Description: This volume explores the formation of social identity and cultural affiliation at the Powers Ranch site, a small settlement at the western edge of the Mimbres region. The authors conclude that the people at Powers Ranch were quintessentially Mimbres and were more closely affiliated with Mimbres settlements on the Gila River drainage in southeast Arizona and New Mexico than with those living in the Mimbres Valley core area.
Review Quotes:
"The Powers Ranch site is a fascinating context along the far western edge of the Mimbres region. This book provides an excellent overview of social life and social identity away from the heartland in this relatively understudied region. Studying Mimbres from the edges of the cultural pattern is likely to reveal new details of what it meant to participate in the Mimbres tradition in general."--Matthew A. Peeples, author of Connected Communities: Networks, Identity, and Social Change in the Ancient Cibola World
"Powers Ranch provides a fascinating contrast to the large villages most of us think of as 'Mimbres.' Whisenhunt and Gilman make a convincing case that this small hamlet located at the geographic edge of the Mimbres area was a full-time residence whose inhabitants had strong links to other Mimbres area communities and expressed those ties in their pottery, architecture, and other items despite the distances that separated them from their Mimbres-affiliated neighbors."--Karen Gust Schollmeyer, University of Arizona"Mimbres Far from the Heartland makes a substantial contribution by publishing data from Powers Ranch, a site excavated more than four decades ago but never previously subjected to comprehensive analysis. The publication of Powers Ranch data would be valuable on its own; however, this volume goes well beyond a descriptive site report. Its organization and analytical framework generate important insights into Mimbres identity interaction, and settlement patterns on the margins of the Mimbres cultural core."--Jakob W. Sedig, KIVA, Journal of Southwestern Anthropology and History