118 posts · 60,023 views
A blog discussing a variety of subjects related to Chaco Canyon, the prehistoric American Southwest, and their complex connections to the world today.
teofilo
118 posts
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- June 10, 2011
- 10:29 PM
- 434 views
Colin Renfrew Has a Hammer
by teofilo in Gambler's House
Kristina Killgrove has an interesting post on the numerous broken Cycladic figurines on the Greek island of Keros that have been documented over the past few years by the prominent British archaeologist Colin Renfrew. Renfrew’s interpretation seems to be that these figurines were deliberately broken in various Cycladic communities, then deliberately brought to Keros to [...]... Read more »
Renfrew, C. (2001) Production and Consumption in a Sacred Economy: The Material Correlates of High Devotional Expression at Chaco Canyon. American Antiquity, 66(1), 14. DOI: 10.2307/2694314
- December 24, 2011
- 03:49 AM
- 432 views
Athapaskan Influence on Tewa
by teofilo in Gambler's House
There’s been quite a bit of research on relations between the Pueblo and Athapaskan peoples of the American Southwest, most of it falling within the broad domain of ethnography or sociocultural anthropology. That is, there is quite a lot of evidence that some of the Athapaskan-speaking Apache groups, especially the Navajos, have been in close [...]... Read more »
Kroskrity, P. (1985) Areal-Historical Influences on Tewa Possession. International Journal of American Linguistics, 51(4), 486. DOI: 10.1086/465943
- September 25, 2010
- 07:40 PM
- 429 views
Another Possible Chacoan Effigy Vessel
by teofilo in Gambler's House
Effigy vessels are very rare in the prehistoric Southwest, and human effigy vessels even more so. Most known examples, especially in the Anasazi area, are of animals, and by far the most common of these are the so-called “duck pots,” a distinctive type of vessel shape that is often considered to be a representation of [...]... Read more »
Lambert, M. (1967) A Kokopelli Effigy Pitcher from Northwestern New Mexico. American Antiquity, 32(3), 398. DOI: 10.2307/2694672
- January 8, 2012
- 04:08 AM
- 427 views
Why Don’t Navajos Eat Fish?
by teofilo in Gambler's House
In 1898 Washington Matthews, the US Army physician who was one of the earliest and best recorders of ethnographic information on the Navajos, published an article in the Journal of American Folklore entitled “Ichthyophobia.” It’s an interesting piece of scholarship for a number of reasons, not least its florid Victorian prose style. Matthews begins thus: [...]... Read more »
Landar, H. (1960) The Loss of Athapaskan Words for Fish in the Southwest. International Journal of American Linguistics, 26(1), 75. DOI: 10.1086/464559
Matthews, W. (1898) Ichthyophobia. The Journal of American Folklore, 11(41), 105. DOI: 10.2307/533215
- August 19, 2010
- 04:32 PM
- 422 views
About Those Chaco Burials
by teofilo in Gambler's House
In discussing a recent paper using stable-isotope techniques to evaluate subsistence in the Southwest during the Basketmaker period, I mentioned that one of the control samples used for contextual comparisons of the Basketmaker results came from Chaco Canyon great house burials. I don’t know how on earth the Utah-based researchers managed to get permission to [...]... Read more »
Coltrain, J., Janetski, J., & Carlyle, S. (2007) The Stable- and Radio-Isotope Chemistry of Western Basketmaker Burials: Implications for Early Puebloan Diets and Origins. American Antiquity, 72(2), 301. DOI: 10.2307/40035815
- August 30, 2010
- 07:03 PM
- 422 views
Human Effigy Vases
by teofilo in Gambler's House
George Pepper’s article on the excavation of Room 33 at Pueblo Bonito is fairly well-known and frequently cited, but he also published a few other articles on specific finds by the Hyde Exploring Expedition that have remained more obscure. Among these is a chapter in a Festschrift for Franz Boas, similar to the Festschrift for [...]... Read more »
Fewkes, J. (1898) An Ancient Human Effigy Vase from Arizona. American Anthropologist, 11(6), 165-170. DOI: 10.1525/aa.1898.11.6.02a00000
Pepper, G. (1905) Ceremonial Objects and Ornaments from Pueblo Bonito, New Mexico. American Anthropologist, 7(2), 183-197. DOI: 10.1525/aa.1905.7.2.02a00010
- September 19, 2010
- 08:54 PM
- 422 views
The West Mexican Context of the Chaco Effigy Vessels
by teofilo in Gambler's House
Given the rarity of human effigy vessels in the ancient Southwest, it seems clear that understanding them requires looking elsewhere. Specifically, it requires looking south, to Mesoamerica, where effigy vessels were quite common starting from an early date. Since most evidence of Mesoamerican influence in the Southwest seems to point to West Mexico as the [...]... Read more »
Beekman, C. (2009) Recent Research in Western Mexican Archaeology. Journal of Archaeological Research, 18(1), 41-109. DOI: 10.1007/s10814-009-9034-x
- November 20, 2011
- 10:58 PM
- 422 views
Level of Measurement and Archaeological Dating
by teofilo in Gambler's House
In 1946 the psychologist Stanley Smith Stevens, founder and director of Harvard’s Psycho-Acoustic Laboratory, published a short article in Science laying out a classification scheme for scales of measurement. This system, and the four scales it proposed, would go on to become extremely influential in the quantitative sciences, and it is still widely used. I [...]... Read more »
Stevens, S. (1946) On the Theory of Scales of Measurement. Science, 103(2684), 677-680. DOI: 10.1126/science.103.2684.677
- December 23, 2010
- 11:12 PM
- 419 views
Walls
by teofilo in Gambler's House
Sand Canyon Pueblo, which I discussed in the previous post, is one of the best-known prehistoric communities in the Southwest due to the multi-year research program conducted there by Crow Canyon Archaeological Center in the 1980s and 1990s. Crow Canyon selected it for this research for a variety of reasons, including its short period of [...]... Read more »
Kenzle, S. (1997) Enclosing Walls in the Northern San Juan: Sociophysical Boundaries and Defensive Fortifications in the American Southwest. Journal of Field Archaeology, 24(2), 195. DOI: 10.2307/530471
- December 27, 2011
- 02:15 AM
- 419 views
Ram Mesa: A Reasonable Case for Witchcraft Execution without Cannibalism
by teofilo in Gambler's House
One of the most notable examples of an assemblage of highly mutilated human remains from the Southwest being attributed to witchcraft execution rather than cannibalism, in accordance with J. Andrew Darling’s theory discussed in the previous post, is Ram Mesa, southwest of Chaco Canyon near Gallup, NM. This site was excavated by the University of [...]... Read more »
Ogilvie, M., & Hilton, C. (2000) Ritualized violence in the prehistoric American Southwest. International Journal of Osteoarchaeology, 10(1), 27-48. DOI: 10.1002/(SICI)1099-1212(200001/02)10:13.0.CO;2-M
- December 25, 2011
- 01:49 AM
- 414 views
The “Kiowa Apaches”: Neither Kiowa Nor Apache?
by teofilo in Gambler's House
The term “Apache” is one of the most widely known names for Native American groups, but it’s actually quite problematic. There is, I think, a general perception that it refers to a specific “tribe,” but it doesn’t. What it really is, at least as it’s used today, is a designation for all the Southern Athapaskan [...]... Read more »
Hoijer, H. (1938) The Southern Athapaskan Languages. American Anthropologist, 40(1), 75-87. DOI: 10.1525/aa.1938.40.1.02a00080
Huld, M. (1985) Regressive Apicalization in Na'isha. International Journal of American Linguistics, 51(4), 461. DOI: 10.1086/465932
- February 20, 2012
- 03:07 AM
- 412 views
Cahokia’s Grand Plaza
by teofilo in Gambler's House
Mississippian societies are known for their mounds, but there’s more to them than that even if you just look at community layout at the largest centers. One of the most distinctive characteristics of Mississippian mound centers is that the mounds at the biggest centers are typically grouped very formally around a central plaza. Historic [...]... Read more »
Holley, G., Dalan, R., & Smith, P. (1993) Investigations in the Cahokia Site Grand Plaza. American Antiquity, 58(2), 306. DOI: 10.2307/281972
- January 13, 2012
- 02:42 AM
- 411 views
Does Language Density Correlate with Latitude?
by teofilo in Gambler's House
Tim De Chant at Per Square Mile has an interesting post discussing an article by Ruth Mace and Mark Pagel in which they did a statistical analysis of the distribution of Native languages at European contact in North America and found that the density of languages correlates inversely with latitude (when controlling for land area) [...]... Read more »
Mace, R., & Pagel, M. (1995) A Latitudinal Gradient in the Density of Human Languages in North America. Proceedings of the Royal Society B: Biological Sciences, 261(1360), 117-121. DOI: 10.1098/rspb.1995.0125
- December 10, 2010
- 12:58 PM
- 407 views
Speaking of Plowing
by teofilo in Gambler's House
The postulated connection between plow-based agriculture and a highly inegalitarian system of gender roles that I was talking about in the previous post reminded me of another paper about plowing and gender in a very different context. This article, by Robin Ganev of the University of Regina, was published in the Journal of the History [...]... Read more »
Ganev, R. (2007) Milkmaids, Ploughmen, and Sex in Eighteenth-Century Britain. Journal of the History of Sexuality, 16(1), 40-67. DOI: 10.1353/sex.2007.0037
- January 16, 2012
- 02:49 AM
- 403 views
The Vacant Quarter
by teofilo in Gambler's House
One of the major advantages Southwestern archaeologists have over those studying other areas of prehistoric North America is a very solid chronology, based primarily on tree-rings and extended by diagnostic pottery types that in many cases changed rapidly. As a result of this chronology, in many parts of the Southwest unexcavated sites can be dated [...]... Read more »
Cobb, C., & Butler, B. (2002) The Vacant Quarter Revisited: Late Mississippian Abandonment of the Lower Ohio Valley. American Antiquity, 67(4), 625. DOI: 10.2307/1593795
- January 9, 2012
- 04:00 AM
- 386 views
Who Were the Padouca?
by teofilo in Gambler's House
In 1827 William Clark, who had attained national fame as co-leader of the Lewis and Clark Expedition more than 20 years earlier and had gone on to a successful career as an Indian Agent and governor of the Missouri Territory, obtained title to 37,000 acres in western Kentucky along the Ohio River that had been [...]... Read more »
Grinnell, G. (1920) Who Were the Padouca?. American Anthropologist, 22(3), 248-260. DOI: 10.1525/aa.1920.22.3.02a00050
Michelson, T. (1921) Who Were the Padouca?. American Anthropologist, 23(1), 101-101. DOI: 10.1525/aa.1921.23.1.02a00120
Secoy, F. (1951) The Identity of the "Paduca"; An Ethnohistorical Analysis. American Anthropologist, 53(4), 525-542. DOI: 10.1525/aa.1951.53.4.02a00060
- February 19, 2012
- 02:05 AM
- 384 views
Mississippian Agriculture
by teofilo in Gambler's House
One of the main ways Mississippian societies differed from earlier societies in eastern North America was in their much heavier reliance on maize agriculture for subsistence. There had been agriculture, and even maize, before in the east, but the Mississippians farmed much more intensively and used maize in particular much more heavily than people had [...]... Read more »
Fowler, M. (1969) Middle Mississippian Agricultural Fields. American Antiquity, 34(4), 365. DOI: 10.2307/277733
- December 25, 2011
- 11:15 PM
- 375 views
Cannibal Christmas Returns: The Witchcraft Theory
by teofilo in Gambler's House
Last year around Christmas I did a series of posts on the evidence for cannibalism in the prehistoric Southwest. I didn’t cover nearly all that there is to say about this important but controversial issue then, so I figured it would be a good idea to discuss it a bit more this year. In this [...]... Read more »
Andrew Darling, J. (1998) Mass Inhumation and the Execution of Witches in the American Southwest. American Anthropologist, 100(3), 732-752. DOI: 10.1525/aa.1998.100.3.732
- December 22, 2010
- 11:56 PM
- 374 views
Prehistoric Zoning
by teofilo in Gambler's House
When I was working at Chaco and would tell visitors that I was going to graduate school for city planning, most people would remark on what a difference that sounded like. And, indeed, there are a lot of differences between my life when I was at Chaco and my life here at school in New [...]... Read more »
Bradley, B. (1993) Planning, Growth, and Functional Differentiation at a Prehistoric Pueblo: A Case Study from SW Colorado. Journal of Field Archaeology, 20(1), 23. DOI: 10.2307/530352
- February 6, 2012
- 03:28 AM
- 371 views
Who the Cahokians Weren’t
by teofilo in Gambler's House
The name “Cahokia” comes from one of the constituent tribes of the Illinois Confederacy, a group of several semi-autonomous “tribes” or “villages” that occupied much of what is now the state of Illinois and parts of some of the surrounding states in the seventeenth and eighteenth centuries. Staunch allies of the French throughout most of [...]... Read more »
Blasingham, E. (1956) The Depopulation of the Illinois Indians, Part I. Ethnohistory, 3(3), 193. DOI: 10.2307/480408
Blasingham, E. (1956) The Depopulation of the Illinois Indians. Part 2, Concluded. Ethnohistory, 3(4), 361. DOI: 10.2307/480464
Wedel, W. (1945) On the Illinois Confederacy and Middle Mississippi Culture in Illinois. American Antiquity, 10(4), 383. DOI: 10.2307/275581
Wray, D., & Smith, H. (1944) An Hypothesis for the Identification of the Illinois Confederacy with the Middle Mississippi Culture in Illinois. American Antiquity, 10(1), 23. DOI: 10.2307/275179
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