Architecture as Artifact: Pit Structures and Pueblos in the American Southwest

Abstract

The use of architecture as an artifact gives archaeologists a data set that we have rarely employed to examine cultural evolutionary questions. In this paper I consider the determinants of some architectural forms and propose some causes of architectural change, specifically in the American Southwest. Using ethnographic material from around the world, I demonstrate the relationship between structure seasonality and two of the most common southwestern architectural forms, pit structures and pueblos. The ethnographic record also suggests that the conditions surrounding the southwestern use of pit structures, and to a lesser degree of pueblos, are rather different from what many archaeologists have supposed. The differences in the conditions under which pueblos are used rather than pit structures form the basis for a theoretical framework that begins to explain the transition between the two kinds of structures in the prehistoric Southwest.