Mimbres during the twelfth century
Subtitle: abandonment, continuity, and reorganization
By: Margaret C. Nelson.
Publisher: University of Arizona Press
Published: 1999
Place of publication: Tucson
Language: eng
Number of pages: 234
Subjects: Mimbres culture.; Indians of North America -- New Mexico -- Migrations.; Indians of North America -- Land tenure -- New Mexico.; Land settlement patterns -- New Mexico.; Archaeological surveying -- New Mexico.; New Mexico -- Antiquities.
Description: During the mid twelfth century, villages that had been occupied by the Mimbres people in what is now southwestern New Mexico were depopulated and new settlements were formed. While most scholars view abandonment in terms of failed settlements, Margaret Nelson shows that, for the Mimbres, abandonment of individual communities did not necessarily imply abandonment of regions.

By examining the economic and social reasons for change among the Mimbres, Nelson reconstructs a process of shifting residence as people spent more time in field camps and gradually transformed them into small hamlets while continuing to farm their old fields.

Challenging current interpretations of abandonment of the Mimbres area through archaeological excavation and survey, she suggests that agricultural practices evolved toward the farming of multiple fields among which families moved, with small social groups traveling frequently between small pueblos rather than being aggregated in large villages.
Notes: Includes bibliographical references (p. [198]-228) and index.