Award Date

May 2023

Degree Type

Dissertation

Degree Name

Doctor of Philosophy (PhD)

Department

Anthropology

First Committee Member

Karen Harry

Second Committee Member

Barbara Roth

Third Committee Member

Liam Frink

Fourth Committee Member

William Bauer

Number of Pages

237

Abstract

This work concerns itself with the Virgin Branch Pueblo of the southern Shivwits Plateau. Within their settlement systems lies considerable variation in terms of architectural sites. The smallest of these sites are often referred to as fieldhouses, a term that has distinct meaning within the archaeological discourse of the American Southwest. Fieldhouses are seasonally occupied structures used by Puebloan people during the agricultural growing season. They arise out of the necessity of land tenure systems that evolve in response to growing competition for arable land in the face of population pressure and finite resources. This research finds that the small sites on the Shivwits Plateau do not fit the fieldhouse model used elsewhere in the Puebloan world. In its place, a more nuanced understanding of small site functions is presented which is situated within the historical trajectories of the Virgin Branch people and their settlement of the Shivwits Plateau.

Keywords

fieldhouses; land tenure; Puebloan archaeology; settlement systems; small sites; Virgin Branch People

Disciplines

Archaeological Anthropology

File Format

pdf

Degree Grantor

University of Nevada, Las Vegas

Language

English

Rights

IN COPYRIGHT. For more information about this rights statement, please visit http://rightsstatements.org/vocab/InC/1.0/

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