Major social and demographic changes occurred during the Pueblo IV Period (AD 1300-1600) in the American Southwest. Small scattered communities aggregated into large settlement centers with more complex social organization during this period. Mural paintings created at this time are dramatically different stylistically from murals created before the social and demographic shift. At Homol'ovi in northeastern Arizona, these mural changes were accompanied by changes in plastering behaviors, including the development of distinct pigment use patterns.The hypothesis of the present study is that the visual performance characteristics of Hopi wall decorations, such as pigment sources, wall plaster colors and mural painting motifs, were part of a complex communicative system that changed as social power relationships changed and new rituals were established to support and legitimize the new social organization.Using inexpensive optical plaster and mural analysis techniques and XRF analysis of pigment samples from the ancestral Hopi sites of Homol'ovi I, Homol'ovi II and Chevelon, this research demonstrates the significance of wall decorations as social and political indicators marking transitions that occurred during the Pueblo IV and contact periods.

1999 Dozier Award Winner / This paper examines critically several key assumptions that have guided many archaeological interpretations of prehistoric mortuary assemblages. It is argued that more sophisticated models of mortuary deposition need to be incorporated into research that attempts to reconstruct community structure and other sociological variables from variation in grave assemblages. To illustrate this point, and to begin to build such models, a study of artifacts deposited in mortuary contexts was conducted by the author in a major urban center in Arizona in 1996. Several different behavioral pathways through which objects enter mortuary contexts are identified in this study, and some general material correlates for each are specified. This study also provides a vehicle for exploring preliminarily how, and to what extent, various forms of mortuary depostion are related to the social identities of the deceased. Finally, a synthetic model is developed which seeks to explain variation in mortuary deposition in terms of behavioral interactions between the living, on the one hand, and the deceased and various classes of material culture, on the other. It is hoped that the general models and material correlates developed through this study can be elaborated by prehistorians to bolster inferences drawn from specific mortuary populations and to explore previously-uncharted realms of mortuary behavior in the past.

Recent decades have seen a surge of landscape concepts in archaeology. Despite strong, growing interest in landscapes, landscape archaeology lacks theoretical and methodological consistency and coherence. To address this problem, I develop a general, integrative framework for landscape archaeology.I argue that landscape concepts have a deep history in anthropological debate. Disagreements between landscape approaches are framed as recapitulations of an ongoing historical dialectic in anthropology. I suggest that fundamental binary oppositions in landscape archaeology can be understood in terms of the epistemological and philosophical distinctions between what Sahlins (1976) has termed cultural logic and practical reason. Optimistically, I offer the working hypothesis that landscape studies may form the synthesis of this entrenched dialectic.I argue that landscape perspectives in archaeology benefit from approaches in geography and ecology, but ultimately artifacts and behavior-based models will need to be built to explain archaeological landscape patterns. Drawing upon behavioral archaeology, I introduce the concepts of archaeological and systemic landscapes and argue that this distinction is critical for making inferences about systemic landscape processes from archaeological landscape patterns. Further, I consider the relevance of scale issues in analyzing landscape patterns and processes.In contradistinction to current approaches that highlight the role of perception and ritual in cognized landscapes, I argue that landscapes are also cognized according to techno-functional categories and suggest that in many cases, how landscapes are cognized is intimately related to how they are used.To model landscapes, I suggest that landscapes are networks and may share some properties with other kinds of biological, ecological, technological, and social networks. I argue that basic properties of landscapes may be allometrically related in manners similar, but potentially distinct from, relationships observed for non-human organisms in physiology and biology. In order to counter notions that human behaviors are either reflexes of environmental conditions or constitutive of environments, I advance the notion of landscape hierarchy. Finally, I explore aspects of systemic and archaeological landscapes relevant to a Class III pedestrian survey I directed in southern Arizona, the Ironwood Forest National Monument survey.

A cerâmica encontrada no sítio arqueológico Cerâmica Preta, localizado entre Camanducaia e Itapeva, Sul do Estado de Minas Gerais, Brasil, apresenta marcas negras de redução que levaram o autor a formular a hipótese sobre uma técnica específica de queima utilizada por aquele povo que habitou o local preteritamente. O conjunto de fragmentos e as marcas neles encontradas representam os remanescentes de uma técnica morta de cerâmica preta, praticada com maestria e regularidade intencionalmente pelo povo que o produziu. A queima da cerâmica, assim como seu uso ao fogo, deixam marcas de diferentes cores e características nas peças submetidas a estes processos. Relata-se aqui a pesquisa de correlatos entre estas marcas, os processos e comportamentos em que esta coleção de fragmentos cerâmicos arqueológicos participou durante sua produção e uso, sua história de vida. Os parâmetros da arqueologia experimental, com base na teoria comportamental, orientam o desenvolvimento dos experimentos sobre as técnicas da queima redutora em fogueiras. Apresento uma análise do material encontrado no sítio Cerâmica Preta em coletas sistemática e assistemáticas, tendo como foco a marcas de queima, buscou-se reproduzir a morfologia e colorimetria para se entender as condições de sua formação através de experimentações em laboratório e em campo. Obtivemos resultados nas experimentações que foram compatíveis com a amostragem arqueológica tendo sucesso em reproduzir condições de queima, investigando o papel das diversas técnicas possíveis para a situação. Conclui-se, pelos correlatos levantados que as ceramistas que viveram no local do sítio praticavam uma determinada tradição técnica de queima de cerâmica que envolvia o uso de recipientes para conter atmosferas redutoras no sentido de produzir uma cerâmica extremamente reduzida de tamanho pequeno a médio e tendo como produto paralelo uma cerâmica reduzida internamente de maiores proporções que serviu de ferramenta na produção da cerâmica preta. O material arqueológico também indica a utilização de uma segunda técnica de queima que difere da primeira principalmente na forma de colocação das peças na fogueira para a queima. Outras marcas encontradas no material arqueológico sugerem que um tipo de queima seria utilizado especificamente para os vasilhames utilizados como panelas e outro para vasilhas e potes de armazenamento. A ligação encontrada entre as marcas de queima e a utilização posterior dos potes leva a proposição de uma ligação estreita entre a técnica de queima e a cosmologia destes povos. O simbolismo das cores resultantes e das superfícies coloridas remetem ao universo feminino, ao útero que gera a vida, ao pote negro e à inserção desta cultura na ordem do mundo em uma camada entre o telúrico e o celeste. / The ceramic artifacts found in Cerâmica Preta archaeological site, situated at Camanducaia and Itapeva county, at southern Minas Gerais State, Brazil, show reduction marks that led the author to formulate an hypothesis about a specific technique of reducing firing of ceramics, used by the people who lived in this site preteritally. The black marks on the ceramic fabric and the black sherds, are remains of a forgotten technique of black pottery practiced intentionally and skillfully by the people who lived in this site preteritally. Firing of the ceramic and its use on the bonfire as pans, leaves different color and characteristic marks on the tissue of the pieces submitted to these processes. The search for correlates between these marks, processes and behaviors lead to the inference of activities in which the artifacts took part during its production and use. The Experimental Archaeology parameters, based on the Behavioral Theory, guided the development of the experiments on techniques of reduction firing in bonfires. The analisys of the material found in the ceramic site, by systematic and unsystematic search, focusing on the burning marks of which, through laboratory and field experiments, aim to reproduce the morphology and colorimetry, in the way to understand the conditions of its formation. The results of the experiments were compatible with the archaeological sampling and successfully reproduced burning conditions with similar results. The research investigated the role of various possible conditions for the production of black pottery. The correlates found by the research, lead to the conclusion that the ceramists, who lived in the site preteritally, practiced a certain technical tradition of ceramic firing, wich involved the use of containers to retain reducing atmospheres, in the sense of producing an extremely thin black ceramic of small to medium size. This firing has as parallel product, an internally reduced ceramic of greater proportions that served as a tool in the production of black pottery, a sagar. Archaeological material also indicates the use of a second firing technique which differs from the first one mainly in the way the parts are placed in the bonfire, but also in its production and use. Other marks found in archaeological material suggest that the people who practiced this tradition used the pots of one kind of firing as pans and diferent ones for consuming and for storage pots too. The connection found between the firing marks and other, dued to the later use of the pots over the fire, leads to the proposition of a close connection between the burning technique and the cosmology of these peoples. The symbolism of the resulting colors and colored surfaces refers to the female universe, the life-giving uterus, the black pot, and the insertion of this culture into the order of the world in a layer between the tellurian and the celestial.

A cerâmica encontrada no sítio arqueológico Cerâmica Preta, localizado entre Camanducaia e Itapeva, Sul do Estado de Minas Gerais, Brasil, apresenta marcas negras de redução que levaram o autor a formular a hipótese sobre uma técnica específica de queima utilizada por aquele povo que habitou o local preteritamente. O conjunto de fragmentos e as marcas neles encontradas representam os remanescentes de uma técnica morta de cerâmica preta, praticada com maestria e regularidade intencionalmente pelo povo que o produziu. A queima da cerâmica, assim como seu uso ao fogo, deixam marcas de diferentes cores e características nas peças submetidas a estes processos. Relata-se aqui a pesquisa de correlatos entre estas marcas, os processos e comportamentos em que esta coleção de fragmentos cerâmicos arqueológicos participou durante sua produção e uso, sua história de vida. Os parâmetros da arqueologia experimental, com base na teoria comportamental, orientam o desenvolvimento dos experimentos sobre as técnicas da queima redutora em fogueiras. Apresento uma análise do material encontrado no sítio Cerâmica Preta em coletas sistemática e assistemáticas, tendo como foco a marcas de queima, buscou-se reproduzir a morfologia e colorimetria para se entender as condições de sua formação através de experimentações em laboratório e em campo. Obtivemos resultados nas experimentações que foram compatíveis com a amostragem arqueológica tendo sucesso em reproduzir condições de queima, investigando o papel das diversas técnicas possíveis para a situação. Conclui-se, pelos correlatos levantados que as ceramistas que viveram no local do sítio praticavam uma determinada tradição técnica de queima de cerâmica que envolvia o uso de recipientes para conter atmosferas redutoras no sentido de produzir uma cerâmica extremamente reduzida de tamanho pequeno a médio e tendo como produto paralelo uma cerâmica reduzida internamente de maiores proporções que serviu de ferramenta na produção da cerâmica preta. O material arqueológico também indica a utilização de uma segunda técnica de queima que difere da primeira principalmente na forma de colocação das peças na fogueira para a queima. Outras marcas encontradas no material arqueológico sugerem que um tipo de queima seria utilizado especificamente para os vasilhames utilizados como panelas e outro para vasilhas e potes de armazenamento. A ligação encontrada entre as marcas de queima e a utilização posterior dos potes leva a proposição de uma ligação estreita entre a técnica de queima e a cosmologia destes povos. O simbolismo das cores resultantes e das superfícies coloridas remetem ao universo feminino, ao útero que gera a vida, ao pote negro e à inserção desta cultura na ordem do mundo em uma camada entre o telúrico e o celeste. / The ceramic artifacts found in Cerâmica Preta archaeological site, situated at Camanducaia and Itapeva county, at southern Minas Gerais State, Brazil, show reduction marks that led the author to formulate an hypothesis about a specific technique of reducing firing of ceramics, used by the people who lived in this site preteritally. The black marks on the ceramic fabric and the black sherds, are remains of a forgotten technique of black pottery practiced intentionally and skillfully by the people who lived in this site preteritally. Firing of the ceramic and its use on the bonfire as pans, leaves different color and characteristic marks on the tissue of the pieces submitted to these processes. The search for correlates between these marks, processes and behaviors lead to the inference of activities in which the artifacts took part during its production and use. The Experimental Archaeology parameters, based on the Behavioral Theory, guided the development of the experiments on techniques of reduction firing in bonfires. The analisys of the material found in the ceramic site, by systematic and unsystematic search, focusing on the burning marks of which, through laboratory and field experiments, aim to reproduce the morphology and colorimetry, in the way to understand the conditions of its formation. The results of the experiments were compatible with the archaeological sampling and successfully reproduced burning conditions with similar results. The research investigated the role of various possible conditions for the production of black pottery. The correlates found by the research, lead to the conclusion that the ceramists, who lived in the site preteritally, practiced a certain technical tradition of ceramic firing, wich involved the use of containers to retain reducing atmospheres, in the sense of producing an extremely thin black ceramic of small to medium size. This firing has as parallel product, an internally reduced ceramic of greater proportions that served as a tool in the production of black pottery, a sagar. Archaeological material also indicates the use of a second firing technique which differs from the first one mainly in the way the parts are placed in the bonfire, but also in its production and use. Other marks found in archaeological material suggest that the people who practiced this tradition used the pots of one kind of firing as pans and diferent ones for consuming and for storage pots too. The connection found between the firing marks and other, dued to the later use of the pots over the fire, leads to the proposition of a close connection between the burning technique and the cosmology of these peoples. The symbolism of the resulting colors and colored surfaces refers to the female universe, the life-giving uterus, the black pot, and the insertion of this culture into the order of the world in a layer between the tellurian and the celestial.