The Social Groups and Decline of a Southwestern Clovis Network

Abstract Shared lithic raw materials were used to map a ca. 13,000-year-old Clovis regional social network, labelled the Cochise Clovis network, that connected the Murray Springs Clovis site to Clovis assemblages in southern Arizona, southwestern New Mexico and northern Sonora, Mexico. The network retained evidence of the foraging party, seasonal aggregation, and periodic aggregation social grouping layers of a Clovis band. With numerous small nodes that coexisted with a few hubs, the link distribution of the network was consistent with a power law. The network initially extended into the Sonoran Desert to the west but subsequently declined from this region in response to a severe drought. The decline of the western portion of the network could have been asymmetric and characterized by errors. Copious flint knapping at Murray Springs presented opportunities to discuss the status of existing links using first-hand information during a time of network decline.