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Papers by Matthew Peeples

Antiquity

Some human settlements endure for millennia, while others are founded and abandoned within a few ... more Some human settlements endure for millennia, while others are founded and abandoned within a few decades or centuries. The reasons for variation in the duration of site occupation, however, are rarely addressed. Here, the authors introduce a new approach for the analysis of settlement longevity or persistence. Using seven regional case studies comprising both survey and excavation data, they demonstrate how the median persistence of individual settlements varies widely within and among regions. In turn, this variability is linked to the effects of environmental potential. In seeking to identify the drivers of settlement persistence in the past, it is suggested that archaeologists can contribute to understanding of the sustainability and resilience of contemporary cities.

Crucible of Pueblos, 2012

Public or religious architecture in non-state societies has traditionally been interpreted as int... more Public or religious architecture in non-state societies has traditionally been interpreted as integrative, an assumption that has limited the ability of archaeologists to study religious change in these settings. We argue that considering such structures within their local historical contexts offers a better approach to understanding diversity in religious architecture. This study examines great kivas, large public or religious buildings in the prehispanic U.S. Southwest, as potential performance spaces, using structure size to estimate audience capacity relative to community size. We compare circular great kivas present along the southern edge of the Colorado Plateau with rectangular great kivas used in the Transition Zone to the south between the 11th and 14th centuries CE. The two traditions share certain similarities, and some great kivas in the area where the two traditions meet appear to be "hybrids." However, examining great kivas as potential performance venues in ...

Ceramic technological clusters associated with Peeples (2018) Connected Communities books [Chapte... more Ceramic technological clusters associated with Peeples (2018) Connected Communities books [Chapter 5]. See Coding guides and raw data for additional details. File ceramic_clust.csv contains the data formatted for analysis in R as output by the code in the associated document: "R Code for Corrugated Ceramic Technological Analysis, Chapter 5" These data pertain to Chapter 5 in: Peeples, Matthew A. (2018) Connected Communities: Networks, Identity, and Social Change in the Ancient Cibola World. University of Arizona Press. Tucson, AZ.

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...

Proceedings of the National Academy of Sciences, 2021

We propose a dedicated research effort on the determinants of settlement persistence in the ancie... more We propose a dedicated research effort on the determinants of settlement persistence in the ancient world, with the potential to significantly advance the scientific understanding of urban sustainability today. Settlements (cities, towns, villages) are locations with two key attributes: They frame human interactions and activities in space, and they are where people dwell or live. Sustainability, in this case, focuses on the capacity of structures and functions of a settlement system (geography, demography, institutions) to provide for continuity of safe habitation. The 7,000-y-old experience of urbanism, as revealed by archaeology and history, includes many instances of settlements and settlement systems enduring, adapting to, or generating environmental, institutional, and technological changes. The field of urban sustainability lacks a firm scientific foundation for understanding the long durée, relying instead on narratives of collapse informed by limited case studies. We argue ...

Surviving Sudden Environmental Change

American Antiquity, 2020

Spatially and temporally unpredictable rainfall patterns presented food production challenges to ... more Spatially and temporally unpredictable rainfall patterns presented food production challenges to small-scale agricultural communities, requiring multiple risk-mitigating strategies to increase food security. Although site-based investigations of the relationship between climate and agricultural production offer insights into how individual communities may have created long-term adaptations to manage risk, the inherent spatial variability of climate-driven risk makes a landscape-scale perspective valuable. In this article, we model risk by evaluating how the spatial structure of ancient climate conditions may have affected the reliability of three major strategies used to reduce risk: drawing upon social networks in time of need, hunting and gathering of wild resources, and storing surplus food. We then explore how climate-driven changes to this reliability may relate to archaeologically observed social transformations. We demonstrate the utility of this methodology by comparing the ...

Journal of Anthropological Archaeology, 2018

American Antiquity, 2016

Diversity is generally valued, although it sometimes contributes to difficult social situations, ... more Diversity is generally valued, although it sometimes contributes to difficult social situations, as is recognized in recent social science literature. Archaeology can provide insights into how diverse social situations play out over the long term. There are many kinds of diversities, and we propose representational diversity as a distinct category. Representational diversity specifically concerns how and whether differences are marked or masked materially. We investigate several archaeological sequences in the U.S. Southwest. Each began with the coming together of populations that created situations of unprecedented social diversity; some resulted in conflict, others in long-term stability. We trace how representational diversity changed through these sequences. Specifically, we review the transregional Kayenta migration to the southern Southwest and focus empirical analyses on regional processes in the Cibola region and on painted ceramics. Results show that, initially, representat...

Journal of Archaeological Science, 2012

Global Ecology and Biogeography

AimClimate is usually regarded as the main determinant of plant species distributions. However, p... more AimClimate is usually regarded as the main determinant of plant species distributions. However, past human use of species for food might also have influenced distributions. We hypothesized that human‐mediated dispersal has resulted in food plants occupying more of their potential geographical range. We also hypothesized that key ecological traits could predispose a species to occupy more of its potential climatic geographical range and be selected by humans for food.LocationThe Sonoran Desert of south‐western North America.Time periodPresent day.Major taxa studiedFood plants.MethodsWe used ethnobotanical data and data from large botanical ecoinformatics databases to estimate realized (dispersal‐ and climate‐constrained) and potential (climate‐constrained) ranges for food plants and their used and unused congeners.ResultsWe found that food plants fill more of their potential geographical ranges than their unused congeners. We also found that succulence and annual growth interacted wi...

We introduce CatMapper (catmapper.org), a set of user-friendly, web-based tools designed to help ... more We introduce CatMapper (catmapper.org), a set of user-friendly, web-based tools designed to help researchers overcome a common bottleneck in comparative research—integrating data across diverse datasets by complex categories (e.g., ethnicities, languages, religions, archaeological artifact types) that are often encoded very differently from dataset to dataset. We illustrate CatMapper's planned architecture and capabilities with the SocioMap tool (catmapper.org/sociomap) which focuses on four inter-related domains—ethnicities (>9000), religions (>1000), districts (> 200,000), and languages, language families and dialects (>25,000). Categories in these diverse domains share commonalities that make them challenging to work with, including large numbers of categories at multiple nested scales that can also change through time. To assist users in merging data by these categories, SocioMap will include four core functions: (1) explore contextual information about specific ...

Advances in Archaeological Practice, 2018

ABSTRACTWhile our fascination with understanding the past is sufficient to warrant an increased f... more ABSTRACTWhile our fascination with understanding the past is sufficient to warrant an increased focus on synthesis, solutions to important problems facing modern society require understandings based on data that only archaeology can provide. Yet, even as we use public monies to collect ever-greater amounts of data, modes of research that can stimulate emergent understandings of human behavior have lagged behind. Consequently, a substantial amount of archaeological inference remains at the level of the individual project. We can more effectively leverage these data and advance our understandings of the past in ways that contribute to solutions to contemporary problems if we adapt the model pioneered by the National Center for Ecological Analysis and Synthesis to foster synthetic collaborative research in archaeology. We propose the creation of the Coalition for Archaeological Synthesis coordinated through a U.S.-based National Center for Archaeological Synthesis. The coalition will b...