Doctoral Dissertation Improvement Grant: Social Transformations and Regional Scales of Identity in the Cibola World: AD 1150-1325

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Under the direction of Dr. Keith Kintigh, Matthew Peeples will conduct archaeological analyses of pottery, architectural data, and site locations from the Zuni/Cibola region of New Mexico and Arizona. The Zuni/Cibola region is centered on the contemporary Zuni Pueblo and the Zuni Indian Reservation. This region has long been a location of relatively large agricultural communities beginning as early as 3,000 years ago. Peeples's work focuses on the period from AD 1150-AD 1325. This period saw a major transformation in the organization of communities as well as changes in the ways that people interacted across the region. In a single generation, people in the Zuni/Cibola region went from living in thousands of small, dispersed agricultural hamlets to living in about twelve large nucleated towns housing several hundred individuals. These analyses are directed at understanding how interaction and social identification among individuals and groups may have changed during this transition. Analyses include (1) chemical characterizations of pottery focused on determining where it was made, (2) studies of the techniques used to produce pottery focused on identifying people using similar methods, (3) studies of painted pottery and public architecture focused on understanding how people expressed social similarities or differences through material culture, and (4) studies of site distributions focused on documenting settlement changes. Together, these analyses will provide a dynamic characterization of social organization and interaction at a regional scale during a period of wide-spread social change. Peeples will test models based on contemporary social theories focused on social movements to explore potential similarities among major social transformations across a variety of cultural and historical contexts.This research will result in the use of well-developed body of theory new to archaeology, as well as new insights into how to address regional-scale social processes in the archaeological record. The large, well-documented regional database of settlements, ceramic source data, and material culture analyses will permit an examination of social change at scales that are seldom directly considered by archaeologists or ethnographers. Archaeological studies such as the one proposed here are uniquely suited to this objective because ethnological studies cannot typically take place at such broad scales and are limited in their temporal coverage. This study will promote participation of underrepresented groups in science by engaging members of the Pueblo of Zuni in consultation. Peeples will organize public presentations for the Zuni Tribal Council and other interested individuals at Zuni during various stages of the project. In addition, Peeples will train three undergraduate anthropology students from Arizona State University to assist in the project. This training will provide job skills for these students and will foster future collaborations. Lastly, this research addresses questions directly relevant for assessments of cultural affiliation in the United States as mandated by the Native American Graves Protection and Repatriation Act. Specifically, this research will provide an alternative means for defining affiliation that does not rely on traditional archaeological culture areas. This alternative has the potential to help in reintegrating anthropological and Native American perspectives into archaeological assessments of affiliation by specifically addressing social and cultural variation rather than masking it.