Landscapes of Social Transformation in the Salinas Province and the Eastern Pueblo World

In the 1100s most Pueblo peoples lived in small, dispersed settlements and moved frequently, but by the mid-1400s they had aggregated into large villages. The majority of these villages were still occupied at Spanish contact and conquest, by which time most Pueblo peoples had completely transformed their perception and experience of village life. Other changes were taking place on a broader regional scale, and the migrations from the Colorado Plateau and the transformation of Chaco initiated myriad changes in ritual organization and practice.

Landscapes of Social Transformation in the Salinas Province and the Eastern Pueblo World investigates relationships between diverse regional and local changes in the Rio Grande and Salinas areas from 1100 to 1500 C.E. The contributing authors draw on the results of sixteen seasons of archaeological survey and excavation in the Salinas Province of central New Mexico. The chapters offer cross-scale analyses to compare broad perspectives in well-researched southwestern culture changes to the finer details of stability and transformation in Salinas. This stability–which was unusual in the Pueblo Southwest–from the 1100s until its abandonment in the 1670s provides an interesting contrast to migration-based transformations studied elsewhere in the Rio Grande region.