Culture and Ecology of Chaco Canyon and the San Juan Basin

------- - -----------------Basketmaker III to Pueblo I 123Gwinn Vivian (1990, 1992) suggested thatnorthern populations had already adapted to a dualsystem of organization with specific functionsdelegated to leaders who made decisions during theirseasonal rotation. In the south he anticipated thatdecisionmaking rested more closely with the family orextended family, depending on the number of peopleaggregated together during a particular season. Inboth cases, he did not see a formal hierarchical systemevolving during these early periods; however, twoestablished forms of social organization were presentby the end of Pueblo I.Whatever social forms developed, we may needto consider that there may have been more than one setof institutions, and to consider how the integration ofseveral groups may have occurred. Other evidencesuggests that more than one group lived together ornearby in several places in the Anasazi World evenearlier. Scheick (1983; Scheick and Ware 1983) indicatedthat the area around Gallup, New Mexico, hasevidence for mixed cultural remains that span theentire time sequence from Archaic through Pueblo III.Chapters in the Kiva issue edited by Matson andDohm (1994) document the distinctions seen inBasketmaker II in southeast Utah. Papers in Reed(2000) support a similar conclusion for the BasketmakerIII along the Chuska Valley, as do Wilshusenand Ortman (1999) for the Pueblo I period insouthwestern Colorado. I expect, therefore, thatmechanisms in their social organization integrateddifferent lineage groups, and possibly different ethnicor linguistic groups, quite early.Sebastian (1988: 132-140; 1992b:99-104) preferrednot to label the type of social organization; rather,she was concerned with how social organization woulddevelop, and why it would change, and the processesinvolved. She acknowledged the shift in settlementpatterns from Basketmaker III to Pueblo 1. Althoughthe reasons are not precisely ascertained, severalpossibilities could be considered; e.g., new strains ofhigher yielding cultigens, or the attainment of acritical density threshold for population. Sebastianpreferred the latter because survey data (Judge et al.1981) indicate that the better watered areas throughoutthe San Juan Basin were becoming densely settled.The movement of agriculturalists into former huntingand gathering locations would probably result inincreased agricultural production and multiyearstorage. The Pueblo I above-ground storage facilitiessupport this consideration. She saw a pattern ofincipient or low-level sociopolitical differentiationthroughout the Anasazi region by A.D. 900.Again, following Judge et al. (1981) and Cordell(1982a, 1982b), Sebastian proposed that two optionswere available to the Chacoans to increase theiragricultural production: 1) a land-extensive strategywherein numerous plots in different physiographicsettings were planted in the hopes that some wouldsurvive and provide sufficient crops; and 2) a laborintensivestrategy wherein facilities to capture anddistribute runoff required a system to construct,maintain, monitor, and manipulate such facilities.Individual families or corporate groups would maketheir decisions based on the topography and hydrologyof the land. Their decisions, however, would affectfuture production and organizational trajectories. Anextensive land use strategy would never achieve anincrease in the water available to crops, but it wouldrequire continued use of diverse topographic andhydrologic settings. This could lead to problems,especially if popUlation increases brought about adecrease in the size of plots available to each groupthrough time. Leadership would focus more on howto allocate land and how to regulate its use (e.g.,marriage alliances and inheritance), as well as managingcalendrical events related to the agricultural year.Those who chose a labor-intensive strategy wouldhave increased the amount of water available to crops.They would be more concerned with the organizationof labor to construct and manage their system.Sebastian suggested that decisionmaking by consensuswould have been replaced by decisionmaking by thosein positions of authority, which would result in greaterdifferentiation in jobs and centralization of authority.The latter group would need additional labor; theformer would need jobs for surplus popUlations.Because Sebastian assumed that both strategies wouldhave been operational, kin ties and social obligationswould bind them together.Sebastian viewed Pueblo I as the period duringwhich the two trajectories led to an imbalance andgroups that selected for a labor-intensive strategyaccumulated larger surpluses and could afford morefrequent displays that would demonstrate their success(whether due to better influence with the supernaturalor as a means to engender social obligations). When