Recipients of the Lister Fellowship

2011

Alyson Thibodeau

Alyson Thibodeau is a doctoral candidate in the Department of Geosciences at the University of Arizona. She is committed to a career as an interdisciplinary scientist, pursuing research at the intersection of archaeology and the geological sciences. Her goal as a researcher is to integrate knowledge across traditional disciplinary boundaries and find new and scientifically innovative ways to investigate the archaeological record. Alyson obtained her undergraduate degree from Amherst College, where she completed a double major in anthropology and geology.

Alyson was a National Science Foundation-IGERT (Integrative Graduate Education and Research Traineeship) Fellow in Archaeological Science from 2004 to 2006. The IGERT program seeks to fundamentally change graduate education by providing opportunities for collaborative, interdisciplinary research and produce scholars who are leaders and creative agents for change in a globally engaged science and engineering workforce.

In her research, Alyson uses geochemical techniques to address archaeological questions in the Southwestern United States, Mexico, and Belize. In particular, she uses isotopic tracers to infer the geologic sources of metals, minerals, and other materials that are found in the archaeological record. These studies allow Alyson to examine questions of human movement, resource procurement, and long-distance trade and interaction. Her research clarifies questions about the prehistoric mining and exchange of many types of raw materials, including turquoise, azurite, malachite, and lead ores.

Abstract

Alyson’s dissertation addresses a question of fundamental importance to the archaeology of the U.S. Southwest and Mexico: Can the turquoise objects found in archaeological sites be linked to specific geological sources? This question has generated tremendous interest among archaeologists because turquoise was prized by prehispanic societies living in both the U.S. Southwest and Mexico and was extensively mined and traded across these areas. Over the last 40 years, scientists have used a variety of chemical analyses, particularly trace element analyses, in attempts to link archaeological turquoise to geological sources. However, the utility of trace elements for the study of turquoise provenance has been limited due to the chemical variability of turquoise within individual deposits and the abundant impurities that are often closely associated with turquoise mineralization.

Alyson has pioneered a new approach to turquoise provenance using lead and strontium isotope analyses. The objectives of her research are threefold: to construct a new geochemical framework for addressing questions of turquoise provenance in the U.S. Southwest and Mexico; to establish that this technique can be applied to archaeological samples; and to demonstrate how information about turquoise provenance can transform ideas about the procurement and exchange of this mineral among prehispanic societies. Over the past five years, Alyson has made more than 250 lead and strontium isotopic measurements on turquoise collected from 18 mining districts in the U.S. Southwest and northern Mexico. To date, her work indicates that lead and strontium isotopes define unique geochemical fingerprints for the majority of these turquoise sources and that lead and strontium isotope analyses can be successfully applied to turquoise with a variety of chemical and physical characteristics. Alyson has also demonstrated that the distinctive isotopic signatures of many turquoise sources can be understood in terms of the geological circumstances under which different deposits formed.

Alyson’s dissertation will use the isotopic fingerprints of individual sources to infer the geologic provenance of turquoise found in archaeological sites. She is especially interested in evaluating claims about the source of turquoise found at sites in Chaco Canyon, New Mexico, and testing the idea that Pueblo societies of the Southwest U.S. traded turquoise to Mesoamerica. To address these questions, she will analyze turquoise from two of the world’s most important archaeological sites: Pueblo Bonito in Chaco Canyon and the Templo Mayor in Mexico City.

Alyson’s dissertation will use the geochemical framework she has developed to address some of the most persistent and exciting questions of Southwestern and Mesoamerican archaeology. Her work promises to make a significant and lasting contribution to our knowledge of the prehispanic societies of these areas and offers the archaeological community a powerful new tool to investigate the social and political dynamics of Pueblo and Mesoamerican groups.

2009

Samuel Duwe

Samuel Duwe is a doctoral candidate at the University of Arizona. He was first exposed to archaeology when his fifth-grade class from Elk Creek Elementary School in Pine Junction, Colorado, attended a program at Crow Canyon. Sam began to develop his research focus as an undergraduate at the University of Michigan, where he learned to conduct instrumental neutron activation analysis for his Senior Honors thesis, which addressed questions of pottery provenance at late-phase pithouse sites in the Taos District, in the Rio Grande region of northwestern New Mexico.

A stint as crew chief on the University of Arizona field school in east-central Arizona led to his Master's project, which focused on community organization at the Bailey Ruin. Using inductively coupled plasma mass spectrometry to discern unique "recipes" for slip and paint used on decorated pottery, Sam explored questions of craft production, community organization, and apprenticeship relationships among potters at a single site. For his dissertation research, he has returned to the Rio Grande drainage to study the processes of coalescence that accompanied the formation of Tewa pueblos after A.D. 1150.

Sam has also conducted research at Early Copper Age (ECA) sites in Hungary. There, the transition from the Neolithic to the ECA appears to be a process of "de-aggregation," which poses an interesting counterpoint to his dissertation research on coalescence.

Abstract

The working title of Sam's dissertation is "The Prehispanic Tewa World: Coalescence and Identity in the Northern Rio Grande Region, New Mexico." His research examines the formation of new group identities among ancestral Pueblo populations in the Tewa Basin, New Mexico, during the Coalition (A.D. 1150–1325) and Classic (A.D. 1325–1600) periods. The Tewa Basin is a portion of the Rio Grande drainage bounded by the Rio Chama drainage on the north and Frijoles Canyon on the south.

The central question that Sam attempts to answer with his research is, How was the formation of a Tewa identity affected when small sites coalesced into large pueblos? He traces the development of more than 40 large pueblos during the Coalition and Classic periods and investigates how it came to be that only six of these remained occupied when the Spanish colonized New Mexico at the end of the sixteenth century. To examine the formation of Tewa pueblos and identity, Sam has designed multiple analyses to document three important topics: the movement of people, the movement of materials, and the development and elaboration of cosmologies.

To reconstruct the movement of people, Sam will develop a high-resolution culture history for his study area. This will be accomplished by creating detailed site maps and analyzing 26,000 pottery sherds. The sizes of sites as determined from the maps will allow Sam to estimate how many people lived at each pueblo, and the pottery analysis will allow him to determine when they lived there.

To analyze the movement of materials, Sam will determine the chemical composition of pottery using flight-laser ablation-inductively coupled plasma mass spectrometry. This analysis will be performed on 89 raw clay samples and 1,000 pottery sherds. The results will allow Sam to determine where pottery was manufactured and how it was exchanged—evidence of how people living in the various pueblos were interacting with one another.

To understand the development and elaboration of cosmologies, Sam will analyze ethnographies, shrines, rock art, ritual architecture, and prominent natural features. This information will provide insights into how ritual landscapes were created and how cosmologies changed over time.

Sam's research will add significantly to our knowledge of the Tewa Basin, will determine how a Tewa identity formed, and will clarify how Tewa culture changed as a result of population coalescence. Finally, the methods developed as a result of this study will be useful to archaeological researchers working in many other regions of the world.

2007

Scott G. Ortman

Scott Ortman is a Ph.D. candidate at Arizona State University. He received his B.A. in anthropology from Stanford University in 1994 and his M.A. in anthropology from Arizona State University in 1998. Scott has been associated with the Crow Canyon Archaeological Center since 1993, when he was a field research intern at Castle Rock Pueblo. He worked as a seasonal field assistant from 1994 to 1996 before joining the full-time staff in 1997, first as material culture specialist, then as laboratory director and database manager, and today as acting director of research. Scott has authored or coauthored eight peer-reviewed journal articles (in American Antiquity, Kiva, and World Archaeology), 11 chapters in edited volumes (published by Altamira Press, Arizona State University, the University of California Press, the University Press of Colorado, Routledge, SAR Press, and the University of Utah Press), and major sections of four archaeological site reports on Crow Canyon’s Web site. In recognition of his work, Scott has received the Firestone Medal for Excellence in Research from Stanford, the Ruppe Student Prize from Arizona State University, and the Student Paper Award from the Society for American Archaeology. His dissertation work is also supported by the National Science Foundation. Scott’s research interests range widely but focus on archaeological method and theory; Pueblo history, culture, and language; and the integration of the traditional subfields of anthropology: cultural anthropology, physical anthropology, linguistics, and archaeology.

Abstract

The rise of population in the northern Rio Grande valley of New Mexico during the thirteenth century A.D. has long been linked to Pueblo migration from the Four Corners region to the west and northwest. The diversity of contemporary Pueblo languages in the Rio Grande suggests that people speaking several different languages took part in these migrations, but the material culture of postmigration Rio Grande sites does not map onto historic language distributions very well, and it does not exhibit obvious continuities with earlier archaeological cultures of the Four Corners. This lack of fit between language and archaeology is why the origin of the Rio Grande pueblos remains a classic puzzle in North American archaeology.

This research takes a fresh look at this puzzle by investigating the origins of the Tewa, one of the major Pueblo groups of the Rio Grande. Specifically, it focuses on relationships between the present-day Tewa and the ancient population of the Mesa Verde region, that portion of the larger Four Corners region most commonly cited as the Tewa homeland. The project traces the genetic, linguistic, and cultural backgrounds of the Tewa using five lines of investigation: (1) an analysis of the biological relationships between Tewa and Mesa Verde populations, using data from skeletal remains; (2) a linguistic study to determine the length of time Tewa has been a distinct language; (3) the archaeological dating of sites with Tewa names to determine the length of time Tewa has been spoken in the Rio Grande; (4) an analysis linking metaphors expressed in Mesa Verde material culture and embedded in the Tewa language to determine whether Tewa was spoken in the Mesa Verde region prior to migration; and (5) an archaeological study of continuities and discontinuities in material culture between the Mesa Verde and Tewa regions, using frameworks derived from ethnographic and historic migration studies.

This transdisciplinary research will clarify affiliations between specific American Indian communities and archaeological sites, and it may assist in the repatriation process mandated by federal law. It will also evaluate a new method for tracing speech communities and will contribute to reunification of the currently estranged subfields of anthropology. Finally, this research will greatly expand public interpretation of archaeological sites by reconstructing the languages that were spoken in ancient times at sites in southern Colorado and northern New Mexico, including sites in national parks and monuments visited by thousands of people every year.

2005

Diane Curewitz

Diane Curewitz is a doctoral candidate at Washington State University. After receiving a B.A. in anthropology from Barnard College (1968), Diane worked for many years in both education and social services, all the while maintaining her interest in archaeology and working on seasonal field projects as her schedule permitted. In 1996, she decided to pursue her archaeological interests full-time and enrolled in Washington State University's graduate program, earning her M.A. in anthropology in 1999. The scholarships, awards, and grants she has received since resuming her academic career—including the Field Museum of Natural History Research Scholarship, a National Science Foundation Doctoral Dissertation Improvement Grant, and a Bureau of Land Management–Museum of New Mexico Research Fellowship—are a testament to the quality of her work. Diane has maintained a busy academic and professional schedule, teaching several introductory anthropology courses, serving as editorial assistant for American Antiquity, presenting papers at several national conferences, and authoring or coauthoring a number of reports and publications. As a graduate research assistant on the Cultural Resource Management Team at Los Alamos National Laboratory, Diane coauthored two reports on ceramic analysis and technology, and she has published two peer-reviewed journal articles, one in Kiva (2004) and the other in the Journal of California and Great Basin Anthropology (2001). Diane's current research focuses on the relationship between pottery production and social organization in the Pueblo Southwest. Her dissertation, titled "Changes in Northern Rio Grande Ceramic Production and Exchange, Late Coalition Through Classic (A.D. 1250–1600), examines the role that ritual may have played in pottery specialization and distribution during a critical period in Pueblo history.

Abstract

The fourteenth century saw great changes in the organization of Pueblo society in the northern Rio Grande area, changes which are as yet incompletely understood by archaeologists. The goal of the current research is to explore the relationship between pottery production and social organization at the transition between the Coalition (A.D. 1150–1325) and Classic (A.D. 1325–1600) periods, with a particular emphasis on pottery produced and exchanged at sites located in Bandelier National Monument, New Mexico. Analysis of pottery composition, technological and design attributes, and distribution patterns will demonstrate how population movement, aggregation, and a new ideological system combined to produce changes in regional production and exchange networks that affected settlement and social organization.

As part of this study, comparative measures of pottery specialization will be developed, pottery-distribution patterns will be identified, and social networks based on the exchange of high-value goods will be analyzed. It is hypothesized that a new religious ideology with an emphasis on communal feasting conferred added social value on, and increased demand for, decorated serving and undecorated culinary vessels used in feasts. Use of these vessels in these contexts identified their owners as group members and ritual participants. Access to skills, materials, and ritual knowledge would have limited vessel production and increased specialization. The physical proximity of distantly related individuals in densely aggregated pueblos, combined with demand for the vessels, may have encouraged the development of new exchange-driven social relationships and nonreciprocal exchange networks.

2003

Donna M. Glowacki

Donna Glowacki is a doctoral candidate at Arizona State University (ASU). Having received a B.A. from Miami University (1992) and an M.A. from the University of Missouri (1995), she entered the Ph.D. program at ASU in 1997. She has been a member of the Register of Professional Archaeologists since 1999. Donna has conducted research in many parts of the North American Southwest, but her field and laboratory research for the past decade has focused on the northern San Juan region. She has a strong record of professional contributions, including directing field projects, organizing sessions and presenting research at professional meetings, and publishing her research in journals and books. Donna's research has focused on documenting patterns of interaction in the northern San Juan region and reconstructing the use histories of large Pueblo villages in both the northern San Juan region and the Zuni area. Her research has resulted in many notable publications. With Hector Neff, she is the editor of the book, Ceramic Production and Circulation in the Greater Southwest: Source Determination by INAA and Complementary Mineralogical Investigations. Donna has also coauthored several peer-reviewed journal articles that have appeared in Kiva and the Journal of Radioanalytical and Nuclear Chemistry. In addition, she is a coauthor on five chapters that have appeared in edited volumes. With Keith Kintigh and Deborah Huntley, she has submitted an article to American Antiquity that examines the settlement history and emergence of towns in the Zuni area. Finally, Donna has an exemplary record of teaching and public outreach, sharing the lessons of archaeology and historic preservation with hundreds of students in a variety of settings. Her dissertation is titled "Placing Emigration in its Social Context: Intraregional Interaction in the Northern San Juan Region During the 13^th Century."

Abstract

The large-scale regional depopulation of the northern San Juan is a momentous occurrence that had wide-reaching impacts across the American Southwest. As such, almost every aspect of the circumstances surrounding this occurrence has been intensively studied; however, studies focused on cooperative social relationships within the region and how they may have contributed to this large-scale depopulation have been lacking. This dissertation research focuses on determining the extent of interaction (cooperation) among pueblos in the northern San Juan region during the 1200s, the century which saw the beginning of the emigration from, and eventually the depopulation of, the region.

Instrumental neutron activation analysis (INAA) is being used to document the production and distribution of Mesa Verde Black-on-white and corrugated pottery within the region to determine how cooperative networks were utilized during an unstable, stressful time. This research will also provide a synthetic database of regional settlement from A.D. 1150–1300 and suggest how variation in settlement organization and demography might have affected social ties. Linking intraregional ceramic data with regional settlement patterns will enable a better understanding of the context of large-scale emigration.

2001

Wesley Bernardini

Wesley (Wes) Bernardini completed his Ph.D. at Arizona State University (ASU) in 2002, having received an M.A. from ASU and a B.A. from the University of Virginia. He has conducted fieldwork in many parts of the southwestern United States, with his most recent work focused on north-central Arizona. Much of his research has focused on how inferences of human behavior are based on estimates of the scale of that behavior, including specifying the number of people and the amount of labor involved in particular activities. In a number of studies, he has demonstrated that addressing the issue of scale is a necessary prerequisite to formulating more specific hypotheses about the purpose or organization of a particular human behavior. Wes has published widely on this research, including the following journal articles and book chapters: "Transitions in Social Organization: A Predictive Model from Southwestern Archaeology" in Journal of Anthropological Archaeology; "Conflict, Migration, and the Social Environment: Interpreting Architectural Change in Early and Late Pueblo IV Aggregations" in Migration and Reorganization: The Pueblo IV Period in the American Southwest; "Cannonical and Indexical Messages and the Generation of Social Prestige" in Hopewell Society, Ritual, and Religion; and "Kiln Firing Groups: Inter-Household Economic Collaboration and Social Organization in the Northern American Southwest" in American Antiquity. Wes received the 2003 Society for American Archaeology Dissertation Prize for the best dissertation in archaeology.

Abstract

This research investigates the process of migration into the Hopi area, ca. A.D. 1275–1400, with the goal of understanding how the formation of the 14th-century settlement clusters affected their subsequent internal and external interactions. This period was characterized by a remarkable amount of population movement as Puebloan settlement in Arizona contracted to only two major population centers at Hopi and Zuni. Because these population centers remain occupied today, an understanding of how these clusters formed—especially the sources of their immigrants and the diversity of these immigrants' backgrounds—will shed light not only on 14th-century social organization but on modern Native American contexts as well. This study provides an alternative to traditional archaeological perspectives on migration that begin research by grouping sites into settlement clusters and regions. Informed by Native American migration traditions, the perspective advocated here focuses instead on migrating groups, hypothesizing that migration involved unsynchronized, short-distance moves by many socially distinct, independent groups. Two lines of evidence—Instrumental Neutron Activation Analysis and a comparative analysis of petroglyph icons—will be used to evaluate this hypothesis, focusing on sites that are traditionally grouped into the Anderson Mesa and Homol'ovi settlement clusters of north-central Arizona.

1997

John Kantner

John Kantner was the third Lister Fellow. John is a native of New Mexico who conducted undergraduate research at Colorado College and received his Ph.D. from the University of California, Santa Barbara. His current research is shaped by an interest in the interplay of cooperation and competition in human society, especially the role of these behaviors in the development of sociopolitical complexity and economic inequality, and in the application of neo-Darwinian evolutionary theory to these problems. To pursue these goals, John has developed a range of methodological interests. He is a ceramicist who focuses on both microstylistic and compositional analysis. His research also incorporates extensive use of spatial analysis, including geographic information systems, which he developed through training at the National Center for Geographic Information Analysis at U.C. Santa Barbara. John's commitment to disseminate the results of his research is reflected in his strong publication record and the award-winning Internet resources he has developed.

Abstract

Anthropological scholarship has most often considered the development of sociocultural complexity to be a function of the need for group decision-making in the face of changing environmental conditions. In recent years, however, this view has come under scrutiny both for its failure to account for the empirical record and its theoretical dependence on untenable views of group adaptation and altruism. This dissertation starts from the premise that an improved view of sociopolitical change can be built from the perspective of methodological individualism through an examination of the effects of varying contexts on human decision-making. Building upon a foundation of evolutionary theory, the dissertation presents a model of sociopolitical change that focuses on self-interested behavior within social contexts. The model employs neo-Darwinian evolutionary theory to explore specific social and environmental contexts and their effects on human behavior, using modeling techniques from agent-based modeling, evolutionary biology, and behavioral ecology.

To evaluate the theoretical model, the development of the prehistoric Chaco Anasazi of the Southwest United States is examined. This society, which emerged in northwestern New Mexico around A.D. 900 and dissolved in the A.D. 1100s, was characterized by the development of complex multi-village organization that included evidence for inequality and sociopolitical differentiation. The research focuses on a 2,500 sq km study area that was once the location of at least a dozen communities that participated in the so-called "Chacoan system." The dissertation tests expectations of the model by focusing on five communities. Two different lines of inquiry are pursued. First, elemental compositional analysis of ceramics from the communities was conducted to identify local patterns of production and exchange. Next, stylistic analyses were conducted on ceramic samples from these same communities in order to identify the differential use of specific design elements to symbolize group identity. The dissertation concludes that the results of the two analytical approaches are consistent with the expectations of the theoretical model of sociopolitical development, suggesting that the emergence of inequality and sociopolitical differentiation in the Chaco Anasazi case can be traced to context-dependent, self-interested human behavior.

1995

Ronald H. Towner

Ronald H. Towner received the second Lister Fellowship in 1995. Ron completed his dissertation and was awarded a Ph.D. at the University of Arizona. Ron conducted an innovative study of early historic period Navajo sites in the "Dinetah" homeland in northwestern New Mexico. Among its significant contributions, his dissertation overturns existing interpretations of Navajo "pueblitos." He shows that these masonry structures are not the result of mixing of Navajo groups and Pueblo groups after the Pueblo Revolt of 1680, as had long been thought. Instead, he interprets the pueblitos as defensive architecture, possibly a response to Ute raiding. Ron has edited a book on Navajo archaeology entitled The Archaeology of Navajo Origins, published by the University of Utah Press.

Abstract

Pueblito sites include masonry structures and forked-stick hogans in defensible positions in the traditional Navajo homeland of Dinetah. Pueblitos have been a key piece of evidence used to infer a massive immigration of Puebloans into the Navajo country following the Spanish Reconquest of New Mexico. Archaeological and tree-ring evidence places the sites in their proper temporal and geographic perspectives and suggests that immigration has been overstated as a factor in models of Navajo cultural development. An expanded pueblito site tree-ring database illuminates early Navajo wood-use behavior, the temporal and spatial patterning of pueblito site occupations, and relationships between climate and the Navajo occupation and abandonment of Dinetah.

Wood-use behaviors identified at the pueblito sites include construction with freshly cut and stockpiled timbers, beam reuse, repair and remodeling of structures, and dead-wood use. Different selection criteria by the builders, combined with differential preservation, have resulted in different qualitative and quantitative data for pueblitos and forked-stick hogans. The wood-use model developed has serious implications for dating early Navajo structures.

The tree-ring and archaeological data indicate that most pueblitos are neither temporally nor spatially related to Puebloan immigration or the Spanish Reconquest. Masonry structures and hogans at the sites are contemporaneous and were constructed by Navajos for protection against Ute raiders. Furthermore, most pueblitos were occupied for relatively short periods of time, and the regional population density was much lower than has been previously assumed.

A dendroclimatic reconstruction indicates that the A.D. 1300s and late 1400s were both periods of relatively stable and favorable conditions that may have facilitated Navajo entry into the Dinetah. The drought of 1748, often cited as a cause of the abandonment of the Dinetah, was a single-year event and probably not a "push" in the abandonment.

The wide geographic distribution of early Navajo settlement has been ignored because of the spectacular nature of and good preservation in pueblitos. A new model of Navajo ethnogenesis is based on a different early Navajo population distribution and a variety of other means of incorporating non-Athapaskan elements into Navajo culture.

1993

David R. Abbott

David R. Abbott received the first Lister Fellowship in 1993. The award helped him complete his Ph.D. at Arizona State University. His dissertation, a pathbreaking study of Hohokam social organization based on patterns of ceramics exchange, was nationally recognized by the Society for American Archaeology as the Outstanding Dissertation in Archaeology for 1995. Dave continued his research at the Arizona State Museum with National Science Foundation Support, and he currently heads his own consulting firm. A revised version of his dissertation, entitled Ceramics and Community Organization among the Hohokam, was published in 2000 by the University of Arizona Press.

Abstract

The prehistoric Hohokam people of south-central Arizona are best known for their large and extensive irrigation works. However, just how the administration of the canal systems articulated with the organization of Hohokam society is an interesting and unresolved issue. In this study, substantial gains are made for reconstructing Hohokam social structure, the degree to which it was shaped by their irrigation economy, and the evolving interplay between hydraulic management and the pattern of Hohokam social relationships over time. A methodology is developed, based on the exchange of utilitarian ceramics over short distances (as little as 5 km), in order to trace social interaction between Hohokam populations who lived in the central Phoenix Basin between A.D. 1100 and 1400. Applications of the methodology show that hydraulic management had a pervasive influence on the organization of Hohokam social networks. In addition, there is new evidence to suggest an increase in Hohokam social complexity around A.D. 1275 that may have been directly linked to the inherent asymmetrical control of water in large irrigation economies. The ceramic methodology consists of two parts. First, it is demonstrated with geologic mapping, petrographic analyses, and electron microprobe assays, that the production sources of Hohokam utilitarian wares are closely associated with the pottery's temper, thereby enabling the participants in the exchange transaction to be identified. Second, the social relationship between the interacting parties can be inferred on the basis of the pottery's exchange value, which, in turn, is determined by an analysis of ceramic production and use. This ability to assess who among the Hohokam interacted with whom and the nature of their social ties provides a novel and powerful approach to study Hohokam social structure, which complements other approaches currently used by archaeologists.