Date: Thu, 23 May 1996 20:46:26 -0600
From: Ian Thompson <ianthom-AT-frontier.net> (by way of ianthom-AT-frontier.net (ian m. thompson))
Subject: "centre-periphery" relations


To: Nick Baron <BARONNP-AT-css.bham.ac.uk>
From: Ian Thompson <ianthom-AT-frontier.net>
Re.: Centre-Periphery Relations

I can't offer ideas on "centre-periphery" relations from a 
Bourdieu/Foucault perspective, but the subject itself interests me.  I am 
director of research at the Crow Canyon Archaeological Center in Cortez, 
Colorado, USA.  We are currently looking at Pueblo Indian settlement 
patterns, A.D. 950-1300, in the Mesa Verde archaeological region--a 
rugged, physiographically diverse area of nearly 11,000 square miles--in 
southwestern Colorado and southeastern Utah.  In doing so, we are working 
closely with Pueblo Indians in existing villages in New Mexico and 
Arizona, the descendants of the Puebloans who once lived in the Mesa 
Verde region. Their oral traditions are very important to us. The 
Puebloans of the Mesa Verde region left here in the late thirteenth 
century and migrated to the areas where their villages are located today. 
To grossly oversimplify the matter, the settlement patterns changed 
during the A.D. 950-1300 time period from widely dispersed small hamlets 
to tightly clustered villages or "communities" located in the center of 
the Mesa Verde region.  On the peripheries of the region there continued 
to be widely dispersed settlement patterns.  Mark Varien, a member of our 
staff and a doctoral candidate at Arizona State University, has 
hypothesized that the relationship--whether manifested as cooperation or 
conflict--between the clustered center and the dispersed periphery is 
important to understanding the historical development of the communities 
and the causes for the final migrations from the Mesa Verde region.  He 
views these relationships from an "agency/structure" perspective in 
Bourdieu/Giddens terms.  Any insights you can offer would be appreciated.

Another research project, among many, we are now pursuing, is focused on 
the spatial organization, horizontally and vertically, of late thirteenth 
century archaeological sites in the Mesa Verde region.  This project is 
being conducted by Brian Brownholtz, a master's student at Wake Forest 
University in Winston-Salem, North Carolina.  In the last few decades of 
their occupation of the Mesa Verde region, communities moved from the 
flatlands to the canyon rims.  Their villages were built across drainages 
which bisected the sites and the locations have extreme verticality.  
Certain architectural features appear on one side of the drainage and 
others appear only at certain vertical levels of the villages.  Where do 
we look for more insight into this phenomenon?  

Thank you for your willingness to expand our perspectives on these 
matters.

Ian Thompson <ianthom-AT-frontier.net>
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