Barbara J Mills | University of Arizona (original) (raw)

Books by Barbara J Mills

The American Southwest is one of the most important archaeological regions in the world, with man... more The American Southwest is one of the most important archaeological regions in the world, with many of the best-studied examples of hunter-gatherer and village-based societies. Research has been carried out in the region for well over a century, and during this time the Southwest has repeatedly stood at the forefront of the development of new archaeological methods and theories. Moreover, research in the Southwest has long been a key site of collaboration between archaeologists, ethnographers, historians, linguists, biological anthropologists, and indigenous intellectuals. This volume marks the most ambitious effort to take stock of the empirical evidence, theoretical orientations, and historical reconstructions of the American Southwest. Over seventy top scholars have joined forces to produce an unparalleled survey of state of archaeological knowledge in the region. Themed chapters on particular methods and theories are accompanied by comprehensive overviews of the culture histories of particular archaeological sequences, from the initial Paleoindian occupation, to the rise of a major ritual center in Chaco Canyon, to the onset of the Spanish and American imperial projects. The result is an essential volume for any researcher working in the region as well as any archaeologist looking to take the pulse of contemporary trends in this key research tradition.

TABLE OF CONTENTS

PART I: INTRODUCTION
On History in Southwest Archaeology
Severin Fowles and Barbara J. Mills
PART II: THE SHAPE OF HISTORY
Conceptualizing the Past
1 Oral Traditions
Chip Colwell
2 Narrative Histories
Stephen H. Lekson
3 Direct Historical Approach
John A. Ware
4 Historical Linguistics
Jane H. Hill
5 Evolutionary and Complexity Theory
Timothy A. Kohler
6 Path Dependency
Michelle Hegmon

Incorporating the Histories of Descendent Communities
7 Translating Tribal Values
Theresa Pasqual
8 Traditional Cultural Properties
T. J. Ferguson and Leigh Kuwanwisiwma
9 "History, Memory, and Querencia"
Sylvia Rodriguez

Archaeological Histories
10 The Earliest People in the Southwest
Jesse Ballenger, Vance Holliday and Guadalupe Sanchez
11 The Southwest Archaic
Maxine McBrinn and Bradley Vierra
12 The Early Agricultural Period
James M. Vint and Jonathan B. Mabry
13 Mimbres Archaeology
Margaret C. Nelson and Patricia A. Gilman
14 Key Dimensions of the Cultural Trajectories of Chaco Canyon
Stephen Plog, Carrie C. Heitman, and Adam S. Watson
15 An Archaeological History of the Mesa Verde Region
Richard H. Wilshusen and Donna Glowacki
16 Preclassic Hohokam
Douglas B. Craig and M. Kyle Woodson
17 Classic Period Hohokam
Jeffery J. Clark and David Abbott
18 Sonoran Prehispanic Traditions
Elisa Villalpando and Randall H. McGuire
19 Chihuahuan Archaeology
Michael E. Whalen and Paul E. Minnis
20 Eastern Pueblo Archaeology
James E. Snead
21 Hopi History Prior to 1600
Wesley Bernardini and E. Charles Adams
22 The Zuni/Cibola Region
Matthew A. Peeples, Gregson Schachner, and Keith W. Kintigh
23 Mesoamerican Connections
Ben A. Nelson, Paul R. Fish, and Suzanne K. Fish
24 Navajo Archaeology
Kerry F. Thompson and Ronald H. Towner
25 Ndee (Apache) Archaeology
Sarah A. Herr, Nicholas C. Laluk, and John R. Welch
26 Plains-Pueblo Exchange
B. Sunday Eiselt and David Snow
27 Early Colonial Period
Barnet Pavao-Zuckerman and Kelly L. Jenks
28 Pobladores of New Mexico
Jun Oeno Sunseri
29 Territorial and Early Statehood Periods
Teresita Majewski and Lauren E. Jelinek

PART III: THE STUFF OF HISTORY
Material Culture
30 Built Environments
Michael Adler
31 Cooking Technologies
Eric Blinman, James M. Heidke, and Myles R. Miller
32 Hunting Technologies
John C. Whittaker and William D. Bryce
33 Perishable Technologies
Edward A. Jolie and Laurie D. Webster
34 Iconography
Marit K. Munson and Kelley Hays-Gilpin
Landscapes
35 Anthropogenic Landscapes
Christopher I. Roos
36 Agricultural Landscapes
Kurt Anschuetz, Eileen L. Camilli, and Christopher D. Banet
37 Movement and Migration
Catherine M. Cameron and Scott G. Ortman
38 Sacred Geographies
Ruth Van Dyke
Ecologies
39 Weather
Scott E. Ingram
40 Minerals
Andrew I. Duff, Judith A. Habicht-Mauche, and M. Steven Shackley
41 Plants
Suzanne K. Fish and Karen R. Adams
42 Animals
Karen Gust Schollmeyer and Katherine A. Spielmann
43 Humans
Ann L. W. Stodder
44 Spirits
Scott Van Keuren and William H. Walker

Living on the Edge of the Rim Vols 1-2, 1999

Papers by Barbara J Mills

University of Arizona Press eBooks, 2006

status: publishe

Oxford Handbooks Online, 2017

The Oxford Handbook of Southwest Archaeology collectively surveys the state of method, theory, an... more The Oxford Handbook of Southwest Archaeology collectively surveys the state of method, theory, and historical reconstruction in the archaeology of the American Southwest, a region that encompasses the Southwest United States and Northwest Mexico. Part I is comprised of an extended introductory chapter that traces the intellectual development of the discipline from the mid-nineteenth century to the present. Archaeological research in the Southwest—like that in any other region—is fundamentally a historical undertaking, and yet there has never been an explicit consideration of Southwest historiography. Part I redresses this situation. Part II inaugurates a set of inquiries into the “shape of history,” exploring the conceptual frameworks guiding archaeological accounts of the past, the intersections between archaeological and descendant perspectives, and the varied culture histories in each major subregion of the Southwest. Part III then turns to consider the “stuff of history” through...

American Antiquity, 2020

This article emerged as the human species collectively have been experiencing the worst global pa... more This article emerged as the human species collectively have been experiencing the worst global pandemic in a century. With a long view of the ecological, economic, social, and political factors that promote the emergence and spread of infectious disease, archaeologists are well positioned to examine the antecedents of the present crisis. In this article, we bring together a variety of perspectives on the issues surrounding the emergence, spread, and effects of disease in both the Americas and Afro-Eurasian contexts. Recognizing that human populations most severely impacted by COVID-19 are typically descendants of marginalized groups, we investigate pre- and postcontact disease vectors among Indigenous and Black communities in North America, outlining the systemic impacts of diseases and the conditions that exacerbate their spread. We look at how material culture both reflects and changes as a result of social transformations brought about by disease, the insights that paleopathology...

Journal of Urban Archaeology, 2023

Chaco Canyon's concentration of monumental architecture and the replication of its great house/sm... more Chaco Canyon's concentration of monumental architecture and the replication of its great house/small house architectural distinction throughout a broad region has o en been regarded as unique and one of the world's archaeological 'Anomalous Giants'. Rather than seeing Chaco as unique, this contribution argues that Chaco should be seen in light of (1) its early position as a frontier zone of households with diverse backgrounds that periodically used the canyon and its surrounding areas; (2) continued mobility of individuals and households engaging in collective large-scale construction, alliance building, and population redistribution in a semi-arid environment; (3) collective governance; and (4) low-density urbanism. Taking a historical approach to Chaco's trajectory, recent research is marshalled to show when and how each of these models adds complexity to current interpretations that contrasts with typological ascriptions of Chaco society.

Collaborating at the Trowel's Edge, Aug 23, 2022

Social Networks, 2021

Abstract Archaeologists are increasingly interested in networks constructed from site assemblage ... more Abstract Archaeologists are increasingly interested in networks constructed from site assemblage data, in which weighted network ties reflect sites’ assemblage similarity. Equivalent networks would arise in other scientific fields where actors’ similarity is assessed by comparing distributions of observed counts, so the assemblages studied here can represent other kinds of distributions in other domains. One concern with such work is that sampling variability in the assemblage network and, in turn, sampling variability in measures calculated from the network must be recognized in any comprehensive analysis. In this study, we investigated the use of the bootstrap as a means of estimating sampling variability in measures of assemblage networks. We evaluated the performance of the bootstrap in simulated assemblage networks, using a probability structure based on the actual distribution of sherds of ceramic wares in a region with 25 archaeological sites. Results indicated that the bootstrap was successful in estimating the true sampling variability of eigenvector centrality for the 25 sites. This held both for centrality scores and for centrality ranks, as well as the ratio of first to second eigenvalues of the network (similarity) matrix. Findings encourage the use of the bootstrap as a tool in analyses of network data derived from counts.

Journal of Anthropological Archaeology, 2018

Migrants are viewed as either disruptive and associated with upheaval or socially and economicall... more Migrants are viewed as either disruptive and associated with upheaval or socially and economically beneficial to society. This contradiction constitutes a "migrant paradox" that must be resolved to form sustainable multicultural societies. Social and political scientists view contemporary cosmopolitan societies as successful multicultural organizations, but give little attention to the historical processes through which such societies form. This essay takes a deep historical perspective on migration and resultant multicultural societies, often called coalescent societies by North American archaeologists. We examine four dimensions of migration (scale, organization, and pre-migration conditions in homeland and destination) and the resultant coalescent trajectories in two intensively studied cases from the late pre-contact U.S. Southwest. These are Kayenta migrations into southern Arizona and Mesa Verde migrations into the Northern Rio Grande Valley, which resulted in two different coalescent trajectories that resolved the migrant paradox with variable success. Lessons drawn from these cases have contemporary relevance for resolving and providing perspective on the current migration "crisis." One important finding is that migrant skill and identity persistence, and social distance between migrants and locals are at least as important as the scale of migration in predicting outcomes. Another lesson is that coalescence, especially among socially distant groups, is typically a multigenerational process. Migration crises are often short-term and more perceived than real when viewed from a deep historical perspective. A final lesson is that inclusive institutions and ideologies that foster interaction between migrants and locals with minimal hierarchy greatly facilitate the coalescence process. These institutions and ideologies may already exist within local sociopolitical organizations or may develop within the migrant community as a result of migrant-local interaction. The twenty-first century will be the century of the migrant. At the turn of the twenty-first century, there were more migrants than ever before in recorded history Nail, 2015:187 Daily headlines provide a constant reminder that millions of people are on the move. Changing political and economic conditions across the globe have generated inequalities in wealth and security at such vast scales that large segments of the world's poor and persecuted are embarking on perilous journeys in search of better lives elsewhere. The

American Anthropologist, 2009

Biology Unmoored: Melanesian Reflections on Life and Biotechnology is a provocative attempt on th... more Biology Unmoored: Melanesian Reflections on Life and Biotechnology is a provocative attempt on the part of Sandra Bamford to further destabilize, in true Schneiderian fashion, the taken-for-granted biologicocentric paradigm underpinning the understanding of personhood, relatedness, attachment, morality, and mortality in the so-called West. The book will be of much interest to scholars working in fields as diverse as kinship studies, science and technology studies (STS), environmental studies, Pacific studies, and social theory broadly configured. The book is well written and engaging and would be suitable for upper-division undergraduate students and graduate students alike. What is perhaps most novel about the book is Bamford's attempt to provide a rather new twist on what is now a classic anthropological move-the putting into question of otherwise unquestioned assumptions about the truths of human existence inherent in "Western" cultural logicby drawing on not one but two contrasting conceptual frameworks. One of these frameworks arises from ongoing struggles within contemporary communities and popular culture in the "West" to make ethical sense of the relevance, applicability, and importance of recent innovations in biotechnology. The second stems from a putatively nonbiological vision of human existence and sociality as articulated in Kamea communities in the highlands of Papua New Guinea in which Bamford conducted almost three years of field research. In challenging "old" understandings of biological relatedness, reproduction, personhood, and life, the "new" biology of biotechnology has significantly put into question what were previously held to be unquestionable truths about the human condition: namely, that sex is necessarily linked to reproduction; that relatedness is understood in terms of shared biological substance; and that individ

Radiocarbon, 2008

We measured radiocarbon ages of 22 decadal replications and 1 bulk group from 5 tree-ring specime... more We measured radiocarbon ages of 22 decadal replications and 1 bulk group from 5 tree-ring specimens using acid-base-acid pretreatment and accelerator mass spectrometry (AMS). The study has the goal of refining the precision and resolution of a segment of the conventional Bronze Age chronology in the Eurasian steppe attributed to the multicultural community known as Andronovo. The archaeological timbers were gathered from 3 cemeteries at the Lisakovsky cluster of sites in Kazakhstan, where there is a prominent Andronovo occurrence that appears to show evidence of overlapping Alakul and Fedorovo cultures in the southern margin of the Eurasian steppe. The new set of Andronovo calendar dates derived from 14C wiggles and a composite floating tree-ring chronology places the cultural overlap from 1780 to 1660 cal BC. Results indicate older ages of artifacts from the Lisakovsky site than were previously determined by the typological chronology, shifting them from the Late Bronze Age to also...

TABLE OF CONTENTS

Living on the Edge of the Rim Vols 1-2, 1999

University of Arizona Press eBooks, 2006

status: publishe

Oxford Handbooks Online, 2017

American Antiquity, 2020

Journal of Urban Archaeology, 2023

Collaborating at the Trowel's Edge, Aug 23, 2022

Social Networks, 2021

Journal of Anthropological Archaeology, 2018

American Anthropologist, 2009

Radiocarbon, 2008

American Antiquity, 2021

Archaeologists have pointed to certain architectural or decorative designs as representing “elite... more Archaeologists have pointed to certain architectural or decorative designs as representing “elite styles” that mark status distinctions. We look at one such style—Dogoszhi—that was applied to several pottery wares across the Chaco World of the northern Southwest. Using a large database of ceramics, we test whether this style comprised an elite style or whether it signaled participation in a broader Chaco social network. We compare the distribution of Dogoszhi style to measures of settlement importance, including site size and network centrality, and we investigate whether this style occurs differentially at Chacoan great houses as opposed to small houses, or by subregion. We also compare its spatial distribution to an earlier style, called Black Mesa style, similarly applied to a number of different wares. Our results indicate that both styles were consistently distributed within Chaco communities (whether great houses or small houses) but variably distributed across subareas and mo...

Uncorrected proofs to appear in Roddick and Stahl (eds.) "Knowledge in Motion: Constella... more Uncorrected proofs to appear in Roddick and Stahl (eds.) "Knowledge in Motion: Constellations of Learning Across Time and Place" University of Arizona Press. The concept of “communities of practice” has been effectively used to understand the transmission of technological practices during production. In this chapter I argue that another fruitful way of looking at communities of practice is through consumption. For ceramics, these patterns of consumption can be looked at in two ways, both of which are situated practices but at different spatial and temporal scales. One is the way in which cuisines are situated in the choices that people make in how and what food is prepared, in what containers they were served in, and to whom. A second way of considering consumption is in how these container choices by different communities accumulate at large temporal and spatial scales to produce distinctive regional networks of consumption practices. I argue that the articulation of the local choices in how to prepare and serve foods with regional patterns of ceramic accumulations produce large-scale networks that are equivalent to Wenger’s (1998) “constellations of practice” (see also Roddick and Stahl, this volume). Further, I show that this concept can be fruitfully addressed through a multiscalar network approach.

Interaction and Connectivity in the Greater Southwest, 2019

Journal of Anthropological Research, 2021

Entangled is part of a trajectory in Ian Hodder's work on the Neolithic that began with his resea... more Entangled is part of a trajectory in Ian Hodder's work on the Neolithic that began with his research in prehistoric Europe and for the last 20 years has focused on the central Anatolian site of Ç atalhöyük. Recently designated a UNESCO World Heritage site, Ç atalhöyük has been both a bane and a blessing to Hodder as he notes in a remarkably honest passage on how the site affords him opportunities to speak at the same time that it constrains him from doing many other things that he would like to do. This dual ability of things to both afford and constrain are important components of his theory of entanglement.

Collaborating at the Trowel's Edge: Teaching and Learning in Indigenous Archaeology, edited by Stephen W. Silliman, pp. 25–49. University of Arizona Press, Tucson, 2008