CULTURAL FORMATION PROCESSES OF THE ARCHAEOLOGICAL RECORD: APPLICATIONS AT THE JOINT SITE, EAST-CENTRAL ARIZONA Item Type text; Dissertation-Reproduction (electronic) Authors Schiffer, Michael B. Publisher The University of Arizona. Rights Copyright © is held by the author. Digital access to this material is made possible by the University Libraries, University of Arizona. Further transmission, reproduction or presentation (such as public display or performance) of protected items is prohibited except with permission of the author. Download date 11/10/2021 00:04:31 Link to Item http://hdl.handle.net/10150/288122 INFORMATION TO USERS This material was produced from a microfilm copy of the original document. While the most advanced technological means to photograph and reproduce this document have been used, the quality is heavily dependent upon the quality of the original submitted. 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It is customary to begin photoing at the upper left hand corner of a large sheet and to continue photoing from left to right in equal sections with a small overlap. If necessary, sectioning is continued again - beginning below the first row and continuing on until complete. 4. The majority of users indicate that the textual content is of greatest value, however, a somewhat higher quality reproduction could be made from "photographs" if essential to the understanding of the dissertation. Silver prints of "photographs" may be ordered at additional charge by writing the Order Department, giving the catalog number, title, author and specific pages you wish reproduced. 5. PLEASE NOTE: Some pages may have indistinct print. Filmed as received. Xerox University Microfilms 300 North Zeeb Road Ann Arbor, Michigan 48106 74-2001 SCHIFFER, Michael Brian, 1947- CULTURAL FORMATION PROCESSES OF THE ARCHAEOLOGICAL RECORD: APPLICATIONS AT THE JOINT SITE, EAST-CENTRAL ARIZONA. The University of Arizona, Ph.D., 1973 Anthropology- University Microfilms, A XEROX Company , Ann Arbor, Michigan THIS DISSERTATION HAS BEEN MICROFILMED EXACTLY AS RECEIVED. CULTURAL FORMATION PROCESSES OF THE ARCHAEOLOGICAL RECORD: APPLICATIONS AT THE JOINT SITE, EAST-CENTRAL ARIZONA by Michael Brian Schiffer A Dissertation Submitted to the Faculty of the DEPARTMENT OF ANTHROPOLOGY In Partial Fulfillment of the Requirements For the Degree of DOCTOR OF PHILOSOPHY In the Graduate College THE UNIVERSITY OF ARIZONA 19 7 3 THE UNIVERSITY OF ARIZONA GRADUATE COLLEGE I hereby recommend that this dissertation prepared under my direction by Michael Brian Schiffer entitled Cultural Formation Processes of the Archaeological. Record: Applications at the Joint Site, East-central Arizona be accepted as fulfilling the dissertation requirement of the degree of Doctor of Philosophy l/[/f2, "j" / Dissertation Director' Date After inspection of the final copy of the dissertation, the follov/ing members of the Final Examination Committee concur in its approval and recommend its acceptance:- A i/r This approval and acceptance is contingent on the candidate's adequate performance and defense of this dissertation at the final oral examination. The inclusion of this sheet bound into the library copy of the dissertation is evidence of satisfactory performance at the final examination. STATEMENT BY AUTHOR This dissertation has been submitted in partial fulfillment of requirements for an advanced degree at The University of Arizona and is deposited in the University Library to be made available to borrow­ ers under rules of the Library. Brief quotations from this dissertation are allowable without special permission, provided that accurate acknowledgment of source is made. Requests for permission for extended quotation from or re­ production of this manuscript in whole or in part may be granted by the head of the major department or the Dean of the Graduate College when in his judgment the proposed use of the material is in the in­ terests of scholarship. In all other instances, however, permission must be obtained from the author. % # 4 SIGNED;^,-, To my parents Louie and Frances-Fera and my wife Annette ill PREFACE In the summer of 1968, I spent my first season of fieldwork in the Hay Hollow Valley of east-central Arizona as an undergraduate mem­ ber of the Southwestern Expedition of the Field Museum of Natural His­ tory under the direction of Dr. Paul S. Martin. During that season, I participated in an archaeological survey; its purpose was the gathering of data relevant to several hypotheses that Fred Plog intended to test in a dissertation. On several occasions, I also had the opportunity to take part in excavations at the Gurley Sites, an amorphous scatter of pit- houses near Broken K Pueblo, which were also a part of Plog's research design. Several impressions from that exposure to the field stand out clearly in retrospect and are reflected in the study presented here. My undergraduate preparation in archaeology led me to expect that activity areas would be directly revealed by the artifact distributions at a site. To my great surprise, I discovered that the floor of the largest pithouse at the Gurley Sites was completely devoid of artifacts and thus presum­ ably of past activities. At the time, this was a substantial anomaly that I could not explain. Only later, however, did I formulate this and similar questions at a sufficiently general level to make them amenable to detailed investigation. One day while surveying a sample unit in the western margin of the Hay Hollow Valley, we encountered Miss Laurie Carter on horse­ back (a member of the Carter family who owned much of the Hay Hollow iv V Valley). She had come to inform us of a fairly large pueblo site nearby. Although this site was not within a chosen sample unit, we followed Miss Carter to it and assigned it a survey number (N.S. 605). N.S. 605, which later became known as the Joint Site, was noteworthy in a number of respects. In the first place, it was situated less than a mile from the Carter ranch house and as a result was pro­ tected from pothunters. Thus, surface sherds and lithics were abundant, and only one small depression in the large mound even hinted of damage. Secondly, the site was in a grassy clearing surrounded by the ubiquitous juniper, some of which held considerable promise as shade for the picnic lunches we ate while in the field. And thirdly, an impressive view of the entire Hay Hollow Valley was available from the site. Chris White (sur­ vey director) and I agreed that a handsome reward might await someone who devised a research design requiring the excavation of such a per­ fectly delightful site. Two years later I was still a member of the Southwestern Ex­ pedition and it was my turn to gather dissertation data. My early queries about the relationship of past cultural behavior to the formation of the archaeological record had developed into a full-blown research interest. I had by then written a paper on the subject and given a name, cultural formation processes, to what I believed was an undeveloped area of ar­ chaeological study. The task ahead was to select a suitable site for investigating some of these questions. If I had been the only member of the Southwestern Expedition to gather dissertation data that summer, it is certain that the Joint Site would not have been dug. It was simply too large (36 rooms) for the analyses I envisioned. But in the give-and-take vi dialog with the other staff members, John Hanson and Frederick Gorman, we determined that a pueblo site of 30 to 40 rooms would do the least violence to any of our research designs. I suggested that N.S. 605 would serve our joint purposes. It has served well. The study reported in the following pages strongly reflects my first summer spent in the Hay Hollow Valley. I am concerned with show­ ing how some aspects of the paradigm of the new archaeology need re­ vision. The revisions concern the cultural formation processes of the archaeological record. Specifically, my intent is to suggest how these processes may be taken explicitly into account to increase the confi­ dence with which archaeologists make statements about the past. Many of the discussions about cultural formation processes draw on data from the Joint Site, a Pueblo III ruin occupied around A.D. 1220-12 70. Though it deals with the Joint site, this study is not a "site report" in any sense. It is a study in archaeological methodology which uses examples from the Joint Site. Even so, I am not completely satis­ fied with the minor role that I have assigned the Joint Site. Overall, it has yielded an extensive set of data, the surface of which I barely ex­ pose here. But I also fall far short of achieving all the goals of theory- revision that I had originally set for myself, although I can now offer explanations for why pithouses may be empty.