ABSTRACT
Depending on the connections, skills, and status of each member, households can consolidate or distribute power by establishing networks that work to integrate and divide groups within a village or community. Thus, to understand large-scale social change in middle-range societies, especially during periods of adversity, requires knowing the role of households and their relationships within and beyond villages. At various points in time across the Northern U.S. Southwest, Pueblo households are involved in kin-based groups such as lineages, House societies, moieties, or non-kin-based groups such as sodalities. Using Spruce Tree House cliff dwelling as a case study, this chapter takes a diachronic approach to considering how the turbulent conditions, which culminated in the depopulation of the Mesa Verde Region by the end of the 1200s, affected household organization and the production and maintenance of corporate groups. The detailed analysis of the evolution of village growth over time suggests that strategies for coping with adversity in the 1200s involved shifting kinship systems and the changing role of household organization with the development of new corporate groups.
