During the mid twelfth century, villages that had been occupied by the Mimbres people in what is now southwestern New Mexico were depopulated and new settlements were formed. While most scholars view abandonment in terms of failed settlements, Margaret Nelson shows that, for the Mimbres, abandonment of individual communities did not necessarily imply abandonment of regions. By examining the economic and social reasons for change among the Mimbres, Nelson reconstructs a process of shifting residence as people spent more time in field camps and gradually transformed them into small hamlets while continuing to farm their old fields. Challenging current interpretations of abandonment of the Mimbres area through archaeological excavation and survey, she suggests that agricultural practices evolved toward the farming of multiple fields among which families moved, with small social groups traveling frequently between small pueblos rather than being aggregated in large villages. Mimbres during the Twelfth Century is the first book-length contribution on this topic for the Classic Mimbres period and also addresses current debates on the role of Casas Grandes in these changes. By rethinking abandonment, Nelson shows how movement by prehistoric cultivators maintained continuity of occupation within a region and invites us to reconsider the dynamic relationship between people and their land.

This monograph takes a fresh look at migration in light of the recent resurgence of interest in this topic within archaeology. The author develops a reliable approach for detecting and assessing the impact of migration based on conceptions of style in anthropology. From numerous ethnoarchaeological and ethnohistoric case studies, material culture attributes are isolated that tend to be associated only with the groups that produce them. Clark uses this approach to evaluate Puebloan migration into the Tonto Basin of east-central Arizona during the early Classic period (A.D. 1200-1325), focusing on a community that had been developing with substantial Hohokam influence prior to this interval. He identifies Puebloan enclaves in the indigenous settlements based on culturally specific differences in the organization of domestic space and in technological styles reflected in wall construction and utilitarian ceramic manufacture. Puebloan migration was initially limited in scale, resulting in the co-residence of migrants and local groups within a single community. Once this co-residence settlement pattern is reconstructed, relations between the two groups are examined and the short-term and long-term impacts of migration are assessed. The early Classic period is associated with the appearance of the Salado horizon in the Tonto Basin. The results of this research suggest that migration and co-residence was common throughout the basins and valleys in the region defined by the Salado horizon, although each local sequence relates a unique story. The methodological and theoretical implications of Clark's work extend well beyond the Salado and the Southwest and apply to any situation in which the scale and impact of prehistoric migration are contested.

From the mid-twelfth to the mid-fourteenth century, the world of the ancestral Pueblo people (Anasazi) was in transition, undergoing changes in settlement patterns and community organization that resulted in what scholars now call the Pueblo III period. This book synthesizes the archaeology of the ancestral Pueblo world during the Pueblo III period, examining twelve regions that embrace nearly the entire range of major topographic features, ecological zones, and prehistoric Puebloan settlement patterns found in the northern Southwest. Drawn from the 1990 Crow Canyon Archaeological Center conference "Pueblo Cultures in Transition," the book serves as both a data resource and a summary of ideas about prehistoric changes in Puebloan settlement and in regional interaction across nearly 150,000 square miles of the Southwest. The volume provides a compilation of settlement data for over 800 large sites occupied between A.D. 1100-1400 in the Southwest. These data provide new perspectives on the geographic scale of culture change in the Southwest during this period. Twelve chapters analyze the archaeological record for specific districts and provide a detailed picture of settlement size and distribution, community architecture, and population trends during the period. Additional chapters cover warfare and carrying capacity and provide overviews of change in the region. Throughout the chapters, the contributors address the unifying issues of the role of large sites in relation to smaller ones, changes in settlement patterns from the Pueblo II to Pueblo III periods, changes in community organization, and population dynamics. Although other books have considered various regions or the entire prehistoric area, this is the first to provide such a wealth of information on the Pueblo III period and such detailed district-by-district syntheses. By dealing with issues of population aggregation and the archaeology of large settlements, it offers readers a much-needed synthesis of one of the most crucial periods of culture change in the Southwest. Contents 1. "The Great Period": The Pueblo World During the Pueblo III Period, A.D. 1150 to 1350, Michael A. Adler 2. Pueblo II-Pueblo III Change in Southwestern Utah, the Arizona Strip, and Southern Nevada, Margaret M. Lyneis 3. Kayenta Anasazi Settlement Transformations in Northeastern Arizona: A.D. 1150 to 1350, Jeffrey S. Dean 4. The Pueblo III-Pueblo IV Transition in the Hopi Area, Arizona, E. Charles Adams 5. The Pueblo III Period along the Mogollon Rim: The Honanki, Elden, and Turkey Hill Phases of the Sinagua, Peter J. Pilles, Jr. 6. A Demographic Overview of the Late Pueblo III Period in the Mountains of East-central Arizona, J. Jefferson Reid, John R. Welch, Barbara K. Montgomery, and María Nieves Zedeño 7. Southwestern Colorado and Southeastern Utah Settlement Patterns: A.D. 1100 to 1300, Mark D. Varien, William D. Lipe, Michael A. Adler, Ian M. Thompson, and Bruce A. Bradley 8. Looking beyond Chaco: The San Juan Basin and Its Peripheries, John R. Stein and Andrew P. Fowler 9. The Cibola Region in the Post-Chacoan Era, Keith W. Kintigh 10. The Pueblo III Period in the Eastern San Juan Basin and Acoma-Laguna Areas, John R. Roney 11. Southwestern New Mexico and Southeastern Arizona, A.D. 900 to 1300, Stephen H. Lekson 12. Impressions of Pueblo III Settlement Trends among the Rio Abajo and Eastern Border Pueblos, Katherine A. Spielman 13. Pueblo Cultures in Transition: The Northern Rio Grande, Patricia L. Crown, Janet D. Orcutt, and Timothy A. Kohler 14. The Role of Warfare in the Pueblo III Period, Jonathan Haas and Winifred Creamer 15. Agricultural Potential and Carrying Capacity in Southwestern Colorado, A.D. 901 to 1300, Carla R. Van West 16. Big Sites, Big Questions: Pueblos in Transition, Linda S. Cordell 17. Pueblo III People and Polity in Relational Context, David R. Wilcox Appendix: Mapping the Puebloa

The purpose of this study was to compare current woodland density and distribution in and around the dry upper Verde River watershed in northwestern Arizona with conditions prior to Anglo settlement. Historic conditions were assessed using early photographs and early diaries and reports. The expedition led by Amiel Weeks Whipple was retraced and areas described in 1854 compared with the present. Diaries and reports of members of the Sitgreaves (1851) and Ives (1858) expeditions, Francis Aubry (1857), Edward Beale, John Marion (1870), and Edgar Mearns were also used to assess presettlement woodland conditions. Photographs from 1867, 1871, 1910, and 1917 were repeated between 1995 and 1999. Based upon these early sources, I hypothesize that the aerial distribution of woodlands have not changed greatly since 1851, although densities within many stands have increased. I conclude that at least three dense stands of woodland of unknown extent existed in the study area as early as 1851.