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Architecture as Artifact: Pit Structures and Pueblos in the American Southwest

Published online by Cambridge University Press:  20 January 2017

Patricia A. Gilman
Patricia A. Gilman*
Affiliation:
The Amerind Foundation, Inc., P.O. Box 248, Dragoon, AZ 85609 and the Mimbres Foundation, Los Angeles, CA 90048
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Abstract

The use of architecture as an artifact gives archaeologists a data set that we have rarely employed to examine cultural evolutionary questions. In this paper I consider the determinants of some architectural forms and propose some causes of architectural change, specifically in the American Southwest. Using ethnographic material from around the world, I demonstrate the relationship between structure seasonality and two of the most common southwestern architectural forms, pit structures and pueblos. The ethnographic record also suggests that the conditions surrounding the southwestern use of pit structures, and to a lesser degree of pueblos, are rather different from what many archaeologists have supposed. The differences in the conditions under which pueblos are used rather than pit structures form the basis for a theoretical framework that begins to explain the transition between the two kinds of structures in the prehistoric Southwest.

Type
Articles
Information
American Antiquity , Volume 52 , Issue 3 , July 1987 , pp. 538 - 564
Copyright
Copyright © Society for American Archaeology 1987

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