Community from within: Intracommunity interaction and the social formulation of the Yellow Jacket community, southwest Colorado, A.D. 1200--1300

Using an intracommunity perspective, this study explores the role of communities in the Mesa Verde region through an examination of the relationships among households within the multisite community of Yellow Jacket in the late Pueblo III period (A.D. 1200 to 1300). Four models of intracommunity interaction are used: household isolation, limited networks, ritual interaction, and webs of interaction. Using these models, the relationships among twenty-one households at four sites at the center of the community are explored through an examination of architectural patterns; evidence for production of pottery, textiles, and pendants; and evidence for exchange of pottery and pendants.;Architectural evidence indicates that ritual interaction was important in this period, and that it warranted the construction of specialized spaces that served as neutral locations for ritual events. The most striking result of the analyses is a marked difference in patterns of exchange and acquisition between households that occupied the central village and households that occupied the smaller surrounding hamlets. Households in the central village appear to have maintained webs of exchange that resulted in a wider variety of goods, but with assemblages consistently dominated by the same source materials. By contrast, households on the smaller sites seem to have belonged to one of two mutually exclusive limited networks for the acquisition of non-local materials, but their exchange of finished goods was limited, and they appear to have maintained a strict level of household isolation that included increasing efforts to screen movements within household spaces from outsiders.;These results suggest that the Pueblo III aggregation was associated with extensive social and economic interaction in aggregated villages, but not all occupants of the community territory participated in such interactions. Those that did may have had increased access to long distance resources in an increasingly competitive social environment. Such close community ties may have been partially responsible for shaping the form of abandonment around A.D. 1300, when populations moved long distances and reformed into aggregated communities elsewhere. The findings have implications for understanding the development of social trends in the Southwest after A.D. 1300 as well as processes of community formation, aggregation, and migration in middle range societies.