Culture and Ecology of Chaco Canyon and the San Juan Basin

-- -~----280 Chaco Project Synthesisarchy, the organization becomes more complex byadding either horizontal or vertical units; butdecisionmaking is in the hands of the few, while itaffects all levels at the same time. In a sequentialhierarchy, Johnson proposed that basic units mayoperate independently for some periods but areintegrated into larger units during periods whenconsensus at a higher level is required. Vivian(1990:432-435) recognized that historical Tewa socialorganization allowed two distinct periods of leadership.He proposed a model of rotating sequentialhierarchy, which provides an opportunity for horizontalpower-sharing, with minimal vertical control.In his comprehensive review of the archaeologicaldata from the San Juan Basin, Gwinn Vivian(1990) documented differences in architecture andsettlement patterns beginning in the Late Archaicthrough Pueblo III, linked the data to environmentalchanges, and compared the different needs for socialorganization in these ecological niches. Like Judge(1979) and Irwin-Williams and Shelley (1980), amongothers, Vivian recognized the effects that differencesin precipitation patterns would have on the subsistencestrategies of peoples utilizing different ecologicalniches. He identified the early economic practices thatwould have evolved in various niches, and traced fourinitial patterns to suggest which ones evolved intolater archaeological traditions. Two patterns, whichaccompanied the people who moved into the centralbasin and merged in the Chaco core, were consideredvisible through analysis of great houses and smallhouse sites and their localities.Gwinn Vivian proposed that a rotating sequentialhierarchy pattern can be traced from the Archaicpopulations in the northern San Juan Basin through theChaco florescence and into the present. All groupswould have been hunters and gatherers during theMiddle Archaic and maize would have been only oneof the cultigens that were included in the subsistencestrategy. Those living in the ecotone between plainsand mountains in the northern San Juan region duringthe Late Archaic would have relied more heavily onhorticulture during a precipitation downturn between100 B.C. and A.D. 100 than those in either of the twodistinct environments (Gwinn Vivian 1990:450).Seasonal sharing of decisionmaking pertinent to thetwo different subsistence strategies would enable alarger group to solve social problems and preventfission. A larger popUlation provides the ability toorganize larger labor groups, which in Chaco arerepresented by the construction of great houses andwater control features leading to grid gardens alongthe north side of the canyon. Thus, the great housepopulations were attributed to a Chaco-San Juantradition that incorporated two seasonal sets of leadersto organize decisionmaking. Vivian (1990:433-435)accepted the suggestion that Tewa (Ford et al. 1972),especially, and also Keres (Fox 1967,1972), ancestorswere present in Chaco Canyon; thus, he proposedcontinuity of this duality as a dominant factor in theirhistoric Pueblo life. Decisions of the two moietyheads are mediated through other sodalities whosemembers belong to both moieties, thus preventingfissioning (Ortiz 1965, 1969). Vivian's model incorporatesreasons for the origin of dual socialorganization, and how it would have operated in theChaco-San Juan tradition and continued into thepresent.Based on rainfall patterns and soil types, thefertile crescent in the southern and western San JuanBasin was considered to have been a good place forexpanding agricultural popUlations during BasketmakerIII and Pueblo 1. Such developing small-sitepopulations would be organized around clan andlineage leadership units that were flexible, dependingon the situation. They could fuse or fission. Theyevolved into the Cibola tradition that Gwinn Vivianattributed to the small-site population in Chaco thatwere akchin farmers along the south side of the ChacoWash. Today their traditions are seen among thewestern pueblos of Zuni and Hopi.Gwinn Vivian's interpretation of the data fromChaco Canyon and the San Juan Basin differs fromthat of the Chaco Project in several ways. This is due,in part, to how each model integrates accepted earlierperiods of cultural development into the Chaco andSan Juan database. During the Chaco Project, it wasnot possible to tie data from Archaic sites directly tothe Pueblo adaptation. Instead, the Basketmaker IIIand Pueblo I evidence was considered similar to thatfound throughout the region; and Judge et al. (1981)assumed that this was the baseline from which latersocial developments evolved. As a result, it was lessdifficult to assume that one unified system developeda ranked social structure with a center in ChacoCanyon. In contrast, Vivian (1990) distinguished four