Skip to main content
SpringerLink
Log in

Inferring Ancestral Pueblo Social Networks from Simulation in the Central Mesa Verde

  • Published:
Journal of Archaeological Method and Theory Aims and scope Submit manuscript

Abstract

Understanding exchange is essential for understanding past societies. The exchange of knowledge and goods undeniably influenced the development of Pueblo culture. Previous studies within Southwestern archaeology have mostly focused on the exchange of material goods such as ceramics or prestige items since these items do not decay, while other day-to-day exchanges, such as the exchange of food items, are relatively undetectable in archaeology. Sahlins (1972) notes that in small-scale societies, food exchange is essential for the survival of individuals in patchy landscapes. Moreover, Sahlins’s research shows that cross-culturally in small-scale societies, the exchange of food is one of the fundamental structuring mechanisms for alliances. With this knowledge, we may want to study the exchange of food within societies, but without being able to see the actual exchange, how can archaeologists explore the impact of food exchange given the relatively sparse archaeological record? In this paper, I use computer simulation to explore the extent to which food-sharing practices would have been instrumental for the survival of Ancestral Pueblo people across the patchy landscape of the Prehispanic American Southwest and suggest that we can see direct evidence of exchange through the aggregation of households into clustered settlements. Social networks would have created stable bonds among these exchanging individuals, further helping the survival of those individuals and their progeny. Specifically, I engage Sahlins’s notion of balanced reciprocal exchange networks (BRN; when unrelated individuals rely upon reputation building to inform exchange relationships) within the experimental test-bed of the Village Ecodynamics Project’s agent-based simulation.

This is a preview of subscription content, log in via an institution to check access.

Access this article

Log in via an institution

Price excludes VAT (USA)
Tax calculation will be finalised during checkout.

Instant access to the full article PDF.

Institutional subscriptions

Fig. 1
Fig. 2
Fig. 3
Fig. 4
Fig. 5
Fig. 6
Fig. 7
Fig. 8
Fig. 9
Fig. 10
Fig. 11
Fig. 12
Fig. 13
Fig. 14
Fig. 15
Fig. 16

Similar content being viewed by others

Notes

  1. Sahlins’ four types of strategies are pooling, generalized reciprocal exchange (GRN), balanced reciprocal exchange (BRN), and negative reciprocal exchange. Pooling is common in nuclear families and is the equal sharing of all resources among all members. Negative reciprocal exchange is conceptualized as either barter for the best price or as theft. BRN and GRN are defined below.

References

  • Adler, M. A., Van Pool, T., & Leonard, R. D. (1996). Ancestral Pueblo population aggregation and abandonment in the North American Southwest. Journal of World Prehistory, 10(3), 375–438.

    Article  Google Scholar 

  • Aftabuddin, M., & Kundu, S. (2010). AMINONET: a tool to construct and visualize amino acid networks, and to calculate topological parameters. J. Appl. Cryst., 43, 367–369. doi:10.1107/S002188981000110X.

    Article  Google Scholar 

  • Assenov, Y., Ramirez, F., Schelhorn, S. E., Lengauer, T., & Albrecht, M. (2008). Computing topological parameters of biological networks. Bioinformatics, 24(2), 282–284.

    Article  Google Scholar 

  • Backstrom, L., and Kleinberg, J. (2013). Romantic partnerships and the dispersion of social ties: a network analysis of relationship status on Facebook. Proceedings of the 17th ACM Conference on Computer Supported Cooperative Work and Social Computing (CSCW), 2014. http://arxiv.org/abs/1310.6753.

  • Badenhorst, S., & Driver, J. C. (2009). Faunal changes in farming communities from Basketmaker II to Pueblo III (AD 1–1300) in the San Juan Basin of the American Southwest. Journal of Archaeological Science, 36, 1832–1841.

    Article  Google Scholar 

  • Bascompte, J. (2010). Structure and dynamics of ecological networks. Science, 329, 765–766.

    Article  Google Scholar 

  • Bascompte, J. (2011). Networks: studying complex systems. Lecture at the Sao Paolo Summer School on Ecological Networks, Sao Pedro, Brazil.

  • Bocinsky, R. K. (2011). Is a bird in hand really worth three in the bush? Models of turkey domestication on the Colorado Plateau. MA Thesis, Department of Anthropology, Washington State University, Pullman.

  • Bocinsky, R. K., Cowan, J. A., Kohler, T. A., & Johnson, C. D. (2012). How hunting changes the VEP world, and how the VEP world changes hunting. In T. A. Kohler & M. D. Varien (Eds.), Emergence and collapse of early villages (pp. 145–152). Berkeley: University of California Press.

    Chapter  Google Scholar 

  • Box, G. E. P. and Draper, N. R. (1987). Empirical model-building and response surfaces. Wiley Series in Probability and Statistics.

  • Brughmans, T. (2012). Thinking through networks: a review of formal network methods in archaeology. Journal of Archaeological Method and Theory. doi:10.1007/s10816-012-9133-8.

  • Cockburn, D., Crabtree, S. A., Kohler, T. A., Kobti, Z., & Bocinsky, R. K. (2013). Simulating social and economic specialization in small-scale agricultural societies. Journal of Artificial and Social Simulation, 16(4).

  • Cole, S. M. (2012). Population dynamics and warfare in the Central Mesa Verde region. In T. A. Kohler & M. D. Varien (Eds.), Emergence and collapse of early villages (pp. 197–218). Berkeley: University of California Press.

    Chapter  Google Scholar 

  • Collar, A., Coward, F., Brughmans, T., & Mills, B. J. (2015). Networks in Archaeology: Phenomena, Abstraction, Representation. Journal of Archaeological Method and Theory, 22(1). doi:10.1007/s10816-014-9235-6

  • Cook, S. (1975). ‘Structural substantivism’: a critical review of Marshall Sahlins’ Stone Age Economics. Comparative Studies in Society and History, 16(3), 355–379.

    Article  Google Scholar 

  • Crabtree, S. A. (2012). Why can’t we be friends? Exchange, alliances and aggregation on the Colorado Plateau, MA Thesis, Anthropology, Washington State University, Pullman, Washington. http://www.academia.edu/1526170/.

  • Crabtree, S. A. and Kohler, T. A. (2010). “Alliance formation and breakdown: networks in the Village Ecodynamics Project.” 109th Annual Meeting of the American Anthropological Association. New Orleans, LA. November 2010.

  • Crabtree, S. A., & Kohler, T. A. (2012). Modelling across millennia: interdisciplinary paths to ancient socio-ecological systems. Ecological Modelling, 241, 2–4.

    Article  Google Scholar 

  • Crabtree, S. A., Kohler, T. A., Bocinsky, R. K. (2014). The development of social groups, leadership and inequality in the Central Mesa Verde. 79th Annual Meeting of the Society for American Archaeology. Austin, TX. April 2014.

  • Dean, J. S., & Van West, C. R. (2002). Environment–behavior relationships in Southwestern Colorado. In M. D. Varien & R. H. Wilshusen (Eds.), Seeking the center place (pp. 81–100). Salt Lake City: The University of Utah Press.

    Google Scholar 

  • Eggan, F. (1950). Social organization of the Western Pueblos. Chicago: The University of Chicago Press.

    Google Scholar 

  • Fast, N. R. (2012). How great were Cedar Mesa Great House Communities, A.D. 1060–1270? MA Thesis, Anthropology, Washington State University, Pullman, Washington.

  • Fitzhugh, B., Philips, S. C., & Gjesfjeld, E. (2011). Modeling variability in hunter-gatherer information networks: an archaeological case study from the kuril islands. In R. Whallon, W. Lovis & R. Hitchcock (Eds.), The role of information in hunter-gatherer band adaptations. Cotsen Institute of Archaeology, University of California, Los Angeles.

  • Ford, R. I. (1972). Barter, gift or violence: an analysis of Tewa intertribal exchange. In E. N. Wilmsen (Ed.) Anthropological Papers, (pp. 21–45). vol. 46. Museum of Anthropology, University of Michigan, Ann Arbor.

  • Glowacki, D. M. (2006). The social landscape of depopulation: the Northern San Juan, A.D. 1150–1300. Doctoral Dissertation, Department of Anthropology, Arizona State University, Tempe.

  • Gosden, C. (1989). Debt, production, and prehistory. Journal of Anthropological Archaeology, 8, 355–387.

    Article  Google Scholar 

  • Gregory, C. A. (1982). Gifts and commodities. London: Academic.

    Google Scholar 

  • Grimm, V., & Railsback, S. F. (2004). Individual-based modeling and ecology. Princeton: Princeton University Press.

    Google Scholar 

  • Hegmon, M. (1989). Risk reduction and variation in agricultural economies: a computer simulation of Hopi agriculture. In B. L. Issac (Ed.), Research in economic anthropology (Vol. 11). Greenwich: JAI.

    Google Scholar 

  • Henrich, J., Boyd, R., Bowles, S., Camerer, C., Fehr, E., Gintis, H., McElreath, R., Alvard, M., Barr, A., Ensminger, J., Hill, K., Gil-White, F., Gurven, M., Marlowe, F., Patton, J. Q., Smith, N., & Tracer, D. (2005). ‘Economic Man’ in cross-cultural perspective: behavioral experiments in 15 small-scale societies. Behavioral and Brain Sciences, 28, 795–855.

    Google Scholar 

  • Hill, J. B., Clark, J. J., Doelle, W. H., & Lyons, P. D. (2004). Prehistoric demography in the Southwest: migration, coalescence, and population decline. American Antiquity, 69(4), 689–716.

    Article  Google Scholar 

  • Hooper, P. L., Kaplan, H. S., & Boone, J. L. (2010). A theory of leadership in human cooperative groups. Journal of Theoretical Biology, 265, 633–646.

    Article  Google Scholar 

  • Kobti, Z. (2012) Simulating household exchange with cultural algorithms. In T. A. Kohler & M. D. Varien (Eds.), Emergence and collapse of early villages (pp. 165–174). University of California Press, Berkeley.

  • Kobti, Z., Reynolds, R. G., & Kohler, T. A. (2006). The emergence of social network hierarchy using cultural algorithms. International Journal on Artificial Intelligence Tools, 15(6), 963–978.

    Article  Google Scholar 

  • Kohler, T. A. (2010). A new paleoproductivity reconstruction for Southwestern Colorado, and its implications for understanding thirteenth-century depopulation. In T. A. Kohler, M. D. Varien, & A. M. Write (Eds.), Leaving Mesa Verde: peril and change in the thirteenth-century Southwest (pp. 102–127). Tucson: University of Arizona Press.

    Google Scholar 

  • Kohler, T. A. (2012a). Modeling agricultural productivity and farming effort. In T. A. Kohler & M. D. Varien (Eds.), Emergence and collapse of early villages (pp. 85–112). Berkeley: University of California Press.

    Chapter  Google Scholar 

  • Kohler, T. A. (2012b). The rise and collapse of villages in the Central Mesa Verde region. In T. A. Kohler & M. D. Varien (Eds.), Emergence and collapse of early villages (pp. 247–262). Berkeley: University of California Press.

    Chapter  Google Scholar 

  • Kohler, T. A. (2012c). Simulation model overview. In T. A. Kohler & M. D. Varien (Eds.), Emergence and collapse of early villages (pp. 59–72). Berkeley: University of California Press.

    Chapter  Google Scholar 

  • Kohler, T. A. (2012d). Complex systems and archaeology. In I. Hodder (Ed.), Archaeological theory today (pp. 93–123). Cambridge: Polity Press.

    Google Scholar 

  • Kohler, T. A., and Van West, C. R. (1996). The calculus of self interest in the development of cooperation: sociopolitical development and risk among the Northern Anasazi. In J. A. and B. B. Tainter (Eds.), Evolving complexity and environment: risk in the prehistoric Southwest, pp. 171–198. Santa Fe Institute Studies in the Sciences of Complexity. New York: Santa Fe Institute and Oxford University Press.

  • Kohler, T. A., & Varien, M. D. (2012). Emergence and collapse of early villages. Berkeley: University of California Press.

  • Kohler, T. A., Johnson, C. D., Varien, M. D., Ortman, S. G., Reynolds, R., Kobti, Z., Cowan, J., Kolm, K., Smith, S., & Yap, L. (2007). Settlement ecodynamics in the Prehispanic Central Mesa Verde region. In T. A. Kohler & S. E. van der Leeuw (Eds.), The model-based archaeology of socionatural systems (pp. 61–104). Santa Fe: The School for Advanced Research.

    Google Scholar 

  • Kohler, T. A., Glaude, M. P., Bocquet-Appel, J. P., & Kemp, B. M. (2008). The Neolithic demographic transition in the US Southwest. American Antiquity, 73(4), 645–669.

    Google Scholar 

  • Kohler, T. A., Bocinksy, R. K., Crabtree, S. A., Hylnka, A., Patil, L., Hooper, P., and Kobti, Z. (2013). Leadership, territoriality and conflict in an agentized Pueblo world. 112th Annual Meeting of the American Anthropological Association. Chicago, IL. November 2013.

  • Kolm, K. E., & Smith, S. M. (2012). Modeling Paleohydrological System Structure and Function. In T. A. Kohler & M. D. Varien (Eds.), Emergence and collapse of early villages (pp. 73–84). University of California Press, Berkeley.

  • Kowalewski, S. A. (2001). Coalescent societies. Paper presented at the 58th Annual Southeastern Archaeological Conference, Chattanooga, TN.

  • Kuckelman, K. A. (2010). Catalysts of the thirteenth-century depopulation of Sand Canyon Pueblo and the Central Mesa Verde region. In T. A. Kohler, M. D. Varien, & A. M. Write (Eds.), Leaving Mesa Verde: peril and change in the thirteenth century Southwest (pp. 180–199). Tucson: University of Arizona Press.

    Google Scholar 

  • Lekson, S. H. (2006). Chaco matters: an introduction. In S. H. Lekson (Ed.), The archaeology of Chaco Canyon: an eleventh century Pueblo regional center (pp. 3–44). Santa Fe: SAR Press.

    Google Scholar 

  • Lekson, S. H., & Cameron, C. M. (1995). The abandonment of Chaco Canyon, the Mesa Verde migrations, and the reorganization of the Pueblo world. Journal of Anthropological Archaeology, 14(2), 184–185.

    Article  Google Scholar 

  • Lipe, W. D., Varien, M. D., and Wilshusen, R. H. (Eds.). (1999). Colorado prehistory: a context for the Southern Colorado River Basin. Colorado Council for Professional Archaeologists, Crow Canyon Archaeological Center Cortez, CO.

  • Marx, K. (1887). Capital Vol 1: a critical analysis of capitalist production. S. Sonnenschein, Lowrey, London. Friedrich Engels (Ed.).

  • McPherson, M., Smith-Lovin, L., & Cook, J. M. (2001). Birds of a feather: homophily in social networks. Annual Review of Sociology, 27, 415–444.

    Article  Google Scholar 

  • Mills, B. J., Clark, J. J., Peeples, M. A., Haas, W. R., Jr., Roberts, J. M., Jr., Hill, J. B., Huntley, D. L., Borck, L., Breiger, R. L., Clauset, A., & Shackley, M. S. (2013). Transformation of social networks in the late pre-Hispanic US Southwest. PNAS, 110(15), 5785–5790.

    Article  Google Scholar 

  • Murdock, G. P. (1949). Social structure. New York: Macmillan.

    Google Scholar 

  • Newberry, J. S. (1876). Geological report. In J. N. Macomb (Ed.), Report of the exploring expedition from Santa Fé, New Mexico, to the junction of the Grand and Green rivers of the great Colorado of the West, in 1859, under the command of Capt. J. N. Macomb, Corps of topographical engineers. Washington, D.C: U.S. Government Printing Office.

    Google Scholar 

  • Newman, M. (2010). Networks: an introduction. New York: Oxford University Press.

    Book  Google Scholar 

  • Nordenskiöld, G. (1990 (1893)). The cliff dwellers of the Mesa Verde Southwestern Colorado, their pottery and implements. Google Books edition ed. Translated by D. L. Morgan. and Chicago: P. A. Norstedt and Söner. Stockholm.

  • Ortman, S. G., Cameron, C. M. (2011). A framework for controlled comparisons of Ancient Southwestern Movement. In M. Nelson and C. Strawhacker (Eds.), Movement, connectivity, and landscape change in the Ancient Southwest, pp. 233–252. University Press of Colorado.

  • Ortman, S. G., Glowacki, D. M., Varien, M. D., & Johnson, C. D. (2012). The study area and the Ancestral Pueblo occupation. In T. A. Kohler & M. D. Varien (Eds.), Emergence and collapse of early villages (pp. 15–40). Berkeley: University of California Press.

    Chapter  Google Scholar 

  • Ortman, S. G., Cabaniss, A. H. F., Sturm, J. O., & Bettencourt, L. M. A. (2014). The Prehistory of Urban Scaling. PloS One. doi:10.1371/journal.pone.0087902.

  • Railsback, S. F., & Grimm, V. (2012). Agent-based and individual-based modeling: a practical introduction. Princeton: Princeton University Press.

    Google Scholar 

  • Rautman, A. E. (2000). Population aggregation, community organization and plaza oriented Pueblos in the American Southwest. Journal of Field Archaeology, 27(3), 271–282.

    Article  Google Scholar 

  • Sahlins, M. D. (1972). Stone Age economics. New York: Aldine de Gruyter.

    Google Scholar 

  • Schaffer, W. M. (1978). A note on the theory of reciprocal altruism. The American Naturalist, 112(983), 250–254.

    Article  Google Scholar 

  • Shannon, P., Markeil, A., Ozier, O., Baliga, N. S., Wang, J. T., Ramage, D., Amin, N., Schwikowski, B., & Ideker, T. (2003). Cytoscape: a software environment for integrated models of biomolecular interaction networks. Genome Research, 13(11), 2498–2504.

    Article  Google Scholar 

  • Varien, M. D. (1999). Sedentism and mobility in a social landscape: Mesa Verde and beyond. Tucson: University of Arizona Press.

    Google Scholar 

  • Varien, M. D. (2010). Depopulation of the Northern San Juan Region: historical review and archaeological context. In T. A. Kohler, M. D. Varien, & A. M. Write (Eds.), Leaving Mesa Verde: peril and change in the thirteenth century Southwest (pp. 1–33). Tucson: Amerind Foundation and the University of Arizona Press.

    Google Scholar 

  • Varien, M. D., Ortman, S. G., Kohler, T. A., Glowacki, D. M., & Johnson, C. D. (2007). Historical ecology in the Mesa Verde region: results from the Village Ecodynamics Project. American Antiquity, 72(2), 273–299.

    Article  Google Scholar 

  • Williams, T. (2009). A streetcar named Desire. London: Penguin Classics.

    Google Scholar 

  • Wilshusen, R. H. (1999). Pueblo I (A.D. 750–900). In W. D. Lipe, M. D. Varien, & R. H. Wilshusen (Eds.), Colorado prehistory: a context for the Southern Colorado River Basin. Denver: Colorado Council of Professional Archaeologists.

    Google Scholar 

  • Winterhalder, B. (1997). Gifts given, gifts taken: the behavioral ecology of non-market, intragroup exchange. Journal of Archaeological Research, 5, 121–168.

    Article  Google Scholar 

Download references

Acknowledgments

This research was made possible by grant DEB-0816400 and was conducted while supported by NSF Graduate Research Fellowship DGE-080667 and the Chateaubriand Fellowship. Thanks to the Laboratoire Chrono-Environnement (UMR-6249) of the Maison des Sciences de l'Homme et de l'Environnement C.N. Ledoux and the Université de Franche-Comté of Besançon for support while completing this manuscript. Great thanks to Tim Kohler for invaluable feedback (and extreme patience) on this manuscript and with my research, and Andrew Duff, Richard Rupp, and Ziad Kobti for feedback on the research. Kyle Bocinsky, Kelsey Reese, and Kristin Safi helped edit earlier versions of this work. And finally, special thanks to Ana Martín González for invaluable advice and Elizabeth Newcombe Crabtree for influencing this work.

Author information

Authors and Affiliations

  1. Washington State University, Pullman, WA, USA

    Stefani A. Crabtree

  2. Université de Franche-Comté, Besançon, France

    Stefani A. Crabtree

Authors
  1. Stefani A. Crabtree
    View author publications

    You can also search for this author in PubMed Google Scholar

Corresponding author

Correspondence to Stefani A. Crabtree.

Electronic supplementary material

Below is the link to the electronic supplementary material.

ESM 1

(DOCX 96 kb)

Rights and permissions

Reprints and permissions

About this article

Check for updates. Verify currency and authenticity via CrossMark

Cite this article

Crabtree, S.A. Inferring Ancestral Pueblo Social Networks from Simulation in the Central Mesa Verde. J Archaeol Method Theory 22, 144–181 (2015). https://doi.org/10.1007/s10816-014-9233-8

Download citation

  • Published:

  • Issue Date:

  • DOI: https://doi.org/10.1007/s10816-014-9233-8

Keywords

Search

Navigation