essay
Land tenure, archaeology, and the ancestral pueblo social landscape
Journal of anthropological archaeology • 15 • Published In 1996 • Pages: 337-371
By: Adler, Michael A..
AbstractBrief abstract written by HRAF anthropologists who have done the subject indexing for the document
Adler examines changes in land tenure and land use as it can be inferred from the archaeology in the region around Mesa Verde. Adler first examines land tenure systems with cross-cultural data from a world-wide sample of food-producing societies, examining "the amount of labor invested in resource exploitation by a group and then the land tenure concepts influencing the group's social access to the resource." (page 341). He then presents a land tenure model that predicts the type of primary access group one should find based on several factors. Adler finds that as the amount of labor put into agricultural fields increases the size of the community also increases. However the size of the primary resource access group first increases, then decreases as labor intensity grows. Prior to the 12th century people in the Mesa Verde region lived near the most productive lands and lived in relatively small communities, households were fairly mobile, occupation of settlements averaged 34 years, and agriculture was land-extensive. Resource access groups were likely households. During the 12th and 13th centuries, as the population increased and the climate became more unreliable, mobility decreased, settlements became aggregated and were occupied for longer periods of time, and agriculture became more labor intensive with terracing, erosion control, floodwater diversion, and use of more permanent agricultural facilites such as field houses and storage facilities.
- SubjectsDocument-level OCM identifiers given by the anthropology subject indexers at HRAF
- Real property
- Settlement patterns
- Land use
- Tillage
- Community structure
- Labor and leisure
- traditionCulture name from the Outline of World Cultures (OWC)
- Early Anasazi
- HRAF PubDateThe date HRAF published the document
- 2012
- RegionThe area the document pertains to
- North America
- Sub RegionThe more specific area the document pertains to, which is located within the Region
- Southwest and Basin
- Document TypeMay include journal articles, essays, collections of essays, monographs, or chapters/parts of monographs
- essay
- Evaluation
- Creator TypeThe type of person writing the document, e.g. Ethnographer, Missionary, Archaeologist, Folklorist, Linguist, Indigenous Person, and so on.
- Archaeologist
- Document Rating A ranking done by HRAF anthropologists based on the strength of the source material on a scale of 1 to 5, as follows: 1 - poor; 2 - fair; 3 - good, useful data, but not uniformly excellent; 4 - excellent secondary data; 5 - excellent primary data.
- 4: Excellent Secondary Data
- 5: Excellent Primary Data
- AnalystThe HRAF anthropologist who subject indexed the document and prepared other materials for the eHRAF culture/tradition collection
- Sarah Berry; 2011
- Field DateThe date the researcher conducted the fieldwork or archival research that produced the document
- no date
- Coverage DateThe date or dates that the information in the document pertains to
- 1100-700 BP (AD 900-1300)
- Coverage PlaceLocation of the research culture or tradition (often a smaller unit such as a band, community, or archaeological site)
- southwestern Colorado, United States
- NotesAdditional notes
- Michael A. Adler
- Includes bibliographical references (p. 366-371)
- LCCNLibrary of Congress Control Number
- 82644021
- LCSHLibrary of Congress Subject Headings
- Indians of North America--Antiquities