M Hegmon
Biographic Data
| ID | 9223 |
|---|---|
| NAME | M Hegmon |
| GIVEN NAMES | M |
| FAMILY NAME | Hegmon |
| SIGNATURE | HEGMON M |
| AFFILIATIONS | Arizona State University |
| ORCID | 0000-0002-9500-5685 |
| VERIFIED | Yes |
| TOTAL WORKS | 46 |
| TOTAL CITATIONS | 700 |
| AUTHOR COUNT | 46 |
| EDITOR COUNT | 0 |
| FIRST PUBLICATION YEAR | 1987 |
| LATEST PUBLICATION YEAR | 2021 |
| H-INDEX | 15 |
The Social Significance of Mimbres Painted Pottery in the U.S. Southwest
Mimbres painted pottery from the U.S. Southwest is renowned for its spectacular designs. Literature on style and identity suggests three concepts helpful for understanding its social significance: boundaries, multiple dimensions of variation, and historical context. This article investigates these concepts by synthesizing past studies with new analyses. The distribution of Mimbres pottery is strongly bounded, demonstrated with data from the cyber…
The Classic Mimbres Period in the Eastern Mimbres Area
Classic Mimbres (ca. AD 1010-mid 1100s) archaeology from the eastern Mimbres area is summarized in comparison to the Mimbres Valley. Focus is on material from sites excavated by the Eastern Mimbres Archaeological Project, including Avilas Canyon, Flying Fish, and Pague Well, and also the Berrenda Creek site. The eastern Mimbres is definitively part of the Mimbres tradition, although there is variability that patterns spatially. Analyses reveal di…
Statement and Commitments from SAA Editors to Change the Underrepresentation of Black, Indigenous, and Other Scholars from Diverse Backgrounds in Our Publications
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Statement and Commitments from SAA Editors to Change the Underrepresentation of Black, Indigenous, and Other Scholars from Diverse Backgrounds in Our Publications
An abstract is not available for this content. As you have access to this content, full HTML content is provided on this page. A PDF of this content is also available in through the ‘Save PDF’ action button
Constructing the Future History
Archaeology is a process for, at minimum, constructing history from the material record. The decisions about what to use to create that history is unavoidably political. This political act primarily serves to construct and enforce the power of the state, although it can be used to contest it. Prefiguration, emerging from anarchist theory and parallel social movements, can be understood not simply as a radical practice, but also as an understandin…
Dimensions of inequality. Comparing the North Atlantic and the US Southwest
Resolving the migrant paradox
The Diversity of the Postclassic Mimbres Periods (AD 1150-1450)
The Postclassic period (ca. AD 1150–1450) in the Mimbres region is diverse and variable. Excavation data from Las Animas Village (LA3949) is used to explore this variability and better delineate the regional sequence. Las Animas Village is a large multicomponent site with Pithouse, Classic, and Postclassic occupations. Focus here is on the Postclassic component, a roughly oval adobe pueblo, two-story in parts, that surrounded a plaza. There was e…
The Potential and Pitfalls of Large Multi-Source Collections
Archaeologists’ newfound ability to access vast digital collections creates opportunities but also presents challenges when those collections are from varied sources, including public institutions and private collectors. We illustrate these challenges by comparing two analyses of gender in Mimbres pottery images. Both analyses used the same procedures, but one included material in private collections, while the second drew on a smaller but more c…
Climate challenges, vulnerabilities, and food security
Significance Climate-induced disasters are impacting human well-being in ever-increasing ways. Disaster research and management recognize and emphasize the need to reduce vulnerabilities, although extant policy is not in line with this realization. This paper assesses the extent to which vulnerability to food shortage, as a result of social, demographic, and resource conditions at times of climatic challenge, correlates with subsequent declines i…
Marking and Making Differences
Diversity is generally valued, although it sometimes contributes to difficult social situations, as is recognized in recent social science literature. Archaeology can provide insights into how diverse social situations play out over the long term. There are many kinds of diversities, and we propose representational diversity as a distinct category. Representational diversity specifically concerns how and whether differences are marked or masked m…
Experiencing Social Change
What was it like to live during a time of social transformation? To live during the culture changes and depopulation at the end of the Classic Mimbres period, ca. 1130 C.E.? As part of the Archaeology of the Human Experience we address these questions with an evidence-based account of what people did and how the changes affected their lives. Where possible and reasonable, we make people the subjects of our sentences. This approach leads to the co…
Identifying Mimbres Artists
Past researchers have identified individual styles of painting in Mimbres Black-on-white bowls, leading Steven LeBlanc to recently call for the development of quantitative methods to enable and assess such identifications. We propose such a methodology here. Through a process of pair-wise, micro-stylistic comparisons, bowls painted by a single artist or group of closely cooperating artists are analytically linked in chain-like fashion. Two bowls …
Transformative Relocation in the U.S. Southwest and Mesoamerica
A comparative perspective, drawing from cases in the U.S. Southwest and Northern Mexico, is used to illuminate the iconic Classic Maya “collapse,” and to define the concept of transformative relocation . In some of the cases we discuss—including La Quemada and Classic Mimbres, as well as Maya—the end of a social configuration is not the end of a people. Rather, a broad temporal and regional perspective demonstrates that the dramatic change we see…
Tropical Landscapes and the Ancient Maya
Archaeologists have begun to understand that many of the challenges facing our technologically sophisticated, resource dependent, urban systems were also destabilizing factors in ancient complex societies. The focus of IHOPE-Maya is to identify how humans living in the tropical Maya Lowlands in present-day Central America responded to and impacted their environments over the past three millennia, and to relate knowledge of those processes to mode…
Developing an Integrated History and future of People on Earth (Ihope)
Robustness and Resilience across Scales
Anderies, J. M., and M. Hegmon. 2011. Robustness and resilience across scales: migration and resource degradation in the prehistoric U.S. southwest. Ecology and Society 16(2): 22. https://doi.org/10.5751/ES-03825-160222
Resisting Diversity
Nelson, M. C., M. Hegmon, S. R. Kulow, M. A. Peeples, K. W. Kintigh, and A. P. Kinzig. 2011. Resisting diversity: a long-term archaeological study. Ecology and Society 16(1): 25. https://doi.org/10.5751/ES-03887-160125
Toward an Integrated History to Guide the Future
Van der Leeuw, S., R. Costanza, S. Aulenbach, S. Brewer, M. Burek, S. Cornell, C. Crumley, J. A. Dearing, C. Downy, L. J. Graumlich, S. Heckbert, M. Hegmon, K. Hibbard, S. T. Jackson, I. Kubiszewski, P. Sinclair, S. Sörlin, and W. Steffen. 2011. Toward an integrated history to guide the future. Ecology and Society 16(4): 2. https://doi.org/10.5751/ES-04341-160402
Scale and Time-Space Systematics in the Post-A.D. 1100 Mimbres Region of the North American Southwest
Time-space systematics for the end of the Classic Mimbres period and subsequent developments in southwest New Mexico are outlined, and the variable spatial scale of these processes is emphasized. The regional unity of the Late Pithouse and Classic periods began to break down around a.d. 1130, a time when disparate developments characterize different portions of the region. The Terminal Classic (ca. a.d. 1130 and later) represents the first steps …
Social Transformation and Its Human Costs in the Prehispanic U.S. Southwest
Change is inevitable, but some changes and transformations are more dramatic and fraught with suffering than others. Resilience theory suggests the concept of a “rigidity trap” as an explanation for these differences. In rigidity traps, a high degree of connectivity and the suppression of innovation prolong an increasingly rigid state, with the result that the eventual transformation is harsh. Three archaeological cases from the U.S. Southwest (M…
Archaeological and Ecological Perspectives on Reorganization
Collapse and abandonment dominate the popular literature on prehistoric societies, yet we know that reorganization is a more common process by which social and ecological relationships change. We explore the process of reorganization using the emerging perspective of resilience theory. Ecologists and social scientists working within a resilience perspective have argued that reorganization is an important component of long-term adaptive cycles, bu…
Painting as Agency, Style as Structure
No More Theory Wars
There is a gap between discussions of theory and of practice in North American archaeology. More political engagement by archaeologists would be desirable. Regarding these and other issues, Moss and I agree. However, I also believe that the open-mindedness and dearth of theoretical schisms characteristic of Processual-plus archaeology is desirable. Critical perspectives such as Marxist and feminist approaches can be included in this broad perspec…
Setting Theoretical Egos Aside
Theory in North American archaeology is characterized in terms of foci and approaches manifested in research issues, rather than in explicit or oppositional theoretical positions. While there are some clear-cut theoretical perspectives-evolutionary ecology, behavioral archaeology, and Darwinian archaeology-a large majority of North American archaeology fits a broad category here called 'processual-plus.' Among the major themes that crosscut many …
Archaeological Research on Style
Infrastructures are material forms that allow for the possibility of exchange over space. They are the physical networks through which goods, ideas, waste, power, people, and finance are trafficked. In this article I trace the range of anthropological ...Read More
Setting Theoretical Egos Aside
Theory in North American archaeology is characterized in terms of foci and approaches manifested in research issues, rather than in explicit or oppositional theoretical positions. While there are some clear-cut theoretical perspectives-evolutionary ecology, behavioral archaeology, and Darwinian archaeology-a large majority of North American archaeology fits a broad category here called 'processual-plus.' Among the major themes that crosscut many …
Social Transformation and Its Human Costs in the Prehispanic U.S. Southwest
Change is inevitable, but some changes and transformations are more dramatic and fraught with suffering than others. Resilience theory suggests the concept of a “rigidity trap” as an explanation for these differences. In rigidity traps, a high degree of connectivity and the suppression of innovation prolong an increasingly rigid state, with the result that the eventual transformation is harsh. Three archaeological cases from the U.S. Southwest (M…
Abandonment and Reorganization the Mimbres Region of the American Southwest
Archaeological research on abandonments has focused primarily on their causes, as though they were final events. This article investigates the abandonment at the end of the Mimbres Classic Period as a process of reorganization within a larger social context. Analyses of pottery and architecture demonstrate that previously homogeneous material culture was replaced by a diversity of technological styles. These material changes indicate that the reo…
Resolving the migrant paradox
Painting as Agency, Style as Structure
Resisting Diversity
Nelson, M. C., M. Hegmon, S. R. Kulow, M. A. Peeples, K. W. Kintigh, and A. P. Kinzig. 2011. Resisting diversity: a long-term archaeological study. Ecology and Society 16(1): 25. https://doi.org/10.5751/ES-03887-160125
Recent Issues in the Archaeology of the Mimbres Region of the North American Southwest
Abandonment Is Not as It Seems
Abandonments of residential sites by prehistoric farmers are most often explained as failures or responses to poor social or environmental conditions. These perspectives ignore the role of residential mobility among farmers as a regionally sustainable approach to land use. To understand the various reasons for abandonment of residential sites, movement patterns at both site and regional scales must be empirically linked. In this study of the east…
Evolution of P 3 morphology in Australopithecus afarensis
The Australopithecus afarensis dental sample exhibits a wide range of variation, which is most notable in the morphology of the lower third premolar (P 3 ). P 3 morphology in the A. afarensis sample ranges from the primitive sectorial extreme in AL 128‐23 to the derived, bicuspid (molarized) extreme in AL 333w‐1. In this paper, the degree and patterning of variation of the 20 known A. afarensis P 3 s are examined and the evolutionary implications…
Constructing the Future History
Archaeology is a process for, at minimum, constructing history from the material record. The decisions about what to use to create that history is unavoidably political. This political act primarily serves to construct and enforce the power of the state, although it can be used to contest it. Prefiguration, emerging from anarchist theory and parallel social movements, can be understood not simply as a radical practice, but also as an understandin…
Archaeological and Ecological Perspectives on Reorganization
Collapse and abandonment dominate the popular literature on prehistoric societies, yet we know that reorganization is a more common process by which social and ecological relationships change. We explore the process of reorganization using the emerging perspective of resilience theory. Ecologists and social scientists working within a resilience perspective have argued that reorganization is an important component of long-term adaptive cycles, bu…
Corrugated Pottery, Technological Style, and Population Movement in the Mimbres Region of the American Southwest
An understanding of small-scale population movements is essential to recent research on migration. Consideration of the technological style (processes of manufacture) of pottery, in conjunction with petrographic sourcing analyses, provides means of identifying and interpreting population movements at various scales. Diverse styles characterizes Postclassic Mimbres (A.D. 1150-early 1200s) regional reorganization in southwest New Mexico. One new st…
Chaco and Hohokam
Developing an Integrated History and future of People on Earth (Ihope)
Scale and Time-Space Systematics in the Post-A.D. 1100 Mimbres Region of the North American Southwest
Time-space systematics for the end of the Classic Mimbres period and subsequent developments in southwest New Mexico are outlined, and the variable spatial scale of these processes is emphasized. The regional unity of the Late Pithouse and Classic periods began to break down around A.D. 1130, a time when disparate developments characterize different portions of the region. The Terminal Classic (ca. A.D. 1130 and later) represents the first steps …
Dimensions of inequality. Comparing the North Atlantic and the US Southwest
Gender, Anatomical Knowledge, and Pottery Production
The anatomical details of a birth scene depicted on Classic Mimbres (A.D. 1000-1150) bowls from southwestern New Mexico can provide clues to gender relations in Classic Mimbres society. The scenes show an infant emerging facing forward (unusual in human birth) with its arms up (virtually unknown in human birth). These details suggest that the scene was painted by someone unfamiliar with the birthing process. Ethnographically, men rarely see human…
Advances in Ceramic Ethnoarchaeology
Marking and Making Differences
Diversity is generally valued, although it sometimes contributes to difficult social situations, as is recognized in recent social science literature. Archaeology can provide insights into how diverse social situations play out over the long term. There are many kinds of diversities, and we propose representational diversity as a distinct category. Representational diversity specifically concerns how and whether differences are marked or masked m…
Toward an Integrated History to Guide the Future
Van der Leeuw, S., R. Costanza, S. Aulenbach, S. Brewer, M. Burek, S. Cornell, C. Crumley, J. A. Dearing, C. Downy, L. J. Graumlich, S. Heckbert, M. Hegmon, K. Hibbard, S. T. Jackson, I. Kubiszewski, P. Sinclair, S. Sörlin, and W. Steffen. 2011. Toward an integrated history to guide the future. Ecology and Society 16(4): 2. https://doi.org/10.5751/ES-04341-160402
The Sample Size-Richness Relation
Recent discussions of the relation between sample size and assemblage richness suggest that researchers should control for that relation before behavioral interpretations of richness levels can proceed. We suggest that such automatic decisions should be avoided because a strong correlation between sample size and richness alone is not sufficient evidence for dismissing behavioral factors as the primary causes of the variation in richness. Instead…
Production of San Juan Red Ware in the Northern Southwest
San Juan Red ware pottery was distributed across the northern Southwest from the eighth through tenth centuries A.D., though made only in the northern San Juan region. This paper investigates the concentration (Costin 1991) of San Juan Red ware production through neutron activation analysis of the pottery and raw materials. Production was concentrated in the area of southeast Utah, and within that area it appears to have been produced at only a l…
The Social Significance of Mimbres Painted Pottery in the U.S. Southwest
Mimbres painted pottery from the U.S. Southwest is renowned for its spectacular designs. Literature on style and identity suggests three concepts helpful for understanding its social significance: boundaries, multiple dimensions of variation, and historical context. This article investigates these concepts by synthesizing past studies with new analyses. The distribution of Mimbres pottery is strongly bounded, demonstrated with data from the cyber…
Scale and Time-Space Systematics in the Post-A.D. 1100 Mimbres Region of the North American Southwest
Time-space systematics for the end of the Classic Mimbres period and subsequent developments in southwest New Mexico are outlined, and the variable spatial scale of these processes is emphasized. The regional unity of the Late Pithouse and Classic periods began to break down around a.d. 1130, a time when disparate developments characterize different portions of the region. The Terminal Classic (ca. a.d. 1130 and later) represents the first steps …
Evolution of P 3 morphology in Australopithecus afarensis
The Australopithecus afarensis dental sample exhibits a wide range of variation, which is most notable in the morphology of the lower third premolar (P 3 ). P 3 morphology in the A. afarensis sample ranges from the primitive sectorial extreme in AL 128‐23 to the derived, bicuspid (molarized) extreme in AL 333w‐1. In this paper, the degree and patterning of variation of the 20 known A. afarensis P 3 s are examined and the evolutionary implications…
Archeology
Archaeological Research on Style
Infrastructures are material forms that allow for the possibility of exchange over space. They are the physical networks through which goods, ideas, waste, power, people, and finance are trafficked. In this article I trace the range of anthropological ...Read More
Processual and Postprocessual Archaeologies
The Sample Size-Richness Relation
Recent discussions of the relation between sample size and assemblage richness suggest that researchers should control for that relation before behavioral interpretations of richness levels can proceed. We suggest that such automatic decisions should be avoided because a strong correlation between sample size and richness alone is not sufficient evidence for dismissing behavioral factors as the primary causes of the variation in richness. Instead…
Archeology
Chaco and Hohokam
Pueblo I Ceramic Production in Southwest Colorado
White ware ceramics associated with the ninth-century occupation of southwest Colorado are characterized by diverse painted designs. In the research presented here, petrographic analysis is used to better understand the production of these igneous rock-tempered ceramics and thus to gain insight into the source of the design variation. Analysis reveals slight differences in tempering materials at different sites, suggesting that the ceramics were …
Gender, Anatomical Knowledge, and Pottery Production
The anatomical details of a birth scene depicted on Classic Mimbres (A.D. 1000-1150) bowls from southwestern New Mexico can provide clues to gender relations in Classic Mimbres society. The scenes show an infant emerging facing forward (unusual in human birth) with its arms up (virtually unknown in human birth). These details suggest that the scene was painted by someone unfamiliar with the birthing process. Ethnographically, men rarely see human…
Response to Comments by LeBlanc, by Espenshade, and by Shaffer et al
We originally concluded that because birth scenes depicted on Mimbres bowls are anatomically unusual or impossible, and men are generally unfamiliar with the details of birth, the pots most likely were painted by men. Three of the four counter-arguments presented in the comments—(1) there is no other way to depict birth; (2) one part of one painting is actually a crack in the vessel; (3) some men are involved in birthing—either are incorrect (1) …
An Anthropological Perspective on the Sample Size-Richness Relation
We are in full agreement with Leonard, and many others, that the sample size-richness relation is an important concern for archaeologists, and we appreciate his evenhanded discussion of our paper. However, we disagree with Leonard regarding the point in the research process when variable prehistoric behavior can be used to explain differences in richness. Leonard and others argue that we must always begin studies of richness by controlling any ob…
The Social Dynamics of Pottery Style in the Early Puebloan Southwest
Production of San Juan Red Ware in the Northern Southwest
San Juan Red ware pottery was distributed across the northern Southwest from the eighth through tenth centuries A.D., though made only in the northern San Juan region. This paper investigates the concentration (Costin 1991) of San Juan Red ware production through neutron activation analysis of the pottery and raw materials. Production was concentrated in the area of southeast Utah, and within that area it appears to have been produced at only a l…
Abandonment and Reorganization the Mimbres Region of the American Southwest
Archaeological research on abandonments has focused primarily on their causes, as though they were final events. This article investigates the abandonment at the end of the Mimbres Classic Period as a process of reorganization within a larger social context. Analyses of pottery and architecture demonstrate that previously homogeneous material culture was replaced by a diversity of technological styles. These material changes indicate that the reo…
Pottery and People
This volume emphasizes the complex interactions between ceramic containers and people in past and present contexts.Pottery, once it appears in the archaeological record, is one of the most routinely recovered artifacts. It is made frequently, broken often, and comes in endless varieties according to economic and social requirements. Moreover, even in shreds ceramics can last almost forever, providing important clues about past human behavior.The …
Scale and Time-Space Systematics in the Post-A.D. 1100 Mimbres Region of the North American Southwest
Time-space systematics for the end of the Classic Mimbres period and subsequent developments in southwest New Mexico are outlined, and the variable spatial scale of these processes is emphasized. The regional unity of the Late Pithouse and Classic periods began to break down around A.D. 1130, a time when disparate developments characterize different portions of the region. The Terminal Classic (ca. A.D. 1130 and later) represents the first steps …
Advances in Ceramic Ethnoarchaeology
Corrugated Pottery, Technological Style, and Population Movement in the Mimbres Region of the American Southwest
An understanding of small-scale population movements is essential to recent research on migration. Consideration of the technological style (processes of manufacture) of pottery, in conjunction with petrographic sourcing analyses, provides means of identifying and interpreting population movements at various scales. Diverse styles characterizes Postclassic Mimbres (A.D. 1150-early 1200s) regional reorganization in southwest New Mexico. One new st…
Abandonment Is Not as It Seems
Abandonments of residential sites by prehistoric farmers are most often explained as failures or responses to poor social or environmental conditions. These perspectives ignore the role of residential mobility among farmers as a regionally sustainable approach to land use. To understand the various reasons for abandonment of residential sites, movement patterns at both site and regional scales must be empirically linked. In this study of the east…
Prehistoric Painted Pottery of Southeastern Arizona . Robert A. Heckman , Barbara K. Montgomery , Stephanie M. Whittlesey
Recent Issues in the Archaeology of the Mimbres Region of the North American Southwest
Setting Theoretical Egos Aside
Theory in North American archaeology is characterized in terms of foci and approaches manifested in research issues, rather than in explicit or oppositional theoretical positions. While there are some clear-cut theoretical perspectives-evolutionary ecology, behavioral archaeology, and Darwinian archaeology-a large majority of North American archaeology fits a broad category here called 'processual-plus.' Among the major themes that crosscut many …
Painting as Agency, Style as Structure
No More Theory Wars
There is a gap between discussions of theory and of practice in North American archaeology. More political engagement by archaeologists would be desirable. Regarding these and other issues, Moss and I agree. However, I also believe that the open-mindedness and dearth of theoretical schisms characteristic of Processual-plus archaeology is desirable. Critical perspectives such as Marxist and feminist approaches can be included in this broad perspec…
Archaeological and Ecological Perspectives on Reorganization
Collapse and abandonment dominate the popular literature on prehistoric societies, yet we know that reorganization is a more common process by which social and ecological relationships change. We explore the process of reorganization using the emerging perspective of resilience theory. Ecologists and social scientists working within a resilience perspective have argued that reorganization is an important component of long-term adaptive cycles, bu…
Archaeology (28 works) · Archaeology and ancient environmental studies (28 works) · Geography (27 works) · History (26 works) · Sociology (22 works) · History (17 works) · Art (16 works) · Pottery (14 works) · Computer Science (12 works) · Historical and Cultural Archaeology Studies (12 works)