Overview

Because nearly all aspects of culture depend on the movement of bodies, objects, and ideas, mobility has been a primary topic during the past forty years of archaeological research on small-scale societies. Most studies have concentrated either on local moves related to subsistence within geographically bounded communities or on migrations between regions resulting from pan-regional social and environmental changes. Gregson Schachner, however, contends that a critical aspect of mobility is the transfer of people, goods, and information within regions. This type of movement, which geographers term 'population circulation,' is vitally important in defining how both regional social systems and local communities are constituted, maintained, and--most important--changed. Schachner analyzes a population shift in the Zuni region of west-central New Mexico during the thirteenth century AD that led to the inception of major demographic changes, the founding of numerous settlements in frontier zones, and the initiation of radical transformations of community organization. Schachner argues that intraregional population circulation played a vital role in shaping social transformation in the region and that many notable changes during this period arose directly out of peoples' attempts to create new social mechanisms for coping with frequent and geographically extensive residential mobility. By examining multiple aspects of population circulation and comparing areas that were newly settled in the thirteenth century to some that had been continuously occupied for hundreds of years, Schachner illustrates the role of population circulation in the formation of social groups and the creation of contexts conducive to social change.

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Reviews

Schachner's multi-scalar and multi-disciplinary study of a well-defined region of the Puebloan Southwest, in order to understand mobility and interaction both within and outside of that region, is an outstanding model of how contemporary archaeology can answer challenging questions about the past. -John Kantner, author of Ancient Puebloan Southwest Authors in other parts of the world have cautioned on using too rigid a concept of community, but Schachner is the first to successfully apply his multidimensional approach to an area many assumed was structured differently. -E. Charles Adams, author of Homol'ovi: An Ancient Hopi Settlement Cluster

A methodological tour de force. -- Current Anthropology

Author Information

Gregson Schachner is an assistant professor in the Department of Anthropology and the Cotsen Institute of Archaeology at the University of California, Los Angeles. Over the past fifteen years he has worked as a field archaeologist in a variety of regions in the Southwest.

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