Customer Reviews

A Space Syntax Analysis of Arroyo Hondo Pueblo, New Mexico: Community Formation in the Northern Rio Grande (Arroyo Hondo Archaeological Series)

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Shapiro's well-structured monograph takes the reader through an overview of architectural analysis and its applicability to archaeology, summarizes the history and layout of the pueblo, and before diving into the analysis itself, provides an entire chapter which acts as a primer on the theory and method of space syntax analysis. This is an important inclusion, since it transforms the reader into a student of space syntax analysis, providing the tools necessary to decipher and understand the graphs and measurements in later chapters.

Unfortunately, the attentive reader will find themselves confused and misled by some of the explanations which are meant to clarify and illuminate. Multiple, significant errors are present in the section describing the alpha index. The formula given for the alpha index (page 43) and the actual examples which follow are not consistent with one another. Referring to another source, this reviewer concluded that the base formula provided for the alpha index is incorrect (there should be no parentheses in the numerator). The example which calculates the alpha index value for a room block at Acoma Pueblo is incorrect in two ways, and identifying them will be left as an exercise to the reader.

Overall, the book delivers much more than access graphs and indices derived from those graphs. Shapiro uses these tools to detect changes in architecture at Arroyo Hondo which demonstrate changing ideas about how space should be organized. He makes a good case that these new spatial arrangements are responses to the changing social and economic environment, and demonstrates how space syntax analysis could be used elsewhere to reveal architecture as an artifact capable of providing insights into culture and social organization.

This book is not only valuable to Southwestern archaeologists interested in Shapiro's analysis of an ancestral pueblo-- it also serves as an example of how to properly apply space syntax analysis to any settlement where sufficient data on rooms and their connections exist.

Shapiro applies the relatively new methodology of space syntax in the field of architecture to the field of archaeology with fruitful results. In analyzing the organization of space in the 14th-century Pueblo Native American community of Arroyo Hondo in the vicinity of present-day Santa Fe, Shapiro's meticulous archaeological study extending over many years arrives at explanations for "how space was both arranged and correlated with the social and political behavior" of this Pueblo community during the relatively brief time of its 125-year existence. The space syntax methodology together with standard and innovative archaeological techniques leads Shapiro to conclude that changes in the structures of the buildings, particularly those allowing for more privacy for individuals and family groups, relieved some of the stresses that might otherwise have led to warfare by "enabling incoming [i. e., migrant or immigrant] groups to reclaim some of their autonomy" they lost when assimilating into the Arroyo Hondo Pueblo. The author relates how space syntax works applied to archaelogy with tables of measurements, diagrams of building structures, and graph-like illustrations noting architectural features and changes. The content is fairly technical, though readily followed by readers with knowledge of the basics of architecture and archaelogy.