The Last Fifty Years: Transforming Southwestern Archaeology

INTRODUCTION I accepted the task of reviewing the three books sent to me by this journal because I felt it provided me with an opportunity to review research directions in Southwestern archaeology during the last fifty years. Such an undertaking (and I use the term loosely) may signal my departure from the ranks of more rational colleagues, who may suspect that I have finally slipped over the edge into the abyss reserved for those whose only remaining professional goal is to "contemplate with perspective." But I also am compelled to offer my "perspective" because of the exceptional books this journal has asked me to review. Rarely do three titles (Ernil W. Haury's Prehistory of the American Southwest, edited by J. Jefferson Reid and David E. Doyel, University of Arizona Press; Social Adaptation to Food Stress: A Prehistoric Southwest Example by Paul E. Minnis, University of Chicago Press; and Prehistoric Adaptation in the American Southwest by Rosalind Hunter-Anderson, Cambridge University Press) encapsulate the history, present state, and future directions of a field of study so coherently. These works embody a longitudinal view of Southwestern archaeology and together permit a discussion of what we have learned during the past fifty years and what we still strive to know about prehistory in the American Southwest. My remarks focus on four pivotal areas of inquiry in Southwestern archaeology where change and rethinking have been commonplace during the last five decades: 1) the definition of cultures, 2) chronology construction, 3) subsistence and agriculture, and 4) population, disease, and sociopolitical complexity. The books that form the basis of this essay are each directly relevant to one or more of these issues. In the case of Emil Haury, it is safe to say that he (along with a few other important archaeologists of his day) defined our field of view on these as well as other key issues. Before I consider each of these topics, however, I comment briefly on the three books