Themes in Southwest Prehistory
George J. Gumerman, Randall, Linda S. Cordell, Patricia L. Crown, E. Charles AdamsBooks.org participates in affiliate programs including Bookshop.org and the Amazon Services LLC Associates Program. We may earn a commission from qualifying purchases made through links on this page, at no additional cost to you.
Synopsis
Environment and demography, health and nutrition, abandonment and aggregation, competition and conflict, hierarchy and political centralization, social integration and alliance. These themes have captured the attention of generations of archaeologists studying the Anasazi, Hohokam, Mimbres, and other precontact Southwestern groups. The regular and patterned rhythms of change across the prehistoric Southwest had their genesis in a few related trends: increased food production, a greater degree of sedentism, and a dramatically increasing population. These conditions helped bring about many observable changes in the complexity of prehistoric Southwestern society, as societal change became necessary to accommodate new forms or resource ownership, territoriality, division of labor, production specialization, and supporting belief systems. In Themes in Southwest Prehistory, 25 scholars present the most current thinking on how these and other issues relate to questions of culture change.
Bulletin of the History of Archaeology
This book is a very valuable contribution to Southwestern prehistory, and its analyses of cultural evolution and patterns have importance well beyond the Southwest . highly recommended reading for all serious students of the Southwest.