scholarly journals FROM LANDSCAPES OF MEANING TO LANDSCAPES OF SIGNIFICATION IN THE AMERICAN SOUTHWEST

2017 ◽  
Vol 82 (4) ◽  
pp. 642-661 ◽  
Author(s):  
Matthew J. Liebmann
Keyword(s):  
Seventeenth Century ◽  
New Mexico ◽  
Landscape Archaeology ◽  
American Southwest ◽  
Symbolic Meaning ◽  
Archaeological Record ◽  
The Past ◽  
Dynamic Studies ◽  
European Colonization

This article builds upon two convergent trends in landscape archaeology: (1) investigations of symbolic meaning and (2) collaboration with descendant and stakeholder communities. The recent merger of these research agendas in the Southwest US provides an innovative approach to addressing meaning in the past. But the interpretations that result can inadvertently propagate notions of static and unchanging indigenous landscapes. Archaeologists can develop more dynamic studies of meaning and landscape by paying greater attention to the indexical properties of the archaeological record. To illustrate this point, I present a case study focused on ancestral Jemez (Pueblo) meanings associated with the Valles Caldera in northern New Mexico between AD 1300 and 1700. By combining contemporary Jemez understandings of this landscape with the indexical properties of obsidian revealed through pXRF analysis, this study illustrates how the uses of this landscape changed through time, particularly as a result of European colonization in the seventeenth century. It concludes that increased attention to the indexical properties of the archaeological record is critical for archaeological studies of meaning to reconstruct more robust and dynamic past landscapes.

Visiting the horned serpent’s home: A relational analysis of Paquimé as a pilgrimage site in the North American Southwest

2018 ◽  
Vol 18 (3) ◽  
pp. 306-324 ◽  
Author(s):  
Todd L VanPool ◽  
Christine S VanPool
Keyword(s):  
American Southwest ◽  
Casas Grandes ◽  
The Past ◽  
The North ◽  
Relational Perspective ◽  
Architectural Features ◽  
The Dead ◽  
North American Southwest ◽  
Insight Into

Paquimé, Chihuahua, was the ceremonial center of the Medio period (AD 1200 to 1450) Casas Grandes world, and the focus of regional pilgrimages. We use a relational perspective to explore the connections that were created and expressed during the pilgrimage. We propose that Paquimé was considered a living city, and that pilgrims actively supported its vitality through offerings of marine shells and other symbolically important goods. A region-wide network of signal fires centered on Cerro de Moctezuma, a hill directly overlooking Paquimé, summoned pilgrims. Ritual negotiations also focused on the dead and may have included at least occasional human sacrifice. While the pilgrimages focused on water-related ritual, they also included community and elite competition as reflected in architectural features such as the ball courts. Central to the pilgrimage was negotiation with the horned serpent, a deity that controlled water and was associated with leadership throughout Mesoamerica and the Southwest. The horned serpent is the primary supernatural entity reflected at the site and in the pottery pilgrims took with them back to their communities. Thus, the pilgrimages were times when the Casas Grandes people created and transformed their relationships with each other, religious elites, the dead, the landscape, and the horned serpent. These relationships in turn are reflected across the region (e.g., the broad distribution of Ramos Polychrome). This case study consequently demonstrates the potential that the relational perspective presented throughout this issue has for providing insight into the archaeological record and the past social structures it reflects.

scholarly journals Nomadic economics: The logic and logistics of Comanche imperialism in New Mexico

2019 ◽  
Vol 19 (3) ◽  
pp. 333-355
Author(s):  
Lindsay M Montgomery
Keyword(s):  
New Mexico ◽  
Social Dynamics ◽  
Social Economic ◽  
Native People ◽  
Political Systems ◽  
Archaeological Evidence ◽  
Empire Building ◽  
The Past

Over the past 20 years, scholars have expanded upon subsistence-driven models of indigenous labor and exchange by tracing out the dynamic social, economic, and political systems created by Native people. While current research has highlighted indigenous agency, especially in response to Western colonialism, these approaches have largely ignored the cultural and linguistic meanings behind key economic concepts. Through a case study of the Comanche, this article develops a culturally grounded approach to nomadic economics. The Comanche offer a compelling case for indigenous empire building, a case which points to the need to develop a revised understanding of imperialism. Drawing on documentary and archaeological evidence, this article traces the logic and logistics of Comanche imperialism in New Mexico. Specifically, I argue that during the 18th and early 19th centuries, Comanche people created a nomadic empire rooted in decentralized political power, kinship, and inter- and intra-ethnic exchange. This case study provides a glimpse into the priorities and practices of Comanche entrepreneurs and points to the important role of internal social dynamics in structuring indigenous forms of imperialism.

scholarly journals Artefact collecting: creating or destroying the archaeological record?

2020 ◽  
Vol 25 ◽  
pp. 39-91
Author(s):  
Paul M. Barford
Keyword(s):  
Public Engagement ◽  
Archaeological Research ◽  
Archaeological Record ◽  
England And Wales ◽  
The Past ◽  
Made In

This paper examines some of the arguments used by archaeologists in favour of collaborating useful for archaeological research and is a form of public engagement with archaeology. It takes as a case study records of 48 600 medieval artefacts removed from archaeological contexts by artefact hunters and recorded by the Portable Antiquities Scheme in England and Wales. The past and potential uses of these records as an archaeological source are objectively reviewed, together with an assessment of the degree to which they provide mitigation of the damage caused to the otherwise unthreatened archaeological record. It is concluded that, although information can be obtained by studying records of findspots of addressed artefacts such as coins, in general the claims made in support of professional archaeological collaboration with this kind of activity prove to be false.

Linguistics for Archaeologists: a Case-study in the Andes

2008 ◽  
Vol 18 (1) ◽  
pp. 35-56 ◽  
Author(s):  
Paul Heggarty
Keyword(s):  
Historical Linguistics ◽  
Archaeological Record ◽  
Linguistic Context ◽  
Previous Issue ◽  
Paradigm Case ◽  
Ideal Case ◽  
Archaeological Data ◽  
The Past ◽  
The Andes

In the previous issue of CAJ, Heggarty (2007) set out how certain key principles and methods of historical linguistics can be exploited to open up another window on the past, from a perspective quite different and complementary to that offered by the archaeological record. Following this up, we turn here to an ideal case-study for exploring how the various patterns in linguistic (pre-)histories can be matched with their most plausible correlates in the archaeological data. Beyond our initial illustration of the Incas we now look further afield, to set the sequence of major civilizations of the Andes into its linguistic context, tracing the expansion trajectories of the main Andean language families further back in time, stage by stage, ultimately to their most plausible original homelands. The linguistic story emerges starkly at odds with assumptions widely held among archaeologists of the region. Indeed we encounter a paradigm case of how only a radical rethinking can reconcile our two disciplines' findings into a single, coherent, holistic prehistory for a human population — in the Andes, a prize now tantalizingly within our reach.

A Tomb with a View

2014 ◽  
Vol 2 (1) ◽  
pp. 24-37 ◽  
Author(s):  
Fabio Silva
Keyword(s):  
Pattern Recognition ◽  
Landscape Archaeology ◽  
Phenomenological Approach ◽  
Mountain Range ◽  
Archaeological Record ◽  
Archaeological Practice ◽  
Central Portugal ◽  
Cross Fertilization

AbstractThe orientations of European prehistoric structures have been studied independently by landscape archaeologists and archaeoastronomers. Despite their similar interests, the two fields have failed to converge primarily because of their differing epistemologies. This paper argues that archaeology has much to gain by integrating the two fields to provide a fuller and more balanced exploration and understanding of the location and orientation of the European megaliths. It is suggested that prehistoric archaeoastronomy needs to become more grounded on the archaeological record and context of the prehistoric structures it studies. If it is to generate knowledge of value to archaeology it needs to become a “skyscape archaeology.” This paper looks at current archaeoastronomical approaches through the lens of archaeological practice. It identifies some limitations and discusses how landscape archaeology can inform archaeoastronomy on overcoming them. A methodology that attempts this necessary cross-fertilization, by shedding unfounded assumptions and developing a more phenomenological approach to pattern-recognition, is proposed. This methodology is applied to a case study in central Portugal. The emergent narrative, linking a cluster of dolmens to a local mountain range and the star Aldebaran, not only fits the archaeological record, but is mirrored by local folklore, lending further support to the validity of this methodology.

Placing plants on paper: Lists, herbaria, and tables as experiments with territorial inventory at the mid-seventeenth-century Gotha court

2018 ◽  
Vol 56 (3) ◽  
pp. 257-277 ◽  
Author(s):  
Alix Cooper
Keyword(s):  
Seventeenth Century ◽  
Modern Science ◽  
Early Modern Period ◽  
Natural World ◽  
Administrative Practices ◽  
The Past ◽  
Princely State ◽  
Paper Technology

Over the past several decades, historians of science have come increasingly to focus on the role of so-called “paper technologies,” reorganizing and transforming information through the use of paper and pen, in the emergence of modern science. Taking as a case study an effort by administrators in the seventeenth-century German princely state of Saxe-Gotha to enlist foresters and herb-women to catalog the medicinal plants of the territory, this article analyzes the varied forms of paperwork produced in the process, including an extremely unusual table, and argues that the table represented an effort to produce a synoptic visualization, akin to but not identical to a map, of the location of the territory’s herbs. While this table may not have ultimately succeeded as a viable paper technology, due to problems of incommensurability, it demonstrates the role of administrative practices and state actors in experimenting with information about the natural world during the early modern period.

‘Born in America, in Europe bred, in Africa travell’d and in Asia wed’: Elihu Yale, material culture, and actor networks from the seventeenth century to the twenty-first

2016 ◽  
Vol 11 (3) ◽  
pp. 320-343
Author(s):  
Elizabeth Kuebler-Wolf
Keyword(s):  
Seventeenth Century ◽  
Material Culture ◽  
Temporal Network ◽  
Actor Network ◽  
Four Dimensions ◽  
The Past ◽  
Actor Networks ◽  
Network Object

AbstractObjects can serve as non-living actors in a Latourian actor network which spans not only geography but time. Over this spatial–temporal network, what I call ‘object-actors’ acquire meanings that motivate living actors to use these objects as connecting points between past and present. Object-actors form networks in original exchanges between individuals and institutions, connect the past and present, and generate new and shifting meanings in this global–temporal network. Object-actors work and generate meaning in four dimensions – distance, location, relation, and time. Globally, object-actors can accrue conflicting meanings bound by locality. This article uses the collections of Elihu Yale as a case study in how object-actors constitute an important aspect of networks, and how those networks are not bound to the original transactions between historical parties or to their original geographies.

scholarly journals Brief communication: maxillary lateral incisor morphology and uncommon trait expression: a case study from prehistoric Paa-ko, New Mexico

2018 ◽  
Vol 26 (1-2) ◽  
pp. 15-19 ◽  
Author(s):  
Erin C. Blankenship-Sefczek
Keyword(s):  
New Mexico ◽  
High Frequency ◽  
Morphological Traits ◽  
Morphological Variability ◽  
High Variability ◽  
American Southwest ◽  
Lateral Incisor ◽  
High Frequencies ◽  
Maxillary Lateral Incisor

Prehistoric American Southwest exhibits a high frequency of dental morphological variability. This high variability may be the result of gene flow and subsequent genetic drift occurring in early periods (pre CE 900), though few studies report on dental variability in later periods. Morphological traits of the maxillary lateral incisors were analyzed from the Pueblo IV site of Paa-ko, New Mexico (CE 1300-1425) yielding high frequencies of four traits (shovel, double shovel, tuberculum dentale, interruption groove) and uncommon variants (barrel-shovel, triform, peg-shaped). Lateral incisor morphology is underrepresented in the literature but could be useful in determining population migration and affinity.

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