Tucked into the rugged mountains and arable valleys of the “International Four Corners” region of el Noroeste de México and the US Southwest, the record of the archaeologically defined Mogollon culture has seldom attracted either public or disciplinary attention akin to Ancestral O'odham and Ancestral Puebloan archaeologies. Aside from the distinctive iconography of Mimbres ceramics, the rapacious looting that ravaged the region in the 1900s, and occasional eruptions of academic controversies over levels and types of connections among culture areas, Mogollon archaeology is seldom at the fore. Worthy journal articles appear annually, yet much of what we know about “Mogollon” is confined to gray literature and conference proceedings.
This volume amounts to a case study of why that is lamentable and a model for integrating work by Mogollon researchers into advances in adjacent areas. The sturdy, 300-page hardcover itself is literally and figuratively packed with distinctive research results and regional perspectives. The editors’ introduction and 14 chapters represent 25 authors and include 24 pertinent tables, an integrated 35-page list of references, and a four-page index. The figures are praiseworthy in terms of both quantity (102!) and quality; all are crisp and about half are color. Hats off to outgoing University of Utah Press editor Reba Rauch!
The content is roundly laudable. The introduction by Robert J. Stokes, Katherine A. Dungan, and Jakob W. Sedig convinced me that the volume is a silver lining from the pandemic and the 2020 Society for American Archaeology (SAA) meeting cancellation. They present the chapters as engagements with four themes: (1) reinterpreting Mogollon communal structures and spaces; (2) seeing landscapes as contexts for communal spaces; (3) applying social memory constructs; and (4) broadening syntheses and uses of legacy collections. Their discussion helps compensate for the lack of symposium-driven organic codevelopment of contributions. The coeditors offer a broadly informed review of each theme, situate the chapters in relation to the themes, and make compelling suggestions about how currents in Mogollon archaeology transcend regional boundaries. Although I appreciated the etic-emic distinction between spaces and places, I wanted greater analytic differentiation of communal and noncommunal spaces. I also wanted a more precise and “actionable” definition of communal spaces than that of the coeditors: “architectural and non-architectural spaces used by groups of people larger than a single household for . . . public and/or nonpublic ritual, religious, and sociopolitical activities.”
Fortunately for all, the chapters were not hung up on my quibbles. The contributions generally proceed from studies of earlier contexts and specific sites to later, landscape-scale, and synthetic studies. Robert J. Hard, Gabriella Zaragosa, John R. Roney, A. C. MacWilliams, and Mary E. Whisenhunt mobilize their geographically and temporally sprawling knowledge in an examination of Early Agricultural (2100 BC–AD 200) and Early Pithouse (AD 200–550) communal spaces through the lens of the plaza at Sanchez Cerro de Trincheras. Fumiyasu Arakawa, Aimee Oliver-Bozeman, and Jorden Scott also use a communal structure at a single site—the great kiva at South Diamond Creek Pueblo—to illuminate broader regional patterns and reveal parallel developments between the Mimbres Valley and the Gila Forks region well to the west. Barbara J. Roth, Danielle Romero, and Ashley Lauzon employ a different lens—ritual objects and their roles in promoting social integration in agricultural societies—to examine the spiritual dimensions of life at the Late Pithouse period (AD 500–1000) Harris site and to cleansing, renewal, and power as prevalent aspects of ceremony evidenced in communal spaces. Sedig retains a focus on great kivas in scrutinizing diverse, inter- and intrasite datasets pertaining to communal structures at the Late Pithouse and Classic period (AD 1000–1130) Woodrow site, demonstrating, among other things, that divergences from expected proportions of residential and communal spaces are worthy of context-specific analysis. Darrell Creel builds on four decades of Mimbres Mogollon research to target fascinating questions about the social correlates of the Swarts site great kivas, how these may have changed through the occupation sequence, and whether architectural change reflects political competition.
In a shift from intrasite variation to a broadly contextual focus, Robert J. Stokes and Joseph McConnell ponder provocative possibilities that the Early Classic period great kiva at site LA 186194 may “map” aspects of sacred geography fused by builders and users of the space to Mesoamerican religious precepts. Shafer continues his long-term dissection of the NAN Ranch site though data-based assessments of communal and ritual functions of extramural spaces and of putatively residential room spaces, resulting in astute recommendations for micro-level sampling and for consideration of bundles of interregional influences affecting mortuary treatments and communal spaces. David H. Greenwald and John Groh look to the skies in suggesting that the suite of great kivas served Tularosa Canyon's irrigation communities not only as places of religious observation and communal integration but also as solar and lunar observatories for tracking celestial events of interest to farmers.
Intersite comparisons and extrasite features are the focus for the final five chapters. Kristin Corl and Dylan Person report on agricultural fields, springs, and roasting pits as nonstructural communal spaces that likely made significant contributions to social integration at Cottonwood Spring Pueblo. Myles R. Miller blends data from southern Mogollon landscape features with perspectives from Hopi, Mescalero Apache, and Zuni knowledge systems to complement the previous chapter's (and Harry J. Shafer's) constructive critiques of overreliance on plazas and great kivas as bases for understanding communal process and experience. In an excursion to the more northerly Pine Lawn and Reserve regions, Tammy Stone's data-packed analysis of the development of great kiva architectural features argues for both common Mogollon roots for these spaces and for regional variations attributable to ideological shifts. Dungan demonstrates the persistent archaeological values of collections excavated from Pueblo period great kivas and the contexts of these assemblages in arguments for understanding communal spaces as both representations of broadly shared cultural traditions and loci reserved for community-specific spiritual experiences. In another terrific and data-rich study centered on existing collections, Karen Gust Schollmeyer scrutinizes the nonhuman animal remains from communal and ritual spaces in present-day New Mexico west of the Rio Grande, adding evidence to arguments for the distributed nature of Mogollon ritual activities. In lieu of a summative conclusion from the editors, the final chapter is Roger Anyon's seasoned review of great kiva architecture, functions, and roles in defining and maintaining geographical and social boundaries. The chapter is replete with apt comments on the relevance of the volume's four themes and Anyon's worthy suggestions for future research, most of which boil down to mandates for diligence and context sensitivity.
Parting disclaimer: I am seldom inspired by edited collections. Unless the chapters share topical foci or parallelism honed through symposia, variations in author approaches, goals, and preferences tend to swamp opportunities for synthetic contributions. In this volume, and in the face of COVID-19 challenges and a tradition of insularity in Mogollon research, the editors and authors have overcome my suspicions and given this oft-ignored part of the Southwest region a booster shot that not only immunizes the region from further disregard but vitalizes scholarship and confirms the potential for multifaceted contributions from this endlessly fascinating set of archaeological records.
Borne of pandemic and regional isolation, Mogollon Communal Spaces and Places in the Greater American Southwest breathes some much-needed fresh thoughts and voices into understudied terrain, features, and topics.
