Donna Glowacki | University of Notre Dame (original) (raw)

Papers by Donna Glowacki

Emergence and Collapse of Early Villages, 2019

This chapter describes the cycles of aggregation and dissolution of the largest villages in the V... more This chapter describes the cycles of aggregation and dissolution of the largest villages in the VEP study area. Because these villages were often central nodes among a number of smaller settlements and contained civic-ceremonial architecture used for large gatherings, these villages have been termed “community centers.” We assess how the location, types of civic-ceremonial architecture, and association with agricultural land changed over time for these villages. A detailed history of the development and abandonment of community centers provides important context for understanding the differences between the two periods of out-migration that occurred during the occupation of the study area.

The use of instrumental neutron analysis (INAA) in ceramic research in the American Southwest has... more The use of instrumental neutron analysis (INAA) in ceramic research in the American Southwest has become widespread over the last ten years. This volume presents case studies of Southwestern ceramic production and distribution in which INAA is used as the primary analytical technique. These studies use provenance determination to explore such issues as exchange, migration, social identity, and economic organisation. Case studies from the Southwestern periphery provide a comparative perspective from which to view the range of variation in Southwestern ceramic circulation patterns. Several of the case studies use mineralogical approaches to supplement chemical sourcing data. And, a case study using petrographic analyses provides a counterpoint to the emphasis on chemical approaches (INAA) in this volume. This volume documents the cumulative contribution of INAA-based ceramic characterisation to knowledge of the prehistory of Southwest.

Archaeology of Households, Kinship, and Social Change, 2021

American Antiquity, 2019

This article systematically and quantitatively characterizes interaction dynamics and community f... more This article systematically and quantitatively characterizes interaction dynamics and community formation based on changes in spatial patterns of contemporaneous households. We develop and apply a geospatial routine to measure changing extents of household interaction and community formation from AD 600 to 1280 on the Mesa Verde cuesta in southwestern Colorado. Results suggest that household spatial organization was shaped simultaneously by the maintenance of regular social interaction that sustained communities and the need for physical space among households. Between AD 600 and 1200, households balanced these factors by forming an increased number of dispersed communities in response to population growth and variable environmental stressors. However, as population rebounded after the megadrought of the mid-1100s, communities became increasingly compact, disrupting a long-standing equilibrium between household interaction and subsistence space within each community. The vulnerabili...

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

Oxford Handbooks Online, 2017

The Mesa Verde region—extending from southeastern Utah to southwestern Colorado and northwestern ... more The Mesa Verde region—extending from southeastern Utah to southwestern Colorado and northwestern New Mexico—is the heartland of the earliest pueblos and an ancestral home for at least three of the four Pueblo language groups. Over the last two millennia, there were three periods in which Ancestral Pueblo population peaked and declined, with the last abandonment of the late thirteenth century the most well known. The combination of excellent material preservation, detailed tree-ring and ceramic chronologies, and the ability to integrate extensive archaeological, linguistic, sociocultural, and biological data provides a unique opportunity to research the Neolithic demographic transition, the ethnogenesis of historically known groups, the formation and abandonment of villages, and the role of historical contingency in making sense of the past.

PLOS ONE, 2016

Recent research in ecology suggests that generic indicators, referred to as early warning signals... more Recent research in ecology suggests that generic indicators, referred to as early warning signals (EWS), may occur before significant transformations, both critical and non-critical, in complex systems. Up to this point, research on EWS has largely focused on simple models and controlled experiments in ecology and climate science. When humans are considered in these arenas they are invariably seen as external sources of disturbance or management. In this article we explore ways to include societal components of socio-ecological systems directly in EWS analysis. Given the growing archaeological literature on 'collapses,' or transformations, in social systems, we investigate whether any early warning signals are apparent in the archaeological records of the build-up to two contemporaneous cases of social transformation in the prehistoric US Southwest, Mesa Verde and Zuni. The social transformations in these two cases differ in scope and severity, thus allowing us to explore the contexts under which warning signals may (or may not) emerge. In both cases our results show increasing variance in settlement size before the transformation, but increasing variance in social institutions only before the critical transformation in Mesa Verde. In the Zuni case, social institutions appear to have managed the process of significant social change. We conclude that variance is of broad relevance in anticipating social change, and the capacity of social institutions to mitigate transformation is critical to consider in EWS research on socio-ecological systems.

KIVA, 2000

... KRISTIN A. KUCKELMAN Crow Canyon Archaeological Center 23390 CR K Cortez, CO 81321 ABSTRACT C... more ... KRISTIN A. KUCKELMAN Crow Canyon Archaeological Center 23390 CR K Cortez, CO 81321 ABSTRACT Crow Canyon's early excavations in the Sand Canyon locality suggested that late Pueblo III canyon-rim villages formed rapidly and according to a consistent pattern. ...

KIVA, 2015

We review some of the most significant research trends as well as emerging issues in the archaeol... more We review some of the most significant research trends as well as emerging issues in the archaeology of the American Southwest and Northwest Mexico. Among the many topics being studied that we could discuss, we have chosen to focus on engaged archaeology, “big data”, the research potential of museum collections, agriculture, social organization, regional connectivity, and culture history.