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Settlement, Subsistence, and Society in Late Zuni Prehistory

Beginning about A.D. 1250, the Zuni area of New Mexico witnessed a massive population aggregation in which the inhabitants of hundreds of widely dispersed villages relocated to a small number of large, architectecturally planned pueblos. Over the next century, 27 of these pueblos were constructed, occupied briefly, and then abandoned. Another dramatic settlement shift occurred about A. D. 1400, when the locus of population moved west to the "Cities of Cibola" discovered by Coronado in 1540. Keith Kintigh demonstrates how changing agricultural strategies and developing mechanisms of social integration contributed to these population shifts. In particular, he argues that occupants of the earliest large pueblos relied on runoff agriculture, but that gradually spring-and river-fed irrigation systems were adopted. Resultant strengthening of the mechanisms of social integration allowed the increased occupational stability of the protohistorical Zuni towns.

Identiferoai:union.ndltd.org:arizona.edu/oai:arizona.openrepository.com:10150/595503
Date January 1985
CreatorsKintigh, Keith W.
PublisherUniversity of Arizona Press (Tucson, AZ)
Source SetsUniversity of Arizona
Languageen_US
Detected LanguageEnglish
TypeBook, text
SourceUniversity of Arizona Press
RightsCopyright © Arizona Board of Regents
RelationAnthropological Papers of the University of Arizona, No. 44, http://www.uapress.arizona.edu/series/series_detail.php?s=1

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