In the 1100s most Pueblo peoples lived in small, dispersed settlements and moved frequently, but by the mid-1400s they had aggregated into large villages. The majority of these villages were still occupied at Spanish contact and conquest, by which time most Pueblo peoples had completely transformed their perception and experience of village life. Other changes were taking place on a broader regional scale, and the migrations from the Colorado Plateau and the transformation of Chaco initiated myriad changes in ritual organization and practice.

Landscapes of Social Transformation in the Salinas Province and the Eastern Pueblo World investigates relationships between diverse regional and local changes in the Rio Grande and Salinas areas from 1100 to 1500 C.E. The contributing authors draw on the results of sixteen seasons of archaeological survey and excavation in the Salinas Province of central New Mexico. The chapters offer cross-scale analyses to compare broad perspectives in well-researched southwestern culture changes to the finer details of stability and transformation in Salinas. This stability—which was unusual in the Pueblo Southwest—from the 1100s until its abandonment in the 1670s provides an interesting contrast to migration-based transformations studied elsewhere in the Rio Grande region.

CONTRIBUTORS

Patricia Capone
Matthew Chamberlin
Tiffany C. Clark
William M. Graves
Cynthia L. Herhahn
Deborah Huntley
Keith Kintigh
Ann Kinzig
Jeannette L. Mobley-Tanaka
Alison E. Rautman
Jonathan Sandor
Grant Snitker
Julie Solometo
Katherine A. Spielmann
Colleen Strawhacker
Maryann Wasiolek
 

Katherine A. Spielmann is a professor emerita of anthropology at Arizona State University. She has spent much of her career studying the late pre-Hispanic peoples of the Salinas area in central New Mexico and the residents of Perry Mesa in central Arizona. Her most recent book, Alliance and Landscape on Perry Mesa in the Fourteenth Century, is co-edited with David R. Abbott.

“A useful case study to re-evaluate our understanding of persistence and mobility.”—Antiquity

 “This volume provides a thorough examination of the variety of landscapes utilized in the Salinas Province from geographic to mobility to landscapes of risk with an excellent analysis of the interaction of the people with these landscapes. Each author provides a distinct yet cohesive chapter that comes together with all of the other chapters to form a well-rounded, comprehensive text.”—KIVA

“This state-of-the-art volume, representing the culmination of more than fifteen seasons of archaeological survey and excavation by the authors, offers valuable new insights into the character and consequences of settled village life in the Salinas Pueblo Province.”—Robert W. Preucel, editor of Archaeologies of the Pueblo Revolt
 
“A fascinating volume by the most experienced and learned investigators of the region, ranging across many fields of expertise.”—James F. Brooks, author of Mesa of Sorrows