Search

The indigenous polities of eastern Sonora, Mexico, play an important role in reconstructions of the late prehispanic political geography of northwest Mexico and the U.S. Southwest. Most interpretations of political organization in the region rely heavily on Spanish conquest accounts from the 1500s augmented by some archaeological data. Researchers have argued that political units in this region were organizationally complex and controlled substantial territories. Recent investigations in the Moctezuma Valley mostly refute these interpretations. This paper presents evidence of the limited scale of political organization in the region, including settlement patterns, the distribution of public architecture, the movement of rare goods, stylistic differences in material culture, and demographic reconstructions. Previous ethnohistoric research mistakenly assumed that Spanish exploration chronicles provided a near complete list of primate centers. This approach produced interpretations of geographically expansive polities. Present data suggest that the region was highly balkanized into numerous autonomous political units that were minimally involved in macro-regional political and social trajectories. The character of political organization in this region resulted in part from a patchy landscape, low demographic pressure, and geographic location between more centrally organized groups. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

Network analysis provides a unique approach for archaeologists to identify structural relationships between the emergent properties of social interactions and the trajectory of corporate groups. This article presents the results of a survey of architectural features and a network analysis of walkways between house clusters at the thirteenth-century Hohokam site of Cerro Prieto, located in the Tucson Basin, Arizona. Statistical measures suggest that nascent inequality was developing at this site, making it an excellent case study of the factors that led to the emergence of economic and social differentiation. Network analysis provides a means to explain how corporate groups were able to leverage social connections in their struggle for ascendance in these spheres of interaction. Regardless of the strategy of social ascendance, a simple increase in the opportunity to influence others appears to explain a large portion of differential corporate group success. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

Archaeological marine shell artifacts moving over long distances may reveal the remnants of social networks, social currency, and the nuances of exchange. For the southwestern United States and northern Mexico, potential sources of marine shell are predominantly the Gulf of California and Pacific Ocean. There exists some taxonomic overlap between molluscan communities of these regions and the Gulf of California, necessitating non-biogeographic methods to distinguish their origins. Combined oxygen and carbon stable isotope ratio measurements demonstrate that modern shells from these water bodies have distinct isotopic ranges. Molluscan isotopic composition within the Gulf of California varies, which allows for the identification of distinct source regions. Archaeological marine shell from Pueblo III and IV sites in the Mogollon Rim region of east-centra! Arizona are sourced, demonstrating that archaeological shell was obtained from a northeastern subregion of the Gulf of California. This is the closest source for the Puebloan communities, but it is not consistent with previous hypotheses concerning the origin of marine shell in the Colorado Plateau and Mogollon Highlands, which suggested an exchange route via Paquimé originating south of Isla Tiburón. We discuss the implications of these results in the context of previous research and draw conclusions about the meaning of shell use in the region. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

This article revises the spatial and temporal boundaries of the Casas Grandes tradition associated with northwest Chihuahua, Mexico, based on new data collected in neighboring northeastern Sonora. The Casas Grandes tradition attained its greatest extent during the Medio period (AD 1200–1450/1500) followed by a dramatic demographic and political collapse. Hunter-gatherer groups subsequently occupied most of northwest Chihuahua. Data from the Fronteras Valley, Sonora, presents an alternative scenario, with a clear pattern of cultural continuity from the eleventh century to the colonial period in which sedentary farmers occupied the same landscapes and occasionally the same villages. These observations contribute to our understanding of the spread and subsequent demise of the Casas Grandes tradition in hinterland regions. For the Fronteras Valley, we infer that immigrant groups originally introduced Casas Grandes traditions and that uneven participation in a suite of shared religious beliefs and practices was common to all the hinterlands. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]