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Although They Have Petty Captains, They Obey Them Badly: The Dialectics of Prehispanic Western Pueblo Social Organization

Published online by Cambridge University Press:  20 January 2017

Randall H. McGuire  and
Dean J. Saitta
Randall H. McGuire
Affiliation:
Department of Anthropology, Binghamton University, Binghamton, NY 13902–6000
Dean J. Saitta
Affiliation:
Department of Anthropology, University of Denver, Denver, CO 80208
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Abstract

Southwestern archaeologists have debated the nature of late Prehispanic western pueblo social organization for nearly a century. Were the fourteenth-century pueblos egalitarian or hierarchical? This issue remains unsettled largely because of the oppositional thinking that has informed most contributions to the debate: that is, the tendency to frame questions about Prehispanic sociopolitical organization in dichotomous “either-or” terms. We critique this approach to the problem and examine one of the most prominent controversies about Prehispanic social organization: the Grasshopper Pueblo-Chavez Pass controversy. We propose an alternative approach rooted in a dialectical epistemology, and a theory of social life that emphasizes the lived experience of people. What impresses us most about late Prehispanic western social organization is not that it was egalitarian or hierarchical, but that it was both. We discuss how this basic contradiction between communal life and hierarchy was a major internal motor driving change in these pueblos.

Resumen

Resumen

Arqueólogos del suroeste han debatido la naturaleza de los pueblos prehispánicos organización social por casi un sigh. ¿Estaba pueblos occidental del decimocuarto del sigh comunal o jerárquico? Esta emisión queda incierto grandemente a causa del pensamiento oposcióno que ha informado la mayoría de contribuciones al debate: ísa es la tendencia idear preguntas acerca de organización social prehispamco en términos dicotomós. Nosotros critica esta proximidad al problema, y examina uno de las controversias mas prominentes acerca de organización social prehispamco: el Grasshopper Pueblo-Chavez Pass controversia. Nos proponemos a una proximidad de la alternativa arraigado en un epistemohgia dialectica, y una teoria de vida social que da enfasis al vivió experiencia de personas. Qué impresiones nosotros más acerca de tarde organización social pueblos occidental, prehispanico, no está que eran comunal o jerárquico, pero que eran umbos. Discutimos cómo esta contradiccion básica entre era un comandante impulso interior de motor cambia en estos pueblos.

Type
Articles
Information
American Antiquity , Volume 61 , Issue 2 , April 1996 , pp. 197 - 216
Copyright
Copyright © The Society for American Archaeology 1996

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