An Exploration Of The Relationship Between Mobility

And Sedentism In The American Southwest And Mesoamerica Essay, Research Paper

In Anthropology a false notion occurs in that hunters and gatherers are mobile and agriculturalists are sedentary. There are many examples of Native North American tribes and cultures that exhibit mobile agriculturalism, opposing early archaeological preconcieved notions of a unilineal settlement continuum from mobile to sedentary. The model from mobile hunting and gathering to sedentary agriculture should be thought of as a universal, variable and mutil-dimensional phenomenon. The American Southwestern culture of the Hopi and the Mesoamerican culture of the Raramuri are two fascinating examples of the incorporation of both mobility and sedentism as subsistence strategies.

CONCEPTS OF MOBILITY

The concept of mobility must be thought of in terms of being a property of individuals who may move in many different ways: alone or in groups, frequently or infrequently, over short or long distances, daily, seasonaly or annually (Kelly). Binford differentiated between residential mobility, movements of the entire band or local group from one camp to another, and logistical mobility, foraging movements of individuals or small task groups out from and back to the residential camp (Binford). Binford later on added another dimension to mobility, territorial or long-term mobility, either a conservation measure or a response to subsistence stress where cyclical movements of a group among a set of territories occur (Binford). Lastly, intentional or unintentional permanent migration from a former territory usually caused by population growth is another important facet of mobility. Mobility must be looked at as both behavioal and cultural, “in that cultural conceptions of the environment affect the way a locality is treated” (Kelly 45). Other factors that must be looked at are foraging strategies, age and sex division of labor, religious, kinship, trade, artistic and personal obligations.

SEDENTISM

Sedentism is seen by most anthropologists as a process “whereby human groups reduce their mobility to the point where they remain residentially stationary year-round” and sedentary settlement systems as “thoses in which at least part of the population remains at the same location throughout the entire year” (Kelly 49). Sedentism has emerged at different places around the world in association with both hunting and gathering and farming adaptations (Hard and Merrill). For many years, sedentism was thought to be incompatible with a foraging lifeway, reexamination of the archaeological record of certain areas in North America including the Northwest Coast, the Midwest, the Southwest, and Mesoamerica are changing this contrived notion. Most anthropologists and archaeologists focus on the “sedentarization process because reduced mobility precipitates dramatic changes in food storage, trade, territoriality, social and gender inequality, male/female work patterns, subsistence and demography as well as cultural notions of material wealth, privacy, individuality, cooperation and competition” (Kelley 43).

AMERICAN SOUTHWEST

In current Southwestern archaeology the interrelated issues of agricultural commitment, sedentism and mobility are currently being researched and studied in a detailed manner, in order to assess the true reliance on agriculture and the duration of residential settlements by the community. “Villages may have been permanent over many years, occupied year round for a few years, occupied seasonally, reoccupied at intervals in either of the two preceding cases, or may have encompassed different mobility patterns among member households” (Fish and Fish 93). Archaeologists who are studying the American Southwest are reevaluating the concept of sedentism, and may think that the agriculturalists, who occupied the pueblo villages and lived in the pithouses, were much more mobile than previously thought of (Kelly, Fish and Fish). Historically the culture groups from the Southwest have always been diverse, practicing mobile foraging to intensive irrigation, yet the transition to agriculture and sedentism was never geographically uniform, completed or irreversible. A combination of environmental, demographic, cultural and economic factors either facilitated or inhibited mobility and/or sedentism in this culture area.

Ernest Beaglehole conducted a general study of Hopi economic life based on two Second Mesa villages, Mishongnovi and Shipaulovi. Ernest and Pearl Beaglehole conducted the fieldwork in the summers of 1932 and 1934. They found that although Hopi economic life is based on the production of agricultural products, the environment is such that other types of secondary production including hunting, herding and gathering play considerable roles in the economy of this people. The Hopi do engage in logistical mobility especially after harvesting when a period of free time exists to either use for salt expeditions, visits to the Navaho or Rio Grande Pueblos for sociability and trade, or formerly, hunts for antelope, deer, and mountain sheep were arranged. The gathering of wild plants is carried out by both sexes, individually or by small household groups, by taking expeditions or journeys to distant desert locations. The Hopi, being a very ritualistic people, hold spring gathering parties to collect the different one hundred and fifty indigenous wild plants that a