This book describes and interprets this period of southwestern history immediately before and after initial European contact, AD 1275-1600-aspan of time during which Pueblo peoples and culture were dramatically transformed. It summarises one hundred years of research and archaeologicaldata for the Pueblo IV period as it explores the nature of the organisation of village clusters and what they meant in behavioral and political terms.

The chapters individually examine the northern and eastern portions of the Southwest and the groups who settled there during the protohistoric period. The authors develop histories for settlement clusters that offer insights into their unique development and the variety of ways that villages formed these clusters. These analyses show the extent to which spatial clusters of large settlements may have formed regionally organised alliances, and in some cases they reveal a connection between protohistoric villages and indigenous or migratory groups from the preceding period. This volume is distinct from other recent syntheses of Pueblo IV research in that it treats the settlement cluster as the analytic unit. By analysing how members of clusters of villages interacted with one another, it offers a clearer understanding of the value of this level of analysis.