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3 books match the query 'Pit houses'

cover of Household Archaeology at the Bridge River Site (EeRl4), British Columbia: Spatial Distributions of Features, Lithic Artifacts, and Faunal Remains on Fifteen Anthropogenic Floors from Housepit 54

Household Archaeology at the Bridge River Site (EeRl4), British Columbia

Spatial Distributions of Features, Lithic Artifacts, and Faunal Remains on Fifteen Anthropogenic Floors from Housepit 54

Anna Marie Prentiss, Ethan Ryan, Ashley Hampton, Kathryn Bobolinski, Pei-Lin Yu, Matthew Schmader, and Alysha Edwards

University of Utah Press, 2022

Household Archaeology at Bridge River offers a unique contribution to the study of household archaeology, providing unprecedented insights into the history of a long-lived house in the Interior Pacific Northwest. With fifteen intact anthropogenic floors dating to pre-Colonial times, Bridge River’s Housepit 54 provides an extraordinary archaeological record—the first to allow researchers to adequately test for relationships between occupational variation and social change.

The authors take a methodological approach that integrates the study of household spatial organization with consideration of archaeological formation processes. Repeating the same set of analyses for each floor, they examine stability from standpoints of occupation and abandonment cycles, structure and organization of activity areas, and variation in positioning of wealth-related items. This volume is an outstanding example of research undertaken through a collaborative partnership between scholars from the University of Montana and the community of the St’át’imc Nation.
 
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cover of Households on the Mimbres Horizon: Excavations at La Gila Encantada, Southwestern New Mexico

Households on the Mimbres Horizon

Excavations at La Gila Encantada, Southwestern New Mexico

Barbara J. Roth

University of Arizona Press, 2023

Pithouse sites represent the basic form of occupation in the Mimbres Mogollon region of southwestern New Mexico from AD 200 to the late 900s. This study presents the results of excavations of one such site, called La Gila Encantada.

Little is known about the variability present at pithouse sites away from the major Mimbres and Gila River Valleys. Nonriverine occupations have been understudied until now. This book describes subsistence and settlement practices and compares the results with recent research conducted at the larger villages in the Mimbres River Valley. Despite basic similarities in material culture, households at La Gila Encantada appear to have followed different trajectories than those along the rivers. Examining these differences, archaeologist Barbara J. Roth provides insights into some of the reasons why they existed and shows that the variability present in pithouse occupations over the years was tied to multiple factors, including environmental differences, economic practices, and the social composition of groups occupying the sites. With chapters assessing ceramic data, chipped and groundstone analysis, shell and mineral jewelry, and regional context, this look at the past offers relevant insights into current issues in Southwest archaeology, including identity, interaction, and household organization.
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cover of Southwestern Pithouse Communities, AD 200-900

Southwestern Pithouse Communities, AD 200-900

Edited by Lisa C. Young and Sarah A. Herr

University of Arizona Press, 2012

Pithouses are the earliest identifiable domestic architecture in many areas of the world, and can provide insights into the origins of communities--a fundamental component of past and present societies. In this book, Lisa Young and Sarah Herr invite archaeologists to explore the development of communities using information from pithouse sites in the American Southwest.

Using regional and topical syntheses to investigate the formation of pithouse communities, contributors to this volume examine the complex relationship between the economic transition to agricultural dependence and the social changes associated with sedentism. They discover that during this transformation, peoples' relationship with the landscape changed in ways that affected their use of space, community organization, and cultural identity.

Employing various theoretical perspectives, these contributions analyze changes in pithouses, site layout, communal architecture, and settlement patterns to investigate the development of place-based communities. Chapters look at community formation strategies in populous regions like the northern San Juan Basin, the southern Colorado Plateau, Mimbres/southern Mogollon, and Hohokam Basin and Range and compare them with social structures in more sparsely populated regions like the northeast Hohokam peripheries, the Arizona Transition Zone, the Cibola region, southeast New Mexico, and the northern Rio Grande. The book also includes thematic discussions of panregional economic change, the complex relationship between house and household, and the demographic shifts accompanying the Neolithic Demographic Transition.

An essential book for students and archaeologists interested in the origins of communities, Southwestern Pithouse Communities is also an important comparative resource for scholars interested in social change during the transition to settled village life.
 

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