Archaeological interpretations for the seemingly sudden introduction of new types of material culture or cultural practice often include attribution to the arrival of a migrant population as part the construction of a periphery or frontier zone. In the International Four Corners area of the American Southwest/Mexican Northwest, archaeologists often correlate the ascendancy of Paquimé in the late thirteenth century CE with the development of a northern periphery in southwestern New Mexico. Simultaneously, sites in far southeastern Arizona became partially integrated into the Salado phenomenon. I evaluate architecture, settlement, and mortuary data from 26 sites with respect to existing models. Given ongoing historian discourse regarding Indigenous borderlands during European colonization, I advocate a model enabling the occurrence of borderlands construction prior to colonization and lacking a predominate hierarchical society. I conclude that the inhabitants of the International Four Corners region situated themselves within multiple inter- and intra-regional zones of interaction and that existing models of frontiers and edge regions are inadequate to address the variability present, but that of the borderlands does as it recognizes relationships to adjacent culture cores as influential but also centers the local inhabitants and their agency.

考古学对看似突然引入的新型物质文化或文化实践的解释通常包括将移民人口的到来归因于边缘或边境地区建设的一部分。在美国西南部/墨西哥西北部的国际四角地区，考古学家经常将公元十三世纪末帕基梅的崛起与新墨西哥州西南部北部边缘的发展联系起来。与此同时，亚利桑那州东南部的一些地点也部分融入了萨拉多现象。我根据现有模型评估了 26 个地点的建筑、定居点和太平间数据。鉴于历史学家关于欧洲殖民时期土著边境地区的持续讨论，我主张一种能够在殖民化之前发生边境建设并且缺乏占主导地位的等级社会的模型。我的结论是，国际四角地区的居民位于多个区域间和区域内互动区域内，现有的边界和边缘区域模型不足以解决当前的变化，但边界地区的模型确实如此与邻近文化核心的关系具有影响力，但也以当地居民及其机构为中心。