More Than 20 Years Ago (1953) research was published on the relationship between mean annual rainfall and the size of the domain occupied by Australian Aboriginal tribal groups. When the original series of 409 tribes was refined to a more homogeneous basic series of 123 tribes, in which all water resources were locally earned as rainfall, the coefficient of correlation between the two variables approached 0.81. This coefficient expressed a systematic inverse logarithmic relationship between the amount of rainfall and the land required to support a tribal population. Further, it carried the implication that tribal populations tended to approximate a constant of 500 persons, based on estimates of tribal size from a variety of observers. The unexplained variance in this statistical relationship amounted to 35% of the total and included a variety of errors in ascertainment, as well as deviations in tribal numbers from the postulated constant. The exercise served to validate the assumption previously made (1950) that tribal numbers in Australia approached a constant value.

During the year 1973, as a Visiting Fellow in the Department of Anthropology and in the Department of Prehistory at the Australian National University, Canberra, it was possible to reexamine the relationships between Aboriginal men and their land in Australia at a much more complex level than previously undertaken. The high-speed computer has become available since the first attempt, and extensive resources in a first-class research institution provided the time and data necessary. During the 20 years that have intervened since 1953, the environmental data on continental Australia have increased enormously; it may now be one of the best studied continents in the world in these terms.

Three trees which began growing in the 12th century lean in a manner not characteristic of neighboring Douglas-firs and have tree-ring patterns showing changes that do not appear to reflect climatic influences. Two old trees, now dead, have limb stubs that were cut by stone tools. It is possible the prehistoric Indians cultivated trees so that in a relatively short time a single root system would produce several limbs suitable for use as construction timbers.

In cultural terms, the Southwest has never been satisfactorily defined. This is particularly true of the southern boundaries. Archeologists usually include the territory occupied by the groups we term Anasazi, Hohokam, Mogollon, and Patayan; it is this area that will be considered here.

Physiographically (Atwood 191+0; Darton 1925; Fenneman 1931), the northern and eastern parts of this area belong primarily to the Colorado Plateaus Province; the southern and western parts comprise a portion of the Basin and Range Province. Physiographers subdivide these major provinces into lesser units having more significance for the archeologist. The Colorado Plateaus Province is marked primarily by high mesas and plateaus underlain by nearly horizontal strata of strong, cliff-producing rocks locally covered by volcanic features or domed by igneous intrusions. This extensive area is drained largely by the Colorado River and its tributaries. Among the distinguishing features are the hundreds of deeply entrenched canyons and great retreating cliffs or escarpments.

Despite Fewkes's reports of 1909 and 1916 that a legend of a battle with the Anasazi was obtained from the Utes, such knowledge was denied by all Southern Utes queried in 1963. Their matter-of-fact acceptance of a common identity between the ruins builders and the modern Pueblo peoples, together with evidence from Spanish documents, led to the hypothesis that the Utes have had a long, unbroken (if somewhat peripheral), and for the most part nonviolent contact with the Anasazi-Pueblo. Spanish records also suggest that eastern Utes in early historic times had become quite unlike their more closely studied Great Basin relatives, and that as participants in the general plains culture they had further contact with the Pueblos and the Spanish. Evidence that an Athapascan intrusion successfully blocked Ute-Pueblo contact seems far from conclusive.

The study of a large amount of chipped material from the seven largest sites excavated at Wetherill Mesa has yielded a pattern of change (as shown in graphs) in chipping methods and materials used that correlates well with other aspects of cultural change.

A general outline of, and justification for, this study, as well as a discussion of the major related concepts, are presented in this chapter.

Carl Lloyd supervised an archaeological survey of the area adjacent to the Ackmen pueblo in southwestern Colorado in 1937 in order to supplement the data recovered from the excavation of this famous site. Sixty-six quarter-sections (each equivalent to a ¼ sq mi area) measuring ½ mi on each side, were intensively surveyed by a large crew. Members of the crew were stationed 100 ft apart along the ½-mi width of the quarter-section, and the entire crew walked across the ½-mi length of the quarter-section.

From each section consisting of 4 quarter-sections, 2 diagonal quarter-sections were selected for investigation. Lloyd assumed that 66 surveyed quarter-sections would reflect adequately, at least, on a 33-sq mi area near the rim. This assumption was based on the rather large (50%) sampling fraction that he employed. He was not certain that his survey methods would produce a contribution to the archaeology of the area and stated the uncertainty as follows: “Given a discontinous intensive archaeological survey of a region, what contributions can be made to the archaeology of that region by means of an analysis of the data thus obtained?” (Lloyd 1938:282). He did not explicitly answer that question during the course of his report. However, I believe that his answer was implicitly positive, that is, the kind of survey he performed did produce a meaningful contribution to the archaeology of the Ackmen-Lowry region.

Having briefly considered the location, environment, and layout of the various Mogollon villages, we may now analyze them to determine whether or not they follow a pattern.

In their choice of village sites, it is clear that, with few exceptions, the Mogollon chose places of some elevation and isolation. Twelve of 2I4. villages were located on a mesa, a bluff, or a ridge; 10 others occupied terraces well above valley bottoms; and one was situated on the outwash fan of nearby mountains. Only one was located in a valley bottom. Furthermore, Danson. (1952) found in his survey that the early people built their villages on mesas or isolated ridges well back from the main stream of travel. Without exception, sites were located in mountainous country or near to mountains. Whether by preference or for some other reason, it was in the mountain country that the Mogollon people had their ecological niche. Many sites lie in secluded valleys on tributary streams; but except, perhaps, in the northernmost sites, the availability of agricultural land seems to have been one of the deciding factors in selecting a village site.

It seems to have become the custom for the author of a paper on archaeological methodology to provide his readers with a review of the theoretical trends of the discipline. The general outline of these trends must by now be the common property of all literate anthropologists. do not consider it improper, therefore, to refrain from repeating a summary of them here. Much more important to this study of the nature of archaeological inference is a statement of the present aims of the discipline and the role which inference is expected to play in achieving these aims.

Phillips and Willey (1953: 616) succinctly describe the proper ends of archaeological research:

The ultimate objective of archeology is the creation of an image of life within the limits of the residue that is available from the past. The procedural objectives toward such a goal may be dichotomized into reconstructions of space-time relationships, on the one hand, and contextual relationships on the other.

Since distance and field work obligations will unfortunately prevent my attendance at the Viking Fund-Institute of Andean Research meeting on Peruvian prehistory, I would like my colleagues to accept a few written notes on one of the subjects that will probably be discussed: the problem of basic highland culture. I am not sure that I understand why the problem was posed in terms of the highlands alone. My impression of the Peruvian archaeological picture is that the differences between highland sub-areas and coastal sub-areas is hardly greater than what one finds between adjacent highland sub-areas. Even in geographical terms the differences between highland sub-areas are very great. The problem is still an Andean one.

The pages which follow are a report of the findings from a series of archeological excavations in western Utah. The archeological sites were Danger (42To13), Juke Box (42To20), and Raven (24EK2) caves. Of these three Danger Cave was the most informative and lends its name to the report. Juke Box and Raven provided interesting problems in excavation, but their evidence as to cultural events was meager.

The human story inferred in this report was set in one of the most remarkable of North American environments—the desert West. The natural subsistence resources of this land are today quite sparse; the balance between success and failure in survival has always been delicate. The fact that human groups survived in this environment deserves serious ecological note. Although no intensive study of this aspect of the problem is being undertaken here, the cultural data cannot be appreciated or evaluated without a modicum of information regarding the terrain and the biotic resources of the region.

Chapter 4, and particularly Table 4, indicate a relatively narrow range of values for E(15), the life expectancy at age 15. This range, 12.3 to 34.6, just overlaps the lowest life expectancies in national censuses of the past 2 centuries (Arriaga 1968; Keyfitz and Flieger 1968). Even in the model life tables of Coale and Demeny (1966), “West” series, which are most applicable to pre-industrial populations, the lowest E(15) is 31.16. This particular value is found in a table which is an extrapolation of their regression lines well beyond the range of data on which the regressions were based.