Rock Art, Architecture, and Social Groups at the Basketmaker III–Pueblo I Transition: Evidence from the Procession Panel, Southeast Utah

This paper draws on iconographic style, social psychology research, and architectural evidence to suggest that the Procession Panel on Comb Ridge, southeast Utah, provides an accurate depiction of the households within an early Mesa Verde community ca. A.D. 760–800. It argues that the Procession Panel depicts a community in transition, when some households began to reorganize as members of lineages and materialized this relationship by constructing large, multihousehold surface dwellings. However, not all households organized into lineage-scale groups, and these differences between these two kinds of social organization created fault lines where social inequalities could later develop.