Porosities in the outer table of the cranial vault (porotic hyperostosis) and orbital roof (cribra orbitalia) are among the most frequent pathological lesions seen in ancient human skeletal collections. Since the 1950s, chronic iron-deficiency anemia has been widely accepted as the probable cause of both conditions. Based on this proposed etiology, bioarchaeologists use the prevalence of these conditions to infer living conditions conducive to dietary iron deficiency, iron malabsorption, and iron loss from both diarrheal disease and intestinal parasites in earlier human populations. This iron-deficiency-anemia hypothesis is inconsistent with recent hematological research that shows iron deficiency per se cannot sustain the massive red blood cell production that causes the marrow expansion responsible for these lesions. Several lines of evidence suggest that the accelerated loss and compensatory over-production of red blood cells seen in hemolytic and megaloblastic anemias is the most likely proximate cause of porotic hyperostosis. Although cranial vault and orbital roof porosities are sometimes conflated under the term porotic hyperostosis, paleopathological and clinical evidence suggests they often have different etiologies. Reconsidering the etiology of these skeletal conditions has important implications for current interpretations of malnutrition and infectious disease in earlier human populations.

The causes of porotic hyperostosis and cribra orbitalia: a reappraisal of the iron-deficiency-anemia hypothesis.

Long House Valley in the Black Mesa area of northeastern Arizona (U.S.) was inhabited by the Kayenta Anasazi from about 1800 before Christ to about anno Domini 1300. These people were prehistoric ancestors of the modern Pueblo cultures of the Colorado Plateau. Paleoenvironmental research based on alluvial geomorphology, palynology, and dendroclimatology permits accurate quantitative reconstruction of annual fluctuations in potential agricultural production (kg of maize per hectare). The archaeological record of Anasazi farming groups from anno Domini 200-1300 provides information on a millennium of sociocultural stasis, variability, change, and adaptation. We report on a multiagent computational model of this society that closely reproduces the main features of its actual history, including population ebb and flow, changing spatial settlement patterns, and eventual rapid decline. The agents in the model are monoagriculturalists, who decide both where to situate their fields as well as the location of their settlements. Nutritional needs constrain fertility. Agent heterogeneity, difficult to model mathematically, is demonstrated to be crucial to the high fidelity of the model.

/pdf/population-growth-and-collapse-in-a-multiagent-model-of-the-3dcmxoepic.pdf

Population growth and collapse in a multiagent model of the Kayenta Anasazi in Long House Valley

The role of social valuables in establishing and defeating hierarchies in prestate societies is explored through the use of Annette Weiner's concept of “inalienable possessions.” Inalienable possessions are objects made to be kept (not exchanged), have symbolic and economic power that cannot be transferred, and are often used to authenticate the ritual authority of corporate groups. Ethnographic examples from Zuni are used to understand the range of individually and collectively owned inalienable objects in Pueblo societies. I then use three classes of these objects from archaeological contexts to gain insight into the history of collective prestige structures in the Southwest. I argue that inalienable goods are more useful than shape prestige goods for understanding the role of social valuables in many nonstate societies, especially those in which inequalities are based on ritual knowledge.

The Establishment and Defeat of Hierarchy: Inalienable Possessions and the History of Collective Prestige Structures in the Pueblo Southwest

Current research on Chaco Canyon and its surrounding outlier communities is at an important juncture. Rather than trying to argue for the presence or absence of complexity, archaeologists working in the area are asking different questions, especially how Chacoan political, economic, ritual, and social organization were structured. These lines of inquiry do not attempt to pigeonhole Chaco into traditional neoevolutionary types, but instead seek to understand the historical trajectory that led to the construction of monumental architecture in Chaco Canyon and a large part of the northern Southwest in the 10th through 12th centuries. This review discusses the conclusions of current research at Chaco including definitions of the Chaco region, recent fieldwork, histories of Chaco archaeology, chronology, paleoenvironmental reconstruction, demography, political organization, outlier communities, economic organization, social organization, ritual, violence, and the post-Chacoan reorganization. Although many issues are hotly debated, there is a growing concensus that power was not based in a centralized political organization and that ritual organization was a key factor in the replication of Chacoan architecture across a vast regional landscape. Exactly how ritual, social, and political organization intersected is a central question for Chaco scholars. The resolution of this problem will prove to be of interest to all archaeologists working with intermediate societies across the globe.

Recent Research on Chaco: Changing Views on Economy, Ritual, and Society

This paper offers a new perspective for the study of prehistoric Pueblo political organization in the American Southwest. In reviewing salient developments in Puebloan archaeology over the last 20 years, we discuss shortcomings in previous studies that argued for either “simple” or “complex” societies without recognizing the potential for hierarchy and equality to coexist simultaneously in all human societies. An alternative approach is outlined that considers corporate and network strategies of political action as a continuum for examining the organizational structure of Southwestern societies. Consideration of the corporate-network dimension is not seen as a replacement for the dimension of hierarchy, but as an analog to it. We consider the utility of this approach in analyzing the community organization of historic Pueblos and argue that the corporate-network continuum may have “deep” time depth in the broader region of the Desert West. Our findings suggest that a diverse range of corporate and network strategies were employed among residents of pithouse villages (A.D. 200-900) and that the pithouse-to-pueblo transition (ca. A.D. 700-1000) marked a significant organizational shift to more corporate forms of political action that also characterize historic and modern Pueblos.

Political Hierarchies and Organizational Strategies in the Puebloan Southwest

Orayvi Revisited: Social Stratification in an "Egalitarian" Society

Challenging the widely held view of the Hopi Indians of Arizona as a sober, peaceful, and cooperative people with an egalitarian social organization, Levy examines the 1906 split in the Third Mesa village of Orayvi.

Orayvi Revisited: Social Stratification in an Egalitarian Society

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Orayvi Revisited: Social Stratification in an "Egalitarian" Society

Orayvi Revisited: Social Stratification in an Egalitarian Society