Dissertation: Understanding Ritual Reorganization in Late Prehistoric Western Pueblos: A Case Study on Homol'ovi

在E·查尔斯·亚当斯博士的指导下，文森特·拉莫塔先生将为他的博士论文收集数据。他的目标是了解允许美国西南部四角地区史前晚期普韦布洛人有效运作和协调活动的因素。从公元13世纪中叶开始，一直持续到14世纪初，被称为普韦布洛三至四世过渡的时期，整个西南部北部的人口结构发生了重大变化。到1300年，四角地区基本上被遗弃了，人口已经移民到几个大型聚居区，有些聚居区的居民超过1000人。到14世纪中叶，平均聚落规模比50-100年前的水平增加了500%或更多。聚集在一起的普韦布洛社区从根本上偏离了当时该区域史前特征的较为典型的分散的低密度定居点模式。虽然早期普韦布卢恩关于聚集生命的实验相对短暂，但普韦布洛IV群落模式持续了几个世纪，直到历史时期。这类社区的这些特点引发了关于促进聚集和融合的社会机制的许多辩论。几位考古学家提出，普埃布洛万人发展的仪式在影响和维持这一模式方面发挥了核心作用。多年来，亚利桑那州立博物馆对跨越这一过渡时期的一系列Homol‘ovi遗址进行了挖掘，这些遗址将成为LaMotta先生研究的基础。他认为，在现在的民族志中观察到的“仪式苏打”出现在史前晚期，并起到了重要的整合作用。仪式联姻是一种仪式组织，其成员横跨亲属关系线，通常执行公共和半公共仪式。正如拉莫塔先生所指出的，问题是如何识别考古记录中的同一性，并将它们与其他类型的以家庭和亲属为基础的仪式团体区分开来，这些团体也可能存在。他已经制定了一系列标准来服务于这一目标，并将在NSF的支持下监督对挖掘出的动物和花卉遗骸的分析，以确定数据是否以及何时符合考古序列中的预期模式。这项研究具有重要意义，因为它将提供对复杂社会如何产生和维持的洞察。这项工作还将有助于培养一位有前途的年轻科学家。

Under the direction of Dr. E. Charles Adams Mr. Vincent LaMotta will collect data for his doctoral dissertation. His goal is to understand the factors which permitted effective functioning and coordination of activities of late prehistoric period Pueblo people in the Four Corners region of the Southwestern USA. The period known as the Pueblo III-IV transition, beginning in the mid-13th century AD and continuing through the early 1400s was characterized throughout the northern Southwest by major demographic shifts. The Four Corners region was largely abandoned by 1300, populations having emigrated to a few large settlement clusters with some sites housing over a thousand people. By the mid 14th century, average settlement size had increased by up to 500% or more over levels of just 50-100 years before. Aggregated Pueblo IV communities departed radically from the more typical pattern of dispersed low-density settlements that characterized the prehistory of the region up to that time. While earlier Puebloan experiments with aggregated life were relatively short-lived, Pueblo IV community patterns persisted for centuries into the historic period. These characteristics of such communities have stimulated much debate about the social mechanisms that facilitated aggregation and integration. Several archaeologists have proposed that Puebloan peoples developed rituals which played a central role in effecting and sustaining this pattern. For many years the Arizona State Museum has conducted excavation at a series of Homol'ovi sites which span this transitional period and these will form the basis for Mr. LaMotta's research. He believes that "ritual sodalities" observed in the ethnographic present emerged during the late prehistoric period and served an important integrating function. A ritual sodality is a ceremonial organization whose membership cross-cuts kinship lines and which typically performs public and semi-public rituals. The problem, as Mr. LaMotta notes is how to identify solidalities in the archaeological record and distinguish them from other types of family and kin based ritual groups which also were likely to exist. He has developed a series of criteria which serve this goal and with NSF support will supervise the analysis of excavated faunal and floral remains to determine whether, and when in the archaeological sequence the data conform to the expected pattern. This research is significant for the insight it will provide into how complex societies arise and are maintained. The work will also contribute to training a promising young scientist.