Mogollon Settlement Patterns in Pine Lawn Valley, New Mexico

Abstract

AbstractSettlement patterns are described for each phase of the sedentary agricultural occupation of the area from Pine Lawn phase (200 B.C.-A.D. 500) through Tularosa phase (A.D. 1100-1250), when the area was abandoned. Through time domestic structures changed from rounded to rectangular, from semi-subterranean to surface, and decreased in size. Earlier villages tended to be on higher, more defensible locations while later ones were lower, closer to water and arable land. Villages were generally random in plan, and great kivas, the only ceremonial structures identified in the area, appear to have served more than one village. From the settlement pattern data it is possible to construct a population curve for the area which may be partially explained in terms of botanical and climatological as well as cultural factors. Pine Lawn Valley Mogollon may have had some multi-village social organization which in later times may have united the entire valley. In this respect the Mogollon may have been intermediate between the well-integrated, segmented Anasazi communities in the plateau and the more politically structured Hohokam communities in the desert.