Pithouse Architecture and the Economics of Household Formation in the Prehistoric American Southwest

Abstract

Changes in prehistoric Southwestern architecture have been interpreted as the result of increasing dependence on agriculture through time which promoted greater sedentism. Recent archaeological research has produced data that point to changes in labor organization rather than agricultural productivity as the factors that most likely favored new forms of domestic architecture. In fact, some of the most striking temporal shifts in residential architecture may have been associated with declining agricultural productivity.