Well-designed provenance studies form the basis from which questions of human economy and behavior are addressed. Pottery is often the subject of such studies, requiring geological and archaeological evidence to establish patterns of ceramic economy. A generalized theoretical and methodological framework for provenance studies is presented, followed by specific considerations for ceramic provenance studies. Four main sources of variation affect pottery composition: geological distribution of resources, geological resource variability, differential economic factors affecting resource use, and technological manipulation of materials. Post depositional alteration is also considered. This ceramic provenance model provides explicit guidelines for the assessment of geological aspects of provenance, since geological resource availability affects acquisition by humans and thus archaeological research designs, in which interdependent geological and archaeological scalar factors must be balanced against budgets. Two case studies illustrate the model. The first is of sand-tempered pottery from the Tonto Basin, Arizona, where the bedrock geology is highly variable giving rise to geographically unique sands. Zones with similar sand compositions are modeled using actualistic petrofacies, the Gazzi-Dickinson point-counting technique, and multivariate statistics. Methods used to create a petrofacies model are detailed, as is the model's application to sand tempered utilitarian sherds from three Tonto Basin project areas. Data analysis reveals strong temporal and spatial ceramic production and consumption patterns. The second is of crushed-schist-tempered Hohokam pottery. Crushed schist was often used to temper pre-Classic Hohokam plain ware pottery in central Arizona's middle Gila River valley. Systematic investigation of rocks from the Pinal Schist terrane in the middle Gila River valley was conducted to assess how many sources were exploited prehistorically, and whether schist or schist-tempered pottery were exchanged. Chemical analysis shows that the sources can be statistically discriminated from one another. Schist source data were compared to schist extracted from plain ware sherds and to unmodified pieces of schist recovered from two archaeological sites. Preliminary indications are that schist was derived from several sources. This model provides a flexible, archaeologically relevant framework for assessing temper provenance. Hopefully, archaeologists and petrologists alike will use it to define ceramic provenance research problems and communicate effective solutions to one another.

Pueblito sites include masonry structures and forked-stick hogans in defensible positions in the traditional Navajo homeland of Dinetah. Pueblitos have been a key piece of evidence used to infer a massive immigration of Puebloans into the Navajo country following the Spanish Reconquest of New Mexico. Archaeological and tree-ring evidence places the sites in their proper temporal and geographic perspectives and suggests that immigration has been overstated as a factor in models of Navajo cultural development. An expanded pueblito site tree-ring database illuminates early Navajo wood use behavior, the temporal and spatial patterning of pueblito site occupations, and relationships between climate and the Navajo occupation and abandonment of Dinetah. Wood use behaviors identified at the pueblito sites include construction with freshly cut and stockpiled timbers, beam reuse, repair and remodeling of structures, and dead wood use. Different selection criteria by the builders, combined with differential preservation, have resulted in different qualitative and quantitative data for pueblitos and forked-stick hogans. The wood use model developed has serious implications for dating early Navajo structures. The tree-ring and archaeological data indicate that most pueblitos are neither temporally nor spatially related to Puebloan immigration or the Spanish Reconquest. Masonry structures and hogans at the sites are contemporaneous and were constructed by Navajos for protection against Ute raiders. Furthermore, most pueblitos were occupied for relatively short periods of time and the regional population density was much lower than has been previously assumed. A dendroclimatic reconstruction indicates that the 1300s and late 1400s were both periods of relatively stable and favorable conditions that may have facilitated Navajo entry into the Dinetah. The drought of 1748, often cited as a cause of the abandonment of the Dinetah, was a single-year event and probably not a "push" in the abandonment. The wide geographic distribution of early Navajo settlement has been ignored because of the spectacular nature of and good preservation in pueblitos. A new model of Navajo ethnogenesis is based on a different early Navajo population distribution and a variety of other means of incorporating non-Athapaskan elements into Navajo culture.

An extensive analysis of the faunal material recovered from the four Homol'ovi pueblos yielded data on the past environment and changes in human and animal interactions. Life-history models incorporating ethnographic and ecological literature were developed and used to identify behaviors associated with the acquisition, processing, use, and disposal of animals in general, and specifically animals used in ritual context. The expectations created by these models were evaluated using a detailed, deposit driven, contextual analysis of each structure. Changes in ritual behaviors involving the fauna, ritual objects, and structures were identified; and included the introduction of new or expanded ritual abandonment processes at the two large, aggregated villages of Homol'ovi I and II. These changes in ritual behaviors suggest that ritual specialization occurred as a possible response to scalar stress during the plaza-oriented aggregation period (post A.D. 1330), and that ritual-based social power was enhanced by this specialization.

The Mogollon Rim Region of the eleventh and twelfth centuries presents a contradiction to those who study it. Population reconstructions demonstrate low populations, but the region, situated on the far southwestern edge of the puebloan world, is overbuilt with a form of community integrative architecture called the "great kiva." Situated outside the areas of Southwest archaeology's strong organizations, the region is considered one of archaeology's "weak patterns." "Weak patterns" indicate a lack of normative behavior and are associated with patterns of expediency, diversity, and mobility, and identify regions with alternative forms of social organization, including frontiers. The frontier can be understood as both a "place" and a "process." This definition provides an analytic bridge between weakly patterned behavioral manifestations and sociopolitical interpretations of areas beyond and between archaeology's strong patterns. It also clarifies the implications of the coincidence of the processes migration, integrative architecture, and situations of low population density. In this dissertation, ethnographic and historical accounts are used to develop a model of the frontier. The frontier situation has an effect on the organization of households and communities. Understanding the relationships of households and communities is a means of reconstructing the social and political organization of a region. The frontier model is operationalized by deriving expectations for household and community production, distribution, transmission, reproduction, and coresidence. Data from five excavated Mogollon Rim region great kiva sites: Cothrun's Kiva Site, Hough's Great Kiva Site, AZ P:16:160(ASM), Tla Kii Pueblo, and Carter Ranch Pueblo, four management projects, and over 20 surveys provide information about household and community production, distribution, transmission, reproduction, and coresidence. These data are then used to reconstruct the sociopolitical organization of the region as a frontier. Comparison of the material culture of the Mogollon Rim region to that of the three contemporaneous regional organizations of Chaco, Mimbres, and Hohokam suggests that the Mogollon Rim region was a frontier to the Chacoan organization. This application of a frontier model suggests that is possible to use ethnographic and historical information to construct models that integrate regions of weak patterns and temporary social formations into models of social and political organization.

This dissertation reports on ethnoarchaeological research conducted among present-day llama pastoralists, (or llameros) in the community of Cerrillos (Province Sud Lipez, Department of Potosi, Bolivia). Using a theoretical framework that combines elements of Marxism and Practice Theory, it aims at defining archaeological correlates for Andean pastoralism and caravan traffic, identifying ways in which the material remains of these activities can be used to explore aspects of the political economy in which they were immersed. Pastoral settlement systems include a minimum of four settings where traces of this activity could potentially be found; these are termed main residences, herding posts, grazing areas, and gathering places. Caravan settlement systems involve six, i.e., caravanners' residences, routes, overnight stops, rest places, articulation points, and extractive loci. Each one of these settings is analyzed in terms of activities, location, artifact content, internal organization, and medium-term processes that condition the relative redundancy in their use. The principles that regulate the organization of behavior and its their material residues in these contexts are discussed, extracting several general propositions that could serve to identify the archaeological record of prehistoric pastoralism and caravan traffic. These remains could also provide important information regarding six variables that are crucial to understand the role of caravan trade in broader social and economic processes: degree of pastoral specialization of caravanners; goods transported; elites' involvement in traffic; ethnic context of trade; geopolitical context of trade; and network configuration.

This dissertation adopts a discourse-centered approach to culture in order to explore the local meanings attached to alcohol and drinking in contemporary Navajo society. Against a backdrop of drastic cultural transformations, Navajo discourse reveals a wide range of accounts in which drinking is situated within the context of individual experiences and histories. Alcohol and drinking are connected to personal memories of important events, emotions, and relationships. Beyond the level of individual stories, these narratives help organize collective accounts of the Navajo as a people by providing comprehensive evaluations and commentaries on drinking. A number of collective meanings are embedded in narratives about alcohol that reference cultural sentiments and prominent moral values and offer a social commentary that defines what is, and is not, Navajo. Further insights are offered by an examination of aging-out, a salient pattern of Navajo drinking. Former problem drinkers who have aged out and no longer experience alcohol related difficulties offer narratives that frame drinking in certain set ways. The discourse on aging-out among the Navajo not only provides detail on a category of drinker that is largely ignored in accounts of Native American drinking but also illustrates some of the values and meanings attached to drinking cessation and personal change. The discourse of alcoholism treatment provides other understandings regarding Navajo conceptions of alcohol, including the character of this substance and the effect it has on people--especially Native Americans. Consideration of this set of discourse reveals insights into the treatment process as well as commentaries and evaluations of treatment effectiveness and other related issues. This study suggests that Navajo narratives of alcohol and drinking provide important idioms for expressing moral and self-identity, individual experience, collective history, and cultural degeneration. The discourse on drinking in Navajo society reveals a social world of polarization, contention, and intergenerational conflict.

This dissertation documents the process of language shift from Zapotec to Spanish in urban Juchitan, a Zapotec community in southern Mexico. The work also analyzes the current strategies Juchitecos are developing to stop the replacement of their local language. The work first provides a sociohistorical overview of the community, which helps us to understand its current sociolinguistic situation. Oral and written materials, the ways in which ethnic symbols are manipulated, and the sociopolitical dimensions of the indigenous language are analyzed in order to elucidate the tensions that define the current bilingual situation of Juchitan. The work also addresses the broader aspect of language policies in Mexico, and shows how linguistic policies in the country have promoted the loss of the Mexican languages, and the replacement of Zapotec by Spanish. After describing how these linguistic policies negatively impacted the reproduction of the Zapotec language, the study presents some of the actions Juchiteco people are currently putting into practice in order to restore mother tongue transmission and reverse the process of language shift. The salient ethnic identity of JuchitAn is explored and helps to understand the linguistic profile of the community, as well as the current actions that are being developed towards the reversal of the Zapotec language shift. This study argues, following Fishman's theory, that the reproduction of the Zapotec language and an effective reversal of the language shift depend mostly on the speakers themselves and on the resources locally developed.

Language maintenance and re-creation are burning issues for many indigenous communities around the world. Child language acquisition and socialization are processes integral to understanding these issues. In order to design realistic language recreation projects, research must first address the many factors impacting the acquisition and maintenance of a language by children. This dissertation shows how different contexts, historical, environmental, interactional, relate to Kaska language socialization and acquisition. Kaska is a Northern Athabaskan language spoken in the Yukon Territory (Canada). In particular, it shows how the shift from Kaska being a language of everyday communication to one associated with authority and respect constrains children's Kaska production. To examine this shift, a combination of linguistic and ethnographic methods are used. Linguistic description identifies the grammatical structures of the target language. These are the structures that children need to acquire in order to be able to understand and speak the Kaska language. Additionally, grammatical description of adult utterances reveals that children are being exposed to a full Kaska grammar. This suggests that children may understand more Kaska than they produce. Ethnographic methods identify the social constraints on speaking the Kaska language and help establish links between interaction patterns and ideological constructs. They reveal that language choice is related to a speaker's age and social position. Older interlocutors may choose to speak Kaska while younger interlocutors typically choose English. Children have incorporated this pattern into their playgroups. By producing a Kaska utterance, a child may become leader of the playgroup. He or she uses Kaska to attain this social position. Speaking Kaska is also related to the concept of respect. Narratives on socialization emphasize this by instructing children on how to behave respectfully. While children are exposed to an adult Kaska grammar, they predominantly speak English. This pattern is not just the result of past assimilationist practices; it is part of Kaska language socialization.

The function of prehistoric platform mounds in the American Southwest has been a subject of archaeological debate for more than 100 years. Two basic theories have been suggested: platform mounds were the residential domains of elite leaders who ruled socially complex groups, or platform mounds were nonresidential ceremonial centers used by groups of low social complexity. These theories have been based primarily on archaeological data because platform mounds were not constructed by any historic period Southwestern group. To better understand the nature of these features and the groups that used them, a cross-cultural analysis is undertaken of ethnographic or ethnohistoric platform mound-using groups from the Pacific Ocean region, South America, and the southeastern United States. Nine groups are examined in detail, and common attributes of mound-using groups are abstracted and synthesized. Insights gained through this analysis are then applied to a prehistoric settlement system in the Eastern Tonto Basin of central Arizona. This system was most intensively occupied during the Roosevelt phase (A.D. 1250-1350), when it contained five platform mounds within a 6-km stretch of the Salt River. A new model for Roosevelt phase settlement is presented that suggests that the platform mounds were constructed by two competing descent groups. Although the mounds were not residential, the groups that used them were socially complex with well-defined, institutionalized leadership. The mounds played a role in the management of irrigation and other subsistence systems and were used to integrate groups of different enculturative backgrounds and to mark descent group territory.

This is a case study of the causes and consequences of the shift from a forager-farmer adaptive strategy to village agriculture in the Southwest's mountainous Transition Zone. The earliest inventions and adoptions of agriculture have attracted a steady stream of archaeological research, but far less attention has been given to the subsequent change to dietary dependence on and organizational dedication to food production--agricultural commitment. Although there is little doubt that the Southwest's large villages and small towns were committed to successful farming, methodological and conceptual problems have impeded archaeological analyses of the ecological and evolutionary implications of this revolutionary shift in how people related to the world and to one another. The rapid and radical change that occurred in the Transition Zone's Grasshopper Region during the late AD 1200s and early 1300s provides a high resolution glimpse at the processes and products of agricultural commitment--notably increasing reliance on farming and the development of permanent towns and institutionalized systems for resource and conflict management. The model proposed for the Grasshopper Region involves population immigration and aggregation leading to increased agricultural reliance and related changes in settlement and subsistence ecology as well as social organization. Critical issues involve the ecological, social, and theoretical significance of these shifts, the methodological capacity to track dietary, settlement, and organizational change archaeologically, and the implications for understanding Western Pueblo social development in terms of seeing the Grasshopper occupation as an experiment in agriculturally-focused village life.