeological record to think explicitly about the human experience by
delineating the factors underlying societal stability, vulnerability, and transformation, thereby developing more general understandings of these processes. Their
work compares and contrasts human responses during times of extreme climate
change, and explores issues such as food security and societal breakdown and resilience among others (e.g., Hegmon et al. 2008; Nelson et al. 2012).
Engaged SW/NW archaeology will undoubtedly continue, especially in light of the
increased political pressure to fully demonstrate how federal money used to support
research tangibly benefits the public. We look forward to its continued expansion
and given the powerful combination of the well preserved environmental, archaeological, and ethnographic records anticipate a growing use of SW/NW cases in comparative studies to more fully understand the histories and processes that have
shaped our world today.
Big Data
Recently it seems like we have all been inundated with innumerable email messages
about speakers, workshops, or funding opportunities related to Big Data. Similarly the
topic has been a constant one in national newspapers and magazines, as well as books
and articles (e.g., Kristiansen 2014; Lohr 2015; Marcus 2013; Mayer-Schoenberger
and Cukier 2013). As Marcus (2013; see also Kristiansen 2014:17) wrote, Five years
ago, few people had heard the phrase Big Data. Now, its hard to go an hour
without seeing it. In the past several months, the industry has been mentioned in
dozens of New York Times stories, in every section from metro to business.
What is meant by the phrase, however, often is vague (e.g., Marcus 2013) and thus
may mean different things to different people or disciplines. We follow Kristiansen
(2014:17) in viewing Big Data in archaeology as large research databases (and the
infrastructure required to generate them) often built with the idea of making them
available to other professional archaeologists and the public. Such databases have
old roots in archaeology, from the state and national databases with site information
and locations to the efforts of the Southwest Anthropological Research Group in the
1970s to build a comprehensive set of site survey information from throughout the
American Southwest.
Recently, however, such efforts have intensified. Although variable in nature, they
all tend to focus on specific geographical areas and topics. One of the earliest recent
STEPHEN PLOG ET AL.
efforts, the Village Ecodynamics Project (VEP; http://village.anth.wsu.edu/) was

begun in 2002 as a collaborative effort among archaeologists, ecologists, computer
scientists, and geologists to understand the history (A.D. 6001300) of a large
(>2000 km2) area of southwestern Colorado. A second stage expanded the spatial
and temporal focus to include part of northern New Mexico and the three centuries
from A.D. 13001600. Amassing data on a tremendous number of settlements from
the area, the VEP team has studied variables such as exchange, demographic fluctuations, intra-regional population movements, and aggregation. They also have used
agent-based modeling, social network analysis, and other techniques to better understand this key period in Pueblo history (e.g., Crabtree 2015; Kohler and Varien
2010).
In part as an extension of VEP, the National Science Foundation has funded
SKOPE, a project involving VEP personnel and others. The goal of SKOPE is to
design an online research tool that will provide state-of-the-art information
about the environment experienced by humans at a given a place and time, past
or present. In response to a specific query, SKOPE will extract the latest data
from diverse online databases. Using explicit and repeatable procedures, it will
process the data to yield a cutting-edge synthesis of environmental information
specifically tailored to the users request (http://www.envirecon.org/).
Another project, Southwest Social Networks (SWSN; http://www.archaeology
southwest.org/what-we-do/investigations/networks/) has constructed a comprehensive database of ceramic and obsidian for the period of A.D. 1200-1450 from
the western Southwest (Mills et al. 2013:5785), although like VEP the project
has recently expanded its temporal and spatial scope. Using ceramic similarities
and differences to measure the strength of relations among communities, the
researchers employed social network analysis in combination with GIS methods
to describe how networks were transformed spatially and temporally during this
very dynamic demographic period in northern American Southwest history.
Unfortunately neither the VEP nor SWSN data are accessible online by other scholars, although hopefully this issue will soon be remedied. A key characteristic of
most Big Data projects is general access is considered critical to facilitating new
and innovative research. At least three other large databases, however, are available
to scholars, with the trio varying significantly in their goals. Steven LeBlanc of
Harvard University has constructed a remarkable database containing approximately 9400 images of Mimbres pottery vessels (http://core.tdar.org/project/
377852/mimbres-pottery-images-digital-database-mimpidd), the largest set of
images of whole vessels available from any region of the SW/NW. Each image has
been tagged with metadata that allow users to search for vessels with particular
types of images. Although permission must be granted for access, such requests
are typically approved.
Another major data-focused project, the Chaco Research Archive (CRA) (http
://www.chacoarchive.org/cra/), available to anyone, has taken a different approach.
Geographically, CRA primarily focuses on a single locale, Chaco Canyon in northwestern New Mexico which has a dense concentration of large, unusual pueblos that
likely were a central node for much ritual, economic, and social interaction across
the Pueblo Southwest from A.D. 850-1110. Major excavations began in Chaco in
the late nineteenth century, but much of the contextual data (i.e. information on individual structures) from those excavations that is needed to answer key questions
about room and site function, demography, and sociopolitical organization had previously been inaccessible. CRA has thus collected a variety of information including
catalog lists, excavation images and notes, and unpublished monographs and integrated it into a complex relational database. Users can download notes, reports,
and catalog lists and explore site and room contexts through database queries or
interactive maps. Access to the CRA database has enabled new publications on a
range of topics (e.g., Heitman 2015; Plog and Heitman 2010; Watson et al. 2015)
and more are forthcoming. Additionally, CRA is now working with Archaeology
Southwest to add the excavation data from Salmon Ruin to the website.
Finally, The Digital Archaeological Record (tDAR) is a major effort to build an
international digital repository for the digital records of archaeological investigations (https://www.tdar.org/about/). These digital records include postexcavation analyses such as spreadsheets; images, forms, field notes and other
records documenting surveys and excavations; and manuscripts all typically
unpublished describing the results of Cultural Resource Management (CRM)
research or research sponsored by such institutions as the National Science Foundation. tDAR provides free access to these digital resources.
These diverse projects create new opportunities to engage with larger data sets
that will enhance our ability to study cultural organization and change at a
variety of spatial and temporal scales. They also offer (and at times have developed
hand-in-hand with) the ability to employ more complex analytical methods, whether
network analysis, agent-based modeling, or applications of complexity theory (Kristiansen 2014:25).
However, we must also be cognizant of the potential problems with Big Data
studies. As Marcus (2013), has observed, Big Data is a powerful tool for inferring
correlations, not a magic wand for inferring causality. We must always keep in
mind that the value of any research, whether based on big or small databases, is
only as good as the quality of the data being analyzed. Comparing archaeological
data such as ceramic type counts compiled by many different scholars, settlement
classifications from different regions of the SW/NW where sites vary in what is
visible on the surface, or contextual information from excavations conducted
during different eras with different goals and methods has the potential to lead to problematic results. It is thus important that users thoroughly read supporting documents
and the analyst notes. We also should always ask not simply What did I measure?
but What did I miss? (Peysakhovich and Stephens-Davidowitz 2015). Like Peysakhovich and Stephens-Davidowitz (2015), We are optimists about the potential of
data But the world is incredibly complicated. No one data set, no matter how
big, is going to tell us exactly what we need. The new mountains of blunt data sets
make human creativity, judgment, intuition and expertise more valuable, not less.
Over 40 years ago at a time when archaeologists were beginning to regularly
use computers, Dell Hymes (1971:19) wrote, Computer use has within it the possibilities of far wider cooperation among archaeologists, a far more effectively international profession. Success of [these] methods would make possible the sharing
of basic data in the same useful form by many centers. Hymes was not alone in such
STEPHEN PLOG ET AL.
optimism, but the cooperative sharing of basic data he and others envisioned did not
come to fruition for multiple reasons, some of which he predicted would be
obstacles. Let us hope that the recent emphasis on Big Data will have a more productive outcome.
Museum-Based Research
A clear trend in the last 1015 years, and one that almost certainly will intensify, is
an increase in the analysis of material from previous fieldwork held in museum collections (e.g., Coltrain et al. 2007; Crown and Hurst 2009; Jolie and Webster 2015;
Somerville et al. 2010). We suggest such studies have increased for at least three
different reasons. First, with greater recognition of the rights of indigenous
groups, new excavations of sites on federal land that are not a result of CRM
studies to mitigate impacts on cultural resources, that is, purely research driven excavations, have decreased dramatically. The likelihood of large, long-term fieldwork
on public or tribal land such as the Chaco or Wetherill Mesa projects or the University of Arizona excavations at Grasshopper is diminished for the foreseeable future.
(Fortunately, however, some such projects continue generally led by nonprofit
organizations such as Archaeology Southwest or the Crow Canyon Archaeological
Center.) Thus, in order to increase our understanding of key areas studied in earlier
eras of SW/NW archaeology, analysis of previously collected artifacts, forms, notes,
and other records has become necessary.
Second, many of the richest collections of perishables materials were gathered by
some of the earliest excavations in the SW/NW. These early field projects often
focused on caves and rockshelters where perishable artifacts are much better preserved than in most open sites. To move beyond ceramics and lithics and examine
the full array of materials used by the inhabitants of the SW/NW, archaeologists
increasingly have turned to these earlier collections that often have sat on
museum shelves, unstudied for decades.
Third, new archaeometric analytical methods referred to by Kristiansen
(2014:13) as part of the third scientific revolution in archaeology have been
developed in last few decades. These methods include identification of ancient
DNA (LeBlanc et al. 2007; Speller et al. 2010), residue analysis (Crown and
Hurst 2009; Crown et al. 2015), and isotopic studies that can help answer questions
about mobility, exchange, diet, and others issues (e.g., Coltrain et al. 2007; Cordell
et al. 2008; Somerville et al. 2010). The increased precision of accelerator mass spectrometer radiocarbon dating along with greater awareness of problems of dating
charcoal (Schiffer 1986) or using tree-rings to date specific contexts in long-occupied
pueblos (Watson et al. 2015) also have led to increasing efforts to date samples of
corn, bone and other materials from museum collections (e.g., Coltrain et al.
2007; Plog and Heitman 2010; Watson et al. 2015)
Key Research Topics

Developments in SW/NW Agriculture
Frameworks for understanding regional agriculture and its multifaceted role in prehispanic societies have undergone reformulation over the last two decades, nowhere
more resoundingly than in perceptions of the timing, transmission, and implementation of initial farming. As late as 1997, Cordell (1997:129) articulated a prevailing
consensus that corn was first planted in the US Southwest between 1000 and 1500
B.C. Subsequent research has pushed those dates back, lengthening what is often
termed early agriculture prior the rise of ceramic traditions and overturning existing models of how food production unfolded.
The inception of farming in the SW/NW rests on the detection of corn, the most
commonly recovered Mesoamerican and Southwestern domesticate. Charred corn
showing domesticate morphology and increased productivity has been dated
about 4300 B.C. in highland Mexico (Piperno and Flannery 2001), providing a
starting point for transmission time to the Southwest. For the SW/NW, two kinds
of breakthroughs have been influential in revising timetables and expanding the
regional contexts of what is now termed the Early Agricultural period: (1) progressively older direct dates on corn and (2) rigorous documentation of well-developed
irrigation at a surprisingly early time in southern Arizona and additional preceramic
water control technologies in the region.
Corn dates with calibrated radiocarbon age ranges around 2000 B.C. come from
several Tucson floodplain sites, but three new determinations on isolated corn
remains from Las Capas (Vint 2015:488) and a previous similar date nearby
(Gregory and Baar 1999) fall into an even older calibrated range between 2500
and 3700 B.C. On the Colorado Plateaus, multiple corn dates cluster around
2100 B.C. from the Old Corn site in west-central New Mexico; corn of a similar
age was previously recovered at Three Fir Rockshelter in northeastern Arizona
[see the summary in Merrill et al (2009)]. Cropping in disparate regional sectors
suggests that the inherent genetic flexibility of corn, along with planting strategies
attuned to differing environments, were fundamental to the successful spread of
farming. If the oldest dates for domesticates in the Southwest prove fully supportable, the estimate by Merrill et al. (2009:21020) of 2200 years for transmission from
Mexico would shrink to less than a millennium, prompting re-examination of existing scenarios.
Unfortunately little is known about the occupational or agricultural circumstances of the oldest-dated cultigens in the SW/NW. Nevertheless, the confirmed
arrival of corn before 2000 B.C. and its increasingly likely presence by 3000 B.C.
or possibly earlier necessitate fieldwork to better locate and characterize the
poorly visible groups who first planted it. Determined efforts particularly are
needed to better document the subsistence systems of foragers prior to the arrival
of corn, about whom comparatively little is now known (e.g., Roth and Freeman
2008).
Equally important is the need to understand the development of water control
systems to sustain farming, although we also must recognize the wide variety of
additional agricultural practices in the diverse environments of the SW/NW
during the Early Agricultural period (Mabry 2005). At Las Capas, optimal preservation and rigorous, innovative investigation (Vint and Nials 2015) revealed a stratigraphic succession of canal networks, with elevated delivery channels that could
supply water to fields on either side. Controlled flow was directed into the contiguous earthen-bermed grids, which held planting holes to further increase moisture
10
STEPHEN PLOG ET AL.
retention for crop plants. The system offered optimal water utilization and opportunities for decision-making in response to changing environmental or social factors.
The intricate design of Las Capas irrigation is inconsistent with notions of expedient
early farming. Furthermore, the canal system operated during an unanticipated span
from 1200 to 800 B.C., before comparable evidence of irrigation is documented in
Mesoamerica.
Even older canals on the Tucson floodplain were in use by approximately 1600
B.C. (Thiel and Mabry 2006), already superseding casual or rudimentary planting.
Instead, infrastructural investment and extended locational stability are implied.
Ongoing discoveries predating 1000 B.C. include small Tucson canals carrying
runoff, floodplain canals near Zuni Pueblo in New Mexico, and canals on tributaries east of Zuni (see Mabry (2005) for discussion of the variety of early agricultural practices in addition to irrigation). These discoveries suggest the widespread
spatial distribution of water delivery technologies.
In the Mexican Northwest, early agricultural occupations have yet to precede or
even equal the greater age of those in southern Arizona or the northern Southwest.
On the other hand, two-well studied settlements resemble still earlier counterparts
on the Tucson floodplains in that they involve extensive occupations over many
years, configurations not found in the northern Southwest. The impressive Early
Agricultural site, Cerro Juanaquea, in northwest Chihuahua was occupied from
1300 to 1100 B.C. and again about 300 B.C. It had 550 residential terraces and
an estimated population of 200 at least nine months a year (Hard and Roney
2005:142, 153). At La Playa along a river in northwest Sonora, canals supplying
gridded fields (Carpenter et al. 2015:230), post-date by centuries the earliest
Tucson irrigation.
As an outgrowth of the renewed focus on early agriculture and the mechanisms
through which maize was adopted in the SW/NW, linguistically based scenarios
that take a new perspective on the issue are engendering lively debate. Examining
language dispersal patterns first proposed by Bellwood (1997), Hill (2001) identified
speakers of a reconstructed Proto-Uto-Aztecan (PUA) language as the agriculturebearing migrants from a central Mexican homeland. To avoid the pitfalls of reconstructed protolanguages, Wheeler and Whiteley (2015) statistically analyzed words
as sequences of sounds, and, like Hill, favored a southern Mexico homeland for
PUA. However, relationships of material culture led Mabry et al. (2008), to question
aspects of Hills model. They espoused a pre-agricultural expansion of PUA peoples
north and into the Southwest that facilitated its subsequent spread, but they also
admitted diffusion. Combining archaeological, linguistic, environmental, and
other data, Merrill et al. (2009) placed the PUA homeland in the western Great
Basin with a pre-agricultural dispersal to the south likewise facilitating later transmission north along a continuum of Uto-Aztecan speakers. Shaul (2014) also attributed a PUA homeland to the western USA, but suggested that a pre-agricultural
dispersal encouraged later down-the-line exchange of cultigens and practices
without necessarily entailing migration.
Researchers also have evaluated an initial migration of farmers through patterning in prehispanic and present-day human genetics. They have variously concluded
that modern groups do not show relationships compatible with Hills model of a
11
northward migration of people bearing agriculture (Kemp et al. 2010), that their
results from prehispanic samples could support northward migration from central
Mexico in conjunction with the incorporation of indigenous populations along
the way (LeBlanc 2008), and that differential movement of males and females in
past migrations might be indicated (e.g., Kemp et al. 2010). As with linguistic analyses, a consensus as to the directionality and centrality of migration as a major
factor in agricultural transfers remains elusive.
Revisions stemming from recent studies about the early agricultural period do not
resolve older and ongoing debates over the degree to which Mesoamerican domesticates impacted subsistence and society. Even though the limited sample of earliest
agricultural strategies exhibit regional diversity, the sophistication and temporal
stability of Las Capas irrigation suggests that polar differences in engagement
with farming emerged with the onset of cropping. Likewise, the extensive and persistent occupations replicated among farmers in the southern Southwest and adjacent Mexican borderlands have no counterparts to date in the northern
Southwest. These early contrasts are forerunners of later, more pronounced contrasts such as between the Phoenix Basin with long-term, large-scale irrigated production and the northern Rio Grande Valley of New Mexico, where primarily
forager economies extended into ceramic times and farmers more dependent on
crops became established as late as A.D. 600 to 900 (e.g., Vierra and Ford 2007).
Despite these differences, in both the south and north, with successively older
dates there remains also a major gap between the initial preceramic use of domesticates and the establishment of sedentary communities dependent upon agriculture.
The disproportionate duration of preceramic agriculture is in keeping with a delayed
onset of the Neolithic Demographic Transition, defined as a sustained period of
increased birthrates and rapid population growth that Neolithic populations typically undergo after becoming dependent on domesticates (e.g., Kohler et al. 2008;
Kohler and Reese 2014). This gap may relate to the productivity of early maize.
Diehl (2005), for example, provides quantified data on the low productivity of
early corn based on carbonized macrofossil metrics. A comprehensive update on
the archaeology and agronomy of corn (Adams 2015) includes experimental
results, however, suggesting caution in interpreting measurements of charred
remains.
Understandings of variations among agriculture in regions of the NW/SW are
advancing through studies of many topics and scales (e.g., Ingram and Hunt
2015). Mabry and Doolittle (2008) reiterated compelling arguments for forager preadaptions to farming in their productive manipulation of native species. A domesticated amaranth has been hypothesized for Cerro Juanaquea (Fritz 2007) and Bohrer
(2007) identified Mesoamerican grain amaranth in early agricultural deposits at
Fresnal Rockshelter in New Mexico. Nevertheless, a strong empirical case has yet
to be made for amaranth as a significant regional crop during earlier or later times.
Morphological changes indicating human intervention are described for remains of
little barley beginning in the Early Agricultural period (Adams 2014) and possibly
could reflect still earlier selective manipulation. Agave is now widely recognized as
a prominent prehispanic crop; studies are underway to better identify the multiple
species that were cultivated (Fish and Fish 1994; Hodgson 2013). In a long-awaited
12
STEPHEN PLOG ET AL.
addition to the roster of prehispanic regional crops, Minnis and Whalen (2010) identified cultivated chile from the Casas Grandes area of Chihuahua.
Compilation and analysis of agricultural configurations at landscape scales in
relation to other broad archaeological patterns of society and environment represent
a conceptual and methodological frontier in SW/NW archaeology. Powerful new
geographic techniques and computational tools increasingly contribute to these
endeavors in conjunction with studies of agronomic variables and the insights of
tribal participants. Studies that incorporate social constructs such as ritual, ideology,
and history in restructuring the landscapes of farmers (e.g., Anschuetz 2005) address
vital topics that reflect the prevailing interests of regional archaeologists and Native
American descendant communities. Anschuetz (2007) innovatively proposed that
inhabitants of the Tewa Basin in central New Mexico maintained lasting claims to
extensive agricultural land and countered ecological risks by selectively constructing
and moving among large and small sites over time. Minnis et al. (2006) identified
fields controlled by Paquimes leaders by their unusual size and their proximity to
sites with sparse populations but specialized and/or ritual roles. Finally, large-scale
studies of past land use in the Northern Rio Grande Valley (Vierra 2013) and the
structure of various ancient Pueblo landscapes (Morrow and Price 2006) exemplify
explanatory frameworks for developmental trends and critical relationships among
agriculture, settlement, and society.
Social Organization
An enduring topic for both ethnographers and archaeologists is understanding
social organization, how it varies among SW/NW cultures, and how it changes or
not over time. The ways in which research on this important topic have evolved
over the years are strongly influenced by both the advantages and challenges of
incorporating ethnographic information into archaeological research. Much of the
early work on this fundamental topic was ethnographically based (e.g., Eggan
1950; Fox 1967; Goodwin 1942; Hawley 1937), though archaeologists like
Fewkes (1893), a self-described ethnoarchaeologist, and Steward (1937) were
using pottery and architecture combined with ethnography to infer social organization. By the 1970s, 1980s, and into the 1990s, however, archaeologists were grappling with the extent to which ethnographic analogies can be used to interpret
material patterns in the deeper past, especially when Spanish colonization intervened
(e.g., Cordell and Plog 1979). These deliberations generated a greater awareness
of the need to be cautious and methodical when applying ethnographic analogies
to the past, but also showed that ethnography cannot be disregarded since components of social organization are deeply embedded and historically contingent.
Consequently, recent studies have returned to the ethno-archaeological approaches
of the early to mid-twentieth century with greater attention to the linking arguments
used to reconstruct the social histories of SW/NW groups (e.g., Bernardini 2005;
Colwell-Chanthaphonh and Ferguson 2006; Ortman 2012; Ware 2014; Whiteley
2015).
The topic of social organization also requires us to grapple with the inherent contradiction of needing to isolate dimensions of cultural behavior (e.g., spiritual,
13
economical, and political), while recognizing that peoples behaviors, actions, and
decisions in general, and especially for SW/NW indigenous groups simultaneously embody them all to varying degrees. The multiscalar nature of social
organization creates another layer of intricacy since an understanding of each
social scale is necessary, but we must also account for the embedded and crosscutting nature of these social units and institutions. These critical dimensions are
being better incorporated into our research and interpretations through novel theoretical approaches and innovative analytical methods.
Since the revivification of household archaeology in the 1980s (e.g., Wilk and
Rathje 1982), research on this basic social unit has mainly focused on subsistence,
production, and exchange (e.g., Ciolek-Torrello 2012; Craig and Henderson
2008; Lowell 1991; Wills 2001). These activities are also socialized by accounting
for the gendered ways in which households operated (e.g., Hegmon et al. 2000;
Roth 2010). The household is also used as an analytical unit in economic and demographic studies, which facilitates large-scale analyses (e.g., Kohler 2010, 2012), but
inherently conceives of them as fixed entities. Recent studies though are also
re-conceptualizing the household using the house society concept, which emphasizes
the structure, associated lands, and social relationships held by the members of the
house. House societies are therefore explicitly embedded in varying, dynamic, and
unique networks of social ties maintained by the house, which better situates
household dynamics in relation to broader social contexts (e.g., Craig 2007;
Heitman 2015; Heitman and Plog 2005; Wills 2005).
The ways in which houses were connected to each other to form larger social units
within villages and beyond are also being more holistically and dynamically examined. Research on the nature and development of corporate groups, such as sodalities and moieties, have moved well beyond their conception as functional
categories to considering the social and historical implications of their origins and
evolution (e.g., Fowles 2005; Heitman and Plog 2005; Schachner 2010; Ware
2014; Whiteley 2015). For example, blending ethnography and archaeology,
Ware (2014) argues that the development of sodalities may have originated in
Chaco Canyon. In the Hohokam area, corporate groups, linked to courtyards, compounds, and platform mounds, are associated with land ownership, irrigation, and
craft production (e.g., Craig 2007, Crown and Fish 1996; Elson and Abbott 2000;
Fish and Fish 2015; Wallace 2008). The multidimensional nature of social groups
and communities is also being described by the connections they maintain using
dynamic concepts including communities of practice (e.g., Gilpin and Hays-Gilpin
2012; Minar and Crown 2001) and social networks (e.g., Mills et al. 2013). The
effects of environmental and social change, including the arrival of immigrants,
on community organization and persistence are another crucial dimension (e.g.,
Clark and Lyons 2012; Darling et al. 2004; Glowacki 2015; Hill et al. 2004).
These scales of understanding also require addressing sociopolitical complexity
and the development and mitigation of social inequality. The rancorous complexity
debates of the 1980s affected not only how researchers engaged with the topic, but
also those who, especially in the younger generation, shied away from issues of
social differentiation altogether. To some extent, the debates also calcified opposing
views on the degree of hierarchy and egalitarian in NW/SW societies. Consequently,
14
STEPHEN PLOG ET AL.
an important outcome has been heightened emphasis on relational approaches that

stress the roles of social power and inequality, and recognize that both vertical
(network) and horizontal (corporate) elements are always present in sociopolitical
organization, even if to varying degrees (e.g., Heitman and Plog 2005; McGuire
and Saitta 1996; chapters in Mills 2000; Nelson 1995; Plog 1995; Rautman 1998).
Another critical concept is that religion often provides the core of social (and political) organization. Inextricably embedded in social life, religion comprises the
things people believe and what they do to reify those beliefs (Van Keuren and
Glowacki 2011). Ritual and ideology order the world (e.g., Ortiz 1969), and may
mitigate periods of social upheaval and imbalance. Inferring religious practice and
cosmology from the material record (not to mention the politics of religion and religious change) is not only difficult in its own right, but also is further complicated
since for many SW/NW groups there is religiousness in the everyday (i.e. there is
no separation between church and state). Thus, although it is now more
widely recognized that religion is inseparable from the social processes we wish to
study, developing methods to recognize and account for this key relation remains
a challenge.
One issue is how to productively and inclusively account for the religiousness in
the everyday in our studies. Some have used inclusive terminology, such as hierocracy (e.g., Fowles 2004; Lekson 2008), which blends the religious, political, and
economic realms, but does not truly encompass all aspects of how NW/SW societies
were organized. Subsequently, Fowles (2013), raising an important point, has contended that religion, as a Western concept, does not apply to ancestral Pueblo
society. He suggests that rather than religion per se, ancestral Pueblo people had
something more akin to the idea of doings. Even if we accept this general proposition, however, how can we effectively implement it and still understand the interplay and influence of each realm (i.e. spiritual, economic, political, and so on) given
some behavior is, for example, more economic in nature and some more spiritual?
Thus, in some ways, doings may lead us to address religion and cosmology at a
somewhat superficial level. We need to continue delving deeper into dimensions of
ritual and religion in relation to other factors (e.g., Gilman et al. 2014) and critically
examining our assumptions (e.g., was there variation across the SW/NW in how
religious societies may have been?).
Social organization will always be a fundamental focus in SW/NW archaeology.
Over the years we have become more sophisticated in how we approach this essential topic, particularly with how we account for its complexity. Yet, we have only
begun to accommodate the nuances of variation and historical contingency, which
are critical for understanding process. Only by closely examining cultural variation
in organization among, within, and between groups, and asking how the different
elements discussed above play out in each case can we come to the most comprehensive and dynamic understandings. But, as Mills (2015) recently reminded us, we
must also be careful not to overemphasis one factor, such as religion, over the
others (e.g., economics and politics). We therefore need to continue tacking
between these dimensions and scales while being mindful of their heuristic and relational aspect (i.e. not absolutist).
15
Connectivity and Interaction

By at least 2000 B.C., the SW/NW began to take shape as a peninsula of largely contiguous village farmers extending north from central Mexico. These farmers were
internally intermingled with hunting-gatherer peoples to their north, east, and
west as well as more complexly organized agricultural societies farther south (Fish
and Fish 1994:83). These interrelationships have been an enduring topic of discussion in regional archaeology, and a renewed emphasis is reflected by the themes
for two recent Southwest Symposium publications (Hegmon 2000; Nelson and
Strawhacker 2011). Current research can be assigned to four broad but overlapping
categories: (1) the flow of information; (2) the exchange of material goods; (3) sociopolitical and ideological relations; and (4) the movement of people.
An explosion of archaeological information from across the larger region has
fueled a resurgence of interest in interaction and connectivity. Inclusion of material
remains such as trails, roads, shrines, and canal systems (e.g., Darling and Lewis
2008; Duwe and Anscheutz 2013; Van Dyke 2007) as well as consideration of prominent topographic features, traditional geographies, and a more nuanced approach
to the ethnographic record (e.g., Colwell-Chanthaphonh and Ferguson 2006) have
provided new analytical perspectives for understanding contexts of interaction.
Sourcing studies--particularly for ceramics (e.g., Abbott et al. 2007; Ownby et al.
2014), obsidian (e.g., Shackley 2005), and turquois (e.g., Thibodeau et al. 2015)
can now be accomplished with convincing sample sizes to alter previously conceived assumptions and theoretical frameworks regarding the scale and directions
of exchange. Studies in both the northern (e.g., Ortman 2012) and southern (e.g.,
Shaul 2014) portions of the SW/NW have incorporated linguistic and genetic evidence to better evaluate population movements, the establishment of late multiethnic communities, and processes of ethnogenesis.
The multisettlement, territorial community connecting large and small settlements, agricultural lands and other resources, shrines, and the sacred and natural
landscape concept has been especially useful in understanding the Chacoan
network and the spatial distributions of great houses and settlements around
them (e.g., Gilpin 2003; Kantner and Mahoney 2000) and the Hohokam ballcourt
and platform mound settlement configurations (e.g., Crown 1994; Fish and Fish
2008) and has been applied elsewhere in the southern deserts (e.g., Pailes 2015)
and northern plateaus (e.g., Cameron 2013; Glowacki and Ortman 2012). Identification of peoples of differing ethnicities and their modes of incorporation in both
multisettlement communities and single villages is of continuing interest, particularly
during periods of dramatic demographic reorganization. For example, Yuman and
Ancestral Pueblo ethnic enclaves in southern Arizona have been identified by burial
practices, architectural style, distribution of artifactual traits, and ceramic production patterns (e.g., Abbott et al. 2012; Beck and Neff 2007; Hill et al. 2004).
Specialization in craft economies correlates often with expansive religious ideologies and consumption of ceremonially important objects (e.g., Mills 2007). The
volume of exchange can be so impressive as to suggest market conditions, most convincingly in the case of Hohokam red-on-buff pottery production sourced to a few
villages along the Gila River and its distribution involving thousands of vessels
16
STEPHEN PLOG ET AL.
annually throughout Hohokam territory (e.g., Abbott et al. 2007). On the other
hand, sourcing of widespread Salado polychromes to a multiplicity of disparate production locations has begun to shift connectivity implications to the flow of ideas as
much as to the movement of pots and people (e.g., Crown 1994; Ownby et al. 2014).
Movement of other exotic items across the region such as shell, copper bells, and
parrots have also been receiving increased attention (e.g., Vokes and Gregory
2007; Watson et al. 2015).
Regular exchange of more mundane items such as food, clothing, many raw
materials, and tools of everyday life are only sporadically documented in the archaeological record when compared to the complex, varied webs that commonly connected consumers and producers at multiple scales in ethnographic description.
The expansive plantings of agave for fiber, food, and likely alcoholic beverages in
particular Hohokam locales represent a well-documented example of specialized
agricultural production (Fish and Fish 2014). Cacao and black drink originating
well beyond the region has a wide SW/NW distribution (Crown and Hurst 2009;
Crown et al. 2015), whereas the only known presence of chile seeds (Minnis and
Whalen 2010) is at a settlement immediately adjacent to Paquim. Likewise, the
extensive ethnographic exchange of agricultural labor, sometimes spanning considerable distances and crossing ethnic boundaries, remains to be meaningfully
explored for prehispanic parallels (Fish and Fish 2015).
Over the past two decades, migration at all scales has once again become a central
theme of SW/NW archaeology and a force for discussing new kinds of connectivities
(e.g., Mills et al. 2013). Researchers are tracing long-distance migrations that correspond to abandonments of large sections of the Colorado Plateaus and movement
toward the east and southeast to the Rio Grande (e.g., Clark and Laumbach
2011; Ortman 2012) or south to southern Arizona (e.g., Hill et al. 2004). Current
interpretations emphasize societal factors at play in these northern abandonments
and limit the importance of simple environmental causation because movements
were initiated well before drought conditions arose (e.g., Duff and Wilshusen
2000; Glowacki 2015; Ortman 2012) and reconstructions suggest that at no time
did conditions deteriorate to the point to preclude significant agricultural production in the north (e.g., Kohler 2012).
Schachner (2015:76) contrasts the inferred consequences of societies who hosted
migrants at Hohokam and Rio Grande destinations. Kayenta peoples are seen as an
immigrant social unit who maintained a separate identity over generations and had
significant social and religious impacts on local southern Arizona residents. Mesa
Verde peoples, on the other hand, emigrated to multiple areas, but appear to have
been absorbed into extant social and economic networks in at least one destination,
the Rio Grande Valley. Both these major population movements reflect a continuing
trend towards post-A.D. 1300 aggregated settlement about irrigated cores throughout the SW/NW (Fish and Fish 2015). Pan-Salado ceramics have been described as
depicting a broad cult iconography that facilitated communication among ethnically
diverse peoples; their localized manufacture across the region offered a means for
Kayenta immigrants to play a key role in the associated integrative ideology
(Crown 1994; Lyons et al. 2008).
17
Within the past decade, social network science has become an increasingly important analytic framework with which to examine relationships and inter-connectively
for SW/NW archaeologists. Recent studies include an impressive array of analyses at
varying geographic and social scales, such as intercommunication between households within a single village based on trails or pathways (Pailes 2014), food
exchange to mitigate risk among Mesa Verde inhabitants (Crabtree 2015), interconnections through shared visual landmarks (Bernardini and Peeples 2015), and
models of interconnectivity, collapse, and migration at a pan-regional scale utilizing
compiled data on decorated ceramics and obsidian (Mills et al. 2013). Because the
methodologies and interpretative approaches for network science have been developed to solve problems in modern Western societies, we can expect future refinement and adjustments as they continue to be applied to prehispanic societies of
the region.
In response to recent calls for exploration of a big picture of North American
connectivity (e.g., Peregrine and Lekson 2012), we can expect increasing attention to
conjoined or interlinked societal processes that transcended traditionally defined
culture areas, sometimes even skipping over intervening areas (Nelson et al.
2016). Inter-regional connectivity was likely stimulated by sociopolitical mechanisms
operating over long distances that served in negotiating social, ritual, and political
relationships within and between regional societies. Such relations generated abundant material evidence shell, turquoise, macaws, copper, cacao and black drink,
as well as iconography linking peoples in California, the Great Basin, the Plains,
and Mesoamerica with the SW/NW (e.g., Crown et al. 2015; Gilman et al. 2014;
Kozuch 2002; McGuire 2011; Nelson et al. 2016; Thibodeau et al. 2015; Watson
et al. 2015). Such connections provoke intriguing and important questions about
why people were motivated during particular periods to cross great distances for
the acquisition of particular materials or perhaps ritual knowledge
Culture History Considerations

The intensity of research is far from uniform across the SW/NW, leaving large temporal, cultural, and geographic gaps in knowledge. Research has traditionally centered on the Ancestral Puebloan area, and this part of the region continues to
dominate theoretical contributions and to set the agenda for broader debate. In
the last decades legally mandated investigations have resulted in unprecedented
scales of excellent cultural resource studies in Arizona (especially in the Phoenix,
Tucson, and Tonto basins) and has begun to alter this scholarly landscape.
However, even in areas with intensive study, unanticipated discoveries or shifts in
methodology can dramatically alter regional culture history as when it became
apparent that deeply buried Early Agricultural remains in the Tucson Basin were
located and offered optimal opportunities for detailed study.
Levels of archaeological study and knowledge do not conform well to those
sectors with densest occupations at the time of earliest Spanish estimates. Relatively
populous areas occupied by Lower Colorado Yumans; the Opata, Yaqui and
Mayo of Sonora; and the Raramuri and Tepehuan of Chihuahua are poorly
known archaeologically but constituted a majority of total SW/NW population at
18
STEPHEN PLOG ET AL.
contact (Sheridan 1992). The emergence of strong regional centers of the Instituto
Nacional de Antropologa e Historia, with numerous active local researchers and
the increasing frequencies of bi-national collaborative projects in Chihuahua and
Sonora, are both important changes in this regard and undoubtedly will continue
to have major impacts on how we understand the dynamics of prehispanic population and society across the broader region (Villalpando and McGuire 2014).
One of the most significant and enduring questions pertaining to regional culture
history is the regional demographic collapses affecting areas with long-term cultural
traditions that occurred between A.D. 1400 and 1600. Regional sequences virtually
ended in areas where they had been continuous for more than a millennium and
large towns disappeared after they reached an apogee of population as well as political
and social complexity (Mountain Mogollon, Paquim, Cerro de Trincheras, and
Classic Period Hohokam centers) in the fifteenth century. Most scholars estimate
total population in these depopulated areas was once very high. For example, population of the Phoenix Basin alone is thought to have ranged between 26,000 and
100,000 circa A.D. 1400 (Doelle 2000:102). Historically, Upper Pima encountered
by missionary Eusebio Kino in A.D. 1690 numbered approximately 7000 in southern
Arizona or roughly the same total as for all contemporary Eastern Pueblos (Doelle
2000:9395; Simmons 1979:185). Areas that may have received immigrants from
the depopulated fifteenth-century SW/NW Borderlands remain obscure.
Attempts to account for this collapse have frequently focused on particular
aspects of environmental change or constraints. For example, a core-decay model
based on anthropogenic change in alluvial soils over a millennium of large-scale irrigation (Hill et al. 2004), highly variable Salt River discharge (Nials et al. 1989:69),
and nutritional stress in the face of growing population (Abbott 2003) have been
variously proposed for the demise of the Classic Period Hohokam in the Phoenix
Basin. However, extension of specific environmental or cultural factors extrapolated
across the whole region would appear to be problematic as individual subareas were
affected by differing regional weather patterns. Furthermore, their inhabitants typically occupied historically optimal zones for irrigation in addition to following
varied farming strategies with different agricultural calendars. If these large-scale
abandonments were interrelated, as they appear to be, a complex variety of demographic, social, and perhaps environmental factors must have been at play.
The dramatic changes between the archaeologically documented large towns and
the indigenous societies observed in detailed ethnographic and ethnohistoric
accounts are generally thought to have occurred by A.D. 1450. Unfortunately,
however, the degree to which the initial consequences of the Columbian exchange
contributed to the observed change has been largely unexplored with archaeological
data. Nonetheless, it is clear in accounts by Cabeza de Vaca and Nuo de Gzman
that Spanish slaving expeditions had already reached as far north as the Lower Pima
of southern Sonora by the early 1530s and the inhabitants of these regions had
already directly experienced the destructive impacts by that time (Hedrick and
Riley 1974:6567). It is difficult to imagine that such early European contact did
not rapidly begin to have consequences across the SW/NW.
To date, examination of initial European contact and the resulting economic, political, and social transformations have almost exclusively relied on analyses of
19
ethnohistoric texts and generalized comparisons with the archaeological record (e.g.,
Reff 1991; Riley 1987). In one of the few archaeological studies to specifically address
timing of the Columbian Exchange, Ramenofsky and Kuliseck (2013) report settlement data and historic records to document relative demographic stability among
Rio Grande peoples through the sixteenth century, suggesting geographic separation,
low population densities, and a limited number of expeditions account for the slow
diffusion of disease into the region. In a growing consensus, other writers (e.g.,
Cameron et al. 2015; Mathers et al. 2013) propose a complex of factors such as
labor demands, patterns of violence, and the degree of political centralization combined with infectious disease to differentially impact local societies.
Renewed interest in the changes wrought by first contact can potentially provide a
critical baseline from which to better evaluate SW/NW late prehispanic societal trajectories. The dynamics of these transformations also hold a key for better understanding prehispanic cultural diversity and the emergence of modern Native
American societies. Ultimately, resolution will be dependent on directed field
study, likely in cooperation with indigenous scholars, combined with new
approaches to chronology that can balance our strong current reliance on ideologically charged polychrome ceramics and overcome methodological problems with
absolute dating techniques such as the complexity of the fifteenth- and sixteenthcentury radiocarbon calibration curves.
Conclusions
As noted in the beginning, archaeologists working in the SW/NW are, and undoubtedly will be, addressing numerous important topics that we have not had the space
to consider here. Landscape studies including an increased understanding of the
cultural significance of key locations to indigenous groups as well as the greater
focus on rock art have become increasingly important and should be discussed in
future, lengthier reviews. The diversity in both the questions being asked and the
data being studied (Schachner 2015) is, we believe, one of the major strengths of
research being conducted in the region. If we were to identify an area of concern,
we would stress the need for archaeologists working in the SW/NW region to
remain engaged with our colleagues working in other areas of the world, to participate
in broader discussions of alternative theoretical perspectives, and to continue the
development of new research methods. The literature on the SW/NW has become
vast and the discipline as a whole has become more specialized, both trends that
can have the unfortunate impact of encouraging us to more narrowly focus on own
specific geographical areas and to attempt to understand those areas from limited
theoretical perspectives. Research in the SW/NW has always been central to the discipline of archaeology as a whole and we hope it will continue to be so in the future.
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Approaches to Research and Professional Engagement

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efforts, the Village Ecodynamics Project (VEP; http://village.anth.wsu.edu/) was

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KEY ISSUES AND TOPICS

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STEPHEN PLOG ET AL.

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KEY ISSUES AND TOPICS

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STEPHEN PLOG ET AL.

an important outcome has been heightened emphasis on relational approaches that

KEY ISSUES AND TOPICS

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Connectivity and Interaction

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STEPHEN PLOG ET AL.

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Culture History Considerations

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STEPHEN PLOG ET AL.

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STEPHEN PLOG ET AL.

Abbott, David R., Alexa M. Smith, and Emiliano Gallaga

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Pre-Columbian Tewa Basin Pueblo Landscape. Kiva 73:175196.

Prehistoric Cultural Explanations for Widespread Linguistic Families. In Archaeology and

Evans, pp. 123134. Oxford University Press, Melbourne.

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