Social Identities Among Archaic Mobile Hunters and Gatherers in the American Southwest [No. 197]

Abstract

The mobile hunters and gatherers of the Archaic Southwest were members of at least three different kinds of social groups: bands, endogamous marriage groups and a risk-sharing economic network. By comparing the geographic distributions of iconological and technological style in cordage, sandals and projectile points, it is possible to distinguish marriage groups from the larger economic networks. Using artifacts from Bat Cave, Tularosa Cave and Cordova Cave in the New Mexico Mogollon and from Presnal Shelter in the Tularosa Basin, this research was able to demonstrate that technological style in fiber artifacts is more geographically constrained than iconological style in textiles or projectile points indicating that although groups using these rock shelters came from different bands, they belonged to the same marriage group, yet participated in different risk-sharing economic networks.