Sedentism and mobility in a social landscape

Research on hunting and gathering peoples has given anthropologists a long-standing conceptual framework of sedentism and mobility based on seasonality and ecological constraints. This work challenges that position by arguing that mobility is a socially negotiated activity and neither mobility nor sedentism can be understood outside of its social context.

Drawing on research in the Mesa Verde region that focuses on communities and households, Mark Varien expands the social, spatial, and temporal scales of archaeological analysis to propose a new model for population movement.

Varien's research clearly demonstrates the need to view agriculturalists from a perspective that differs from the hunter-gatherer model. This innovative study shows why current explanations for site abandonment cannot by themselves account for residential mobility and offers valuable insights into the archaeology of small-scale agriculture.