Culture and Ecology of Chaco Canyon and the San Juan Basin

340 Chaco Project Synthesiscontributed most to the destabilization ofhunting and gathering economies. (A.Johnson 1997:47, emphasis in original)Subsistence diversity was measured as a standarddeviation of subsistence dependence. Higher standarddeviations indicate lower subsistence diversity and.narrow niches; lower standard deviations indicatehigher subsistence diversity and broader niches.Greater subsistence diversity correlates with a slowertransition to dependence on horticulture (A. Johnson1997:39). The southern area, represented by theHohokam culture, had a shorter phase I and relativelylonger phase III duration than did the Eastern andWestern Anasazi pattern. Longer phase I and phase IIdurations occurred in areas where projectedsubsistence diversity is highest, but phase III wasshort. By deriving standard deviations for the projectedsubsistence diversity of horticulturalists, A.Johnson was able to confirm that measurements ofniche breadth did operate in the same manner forhorticulturalists as they did for hunter-gatherers. Shealso found that the environmental conditions supportingthe least stable hunter-gatherers are the sameas those that support the most stable horticulturalists.The earliest evidence for com was found on siteswhere hunter-gatherer niche breadth was greatest; theearliest horticultural sites are located where huntergathereradaptations would have been the least stable(A. Johnson 1997:44). Thus, the context for theintroduction of maize is different from that of its usein a horticultural subsistence strategy. She also foundevidence for different environmental contexts for theearliest examples of population aggregations and thosewith permanent, stable population aggregations.A. Johnson chose to examine the distribution ofaggregated sites with 50 or more rooms in NewMexico. She then calculated the standard deviation ofsubsistence specialties. There were few aggregatedsites in New Mexico prior to A.D. 1000 (N = 11); allare located in areas with moderate or low diversityprojections for horticultural subsistence diversity (A.Johnson 1997:50). The San Juan Basin had very lowhorticultural subsistence diversity (A. Johnson 1997:Figure 3.5). Between A.D. 1000 to 1200 and 1300,the shift in the number of aggregated sites in settingswith high subsistence diversity went from 17 percentto 80 percent.To examine the effects of diverse subsistencestrategies on the stability of human social organization,A. Johnson focused on the differences betweenEastern and Western Pueblo social and ceremonialorganizations. For the Historic Pueblo world, therewere general patterns in social organization-e.g.,clans, moieties, and medicine societies-but there weregraded variations in social organization from east towest (Table 11. 3). Johnson concluded that differencesin conditions for social organization (i.e., populationdensity, group size, mobility, and subsistence system)led to distinct adult labor organization patterns.Values for the cooperative labor group size (i.e.,number of households controlling access to productiveresources) were related to the intensity of agriculturallabor. When values of agricultural intensity wereeither high or low, individual households were theprimary resource access group. When values weremoderate, communal access is common (Adler 1994:89).When A. Johnson evaluated her sample ofPueblo agriculturalists, there was a distinct divisionbetween those who owned land individually versusthose with communal ownership at 25.5 standarddeviations (s.d.) from subsistence. The values of acooperative labor group size increased whensubsistence strategies were rated as less diverse.Below the standard value of 25.5, the primary accessgroup size was characterized as cooperative laboramong clans who are the social unit involved in landtenure and work parties. Above 25.5, there weredramatically different group sizes and increasingdivergences. This led to implications for variability inceremonial organization. The number of secretsocieties increased with the need to maintain theintegration of large social units that only occasionallycooperated in economic pursuits (Johnson 1997:68).Yet there was also a relationship between the numberof integrative structures and the total population.Acoma, Oraibi, and Zuni had more secret societies,but also had the largest populations in clan-basedsocieties (ca. 850 vs. less than 300 in others).... the diversity of subsistence strategiesconditions adult labor requirements andthat the relationships between economicall yinterdependent primary resource accessgroups and periodically cooperative labor