Ritual Facilities and Social Integration in Nonranked Societies

Archaeological investigators of Anasazi architecture generally assume that kivas served primarily as a context for ritual activity above the household level. This paper approaches that assumption through a cross-cultural survey of socially integrative architecture among nonstratified societies. Questions considered are: (1) Is the presence or absence of an integrative facility dependent upon the scale or population of the host community? (2) What range of activities is carried out in the facility? (3) What portion of the society has access to the integrative facility? Aspects of social organizational theory are found to be helpful in interpreting the generalized observations on integrative facilities. Finally, the resulting insights are applied to data on prehistoric and historic kivas.