Stephen Plog

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Stephen Plog is a notable American archaeologist and anthropologist, who specializes in the pre-Columbian cultures of the American Southwest. As the Commonwealth Professor of Anthropology at The University of Virginia, he currently teaches undergraduate and graduate students, and is working to digitize all the research on the Chaco Canyon through the Chaco Digital Initiative. He was a visiting fellow at the School of American Research in Santa Fe, New Mexico in 2001-2002.

Plog's research focuses on understanding culture change in the prehistoric American Southwest. He is particularly interested in the changing nature of ritual, social organization, exchange and demography from approximately 1000 C.E. to the historic period.

His recent fieldwork in the Chevelon region of east central Arizona examines changing patterns of ritual, social relationships, and exchange ties during the 11th, 12th, and 13th centuries. Evidence for significant social conflict in the 11th and 12th centuries appears a century or more before similar patterns become common in the northern Southwest and has been a particular focus of his fieldwork. Continued surveys and excavations in the Chevelon region are planned for the next several years.

[edit] Books and Publications

1997

Ancient Peoples of the American Southwest. Thames and London, LTD, London, England. ISBN 0-500-27939-X.

(with Julie Solometo) The ever changing and the never changing: the evolution of western pueblo ritual. Cambridge Archaeological Journal 7(2):161-182.

1996

(with Michelle Hegmon) Regional social interaction in the northern southwest. In Interpreting Southwestern Diversity: Underlying Principles and Overarching Patterns, edited by P. R. Fish and J. J. Reid, pp. 23-34. Arizona State University Anthropological Papers No. 48.

1995

Paradigms and pottery: the analysis of production and exchange in the American Southwest. In The Organization of Ceramic Production in the American Southwest, edited by Barbara J. Mills and Patricia L. Crown, pp. 268-280. University of Arizona Press, Tucson.

Equality and hierarchy: holistic approaches to understanding social dynamics in the Pueblo Southwest. In The Foundations of Social Inequality, edited by T. Douglas Price and Gary M. Feinman, pp. 189-206. Plenum, New York.

Approaches to the study of style: complements and contrasts. In Style, Society, and Person, edited by Christopher Carr and Jill Neitzel, pp. 369-87. Plenum, New York.

1993

(with Michelle Hegmon) The sample size-richness relation: The relevance of research questions, sampling strategies, and behavioral variation. American Antiquity 58:489-496.

1991

Chronology construction and the study of prehistoric culture change. Journal of Field Archaeology. 17:439-456.

1990

Agriculture, Sedentism and Environment in the Evolution of Political Systems. In The Evolution of Political Systems. Steadman Upham, ed. pp. 177- 199. Cambridge: Cambridge University Press.