Hostname: page-component-cd9895bd7-fscjk Total loading time: 0 Render date: 2024-12-25T08:08:18.119Z Has data issue: false hasContentIssue false
  • English
  • Français

Nearest Neighbor Analysis of Pueblo I-III Settlement Patterns along the Rio Puerco of the East, New Mexico

Published online by Cambridge University Press:  20 January 2017

Dorothy Koster Washburn
Dorothy Koster Washburn*
Affiliation:
Peabody Museum of Archaeology and Ethnology, Harvard University
Get access Rights & Permissions [Opens in a new window]

Abstract

Nearest neighbor analysis, a method which quantifies the deviation of a body of data from a random toward either a clustered or an anticlustered distribution, was utilized to study aspects of a settlement system. Data from a surface survey of 241 Pueblo I-III sites on the middle Rio Puerco of the East, New Mexico, corroborated the hypothesis of a direct correlation between house location and presence of arable land, assuming use of akchin farming methods. A smooth curve of population growth and decline was correlated with a decrease, then increase, in site agglomeration. Presumably these changes reflected adjustment of site locations to a deteriorating environment resulting from the shift to a summer rainfall cycle. Statistical tests corroborated the validity of these observations. Arrangement of the ceramic types according to their corresponding degree of aggregation produced a tentative local ceramic chronology.

Type
Reports
Information
American Antiquity , Volume 39 , Issue 2Part1 , April 1974 , pp. 315 - 335
Copyright
Copyright © Society for American Archaeology 1974

Access options

Get access to the full version of this content by using one of the access options below. (Log in options will check for institutional or personal access. Content may require purchase if you do not have access.)

References

Adams, Robert McC, and Nissen, Hans J. 1972 The Uruk countryside. University of Chicago Press, Chicago.Google Scholar
Bailey, Vernon 1913 Life zones and crop zones of New Mexico. U. S. Dept. of Agriculture, Bureau of Biological Survey, North American Fauna 35.Google Scholar
Bice, Richard A. 1970 Basketmaker Ill-Pueblo I manifestations on the Rio Puerco of the East. Albuquerque Archaeological Society, Technical Notes 1.Google Scholar
Bryan, Kirk 1954 The geology of Chaco Canyon, New Mexico. Smithsonian Miscellaneous Collections 122.Google Scholar
Bryan, Kirk, and McCann, Franklin T. 1936 Successive pediments and terraces of the upper Rio Puerco in New Mexico. The Journal of Geology 44:145–172.Google Scholar
Clark, Philip J., and Evans, Frances C. 1954 Distance to nearest neighbor as a measure of spatial relationships in populations. Ecology 35:445–453.CrossRefGoogle Scholar
Emma Lou, Davis, and Winkler, James H. 1959 A late Mesa Verde site in the Rio Puerco valley. ElPalacio 66:92–100.Google Scholar
Dixon, Wilfred J., and Massey, Frank J. Jr., 1957 Introduction to statistical analysis. McGraw- Hill, New York.Google Scholar
Hack, John T. 1942 The changing physical environment of the Hopi Indians of Arizona. Papers of the Peabody Museum of Archaeology and Ethnology 35(1).Google Scholar
Hill, James N. 1970 Broken K Pueblo. University of Arizona, Anthropological Papers 18.Google Scholar
Leopold, Luna B. 1950 The erosion problem of Southwestern United States. Unpublished Ph.D. dissertation. Department of Geology, Harvard University.Google Scholar
Lipe, William D. 1970 Anasazi communities in the Red Rock Plateau, southeastern Utah. In Reconstructing prehistoric pueblo societies, edited by Longacre, William A., pp. 84–139. University of New Mexico Press, Albuquerque.Google Scholar
Miller, J. P., and Wendorf, Fred 1958 Alluvial chronology in the Tesuque valley, New Mexico. Journal of Geology 66:177–194.Google Scholar
Nair, K. R. 1940 Table of confidence intervals for the median in samples from any continuous population. Sankhya 4:551–558.Google Scholar
Schoenwetter, James, and Eddy, Frank W. 1964 Alluvial and palynologtcal reconstruction of environments. Museum of New Mexico, Papers in Anthropology 13.Google Scholar
Schoenwetter, James, and Dittert, Alfred E., Jr. 1968 An ecological interpretation of Anasazi settlement patterns. In Anthropological archaeology in the Americas, edited by Meggers, Betty J., pp. 41–66. Anthropological Society of Washington, Washington, D. C. Google Scholar
Smith, Philip E. L. 1972 Changes in population pressure in archaeological explanation. World Archaeology 4:5–18.Google Scholar
Stickel, Edwin Gary 1968 Status differentiation at the Rincon site. University of California Archaeological Survey, Annual Report: 209–261.Google Scholar
Washburn, Dorothy Koster 1972 An analysis of the spatial aspects of the site locations of Pueblo I-III sites along the middle Rio Puerco, New Mexico. Ph.D. dissertation, Columbia University. University Microfilms, Ann Arbor.Google Scholar
Wright, Herbert E. Jr., 1946 Tertiary and Quaternary geology of the Lower Rio Puerco area, New Mexico. Bulletin of the Geological Society of America 57:383–456.Google Scholar
Zubrow, Ezra 1971 Carrying capacity and dynamic equilibrium in the prehistoric Southwest. American Antiquity 36:127–138.Google Scholar