Late Prehistoric technological and social reorganization along the Mogollon Rim, Arizona

Abstract

This study seeks to study the social processes of community reorganization through the changing technological organization of flaked stone tools. The Mogollon Rim region of east-central Arizona, between AD 1000 and AD 1400, was the scene of remarkable social changes. In this period, migrants were attracted into the region and new small communities were created. After a period of dispersed settlement pattern communities, some of the communities developed large, aggregated settlements. In this process of aggregation, community growth was facilitated by the incorporation of migrants. Social integrative forces at work included the development of interhousehold exchanges, as well as informal and formal suprahousehold organizations. In spite of these social integrative forces, community dissolution and abandonment sooner or later came to all of these settlements. The technology of daily life is one means of exploring these social organizational forces. Chipped stone studies have been behind the times in the American Southwest when addressing social organization research through the examination of Pueblo chipped stone assemblages. Technological organization is a creation of households and suprahousehold groups. Technological organization changes as community organization changes. This study examines the chipped stone tools and debitage from ten east-central Arizona pueblos, forming inferences about how the organization of chipped stone tool production, distribution, consumption, and discard was arranged in each community. Each community studied was a product of migrants and resident families, social exchanges, social integration, and social dissolution. This study demonstrates the utility of chipped stone analysis for studying the social processes at work in communities.