Contemporary Archaeologies of the Southwest P r o c e e d i n g s of the Southwe s t S y m p o s i u m
The Archaeology of Regional Interaction: Religion, Warfare, and Exchange across the American Southwest and Beyond edited by Michelle Hegmon
Contemporary Archaeologies of the Southwest edited by William H. Walker and Kathryn R. Venzor
Identity, Feasting, and the Archaeology of the Greater Southwest edited by Barbara J. Mills
Movement, Connectivity, and Landscape Change in the Ancient Southwest edited by Margaret C. Nelson and Colleen A. Strawhacker
Traditions, Transitions, and Technologies: Themes in Southwestern Archaeology edited by Sarah H. Schlanger Contemporary of Archaeologies the
Edited by William H. Walker and Kathryn R. Venzor
U n i v e r s i t y P r e ss o f C o l o r a d o © 2011 by the University Press of Colorado
Published by the University Press of Colorado 5589 Arapahoe Avenue, Suite 206C Boulder, Colorado 80303
All rights reserved Printed in the United States of America
The University Press of Colorado is a proud member of the Association of American University Presses.
The University Press of Colorado is a cooperative publishing enterprise supported, in part, by Ad- ams State College, Colorado State University, Fort Lewis College, Mesa State College, Metropolitan State College of Denver, Regis University, University of Colorado, University of Northern Colorado, and Western State College of Colorado.
The paper used in this publication meets the minimum requirements of the American National Standard for Information Sciences—Permanence of Paper for Printed Library Materials. ANSI Z39.48-1992
Library of Congress Cataloging-in-Publication Data Southwest Symposium (1988–) (10th : 2006 : Las Cruces, N.M.) Contemporary archaeologies of the Southwest / edited by William H. Walker and Kathryn R. Venzor. p. cm. — (Proceedings of the Southwest Symposium) “This volume builds on papers presented at the 10th Biennial 2006 Southwest Symposium entitled ‘Acts of History: Ritual, Landscape and Historical Archaeology in the U.S. Southwest and Northern Mexico’, held in Las Cruces, New Mexico, January 13–14, 2006”—Introd. Includes bibliographical references and index. ISBN 978-1-60732-090-6 (hardcover : alk. paper) — ISBN 978-1-60732-091-3 (e-book) 1. Indians of North America—Southwest, New—Antiquities—Congresses. 2. Indians of North America—Southwest, New—Ethnic identity—Congresses. 3. Indians of North America—Material culture—Southwest, New—Congresses. 4. Land settlement patterns, Prehistoric—Southwest, New—Congresses. 5. Landscape changes—Southwest, New—History—To 1500—Congresses. 6. Land use—Southwest, New—History—To 1500—Congresses. 7. Ethnoarchaeology—Southwest, New—Congresses. 8. Human ecology—Southwest, New—History—To 1500—Congresses. 9. Southwest, New—Antiquities—Congresses. I. Walker, William H., 1964– II. Venzor, Kathryn R. III. Title. E78.S7S576 2006 979—dc22 2011001963 Design by Daniel Pratt
20 19 18 17 16 15 14 13 12 11 10 9 8 7 6 5 4 3 2 1 List of Figures List of Tables Introduction to Contemporary Archaeologies of the Southwest William H. Walker and Kathryn R. Venzor
Part I: Places of Experience and Memory Materialities of Place: Ideology on the Chacoan Landscape Ruth M. Van Dyke
Procurement and Landscape: Lithic Quarries as Places Christine G. Ward
The Sun Dagger Interactive Computer Graphics Model: A Digital Restoration of a Chacoan Calendrical Site Anna Sofaer, Alan Price, James Holmlund, Joseph Nicoli, and Andrew Piscitello
The Lay of the Land: Power, Meaning, and the Social in Landscape Analysis Maria O’Donovan
Archaeology of the Moment: Creating Place in the Ludlow Strikers’ Colony Michael E. Jacobson
Sacred Landscapes, Sacred Acts: The Metaphysics of Emplaced Ritual among Northern Paiute and Hualapai Ghost Dancers Alex K. Ruuska
Fire: Accidental or Intentional? An Archaeological Toolkit for Evaluating Accident and Intent in Ancient Structural Fires Joe Lally and A. J. Vonarx
Part II: Boundaries and Landscapes of Movement Ancient Social Boundaries Inscribed on the Landscape of the Lower San Pedro Valley Patrick D. Lyons, Jeffery J. Clark, and J. Brett Hill
El Morro Valley as Crossroads, El Morro Valley as Gathering Place: Understanding the Social Landscape of the Eastern Cibola Region through the Archaeological and Historical Record Gregson Schachner
Social Identity and Memory: Interactions between Apaches and Mormons on a Frontier Landscape Lauren Jelinek
Landscape Use at San Agustín Barnet Pavao-Zuckerman
Ephemeral Sites and Inertia along El Camino Real de Tierra Adentro: Evidence from Nearly Two Decades of Archaeological Research Edward Staski
Investigating Differential Persistence of Pueblo Population: A Landscape Approach Ann F. Ramenofsky, Michael K. Church, and Jeremy Kulisheck
Index
vi Contents P r o c e e d i n g s of the Southwe s t S y m p o s i u m
The Archaeology of Regional Interaction: Religion, Warfare, and Exchange across the American Southwest and Beyond edited by Michelle Hegmon
Contemporary Archaeologies of the Southwest edited by William H. Walker and Kathryn R. Venzor
Identity, Feasting, and the Archaeology of the Greater Southwest edited by Barbara J. Mills
Movement, Connectivity, and Landscape Change in the Ancient Southwest edited by Margaret C. Nelson and Colleen A. Strawhacker
Traditions, Transitions, and Technologies: Themes in Southwestern Archaeology edited by Sarah H. Schlanger Contemporary of Archaeologies the
Edited by William H. Walker and Kathryn R. Venzor
U n i v e r s i t y P r e ss o f C o l o r a d o © 2011 by the University Press of Colorado
Published by the University Press of Colorado 5589 Arapahoe Avenue, Suite 206C Boulder, Colorado 80303
All rights reserved Printed in the United States of America
The University Press of Colorado is a proud member of the Association of American University Presses.
The University Press of Colorado is a cooperative publishing enterprise supported, in part, by Ad- ams State College, Colorado State University, Fort Lewis College, Mesa State College, Metropolitan State College of Denver, Regis University, University of Colorado, University of Northern Colorado, and Western State College of Colorado.
The paper used in this publication meets the minimum requirements of the American National Standard for Information Sciences—Permanence of Paper for Printed Library Materials. ANSI Z39.48-1992
Library of Congress Cataloging-in-Publication Data Southwest Symposium (1988–) (10th : 2006 : Las Cruces, N.M.) Contemporary archaeologies of the Southwest / edited by William H. Walker and Kathryn R. Venzor. p. cm. — (Proceedings of the Southwest Symposium) “This volume builds on papers presented at the 10th Biennial 2006 Southwest Symposium entitled ‘Acts of History: Ritual, Landscape and Historical Archaeology in the U.S. Southwest and Northern Mexico’, held in Las Cruces, New Mexico, January 13–14, 2006”—Introd. Includes bibliographical references and index. ISBN 978-1-60732-090-6 (hardcover : alk. paper) — ISBN 978-1-60732-091-3 (e-book) 1. Indians of North America—Southwest, New—Antiquities—Congresses. 2. Indians of North America—Southwest, New—Ethnic identity—Congresses. 3. Indians of North America—Material culture—Southwest, New—Congresses. 4. Land settlement patterns, Prehistoric—Southwest, New—Congresses. 5. Landscape changes—Southwest, New—History—To 1500—Congresses. 6. Land use—Southwest, New—History—To 1500—Congresses. 7. Ethnoarchaeology—Southwest, New—Congresses. 8. Human ecology—Southwest, New—History—To 1500—Congresses. 9. Southwest, New—Antiquities—Congresses. I. Walker, William H., 1964– II. Venzor, Kathryn R. III. Title. E78.S7S576 2006 979—dc22 2011001963 Design by Daniel Pratt
20 19 18 17 16 15 14 13 12 11 10 9 8 7 6 5 4 3 2 1 List of Figures List of Tables Introduction to Contemporary Archaeologies of the Southwest William H. Walker and Kathryn R. Venzor
Part I: Places of Experience and Memory Materialities of Place: Ideology on the Chacoan Landscape Ruth M. Van Dyke
Procurement and Landscape: Lithic Quarries as Places Christine G. Ward
The Sun Dagger Interactive Computer Graphics Model: A Digital Restoration of a Chacoan Calendrical Site Anna Sofaer, Alan Price, James Holmlund, Joseph Nicoli, and Andrew Piscitello
The Lay of the Land: Power, Meaning, and the Social in Landscape Analysis Maria O’Donovan
Archaeology of the Moment: Creating Place in the Ludlow Strikers’ Colony Michael E. Jacobson
Sacred Landscapes, Sacred Acts: The Metaphysics of Emplaced Ritual among Northern Paiute and Hualapai Ghost Dancers Alex K. Ruuska
Fire: Accidental or Intentional? An Archaeological Toolkit for Evaluating Accident and Intent in Ancient Structural Fires Joe Lally and A. J. Vonarx
Part II: Boundaries and Landscapes of Movement Ancient Social Boundaries Inscribed on the Landscape of the Lower San Pedro Valley Patrick D. Lyons, Jeffery J. Clark, and J. Brett Hill
El Morro Valley as Crossroads, El Morro Valley as Gathering Place: Understanding the Social Landscape of the Eastern Cibola Region through the Archaeological and Historical Record Gregson Schachner
Social Identity and Memory: Interactions between Apaches and Mormons on a Frontier Landscape Lauren Jelinek
Landscape Use at San Agustín Barnet Pavao-Zuckerman
Ephemeral Sites and Inertia along El Camino Real de Tierra Adentro: Evidence from Nearly Two Decades of Archaeological Research Edward Staski
Investigating Differential Persistence of Pueblo Population: A Landscape Approach Ann F. Ramenofsky, Michael K. Church, and Jeremy Kulisheck
Index
vi Contents Classic Bonito phase Chacoan world and the greater San Juan Basin Fajada Butte at sunrise Hosta Butte, South Gap, and Pueblo del Arroyo from a stone circle on the north rim of Chaco Canyon West Mesa shrines overlooking the Chaco River and the western San Juan Basin The tower kiva at Kin Ya’a Brushy Basin chert Map of the northern Southwest, showing community great houses, Chaco Canyon, and approximate origination points for lithic raw materials Diagram of solar and lunar markings of the Sun Dagger site as originally recorded Pairs of 1978 photographed images and 2006 registered model simulated images Pairs of 1980 to 1987 photographs with 2006 registered model simulated images of rising sun and moon markings The slabs in an image developed from the registered model and the laser- scanned model that show their original positions, outlines of their disturbed
vii positions, and measurements of some of the differences between the 2005 and 1984 positions Northwestern section of Cerro de Trincheras Location of areas on Cerro de Trincheras Approximate location of streets in Ludlow strikers’ colony Arapaho Ghost Dancers John Gast, American Progress René Descartes John Locke Wovoka, 1890s Ghost Dance prophet Map of western Nevada, where 1890s Ghost Dance originated Northern Paiute Woman and Tule House, ca. 1890s Hualapai Ghost Dancer Trails from Kingman to Tinaka Salt Song Path map Movement of heat and smoke in a compartment fire Fuel wood burning in corner Map of Arizona showing the locations of places mentioned in the text Map showing Lower San Pedro Valley archaeological districts and the loca- tions of sites mentioned in the text Kiva at the Davis Ranch site, in the Lower San Pedro River Valley Map of the Davis Ranch site showing Kayenta pithouses underlying pueblo architecture and the segregation of the kiva from the core roomblock by a later enclosing wall Harvard Values study area circa 1950 Population changes at Ramah and Fence Lake during initial settlement Locations of sites discussed in the text Summary of zooarchaeological remains from Mission San Agustín Map of south-central New Mexico, showing the Camino Real, the modern interstate highway, the Rio Grande, and various archaeological project areas Counts of large and small settlements Distribution of small and large settlements during Glaze-Paint periods A–B Distribution of small and large settlements during Glaze-Paint periods C–D Distribution of small and large settlements during Glaze-Paint periods E–F Place use periods, San Marcos Pueblo, north-central New Mexico viii Figures Production zone of St. Johns Polychrome and Cibola Corrugated from Pueblo III period sites in El Morro Valley and Pescado Basin San Agustín: species list Estimates and census counts of Pueblo population Puebloan population estimates before or at the time of initial Spanish con- quest Glaze-Paint periods by combining glaze-paint types
ix
Contemporary Archaeologies of the Southwest
William H. Walker and Kathryn R. Venzor
This volume builds on papers presented at the 10th Biennial 2006 Southwest Symposium, entitled “Acts of History: Ritual, Landscape and Historical Archaeology in the U.S. Southwest and Northern Mexico,” held in Las Cruces, New Mexico, January 13–14, 2006. The symposium organizers, William H. Walker and Maria Nieves Zedeño, asked participants to focus on the role of practice theory in their theoretical and methodological considerations of ritual, history, and landscapes. The chapters submitted to this volume include studies of ancient and historical landscapes, the movement and shifting identities of past peoples, experimen- tal archaeology, and preservation of sacred sites. They document a flowering of method and theory in southwestern archaeology since the mid-1990s that mirrors changes in the larger field. No dominant theoretical paradigm emerges; instead, contributors present a series of imbricated theoretical frameworks, many combin- ing aspects of interpretive and practice theories with earlier historical particularist, processual, behavioral, and selectionist theory. This range of theoretical perspectives derives mostly from the processual– post-processual debates of the 1980s (Hodder 1986; Schiffer 1988; Shanks and Tilley 1987a, 1987b; Skibo, Walker, and Nielsen 1995; Wylie 1989) and subsequent theoretical developments (e.g., Ashmore and Knapp 1999:6–8; Dobres and Robb
2000; Meskell and Preucel 2004; Mills and Walker 2008; Tilley 1994; Van Dyke and Alcock 2003). In this introduction we briefly describe each of the chapters, begin- ning with those involving place making at Chaco Canyon.
Place Making The first three chapters, by Ruth Van Dyke, Christine Ward, and Anna Sofaer and colleagues, focus on place making in the complex landscape of Chaco Canyon. Van Dyke (chapter 1) defines this complexity through a “phenomenological” approach (see Tilley 1994), arguing that this landscape was a large-scale represen- tation of a worldview—an imaginary cartography (sensu Smith 2003:11) shared by its inhabitants, builders, and visitors. She emphasizes visibility (horizons, buttes, and buildings), movement (roads, ramps, stairs), and material evidence of memory (ancestral sites, old and new buildings, memorable materials) to under- stand the experience of its sacred geography. Within the great house architecture, Van Dyke notes that great kivas are situated in a balanced symmetry that likely expressed a dualist social structure still found today in many historically known eastern pueblos. This balance is also replicated on a larger scale among networks of Chacoan roads, as well as between highly visible landmarks such as Hosta Butte, Fajada Butte (see Sofaer et al., chapter 3), and the canyon’s hidden pueblos. Other dimensions of the landscape evoke directionality and cyclical rituals that contrib- uted to the overarching experience of Chaco Canyon as a central place in time and space. Ward (chapter 2), building on discussions of artifact agency arising out of practice theory and landscape studies, argues that the acquisition of four kinds of exotic lithic materials recovered from a sample of five Chaco Canyon great houses was shaped as much by the social significance of these quarries and the subsequent life histories of their stones as by pragmatic considerations of dis- tance, expedience, or lithic quality. She notes that these quarries, like the Chacoan built environment discussed by Van Dyke, are parts of cultural landscapes and therefore were active, rather than passive, participants in social activities. The four stone materials had long use histories in the ancient Southwest. They were therefore likely imbued with meanings and memories negotiated and contested through time as practices within Pueblo cultures and environments changed. All have distinctive coloring, and this, along with their historically contingent mean- ings, contributed to the sense that they were pieces of specific cultural places and the practices that made them. In a sense, the movement of these artifacts distrib- uted important places across the Chacoan landscape similar to the ways gifts or other objects can distribute personal relations through exchange networks (see Wagner 1991).
William H. Walker and Kathryn R. Venzor An interesting facet of the reconsideration of modernist or enlightenment dichotomies during the 1980s was a recognition by some philosophers of sci- ence and technology, such as Bruno Latour (1993), that the more we create and apply specialized scientific knowledge, the more we actually foster knowledge and causal processes that transcend these specialties. Latour calls these transcendent entities “hybrids.” Cultural heritage, for example, depends on the modernist dis- ciplines of archaeology, history, and architecture. Yet that knowledge, when put into practice in conjunction with other disciplines and institutions, creates a world of hybrid places such as national parks and monuments that, in turn, cause fur- ther experiences and practices for a wide range of peoples—many with no direct culture historical connection to the original archaeological site or historical place. This happens at regional, national, and international scales. Two of the United Nations Educational, Scientific, and Cultural Organization’s (UNESCO) most pop- ular world heritage sites, for example, are Britain’s Stonehenge and New Mexico’s Chaco Canyon. Once created, such places continue to be sources for new modern- ist scientific study, and, as a consequence, will continue to foster new hybrids often unanticipated by the scientists themselves. Sofaer and others’ (chapter 3) Solstice Project illustrates this process in an important and positive manner. They use the latest digital technology to enhance study and preservation of the sun dagger, one of the most important ritual places in the larger Chacoan landscape. Archaeologists have identified three large stone slabs on Fajada Butte overlooking the canyon that cast shadows and vertical shafts of light (the daggers) onto two spiral petrogylphs; the shadows and light record summer and winter solstices, equinoxes, and an 18.6-year lunar cycle like a sundial. In this project, Sofaer and colleagues transform an ancient sacred place into more than a locus of study within a cultural monument; it becomes also a digitalized virtual monument that will preserve information, making possible future archaeo- logical studies that would otherwise be lost as a result of ongoing erosion. In the process they are bringing to life a hybrid place meaningful to scientists, contem- porary pueblo peoples, New Age enthusiasts, and others. This hybrid place has now been actually displaced from its original eroding context in physical space and emplaced in a new context that will be subject to other forms of weathering in the digital realm, which will no doubt stimulate further hybrids in the future. As exemplified by Van Dyke in this volume, phenomenology and practice have been important theoretical perspectives for escaping the confines of proces- sual categories and creating new ones that highlight the role particular individu- als can play in the creation of places and other facets of past human experiences of landscapes. Maria O’Donovan (chapter 4) reviews and critiques recent trends in landscape archaeology, particularly phenomenological approaches associated with post-processual archaeology, in her study of the Late Prehistoric (AD 1300–1400)
Introduction to Contemporary Archaeologies of the Southwest site Cerro de Trincheras, Sonora, Mexico. O’Donovan calls for a “social totality” approach that recognizes experience but gives equal consideration to the relation- ship between emergent structures (economic and ideological) that impinge on individual practices and experiences. To illustrate her ideas, O’Donovan explores the multifunctional and complex landscape within and around Cerro de Trincheras and argues that landscape archaeologies should embrace the social totality entailed by dialectical processes of practice. Similarly, Michael Jacobson (chapter 5) recognizes that while ideologies are not material things, there are no wars, medical systems, or governments whose ideologies are not present in the production and use of those things. Jacobson considers the materiality of ideology and identity in the activities and architecture of a twentieth-century strikers’ colony in Ludlow, Colorado. The tents, street lay- out, and communal areas in the colony were arranged to reinforce the union lead- ers’ authority. In step with more recent identity studies, however, Jacobson tacks back and forth between similarities and differences among the strikers. The strik- ers encompassed seventeen ethnic groups, and their differences were celebrated in communal recreational events, including games and ceremonies. Nonetheless, the union’s centrality was also represented in communal gatherings through the singing of union songs. Such experiments in communal integration echo earlier historic and prehis- toric religious movements, including the late–nineteenth-century Ghost Dance. In chapter 6 Alex Ruuska explores the mingling of the natural environment and the Ghost Dance religion in contexts of practice, stressing the importance of under- standing the pitfalls of previous western philosophical renderings of people and nature. Ruuska notes that despite the relatively large body of scholarship on the North American Ghost Dance movement, “little has been written about the natu- ral environments Numic and Yuman ritual specialists selected for the performance of sacred pan-Indian rituals.” Ruuska emphasizes the ways perceptions of the ani- mate aspects of landscape contributed to their use in Paiute and Hualapai Ghost Dances. Joe Lally and A. J. Vonarx (chapter 7) address an important topic derived from the detailed discussions of archaeological site formation processes and study of ritual deposition that began in the 1980s. This is an important chapter for all those interested in the study of ritual, violence, and the natural processes that formed burned buildings. Lally and Vonarx are the sole representatives in this volume of the still active and important field of experimental archaeology. They question the validity of inferences archaeologists employ to explain the relatively common destruction by fire of buildings in the ancient Southwest. In common with behav- ioral archaeology’s interest in the detailed study of lower-scale archaeological site formation processes (often individual activities as opposed to the societal-scale
William H. Walker and Kathryn R. Venzor questions of processual archaeology), Lally and Vonarx define an experimental approach to the fiery destruction of places. Such studies are critical for evaluating several regional and pan-southwestern arguments about the relationship among structural burning, ceremonial destruc- tion, and warfare. Burned buildings (e.g., pithouses, pueblo rooms, Hohokam platform structures, and even Trincheras sites) characterize many prehispanic sites in northern Mexico and the US Southwest. Interpretations of the uses and meanings of these particular structures and sites depend on inferences about the causes of their abandonment, including burning. Scholars such as Steven LeBlanc (1999), Jonathan Haas and Winifred Creamer (1993), and others (Wilcox and Haas 1994; Woodbury 1959) link such burning to warfare precipitated by environmental changes, particularly during the Little Ice Age. Others (Montgomery 1993; Walker 1998, 2002; Wilshusen 1986) see much of this burning as resulting from the cer- emonial closure of sites and structures that accompanied the abandonment of sites and regions. Although practice theory allows us to unify ritual and warfare within one or more forms of practice, fire is itself an active causal object with its own performance characteristics that contribute to the practices of burning. As such, to understand fire’s materiality, we need also to consider the physics and chemistry of fires themselves.
Identities, Boundaries, and Place Making In the second part of the volume, the majority of chapters focus on the for- mation of identities, landscape boundaries, and the movement associated with these aspects of place making. Inferences about memories, sanctity, identity, and solidarity shape several of the chapters. To varying degrees, these chapters address the ways people’s interaction with things brings particular landscapes to life. They become places where activities tether people to their ancestors, important historic events, and beliefs about politics, religion, and technology. People renew, modify, and replace these ties, thereby creating and re-creating landscapes. In this perspec- tive landscapes are oceans in which places, like waves, sometimes rock gently and uniformly and at other times roil and thrust up, down, and sideways. Such was the case in several regions of the late prehistoric and historic Southwest. Patrick Lyons, Jeffery Clark, and Brett Hill (chapter 8) consider the interplay of boundary making and memory work in the multiethnic history of the San Pedro River Valley of southern Arizona. They focus on architecture and practice to understand the changing identities and boundaries of people in this region. This was a crossroads in later prehistory, bringing migrating pueblo peoples from the north into contact with Hohokam peoples already living in the area. This encoun- ter was critical to the forging of new identities in late prehistory, as well as to the
Introduction to Contemporary Archaeologies of the Southwest rise of the Southern Ceremonial Cult and its associated feasting bowls and jars, Salado Polychrome ceramics (see Crown 1994; Lyons 2003). Hohokam peoples using ball courts and shallow pithouse structures originally occupied the valley. Their construction of ball courts came to an end around AD 1100, and, in the late twelfth century, Mountain Mogollon peoples moved into the area. By the late 1200s peoples in the valley were constructing aboveground adobe compounds associated with platform mounds, a form of ritual architecture that had spread throughout the now multiethnic Hohokam territory. At approximately the same time, Kayenta Anasazi from northern Arizona and southern Utah moved into the valley, recognizable by their stone pueblos, kivas, and other material attri- butes of Kayenta identity. Greg Schachner (chapter 9) is particularly interested in understanding how demographic instability and mobility shaped the archaeological landscape of El Morro Valley in the Cibola region of New Mexico. Following the lessons of recent studies of identity in contemporary theory, Schachner stresses the differences between ancestral Zuni populations in the twelfth and thirteenth centuries and later historic homesteaders to understand how each community created distinct landscapes through its land-use and mobility practices. Lauren Jelinek (chapter 10) also explores a landscape created by the encounter between historic Mormon settlers and indigenous, reservation-dwelling Apaches in the Forestdale Valley of east-central Arizona. She draws on an understanding of the role oral traditions play in practices of memory making in both cultures to understand how they constructed their differing perceptions of the valley’s history. Barnet Pavao-Zuckerman (chapter 11) explores the historic landscape of Pimeria Alta of south-central and southwestern Arizona. Similar to Schachner and Jelinek, Pavao-Zuckerman compares seasonal mobility of the indigenous O’odham peoples with the Spanish missionary vision of a civilized landscape characterized by a settled agro-pastoral economy. As a faunal specialist, Pavao-Zuckerman brings a unique perspective to this topic. Her study of faunal remains from two mission settlements highlights a contested landscape in which mission inhabitants still pur- sued wild game, albeit more opportunistically rather than as a habituated subsis- tence practice. Edward Staski (chapter 12), a behavioral archaeologist, considers the land- scape of the Spanish colonial Southwest—focusing on the Camino Real, one of the region’s most important communication routes. Staski wonders why this route resembled an informal trail if it was so central to the colonies of New Spain. Apparently, relatively little effort was put into its construction and maintenance. Staski further contemplates what this tells us about the organization of frontier practice in some kinds of empires. Following behavioral theory, Staski argues that
William H. Walker and Kathryn R. Venzor to answer these questions, we need to examine smaller-scale behaviors and the sites formed by them. They can be critical for understanding even the largest-scale phenomena, such as the frontier of the Spanish and later American empires. In this chapter Staski continues to develop his concept of “structural inertia” to account for the occurrence of ephemeral sites—what he calls “places of short-term, although repeated, occupation”—that often characterize frontier places. Staski argues that such sites are as informative about the creation of communities as are larger, more permanent settlement forts and towns and that they should be of prime concern to scholars studying the landscapes of empires. Selectionist archaeologists share this emphasis on alternative visions of mate- rial variability and the importance of settlement patterns. Ann Ramenofsky, Michael Church, and Jeremy Kulisheck (chapter 13) exemplify the value of settle- ment patterns in a study of the abandonment and occupation of historic New Mexico pueblos. As selectionists, they frame their study of material variability as the explanation of the differential persistence and change in people and objects (in this case, pueblos) through time. They illustrate the power of this perspective through a case study of the abandonment of larger historic New Mexico pueblos. In contrast to previous models that explained the abandonment of large pueb- los in the early historic period as the result of disease and population decline, Ramenofsky and colleagues’ preliminary findings suggest that Puebloan peoples moved from large sites to smaller settlements, allowing them to escape many of the effects of European diseases and actually survive to the present day. The authors in this volume, while representing a diverse cross-section of southwestern archaeologists, are united by a concern with pushing the boundar- ies of archaeological method and theory. They agree that seeking new means for identifying and explaining material variation is a central concern of southwest- ern archaeology. In presenting largely complementary but sometimes contrast- ing perspectives, they are building a strong foundation for future southwestern studies.
Acknowledgments. We thank the participants in the volume and conference for their stimulating papers. Maxine McBrinn and two anonymous reviewers gave us helpful criticism on drafts of the volume. We are also grateful to the conference sponsors, including the New Mexico State University Department of Sociology and Anthropology, New Mexico State University Museum, New Mexico State Uni versity College of Arts and Sciences, University of Arizona Department of Anthro pology, Museum of Anthropology at the University of Colorado, SWCA Environ mental Consultants, and the student volunteers from New Mexico State University. Finally, we thank Darrin Pratt and the staff at the University Press of Colorado for their patience and support.
Introduction to Contemporary Archaeologies of the Southwest Ashmore, Wendy, and A. Bernard Kapp (editors) 1999 Archaeologies of Landscape: Contemporary Perspectives. Blackwell, Oxford. Crown, Patricia L. 1994 Ceramics and Ideology: Salado Polychrome Pottery. University of New Mexico Press, Albuquerque. Dobres, Marcia-Anne, and John Robb (editors) 2000 Agency and Archaeology. Routledge, London. Haas, Jonathan, and Winifred Creamer 1993 Stress and Warfare among the Kayenta Anasazi of the 13th Century AD. Fieldiana, Anthropology New Series 21. Field Museum of Natural History, Chicago. Hodder, Ian 1986 Reading the Past: Current Approaches to Interpretations in Archaeology. Cambridge University Press, Cambridge. Latour, Bruno 1993 We Have Never Been Modern. Trans. Catherine Porter. Harvard University Press, Cambridge. LeBlanc, Steven A. 1999 Prehistoric Warfare in the American Southwest. University of Utah Press, Salt Lake City. Lyons, Patrick 2003 Ancestral Hopi Migrations. Anthropological Papers 68. University of Arizona, Tucson. Meskell, Lynn, and Robert W. Preucel 2004 Identities. In A Companion to Social Archaeology, ed. Lynn Meskell and Robert W. Preucel, 121–141. Blackwell, Oxford. Mills, Barbara J., and William H. Walker (editors) 2008 Memory Work: Archaeologies of Material Practices. School of Advanced Research Press, Santa Fe. Montgomery, Barbara 1993 Ceramic Analysis as a Tool for Discovering Processes of Pueblo Abandonment. In Abandonment of Sites and Regions, ed. Catherine M. Cameron and Steven A. Tompka, 157–164. Cambridge University Press, Cambridge. Schiffer, Michael B. 1988 The Structure of Archaeological Theory. American Antiquity 53:461–485. Shanks, Michael, and Christopher Tilley 1987a Re-constructing Archaeology. Cambridge University Press, Cambridge. 1987b Social Theory and Archaeology. Basil Blackwell, Oxford. Skibo, James, William H. Walker, and Axel E. Nielsen (editors) 1995 Expanding Archaeology. University of Utah Press, Salt Lake City.
William H. Walker and Kathryn R. Venzor Smith, Adam 2003 The Political Landscape: Constellations of Authority in Early Complex Polities. Uni- versity of California Press, Berkeley. Tilley, Christopher 1994 A Phenomenology of Landscape: Places, Paths, Movements. Berg, London. Van Dyke, Ruth M., and Susan E. Alcock 2003 Archaeologies of Memory: An Introduction. In Archaeologies of Memory, ed. Ruth M. Van Dyke and Susan E. Alcock, 1–13. Blackwell, Oxford. Wagner, Roy 1991 The Fractal Person. In Big Men and Great Men: Personifications of Power in Melane- sia, ed. Maurice Godelier and Marilyn Strathern, 159–173. Cambridge Univer- sity Press, Cambridge. Walker, William H. 1998 Where Are the Witches of Prehistory? Journal of Archaeological Method and The- ory 5:245–308. 2002 Stratigraphy and Practical Reason. American Anthropologist 104:159–177. Wilcox, David R., and Jonathan Haas 1994 The Scream of the Butterfly. In Themes in Southwestern Prehistory, ed. George Gummerman, 211–238. School of American Research Press, Santa Fe. Wilshusen, Richard H. 1986 The Relationship between Abandonment Mode and Ritual Use in Pueblo I Anasazi Protokivas. Journal of Field Archaeology 13:245–254. Woodbury, Richard A. 1959 A Reconstruction of Pueblo Warfare in the Southwestern United States. Pro- ceedings of the International Congress of Americanists 33:400–401. Wylie, Alison 1989 Archaeological Cables and Tacking: The Implications of Practice for Bern- stein’s “Options beyond Objectivism and Relativism.” Philosophy of the Social Sciences 19:1–8.
Introduction to Contemporary Archaeologies of the Southwest
P a r t I
Ruth M. Van Dyke
C h a p t e r 1
Ideology on the Chacoan Landscape
Landscape is the spatial milieu within which bodies and the social and material worlds intersect. Landscapes involve the archaeologically familiar environment of sites, features, topography, and resources, but they also have sensual and ideological dimensions. The term place emphasizes the lived experiences and meanings bound up in a particular space. In his Apache ethnography Wisdom Sits in Places, Keith Basso (1996) employed the term sense of place to describe the ways humans imbue their surroundings with memories, meanings, and aesthetic resonance. Place mak- ing—the construction of a meaningful landscape—is a sensual experience involv- ing sight, sound, smell, emotion, and memory. Lived, spatial experiences help affirm and challenge ideas about the world and our place in it. Landscapes also constrain and order—they are the spaces through which identities and power are negotiated. Because worldviews and ideologies are negotiated within a complex web of the social and the material, they are at least partially accessible to archae- ologists willing to take an interpretive approach to the past. Chaco Canyon in northwestern New Mexico is an aesthetically powerful place, in part because of the sky-filled horizontal topography of the Colorado Plateau. The canyon—in the center of the vast dish of the San Juan Basin—contains hid- den spaces, but the mesas that bound it are high places (figure 1.1). Fajada Butte,
13 The Classic Bonito phase Chacoan world and the greater San Juan Basin. Map by Molly O’Halloran, Inc.
Chacra Mesa, and West Mesa can be seen for miles to the north, west, and south of the canyon. From Chaco, these mesas offer spectacular views in nearly every direction toward distant peaks such as Huerfano Mountain, Shiprock, the Chuskas, Hosta Butte, and Mount Taylor.
14 Ruth M. Van Dyke At the heart of Chaco Canyon lie twelve massive great houses constructed between AD 860 and 1130 (Lekson 1986; Lekson, Windes, and McKenna 2006). The Chacoans crafted these buildings at an exaggerated scale, with formal sym- metry, according to specific designs. Over the course of three centuries they stacked hundreds of very large rooms—many devoid of hearths or other indica- tions of use—in rows up to four stories, or 8 meters, high. The rooms surround blocked-in kivas, and they embrace plazas toward the east or the south. The Chacoans built circular, masonry-lined, semi-subterranean great kivas according to formal guidelines for size, layout, and orientation. They modified the landscape in other ways as well, building earthen mounds, ramps, staircases, and road seg- ments. Bonito style architecture refers collectively to all these architectural elements (Gladwin 1945). Bonito style architecture contrasts dramatically with the many small domestic pueblos that form clusters of low mounds along the south side of Chaco Canyon. The Classic Bonito phase (AD 1020–1100) was Chaco’s heyday; during that time, the canyon’s influence spread across the surrounding San Juan Basin. Cleared linear alignments, or road segments, extended from the canyon toward the north, northwest, and southwest. Across the basin’s buttes, dunes, and drainages, ancient Puebloans built Bonito style architecture in nearly 100 outlier communities. Great houses, great kivas, road segments, and earthworks are usually surrounded by thirty to forty small domestic sites (Fowler, Stein, and Anyon 1987; Kantner and Mahoney 2000; Marshall et al. 1979; Marshall and Sofaer 1988; Powers, Gillespie, and Lekson 1983). Chacoan archaeology has attracted generations of scholars (Lekson 2006; Lister and Lister 1981; Mathien 1992; Mills 2002; Vivian 1990:37–78). Although archaeological interpretations for Chaco are sometimes conflicting, scholars agree that planned, massive Bonito style structures required a substantial investment of labor and design. Bonito style architecture “exceed[s] the requirements of any prac- tical functions that a building is intended to perform” (Trigger 1990:119). Large- scale, long-term construction projects suggest the presence of social inequalities and institutionalized leaders, yet the evidence for sociopolitical hierarchy in the canyon is ambiguous. As a result, Chaco has great appeal for scholars of prehistoric sociopolitical complexity. Most current explanations for Chaco revolve around the idea of the canyon as a central place for ritual gatherings, with leaders’ power legitimated through exclu- sive access to ritual knowledge (Judge 1989; Kantner 1996; Saitta 1997; Sebastian 1992; Toll 1985; Wills 2000; Yoffee 2001). But how did ritual leaders come to power? Why was their authority perceived as legitimate? The concept of ideology can help us understand why people would agree to act as subjects—that is, to partici- pate in a situation that was to their social or material disadvantage. The Chacoan
Materialities of Place 15 landscape, with its formally constructed, carefully situated architectural features, is charged with symbolism (Fritz 1978; Marshall 1997; Stein and Lekson 1992). This landscape can reveal much about the nature of Chacoan worldview, social relation- ships, and ideology. In this work I use phenomenological investigations tempered with ethno- graphic data to construct an interpretation of the Chacoan landscape. I argue that the Chacoan landscape can be understood as the large-scale spatial representation of a worldview shared by ancient Puebloan inhabitants, builders, and visitors. Chacoan architects actively designed a landscape that elicited a powerful emo- tional response in visitors. This worldview revolved around interrelated spatial- ized themes, including visibility, directionality, balanced dualism, cyclical renewal, social memory, and center place. When those who shared this worldview moved through the buildings and across the modified landscape of Chaco Canyon, the experience actively reaffirmed their beliefs about the nature of the world and their place in it. Architecture and worldview were transformed into a powerful Chacoan ideology. Leaders’ authority was naturalized and legitimated by spatial messages that celebrated Chaco Canyon as the center of the Puebloan cosmographic, social, and ritual world. It seemed inevitable and desirable for visitors to travel to Chaco for periodic ritual events and to contribute labor and resources toward the ceremo- nies necessary for continuation of the Puebloan way of life.
Archaeological Landscapes Over the past two decades, landscape has emerged as a unifying concept for the archaeological study of place and social reality (e.g., Ashmore 2002; Ashmore and Knapp 1999). Many current areas of archaeological interest—including iden- tity, ethnicity, ritual, power, and ideology—intersect at the nexus of landscape. In the southwestern United States, the term landscape is invoked by archaeologists straddling a wide range of epistemological positions. Some equate landscape with settlement patterns, examining the changing and variable distributions of people and resources across space. Some explore “cultural landscapes,” investigating the links—which may involve oral traditions as well as archaeology—that con- nect indigenous groups with specific places. Still others view spatial experiences as reflexively constructed over time and landscape as a window through which to investigate less tangible aspects of ancient life, such as meaning and ideology. While each of these approaches has different theoretical roots, they can be comple- mentary. Material remains, ethnography, and cognitive perceptions can all have a place in well-rounded interpretive analysis. Settlement pattern studies have enjoyed a long popularity in cultural ecol- ogy and processual archaeology. Horizontal and vertical measurements describe
16 Ruth M. Van Dyke relationships between people and natural or cultural resources, and landforms provide raw materials or opportunities to engage in various kinds of subsistence behavior. Traditional settlement pattern studies tend to view space as a neutral container for action. Clearly, ancient peoples were concerned with factors such as the presence of competitive neighbors and the availability of arable land or water, but landscapes are more than backdrops or sets of resources waiting to be exploited. (For examples of absolutist approaches to landscape, see Hodder and Orton 1976; Steward 1955; Washburn 1974; Willey 1953. For detailed critiques, see A. Smith 2003:33–54; Thomas 1993; Tilley 1994:7–11; Wagstaff 1987.) While measurements of physical distances among populations and resources can con- stitute useful information, reducing landscape to material patterning leaves the meaningful and experiential aspects of place unexplored. People have reactions, perceptions, opinions, and experiences of their constructed and natural spatial surroundings. During the 1980s and 1990s, geographers, philosophers, and anthropologists began to move beyond “space as container” models, developing a holistic concept of space as a socially produced, relational medium vital to the construction of identity and society (e.g., Davis 1992; Harvey 1989, 1996; Jackson 1984; Lefebvre 1991; Soja 1988, 1996; Tuan 1974, 1977). (Some influential anthropological land- scape investigations include Altman and Low 1992; Basso 1996; Feld and Basso 1996; Hirsch and O’Hanlon 1995; Ingold 1993; Lawrence and Low 1990; Ucko and Layton 1998.) Archaeologists seeking ways to move beyond the limitations of set- tlement pattern studies began to focus on landscape as a way to integrate human perceptions and relationships into the picture (Anschuetz, Wilshusen, and Scheick 2001). In the southwestern United States and other postcolonial settings, archae- ologists working with indigenous peoples developed the concept of cultural land- scapes to weave together oral histories, migrations, and traditional land use (e.g., Carroll, Zedeño, and Stoffle 2004; David, McNiven, and Barker 2006; Ferguson and Anyon 2001; Ferguson and Colwell-Chanthaphonh 2006; King 2003; Morphy 1993; Snead 2008; Taçon 1999; Zedeño 1997). But landscapes are not only culturally constructed; they are also inherently ideological. Landscapes comprise the spatial milieu within which bodies and the social and material worlds interact and intersect as identity and power are negoti- ated. Highly visible monumental architecture is often employed in the construc- tion of identity or the legitimation of power. The commercial skyscrapers that form the nucleus of the urban landscape can be seen as embodiments of the domi- nance of capitalism and capitalists, towering over (yet based in) the wreckage of the inner-city poor (Zukin 1991). Landscapes do not simply evoke meanings; they also constrain and order (Foucault 1977). Spaces are both the site and the stake of social struggle (Harvey 1989, 1996). An investigation into space must extend beyond
Materialities of Place 17 “the relationship between bodies, forms, and elements” to include “the product of negotiations between an array of competing actors with varying practical capaci- ties to transform relationships” (Smith 2003:72). Archaeologists working on monu- mental landscapes in Mesoamerica (Ashmore 1989; Ashmore and Sabloff 2002), Andean South America (Moore 1996, 2004), the Mediterranean (Alcock 1993), and Neolithic Britain (Barrett 1991, 1994; Bender 1993; Bradley 1998, 2000; Thomas 1991, 1996; Tilley 1994, 1999) have turned their attention to landscape as a way to think about ancient ideologies, worldviews, and power relationships. The ranks of this genre of landscape studies are increasing exponentially (e.g., Ashmore and Knapp 1999; Bowser 2004; Glowacki and Malpass 2003; Inomata 2006; Johnson 2007; Joyce and Gillespie 2000; Khatchadourian 2007; Leone 1988; Parker Pearson and Ramilosonina 1998; Williams and Nash 2006; Yekutieli 2006).
Interpreting Sensual Places Landscapes are more than reflexive representations of social or political rela- tionships. Much of the potency of spatial experiences for enhancing or challenging power relationships comes from the fact that landscapes are also inherently sen- sual. Place making—the construction of a meaningful landscape—involves sound, smell, taste, touch, sight, and emotion. Yi-Fu Tuan’s Topophilia (1974), today a clas- sic geography text, was the first book of its kind to deal with the aesthetic and sensual dimensions of landscape. Tuan (1974:27) pointed out that spatial experi- ences can elicit powerful emotions, particularly when multiple senses are involved. Cathedral interiors provide a familiar example. The exaggerated height and empti- ness of the space, the shadowy light shot through with stained glass beams, the suffused odors of incense and candle wax, the blurry echoes of chants or organ music, and the coolness of marble underfoot combine to create strong aesthetic and emotional responses. Landscapes can be thought of as multidimensional, encompassing the mate- rial spaces of the physical environment, the represented spaces of the imagina- tion, and the perceived spaces of the senses (Lefebvre 1991:38–46; Smith 2003:73– 75). The material dimension involves the archaeologically familiar patterning of sites, features, topography, and resources. This physical landscape is invested with meaning through representations and perceptions. Spatial representations refer to the ways people draw, describe, and imagine landscape through art, texts, pho- tographs, maps, or cosmographic schemes. This dimension may be accessible to Southwest archaeologists through rock art, pottery motifs, and indigenous oral traditions and histories. Spatial perceptions encompass the sensual, emotional, and aesthetic dimensions of landscape, involving such archaeological factors as visibil- ity, memory, and iconic symbolism.
18 Ruth M. Van Dyke This tripartite organization can be seen as somewhat analogous to the ways archaeologists have conceived of landscapes—as settlement patterns, as traditional cultural places, and as material windows into reflexively constructed pasts. My interpretations of Chacoan landscape are similarly woven from three interrelated kinds of evidence—archaeological data, ethnographic information, and phenom- enological research. Archaeological data are composed of architecture and fea- tures positioned on the topography. Ethnographic information details historic and contemporary Puebloan cosmographies and spatial meanings. Phenomenology provides one route of ingress into the sensual and experiential dimensions of past landscapes. Phenomenology—an approach grounded in existentialist philosophy—has recently gained attention among some British archaeologists as a useful way to apprehend past meanings and social forms (Gosden 1994; Thomas 1996; Tilley 1994). Phenomenological philosophers see the human body as the point of dialec- tical mediation between consciousness and the physical world, subject and object (Casey 1996, 1997; Heidegger 1962; Merleau-Ponty 1962). Place plays a critical part in human understanding of existence because all bodily experiences are spatially situated. People actively construct knowledge of the world by moving through places (De Certeau 1984:91–130). Because the configuration of the human body is universal, it is possible to assume that all humans have generally similar spa- tial perceptions of such body-relevant experiences as directionality and scale. The human body organizes spaces into up and down, front and back, left and right. If we accept these premises, then a phenomenological approach to archaeology can allow us to think about the ways prehistoric peoples experienced, perceived, and represented landscapes, working from the starting point of contemporary bodies in the same spaces. By moving through ancient landscapes and architecture as pre- historic peoples did, phenomenological archaeologists can gain insights into past worldviews. My phenomenological investigations suggested that some of the dimensions important to Chacoan builders were visibility, movement, and memory. Visibility was likely important to ancient Pueblos living on the open, exposed, sky-filled hori- zons of the arid Southwest (Lekson 2002; Tuan 1974:79–83). Iconic high places such as Fajada Butte and Hosta Butte were likely storied, meaningful places for Chacoans. Chacoans often positioned Bonito style structures to create intervis- ibility with one or more prominent, isolated peaks. The builders of Chacoan monumental architecture intended for their work to be highly visible. Bonito style architecture fits Jerry Moore’s (1996) criteria for public buildings designed for high visibility: the structures have clear forms, contrasting backgrounds, vertical promi- nence, and solid mass. But visual perception changes as the viewer moves across the landscape and through buildings. We experience the world and inscribe it with
Materialities of Place 19 meaning as we move through it (De Certeau 1984:91–130; Tilley 1994:27–31). Roads, pathways, and other access routes can provide indications about the ways movement was culturally prescribed in the past. Most contemporary Chacoan pilgrims arrive at the canyon by automobile. But ancient visitors to Chaco arrived on foot and entered the canyon through for- malized access routes designed by Chacoan builders to emphasize particular struc- tures or features. At least six major formal routes lead into Chaco Canyon (Kincaid 1983; Vivian 1997a, 1997b; Windes 1987, 1991). The Great North Road arrives at Pueblo Alto on North Mesa, where it converges with a number of shorter seg- ments. The Ah-Shi-Sle-Pah Road approaches Chaco Canyon from the northwest. The South Road passes into Chaco through South Gap. A second southern road segment enters through Fajada Gap. The Chacra Face Road traverses the south side of Chacra Mesa before entering the canyon at Fajada Gap. An East Road leaves Pueblo Pintado and descends into Chaco Canyon by a series of cut steps. Although evidence for a continuous West Road is more tenuous, Chaco Canyon and the Chaco River provided a natural conduit. A large cairn or shrine complex on the west end of West Mesa suggests that the river was a major access route. Chacoan builders constructed formalized access into the canyon proper by means of road segments, ramps, and staircases. In some cases these features enhanced or facilitated access over natural routes. In other cases the construction of staircases and ramps created access points across the prohibitive barriers of sandstone escarpments. Jackson’s Staircase, which connects the upper two terraces in the tributary drainage behind Chetro Ketl, is just one well-known example. A foot traveler could use the staircase to drop off the uppermost bench of North Mesa and proceed down to the canyon floor by means of a ramp. At least five other, similar staircases are near great houses in the canyon core. Road segments and prescribed pathways likely existed within Chaco Canyon as well, but centuries of environmental and cultural impact to the canyon floor have made it virtually impossible to identify them (Vivian 1997a, 1997b). Great house layouts nonetheless suggest that there were formal approaches to these buildings. In addition to visibility and movement, landscapes are experienced through the sensual, emotionally charged dimension of memory (Connerton 1989; Halbwachs 1975 [1925], 1992 [1950]). People develop a sense of place through a history of social engagement with the landscape (Altman and Low 1992). Like us, past peo- ples reconfigured and reinterpreted the more distant past, selectively remembering and forgetting people and events to serve the interests of the then-present (Alcock 2001, 2002; Bradley 2002; Bradley and Williams 1998; Van Dyke and Alcock 2003). Although in archaeological contexts it is easiest to see the top-down machinations of elite groups invoking memory to legitimate authority or consolidate identity, multiple and conflicting versions of events coexist. The past may be accessed and
20 Ruth M. Van Dyke constructed, dismantled and rebuilt. Buildings, shrines, rock art, and iconic natural features are some of the places likely to be symbolically charged in the construc- tion of social memory. Past peoples dwelt within landscapes reoccupied time and again. The juxtaposition of new and old sites or buildings creates a powerful con- nection with the past. Materials from older sites can be reused or incorporated into new constructions. Ancestors’ buildings may become residences of mythic or remembered ancestors, or they may be remodeled or demolished as a way to trans- form ancestral connections. Phenomenological investigations cannot reveal past meanings, but they can help us determine whether ancestral buildings, shrines, or other features were regarded as important. Armed with a 35 mm camera, a digital video camera, and a notebook, I made formal and informal data-gathering forays in Chaco Canyon and across the San Juan Basin, visiting great houses, great kivas, shrines, stone circles, small sites, road segments, and high places over more than a decade. I walked the last few kilome- ters of the major road segments and access routes that lead into Chaco Canyon, and I visited over fifty outlier communities across the San Juan Basin. Along the way, I asked specific questions about spatial and sensual perceptions and the ways they were directed and enhanced by Bonito style architecture. One serious problem with any phenomenological interpretation, however, is that spatial perceptions emerge not only out of bodily experiences but also out of situated cultural knowledge (Brück 2005; Fleming 1999; see also O’Donovan, this volume). Archaeologists are not Chacoans; we come with our own sets of precon- ceptions, experiences, and beliefs about the world. Phenomenological interpreta- tions run the risk of expressing nothing more than naive universalism or, worse, the archaeologist’s own culturally situated perceptions. In the Pueblo Southwest, contemporary and historic Pueblo ethnography can help mitigate this problem. For many modern Pueblo peoples, the social, ritual, and mythic worlds are expressed and represented by physical and imagined landscapes. Landscape and architecture carry symbolic meaning and, together with myth and ritual, form an interconnected whole. The social and the supernatural are expressed in topo- graphic features, paths of movement, and locations of settlements. Contemporary Pueblo people are not living ancestors; many changes and events have trans- formed the Pueblo world over the past millennium. Nevertheless, some core ideas derived from recent and historic ethnography are plainly visible at Chaco, and we can learn much about Chacoan ideology by following these threads back into the past. Overlapping ideas drawn from Puebloan ideologies and cosmographies include:
1. Symbolically laden horizontal and vertical directions converge at a center place. 2. Balance is maintained by the dualistic juxtaposition of opposites.
Materialities of Place 21 3. The past is repeatedly revisited in a pattern of cyclical renewal. 4. Individual and mythic life may be experienced as a journey.
The shared presence of these themes among contemporary Pueblo groups who speak different languages and otherwise have different ritual practices speaks to the antiquity of these belief systems among Puebloan peoples (Dozier 1960). Within the Chacoan world of a millennium ago, archaeological indicators clearly signal that similar worldviews were present (Swentzell 1992). As in contemporary pueblos, these beliefs were represented spatially, on the landscape.
Landscape and the Chacoan Worldview Elements of the Chacoan worldview are represented in archaeologically accessible material spaces, in the architecture and on the landscape. Both phenom- enological perceptions and ethnographic representations provide lenses through which to construct one interpretation of that worldview. Phenomenology encour- ages us to think about visibility, movement, and layered emotional connections to places. Ethnography indicates the importance of sacred geography, balanced dualism, journeys, and cyclical renewal. As I began my research, I considered that the Chacoan worldview would likely be concerned with one or more of these themes:
1. Sacred geography. Unusual or highly visible natural places, such as mountain peaks or springs, might have been the sites of shrines or votive deposits. 2. Visibility. A concern with visibility might have been expressed through architec- tural prominence, site positions, and line-of-sight connections between build- ings and features, and topographic landmarks. Sacred places might have been linked to Chaco through lines of sight or roads. 3. Movement. Roads, ramps, and staircases in Chaco Canyon and near outlier great houses might have enhanced or restricted access and visibility, and they might have served as routes for ritual processions. 4. Memory. References to the recent past and to more distant ancestors might have been incorporated into buildings and features. 5. Cosmography. Cosmographic ideas such as cardinal directions, balanced dual- ism, and center place might have been represented in Chacoan architecture and landscape. These ideas might have been tied to the movements of the sun and moon.
As I examined canyon and outlier architecture and site positions and moved across the landscape, I investigated these interrelated themes, answering specific questions about the relationships among perceptions, representations, and mate- rial spaces.
22 Ruth M. Van Dyke Fajada Butte at sunrise. Photo by author.
Sacred Geography and Visibility The open horizons of the San Juan Basin heighten the drama of elevated or oddly shaped, highly visible landforms, such as Huerfano Mountain, Shiprock, Bennett Peak, Ford Butte, Fajada Butte, Hosta Butte, Mount Taylor, and Cabezon Peak (figure 1.2). Mountain peaks topped with shrines mark the boundaries of the Tewa (Ortiz 1972) and Keresan (White 1960) worlds. R. Gwinn Vivian (1990:35), Alden Hayes and Thomas Windes (1975), Stephen Lekson (2002), and many others have noted the views of prominent peaks from Chaco Canyon. Hayes and Windes (1975) documented the existence of a canyon-wide shrine network and postulated that intervisibility was important across the San Juan Basin. My findings also sup- port the importance of sacred geography and visibility at Chaco. Chacoan shrines, road segments, and strategically placed sites all suggest that distinctive volcanic plugs, buttes, and mountain peaks held special significance across the Chacoan world, from the Basketmaker III through Pueblo III periods. Both Shabik’eshchee Village and Site 423, two large Basketmaker III villages in Chaco Canyon, are situated on high places (Windes 2007). By the Early Bonito phase, the ancients were systematically situating great houses and great kivas within sight of iconic landforms. Nearly all major Early Bonito settlements can see one or more
Materialities of Place 23 Hosta Butte, South Gap, and Pueblo del Arroyo from a stone circle on the north rim of Chaco Canyon, with colleague Joshua Jones. Photo by author. isolated peaks. At the outliers of Morris 33 (Morris 1939:75–85; Wilshusen and Blinman 1992), Willow Canyon (Marshall et al. 1979:91–94), Kin Bineola (Marshall et al. 1979:69–72), and Peach Springs (Powers, Gillespie, and Lekson 1983), build- ers positioned community architecture to create lines of sight to landmarks such as Shiprock, Bennett Peak, Hosta Butte, and Huerfano Mountain. Peñasco Blanco, arguably the most important Early Bonito great house (Windes and Ford 1992), sits on a high place with line-of-sight connections to Huerfano Mountain and the Basketmaker III Site 423. During the Classic Bonito phase, Chacoans transformed Peñasco Blanco into a highly visible great house. They positioned Pueblo Alto atop North Mesa with spec- tacular 360-degree visibility, and they sited Pueblo del Arroyo to align with Hosta Butte through South Gap (figure 1.3) (Judd 1959; Lekson 1986; Lekson, Windes, and McKenna 2006; Windes 1987). Road segments and other features underscore the importance of these site locations. Pueblo Alto and Pueblo del Arroyo were situated to maximize viewer impact when approaching the canyon from the north and south, respectively. A stone circle atop the north rim of Chaco Canyon aligns with Pueblo del Arroyo, South Gap, the South Road, and Hosta Butte (Hayes and Windes 1975). Roads not only emphasize the importance of certain highly vis- ible great houses, they also link Chaco Canyon with potentially significant topo- graphic features. The Great North Road heads to Kutz Canyon, while the South
24 Ruth M. Van Dyke West Mesa shrines overlooking the Chaco River and the western San Juan Basin, with the Chuska Mountains on the horizon. Photo by author.
Road points to Hosta Butte (Marshall 1997). The Ah-Shi-Sle-Pah Road extends to Black Lake, while the Chacra Face Road trends toward Cabezon Peak (Marshall and Sofaer 1988; Nials, Stein, and Roney 1987:120–126; Roney 1992; Stein 1983). Classic and Late Bonito phase shrines demarcate points of visibility along Chacra Mesa, South Mesa, and West Mesa (Hayes and Windes 1975). They connect sites in the canyon as well as outlying areas of the Chacoan world. The cairn-like shrines atop West Mesa might have facilitated communication between Chaco and outliers in the southern and western San Juan Basin (figure 1.4). Some shrines stra- tegically created line-of-sight connections with significant landforms—for example, a shrine near the southern outlier of Las Ventanas is positioned to create a visual link with Hosta Butte. Just as people at shrines or elevated great houses could see vast distances, the sites could be seen from afar by outlier dwellers and Chacoan visitors. Chaco Canyon is itself both a low and a high place—although the canyon’s interior is protected from view, Chacra Mesa is visible at great distances across the southern San Juan Basin, and West Mesa is visible from the flanks of the Chuska Mountains. Canyon great houses in both high and low locations exhibit the solid mass, verticality, contrasting backgrounds, and clear forms characteristic of architecture
Materialities of Place 25 built to be viewed, following tenets set out by Moore (1996; see also Higuchi 1983). Outlier great houses also contain most of these characteristics, but there are inter- esting differences among them. Builders clearly meant for outlier great houses to be viewed (Stein 1987; Stein and Lekson 1992). There is no such thing as a small, inconspicuous great house in a low place. However, no straightforward, inverse relationship exists between great house mass and verticality. Outlier great house builders often used more than one device to enhance visibility, including massive construction, vertical locations, and associations with dramatic landforms. Outlier great house builders frequently exploited natural topography to heighten visual drama. Red Willow (Marshall et al. 1979; Van Dyke 2003) and Skunk Springs (Marshall et al. 1979) are massive great houses atop high mesas. Kin Bineola and Peach Springs are massive great houses that are not elevated but that provide line-of-sight connections to iconic landforms. Chimney Rock (Eddy 1977; Malville 2004), Escalon (Marshall and Sofaer 1988), Guadalupe (Baker 1983; Pippin 1987), Bluff (Jalbert and Cameron 2000), Lowry (Martin 1936), and Whirlwind (Marshall et al. 1979:87–89) are relatively small great houses in elevated locations—the for- mer three are associated with distinctive, oddly shaped peaks. Andrews (Van Dyke 1999), Casamero (Harper et al. 1988; Sigleo 1981), and Las Ventanas (Marshall et al. 1979:187–193; Powers and Orcutt 2005) are associated with highly visible geologic formations. Builders positioned most outlier great houses with lines of sight to Chaco Canyon or to iconic Chacoan high places. In some cases, as at Las Ventanas and Kin Bineola, shrines facilitated these links. The different methods builders employed to enhance the visibility of outlier great houses provide clues to different kinds of community interactions and rela- tionships with Chaco. Andrews and Casamero, although neighbors, were visually isolated from one another, suggesting two independent communities. Although the Red Mesa Valley provided less opportunity to create line-of-sight connections to significant peaks, a stone circle above the Andrews great house provides a view of Hosta Butte. Casamero contains no such line-of-sight connections—together with other aspects of its architecture, this suggests that Casamero might have been a colony once or twice removed from Chaco, with less close connections to the canyon or incomplete participation in a Chacoan sacred geographic schema. Most outlier great houses loom over their surrounding communities, but Whirlwind is visible only from afar, suggesting that visitors or neighbors, rather than local residents, were the intended audience. The original settlers at Kin Bineola posi- tioned the great house looking south, through the Kim-mi-ne-oli Valley, at Hosta Butte on the horizon. Two hundred years later, Late Bonito builders bulked up Kin Bineola, perhaps competing with Chaco or perhaps attempting to confirm and solidify influence over the valley’s inhabitants. They not only built a huge structure with hundreds of rooms; they also used double walls along the exterior to increase
26 Ruth M. Van Dyke apparent mass. Nearly 200 km north of Chaco Canyon, the colonial Lowry great house provides a 360-degree view of surrounding landmarks, including the La Plata Mountains and Sleeping Ute Mountain—both with visual connections back to Chaco. Chimney Rock great house is positioned beneath Chimney Rock and Companion Rock to facilitate observation of the major lunar standstill; viewers at Chimney Rock can also see Huerfano Mountain far to the south. Although each of these great houses presents a unique situation, visibility is always a common denominator. These observations reinforce the notion that sacred geography and visibility were key components of a Chacoan worldview. They also suggest ways we might explore the different intentions of great house builders and, by extension, different kinds of outlier communities and relationships with Chaco.
Dualisms and Oppositions, Visibility and Movement Balanced dualism is an organizing principle in many pueblos, particularly among the Tewa, Tiwa, and Rio Grande Keresans (Fox 1972; Ortiz 1969; White 1942). At Chaco, architectural symmetry may be traceable back as far as Shabik’eshchee Village, and it is strongly in evidence at the northern San Juan Pueblo I period site McPhee Village (Wilshusen and Ortman 1999; Windes and Ford 1992). Dualistic symmetry is one of the guiding principles for the layout of Classic Bonito great houses and great kivas, and it can also be seen in the paired opposition between the two. The vertical great house and its subterranean great kiva counterpart fur- ther represent a type of dualism that is pervasive on the Chacoan landscape—an opposition between the visible and the hidden. Great houses such as Pueblo Bonito were highly visible, yet many interior spaces, including kivas and the oldest part of the pueblo, were restricted from general view. Tower kivas such as those found at the outliers of Kin Klizhin and Kin Ya’a consist of a series of up to four enclosed kivas vertically stacked on top of one another (Marshall et al. 1979:18). Tower kivas are a dramatic representation of bal- anced dualism. The kiva, a circular, subterranean, womb-like space, is juxtaposed with the tower, a rectangular, vertical, phallic-like space. Tower kivas symbolically balance up and down, light and dark, sky and underworld, and possibly male and female. The structures might represent the vertically stacked worlds of Ancestral Puebloan origin stories (Fewkes 1917:14–15; Marshall et al. 1979:204) (figure 1.5). An opposition between the visible and the hidden is represented at a meta- level by Chaco Canyon itself. While Chacra Mesa is visible for many kilometers across the San Juan Basin, the canyon interior is protected from view. Chacoans used road segments to emphasize this vertical-visible and subterranean-hidden juxtaposition across several dimensions. The two major road segments extending
Materialities of Place 27 The tower kiva at Kin Ya’a. Photos by author. from Chaco—the Great North Road and the South Road—balance one another in terms of direction and also in terms of the hidden (Kutz Canyon to the north) and the visible (Hosta Butte to the south). A similar hidden-visible dichotomy might be represented by the Ah-Shi-Sle-Pah Road (Black Lake) and the Chacra Face Road (Cabezon Peak), although these termini are less certain. Roads undoubtedly had cosmographic and symbolic purposes, but they also directed movement into and away from Chaco. It is easier to walk on road segments than on adjacent, unmodi- fied terrain. In the canyon and at outliers, road segments were likely used for pro- cessions. As they led travelers to sites such as Pueblo Alto (in a high place, with excellent visibility) and Pueblo del Arroyo (in a low place, with more restricted visibility), road segments prescribed movement, creating spatial experiences that emphasized the visible and the hidden. Travelers moving across the dunes experi- enced an interesting “now you see it, now you don’t” phenomenon when follow- ing prescribed approaches to Chaco along the roads. During the Late Bonito phase, builders seem to have taken this visible-hidden juxtaposition to yet another level, positioning great houses on the canyon landscape to exhibit either high visibility (New Alto, Tsin Kletsin) or invisibility (Wijiji, Casa Chiquita) (Van Dyke 2004). The formal dualisms embodied by major Chacoan roads suggest that north, northwest, and south roads into Chaco Canyon may have been formal procession routes. These roads created specific kinds of visual experiences that culminated in the dramatic spectacle of particular great houses. The visible-hidden opposition may be echoed in other arenas of the Chacoan material world, such as rock art (Kelley Hayes-Gilpin, personal communication, August 2006).
Directionality and Celestial Events Cardinal or inter-cardinal directions are important for all contemporary Pueblos, so it is not surprising that directionality has a deep history reaching back at least as far as Chaco. Archaeologists have long recognized a north-south organiz- ing principle in Chaco Canyon (Fritz 1978; Lekson 1999; Marshall 1997). Chacoan directionality may have emerged out of concerns with sacred geography, visibility, and balanced dualism. The relationship among all these concepts is well illustrated by the Great North and South roads. The celestial and subterranean directions cor- relate with visible and hidden architectural elements and are strongly represented at Chaco. Chacoans used cardinal or meridian orientations for some great kivas and great houses. East and west are less formally expressed on the Chacoan land- scape, although they might be captured by the east/west-trending canyon itself. Directionality is linked to the movements of celestial bodies. Cardinal align- ments are also astronomical alignments, bisecting the movements of the sun and stars. Like farmers everywhere, ancient Pueblo peoples were undoubtedly acutely
Materialities of Place 29 aware of the sun’s daily and seasonal peregrinations across the sky. Many Pueblo peoples—including the Hopi, Zuni, Tewa, Jemez, and Zia—follow with interest the peregrinations of the sun and moon (Harrington 1916:45–48; McCluskey 1977; Parsons 1939:212; Stevenson 1894:29; Tedlock 1983). Anna Sofaer and her col- leagues (e.g., Sinclair, Sofaer, and McCann 1987) have demonstrated that Chacoans were concerned with solstices and equinoxes. More recently (Sofaer 1997, 2007, this volume), she has argued that Chacoans marked lunar standstills as well. This latter interpretation is more controversial, yet it seems borne out by rock art, by some great house alignments, and—perhaps most compelling—by the posi- tion of the Chimney Rock outlier great house (Malville 2004). If Chacoans were keeping track of the movements of the sun and moon on the horizon, solstices, equinoxes, and standstills might have signaled occasions for people all over the basin to gather in the canyon. There might also be another juxtaposition here between accessible-visible and restricted-hidden ritual knowledge. Solstices and equinoxes are fairly easy to anticipate on an open horizon, but lunar standstills require tracking over 18.6 years. Chacoan lunar knowledge is more likely to have been the purview of specialists, and, as Sofaer (1999) notes, it served no useful agricultural purpose.
Cyclical Renewal and Social Memory Rituals involve formal practices, liturgies, and performances of ceremonies that have been undertaken multiple times in the past (Moore and Myerhoff 1977). Pueblo ritual events are cyclical, repeating at prescribed intervals. Repeatedly touch- ing the past, potentially for the purpose of constructing social memory, is a Pueblo practice that can be traced materially from the contemporary world back into the Basketmaker III period. Representational media such as rock art panels, kiva murals, masks, and pottery show signs of superposition, or repeated obliteration and redecoration (Hibben 1975:34; W. Smith 1952:19–21, 1990; Young 1988:192). Chacoan kivas were frequently remodeled and replastered as well—some have up to thirty-one layers of plaster (Kluckhohn 1939:8). At Zuni and Hopi, katsina masks were repainted and refurbished for ceremonial use (Bunzel 1932:858; Parsons 1939:341; Young 1988:192). Whiteware cylinder vessels from Chaco were repeat- edly redecorated, either by washing or scraping away the black-on-white designs or by reslipping, repainting, and refiring (Crown and Wills 2003). Periodic repetitive ritual practices create the illusion of timelessness—as it is now, so it ever was. Thus cyclical ritual is part of the larger process of social memory building. Architecture and landscape indicate that Chacoans referenced the past, both through repeated cyclical events and through more general affirmations of continuity with distant ancestors.
30 Ruth M. Van Dyke Time and again across the Basketmaker III–Pueblo III sequence, people returned to landscapes occupied by ancestors, building new sites atop or next to old ones or constructing shrines on the locations where ancestors dwelled. Cyclical ritual may have its roots in Basketmaker III solar or agricultural observances. At Chaco, cyclical renewal is expressed in repeated additions and remodelings at great houses, great kivas, and other structures. Additions to great houses in Chaco Canyon over three centuries maintained physical continuity with past events and ancestors. The founders of Peñasco Blanco, and the Classic Bonito builders of a J-shaped shrine atop Site 423, may have wished to associate themselves with Basketmaker III ances- tors. Memory lent symbolic power to the conversion of tenth-century domestic space into eleventh-century elite burial rooms at Pueblo Bonito. Mounds and berms may have been a form of constructed memory, standing in for large middens that would have signified long-term occupation. When Chacoans incorporated great kivas into the Bonito style repertoire during the eleventh century, they may have been referencing Basketmaker III oversized pit structures. During the late eleventh century and beyond, in Chaco Canyon and at outliers, ancient Puebloans built “time bridges” linking new buildings to those constructed by ancestors. Some aspects of memory at Chaco—such as great house additions, great kivas, mounds, and roads—are highly visible, but others are deliberately hidden. Barbara Mills (2008) suggests that votive deposits sealed in great kiva niches or below roof pillars are a form of memory’s counterpart—ritualized obliteration, or forgetting. The elite burial rooms at Pueblo Bonito were screened from general view. As is evident in many other aspects of Chacoan architecture and landscape, Chacoans seem to have juxtaposed both visible and hidden memory references.
Center Place All of these themes—sacred geography, visibility, balanced dualism, direction- ality, and social memory—come together to emphasize the most important idea in the ancient Pueblo worldview and the critical facet in a Chacoan ideology: the concept of Chaco Canyon as the center place. Center place figures prominently in most contemporary Pueblo migration stories, with Tewa, Keres, Hopi, and Zuni peoples each contending, for example, that they have now arrived in the center place where each was ordained to live (Dongoske et al. 1997; Ferguson and Hart 1985; Parsons 1939). The idea of the middle or center place clearly has deep roots in Pueblo history. Although from a contemporary perspective, Puebloans do not consider Chaco Canyon the proper center place, a millennium ago the ancients might well have seen it that way. For people looking outward from Chacoan high places, the canyon seemed ringed with high places—distant, storied peaks that likely held sacred significance.
Materialities of Place 31 The canyon juxtaposed high and visible landforms with low and hidden spaces. Chaco Canyon was a hidden, protected space, but Chacra Mesa was a landform highly visible across the southern and western San Juan Basin. Perhaps Chaco seemed to be the point of balance between not only visible-hidden but also direc- tional dualisms. Up and down, north and south, east and west—builders increas- ingly formalized these relationships on the surrounding landscape. Road segments balanced and connected opposing directions, high and low great houses, and vis- ible and hidden natural spaces. The canyon was a fulcrum, a point of fixity halfway between these geographic opposites. Perhaps time itself revolved around Chaco. Solar and lunar observations lent weight to the concept of Chaco Canyon as the center of the world, as architecture and rock art marked the ways the sun and moon seemed to revolve around the canyon (Sofaer 1999). The canyon was charged with the memory of Basketmaker ancestors and the tangible, centuries-old evidence of their presence. The repeated cyclical celebration of rituals and traditions would have created a sense of continu- ity with the past and the future. Chaco Canyon seemed to be the place at which all these ideas intersected, the nexus to which all directions pointed. Perhaps Early Bonito ceremonial gatherings blossomed in Chaco in part because of the ways the canyon’s natural topographic properties fit with elements of an ancient Pueblo worldview. By the Classic Bonito phase, Chacoan builders and participants thought of the canyon as the center place, the proper place in which to undertake ceremo- nies that likely served in part to keep the world in balance.
A Chacoan Ideology From a reflexive, bodily engaged perspective, Chacoan architecture and land- scape provide windows into the major social and cosmographic beliefs shared by ancient Puebloans during the Bonito phases. But the point of this exercise is not only to attempt to get at past meanings; it is also to look at power relationships at Chaco, to understand why, and for whom, Chacoans constructed monumental landscapes. Chacoan beliefs revolve around the concept of center place and likely formed the corpus of a Chacoan ideology. Anthropologists may use various defi- nitions of ideology (e.g., Eagleton 1991:1–31; Geuss 1981:4–44; Weber 1947:115– 121). Here I follow Karl Marx and Friedrich Engels (1939) to consider ideology to encompass shared ideas, beliefs, and values that assist in the promotion and legitimation of the interests of some groups and not others, but I diverge from the notion that ideology is wielded as an obfuscatory mechanism by dominant groups (Althusser 1969, 1971; Habermas 1976). Ideology works because some elements of both dominant and subordinate groups’ ideologies are shared. Subjects are not dupes, but they consensually participate in unequal social and political situations
32 Ruth M. Van Dyke because they resonate strongly with ideas shared by the dominant group (McGuire and Wurst 2003). If Chacoans and participating peoples from across the greater San Juan Basin all shared the belief that Chaco Canyon was the center place, the canyon would have clearly been an important and appropriate location in which to conduct ritu- als necessary to ancient life. The purposes of these rituals may have been to keep the world in balance and to ensure rainfall and agricultural productivity. Great houses and great kivas were likely settings for these ceremonies, and the build- ings housed ritual paraphernalia when not in use. Great house dwellers—descen- dants of the first settlers at canyon great houses—likely played key parts in the public elements of Chacoan rituals. They may also have maintained ceremonial secrets known only to a few but necessary for proper ritual performance. One of the major ways ideologies are perpetuated is through the naturalization of beliefs so they appear self-evident. By the Classic Bonito phase, it must have seemed natu- ral and inevitable that great house leaders at the center place should be accorded higher status than other Puebloans. Aesthetic and emotionally charged practices such as ritual are powerful ven- ues for the development and support of ideologies (Bell 1997; Bloch 1989; Kelly and Kaplan 1990). The Chacoan landscape carried emotional resonance for ancient Puebloans that dated back to Basketmaker III times. Emotional connections to place may have been part of the reason Early Bonito peoples settled in Chaco, amid sacred landmarks and ancestral villages. Ritual gatherings in the canyon would have heightened the aesthetic resonance of the place. As social norms and categories are suffused with emotion, meaning is “condensed” (Turner 1967:29), and the distinctions between the poetic and the political are blurred (Geertz 1980). Following Walter Benjamin, Adam T. Smith (2000) terms this process “rendering the political aesthetic.” When people gathered in the canyon, their aesthetic expe- riences in that place confirmed and reinforced a Chacoan ideology, encouraging them to support the ritual and the social order despite increasingly unequal access to social prestige and resources. By the final decades of the eleventh century, those who orchestrated and pre- sided over ritual events in Chaco Canyon derived great status and prestige from their positions. Leaders were living in great houses, were buried in great houses, and were directing major building projects. They were better nourished and taller than their small-house neighbors (Akins 1986, 2003). Leaders may have overseen canyon agricultural production, but they likely did not go hungry in years of poor production. Other Ancestral Puebloans lived and farmed at small houses and at outliers. Outlier dwellers brought many things to Chaco—corn (Benson et al. 2003), turquoise (Mathien 2001), wood (Durand et al. 1999; English et al. 2001), pottery (Shepard 1954; Toll 1984, 1985), lithics (Cameron 1984, 2001; Ward, this
Materialities of Place 33 volume), labor (Lekson, Windes, and McKenna 2006), and, ultimately, devotion (Renfrew 2001). The canyon’s natural topography encouraged visitors to think of Chaco as the center place. As the people most closely associated with the great houses, Chacoan lead- ers likely directed monumental construction, including new great houses and additions, great kivas, earthworks, and roads. Skilled, experienced engineers and masons may have carried out the building designs, but Chacoan leaders likely had a strong hand in their creation. On multiple, intersecting, overlapping levels, Classic Bonito architecture and landscape celebrate the ancient Pueblo worldview and emphasize Chaco Canyon as center place. These ideas were not merely symbolized by the buildings. Rather, approaches to Chaco, approaches to great houses, lines of sight, and the positioning of Bonito style structures all worked together to cre- ate a specific spatial experience for human bodies moving through this landscape. Traveling to and through Chaco would have been an aesthetically and emotionally powerful journey for ancient Puebloans. As canyon dwellers and visitors viewed and moved through Chacoan spaces, they reciprocally confirmed ideas about the nature of the world and their place in it and willingly transformed themselves into subjects. As they manipulated Chacoan spaces, leaders may have sought merely to celebrate, not to aggrandize. But the ultimate effect was to legitimate leaders’ prestige and authority and to encourage followers to continue to contribute their labor and resources. In this way, at Chaco the aesthetic became political. Chacoan architects created an aesthetic spatial experience for visitors that resonated with core Pueblo ideas. To experience the Classic Chacoan landscape was to connect with the themes of center place, directionality, visibility, dualism, and memory in a spatial and experiential sense. A Chacoan ideology legitimated the authority and prestige held by priestly elites. It also provided a sense of shared purpose and identity among the disparate groups of outlier dwellers who came to the canyon to participate in or observe ritual events and ended up contributing their labor, resources, bodies, and energy to the greater glory of Chaco. A Chacoan ideology created a sense of shared purpose and identity among the disparate groups of visitors and legitimated the priestly leaders’ authority and prestige. The most effective political leaders are those who can win the “hearts and minds,” or emotional loyalties, of their subjects. To be at Chaco on high holy days must have been a grand and glorious thing. When people came to Chaco to participate in or observe ceremonies, their emotionally charged, spatially complex experiences confirmed that Chaco was the center of space and time, the intersec- tion of opposing dimensions, a highly appropriate place in which to conduct the rituals necessary to keep the world in balance and to ensure continued agricultural success. In this way, the Chacoan landscape provides us with the material means for understanding the transformation of ancient farmers into Chacoan subjects.
34 Ruth M. Van Dyke Because landscapes encompass the intersection of the social, the emotional, and the material, they can provide archaeologists with a useful window into the workings of ideology. Lived spatial experiences help to affirm and challenge ideas about the world and our place in it. As a case study, Chaco illustrates intersec- tions among landscape, spatial experience, sociopolitical complexity, and ideology. Landscapes both create and reflect ideas about ourselves and our societies, our worldviews, and our ideologies. All human experience is spatialized, and some aspects of Chacoan life may have been deliberately and consciously so. For many contemporary Puebloans, there are interrelated, overlapping spatial dimensions to society, ritual, cosmography, and politics. These ideas likely have a deep his- tory. As Chacoans constructed monumental buildings and positioned structures and features to engage with the natural topography, they communicated aspects of a Chacoan ideology. The Chacoan landscape is laden with meaning, and although we cannot access ancient meanings at a specific level, we can trace the large-scale outlines of a Chacoan worldview. The Chacoan landscape was created to be experienced. In this study I com- bined phenomenological research with Pueblo ethnography to create an interpre- tive understanding of the ways Chacoans perceived and represented landscape. Today, Native Americans, artists, scientists, archaeologists, and tourists are moved in different yet overlapping ways by the Chacoan landscape. As this is true for mod- ern visitors to the canyon, how much more so for the ancient Chacoans, for whom and by whom the canyon architecture, with its multilayered uses and meanings, was constructed?
Acknowledgments. This chapter represents an abbreviated version of a longer work entitled The Chaco Experience: Landscape and Ideology at the Center Place, pub- lished in 2007 by the School of Advanced Research Press, Santa Fe. My thanks to Bill Walker and Nieves Zedeño for inviting me to participate in the Tenth Southwest Symposium. I am grateful to many institutions and agencies that pro- vided financial or other support for the research presented here, especially the Amerind Foundation, Chaco Culture National Historic Park, Colorado College (including the Benezet Fund, the Jackson Fund, the Social Sciences Division, and the Department of Anthropology), the National Endowment for the Humanities, the School of American Research, and the Navajo Nation. Space precludes me men- tioning by name all the helpful individuals who have contributed expertise, com- mentary, or other support, but I especially thank Russ and Tracy Bodnar, Dabney Ford, Rich Friedman, Sarah Herr, Joshua Jones, Steve Lekson, Ron Maldonado, Mike Marshall, Randy McGuire, Adam Smith, Anna Sofaer, John Stein, Julian
Materialities of Place 35 Thomas, Wolky Toll, Phil and Judy Tuwaletstiwa, Gwinn Vivian, and Tom Windes. Any errors or misunderstandings remain my responsibility.
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48 Ruth M. Van Dyke Christine G. Ward
C h a p t e r 2
Lithic Quarries as Places
Raw materials for the flaked stone artifacts found in the archaeological record are strewn across the landscape according to geologic processes of development and exposure. The reason some raw materials are selected over others, however, is often assumed to be a result of the practical and functional values we fix on those materials, such as workability or efficiency in acquisition. Obsidian, for example, has often been seen in archaeological contexts as having desirable qualities, but that desirability is often tied to economic purposes (Torrence 1986). More recently, researchers have noted aspects of the life histories of some chipped stone artifacts that suggest values ascribed not according to workability or efficiency in acquisi- tion but instead to what the raw materials themselves might represent—tradition of use, intrinsic characteristics such as color or texture, or the resource area’s loca- tion on the landscape (Bradley 2000; Cobb 2000; Whittle 1995). Many traditional views of material culture define it passively, with material culture generally encompassing functional items—things needed for survival— without reference to other roles or embedded meanings. Such a view separates perceptions of the land from active individuals, social lives, and decision making (Dobres 2000). If by contrast—and as considered in this chapter—material cul- ture is viewed as experiential, then there may exist embedded meanings or other
49 roles for items of material culture beyond the need for survival. As a result of such a view, decisions regarding materials for use do not have to be made exclu- sively on the basis of rationality, energy expenditure, or expedience. Decisions are made by individuals and groups negotiating and renegotiating social rela- tions, thus acknowledging an active and recursive relationship among people, landscape, and material culture (e.g., Dobres 2000). Such active views of mate- rial culture merely emphasize more than economy as the reason for those views’ acquisition, manufacture, and use. Economy still needs to be considered, but a more expansive and experiential view more readily allows for economy as not the only or even necessarily the primary reason for an object’s presence in the archaeological record. In this chapter I suggest that through long histories of use as resource areas, natural geologic features became means of referencing the past during the Chaco (AD 900–1150) and post-Chaco (post–AD 1150) eras in the northern Southwest (e.g., Van Dyke 2003). Some chipped stone raw materials may have been acquired for reasons of value tied to the places from which they were obtained and the historical role those places played in Ancestral Puebloan peoples’ past. Over a long period, the meanings of these landscape features were renegotiated from their being important as resource areas to their being significant for their own histories and roles in people’s lives. The argument presented here is based on an analysis of chipped stone artifacts recovered from community great houses across the north- ern Southwest that date to the Chaco and post-Chaco eras (Ward 2004) and is pred- icated on the recognition of lithic raw materials as originating in particular places on the landscape. I begin with a discussion of the recognition of natural places as phenomena of archaeological import that can be recognized through landscape approaches. I use the concept “pieces of places” (Bradley 2000) to describe artifacts found in archaeological contexts but removed from their place of origin for the purpose of commemorating or at least recognizing the significance of those places on the cultural landscape.
Natural Features as Part of the Cultural Landscape Landscapes that consist of the surroundings (near and far) with which we interact include both built and natural, unaltered features (Basso 1996a; Bradley 2000; Ucko 1994). Archaeologically, features of the built landscape are far easier to recognize—they range from a small construction like a rock cairn to a larger one such as a monument. But as P. J. Ucko (1994:xix) has noted, many areas thought significant by people today are unaltered, either by construction or activities (also see Hirsch 1995). Such significant unaltered places may include rivers, springs, mountains, forests, caves, and resource areas.
50 Christine G. Ward Richard Bradley (2000:35) has argued that natural places, regardless of difficul- ties with their identification, “have an archaeology because they acquired a sig- nificance in the minds of people in the past” (emphasis in original). In some cases, such places might be recognizable on the basis of cultural remains found there (e.g., rock art or deposits of artifacts or animal bones), but in other cases these places may not be directly visible (Knapp and Ashmore 1999; Ucko 1994). These otherwise invisible places may also be recognized, however, on the basis of art- work or objects found elsewhere that emphasize their importance (Bradley 2000). Bradley (2000) references artwork that might reflect significant mountain peaks, as well as materials removed from important natural places and deposited elsewhere. The objects removed might include building stones or unmodified stones found in archaeological contexts far from the source areas. He further suggests (2000:90) that these “pieces of places” might have distinctive appearances that may have informed people of their points of origin (also see Scarre 2002:238). The recognition of such important places on the landscape may be made through distinctive objects that had origins there but that were removed, then consumed and deposited elsewhere in commemoration of those places. Distinctive characteristics that might lead to rec- ognition of these places include the cortex (De Grooth 1996), color (Cooney 2002), and texture and workability (McElrath and Emerson 2000) of a raw material.
Landscapes and Memory in the Chacoan Southwest Ruth Van Dyke (2003) has argued that places were used in Chacoan society as means of invoking social memory through connections to the past. The argument is provocative, as she more generally cites examples from accounts of present-day Puebloan populations that reference their pasts (Van Dyke 2003:181): oral tales of migrations materially referenced through rock art and various constructions, building stones that remind people of specific events, and the sipapu included as a traditional kiva feature that refers to Puebloan origin myths. In Chaco Canyon, New Mexico, during the years AD 900–1150, constructed landscapes were patterned and repeated. Great houses that reference the cardi- nal directions, the use of astronomical alignments in their construction (Sofaer 1997), roads with symbolic meaning (Roney 1992), and rock art atop prominent landforms (Sofaer, Sinclair, and Doggett 1982) are indicative of the Chaco Canyon cultural landscape. Van Dyke (2003:194) cites various examples of such built cul- tural landscape features in Chaco Canyon and the larger Chaco world—includ- ing great houses, berms, roads, and great kivas—as referencing the past. Great houses, through generations of additions, retain reference to their original form; berms memorialize a tradition of depositing trash in particular locations; great kivas revive a form originated hundreds of years earlier; and roads provide a literal
Procurement and Landscape 51 and figurative connection to the past and other places outside the “center place.” These references were, among other things, an invocation of social continuity to consolidate community identity (Van Dyke 2003). While these same elements of a constructed landscape are found at Chacoan great house communities outside Chaco Canyon, few elements of a natural, unal- tered landscape have been identified across the larger Chacoan northern Southwest. Prominent mountains and mesas are visible from the canyon, from roads leading into it, and from some of the hundreds of Chacoan community great houses out- side the canyon—and some of these features do have constructed landmarks atop them—but tangible evidence of how these features may have been perceived has remained elusive. Catherine Cameron’s (1997, 2001) analysis of chipped stone arti- facts from excavations at great houses and small habitation sites in Chaco Canyon, however, appears to offer one avenue for identifying significant, largely unaltered aspects of a Chacoan cultural landscape.
Chipped Stone in Chaco Canyon . . . In her analysis of chipped stone artifacts recovered from sixteen sites in Chaco Canyon excavated during the National Park Service’s Chaco Research Project, Cameron (1997, 2001) noted, among many other things, that five primary exotic raw materials were represented in the collections. These exotic materials—origi- nating in places well outside the canyon—represented 30 percent or so of the lithic assemblage from the period AD 1020–1220 (the late Chaco to post-Chaco eras). These exotic materials were generally subject to the same broadly expedient lithic technology as the locally available splintery silicified wood and quartzite cobbles; throughout their life histories they were not, for the most part, treated in any spe- cial way in spite of their more distant origins. Four of the five exotic materials Cameron (1997, 2001) identified in the Chaco Canyon chipped stone assemblages have also been identified in assemblages from Chacoan community great houses outside Chaco Canyon (Ward 2004). All four of these materials—Narbona Pass, Brushy Basin, and yellow-brown spotted cherts and Jemez Mountains obsidian—have distinctive appearances and intrinsic charac- teristics that make them relatively easy to identify in the present and likely also in the past. Each of these materials is briefly discussed next; the discussions include descriptions of the materials, history of use, identifying characteristics, and pat- terns Cameron (1997, 2001) noted in their use, distribution, and deposition in Chaco Canyon archaeological contexts. They are presented in order of their fre- quency within the Chaco Canyon assemblages. Narbona (Washington) Pass chert, from the Chuska Mountains about 70 km west of Chaco Canyon, occurs in a variety of colors ranging from white, pale
52 Christine G. Ward Brushy Basin chert, one of the lithic raw materials discussed in this chapter. blue, and dark gray to several shades of pink (Banks 1990:63). It has very regu- lar breakage patterns and is considered of a high quality for flintknapping. It has a very fine texture, and the combination of color and texture makes it very dis- tinctive. Narbona Pass chert is sometimes referred to as “Paleo-pink,” in recogni- tion of its deep history of use in the Southwest and adjacent regions (Anderson 1999). In Chaco Canyon its greatest frequency occurred during the Chaco era, AD 1020–1120. At that point it comprised over 20 percent of all chipped stone material (Cameron 1997:545). During all the periods in which it was imported to the can- yon, it appears to have arrived as bulk raw material. In spite of its relatively distant origin, it was rarely manufactured into formal tools. Brushy Basin chert is found in association with certain Morrison Formation outcrops in the Four Corners region (figure 2.1). Cameron (1997) considers it in combination with other Morrison Formation materials. As a whole, these materi- als are found relatively infrequently in the Chaco Canyon assemblages, reaching a peak of just 4.3 percent of the raw materials during the period AD 1020–1120. As this category includes five different “types” of raw materials, they do show some variability. However, Brushy Basin chert in particular was found in the canyon pri- marily as debitage, not tools. Brushy Basin chert is actually “a hardened volcanic ash . . . with extreme uniformity of texture” (Gerhardt 2001:2) and a waxy luster. Although its color ranges widely, including various shades of chocolate brown, gray, butterscotch, and green, its luster and texture make it distinctive. It has few
Procurement and Landscape 53 inclusions or regular breakage patterns and is thus considered of a high quality for flintknapping. In Chaco Canyon, all obsidian sources combined formed the third most fre- quent of the exotic materials, peaking early on at 7.6 percent during the AD 600s and later at 7.3 percent from AD 1120 to 1220 (Cameron 1997:546). Among the obsidian sources, Jemez obsidian was by far the most frequent, comprising over 50 percent of all obsidian artifacts and peaking in frequency at 6.5 percent of all chipped stone artifacts during AD 1120–1220. The Jemez Mountains, in which several chemically distinct types of obsidian are found, are in north-central New Mexico northwest of Santa Fe. Jemez obsidian has been found widely in archaeo- logical contexts, from the Southwest to the Plains and from contexts dating to the entire prehispanic era (Baugh and Nelson 1987). While likely not visually distinc- tive from other southwestern obsidian sources, obsidian itself is extremely distinc- tive, and the Jemez Mountains are arguably the most frequently exploited obsidian sources in the northern Southwest. Very high-quality obsidian can be obtained from any of the three distinct sources, and it may occur as nodules that have good flintknapping qualities. Yellow-brown spotted chert originates somewhere in the Zuni Mountains/Red Mesa Valley vicinity southwest of Chaco Canyon (LeTourneau 1997). It is “a but- terscotch, yellow-brown chert with black, dendritic inclusions” (Cameron 2001:83) and, like the other materials, is distinctive in both color and texture (LeTourneau 1997). In the Chaco Canyon assemblages, yellow-brown spotted chert reached its peak frequencies of 3.0 and 2.4 percent during the post-Chaco eras AD 1120–1220 and 1220–1320, respectively. It, too, has a deep history of use in the prehispanic Southwest from the Paleoindian through Pueblo periods, particularly in areas close to Chaco Canyon. The patterns Cameron (1997, 2001) identified among these material types with regard to acquisition, production, use, and deposition led her to suggest that “[t]he act of procuring distant material such as obsidian may, at times, have been as important as the objects that were produced from it” (Cameron 2001:98). While this statement applies specifically to the obsidian in the assemblages, she noted patterns regarding other exotic materials that might also call for use of this observation.
. . . and Across the Chaco World There are, as mentioned, analogous situations with regard to the built envi- ronment within Chaco Canyon and the one outside the canyon associated with Chacoan community great houses; the similarities are often obvious and fre- quently repeated. However, given the limited number of great house excavations
54 Christine G. Ward Map of the northern Southwest, showing community great houses discussed in this study, Chaco Canyon, and approximate origination points for lithic raw materials (adapted from Ward 2004: figure 1.2). outside the canyon, analogous types and quantities of artifacts have been difficult to identify. There has, however, been a renewed focus on research at community great houses across the northern Southwest (e.g., various chapters in Kantner and Mahoney 2000), and this interest has presented opportunities to better evaluate similarities in chipped stone artifact patterns between Chaco Canyon and these outlier community great houses that might indicate social, economic, and political cohesiveness with the Chaco world. The study presented next is based on extensive analyses of chipped stone assemblages from seven community great houses located across the Chaco world, dating to both the Chaco (AD 900–1150) and post-Chaco eras (figure 2.2). Great houses that date predominantly, if not entirely, to the Chaco era include Escalante
Procurement and Landscape 55 Ruin and Chimney Rock in southwestern Colorado and Navajo Springs in north- eastern Arizona. Post–Chaco era community great houses included in the study are Crumbled House and Raton Well in northwestern New Mexico, and those that overlap the two eras in construction and use include the Bluff great house in southeastern Utah and Lake Valley in northwestern New Mexico. Summaries of the chipped stone analyses from these community great houses—including details of the chipped stone assemblages from each, caveats regarding possible sampling biases, and problems with some datasets—and extensive conclusions based on anal- yses of assemblages are presented elsewhere (Ward 2004). Here, I restrict my review of the data and analyses to a few important aspects of the full results that are rele- vant to interpretations relating to perceptions of landscape in the Chacoan world. None of the Chaco Canyon exotic materials is common at any of the com- munity great houses. Exotic materials are represented much less frequently in the community great house assemblages than they are in the Chaco Canyon assem- blages, but the patterns of acquisition, production, and use of these materials are broadly comparable. Determining specific contexts of deposition is a distinct problem among the chipped stone assemblages at several of the community great houses (see Ward 2004 for a complete discussion); thus discard is not considered in this study. As a group, the four exotic materials considered here were identi- fied in the lithic assemblages from five of the community great houses. None was identified in the assemblages from Chimney Rock Pueblo or Raton Well, a point to which I return later. First, I summarize the patterns of acquisition, production, and use for each of the four raw materials. Narbona Pass chert was identified in the chipped stone assemblages from four of the community great houses. Narbona Pass chert is naturally distributed toward the top of the Chuska Mountains, on the lower slope of which lies the commu- nity great house, Crumbled House. Nearly 20 percent of the lithic assemblage from Crumbled House was identified as Narbona Pass chert. This material was also identified in the assemblages from the Bluff great house, Navajo Springs, and Lake Valley. In these three assemblages, it was far less frequent than at Crumbled House, representing less than 0.1 percent of raw materials identified in any of these assemblages. It was not identified in the chipped stone assemblages from Raton Well, Chimney Rock Pueblo, or Escalante Ruin. There is little direct evi- dence that Narbona Pass chert was manufactured into formal tools at any of the community great houses, and it appears to have been obtained in the form of debitage or small chunks but likely not as formal tools. At Crumbled House, two biface thinning flakes suggest that some formal tool manufacture occurred, but no bifaces were identified. At Lake Valley, one of the eleven artifacts was a broken biface. With these few exceptions, most of these artifacts were various types of unmodified debitage.
56 Christine G. Ward Narbona Pass chert is most frequent in the assemblage from Crumbled House, a community great house dating to the post-Chaco era, but it was also identified at one dating almost exclusively to the Chaco era (Navajo Springs; Warburton 1991) and two that have both Chaco and post–Chaco era occupations—the Bluff great house (Cameron 2002) and Lake Valley (Marshall et al. 1979). It was not identi- fied at two sites having evidence almost exclusively for Chaco era occupations— Chimney Rock Pueblo (Eddy 1977) and Escalante Ruin (Hallasi 1979). Brushy Basin chert was identified exclusively in the assemblage from the Bluff great house. It is readily available from certain Morrison Formation exposures within approximately 20–25 km of the Bluff great house and represents almost 20 percent of the chipped stone assemblage. While 20–25 km is not a great distance to travel for good-quality raw materials, abundant workable, even good-quality mate- rials are available in the immediate vicinity of the great house. In fact, unmodi- fied chert nodules are still present among the gravels strewn across the elevated landform on which the site lies (Ward 2004). Early-stage and middle-stage bifaces and many cores are represented among the Brushy Basin artifacts, but not in fre- quencies remarkably different from those among the various locally available chert materials. There are also numerous flakes, flake fragments, and broken flakes of this material modified for apparent expedient use. Modified pieces of Brushy Basin chert debitage are present in almost the exact same frequency as modified debitage for the entire chipped stone assemblage from the Bluff great house. Finally, Brushy Basin chert artifacts were recovered from contexts dating to both the Chaco and post-Chaco eras and were discarded in depositional contexts very comparable to those for artifacts made from most other materials represented in the assemblage. All the obsidian artifacts in these assemblages were derived from sources in the Jemez Mountains. Just six obsidian artifacts were identified in the chipped stone assemblages from four of the assemblages—those from the Bluff great house, Crumbled House, Lake Valley, and Navajo Springs (Shackley 2003). By far the majority of obsidian artifacts were from Escalante Ruin, representing almost 10 percent (92 artifacts) of the total chipped stone assemblage from that site. Escalante Ruin obsidian was identified as coming from both Valle Grande and Cerro Toledo deposits in the Jemez Mountains, areas from which high-quality materials can be obtained. While the relatively high frequency of Jemez Mountain obsidian at Escalante Ruin is surprising based on distance to source, it is not surprising given that Escalante Ruin is one of two community great houses in the sample thought to be most similar to the great houses at Chaco Canyon. Escalante Ruin was constructed and used almost exclusively during the Chaco era. It has been described as “Chaco- style” (Hallasi 1979) and has been interpreted as having served as a “procurement outlier” for the occupants-users of Chaco Canyon (Kane 1993). The obsidian raw
Procurement and Landscape 57 material represented in the Escalante collection, however, is of amazingly poor quality—large, devitrified spherulites are present throughout much of the mate- rial (Shackley 2003), disrupting its workability. Good-quality material is available in the Jemez Mountains at both the Valle Grande and Cerro Toledo source areas (Baugh and Nelson 1987; Shackley 2003), but much of the Escalante material has the spherulites, and irregular breakage is common among these artifacts. Most of the obsidian appears likely to have been obtained in the form of raw material, not finished or even partially finished formal tools, although this is dif- ficult to discern for community great house assemblages from which just one or two obsidian artifacts were recovered. The Escalante assemblage contains a wide variety of artifact types: unmodified debitage, modified debitage, a core, a uniface, and three bifaces. Unmodified and modified debitage comprises by far the majority of the obsidian artifacts. This, combined with the quantity, suggests that the mate- rial was obtained as raw material, not finished tools. Finally, yellow-brown spotted chert was the exotic material least frequently identified in the community great house assemblages. Just six artifacts were identi- fied from four of the assemblages: the Bluff great house, Crumbled House, Lake Valley, and Navajo Springs. These artifacts are either unmodified or modified deb- itage; no formal tools are represented.
Objects Out of Place A notable aspect of the use of non-local materials at the community great houses outside Chaco Canyon is that their frequency of occurrence at a great house appears to have little or no correlation with three obvious explanations for their presence, all of which are tied to economic purposes. First, their frequencies do not necessarily correlate with distance from source. Second, their frequencies also do not necessarily correlate with geographic distance from Chaco Canyon. Third, they do not necessarily correlate with community great houses, such as Chimney Rock, generally thought to have very close ties—both socially and tem- porally—to Chaco Canyon. In short, economic value can be argued against for several reasons. Economy is a less likely explanation based on the low quantities of these materials at any single community great house—usually just a half-dozen or so objects, and relatively low percentages of the total assemblages in all cases. The pattern Cameron (1997, 2001) noted for Chaco Canyon, where exotic materials were not used to produce specific objects, holds for these same materials at com- munity great houses elsewhere. The lack of these exotic materials at Chimney Rock Pueblo and Raton Well helps demonstrate these points. The chipped stone assemblage from Chimney Rock Pueblo is small, but the complete lack of exotic lithic raw materials like those
58 Christine G. Ward found at Chaco Canyon great houses is unexpected. Chimney Rock Pueblo, dating from AD 1076 to 1125—entirely contemporaneous with the Chaco era—has an architectural appearance and site layout so similar to those at Chaco Canyon great houses that some have argued it was a “site unit intrusion” (Eddy 1977; Kane 1993), constructed by Chaco Canyon great house builders for their use. The lack of exotic raw materials at Raton Well is perhaps surprising as well, but for different reasons. Raton Well, while apparently dating to the post-Chaco era, is located between Chaco Canyon to its west and the Jemez Mountains to its east. Obsidian, as men- tioned, peaked in frequency at sites in Chaco Canyon during the post-Chaco era, and a lack of obsidian at this community great house suggests that the materials were not distributed to the canyon great houses through this conveniently located site. The lack of the four exotic materials at these two community great houses in particular is intriguing because the sites are either socially (Chimney Rock Pueblo) or geographically (Raton Well) close to Chaco Canyon. Other patterns that point to reasons other than the obvious can also be dis- cerned from the data presented here. For example, three of the materials are pres- ent in relatively large quantities at three of the great houses: Narbona Pass chert represents almost 20 percent of the lithic assemblage at Crumbled House, Brushy Basin chert represents almost 20 percent of the assemblage from the Bluff great house, and Jemez Mountain obsidian comprises about 10 percent of the assem- blage from Escalante Ruin. In the case of Crumbled House and the Bluff great house, high frequencies are related to distance from source. Both are within 20 km or so of source locations for these materials. So, although both of these commu- nity great houses are relatively close to the respective source areas for the materi- als, they are not close enough to have made it easy to transport substantial quanti- ties of raw materials across the landscape. Adequate raw materials for an expedient technology are located in the vicinities of both sites. At Escalante Ruin, where Jemez Mountain obsidian is frequent in the assem- blage, the material is of very low quality. High-quality material can be obtained at the same source areas from which most of the materials originated. Since the material was obtained in raw material form, it was likely acquired directly from the source area. Testing a raw material for quality prior to removing it to distant locales might be assumed to be a part of this process, but it likely did not happen in this case. A possible explanation might be that quality was unimportant for the purposes of obtaining the material. Another major aspect of these data is the general expedience with which the materials were treated with regard to production. Few formal tools are represented among any of the exotic materials. Two or three biface fragments are present, but there is nothing unusual. In fact, the ratio of formal tools to debitage and cores, for example, is very comparable to that of local materials, such as decent-quality
Procurement and Landscape 59 local cherts, basalts, and quartzites (see Ward 2004 for a more detailed discussion of this issue). In all, few aspects of the lithic analyses data indicate sharp differences between the exotic materials and those available in the immediate or close vicini- ties of the community great houses. The single aspect of these data that stands out is the fact that exotics were generally treated in a manner comparable to local materials. This is very similar to the pattern Cameron (1997, 2001) noted for the lithic assemblage from Chaco Canyon. While not conclusive, these data suggest that convenience of source loca- tion, redistribution by elite individuals at Chaco Canyon, and close social ties had nothing to do with the frequency of exotics at community great houses.
Lithic Objects as “Pieces of Places” The places from which these materials originated may instead be a reason for their apparent value, and certain distinctive and intrinsic qualities of these four materials make them recognizable as having originated in specific locales. These materials are extremely distinctive—they can all, with the exception of the particu- lar type of obsidian, be identified specifically and immediately by a familiar eye on the basis of color, appearance, and texture. Some researchers (e.g., McElrath and Emerson 2000) have characterized these distinctive identifying qualities as valid means of classifying lithic materials in the present and likely also as means by which social actors identified and valued lithic materials in the prehispanic past. Color in particular has been singled out as an aid in identification, both in the present and in the past (Cooney 2002; Morrow, Elam, and Glascock 1992; Whittle 1995); more important, it may have been used to distinguish between local and non-local materials or products (e.g., Scarre 2002). All of the materials discussed here have distinctive coloring. In the case of Brushy Basin and Narbona Pass cherts, the colors range significantly, but other intrinsic characteristics such as texture and luster set them apart from other, similarly colored materials. In the case of obsid- ian, the distinctive spherulites in the artifacts from Escalante Ruin may make those objects recognizable as to source location and thus to a place on the landscape. What I have referred to as poor quality could in fact be what gave the obsidian “value”—something that might have made the material recognizable as being from a specific place. Three of the four materials discussed here, and identified relatively consis- tently among the lithic assemblages from community great houses, originate in very specific locations on the landscape: the Zuni, Chuska, and Jemez Mountains. The fourth, Brushy Basin chert, is found across a widespread swath of the north- ern Southwest but is particularly common in the Four Corners region. However, just as the entire Jemez Mountains might be indicated by a piece of obsidian from
60 Christine G. Ward any one of the three chemically distinct source areas, it may not have been impor- tant to indicate a specific source for a particular piece of Brushy Basin chert. All four materials have a deep history of use throughout the prehispanic past in the Southwest and adjacent regions, and the locations at which each of the materi- als could be found were likely well-known. This long history of collecting materials from these locations constituted daily practice, and through such a routine, these procurement locales became important for their roles in the histories of the people themselves. Through daily practice, space—including, for example, an important procurement locale—is turned into place and imbued with meaning (e.g., Dobres 2000). That meaning may be renegotiated through time, so that a place initially made important by fulfilling a daily economic function later becomes significant and worthy of commemoration through that history of use. At that point, as its meaning is altered, little evidence of the original meaning may remain. One would not actually have to obtain large quantities of the material or even produce any- thing from it. Acquiring the material as a piece of that particular place is all that is necessary.
Conclusion The exotic materials discussed in this chapter are found across a wide swath of the northern Southwest. While the argument presented here may extend outside the Chacoan world of community great houses, I believe it is most appropriate—at least at the present stage of research—with regard to the Chaco world, given that the invoking of social memory in the constructed landscape is particularly evi- dent in the Chaco and post-Chaco eras in the northern Southwest. I suggest that the repeated patterns of the constructed landscape both inside and outside Chaco Canyon, which Van Dyke (2003) argues invoke the past of Ancestral Puebloan populations, can be seen as well through the repeated and curious use of these particular raw materials as pieces of the places from which they were obtained. Cameron (1997, 2001) first noted the pattern in the lithic assemblages from Chaco Canyon. She recognized that “[t]he act of procuring distant material such as obsidian may, at times, have been as important as the objects that were pro- duced from it” (Cameron 2001:98). This is a profound observation that I believe is reflected as well in the data from community great house lithic assemblages outside Chaco Canyon. The materials are distinctive in color and texture, and these intrinsic characteristics, as various researchers have noted (Bradley 2000; Cooney 2002; De Grooth 1996; McElrath and Emerson 2000; Scarre 2002), were likely as identifiable in the past as we find them to be today. While we may often disregard such intrinsic characteristics as being about aesthetics and not being characteris- tics—such as workability or ease of acquisition—that would have been important
Procurement and Landscape 61 in the past, it might be worth emphasizing such characteristics more rather than less. There were likely many reasons for valuing materials, and these values may have changed significantly over time in people’s minds. We may not always be able to identify these values, but an active view of material culture allows us to bet- ter explore the complex web of relations among material culture, people, and the landscape.
Acknowledgments. Several people assisted me as I pursued this research project. Cathy Cameron, foremost, was a terrific adviser at CU-Boulder and has been a wonderful supporter all along. I thank Ruth Van Dyke for her comments, critiques, and advice as a member of my committee, as well as for inviting me to participate in the landscape session at the Southwest Symposium. I received other comments on the present study from too many people to name, but I thank you just the same.
References Cited Anderson, Douglas J. 1999 A Geochemical Analysis and Characterization Study of Narbona Pass Chert. Unpublished MA thesis, Department of Anthropology, Eastern New Mexico University, Portales. Banks, Larry D. 1990 From Mountain Peaks to Alligator Stomachs: A Review of Lithic Sources in the Trans- Mississippi South, the Southern Plains, and Adjacent Southwest. Oklahoma Anthro- pological Society Memoir 4, Norman. Basso, Keith H. 1996 Wisdom Sits in Places: Landscape and Language among the Western Apache. Univer- sity of New Mexico Press, Albuquerque. Baugh, Timothy G., and Fred W. Nelson Jr. 1987 New Mexico Obsidian Sources and Exchange on the Southern Plains. Journal of Field Archaeology 14(3):313–329. Bradley, Richard 2000 An Archaeology of Natural Places. Routledge, London. Cameron, Catherine M. 1997 The Chipped Stone of Chaco Canyon, New Mexico. In Ceramics, Lithics, and Ornaments of Chaco Canyon, ed. F. J. Mathien, 531–658. Publications in Archae- ology 18G. Chaco Canyon Studies, National Park Service, Santa Fe. 2001 Pink Chert, Projectile Points, and the Chacoan Regional System. American Antiquity 66(1):79–101. 2002 Sacred Earthen Architecture in the Northern Southwest: The Bluff Great House Berm. American Antiquity 67(4):677–695.
62 Christine G. Ward Cobb, Charles R. 2000 From Quarry to Cornfield: The Political Economy of Mississippian Hoe Production. University of Alabama Press, Tuscaloosa. Cooney, Gabriel 2002 So Many Shades of Rock: Colour Symbolism and Irish Stone Axeheads. In Colouring the Past: The Significance of Colour in Archaeological Research, ed. Andrew Jones and Gavin MacGregor, 93–107. Berg, Oxford. De Grooth, M. 1996 Social and Economic Interpretations of the Chert Procurement Strategies of the Bandceramik Settlement at Hienheim, Bavaria. Analecta Praehistorica Leidensia 29:91–98. Dobres, Marcia-Anne 2000 Technology and Social Agency. Blackwell, Oxford. Eddy, Frank W. 1977 Archaeological Investigations at Chimney Rock Mesa: 1970–1972. Memoirs of the Colorado Archaeological Society 1. Colorado Archaeological Society, Univer- sity of Colorado, and United States Forest Service, Boulder. Gerhardt, Kim (compiler) 2001 Lithic Source Materials Classification Standards. Guidebook resulting from the lithics workshop held at the Bureau of Land Management Anasazi Heritage Center, Dolores, CO. Hallasi, Judith Ann 1979 Archaeological Excavation at the Escalante Site, Dolores, Colorado, 1975 and 1976. Cultural Resource Series 7, Part 2. Colorado State Office, Bureau of Land Man- agement, Denver. Hirsch, Eric 1995 Landscape: Between Place and Space. In The Anthropology of Landscape: Perspec- tives on Place and Space, ed. Eric Hirsch and Michael O’Hanlon, 1–30. Claren- don, Oxford. Kane, Allen E. 1993 Settlement Analogues for Chimney Rock: A Model of 11th and 12th Century Northern Anasazi Society. In The Chimney Rock Archaeological Symposium, ed. John McKim Malville and Gary Matlock, 43–60. General Technical Report RM- 227. USDA Forest Service, Rocky Mountain Forest and Range Experiment Sta- tion, US Department of Agriculture, Fort Collins, CO. Kantner, John, and Nancy M. Mahoney (editors) 2000 Great House Communities across the Chacoan Landscape. Anthropological Papers of the University of Arizona 64. University of Arizona Press, Tucson. Knapp, A. Bernard, and Wendy Ashmore 1999 Archaeological Landscapes: Constructed, Conceptualized, Ideational. In Archae ologies of Landscape: Contemporary Perspectives, ed. Wendy Ashmore and A. Ber- nard Knapp, 1–30. Blackwell, Malden, MA.
Procurement and Landscape 63 LeTourneau, Philippe D. 1997 Sources and Prehistoric Use of Yellowish Brown Spotted Chert in Northwest- Central New Mexico. Paper presented at the 62nd Annual Meeting of the Soci- ety for American Archaeology, Nashville, TN. Marshall, Michael P., John R. Stein, Richard W. Loose, and Judith E. Novotny 1979 Anasazi Communities of the San Juan Basin. Public Service Company of New Mexico, Santa Fe. McElrath, Dale L., and Thomas E. Emerson 2000 Toward an “Intrinsic Characteristics” Approach to Chert Raw Material Clas- sification: An American Bottom Example. Midcontinental Journal of Archaeology 25(2):215–244. Morrow, Carol A., J. Michael Elam, and Michael D. Glascock 1992 The Use of Blue-Gray Chert in Midwestern Prehistory. Midcontinental Journal of Archaeology 17(2):166–197. Roney, John R. 1992 Prehistoric Roads and Regional Integration in the Chacoan System. In Ana- sazi Regional Organization and the Chaco System, ed. David E. Doyel, 123–132. Anthropological Papers 5. Maxwell Museum of Anthropology, Albuquerque. Scarre, Chris 2002 Epilogue: Colour and Materiality in Prehistoric Society. In Colouring the Past: The Significance of Colour in Archaeological Research, ed. Andrew Jones and Gavin MacGregor, 227–242. Berg, Oxford. Shackley, M. Steven 2003 Source Provenance of Obsidian Artifacts from Three P-II to P-III Sites in North- eastern Arizona, Southwestern Colorado, and Northwestern New Mexico. Report in author’s possession. Sofaer, Anna 1997 The Primary Architecture of the Chacoan Culture: A Cosmological Expres- sion. In Anasazi Architecture and American Design, ed. Baker H. Morrow and V. B. Price, 88–132. University of New Mexico Press, Albuquerque. Sofaer, Anna, R. Sinclair, and L. Doggett 1982 Lunar Markings on Fajada Butte, Chaco Canyon, New Mexico. In Archaeoas- tronomy in the New World, ed. Anthony F. Aveni, 169–181. Cambridge University Press, Cambridge. Torrence, Robin 1986 Production and Exchange of Stone Tools: Prehistoric Obsidian in the Aegean. Cam- bridge University Press, Cambridge. Ucko, P. J. 1994 Foreword. In Sacred Sites, Sacred Places, ed. David L. Carmichael, Jane Hubert, Brian Reeves, and Auchild Schande, xiii–xxiii. Routledge, London.
64 Christine G. Ward Van Dyke, Ruth M. 2003 Memory and the Construction of Chacoan Society. In Archaeologies of Memory, ed. Ruth M. Van Dyke and Susan E. Alcock, 180–200. Blackwell, Oxford. Warburton, Miranda 1991 Flaked Stone from the Navajo Springs Great House, Arizona. Journal of Califor- nia and Great Basin Anthropology 13(2):230–241. Ward, Christine G. 2004 Exploring Meanings of Chacoan Community Great Houses through Chipped Stone: A Biographical Approach. Unpublished PhD dissertation, Department of Anthropology, University of Colorado, Boulder. Whittle, Alasdair 1995 Gifts from the Earth: Symbolic Dimensions of the Use and Production of Neo- lithic Flint and Stone Axes. Archaeologia Polona 33:247–259.
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Anna Sofaer, Alan Price, James Holmlund, Joseph Nicoli, and Andrew Piscitello
C h a p t e r 3
A Digital Restoration of a Chacoan Calendrical Site
In 2006 an interdisciplinary team, coordinated by the Solstice Project,1 produced an interactive computer graphics model that precisely replicates the astronomical functioning of an ancient calendrical site, the Sun Dagger, of Chaco Canyon, New Mexico. The interactive, three-dimensional format of this digital model provides opportunities for extensive research of the structure’s light patterns, as well as its geometry and the process of its original development. At the Sun Dagger site, which Anna Sofaer rediscovered in 1977, three upright sandstone slabs cast precise light and shadow patterns on two spiral petroglyphs, recording the summer and winter solstices, the equinoxes, and the 18.6-year lunar cycle (Sinclair et al. 1987; Sofaer and Sinclair 1987; Sofaer, Sinclair, and Doggett 1982; Sofaer, Zinser, and Sinclair 1979; figures 3.1–3.4).2 This site is located on a southeastern-facing cliff near the top of the 135-m-high Fajada Butte, which stands prominently at the south entrance of Chaco Canyon. The rediscovery of the Sun Dagger site was followed by intense visitation. This activity caused acceleration of the process of natural erosion at the site, which, in turn, caused significant shifts in the positions of the slabs and the light markings. Thus the precise archival replication of the Sun Dagger site allows appreciation and study of its astronomical functioning that can no longer be observed or recorded.
67 Diagram of solar and lunar markings of the Sun Dagger site as originally recorded, showing how the light comes onto the spirals from the sun’s passage above the slabs and from the sun’s and moon’s rising positions. © Solstice Project.
In addition, this effort succeeded in its goal to present as clearly as possible for potential researchers—with no “agenda” of interpretations—a model that accu- rately replicates the physical elements of the Sun Dagger site in comprehensive detail. Thus, with precise astronomical orientation and programming also incor- porated in the model, users can experiment with the interplay of these elements with the cyclical movements of the solar and lunar cycles and evaluate the shifting patterns of shadow and light for their significance as markings. In other words, this model allows and invites people to develop their own interpretations of the site without the bias of former interpretations. The implication of this effort for archaeological studies is that models of sites—whether on this small scale or of larger structures, such as buildings and roads, that simply present comprehensive data in three-dimensional and interactive formats—can facilitate unbiased research opportunities, as well as archival restoration. This chapter first discusses the larger context of the Chacoans’ extensive expression of astronomy and cosmography, in which the Sun Dagger site is one part. In this context the Pueblo associations with the sacred nature of the site are reported. The site itself is then described in detail: its solar and light markings and
68 Anna Sofaer, Alan Price, James Holmlund, Joseph Nicoli, and Andrew Piscitello Pairs of 1978 photographed images and 2006 registered model simulated images: a, summer solstice (June 26, 1978, 11:13:15 AM Local Apparent Time [LAT]); b, equinox (September 21, 1978, 10:50 AM [LAT]; insert 10:52 AM [LAT], not noted in Sofaer, Zinser, and Sinclair 1979); c, winter solstice (December 22, 1978, 10:22:15 AM [LAT], corrected from Sofaer, Zinser, and Sinclair 1979). (The correction noted here from Sofaer, Zinser, and Sinclair 1979 is based on an error recently identi- fied in the original reading of the winter solstice 1978 photographic contact sheets and log.) In each pair, the exact time of the 1978 recorded photo was used in the simulation. Photos by Karl Kernberger (1978); simulated images by Alan Price (2006). © Solstice Project. Pairs of 1980 to 1987 photographs with 2006 registered model simulated images of rising sun and moon markings: a, equinox (September 23, 1980, sunrise at approximate azimuth 90.2 degrees); b, northern minor lunar standstill (May 13, 1980, using the sunrise to simulate the moon at approxi- mate azimuth 67.4 degrees); c, northern major lunar standstill (November 8, 1987, moonrise at approximate azimuth 55.4 degrees). In each pair, the dates of the photographs are used in the simula- tions. The altitudes of the high edge of the disc of the rising sun or moon are taken in the simulations as 0.35 degrees above the true horizon of 0.2 degrees. Photos by Karl Kernberger (1978), Nevada Weir (1980), and Rolf Sinclair (1987); simulated images by Alan Price (2006). © Solstice Project. The slabs in an image developed from the registered model and the laser-scanned model that show their original positions, outlines of their disturbed (2005) positions, and measurements of some of the differences between the 2005 and 1984 positions. Simulated image by Alan Price. © Solstice Project. its shadow-casting features. The chapter reports the deterioration of the site caused by excessive visitation following its rediscovery. The process of the digital restora- tion of the site is fully explained, including an integrated use of photogrammetry and laser scanning. Finally, the chapter reports on the interactive tools developed for the model to facilitate open-ended research on the site’s astronomical function- ing and its original development.
The Sun Dagger Site: One Part of Chacoans’ Astronomy and Cosmography The Chaco culture redundantly expressed the integration of the solar and lunar cycles, often in relationship to key features of the Chacoan landscape. As other chapters in this volume note, distinctive landscape features probably played an important role in Chacoans’ decisions to locate cosmologically significant sites (chapter 1), and artifact resource locations may have been imbued with special meanings (chapter 2). Astronomical knowledge and expression appear to have formed a unifying cosmology for Chacoan people across the vast region of their culture. This cultural florescence was centered in Chaco Canyon, itself a topo- graphic center in an open and spare landscape. Research by the Solstice Project has shown that twelve of the Chacoans’ major buildings—eight in Chaco Canyon and the four largest outlying buildings—are ori- ented to the solar and lunar cycles (Sofaer 2007). These orientations are to the azi- muths of the extremes and mid-positions of the sun and moon marked at the Sun Dagger site and at two other sites on Fajada Butte (Sofaer and Sinclair 1987). The inter-building alignments and internal geometries of the Chacoans’ major build- ings also express solar and lunar relationships (Sofaer 2007). The inter-building alignments form an astronomical regional pattern of approximately 5,000 square kilometers. This pattern was centered and cardinally organized at the central com- plex of Chaco Canyon. In addition, one of the primary Chacoan roads, the Great North Road, appears to have been built to commemorate the relationship of the central complex of Chaco Canyon to celestial north and to a badlands canyon in the north (Sofaer, Marshall, and Sinclair 1989). The Chacoan people integrated their knowledge of astronomy with the use of visually prominent—and sometimes dramatically situated—features of the land- scape. The extensive solar and lunar patterning of the Chaco architecture is sym- metrically ordered and centered in the most sharply defined topography of Chaco Canyon. Pueblo Bonito (PB) and Chetro Ketl (CK), the two largest buildings of the Chaco world, are east-west of each other: they are located at the base of the cliffs that rise most precipitously from the canyon floor. Pueblo Alto and Tsin Kletsin are north-south of each other, forming a north-south axis that divides the east-west
72 Anna Sofaer, Alan Price, James Holmlund, Joseph Nicoli, and Andrew Piscitello distance between PB and CK: they are located on two of the most elevated sites of the Chaco mesas. The Great North Road is an elaborate construction that runs 50 km to the north from this central complex—across an open plain—and descends the steepest slope of a badlands canyon in the north, where above this slope a prominent feature is located. The light markings atop Fajada Butte also appear to be a cosmographic expression—their occurrence at high sites was chosen perhaps for its relationship to “the world above.” Members of today’s Pueblo communities, descendants of the Chacoan cul- ture, have expressed their regard for the Sun Dagger as a sacred site, also noting its dramatically elevated location. The late Alfonso Ortiz (anthropologist and mem- ber of the Pueblo, Ohkay Owingeh) said that the Sun Dagger site “would be one of the central concerns of their [the Chacoans’] lives and there would be people there on a regular basis praying, meditating, leaving offerings, and making obser- vations” (Solstice Project 1982). Ortiz further noted the Puebloan character of the Sun Dagger site as “a center of time on a high butte.” As Ortiz considered photographs of the solar markings at the site in 1978, just prior to the Solstice Project’s finding of lunar markings there, he perceived that “where the sun is so marked, so would be the moon” (Solstice Project 1982). He believed this, he said, because in the Pueblos’ traditions the sun and the moon are held as spiritual beings who reside in complementary relationships with each other. He also noted that one or two people would be at the Sun Dagger site observing the light markings and that their observations would determine the beginnings and endings of ceremonies in the canyon. These comments anticipated what research would show to be true in the coming years. Chacoan people, with very different kinds of experiences, appear to have been united in a shared attention to celestial cycles. The intimate observations of the Sun Dagger site by a few ceremonial officiants, suggested by Ortiz, contrast with the large public settings of the massive Chaco buildings and great kivas where vast numbers of people probably participated in ritual acts related to the sun and moon. Yet while viewing the sun’s and moon’s alignments or markings, whether at the Sun Dagger site or at a Chaco building, on a day of equinox or solstice or a night of the lunar standstills, they were within the same experience of cosmology. In some instances Chacoans observing the same astronomical phenomenon would be at sites great distances from each other. As an example, at Chimney Rock Pueblo, a Chacoan building set on a precipice in southwestern Colorado, people would have the spectacular view of the moon rising between two pillars of rock at its northernmost position in its 18.6 standstill cycle, the northern major standstill (Malville and Putnam 1989); at that same time, ceremonial officiants would see the moon’s shadow mark the large spiral petrogylph on Fajada Butte. These sites are separated by 140 km.
The Sun Dagger Interactive Computer Graphics Model 73 Some have suggested that the dispersed Chacoan communities, located across the 80 or more square kilometers of the Chaco cultural region, were related to each other—and sometimes joined in pilgrimage to the ritual buildings of Chaco Canyon—by a precisely timed solar and lunar calendar (Judge and Malville 2004). This calendrical knowledge was probably held as sacred—and its details main- tained secretly in esoteric contexts—to be experienced by some in small private events and by others in large-scale public hierophanies. All participants must have had some experience or perception of Chaco Canyon as a center of significant power, where cosmological knowledge was expressed most intensely. Paul Pino of Laguna Pueblo conveyed that Ancestral Pueblo history may have carried such an understanding of Chaco: “In our history they talk of things that occurred a long time ago, of people who had enormous power, spiritual power, and power over people. I think those kinds of people lived here in Chaco” (Solstice Project 2000).
The Sun Dagger Site Near the top of the 135-m-high Fajada Butte at the south entrance of Chaco Canyon, three sandstone slabs lean against a southeast-facing cliff (figures 3.1, 3.4). Each measures 2 to 3 m high and weighs from two-thirds to one and a third tons. The openings between the slabs are to the south-southeast. Of the two spi- ral petroglyphs pecked into the rock face behind the slabs, one, 41 cm across, has nine and a half turns; the second, to its left and 13 cm across, has two and a half turns.
Solar Light Patterns The slabs cast vertical light patterns onto the cliff each day in the late morn- ing to near solar noon. These patterns form markings on the two spirals that are distinctive to the solstices and equinoxes. At summer solstice the opening between the middle and eastern slabs forms a slim dagger of light. It begins forty-seven min- utes before solar noon in the top turn of the large spiral as a small spot of light that lengthens to a dagger shape bisecting the spiral. It descends through and off the spiral eighteen minutes after its first appearance. Four days before or after the sum- mer solstice, a slight rightward shift of the light dagger—of about 2 mm—occurs in its position in relation to the center of the large spiral. In four weeks it is 3.2 cm to the right of the center. Through the following weeks and months, the light dag- ger descends through the spiral in positions farther and farther to the right. Soon after the summer solstice a second light dagger, formed by the opening between the middle and western slabs, joins the first. It also descends in a vertical
74 Anna Sofaer, Alan Price, James Holmlund, Joseph Nicoli, and Andrew Piscitello course along the cliff face each day and moves farther to the right as the seasons progress. The second light dagger bisects the small spiral at equinox one hour and ten minutes before solar noon. At the winter solstice the two vertical light daggers descend over the course of three hours. When the second dagger matches the first in length, one hour and forty-one minutes before solar noon, both are on the outer edges of the large spi- ral. At this time of the sun’s lowest passage, the light daggers appear to frame the spiral—bisected by the sun during its highest passage, at summer solstice—now empty of light.
Lunar and Equinox Light Pattern The eastern slab creates shadow patterns that record the extremes of the moon in its 18.6-year cycle—the northern major and minor lunar standstill posi- tions—and the equinox, or the mid-position of the sun or moon. The inner (or northern) edge of the eastern slab casts a shadow on or adjacent to the large spiral as the sun rises or the moon rises (during phases of its nighttime rise) at azimuths between approximately 54 and 90 degrees. In the year of the major lunar standstill, when the moon rises at its northernmost position in its 18.6-year cycle at an azi- muth close to 54.3 degrees, the eastern slab casts a shadow tangent to the left edge of the large spiral. Nine and a third years later, when the moon rises at its northern minor standstill position at an azimuth close to 67.1 degrees, a shadow from this same slab diagonally bisects the large spiral. Twice yearly at the equinox, when the sun rises—or when the moon at the mid-position of its cycle rises—directly east (close to 90 degrees), the same slab casts a shadow onto the right edge of the large spiral.3 It appears that the Chacoans gave distinctive emphasis to the lunar patterns by their alignment of two pecked grooves with the shadows of the minor and major standstill moons (Sofaer and Sinclair 1987:figure 4.3; figure 3.3b in this chapter). It is also of interest that the ten turns of the left side of the spiral that the shadows cross, year by year, during the progression of the moon from its northern minor to its northern major standstill correspond closely to the nine-and-one-third years of this journey by the moon. In addition, the nineteen turns of the spiral from its left to right edges may symbolize the full lunar standstill cycle of 18.6 years. In sum, the three large sandstone slabs at the Sun Dagger site mark the extremes and mid-positions of both the solar and lunar cycles on the same large spiral and the equinox on the smaller spiral as well. The site reveals significant coordination in the markings. The Chacoans created solar and lunar markings that repeatedly fall on the center and outer edges of the large spiral. These find- ings raise a number of intriguing research questions. How sensitive (not critical)
The Sun Dagger Interactive Computer Graphics Model 75 are the relationships of the slabs’ positions and shapes to these light and shadow formations? What activities and process did the Chacoans conduct at the site? How might they have placed and shaped the spirals and the cliff face on which they are carved and shaped the slabs and adjusted their positions to achieve their results?4 During the ten years following Sofaer’s 1977 finding, the Solstice Project col- lected timed photographic records of the light and shadow formations of the Sun Dagger site. In 1989 the project discovered that disturbances at the site had destroyed its solar marking functions. Largely because of the site’s attractiveness to tourists and investigators, the middle of the three slabs had pivoted 2 to 5 cm from its originally recorded position (Palca 1989; Sofaer and Sinclair 1990; Trott et al. 1989). In 2005, combining state-of-the-art Global Positioning System (GPS) and 3D Light Detection and Ranging (LiDAR) techniques with photogrammetric measure- ments collected in 1984, a team that included an archaeoastronomer, a geodesist, a computer graphics specialist, and several mapping specialists produced two high- resolution 3D computer models of the 1984 and 2005 positions of the slabs (Nicoli et al. 2006). Integration of these models produced a virtual restoration of the site that simulates the original interaction of sunlight and moonlight with the slabs and petroglyphs. This virtual restoration serves as an archival record of the site, an interactive research tool, and an educational resource.
Developing an Archival Record Beginning in 1978, the Solstice Project set out to develop an archival record of the Sun Dagger site and envisioned a three-dimensional computer graphics model for research. In fact, a quarter of a century would pass before the technology existed to accurately replicate the site in such a model. Yet early on, the Project recognized that beyond providing an archival record of the fragile site, a 3D computer graph- ics model would allow interactive experiments to further test the sensitivity of the site’s geometry to the positions of the sun and the moon. These experiments, in turn, would give modern researchers the chance to gain insights into the process and concepts behind the Sun Dagger’s original development.
Early Efforts Between 1978 and 1987, the Solstice Project collected comprehensive, timed photographic records of the light and shadow formations of the Sun Dagger site. The Project first contracted photographer Karl Kernberger to record the light patterns on the spiral petroglyphs in an extensive series of precisely timed images.
76 Anna Sofaer, Alan Price, James Holmlund, Joseph Nicoli, and Andrew Piscitello Near the twenty-first of each month of the 1978 solar cycle, he used a Hasselblad camera with a 50 mm lens to photograph from a single position, every thirty sec- onds, the changing light patterns through their duration. In 1980 the Solstice Project photographed the lunar standstill markings on the spirals, using the sun to simulate the rising minor standstill moon’s shadow and a laser to simulate the rising major moon’s shadow seven years before it reached its major standstill position. In 1987, when the moon had reached this position, the project photographed the moon’s shadow cast by the eastern slab (Sinclair et al. 1987; see figure 3.3c[1], this chapter). Between 1979 and 1987 the Project also collected time-lapse images with 16 mm film of the light patterns on the spirals at the solstices and the equinox. In addition, it recorded extensive measurements and documentation of other shadow and light formations on the spirals and identified the shadow-casting edges of the rock slabs. Because of the extreme fragility of the site’s soft sandstone slabs and spirals, in 1981 the Project contracted with the engineering firm Koogle and Pouls to pro- duce terrestrial photogrammetric measurements of the site as an archive and as data for a computer graphics model. The exactness of some of the slab positions and shapes required to create the light patterns demanded fine precision in the con- struction of an archival computer model. For example, the Project estimated that a 1 cm movement of the eastern slab on an approximate north-south axis could create a 1 cm displacement of the lunar light patterns on the large spiral; a 1–2 cm movement of the top surface of the eastern slab on an approximate east-west axis could create a similar displacement (or blockage) of the summer solstice light dag- ger. Because the light dagger itself is only 2 cm wide, such a change would destroy the astronomical accuracy of the marking.
Disturbances of the Site In 1981 the Solstice Project discovered, and then photographed, numerous disturbances and abuses to the Sun Dagger site: graffiti on the eastern slab, a beer can between the middle and eastern slabs, movement of several smaller rocks at the site, signs of removal of soil at the base of the middle slab, and loss of material along the edge of the eastern slab that cast the lunar markings (Sofaer 1982).5 In response to this documentation, the US Congress allocated $100,000 to the National Park Service (NPS) for the development of a computer graphics model of the site. Congress proclaimed the Sun Dagger site a national treasure and recommended its thorough protection by the NPS (US Congress 1981). The NPS contracted with the consulting firm Ibarr, Inc., to develop a computer graphics model of the site. Ibarr contracted with two engineering firms—Aero- Metric and Dennett, Muessig, and Ryan—to produce a second set of terrestrial
The Sun Dagger Interactive Computer Graphics Model 77 photogrammetric measurements of the site in 1984, but it did not develop a model of the site from the resulting data. In 1989 the Solstice Project discovered significant changes at the Sun Dagger site caused by natural erosion, greatly accelerated by tourist traffic and investiga- tive activity. It appeared that the middle slab, critical to the shaping of all the solar light patterns, had pivoted about 2 to 5 cm from its documented position in 1978. Photo documenting of the effect of this disturbance by the Project and the NPS showed substantial changes: the slim, pointed summer solstice dagger of 1978 was now a wide band of light, the two winter solstice light daggers did not bracket the large spiral, and the small equinox light dagger did not pierce the smaller spiral (Palca 1989; Sofaer and Sinclair 1990). The National Park Service’s response was twofold: it limited visitation to the site more severely, and it brought in fill to replace the eroded sediments around the base of the slabs, constructing a coursed masonry wall east of the easternmost slab to prevent additional sediment loss downslope.
Computer Graphics Efforts Throughout the 1980s and 1990s the Solstice Project pursued efforts to rep- licate the site, in consultation with experts in the burgeoning field of computer graphics. From 1979 to 1981 the Project turned to the Massachusetts Institute of Technology’s Computer Graphics Department and from 1983 to 1987 to the Math Department at Rensselaer Polytechnic Institute (RPI). A graduate student at RPI, Eric Brechner, developed a prototype interactive model of the site on a Silicon Graphics computer (Bordner 1989; Sofaer, Sinclair, and Brechner 1989). In the early 1990s a graduate student at Ohio State University’s Center for Mapping, Ken Edmundson, along with Phillip Tuwaletstiwa and Kurt Novak, developed a 3D model of a large portion of the site from the 1984 photogrammetric measure- ments. Novak combined Edmundson’s digitized model with the interactive model from RPI to display on a Silicon Graphics computer a partial interactive model of the site (Novak, Edmundson, and Johnson 1992). While these efforts paved the way, limitations in both the nature of the mea- surements to date and the available technology precluded the development of a fully and accurately functioning model of the Sun Dagger site. For example, the large photogrammetric cameras, which had to be stationary and at least 40 cm apart, could not adequately record within the crevice between the slabs and the spirals. This meant that Edmundson’s model could replicate only the outer views of the rock slabs and not the spirals or the inner edges of the slabs, which cast half the shadow and light patterns that marked the solar cycle as well as the shadow patterns of the lunar cycle.
78 Anna Sofaer, Alan Price, James Holmlund, Joseph Nicoli, and Andrew Piscitello In 2001 Alan Price, of the University of Maryland, and the Solstice Project cre- ated an interactive model of the Sun Dagger site based on the Edmundson model. Now on display at the Adler Planetarium and Astronomy Museum in Chicago, Price’s model allows viewers to move around the site and to view light patterns created on the spirals at different times of the day and year. Yet while educational and illustrative, the model is not an accurate or complete replication of the site. The Solstice Project’s goal of developing such a model remained elusive.
Developing and Orienting the Laser-Scan Model of the Sun Dagger Site In 2003 Western Mapping Company’s James Holmlund proposed that with new laser-scanning technology, his group could measure the inner edges of the slabs and the spirals, as well as the outer shapes of the slabs and the entire nearby cliff face and ground. Holmlund estimated that the results would be accurate within 1 cm, a level of precision at the low end of the range the Solstice Project had estimated would be required to authentically replicate the light markings.6 The assumption was that by now, all three slabs could have moved from their 1984 positions. The challenge concerned the plausibility of integrating two key sets of measurements: the accurate but limited and low sampling density of the 1984 photogrammetric data gathered before the site was disturbed, and the much more comprehensive and highly accurate laser-scanning measurements to come. The conclusion: the 1984 photogrammetric record had sufficient three-dimensional definition and accuracy—and, most critically, included enough tie-in with the cliff face—to allow a tight registration of the slabs of the proposed laser-scanned model with the slabs prior to their disturbance. Holmlund suggested that after acquiring three-dimensional laser-scan data for the current site configuration, the computer program could digitally separate the new slab models into their component parts and virtually reposition them to fit the configuration from the 1984 close-range terrestrial photogrammetric model. With this assurance, the Solstice Project contracted the Western Mapping Company to conduct the laser scanning of the Sun Dagger site. Critical technical support came from the National Park Service, which wanted an archival record of the site in its current condition as a base for monitoring future changes. Following extensive logistical planning with NPS archaeologist Dabney Ford, the scanning effort proceeded with her generous assistance and that of professional climber Scott Sholes, several volunteers, and four members of the NPS ruins stabilization crew. A crew of thirteen hauled 670 pounds of equipment to the site, and two Western Mapping staff members, Joseph Nicoli and William Haas, conducted the laser scanning and surveying during the afternoon and night of May 11 and the morning of May 12, 2005.
The Sun Dagger Interactive Computer Graphics Model 79 Accompanying the group were William Stone of the National Geodetic Survey (NGS) of the National Oceanic and Atmospheric Administration (NOAA), who would provide precise geodetic coordinates for the laser-scanned model, and Alan Price, who, with Stone and Haas, would conduct accurately timed photo docu- mentation of the light patterns at the time of the laser scanning. Price, who would develop the final interactive computer model, would first use the photo documen- tation of May 11–12 to test the accuracy of the laser model with simulations of the light patterns on these dates.
Establishing Geodetic Orientation On May 11 and 12, 2005, Stone positioned a permanent geodetic control point near the slabs. He established the geodetic position of the control point by col- lecting seventeen hours of static, dual-frequency GPS observations with survey- grade GPS equipment and procedures. The National Geodetic Survey’s Online Positioning User Service (OPUS) utility processed the resulting data with respect to the nationwide network of permanent GPS Continuously Operating Reference Stations (CORS), which defines the nation’s modern National Spatial Reference System. Peak-to-peak errors (that is, the approximate uncertainty of the results with respect to the CORS network) of about 1 cm horizontally and 2 cm vertically characterized the resulting geodetic position. In addition, from May 11 to May 13, Stone collected GPS data on several verti- cal control points around Chaco Canyon to assess the accuracy and behavior of the GEOID03 model, which is used to convert between the ellipsoid height system (referenced to a mathematically defined surface, called the ellipsoid) used by GPS and the orthometric height system (referenced to a gravitationally defined surface, called the geoid) used on traditional maps to describe ground elevation. These additional observations indicated that GEOID03 works well in the Chaco area and that the resulting elevations derived from the combination of GPS measurements and the GEOID03 model are sufficiently accurate for this application. Two sites provided azimuth control for the laser-scan work: a recently estab- lished permanent GPS installation on the mesa top north of Fajada Butte and a Public Land Survey System section corner positioned with GPS during the project. Both the GPS installation’s monument and the section corner provide azimuth control for optical survey instrumentation (e.g., total station or theodolite) located at the Fajada Butte control point. Verification of the May 11–12 results came with an independent survey by Stone of the Fajada Butte control point on December 16–17, 2005. The findings of a six- teen-hour GPS observation session, again processed through the OPUS utility, agreed with the earlier results within 0.5 cm in horizontal position and 1 cm in height.
80 Anna Sofaer, Alan Price, James Holmlund, Joseph Nicoli, and Andrew Piscitello Conducting the Laser Scanning The Western Mapping staff carried out the laser scanning in two phases. In the first phase, the staff scanned the overall cliff face and most of the slab geometry with a Leica HDS 2500, which uses time-of-flight scanning. With this instrument, a laser scanner with a known relative orientation emits a laser pulse; the time the pulse takes to return to the scanner establishes a point at the measured distance and at the orientation of that pulse. The scanner runs through this process at a rate of a thousand times per second, creating a point cloud. The scanner is then moved to another position, where the process is repeated. Setting the instrument in vari- ous locations allowed the Western Mapping staff to capture complex shapes, with intricate relationships, in three dimensions. The cliff face was scanned at a density of points of 1 cm (that is, a point was collected every centimeter), and the slabs were scanned at a resolution of 5 mm. The scanner recorded a total of 7.2 million points from thirty-one different scanner setups. In the second phase, the Western Mapping staff conducted small-scale trian- gulation scanning of the two spiral petroglyphs and most of the shadow-casting edges of the slabs. The triangulation scanner consists of a camera and a line laser. The laser passes over the area at a known rate, while the camera captures 3D coor- dinates, triangulating among the camera, the laser, and the rock surfaces. Western Mapping staff conducted seventy-one triangulation scans of the scene, all with an estimated accuracy of better than 1 mm. (Because the pixel count of the cam- era determines the resolution of the final image, resolution cannot be precisely quantified.)
Registration of the Laser Scans The Western Mapping staff completed the registration in three phases. In the first phase, the time-of-flight point clouds were registered locally to each other. Targets placed in the scanned scene act as 3D reference points to which overlapping clouds can be registered. In addition to the targets, a process called cloud-to-cloud registration uses similar geometry in overlapping scans to align two scans to each other. The computer operator tags two point clouds that roughly identify areas of overlapping geometry. Software algorithms then create a best-fit alignment of the two clouds. Repeated multiple times between various clouds, this process cre- ates an overall best-fit alignment. Incorporating the targets and the cloud-to-cloud alignments, the final local registration is frozen. In the second phase of registration of the laser scans, the Western Mapping staff put the locally registered scans into a geodetic coordinate system so the scan information could be modeled later with respect to astronomic relation- ships. Using the geodetic positions established by William Stone for the new
The Sun Dagger Interactive Computer Graphics Model 81 NGS monument (station FAJADA) on Fajada Butte, the staff computed a geo- detic azimuth and a Universal Transverse Mercator (UTM) azimuth between FAJADA and the CORS station previously established at Chaco Canyon. (The UTM is a universally used x-y planar mapping coordinate system, which is rigor- ously related to the geodetic latitude-longitude system.) The staff checked these orientations against the position of another GPS-positioned section corner mon- ument more than 1.5 km from the site. Using a certified geodetic-quality total station, the staff mapped the positions of reflective targets in the scan scenes and established world (UTM) coordinates for each target. These coordinates were then adjusted (see the section “Positioning and Orienting the Laser-Scanned Model”) and incorporated into the cloud registration, moving the local registra- tion into UTM-based coordinates. In the third phase, the Western Mapping staff used a different software pro- gram to group the small-scale scans into five areas and register them to each other using the cloud-to-cloud method just described. The world coordinate registered group was then imported into the new software, where the overall cloud-to-cloud registration was further refined. Again using the cloud-to-cloud method, the small- scale scan groups were then registered to the world coordinate group.
Modeling the 2005 Laser-Scanned Site To model the laser-scanned site, the Western Mapping staff moved both groups of scanned data—the time-of-flight and small-scale scans—into a different software program. With the time-of-flight point data reduced in resolution to elim- inate overlapping data points, a Triangular Irregular Network (TIN) was created at approximately 6 mm resolution. Each of five additional small-scale scanner mod- els was decimated to 0.8 mm resolution and meshed independently. The resulting high-resolution models were pasted into the overall model. These high-resolution portions simply replaced less resolved sections (at 6 mm resolution) modeled from the time-of-flight data. The models were cleaned of spurious data and resampled using curvature-based algorithms.
Positioning and Orienting the Laser-Scanned Model Because the survey was adjusted to the UTM coordinate system, an additional rotation was necessary to establish the geodetic orientation to match the input required for Alan Price’s astronomical modeling program. The Western Mapping staff used the convergence angle between the UTM coordinates and geodetic posi- tions computed from the reduction of the GPS data at station FAJADA to rotate the orientation of the model to geodetic north. Since the coordinates were originally
82 Anna Sofaer, Alan Price, James Holmlund, Joseph Nicoli, and Andrew Piscitello UTM grid coordinates, they used the computed ground-scale factor for FAJADA to scale the coordinates to enable accurate (local) model measurements. At this juncture, the coordinates of this adjusted (Sun Dagger site) system were no longer UTM coordinates but instead a local coordinate system.
Testing the Accuracy of the Laser-Scanned Model To test the new model, Price used the accurately timed digital photographs and slides of the light and shadow formations on the spirals and the surrounding cliff face taken during the two days of laser scanning—two sequences of images made during midday on May 11 and 12 and a third of sunrise on May 12. Independent of the fact that the light patterns have changed since the site’s initial documenta- tion in 1978, it was critical that simulations of light and shadow casting on the new digital model exactly match the site in its May 11–12, 2005, state. To facilitate testing of the model before developing the interactive applica- tion, Price selected Alias Maya software because of its suitability for handling the high-resolution model, for ray trace rendering, and for the custom scripting ability of Maya Embedded Language (MEL). In Maya, a directional light model was used to project orthogonal (parallel) light to ray trace shadow patterns from the slabs to the cliff face based on ephemeris calculations of the sun and moon positions. (An ephemeris is a table of the positions of a celestial body at regular intervals.) To calculate the ephemeris, a series of MEL scripts was created that inter- faced with an external application for the calculations. Code was compiled from Steve Moshier’s AA code (www.moshier.net) for computing ephemerides of the sun and moon using rigorous reduction methods from the Astronomical Almanac and related sources and a long-term extension of modern lunar theory for the moon’s position. The results of the calculations were compared with the US Naval Observatory’s ephemeris calculations and with a number of commercial planetar- ium software programs, including Starry Night Pro, Software Bisque’s The Sky, and Sky Map Pro. The UTM coordinates and elevation obtained during the process of scanning the site were used as input parameters for the ephemeris calculations. A series of renderings was created with the digital model to correspond with the timing of images taken May 11–12, 2005. The first results proved a highly accurate match of light patterns between the simulation and the photographic documentation, indicating that the processes of scanning, gathering positional and orientation data by the Western Mapping Company and William Stone of NGS, and Western Mapping’s conversion process of the digital model had created an accurate digital reproduction of the site as it existed on May 11–12, 2005.
The Sun Dagger Interactive Computer Graphics Model 83
In the spring of 2006, Aero-Metric, under the direction of Andrew Piscitello, conducted further readings of the 1984 photogrammetry, which consisted of eleven stereo pairs of glass plates recorded by Dennett, Muessig, and Ryan. A spe- cial effort was made to include as many data points as possible in this reading that would accurately relate the slabs to the cliff face, on the assumption that all three slabs might have moved by the time of Western Mapping’s 2005 laser-scanning project. The cliff provided the only stable feature of the site for both the 1984 and 2005 models of the slabs.
Background: 1984 Photogrammetric Activity In 1984 Dennett, Muessig, and Ryan had acquired eleven stereo pairs of pho- tography of the Sun Dagger site on glass plates using a WILD 40 dual camera system. This system is composed of two calibrated metric cameras mounted on a fixed base bar to ensure that their optical axes are parallel. Positioned a proper distance from an object, the system records overlapping images suitable for ste- reoscopic viewing. With a stereoscopic restitution instrument to record x, y, and z positions of any point imaged in the object space, precise measurement is then possible from the stereoscopic images. Dennett, Muessig, and Ryan had also conducted a field survey to determine the x, y, and z positions of control targets—small concentric rings (a bull’s-eye) affixed to the surface area of interest—which would reestablish the position of the cameras during the photogrammetric restitution process. The object of the surveys, completed in a local coordinate system with Polaris observation (to deter- mine true north), was to tie the observations to previous surveys by Koogle and Pouls that had located the site in geodetic position. The surveyors used a WILD T2 theodolite to attain their readings. The field surveys were designed to produce accuracies in the range of 2 mm. Dennett, Muessig, and Ryan contracted Aero-Metric to reduce the fieldwork surveys and complete the photogrammetric restitution. Aero-Metric reduced the survey work in the local coordinate system with orientation to true north but did not transform the results to the actual geodetic location because the necessary data were not available. In 1984 Aero-Metric completed an analytic triangulation of all the photographs and produced a simultaneous adjustment of all the photo positions to verify the control points. The photogrammetric restitution of each of the eleven stereo models was then completed on a WILD BC1 analytical stereo plotter, and several thousand points on the surface of the Sun Dagger slabs and on the large and small spiral petroglyphs were recorded. The photogrammetric
84 Anna Sofaer, Alan Price, James Holmlund, Joseph Nicoli, and Andrew Piscitello accuracies varied from a couple of millimeters to approximately 10 or 12 mm, according to the variation in the distance of the cameras from the image points. This effort did not produce a complete computer model of the Sun Dagger site because the dataset was not sufficiently dense and the system was unable to mea- sure points within the narrow openings between and behind the slabs.
2006 Photogrammetric Reading In the spring of 2006, at the request of the Solstice Project, Aero-Metric used the 1984 photogrammetry survey to add points on the cliff wall, against which the slabs were positioned, to its original readings of this dataset. The stable cliff wall and its features were accurately shown in the LiDAR dataset. In particular, Aero- Metric added readings from the 1984 dataset of micro-topographic features of the cliff wall so the photogrammetric model could be accurately transformed to the 2005 laser-scanned model. For this new work, the individual stereo models were reset on a Zeiss P1 ana- lytical stereo plotter. Once the existing dataset was verified, Aero-Metric added new recordings of x, y, and z coordinates of the significant features on the cliff wall the Western Mapping Company had identified, based on the laser-scanned data, as critical areas for registering the two models. These features could be read- ily identified in the LiDAR dataset. The resulting new, more comprehensive (1984) photogrammetric model was transferred to the Western Mapping Company in Tucson.
Registering the 1984 Photogrammetric Model with the 2005 Laser-Scan Model Western Mapping Company staff digitally removed the disturbed slabs in the 2005 laser-scanned model, maintaining only the laser-scanned cliff face. They then registered the slabs and the cliff face of the new 1984 photogrammetry model to the laser-scanned cliff face. Using cloud-to-cloud registration, they then registered each of the laser-scanned slab models that had been digitally removed to its cor- responding, pre-movement version in the new model. The resulting registration was frozen as the 1984 model. Beyond an attempt to digitally restore the slabs to their 1984 positions, this registered model contained remarkable detail of the site, with more than 30 mil- lion points compared to the 9,000 points of the 1984 photogrammetry. (The sig- nificantly smaller number of points in the 1984 model did not detract from its high accuracy in modeling the slabs and their relationship to the cliff face because the points were collected in smaller critical areas of the slabs and bedrock identified in
The Sun Dagger Interactive Computer Graphics Model 85 the laser model.) The laser-scanned model covered far more of the site than did the 1984 photogrammetry, encompassing the surrounding cliff and ground areas up to 5 m above the slabs, 3 m to the east, and 3 m to the west. For example, it recorded a critical shadow-casting edge located approximately 4.7 m above the slabs, in an area suspected and later specifically identified as defining the upper edges of the light daggers in the summer season. In addition, the new model made possible an accurate geodetic orientation, which the 1984 photogrammetric survey had not obtained, derived from the 2005 geodetic positioning of the FAJADA monument at the site by NGS.
Testing the Accuracy of the Registered Model To test the accuracy of the registered model from Western Mapping, in the spring of 2006 Alan Price applied the astronomical program he had used in his test of the 2005 laser model. As an integration of the detailed 2005 laser-scanned model into the 1984 photogrammetric model, the registered model should have restored the slabs to their positions prior to their disturbance and thereby simu- lated images of the light patterns, replicating the early photo documentation of the site. Price’s test results showed that the solar and lunar images simulated by the reg- istered model match the Solstice Project’s accurately timed photo documentation of solar and lunar events at the site in the years 1978–1987.7 (In addition to the set of sequential photographs taken by Karl Kernberger, numerous other timed pho- tographs had been taken of lunar and solar events at the site.) The paired images in figures 3.2 and 3.3 show light and shadow markings photographed between 1978 and 1983 at the key times of the solar and lunar cycles compared with those simu- lated by the registered model at these times. The Solstice Project’s first goal was now a reality: an archival digital replica- tion of the Sun Dagger and its astronomical functioning.
Assessing the Site’s Disturbance Using the two models—the 2005 laser-scanned model and the 1984 photo- grammetric model—Price and Western Mapping explored the extent of distur- bance to the slabs. Figure 3.4 illustrates Price’s comparison of the simulated slabs restored to their 1984 positions, shown in solid form, and the 2005 disturbed slabs, shown in black outline. The middle slab had moved the most of the three—15 cm on one axis. The other two slabs had also moved: the eastern slab 5.4 cm on a simi- lar axis and the western slab the least, 0.8 cm.
86 Anna Sofaer, Alan Price, James Holmlund, Joseph Nicoli, and Andrew Piscitello
Preliminary experiments with the 2005 registered model have placed the slabs in the positions where, according to geological reports (Newman, Mark, and Vivian 1982; Sofaer, Zinser, and Sinclair 1979), they were originally attached to the nearby cliff along an approximate horizontal plane. Plans call for more detailed efforts to match the geometry of the cliff face with the inner surfaces of the slabs to verify or refute these earlier reports and possibly to further pinpoint the slabs’ place of origin. With the slabs attached to the cliff in the computer model, planned kinetic experiments should show possible positions to which they could have fallen and been found by the Chacoans.8
Creating an Interactive Research Model In 2006 Alan Price created an interactive application for research and analy- sis of the site. The application combines functionality similar to the tools created with MEL scripting with new navigation and manipulation tools so researchers can explore the model in a standalone application. The interactive application allows one to navigate around the 3D model, observing it from any angle. One can set the calendar date and the time of day for positioning the sun and moon, projecting the shadows of the stone slabs onto the cliff and spiral patterns in real time. Translation and rotation tools allow one to experiment with manipulation of the slabs and the cliff face in the region of the spirals, as well as to alter the latitude, longitude, and orientation of the entire site. One can set markers at any position on the surface of the slabs or cliff face to mea- sure distances between points and to determine shadow-casting edges. A surface modeling tool allows one to alter the shape of the slabs, much as one might use a small tool to work the shadow-casting edges. One can alter the orientation and size of the spiral patterns or “draw” an entirely new spiral. These tools allow a user to deconstruct the site, experimenting with variations to gain a better understanding of the complexity and precision with which it operates.
Conclusion Through the extraordinarily generous and dedicated efforts of many individu- als who have brought rich interdisciplinary experience to the project, the Chacoan Sun Dagger is digitally restored. It is also accessible for challenging research explo- rations and, it is hoped, will serve as a stimulating educational resource. Centuries ago, the Sun Dagger site engaged skilled and trained astronomers to achieve its complex astronomical expressions. It is of interest that its restoration
The Sun Dagger Interactive Computer Graphics Model 87 required several of today’s most advanced technologies, employed by scientists with modern math and engineering backgrounds. Several mapping specialists from Western Mapping Company and a geodesist ensured remarkable precision and scope in the laser model’s replication of the site and its orientation. Photogrammetrists provided high-quality stereo glass plates of the site before its disturbance. They also provided thorough readings of these plates for the intricate detail essential for the registration of the recent laser model to the model of the site prior to its disturbance. Recently developed computer software allowed the registration of the two models. Finally, a computer mod- eler, using the latest programs of astronomical data and sophisticated interactive computer applications, could test the model of the restored slabs against the 1978 accurately timed photo documentation of the astronomical markings of the site. The success of the digitally restored model is evident in its exact replication of this early record, with no manipulation of any element in the model. In contrast, about a thousand years ago the Chacoans developed the site by applying their knowledge of the solar and lunar cycles and their astute observa- tions of shadow and light patterns to three sandstone slabs located near a south- east-facing cliff face. As in the alignments of their buildings, in the light markings of the Sun Dagger site the Chacoans developed an integrated expression of the sun and moon. This site and the Chacoans’ other elaborate astronomical works are physical realizations of cosmological concepts. The detail and precision of the research model, with its numerous interactive tools, offer opportunities to analyze the Chacoans’ process. Experimentation with the model should bring insights about the knowledge, planning, and experimenta- tion the Chacoans employed to achieve the interlocking markings of the sun and moon. It has already revealed to one researcher elements of the site that were readily available and suggestive to Chacoan astronomers (Luce and Sofaer 2009).9 Further exploration may reveal the Chacoans’ process of refining their light mark- ings by shaping, moving, or adjusting elements of the site. Perhaps, paradoxically, only an interactive research model achieved with the latest technologies will allow modern researchers and students to appreciate the Chacoans’ capacity to conceptualize and work—without such technology—with the four dimensions of time and space as they created the Sun Dagger site.
Acknowledgments. We appreciate the generous help provided to this project by the Chaco Culture National Historical Park. In particular, we appreciate the thoughtful planning, safety preparation, and logistical support of park archaeol- ogist Dabney Ford and the NPS ruins stabilization crew. Rolf Sinclair and Karl Kernberger contributed generously to create the valuable timed photo docu- mentation of the Sun Dagger site prior to its disturbance. The National Geodetic
88 Anna Sofaer, Alan Price, James Holmlund, Joseph Nicoli, and Andrew Piscitello Survey of NOAA again assured us the assistance of William Stone in producing a superbly precise geodetic survey of the site. We thank Phillip Tuwaletstiwa for his early and continuing interest in the Sun Dagger modeling effort and Kenneth Edmundson for his dedicated work to create the early photogrammetric model of the site. In 1984 Dennett, Muessig, and Ryan recorded the precise photogrammet- ric stereo pairs used in the final modeling. The Center for Mapping at Ohio State University, the Imaging Research Center at the University of Maryland, ACCAD at Ohio State University, Aero-Metric, Inc., and Cooper Aerial, Inc., provided critical technical assistance to our modeling efforts. We thank NPS archaeologist Roger Moore and volunteers Scott Sholes (Durango, Colorado), Susan Yewell (Solstice Project), Craig Johnson (Santa Fe, New Mexico), Armando Espinosa Prieto (Santa Fe, New Mexico), and Richard Friedman (Farmington, New Mexico) for their gen- erous logistical and safety support of our laser scanning of the Sun Dagger site in May 2005. Lindsay Kraybill (Western Mapping Company) provided critical data analysis in developing the 2005 laser model and the registered model.
Notes 1. The Solstice Project (www.solsticeproject.org) is a nonprofit organization dedicated to the study of ancient cultures of the American Southwest. The organization was found- ed in 1978 by Anna Sofaer to study, document, and preserve the Sun Dagger and other astronomical expressions of these cultures. 2. These references discuss possible cultural affiliations of the Sun Dagger site and contain estimates of the time of its development between AD 900 and 1300, as well as describe certain parallels between the Chacoan astronomical expressions and the traditions of historic Pueblo cultures. 3. It is difficult to strictly define at what point the shadow and light formations of the rising major and minor standstill moon and the equinox sun can be considered “markings.” These formations appear to be distinctive patterns (i.e., close to the edges and the center of the large spiral), however, when they are cast by the sun or moon rising within 0.5 to 1.5 degrees of the values given here of azimuths 54.3, 67.1, and 90 degrees (see Sinclair and Sofaer 1993 for a discussion of how these values were established). In our documenta- tion, we define “rising” as when the sun or moon is 0.5 to 1.5 degrees above the 0.3-degree altitude of the eastern-northeastern horizon. See annotations to figures 3.2 and 3.3 for the specific azimuths of the solstice, equinox, and lunar standstill light and shadow markings illustrated in this chapter. 4. The right and left edges of the large spiral are marked multiply: at the winter solstice with two light daggers on these edges, at the equinox by the rising sun’s shadow on the right edge, and at the major lunar standstill by the rising moon’s shadow on the left edge. In addition, both the minor standstill moon’s shadow and the summer solstice sun’s light dagger mark the center of the spiral. Finally, the summer solstice dagger also marks the top turn of the spiral: for the four to five days before and after the summer solstice only, the light form first appears as a spot of light in the top turn. (A week after summer solstice,
The Sun Dagger Interactive Computer Graphics Model 89 a streak of light appears above the spiral and expands through the seasons.) In sum, these numerous interlocked markings appear to define the shape and size of the large spiral. (For a fuller discussion of this apparently intricate coordination of the markings at the site, see Sofaer and Sinclair 1987.) 5. NPS records showed that more than a thousand registered visitors had been to the site between 1977 and 1982. Many others, it is assumed, visited the site without registering with park staff (Trott et al. 1989). See figures 3.3b(1) and (2). The loss of material along the shadow-casting edge of the eastern slab caused the difference evident between the image of the 1980 photograph 3b(1), taken before the loss of this material, and the simulated image of the same, derived from the laser scan that registered the change, 3b(2). See in particular the difference in the shadow line below the spiral center. 6. As it turned out, the laser model has only about half the inaccuracy Holmlund had estimated. 7. Experiments conducted with the model since 2008 uncovered an earlier timing in the first appearance of the light dagger at summer solstice when compared with the 1978 photo- graphic record. Calculations by Alan Price and Ben Luce, who studied this phenomenon on the model, and consultations with James Holmlund suggest that the rock face immediately above the large spiral is within a configuration of the slabs and the cliff face that is too narrow to have allowed accurate laser scanning. This rock surface casts the shadow that forms the top edge of the light dagger when it first appears on the large spiral. It is hoped that with new laser-scanning equipment available and with the assistance of the National Park Service, the Project will have the opportunity to scan this surface successfully in the near future. At that time the early occurrence of the light dagger can be studied and assessed, including the pos- sibility that a small settling of the slabs between 1978 and 1984 widened the opening between the eastern and middle slabs and thus caused this earlier occurrence of the light form. 8. In 1982 three authors reported their geological and archaeological assessment that the slabs could have fallen into their 1978 recorded positions (Newman, Mark, and Vivian 1982), refuting an earlier report by the Solstice Project (Sofaer, Zinser, and Sinclair 1979). This report strongly implied, by its title and concluding statements, that there had been no movement of the slabs by the Chacoans, although it provided no data to exclude this pos- sibility. Following this proposal, Newman and Mark were reported to have stated that the slabs could have been adjusted and shaped to achieve the markings (Simon 1982). See Sofaer and Sinclair 1987 for discussion of the likelihood that the Chacoans achieved the complexity of the solar and lunar markings at the site without some adjustment to the slabs. 9. Ben Luce, a theoretical physicist, recently initiated a study of the Sun Dagger site’s functioning, using the interactive tools of the computer graphics model and other theoreti- cal models based on the interactive model, to explore the mechanisms involved and possible constructive aspects. He reports that preliminary research “reveals a fully but not overly determined system in the way the site controls a complex set of astronomical and geologi- cal variables to achieve its markings” (private communication 2009; Luca, in press).
References Cited Bordner, K. 1989 Computer Graphics Unlock Mysteries of the Past. Rensselaer (March):4–7.
90 Anna Sofaer, Alan Price, James Holmlund, Joseph Nicoli, and Andrew Piscitello Judge, W. James, and J. McKim Malville 2004 Calendrical Knowledge and Ritual Power. In Chimney Rock, ed. J. McKim Malville, 151–162. Lexington Books, Lanham, MD. Luce, Ben, and Anna Sofaer 2009 Modeling and Analysis of the Chaco Canyon Sun Dagger. Paper presented at the Conference on Archaeoastronomy in the American Southwest, Camp Verde, AZ. Malville, J. McKim, and Claudia Putnam 1989 Prehistoric Astronomy in the Southwest. Johnson Books, Boulder. Moshier, Steve 2005 “Astronomy and Numerical Software Source Codes.” www.moshier.net. Accessed July 2005. Newman, Evelyn B., Robert K. Mark, and R. Gwinn Vivian 1982 Anasazi Solstice Marker: The Use of a Natural Rockfall. Science 217:1036–1038. Nicoli, Joseph, James Holmlund, Anna Sofaer, Alan Price, Lindsay Kraybill, and William Stone 2006 Digital Restoration of the Sun Dagger Site, Chaco Canyon. Abstract, Society for American Archaeology, San Juan, PR. Novak, Kurt, Kenneth L. Edmundson, and Philip Johnson 1992 Spatial Reconstruction and Modeling of the Sundagger Site in Chaco Canyon. ISPRS International Archives of Photogrammetry and Remote Sensing 29, Commis- sion 5, part B5:808–812. Palca, Joseph 1989 Sun Dagger Misses Its Mark. Science 244:1538. Simon, Cheryle 1982 Solar Marker: A Natural Rock Fall? Science News 122(19):300. Sinclair, Rolf M., and Anna Sofaer 1993 A Method for Determining Limits on the Accuracy of Naked-Eye Locations of Astronomical Events. In Archaeoastronomy in the 1990s, ed. Clive Ruggles, 178–184. Group D Publications, Loughborough, UK. Sinclair, Rolf M., Anna Sofaer, J. J. McCann, and J. J. McCann Jr. 1987 Marking of Lunar Major Standstill at the Three-Slab Site on Fajada Butte. Bul- letin of the American Astronomical Society 19:1043. Sofaer, Anna 1982 Protective Measures for the Sun Dagger Site, Chaco Canyon National Historic Park, Fiscal Year 1983. Memorandum to Senator Pete V. Domenici. 2007 The Primary Architecture of the Chacoan Culture: A Cosmological Expres- sion. In Architecture of Chaco Canyon, New Mexico, ed. Stephen H. Lekson, 225– 254. University of Utah Press, Salt Lake City.
The Sun Dagger Interactive Computer Graphics Model 91 Sofaer, Anna, Michael P. Marshall, and Rolf M. Sinclair 1989 The Great North Road: A Cosmographic Expression of the Chaco Culture of New Mexico. In World Archaeoastronomy, ed. Anthony F. Aveni, 365–376. Cam- bridge University Press, Cambridge. Sofaer, Anna, and Rolf M. Sinclair 1987 Astronomical Markings at Three Sites on Fajada Butte, Chaco Canyon, New Mex- ico. In Astronomy and Ceremony in the Prehistoric Southwest, ed. John Carlson and W. James Judge Jr., 13–70. Maxwell Museum of Anthropology, Albuquerque. 1990 Changes in Solstice Marking at the Three-Slab Site, New Mexico, USA. Archaeo- astronomy 15:59–60. Sofaer, Anna, Rolf M. Sinclair, and Eric Brechner 1989 Computer Graphics Model of the Three-Slab Site on Fajada Butte, New Mex- ico. Bulletin of the American Astronomical Society 21:1210. Sofaer, Anna, Rolf M. Sinclair, and LeRoy F. Doggett 1982 Lunar Markings on Fajada Butte, Chaco Canyon, New Mexico. In Archaeoas- tronomy in the New World, ed. Anthony F. Aveni, 169–186. Cambridge University Press, Cambridge. Sofaer, Anna, Volker Zinser, and Rolf M. Sinclair 1979 A Unique Solar Marking Construct. Science 206:283–291. Solstice Project 1982 The Sun Dagger. Documentary film broadcast by PBS, 1982–1983. 2000 The Mystery of Chaco Canyon. Documentary film broadcast by PBS, 2000–2009. Trott, James, Robert K. Mark, Dennis B. Fenn, and Cecil Werito 1989 Evaluation of Status of Site 29 SJ 2387: Chaco Culture National Historical Park. Washington, DC, Government Printing Office. US Congress 1981 Congressional Record. December 9. S14283. Washington, DC, Government Print- ing Office.
92 Anna Sofaer, Alan Price, James Holmlund, Joseph Nicoli, and Andrew Piscitello Maria O’Donovan
C h a p t e r 4
Power, Meaning, and the Social in Landscape Analysis
The surge of interest in landscape within the last two decades has stemmed largely from the theoretical interests of post-processualism and Marxism. With few excep- tions, archaeologists have constructed landscape as an alternative to processualist archaeology’s instrumentalist approaches to human-environment interaction (see Knapp and Ashmore 1999). The primary emphasis of landscape studies has been on meaning, symbolism, and cosmology, which represents a shift from material to ideal considerations. This development has corrected a long-held imbalance in archaeology, but we must be careful not to create new limitations by overempha- sizing meaning. The material world was an equally important part of everyday life in the past and was integrated with that which was meaningful. Contemporary methods and theories for reconstructing meaning also present significant chal- lenges to the integration of social scales and the collection of appropriate data. A possible solution lies within a multi-scalar, dialectical framework for land- scape that focuses on social totality. It is only through the totality of social rela- tions that dichotomies are united, giving us a more comprehensive understanding of landscape. The dialectics of the social totality integrate what are often con- sidered disparate and oppositional entities, including meaning, production, ritual, ideology, and environmental factors. Social relations take place at many scales—
93 including those of the individual, social groups, and structural institutions—and are integrated across these scales. Individual experience is lived within this rela- tional framework, and only within these relations does experience become truly meaningful. Embedded within the totality of social relations, landscape is a pow- erful interpretive tool, one on which we can no longer afford to place theoretical limitations. It takes more than rhetoric to implement this type of analytical framework; it takes a great deal of data and analytical creativity. This is not an easy task that can be accomplished simply with broad-scale survey data, embodied walkovers, or GIS analysis. Rather, it is a continual, interpretive process that must also incorporate multiple spatial and social scales. I continually strive to achieve this type of multi- scalar landscape grounded in the social totality in my work at Cerro de Trincheras and admit that I am far from completing this task. However, a consideration of the landscape of social relations at Cerro de Trincheras does provide insights into the potential of this analytical framework.
The Meaningful and the Material Even a casual glance at the literature shows archaeology’s strong associa- tion of landscape with meaning, cosmology, and the symbolic (see Knapp and Ashmore 1999 for a review). Landscape approaches often entail a wholesale rejec- tion of processualist concepts of social life and human-environment relationships. Processualist archaeology left little room to consider meaning and the symbolic beyond its ideas of system integration and stability. Processualism’s notions of cau- sality were ultimately rooted in a purely adaptational, external environment. In this, processualism embraced a long-held dichotomy within Western intellectual tradition that separates culture and nature, in which the natural world is merely a source of materials and sustenance for humans divorced from the creation of cul- tural meaning. This dichotomy is evident in processualist settlement pattern stud- ies’ focus on the measurement of objective and instrumental space (Thomas 1996). Most approaches to landscape have sought to transcend this dichotomy through their attention to the interaction of meaning with the natural world. While this has been a largely positive step, it may be time to examine the potential limitations of the theories that have been used to write meaningful landscapes. The important contributions landscape studies have made are too numerous and varied to list in detail here. The basic tenet of most landscape studies—the recognition that people live in a world to which they give meaning—is the most essential and important contribution of this approach. The natural environment is not seen as existing separate from humans, as a thing to be operated on, but instead as an integral component of human life, sacred belief, and cosmology. This
94 Maria O’Donovan intermeshing of culture and nature more closely approximates the worldview of many Native and indigenous peoples (Feld and Basso 1996; Ucko and Layton 1994) and may bring us closer to the prehistoric peoples we study as well as to a more emic perspective on the past. The recognition of meaningfully constituted landscapes has also had impor- tant practical consequences. It has forced archaeologists to acknowledge that our common analytical scales do not necessarily coincide with the social scales that constitute meaningful landscapes. Human life does not end at the perimeter of archaeological sites but extends to natural features as well. This challenges us to develop new methodologies (e.g., Snead and Preucel 1999) and perceptions. The physical manifestations of social life, such as domestic structures, monuments, and sites, do not necessarily correspond to discrete social units or social relations and cultural understandings. Archaeologists’ acceptance of non-site phenomena has also lent support for the protection of Native American sacred sites, which is ultimately a more important consequence than the expansion of archaeological interpretation. As powerful as the emphasis on meaning in landscape has been, it has also significantly limited our understanding of other social aspects. While meaning is imbued in all aspects of landscape, people did not create landscapes just to make meaning. If we accept that one of the central features of the landscape is that humans interact with their world in a meaningful way, we also have to accept that they produce, exchange, and carry on daily activities within social relations. They are also, in part, constrained by their environment. In these processes, they create a landscape that contains the mundane, such as fields and trash heaps, as well as the sacred. It may be very Cartesian, and thus passé (cf., Ingold 1993; Thomas 1996; Tilley 2004b), to mention such things as environmental constraints, exchange, and labor, but they are very real components of human existence. Meaning and the sacred do not exist in a vacuum but are dialectically connected to the material. Each is shaped by the other and cannot stand alone. Thus excluding or placing less emphasis on material factors leads to interpretations that do not fully consider this dialectic and that convey an imperfect understanding of meaning and the symbolic. Ironically, privileging meaning and the symbolic may lead to their being viewed as epiphe- nomenal, as something that floats above the materiality of lived experience rather than being intricately connected to it. At a general level, the priority given to meaning in landscape necessarily slights the material. When we start from any one aspect of culture and work out, whether it is from the material or the ideal, we invariably privilege the starting point (Ollman 1993). Any vantage point from a specific aspect of social relations, such as ritual, colors the way we see the remainder and what aspects of society we
The Lay of the Land 95 privilege as relevant. Problems of emphasis can be lessened by downplaying mean- ing or focusing on the material, but the more fundamental issue of fully integrat- ing meaning and materiality requires a sustained examination of theoretical and methodological frameworks.
Phenomenology, Meaning, and Experience The most prominent theoretical approach to meaningful landscapes has been post-processualism, particularly its phenomenological varieties. Phenomenological approaches to landscape have emphasized the connection between mind and body in people’s experience with and dwelling within the landscape. People experience natural and cultural features as they move through landscape and create meaning in that process. Meaning can be structured through monuments and paths and other human creations, but it is never fixed. Landscape is always open to reinter- pretation and differential experiences related to gender, class, ethnicity, sexuality, personal history, and other factors in which individuals vary (e.g., Ingold 1993; Kirk 1993; Richards 1999; Thomas 1996, 2001; Tilley 1993, 1994, 1996, 2004a, 2004b). The embodied experiences of phenomenological landscapes are ultimately not social phenomena in the sense that social groups or “society” cannot pos- sess a unified body or be expected to consistently have vastly similar experiences. Phenomenologists have generally argued that experiencing a landscape is a key component of self-identity (Tilley 1996) and that it will be experienced somewhat differently by different people because of their personal positions, including gender, ethnicity, sexuality, age, and life history (Thomas 2001). Identity and personhood recognize a concept of individuality at a social-analytical scale, if not the biog- raphies of particular individuals or the specific concept of modern individuality (Thomas 2004). In phenomenological approaches, individual experience and the landscape are reflexive; they constitute each other. The integration of landscape, meaning and personhood, and identity and experience in phenomenology has cre- ated an interesting dilemma: how do we honor the experiential, which appears to be a significant component of landscape interpretation, while avoiding the limita- tions of phenomenological approaches? These limitations stem directly from the theoretical position of meaning and experience in phenomenology and the methods used to arrive at interpretations of these factors. Phenomenological theorists view landscape as relational, as a net- work of meaningful places constructed through people’s habitual activities and interactions. Personhood and life histories are constructed through this landscape; thus it is a reflexive concept. Landscape embodies the social relations that structure identity and personhood, including relations of power and inequality (Thomas 2001). The relational and reflexive aspects of landscape in phenomenology place
96 Maria O’Donovan some limits on experience and meaning. However, the potential of structure to constrain experience through class relations, ideology, and similar factors is not well developed within phenomenology, ultimately leading to a false sense of expe- rience and personhood. The central problem in phenomenological approaches is the disjuncture between meaningful experiences and structural relations. From this perspective, structure is ultimately derived from people’s experiences as they dwell in and move through the landscape; however, these experiences are highly fragmented because of individuals’ different characteristics and life histories. How, then, does structure have any cohesion or force? What seems to be lacking in phenomenal interpreta- tions is a sense of how the opposition between the experiences of personhood and structure are held together in practice. If these “entities” are relationally con- nected, how are experience and meaning funneled into something as solid as class and ethnicity? In turn, how do structural relations of power, as manifested in land- scape, construct identity if it is fragmentary and diffuse? Methodological issues also cloud the interpretation of meaning and experience in phenomenological landscapes. In several instances, the interpretation of mean- ing and bodily experience seems to consist of little more than a walk through the landscape by contemporary archaeologists (e.g., Bender 1998:78–86; Tilley 2004a, 2004b). These analyses are short on archaeological data and long on interpreta- tion. The description of qualities of artifacts, monuments and natural features, and experiences in phenomenological analysis often falls far short of a convincing argument for anything except elegant narrative. It is also unclear whose experience is being interpreted. A type of archaeological “thick description” may indeed be fruitful, but not if it imposes our own meanings on the past. While the quantitative, comparative data that comprise the substance of archaeological interpretation have been described as rigidly scientific (Shanks and Tilley 1987), they also serve to ground us. The reality of the past is always subject to interpretation—qualitative, quantitative, or both—but do we do a disservice to people of the past by presuming that we can so completely inhabit their lived real- ity? Do we also do a disservice to both them and our craft by focusing on only a narrow range of material culture and thus not fully appreciating the richness of what they left behind? Julian Thomas (2004) recently addressed critiques of phe- nomenological approaches to personhood and landscape by stating that many of these analyses were merely attempts by contemporary archaeologists to capture embodied personhood and a sense of the alterity of the past. As an attempt at a new type of bodily connected method of analysis, this approach is interesting and provocative. It is also disturbing, however, both in the wanton disregard for the mul- tiple layers of archaeological data that may support and contest this analysis and in the hubris of a position that purports that thoroughly modern archaeologists
The Lay of the Land 97 are able to achieve some sense of embodied oneness with past people. Clearly, if experience is important—and it is—we need better methods of interpreting it than merely our own bodies. Phenomenological theories of landscape incorporate several dichotomies that we need to transcend. The most basic is the one between the mental and the material, a problem that extends beyond phenomenology to the general empha- sis on the symbolic, ritual, and meaning within landscape studies. These “compo- nents” of human existence need to be fully considered in any landscape analysis. In phenomenological approaches, Christopher Tilley (2004a) has viewed even the mention of the term “economic practices” as constituting a misguided separation between meaning and the material. In this statement, he is expressing the view that meaning and the material are dialectically connected, a position I agree with. It is not clear, however, that phenomenology truly captures a sense of the material in this relation. The basic expressions of the materiality of daily life, such as labor and production, have no real place within phenomenology. In part, this is a result of the issue of vantage point and the emphasis on individuals’ subjective, meaningful experiences. Issues regarding the articulation of the individual and structure are not unre- lated to those of meaning and materiality. Clearly, we need to incorporate meaning- ful bodily experience into landscape interpretations; it is an essential component of how people relate to the built and natural environments. Without this component, the natural and cultural features associated with power, such as impressive monu- ments, would be meaningless, to say nothing of the broader range of landscape meanings people create and draw upon in their daily lives. Our sense of structure and its constraints on people can clearly become attenuated through a focus on the multiplicity of individual experiences and identity badges, such as gender and life history. We have seen how an extreme emphasis on structure only produces differ- ent problems; top-down approaches (e.g., DeMarris, Castillo, and Earle 1996; Earle 1997; Leone 1984) leave little room for resistance or reinterpretation of meaning, thus reducing our ability to fully incorporate all social scales and groups in our analysis. What is needed is a more integrative framework in which the full interac- tion between structure and the individual is appreciated.
Some Thoughts on Landscape Achieving a balance among the multiple factors of meaning, materiality, struc- ture, individual experience, and method is a difficult proposition that may require a great deal of thought and practical trial. I offer some suggestions for what this landscape archaeology might look like. Landscape archaeology should be rooted in ideas of social totality and should display a consciousness of embodied, meaning-
98 Maria O’Donovan ful, and material connections to past environments and natural features. The term “social totality” has been read as totalizing, but this interpretation is somewhat naive. Totality is a concept based on the dialectical interaction among everything we perceive as “parts” of society. The dialectics of totality ensure that no “part” is read in isolation or is given more significance than any other. If we begin our analy- sis by examining meaning, this is simply an analytical abstraction; meaning must be understood in its fuller connections to materiality and social relations (Ollman 1993). A true sense of the dialectical within the social totality is a “balanced” entity in which no part of human existence is a priori assigned more significance than any other. A fuller understanding of social scales within landscape would also pro- vide significant benefits. Social life takes place, and is made meaningful, at many scales—within domestic relations, social groups, and at the level of the individual (Crumley and Marquardt 1987). These scales are defined through, and influence, social life; thus their significance is contextual. Landscape analyses have tended to focus primarily on the scales at the extremes: either at broad scales of social life, such as communities or regions, or at the level of the individual. This limits our understanding of the intervening scales and the interactions between them. A focus on multiple scales would lead to a richer sense of the articulation between the individual and structure. While phenomenological approaches do recognize intervening scales, they rarely focus on everyday life at these scales in their empha- sis on bodily movement through monuments. Landscape is created through, and influences, relations at all scales. Individual experience presents several interrelated problems that revolve around the articulation of the individual with structure and the construction of methods and frameworks that will allow us to capture experience within that articulation. First, we need to take embodied experience and reflexivity seriously. While experience may ultimately be an individual quality in the sense that there is no such thing as a group mind or body, it is also a lived quality. Individuals are created through social relations, and experience has no true meaning outside of those relations. While individuals may read and experience the landscape differ- ently, they live this experience relationally; it is shaped and transformed within relations that bind different qualities, experiences, and characteristics. Experience thus cannot be fragmented into myriad different readings as a result of individual characteristics. In a related vein, we must remember that people do not create meaning sim- ply through their embodied experience of landscape; they also labor within the landscape and, in so doing, enter into definite social relations that are meaningful. The physicality of the body does not apply merely to landscape perspectives or momentary experiences of monuments but also to the weariness of productive
The Lay of the Land 99 labor and the pain of oppressive, forced labor. These experiences also unite land, embodied experience, social relations, and meaning; they need to be given equal importance in our interpretations. The issue of methodology invokes the question of what we believe we are interpreting—the actual embodied experiences of past people or a version of the past that lives only through our contemporary lenses and bodies. Thomas (2001) has eloquently argued that we interpret through our contemporary bodies, which gives us access only to an understanding of how different from us people in the past may have been, not to an analogue of past experience. This suggests that we need a battery of methods for comparison that would help illuminate the extent and quality of this “different-ness.” Our understanding must be based on a solid comparative foundation of history, landscape structure, material factors of everyday life, and other sources of data. There must be some “reality” in the past to support our suppositions in the form of multiple lines of evidence that con- verge on a particular interpretation. For example, multiple and converging lines of evidence might include a significant vantage point to a particular mountain, an ethnographic analogy, and material evidence on the mountain—such as trails or structures—that would form a fairly strong interpretive argument (see Van Dyke, this volume, for a good example of multiple lines of interpretation within landscape analysis). Finally, I would like to make a reasoned plea for the need for a concept of ideol- ogy in landscape. Post-processualism has largely rejected the concept of ideology in its reaction against totalizing discourses and its emphasis on individual experience. The problems perceived with ideology stem from a fairly simplistic reading of it as false consciousness (McGuire and Wurst 2003). Randall McGuire and LouAnn Wurst (2003) have argued that a dialectical approach sees ideology as both material and historical. Thus ideology cannot be rendered simply as a thing that functions to maintain inequality. Embedded within historical, social, and material relations, ideology is part of the structural relation of power. Ideology is written within the landscape, but it is not merely meaningful and can never be individual (McGuire and Wurst 2003). Individuals may embrace, reinterpret, struggle against, and be harmed by particular ideologies, and their lives and experiences may change as a result of these processes. It is through these processes, enacted within social rela- tions and structure, that ideology is transformed and materialized. With ideology, meaning is transformed into structural power; we achieve a more detailed sense of how the meaningful becomes material and how structural power articulates with both the individual and experience. Landscape has been a powerful interpretive concept in that it transcends the dichotomy between culture and nature and insists on viewing human-land inter- actions as meaningful and experiential. The true power of landscape lies in tran-
100 Maria O’Donovan scending all dichotomies—those between the meaningful and the material, the individual and structure, and freedom and constraint. The key to this transcen- dence lies in a dialectical view of social totality in which all scales of human exis- tence are incorporated and experience is lived. This approach ties structures of power to individual experience through the dialectics of social relations and strug- gles at multiple social scales. Social relations are both constrained and constraining within structure and embodied experience and through their interaction with an environment of potentials and limits. They were real, as landscape was real, and this past reality will always leave material traces that ground our interpretations and experiences of landscape. Developing an analytical framework that captures the totality of social rela- tions and the ways they are embedded and expressed in landscape is a considerable challenge. I have attempted in some small way to move toward this goal in my work at Cerro de Trincheras and admit that I am not close to achieving it. I would, however, like to briefly consider some of the implications of this framework for the interpretation of Cerro de Trincheras (this example is based on O’Donovan 1997, 2002, 2004).
Cerro de Trincheras as Landscape Landscape analysis of Cerro de Trincheras unites the physical presence and characteristics of the site with social relations. Social relations are most clearly seen in the site’s architectural structure, specialized ritual structures, and artifact distributions—particularly of shell and other items involved in ritual and social reproduction. This evidence provides insight into the ways power flowed through the mundane and sacred aspects of daily life on the site and was channeled into structure and experience. Cerro de Trincheras is the largest example of the site type cerros de trincheras, defined primarily by the location of the sites on isolated hillsides and the presence of architectural terraces. These sites have been found in at least five culture areas in the Northwest-Southwest (northwestern Mexico and the American Southwest)— Trincheras, Casas Grandes, Rio Sonora, Hohokam, and Mogollon. One of the most frustrating and challenging aspects of working on cerros de trincheras is that in gen- eral, little is known about the specifics of the sites, how they fit within their regional contexts, and, in some cases, the general culture area in which they occur. Cerro de Trincheras is located in the Rio Magdalena Valley in the Trincheras culture area. It is one of the most thoroughly investigated cerros de trincheras. The site has been completely surveyed, and analysis of two seasons of excavation data is nearly complete. Cerro de Trincheras dates to approximately AD 1300–1450. It has 900 terraces that principally served as residential platforms for dwellings.
The Lay of the Land 101 Northwestern section of Cerro de Trincheras.
Cerros de trincheras sites have been interpreted as single-purpose defensive sites. This interpretation clearly does not fit Cerro de Trincheras, which has evidence of dwellings on terraces, high artifact densities, and a highly diverse artifact assem- blage. This evidence unambiguously points to a full-time, general residential occu- pation at Cerro de Trincheras. Terraces did not serve a narrow function but instead were used to create a flat platform on the hill that could be used for a variety of purposes. In addition to residential terraces, a specific type of terrace appears to have been used for agricultural purposes, and other terraces were used to structure ritual areas (McGuire et al. 1999; O’Donovan 1997, 2002, 2004). Numbers of resi- dential terraces have provided a general population estimate of 1,000 to 2,000 indi- viduals, comparable in scale to other large town sites in the Northwest-Southwest, including Snaketown (McGuire et al. 1993; O’Donovan 1997, 2002, 2004). The site is truly a major presence on the landscape (figure 4.1), and its visual and sheer physical impact is one of its most impressive aspects. Cerro de Trincheras was built on a natural hill that rises over 150 m from its surrounding desert land- scape, and the site achieves its true impact through the combination of the natu- ral hill and cultural terracing (McGuire 1998). Terracing can be seen from nearly 20 km away and primarily occurs on the north face of the hill, which faces the
102 Maria O’Donovan Location of areas on Cerro de Trincheras mentioned in text.
Rio Magdalena. The site has, and had, a powerful presence within the landscape (McGuire 1998), one inadequately conveyed by dry statistics. The meaning and manifestation of this power are still unclear. The site could have united sacred and cosmological meanings, inequities between social groups within the site and the region that involved exchange, access to resources and other material, ideological factors, and ritual networks in a complex web I have just begun to unravel. Ironically, ritual and symbolic aspects, as expressed in landscape, are among the most easily accessible aspects at Cerro de Trincheras—in part because of the obvious and visible presence of ritual structures at the site, which are easily identi- fied without excavation. The two ritual areas at the site appear to represent some- what different qualitative experiences. The first, La Cancha (figure 4.2), is a wide
The Lay of the Land 103 platform located near the base of the hill on the north face that is centrally located in relation to the primarily residential terraces that cover this portion of the hill. Excavation data indicate that the platform was not roofed. These factors suggest that it was used for public performances, which would have been visible and audi- ble over most of the north face’s main residential area. The hill’s kidney shape acts as a natural amphitheater (Hoover 1941:231; Huntington 1914). The other ritual area encompasses the crest of the hill, access to which appears to have been controlled. Terraces are located on the two trails to the crest of the hill. These terraces form switchbacks, and their placement indicates that they may have been used to monitor or control access to the crest. A petroglyph at the point where one of these trails enters the crest appears to mark this as sacred space. The crest consists of two saddles and three peaks. The western saddle—El Abra Oeste—is ringed by terraces that define its natural contours and enclose the space of the saddle. This saddle, which is devoid of architecture, may have been used for ritual activities or performances, which would have had limited visibility from terraces on one crest peak and perhaps some of the higher terraces on the north face below the crest. The eastern saddle—El Abra Este—contains the most unusual feature on the crest, El Caracol. As its name implies, this is a spiral-shaped feature. Its walls still stand to approximately 1.5 m, shielding its interior from view, and it is possible that this structure was roofed. If not, only partial glimpses of any rituals performed here would have been afforded by a few terraces on the peak directly above El Caracol. The configuration of El Caracol and adjacent terraces provides strong indications that some aspects of ritual knowledge may have been controlled (McGuire et al. 1993; O’Donovan 1997). The feature’s spiral shape is also suggestive of symbolic meanings. Spirals on rock art in northwestern Mexico are associated with agricul- ture and fertility (Schaafsma 1980), and spirals are also generally associated with the feathered serpent, water, and wind. The shape is equally reminiscent of a shell bisection. The ritual area of the crest raises several questions. The control of access and, possibly, ritual knowledge would have intermeshed with other relations of social power. How was this power manifested in everyday life, and did it transfer into the control of material and social resources? What was it like to move through the ritual area of the crest, to experience this place and its rituals, and how was this experience transferred into and transformed within social relations? How did the meaning created through these experiences connect to ideology? Was this mean- ing focused on agricultural potential and its control, on the control of shell as a material manifestation of social reproduction, or both? The site’s structure provides evidence for material and social differences, some of which are related to religious activities. Some form of supra-household orga-
104 Maria O’Donovan nization, probably based on kinship, seems to be indicated by terrace groupings defined by horizontal or vertical breaks. Kinship groups may have regulated access to material and social resources, providing opportunities for inequities in social power to exist. Their location within the site may also have meshed with social inequalities. It is evident that groups higher on the hill could see and hear every- thing and everyone below them. This suggests that privacy and the ability to con- trol visual and auditory access to the conduct of everyday life may have been a key aspect of social power. A recent analysis (DeLeonardo 2005) of excavated terraces within the top third of the site near the crest reaffirmed the association among height, privacy, and social power. One of these was a residential terrace (Area B7) below El Abra Oeste in the central portion of the north face. The quantity and diversity of arti- facts indicate that this was a primary residential area. It appears that residents were producing more shell jewelry than they would have needed for their own social reproduction (Vargas 2004), possibly indicating elite-centered production. This finding adds depth to survey data that indicate that residents of this andsome other areas may have had higher involvement in shell jewelry production than was the case in still other areas (O’Donovan 1997, 2002, 2004). It is also possible that a ritual specialist was resident here, as indicated by the presence of minerals and other potential ritual paraphernalia (DeLeonardo 2005). At the least, this evidence is proof that ritual specialists were present at the site. Further insight into the presence and role of ritual specialists comes from El Mirador, a complex of three interrelated terraces very close to the crest of the hill near El Abra Oeste. This area shows significantly less evidence of habitation, sug- gesting that only one or perhaps a few individuals may have lived here, probably on an intermittent basis. The area contains evidence of medicinal plants, shell items that may have been used in dance costumes, and a high concentration of ceramic cloud-blower pipes. Quantities and types of ceramic vessels and faunal remains also suggest feasting, and one terrace with particularly low artifact densities may have been used as a platform for performances. It thus appears that El Mirador was a specialized ritual area where a variety of activities—including dancing, public oratory, and healing—may have occurred (DeLeonardo 2005). El Mirador’s posi- tion high on the hill would have allowed anyone performing activities there to keep them secret; people on terraces below would not have been able to see into the ter- races. Ritual performers or specialists could have made themselves visible to those below if they wished to do so, however. The scale of Cerro de Trincheras and its visibility within the surrounding land- scape also provide evidence of social power and inequality. This was clearly the largest and most visible site within the local area and the overall region. At this point, it does not appear that residents of Cerro de Trincheras exercised significant
The Lay of the Land 105 power over the distribution of key economic and social valuables, particularly shell (Vargas 2004), within the local area. This belief may change as research progresses, however. The site’s potentially central role in local power relations is based—again ironically—on ritual factors. Rituals performed on the crest seem to have held significance beyond Cerro de Trincheras. Suzanne Fish (1999) has proposed that communal rituals associ- ated with summit features at smaller cerros de trincheras in the area were more complexly enacted at Cerro de Trincheras. Several smaller cerros de trincheras in the local area have special features on their summits akin to those of El Caracol, although none is spiral-shaped. This suggests that residents of these sites were also enacting rituals on hill crests. Cerro de Trincheras, with the area’s most elaborate crest ritual configuration, may have taken a leading role in this ritual complex. The placement of ritual features at the apex of hills, at the place where earth meets sky, seems to indicate that hills in general may have held symbolic significance. The ethnohistoric record offers support for the idea that hills were sacred spaces for the Tohono O’odham. Mountains and hills often appear in Tohono O’odham songs as landmarks, as residences of the gods, or in association with water-related words (Underhill 1946:38). The landscape of Cerro de Trincheras currently presents a complicated pic- ture of the interaction of ritual, social relations, experience, symbolic meaning, and material factors. Rituals enacted at the site and within the local area played into relations of social power and drew upon the experiential. Rituals on the crest, La Cancha, and El Mirador—which tended to be related to agricultural tasks and daily life in general—invoked very different experiences and meanings that were lived within social relations. As one participated in rituals on the crest or at El Mirador, meaning was created and re-created—meaning that may have linked sym- bols, beliefs, and experiences involving agricultural fertility, shell, or other aspects into ideologies. In this process, power—which can be seen in the control of access to ritual areas, knowledge, and material culture—flowed through social relations. Power was also manifest in the ability to live within or out of view on the hill, to have one’s daily domestic life exposed or to maintain privacy, and to access to shell artifacts necessary for social reproduction. Power may also have extended to control of agriculture, exchange, and other aspects of everyday life for which we currently have little evidence but that were enmeshed in the same totality of social relations as was ritual. As power flowed through social relations, it structured expe- rience; the ways people would be able to move about the site, conduct their daily lives, and think about their world and their experiences structured social relations and power. Lived experience occurs within the dialectics of social relations and cannot be separated from them. Thus a particular place, Cerro de Trincheras, was created and lived.
106 Maria O’Donovan Cerro de Trincheras as place and its relations cannot be understood in isola- tion. The site had an incredibly striking presence on the landscape, one that conveys an impression of power (McGuire 1998) and that may have intermeshed with the particulars of ritual belief. The possibility of a ritual complex in which residents of Cerro de Trincheras may have taken a leading role suggests inequalities in social relations within the local area. These inequalities may have intermeshed with social relations at the site, forming a complex web that united various social scales. The specifics of daily life at Cerro de Trincheras and within the local area are not completely clear. The ways social power writ within ritual translated into everyday life, whether agricultural production and exchange were involved in social inequities, how resources were channeled within the local area, and other issues are far from fully resolved. These issues require more information on all aspects of life at Cerro de Trincheras, particularly the mundane aspects of every- day life and the surrounding human and environmental landscape. Imagination is also required to fully explore what it meant to dwell on this hill where everything was visible to those above, where paths led to the sky and to arenas of the super- natural. This imagination, though, must be grounded in the lived relations of the people who created and were shaped by Cerro de Trincheras.
Conclusion It is within social relations and lived experience that meaning really matters. We cannot lose sight of the specifics of data on daily labor, social relations, the environment, and similar factors within a meaningful landscape. To do so drains landscape of much of its interpretive force and, more important, of the past and the people who lived it. Landscapes are created by the people who live them, who experience their world through a unity of mind and body that cannot be separated from the totality of the social relations in which they are enmeshed. These social relations bind individuals, groups, and structural institutions into a whole through which the material, the experiential, and the meaningful are lived. Grasping this whole is a difficult process that requires intensive exploration of all aspects of archaeological data. The reward is creating a landscape that does not re-create our own dichotomies or focus primarily on our experience and that captures the flow of the material and the meaningful, culture and nature, the subjective and the objective, the sacred and the mundane, through past social relations.
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110 Maria O’Donovan Michael E. Jacobson
C h a p t e r 5
Creating Place in the Ludlow Strikers’ Colony
On April 19, 1914, the striking coal miners and their families living in the Ludlow strikers’ colony came together to celebrate Greek Easter Sunday. Union leaders and the striking families sang union songs, played baseball, and ended the day with a large community dinner (O’Neal 1971:130). Although it was a Greek holiday, few of those celebrating were Greek. The strikers represented at least twenty-one nation- alities, mostly from the United States and Eastern and Southern Europe (Ludlow Report 1914:7). Despite their ethnic differences, the strikers joined together and turned a collection of canvas tents into a community. The following day, members of the Colorado National Guard along with coal company mine guards attacked the Ludlow strikers’ colony. Their actions, known as the Ludlow Massacre, led to the deaths of twenty strikers and the destruction of the colony. The Ludlow Massacre was part of a long-term struggle over place and commu- nity that took place in the American Southwest during the growth of industrialism in the nineteenth and twentieth centuries. Class and industrial conflicts resulted in contentious definitions of practices in the workplace and in the social and cultural lives of those living in the American Southwest (Baxter 2002; Gillespie and Farrell 2002). Settlement in the Southwest was often directed by industrial ambitions to accumulate resources for production in the eastern United States (Hardesty 1988).
111 To ensure the success of these industrial endeavors, settlers from the eastern United States carried out a process of conquest (military, cultural, and economical) of the southwestern landscape (Limerick 1988). Their mining and harvesting activities did not just physically alter the landscape. The settlers’ actions also redefined the landscape by replacing indigenous communities’ values and meanings associated with landscapes with new values (Ruuska, this volume). The settlers’ view of space was not devoid of meaning; rather, it held a different meaning. The resources present in the landscape established the value of a place, making landscapes com- modities instead of sacred places. As a result, the primary experience of space in the American West was transitory. As soon as resources were mined out, the camp was closed and its inhabitants moved to another camp. This boom-and-bust cycle was not a tragic failure of community but a reality when the goal was capital utilization rather than community formation. In such ephemeral communities, the development of community identity differed from that found in long-term settlements. There have been many studies of the use of ritual and tradition to influence identity, enforce power, and develop cultural associations (Hobsbawm and Ranger 1983; Hodder 1990; Thomas 1996; Ruuska, this volume; Van Dyke, this volume)— all in the promotion of specific ideologies. These studies have relied on the use of enduring practices such as ritual for their interpretation, emphasizing long-term structures in disciplining practice over time. There is value in such perspectives for identifying overarching trends and the development of new power relations. However, such perspectives become limited in informing on short-term trends. When applied to situations involving short occupations, conflict, or rapidly chang- ing processes (e.g., industrialism and capitalism), however, researchers must rely less on tradition or discipline over time and more on the negotiations of identities and meanings that exist in a state of flux or fluidity (O’Donovan, this volume). In conflicts and habitations of short duration, meanings change on a daily basis, and each activity becomes increasingly meaningful without the repetition of time and ritual to make the meanings unconsciously understood. Landscape studies, specifically those with a phenomenological approach, are helpful in addressing the formation of transient communities. It is in the mun- dane activities that one experiences the surrounding world and develops an inter- pretation and knowledge of that world. The ideological definitions that label and influence people’s interpretation of their experiences direct their identification with places, material culture, and communities. This recognition of experience shows that the practices of daily life are significant acts that establish meaning in the material world. Such a perspective allows for fluidity in interpretation that does not require long-term habitation or practices to identify meaning and social relations. Instead, the meaning of each act is recognized at the smallest scale of
112 Michael E. Jacobson time. It is an archaeology of the moment, looking at acts that in some cases leave limited or no material remains. The use of multiple lines of evidence, such as pho- tographs, texts, and material remains, allows us to study these moments and the meanings they embed in the landscape. A look at these meanings in the landscape, no matter how fluid, creates an avenue for research into ephemeral sites or short- lived communities. The Ludlow strikers’ colony’s relation to the 1913–1914 Colorado Coalfield War meant it was a product of the industrial relations that existed in the American Southwest during the nineteenth and twentieth centuries. However, it was still a unique community. Its inhabitants were not mining coal or producing goods. Instead, they established a new community to protest the lack of community in the coal camps. The Ludlow strikers’ colony only existed for about seven months, from September 30, 1913, until it was destroyed during the Ludlow Massacre on April 20, 1914. During this time the union, the United Mine Workers of America (UMWA), used the organization of space in the colony as an expedient method to unite strikers around its goals and to maintain authority during the strike. The union did not haphazardly construct the Ludlow colony; rather, organizers took painstaking care in the development of its layout. Using documents, photographs, and the material remains of the Ludlow strikers’ colony, in this chapter I develop an interpretation of how union organizers used this layout to shape place and the identities of the strikers and their families.
Community and a Sense of Place Keith Basso’s (1996) concept of a sense of place influences this study’s theo- retical and interpretive attempt to recognize the processes union leaders used to establish community in the Ludlow strikers’ colony. For Basso (1996), a sense of place is a sense of belonging to a material landscape, a community, and an identity. A sense of place is an activity, not a feeling (Basso 1996:83). It is “vaguely realized most of the time and rarely brought forth for conscious scrutiny, it surfaces in an attitude of enduring affinity with known localities and the ways of life they sponsor” (Basso 1996:83). Basso follows a phenomenological perspective of space and place theory that looks at people’s experiences and how those experiences are shaped by memory and connections with material culture. Being or dwelling in an environment leads to daily experiences and interac- tions with surrounding objects and people (Tilley 1994:13). The interpretation of these experiences creates a valued relationship to the world. Names, meanings, and values given to the material and social entities present in a place reinforce the values held toward those entities (Basso 1996). The result of this development of a valued relationship to a location is a connection to a place, the lessening of
Archaeology of the Moment 113 distance between the self and the items that surround the self (Tuan 1977). The diminished distance between the self and the surrounding world reaches a point where the meanings and definitions held in a place become unconsciously under- stood. This unconscious understanding is the acceptance of one’s surroundings and a sense of place or belonging. The foundation of such a perspective is the self or individual. The mind and body interacting in experiencing and interpreting the world leads to an under- standing of one’s surroundings. Ruth Van Dyke (this volume) discusses the use of the body to structure the world in phenomenological perspectives. Relying on Edward Casey (1996, 1997), Martin Heidegger (1962), Maurice Merleau-Ponty (1962), and Yi-Fu Tuan (1977), Van Dyke assumes a universal abstract body that can determine direction and general spatial abstractions. Such an assumption allows an entry point for study, as the body of the archaeologist is equated with the body of an individual from the past. The archaeologist’s movement through the landscape becomes subject to the same aesthetics and influences an individual from the past was subjected to by the landscape (Tilley 1994). This creates a basis for phenom- enologists to interpret individuals’ past experiences with their social and material worlds. Maria O’Donovan (this volume) clearly describes the critiques of such a phe- nomenological approach. Since phenomenologists often use the body as the unit of study for interpreting a landscape, their studies often center on the individual. As O’Donovan suggests, this is problematic given that unknown social backgrounds of past individuals as well as the archaeologists themselves can alter perceptions and the final interpretation of landscapes. A focus on the individual also ignores social and collective actions. Most connections to the social world are made using major aspects of place, such as temples, major landmarks, and rituals. These aspects were not part of ordinary life; by concentrating on them, archaeologists move individual experience from the mundane to the extraordinary in an attempt to interpret com- monplace social relations. Instead, it is the mundane practices and everyday experi- ences that create identity and form the basis of social relations. This chapter attempts to show that as a theoretical approach, phenomenology is best applied when looking at mundane experiences. The establishment of place is not found within the individual but rather in the individual’s relation to the social and material worlds that surround the self. One’s relationship with place is a social experience structured by negotiations and issues of power. The association of the self with a community is often a struggle between the interests of the self and those of the community as a whole. In everyday discourse, direct or indirect, indi- vidual values and experiences meet and conflict with others. Those who control the material world through access to resources have the greater ability to influence meanings held within material culture (McGuire and Paynter 1991). Those with
114 Michael E. Jacobson power have the opportunity to shape the basic rules for social discourse using per- suasion, material or social access, and even violence. Ideology plays a crucial role in the development of identity and community. Ideology as materialized in the landscape directs the bodily experience and, ulti- mately, people’s perceptions (Tilley 1994:24–25). I follow Heather Burke’s (1999:15) definition of ideology as a set of deceptive beliefs implied in mundane life, which come from and reproduce a structure by hiding contradictions and continuing unequal relationships between and among groups. The social relations inherent in a structure express an ideology as that ideology shapes those social relations. Material culture’s association with daily life makes it a part of these social relations and ideology. As Randall McGuire (1992:102) states, “Material culture entails the social relations that are the conditions for its existence.” Daily social relations cre- ate material culture, and the development of material culture, in turn, is a product and a reflection of the social relations that required it. As material culture is the product and emulator of social relations, styles related to material culture work to express the meanings associated with that cul- ture. Style is a nonverbal expression of identity. By dictating appropriate styles in material culture, community members materially define their own values, which are an expression of identity (Wobst 1977) and ideology (Burke 1999:19). Those who understand and accept the symbolic expression of ideology are seen as insid- ers, and those who do not understand are outsiders (Burke 1999:19). For social relations to remain secure, they must maintain a strong influence and promote the individual’s recognition of belonging in community. By defining appropriate meanings and categories within material culture and place, those with power in a community can attempt to secure their position by formalizing aspects of com- munity identity associated with material space. Basso (1996:57) sees people’s expression of a sense of place present in ritual, architecture, and art. In daily life and in special ceremonies, people represent the social relations and meanings that tie them together and that tie them to place. For Basso (1996:57), it is the researcher’s responsibility to interpret from the mate- rial or the activity the underlying relationships such meanings have to people’s perception of themselves and their world. The materials used in the expression of the interpretations of these senses of place in dialogues, negotiations, and vio- lence have left a historical record open to interpretation. Statements in testimo- nies, texts, oral histories, photographs, and the material record present a view of the social relations involved in the strike and in participants’ sense of place. The union’s organization of space and the shaping of activities in the Ludlow strikers’ colony left evidence of the development of community and solidarity among the strikers.
Archaeology of the Moment 115 During the early 1900s, coal companies determined the socioeconomic struc- ture of Colorado’s southern coalfields. The Victor-American Company, along with the Colorado Fuel and Iron Company (CF&I) and the Rocky Mountain Fuel Company, produced over half of the state’s coal, with CF&I alone producing 32 percent (McGovern and Guttridge 1972:77). These companies sought to maximize profit with minimal cost or oversight. Managers used their economic and political dominance to create a harsh environment for the workers. They defrauded work- ers out of wages and made minimal investment in mine safety (Whiteside 1990). The coal companies maintained a strong influence over the state’s economy and workforce. Coal company managers used their control over the camps to influence their employees’ home lives. In company housing, schools, hospitals, and social halls, managers dictated the shape of space in the camps and influenced the programs and activities that took place in these corporate spaces (Jacobson 2006). Managers used company-approved aesthetic styles, art, and appearance in company housing. Company-hired teachers taught a company-approved curriculum in the schools. Company stores limited consumer options for miners and their families. Managers dictated moral practices by prohibiting gambling and alcohol in the social halls. These controls over the daily lives of coal camp residents left them little voice in constructing community in the camps. The UMWA capitalized on the increased tension between miners and manag- ers to boost its membership. The miners’ demands, as represented by the UMWA, revealed that they wanted more than a simple change in labor relations. The strik- ers made seven demands (Gitelman 1988:2). The first, recognition of the union, pushed for worker solidarity around an ideology separate from that of the com- panies. The next four demands—a 10 percent wage increase, adoption of the eight-hour workday, payment for dead work, and the right to elect check-weigh- men—were evidence of the proposed restructuring of both the workplace and labor-management relations. The sixth asked for the right to trade in any store. By gaining the right to choose their own stores and merchants, the workers and their families could acquire influence outside the companies’ overall ideology. The final demand asked for the enforcement of mining laws and the abolition of armed min- ing guards. In effect, the miners were asking the companies to take a less authori- tarian role both inside and outside the mines and company towns. On September 23, 1913, the UMWA called a strike; 90 percent of the workers walked out (McGovern and Guttridge 1972:104). The company retaliated by evict- ing the strikers from company housing. The UMWA aided the strikers by supplying tents and leasing land for tent colonies across the southern coalfields. The Ludlow tent colony was the largest of these colonies and served as the headquarters for the
116 Michael E. Jacobson strike in Las Animas County. The colony was located near the Ludlow railroad sta- tion and east of the mining towns of Berwind and Tabasco; up to 1,200 residents in 150 tents inhabited the site (McGovern and Guttridge 1972). The strikers and the companies settled down into a cold, tense winter. The strike came to a climax the following April. Harassment had been com- monplace, but direct attacks, including assassinations and the destruction of mate- rial and property, became more intense. On the morning of April 20, 1914, the situ- ation exploded. Gunfire broke out and continued the rest of the day. The Colorado National Guard strafed the colony as inhabitants took refuge. Fires broke out, trap- ping individuals in cellars excavated below the tents. Twenty strikers, including eleven children and two women, died in the Ludlow Massacre. Strikers responded with a violent takeover of the region in what was termed the Ten-Day War. Calm returned when President Woodrow Wilson ordered federal troops to the strike zone (Gitelman 1988). After the troops had eased the conflict, survivors of the massacre returned to the Ludlow strikers’ tent colony. Strikers cleared the burned remnants of the initial colony into the remains of the tent cellars. After the site had been cleaned, the colony was reestablished and the strikers memorialized areas of the initial colony. The strike continued until December 15, 1914. The Ludlow strikers’ colony was an ephemeral community. It was only meant to last for the duration of the strike. However, to ensure success in the strike, union leaders needed to establish a sense of community and place among the strikers, despite the limited time. The colony’s unique nature meant union leaders could not use force or continue their former practices if they were to establish and main- tain solidarity. Instead, they needed to persuade strikers to adopt their ideology by shaping daily interactions and practices within the colony.
Establishing Order and a Social Stage UMWA leaders’ organization of the colony allowed order to prevail during the strike (O’Neal 1971:109) and established the union as the central authority in the development of place within the colony. The union provided a unified message and ideology in its demands. However, to maintain the strike and support from the strikers, the UMWA needed to ensure that striking families had enough resources and that they resisted using violent aggression against the coal company guards. The shaping of the colony allowed for order and created a material stage for the union to shape the daily interactions of the strikers and their families in an attempt to create a unified community. The size and population of the Ludlow strikers’ colony required a centralized system of organization. There were no structures other than the tents, so they con- stituted the material basis for this organization. One striker’s wife, Mary Petrucci,
Archaeology of the Moment 117 confirmed the formal organization of the tents; she noted that she lived in tent number 1, which was next to tent number 58 (USCIR 1916:8193). Photographs of the colony confirm the tent numbering, with the presence of numbers painted on the fronts of tents. The existence of five identified photographs with num- bered tents suggests that the practice of numbering tents was widespread and cen- trally organized within the colony. To reinforce the tent numbering system, union organizers lined up tents side by side, with streets running between them (USCIR 1916:8192). Mary Thomas O’Neal (1971:108–109) described the organization in the colony as a system of numbered tents on “numerically designated streets.” No detailed identification of these streets is available except in the titles of fourteen photographs of the Ludlow colony that include street names, such as Front Street, Main Street, North Main Street, 2nd Street, and 3rd Street. Despite generalized statements professing the existence of a system of orga- nization in the Ludlow strikers’ colony, no further documentary information, such as maps, details that organization. Photographic overlays helped establish the lay- out of the colony (Walker et al. 2002:19–22). I identified the positions of eight of the fourteen photographs that included street names in their titles. By positioning these photographs, I determined an alignment between the positions in which the photographs were taken that suggested the locations of the streets in the colony. Front Street was the colony’s southern perimeter. The next street to the north was Main Street. North Main Street served as a second main street. Second and Third streets were the northernmost streets (figure 5.1). These streets were offset from true north by about 45 degrees. The colony’s alignment at 45 degrees off true north also made the tents offset from the two major transportation routes that ran alongside the colony. The county road along the colony’s southern perimeter ran in an east-west direction, while a railroad track ran north-south along the western perimeter. Excavated features support the offsetting of the colony that I identified using photographic overlays. Archaeologists within the Colorado Coalfield War Archaeological Project (CCWAP) identified tent platforms using the remains of trenches strikers excavated around the perimeters of their tents to limit flooding. The trenches filled with ash, coal, and clinker, resulting in an inclusion that dif- fered from the surrounding natural soil matrix (CCWAP 2000:20–22). These fea- tures acted as boundaries for the tents. The orientation of all excavated tent plat- forms confirmed the orientation identified by the photographic overlay as being 45 degrees off the county road and the railroad track that ran alongside the colony (CCWAP 2000; Horn 1998; Walker et al. 2002). Both the photographic overlays and the field survey and excavation confirm the presence of an organized landscape in the Ludlow strikers’ colony and suggest the way the union implemented that organization.
118 Michael E. Jacobson Approximate location of streets in Ludlow strikers’ colony.
The arrangement of the tents into a loose grid formation, as identified by the photographic overlays and feature excavation, allowed public activity to be cen- tralized in specific areas of the colony. The use of the grid layout had been well established throughout the settlement of the American West as a fast, reliable, inexpensive, and universally applicable method in surveying and settlement design (Peterson 2003:9). Grids also allowed the community to be flexible because struc- tures, as in the case of the Ludlow strikers’ colony tents, could be moved and rear- ranged throughout the grid with little complication (Peterson 2003:10). Within this organized space, union leaders shaped striking families’ activities with the goal of establishing community. The locations from which photographers took photographs also provide infor- mation on people’s movements within the colony. Seven of the thirteen mapped pre-massacre photographs of the Ludlow strikers’ colony were taken south of North Main Street. Photographers attempted to record daily life in the colony and therefore focused on the area with the most public activity—the colony’s open southern portion, which housed many of the public structures. Social services originated from union leader John Lawson’s tent (which also served as the union’s headquarters in the colony) (USCIR 1916:6367), the large community tent that housed the school and religious services (USCIR 1916:6778), and the doctors’ tent. A structure located in the southwestern corner served as a store (Long 1991:289; O’Neal 1971:111). Strikers built recreational facilities, such as gymnastics bars,
Archaeology of the Moment 119 along the county road and constructed a baseball field across the road south of the colony (USCIR 1916:6889). The centralization of these public areas allowed easy access for strikers and their families, prodded them to interact in everyday prac- tices, and promoted a public image to passersby on the adjacent county road. The 1913–1914 Colorado Coalfield War was a violent struggle for strikers and their families. Without assistance, they would have failed to acquire the resources and the support they needed to survive the strike. By providing tents and resources, the UMWA fulfilled the striking families’ basic material needs. By arranging the tents and centering the public areas, union leaders established a material stage on which to develop a unified community. Union leaders used space to bring people together in their daily lives. Coal companies had the ability to influence miners through the use of long-standing architecture, school curricula, and social halls. The union had none of these tools, but union leaders used the organization of space to promote shared activities through which the strikers and their families could develop common experiences and, in turn, a unified identity.
Experience and the Making of Place Union leaders could shape space, but they needed to change space into place to give the striking families a sense of home within the colony and create a uni- fied community. By joining together behind a central cause, strikers and the union could develop a strong and stable community. However, they needed a common identity to remain united for the duration of the strike. They accomplished this by promoting public practices. Ethnicity was a major challenge to the development of solidarity among the strikers. Documents suggest that an ethnically varied population existed within the colony. One striker’s wife, Pearl Jolly, claimed that twenty-one nationalities were present in the colony (USCIR 1916:6354). The National Guard maintained that twenty-two languages were spoken in the Ludlow strikers’ colony (Ludlow Report 1914:7). With such an ethnically diverse community, the union needed to diminish the influence of specific ethnic groups and promote its own authority and a sense of commonality. The union initially handled the issue of ethnicity by establishing an internal police service and committees that represented each ethnic group. Louis Tikas served as the Ludlow strikers’ colony leader and the representative of the Greeks (USCIR 1916:6364). Bernardo Verdi represented the Italians (USCIR 1916:6808). By appointing committee leaders, each ethnicity gained a sense of power and repre- sentation in the colony’s leadership. The union did not give any ethnic group more authority than any other, thus creating a sense of equity. UMWA organizer John Lawson and other UMWA representatives continued to direct the union’s strategy
120 Michael E. Jacobson during the strike. Through the use of such a system, the union structured the rela- tions between ethnic groups and claimed a role as the central authority. The ethnic committees also gave strikers a sense that they were creating the basis for community. Mary Thomas O’Neal stated, “John Lawson . . . called for volunteers to make this a happy, ideal clean camp” (1971:108). The committees promoted ethnic practices and recreational activities within the colony, which worked to establish a sense of community. Photographs depict strikers playing ethnic games, such as bocce ball. Historical accounts suggest that ethnic music was commonly played in the camp (USCIR 1916:8186). These celebrations of identity forced strikers into a discourse. Negotiation among ethnic, individual, and class identities occurred in every action and practice, no matter how mundane. The union used this dialogue of ethnicity and identity to discuss openly issues of dif- ference in the community. However, the union’s authority subsumed the power of any tradition, in both discussion and performance. Union leaders gave strikers a perception of controlling the community, but they also enacted practices related to daily life in the colony to ensure the pres- ence of a union identity. The union used recurring messages in union songs and speeches to reaffirm its message. In the Ludlow strikers’ colony, union meetings were held on a platform adjacent to the large tent (O’Neal 1971:109). The singing of the National Anthem marked the beginning of every meeting, and the sing- ing of the Union Song to the tune of “The Battle Cry of Freedom” marked the meeting’s close (O’Neal 1971:109). The singing of the Union Song became a ritual performance during different strike events to help maintain identity. One National Guard officer noted that strikers and their families welcomed the Guard into the strike zone by singing union songs (USCIR 1916:6806). Strikers and their wives who were arrested during the strike sang these songs in their cells to reaffirm their iden- tity (O’Neal 1971:114). They also sang the Union Song to strikebreakers (O’Neal 1971:111). The song became a ritualized practice, causing daily strike events to be related to the union. Violence and tediousness filled the strikers’ daily lives. Amusements worked well in easing the tension between divergent identities in the colony by distracting residents from the stress of the strike. They also allowed strikers to express their resentment of the coal companies. This is most evident in the presence of what can best be described as protest snow piles. Although not directly addressed in the testimonial evidence and not present in the material remains of the colony, six pho- tographs show that colony residents created large snow piles, with flags and dolls or stuffed figures placed on top of the piles. Based on the photographic overlays, these piles appear to have been located in the eastern section of the colony. The presence of flags and figures atop these snow piles suggests that they may have conveyed a symbolic message. They were material reminders that kept strikers
Archaeology of the Moment 121 and their families cognizant of the issues of the strike and united them around a shared goal. The union used moving picture shows as a shared activity among strikers to help create a common experience for the miners and their families. Archaeologists excavated a celluloid frame in the Ludlow colony’s midden, suggesting the pres- ence of such entertainment. Based on a celluloid frame excavated in the midden, the union allowed traveling projectionists to enter the colony. Beyond just passing time, the act of watching motion pictures helps promote a unified community. Liz Cohen (1990:123–125) has described the differences between attending a motion picture show in the colony and doing so today. Since the movies were silent, audi- ences actively engaged in motion picture performances by providing commentary on the events depicted on the screen. The lack of spoken dialogue in the motion pictures allowed those unable to understand English to view them. This activi- ty’s cross-cultural availability meant that many strikers could have shared in the experience. Sports were also effective in creating community. The union encouraged the playing of different sports to develop a public arena for strikers to participate in cre- ating a common identity. The most visible sport was baseball. The union pushed for the construction of a field and set up games, specifically the game on Greek Easter in 1914 (O’Neal 1971:130). The game was useful in bringing people together and presenting an American identity (O’Neal 1971:130). Other forms of recreation, such as gymnastics and bocce ball, helped amuse the strikers. Baseball, however, brought the entire colony together. Members of different ethnic groups could share in an experience not controlled by the tradition by one ethnic group. It was not a Greek or an Italian game but an American one. Mike Livoda stated, “You see, they had baseball teams at these different camps . . . and we’d go and we had the best time. The miners all got along and [there was] no race barrier or nationality. It was just one big group, that’s all. And everybody just seemed to get along” (Livoda 1975). Those who did not play in the games could share in the sense of community and social practices as spectators. Recreation and public activities thus allowed the union to structure the strik- ing families’ experience in an attempt to create a unified community. This effort could have been successful only if the families accepted this public interaction and actively joined in. The accounts discussed here suggest that the families did publicly engage each other in forming a community. Archaeological remains also suggest that they willingly conducted their household activities in public rather than isolating themselves from the community. The excavation of religious items and medals from inside tent platforms reveals the presence of ethnic and religious practices among striking households (CCWAP 2000). By cooking, playing music, and performing traditional ethnic activities, strikers and their families were trying
122 Michael E. Jacobson to continue household practices from their houses in the coal camps in the strikers’ colony. The distribution of artifacts associated with Ludlow colony tent platforms suggests that household activities often occurred outside the tents. Spatial analy- ses of food-related artifacts and personal items show a higher clustering of such artifacts outside some tent outlines (CCWAP 2000:22–25; Jacobson 2006:246–253). Activities may have been conducted outside because of the tents’ small size. From the identification of excavated tent outlines, we can determine that tents were about 5 m × 6.4 m (33 m2) in size. For some strikers, the limited space in the tents made performing activities outside more feasible. They also may have done so because the strikers and their families were trying to be sociable and active in the community. Through recreation, the union worked to promote its ideology and the soli- darity needed to win the strike. In doing so, it created a new identity in which the union acknowledged the strikers’ different ethnicities and absorbed their practices, thus giving the union full authority. Strikers needed to see themselves as sharing a common working-class identity rather than dividing themselves along ethnic lines. Only through solidarity and shared experience could the union develop such an identity among the strikers. The threat of ethnic differences was plausible in the colony, which, as mentioned earlier, contained twenty-one ethnic groups, each with its own traditions and values. By promoting shared practices, the union hoped to produce a common identity and a sense of community, with the union acting as the broker of such community rather than as an imposing authority. Strikers and their families appear to have willingly and assertively pushed for these commu- nity activities. They even moved their private household activities from inside their tents to the public sphere in a shared attempt to form a new community.
Conclusion Following the Ludlow Massacre and the Ten-Day War, the surviving strikers and their families returned to the remains of the Ludlow colony. They did not concede the strike; instead, they rebuilt the colony and continued the strike for eight more months. The strikers’ push to rebuild shows that the union did suc- ceed in creating a new community. The union united the striking families and eth- nic groups by using a shared space and recreation. The community that resulted from these shared experiences was not destroyed by the massacre. Rather, it was strengthened by the massacre, which created an intense shared experience that united the strikers. The miners and their families joined the union in the strike with an initial goal of changing industrial relations. To achieve this goal, union leaders based their strategy on promoting a community with a shared identity. Even with the strike’s
Archaeology of the Moment 123 short duration, the union established a sense of community among the strikers that allowed solidarity to survive beyond the Ludlow Massacre. This situation reminds us that as researchers studying sites that had short occupations, we must look at the moment and not just at the monument. Much of the settlement of the American Southwest during the late nineteenth and early twentieth centuries was defined by short-term settlements. When study- ing these sites, archaeologists can look to larger cultural trends, such as ethnic identity, capitalism, and industrialism. However, to examine the local and contex- tual development of community, researchers must look at mundane practices and the staging of place. Historical archaeologists must take into account that people in the past did not perceive of themselves or their surroundings in only one aspect (Hall 2000). Texts, images, and material culture overlapped in their relationship to the same practices and spaces. The actions of mundane life did not always leave a lasting material presence, as in the case of snow piles, sports, or watching movies. Yet these actions were meaningful in the development of community. To research the ways these practices added to a sense of identity, we must adopt an integrated view of place using material culture, texts, and images, especially when the sites under study are ephemeral.
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124 Michael E. Jacobson Cohen, Lizabeth 1990 Making a New Deal: Industrial Workers in Chicago, 1919–1939. Cambridge Univer- sity Press, Cambridge. Gillespie, William, and Mary M. Farrell 2002 Camp Settlement Patterns: Landscape-Scale Comparisons of Two Mining Camps in Southeastern Arizona. Historical Archaeology 36(3):59–68. Gitelman, Howard M. 1988 Legacy of the Ludlow Massacre: A Chapter in American Industrial Relations. Univer- sity of Pennsylvania Press, Philadelphia. Hall, Martin 2000 Archaeology and the Modern World: Colonial Transcripts in South Africa and the Chesapeake. Routledge, New York. Hardesty, Donald 1988 The Archaeology of Mines and Mining: The View from the Silver State. Special Pub- lication Series 6. Society for Historical Archaeology, California, PA. Heidegger, Martin 1962 Being and Time, trans. John Macquarrie and Edward Robinson. Blackwell, Oxford. Hobsbawm, Eric, and Terence Ranger 1983 The Invention of Tradition. Cambridge University Press, Cambridge. Hodder, Ian 1990 The Domestication of Europe: Structure and Contingency in Neolithic Societies. Black- well, Oxford. Horn, Claire C. 1998 Archaeology of the Ludlow Tent Colony. Master’s thesis, University of Denver, Denver. Jacobson, Michael E. 2006 The Rise and Fall of Place: The Development of a Sense of Place and Com- munity in Colorado’s Southern Coalfields, 1890–1930. PhD dissertation. Bing- hamton University, Binghamton, NY. Limerick, Patricia 1988 The Legacy of Conquest: The Unbroken Past of the American West. W. W. Norton, New York. Livoda, Mike 1975 Oral history, collected by Eric Margolis. University of Colorado–Boulder Library Archives. Long, Priscilla 1991 Where the Sun Never Shines: A History of America’s Bloody Coal Industry. Paragon Books, New York. Ludlow Report 1914 Ludlow: Being the Report of the Special Board of Officers Appointed by the Governor of Colorado to Investigate and Determine the Facts with Reference to the Armed Conflict
Archaeology of the Moment 125 between the Colorado National Guard and Certain Persons Engaged in the Coal Mining Strike at Ludlow, Colo., April 20, 1914. Western History and Genealogy Depart- ment, Denver Public Library, Denver. McGovern, George S., and Leonard F. Guttridge 1972 The Great Coalfield War.Houghton Mifflin, Boston. McGuire, Randall H. 1992 A Marxist Archaeology. Percheron, New York. McGuire, Randall H., and Robert Paynter (editors) 1991 The Archaeology of Inequality. Basil Blackwell, Oxford. Merleau-Ponty, Maurice 1962 Phenomenology of Perception, trans. Colin Smith. Routledge and Kegan Paul, London. Reprinted 1981. O’Neal, Mary Thomas 1971 Those Damn Foreigners. Minerva, Hollywood, CA. Peterson, Jon A. 2003 The Birth of City Planning in the United States, 1840–1917. Johns Hopkins Univer- sity Press, Baltimore. Thomas, Julian 1996 Time, Culture and Identity: An Interpretive Archaeology. Routledge, New York. Tilley, Christopher 1994 A Phenomenology of Landscape: Places, Paths, and Monuments. Berg, Oxford. Tuan, Yi-Fu 1977 Space and Place: The Perspective of Experience. University of Minnesota Press, Minneapolis. USCIR 1916 United States Commission on Industrial Relations Final Report and Testimony. Gov- ernment Printing Office, Washington, DC. Walker, Mark, April Beisaw, Daniel Brookman, Phil Duke, Randall McGuire, Paul Reckner, Dean Saitta, and Margaret Wood 2002 Archaeological Investigations at the Ludlow Massacre Site (5LA1829) and Berwind (5LA1829), Las Animas County, Colorado: Report on the 1999 Season. Colorado His- torical Society, Denver. Whiteside, James 1990 Regulating Danger: The Struggle for Mine Safety in the Rocky Mountain Coal Indus- try. University of Nebraska Press, Lincoln. Wobst, H. Martin 1977 Stylistic Behavior and Information Exchange. In For the Director: Research Essays in Honor of James B. Griffin, ed. Charles E. Cleland, 317–342. Anthropological Papers 61. University of Michigan Museum of Anthropology, Ann Arbor.
126 Michael E. Jacobson Alex K. Ruuska
C h a p t e r 6
The Metaphysics of Emplaced Ritual among Northern Paiute and Hualapai Ghost Dancers
Among the Paiute and Hualapai of the Great Basin and the Colorado Plateau, rit- ual dance and song are ancient healing practices that continue to contribute to the creation of sacred places at unique physiographic locations within their aboriginal homelands (Carroll, Zedeño, and Stoffle 2004; Stoffle et al. 2000a; Vander 1986). From a Western perspective, each place serves as a sanctified stage upon which the cycles of death, rebirth, and regeneration are repeatedly performed and affirmed, an echo of nature and culture writ large. Generations of Numa and Newe have continually made the pilgrimage back to particular sanctified ritual places in the belief that by performing sacred acts at such places, both people and the world in which they dwell experience renewal, rebirth, and a resurgence of Puha (life force), once more flowing freely through an animated universe (Franklin and Bunte 1994:250; Miller 1983; Stoffle et al. 2000a). This chapter explores the primacy of place among the Paiute and Hualapai of the Great Basin and the Colorado Plateau as exemplified by the use of the same ritual sites for pre-Contact world-balancing ceremonies and mourning rituals and within historic and contemporary times for the sanctified performances of rituals that have become known as the 1890s and 2005 Ghost Dances, respectively. To this end, I examine the unique spatial regimes evidenced at two cultural sites used in
127 the performance of the Ghost Dance, a powerful ritual performative event that contributed to cultural revitalization among over thirty-two North American indig- enous groups at the end of the nineteenth century—an era marked by the official closure of the Frontier and the Wild West and, concomitantly, by the contested reinvention of a land, of major lifeways, and of the diverse peoples who inhabited North America at that time (Mooney 1973 [1896]; Moses 1996). Today, in the early twenty-first century—a time characterized by rapid technological and economic developments, the emergence of previously unknown environmental challenges, and a plethora of cultural losses, particularly in the realm of Native language attri- tion—some indigenous communities of the Great Basin and the Colorado Plateau are once again turning to emplaced rituals as a means of experiencing renewal, revitalization, and world balancing. To understand the role of emplaced ritual among the originators of the Ghost Dance, it is necessary first to examine how the indigenous peoples of North America and immigrant populations historically conceptualized the natural envi- ronment and how these differing epistemologies led to discrete, often incongruous dwelling practices among both groups. I then identify and deconstruct the ritual settings Paiute and Hualapai communities selected historically in their efforts to conduct world-balancing ceremonies during the contentious resettlement of North America and the reconfiguration of dominant cultural landscape metaphors underscoring the nation-making process. Through this analysis I demonstrate that the Paiute and Hualapai have repeat- edly used ceremonial site selection practices consistent with animistic conceptions of the world as powerful, dynamic, and engaged with all forces of life. These prac- tices include (1) a return to holy places, (2) the use of ritual pilgrimage, (3) the con- cretization of cultural significance through place-centered storytelling practices, (4) the creation of ceremonial grounds in a manner that attends to the landscape’s distinct physiography, and (5) the development of inclusive, holistic cultural land- scapes that incorporate the core cultural construct of both the circle and cardinal directions. Such patterns of land use are by no means singular among indigenous peoples of the Great Basin and the Colorado Plateau. In chapter 1, for example, Van Dyke argues convincingly that the inhabitants of Chaco Canyon in the US Southwest also returned to places deemed holy, engaged in ritual pilgrimage, built the Classic Bonito phase kivas and grand houses with attention to the visibility and direc- tionality of ritual sites, engaged in cyclical renewal, and infused this cultural land- scape with meaning through social memory practices. In chapter 5, Jacobson demonstrates the importance of place in more ephemeral communities, such as among the Ludlow strikers in the Southwest who were embroiled in the Colorado Coalfield War.
128 Alex K. Ruuska Arapaho Ghost Dancers. Photographed by anthropologist James Mooney around 1891. SPC Plains Arapaho BAE no. Mooney 00357700, courtesy of National Anthropological Archives, Smithsonian Institution Washington, DC.
When we turn to the nineteenth-century Ghost Dancers, we find that emplaced rituals catalyzed the building of established and nascent social networks, nourished syncretic worldviews that helped mediate the changes that occurred in the wake of westward expansionism, and often indirectly countered the hegemonic prac- tices of newly arrived populations whose lifestyles, progressive demands for more land and resources, and swelling numbers sometimes threatened to permanently alter—if not fundamentally eradicate—some of the Numic and Newe peoples’ traditional lifeways (figure 6.1) (Knack 2001; Nye 2003). Toward these ends, between 50,000 and 60,000 indigenous North Americans from California through the Great Plains gathered in the eleventh hour of the nine- teenth century to perform ancient ritual ceremonies adapted to meet the needs of
Sacred Landscapes, Sacred Acts 129 a particular historic moment (Mooney 1973 [1896]:926–927). They assembled with hope and sometimes desperation as they performed land-centered rituals known alternatively as the Father Dance, Spirit Dance, and Ghost Dance (Laird 1976:44– 45; Zedeño, Carroll, and Stoffle 2003:137). The 1890s version of this revitalization movement attracted the interest of North American indigenous groups who were struggling with the radical changes that accompanied the colonization of North America (Mooney 1973 [1896]:926), and served as a collective means of mitigating the massive physical, socio-cultural, and economic damages that accompanied the loss of large portions of aboriginal territories and the rapid influx of non-indig- enous populations throughout the West (e.g., Aberle 1959; Barber 1941:663–666; Mooney 1973 [1896]). The physical convergence of large segments of diverse indigenous communities was not lost on Indian agents, whose job descriptions were framed largely by nineteenth-century social evolutionary tenets centered on “the Indian Problem” and “civilizing” those who had survived powerful agents of change—including generations of war, virgin soil epidemics, and the progressive loss of land and resources (Berkhofer 1978:166, 169; Utely 1984:xiv). Local immi- grants, endeavoring to give physical form to national mantras of Manifest Destiny and Progress, often expressed equal suspicion toward the Indians who were collec- tively mobilizing themselves for ritual purposes, sometimes going so far as to call in the militia to stop people from engaging in their world-balancing performances (e.g., Zanjani 1988:54–55). Those who participated in the Father Dance envisioned the rejuvenation of themselves, their ancestors, plants and animals, and the earth itself. Eliciting heal- ing at such a grand scale required extraordinary efforts composed of dynamic lived experiences, a reciprocal exchange between the people who danced and the embodied sensual worlds—both seen and unseen—evoked through dance. These ideas of reciprocity represent aspects of traditional knowledge learned over hun- dreds and sometimes thousands of years of collective experience living in par- ticular places (Mooney 1973 [1896]:785). When seeking connections to the world of spirit, Numic ritual specialists frequently sought out natural intermediaries, such as the echo, to guide them in their quests. The strong connection among people, the natural world, and ritual performance is suggested in John Wesley’s field notes: “Pi-pursh is the name of the little black four-legged stinking animal that makes the echo. Witches or old bad women turn into these. The pi-pursh are great singers and dancers. Pi-pursh taught the people singing and dancing. They are old people who have not died but turned into pi-pursh” (Fowler and Fowler 1971:243). Among the Numic originators of the Ghost Dance, dance and song served as vehicles to connect people with the living earth. Whereas many nineteenth-century indigenous people espoused a nature-centered paradigm, Euro-Americans of the
130 Alex K. Ruuska time largely embraced a culture-centered paradigm in which humans were privi- leged above all other life forms. Efforts to establish, maintain, and protect this privi- leged status are reflected in the nineteenth century’s heavily managed land prac- tices, particularly the reconfiguration of the North American continent through transcontinental railroads, fences, and domesticated animals such as cattle, sheep, and horses; the upsurge of boomtowns that followed the rapid extraction of min- eral wealth; and the leveling of forests to make room for the Jeffersonian vision of a nation of farmers (Nye 2003; Utely 1984:170). These competing visions of land use fueled innumerable conflicts between immigrant and indigenous populations. To understand these tensions and an estimated thirty-two indigenous communi- ties’ recourse to ritual as a means of rebalancing the world, it is first necessary to examine the discrete epistemological conceptualizations of the physical world that underscore these paradigms.
Conceptualizing Space and Place At the end of the nineteenth century, the imagined nation of the United States (sensu Anderson 1991), as well as the dwelling paradigms through which people defined their principal engagements with the natural world, were being rapidly reconfigured. A dwelling paradigm suggests each person’s embodied awareness as a Being-in-the-World as well as the praxis of engaging the physical world as a consequence of such perceptions (sensu Heidegger 1971; Ingold 1995). An exami- nation of the epistemological foundations of two distinctive dwelling paradigms vying for supremacy on the North American continent helps explain dimensions of the physical and ideological conflicts that characterized the settlement of the West while also setting the stage for examining Paiute and Hualapai efforts to return to an earlier conception of place through the use of ritual.
Space and Place In Western thought, the environment is frequently described through the con- ceptual frameworks of space and place: “By space is meant a neutral, pre-given medium, a tabula rasa onto which the particularities of culture and history come to be inscribed, with place as a presumed result” (Basso 1996:14). In addition to viewing spaces as empty canvases on which humans can inscribe their interests, space is frequently perceived as a distance, obstacle, or empty zone that separates those areas already collectively infused with significance through their physicality or the alterations humans have evinced therein. The view that space is socially constructed is a dominant theme among many scholars. According to Yi-Fu Tuan (1977 cited in Kalipeni and Zeleza 1999:2), “These spaces are socially produced and
Sacred Landscapes, Sacred Acts 131 John Gast, American Progress, 1872. Courtesy, Library of Congress LC-USZC4-668. they produce the social.” Doreen Massey (1993:153) provides a more encompass- ing explanation, maintaining that “spaces are created out of the vast intricacies, the incredible complexities, of the interlocking and the non-interlocking, and the networks of relations at every scale from the local to global.” In contrast to the alleged tabula rasa of space, phenomenologists Maurice Merleau-Ponty (1964) and Edward Casey (1996) maintain that matter and places are pregnant in form (Merleau-Ponty 1964:12), meaning, and their relationship to natural and human phenomena. We come to know place through sensory embodi- ment (Casey 1996; Merleau-Ponty 1964). In addition, “Place, rather than being a product or portion of space, is as primary as the perception that gives access to it” (Casey 1996:16). Perceptions occur “within a certain horizon [we experi- ence] in action [pratiquement] rather than by ‘posing’ them or explicitly knowing them” (Merleau-Ponty 1964:12). In other words, place is an all-encompassing field through which we arrive at knowledge. From this perspective, space is a social construct that measures disengagement from place rather than an indication of another phenomenon in its own right. For Casey (1996:17), there are multiple ways to be in place, including “staying in place,” “moving within a place,” and “moving between places.” These relations demonstrate that one’s engagements to place are simultaneously subject to change yet all-encompassing.
132 Alex K. Ruuska René Descartes (1596–1650). Available at http://www.glafreniere.com/sa_aether.htm.
In canonical Western thinking, places are frequently identified as regions humans have already inscribed with human significance, yet for many Native Americans, places have an a priori significance that is not merely the result of human activities or inscription practices. Consequently, engagements to place can- not be understood as unidirectional processes between active humans on passive environments. Rather, Native Americans understand that “people create places, but places also create people” (Kearns 1991 cited in Kalipeni and Zeleza 1999:136). These disparate conceptions reveal the first assumption that results in diverse opin- ions on the nature of cultural significance. For “the anthropologist [and others
Sacred Landscapes, Sacred Acts 133 whose understandings are rooted in Western philosophies], Space comes first; for the native, Place; and the differences are by no means trivial” (Casey 1996:15). Although the foundations of this epistemological difference are multiple, certain critical assumptions underlying constructions of place and space are partially revealed in canonical Western philosophical texts.
Euro-American Conceptions of Space The western ontological premises of space and place are revealed in the works of the classical Greek philosophers as well as modern philosophers John Locke and René Descartes (figures 6.3, 6.4). These thinkers emphasized cultural construc- tions that present elements of the phenomenal world as either bounded, static, or separate from human beings. In the writings of Aristotle, “Place is prior to space” (Casey 1996:16). However, in other respects, his ideas have contributed to the Western notion that the world is eminently knowable, bounded, and fixed. Most important, Aristotle sought to legitimize knowledge through the process of naming and delineating categories within which all phenomena can be placed in contradistinction to all other phenomena. Aristotle’s taxonomic feats implicitly devalue non-human ordered nature, dynamic processes, multilayer phenomena, and qualities considered uncivilized. The works of the classical Greek philosophers have contributed to an ethno- centricism that removes people from nature as well. This separation was catalyzed by elevating the Apollonian qualities of culture, abstract reasoning, and aesthet- ics and denigrating Dyonysian earth-centered philosophies in which humans were integrated into natural systems and experience and knowledge were intimately bound to natural processes and places. According to Kalipeni and Zeleza (199:136), “Greek philosophers accepted that human beings were essentially, by virtue of their possession of reason, superior to all other forms of life. This was affirmed by Herodotus, Xenophon, Plato, Aristotle, and by the later Stoics.” Aristotle, for example, wrote, “Now if nature makes nothing incomplete, and nothing in vain, the inference must be that she made all animals for the sake of man” (Aristotle, Politica 1, 8, cited in Glacken 1967:308). The ideas of René Descartes also catalyzed a conceptual split between nature and culture. Descartes’ work elevates deductive knowledge derived from abstrac- tion above inductive knowledge derived from intersubjective experiences rooted in place. Following Descartes, scientists divided the phenomenal world into discrete categories of subjective and objective realities. Whereas discrete and objective real- ities were amenable to scientific testing, subjective realities, or that which science did not know how to test and quantify, were systematically devalued. While the benefits and detrimental effects of this delineation are difficult to estimate, David
134 Alex K. Ruuska John Locke. Available at www.mofirst.org.
W. Rutledge (1993:47) attributes the present ecological crises to “the mechanisms of the scientific revolution of the 17th and 18th centuries that affirms the complete passivity of nature.” He also maintains that both “the utilitarianism of the tech- nological revolution of the last two centuries . . . and the anthropocentricism of the Greek and biblical tradition that assumes human superiority over nature” have contributed to these problems. Like many ancient Greek philosophers as well as Descartes, the modern phi- losophy of John Locke is also premised on a nature-culture duality. His ideas of property provided the ideological justifications new immigrants from Europe required to appropriate Native Americans’ lands. He claimed, “As much land as a man tills, plants, improves, cultivates, and can use the product of, so much is his property. He by his labor does, as it were, inclose it from the common” (Locke 2002:14). The colonists conflated property acquisition and self-determination. As a
Sacred Landscapes, Sacred Acts 135 consequence, “Any attempt to deny the pursuit of either was seen as an attack on their fundamental natural-law rights” (Williams 1990:252). Thomas Jefferson seized on these ideas to develop his “agrarian dream” for America, wherein America’s unclaimed wilderness would be populated by “the yeoman, the independent, pros- perous farmer he had seen in Europe” (Zedeño 2000:99). His dream, which was detailed in a publication known as Summary View, was readily taken up by the new immigrants to implement “exclusive property rights, agrarian development, and the notion of space-bounded tenures” (Zedeño 2000:99).
Impacts Objectivism, nature-cultural tensions, and ideas of property rooted in Lockean premises have colored much of the scholarship on the natural environment. Investigations stemming from these assumptions frequently defer to models of positivism and materialism. From these vantages, places constitute inert objects to be studied, measured, quantified, controlled, utilized, or owned. Places are most easily recognized if they are clearly bounded and demarcated through human inscription activities. Places that have an explicit resource function are quickly rec- ognized and implicitly valued above those that lack such a function. In addition, many Westerners tend to view place and property as synonymous. Places whose owners cannot be readily identified are by definition “wild” and hence open for the taking. In historic and cultural preservation, the concept of “place as property” has catalyzed debates that are not easily resolved. Scholarship founded on materialist and objectivist views has been successful in studying tangible and quantifiable phenomena of archaeological and heritage sites, as well as physical elements that are easily demarcated, visibly altered by human or natural forces, and frequently bounded and fixed rather than dynamic and relational in emphasis. While this perspective has facilitated the development of knowledge of the material world, it has also systematically marginalized or negated relevant information on the relations established between humans and their environments. An antidote for this problem is evidenced in chapter 1 of this volume, wherein Van Dyke recapitulates the development of landscape perspec- tives as an effort to more accurately represent the intersection of physical embodi- ment, social phenomena, and the material world. Whether such epistemological perspectives are principally directed toward understanding settlement patterns, linking archaeology with oral traditions, or delving into the social memory and reflexivity of communities through time, efforts to examine the inter-digitation of material culture, cultural inscription practices, and embodiment represent a prom- ising theoretical shift that more closely aligns to the interconnected worldviews of many Native peoples of North America.
136 Alex K. Ruuska In contrast to common views of place informed by Western philosophic and scientific traditions, Native Americans perceive subjective and objective phe- nomena as interrelated rather than polarized phenomena or means of arriving at knowledge. For Native Americans, the foundations of all knowledge and, hence, of individual and collective identities are rooted in place. This is consistent with Merleau-Ponty’s (1964:12) claim that “in the final analysis every perception takes place within a certain horizon and ultimately in the ‘world.’ ” Accordingly, knowl- edge gained through direct experience of places is of the highest order. In an archaeological study conducted by David Whitley and colleagues (1999) at Sally’s Rockshelter in the Mojave Desert, prehistoric people’s shamanic practices dem- onstrate the interrelatedness of knowledge acquisition and place. Utilizing quartz samples associated with rock engravings from this site, they confirmed that sha- mans have been using special places of power for vision questing since prehistoric times. According to Catherine Fowler, “A person seeking a favor from a power, or seeking power itself, would go [to a particular rock art site] and spend the night . . . Anyone who was successful at the cave had to pay it for its favors. People usually presented the cave with sticks, beads, arrows, and a variety of other items” (Fowler 1992:177 cited in Whitley et al. 1999:234). The ritualistic component, through which abstract understandings are directly infused with the environment and material elements, is central to many indigenous practices of knowledge acquisition. Place often plays a transformative role in ritual performances. As Simone Weil (1952:41) claims, “To be rooted is perhaps the most important and least recognized need of the human soul.” The interrelatedness of ritual and place is recognized in the works of Roy Rappaport (1999) and Victor Turner (1968, 1969), eminent lead- ers in the anthropology of ritual and religion. Turner indicates that ritual “often has a spatial or place orientation. Space, along with ritual objects and gestures . . . stand[s] for something other than itself. Through the wide range of reference pos- sessed by a single symbol, almost all the things that matter can be concentrated into a small area of space and time, there to be re-endowed with value” (1968:21). Cultural, spiritual, and historical expertise is derived from strong connections to places where the phenomenal and the epiphenomenal conjoin and knowledge is transferred from generation to generation, as well as from the places to the people themselves. Scholars of North American ritual are increasingly recognizing the inter- digitation of place, ritual, and personhood (Carmichael et al. 1997; Feld and Basso 1996; Nabokov 2006). Among the Paiute and Hualapai of the Great Basin and the Colorado Plateau, place, ritual, and identity are so intertwined that it is most meaningful to examine these phenomena concurrently. To begin, while the place- centered rituals of Native Americans contribute to the perceived significance of
Sacred Landscapes, Sacred Acts 137 places, certain areas hold an a priori significance that is not the result of human inscription practices. As Carroll and colleagues (Carroll, Zedeño, and Stoffle 2004:132) note, “Ritual settings may contain a variety of physiographic, botanical, and faunal resources that add to their power . . . these include medicinal plants such as tobacco, animals such as the highly regarded big horn sheep, minerals like quartz or obsidian, and outstanding landforms and rock formations.” Mountains, caves, waterways, and unique geological formations are fre- quently perceived as places of power and hence of sacredness (Stoffle et al. 2000a). Furthermore, the distribution of ritual sites is “remarkably sensitive to the charac- ter of local ecology” (Robert Layton 1986 cited in Bradley 1997:10). Ethnologist Melvin Randolph Gilmore (1921:17) observed that “each of the nations and tribes had certain places within their domain, which they regarded as sacred. These places were sometimes water springs, sometimes particular hills, sometimes caves, sometimes rocky precipices, sometimes dark, wooded bluffs.” Significantly, not all such places are visually captivating. Peter Nabokov (2006:xiv, original emphasis) noted that “what lies within or beneath what the eye can see” may be more important than what is visually evident on the surface. Shamans often went to these places of power to manipulate the power for different pur- poses, such as curing, rainmaking, warfare, fighting, or sorcery (Whitley et al. 1999:232). Isabel Kelly’s (1939) and Carobeth Laird’s (1976) research on Southern Paiute and Chemehuevi shamanism and Thomas R. McGuire’s (1983) survey of Hualapai religious customs describe how specialists may acquire liturgical knowl- edge directly from special places, through individual revelation, and during dreams or vision quests (Carroll, Zedeño, and Stoffle 2004:133). Today, Native Americans continue to enter places of power to acquire many different types of knowledge. Some factors that contribute to a place’s significance are less tangible, however. Dorthea J. Theodoratus documented the multidimen- sionality of landscape perceptions in her ethnographic studies with the Yurok, Karuk, and Tolowa of Northern California: “I learned about the fine points of meaning beyond topographical features for sacred sites (ambiance such as sight, sound, and smell, as well as concepts of distance between interconnecting top- ographical features were important)” (quoted in Alanen and Melnick 2000:175). Among the Numa and Newe, the activation of the human senses can add to the perceived sacredness of a place. Unique acoustics, the physical sensation of being in a cave, the rush of the wind, or the sudden presence of a feather are actively interpreted as living engagements with place. Such intersubjective scholarship suggests that objectivist and materialist con- ceptions of place do not reflect Native American ideas of place in their totality. For Native Americans, places are valued for their sacredness. Nabakov (1991:50) observed that “to many Native American peoples much of the land they inhab-
138 Alex K. Ruuska ited was [and is] sanctified. They conceived of the earth, the heavens, and cardinal directions as supernatural forces.” Native Americans also value places because they are told that they originated from the earth. The Hopis exclaim, “Haliksa’I! Listen! The Hopi emerged into this, the Fourth World, from the Sipapuni in the Grand Canyon. Emerging, they encountered Ma’saw, guardian of the Fourth World, and made a spiritual pact with him, wherein the Hopi would act as stewards of the earth, vowing to place their footprints through the Fourth World as they migrated in a spiritual quest to find their destiny at the center of the universe” (Ferguson et al. 2000:45, original emphasis). Native Americans’ understandings of places are based on a holistic perspective wherein “the world is integrated” (Stoffle et al. 1990:14). Viewing place within a holistic framework holds important implications for historic and cultural preserva- tion. In projects meant to assess particular places, Native American consultants may “seek information about an area that often is many miles larger than that specified as a project study area” (Stoffle et al. 1990:14). By extension, they will frequently seek to gain legislative protection for larger tracts of land than federal agencies are willing to endorse. Native Americans, as well as others with established connections to certain environments, view places as sources of identity. The place of one’s origin cannot be exchanged for another place “of equal value.” Therefore, the destruction of such places through economic development constitutes a form of identity destruc- tion. Those who make determinations about whether to protect a cultural or his- toric property do not always perceive the depth of these attachments or the mag- nitude of potential losses. In contrast to Western ideas that pit nature against culture, Native Americans often view places as a part of themselves to which they are personally responsible. Nabokov (1991:70) believes the two groups’ different attitudes toward land use constitute “a major stumbling block between Indians and whites.” He claims: In the new world, whites cleared the forests, cultivated the ground, slaughtered wild game in massive quantities, mined the earth’s gold and silver as if they would never end, and began peopling villages and towns blocked out after those of their homelands. Yet the Indians generally viewed themselves as the earth’s occupiers and custodians, not as its surveyors and engineers. Defining land as a commercial product, like sugar or gun powder, the whites measured it, bought it, sold it, fenced it, tilled or built on it with an abandon that horrified [the] Indians. (Nabokov 1991:70)
Nabokov’s statement suggests that the differing philosophies of Euro- Americans and Native Americans were most vividly depicted in land-use practices. For Euro-Americans who embraced Jefferson’s agrarian dream, land use defined one’s relationship to place. For Native Americans, exchanges between the land
Sacred Landscapes, Sacred Acts 139 and people have always been reciprocal. Consequently, land use is not in itself problematic, but use resulting in depreda- tion of the environment is viewed as fool- ish as well as irreverent. The Ghost Dance of the 1890s represents collective efforts to affirm core tenets of nature-centered dwelling paradigms established through thousands of years of living in particular environments. Some of these core tenets include (1) recognition of the earth as alive and dynamic; (2) reciprocity with all life forms, including the earth; and (3) a non-dualistic view of self and nature, with each co-constituted by the other. Evidence of place literacy—an ability to read a land- scape as a living entity composed of partic- ular physiographic, faunal, and botanical characteristics; behavioral characteristics that support particular sets of activities; and cultural inscription practices—is evi- denced in the two places selected for the performance of the Ghost Dance by the Wovoka, 1890s Ghost Dance prophet. Courtesy, Nevada Historical Society. Reno, Northern Paiute and Hualapai. Nevada.
Emergence of the Ghost Dance By the 1890s, efforts to reestablish a more balanced dwelling paradigm that merged ancient reciprocal ties with nature with the radical cultural and landscape changes that followed the massive influx of immigrants from the Great Plains to the Pacific Rim emerged through the prophecies of Wovoka, a Northern Paiute ritual specialist from the Smith and Mason valleys in western Nevada (figures 6.5, 6.6). A prolific body of Ghost Dance scholarship has revealed core aspects of this revitalization movement (see, for example, Hittman 1973, 1990; Kehoe 1989; Mooney 1973 [1896]; Osterreich 1991; Thornton 1986). However, certain key epis- temological tenets of these land-centered rituals have remained largely unexplored (for notable exceptions, see Stoffle et al. 2000b; Vander 1997). Most important is the recognition of the interrelatedness and interdependence established between a natural environment and communities immersed in a nature-centered dwelling perspective. Among both the Numic and Yuman peoples, there is an understand-
140 Alex K. Ruuska Map of western Nevada, where 1890s Ghost Dance originated. Western Nevada, Mineral County, courtesy, countymapsofnevada.com.
ing that the physical world is alive with a force called Puha. This same force moves through the wind, water, earth, plants, and all ani- mals, including humans. It is understood that humans are a part of nature rather than out- side it (Miller 1983). Nature exists as an integrated circular system. When imbalances occur within some dimension of nature, ceremonies are conducted in holy places. These ceremonies are designed to unify people’s collective Puha (energy or life force), which can then be used for individual and collective healing acts, including something as grand as rebalancing the earth and all its relationships (Carroll 2007). The Ghost Dance performances constitute world-balancing ceremonies designed to reintegrate all the forces of nature, ranging from human energy to energy man- ifest in physical forces such as the wind, light, or the force of a river (Mooney 1973 [1896]). Despite a large body of scholarship on the Ghost Dance, little has been written about the natural environments both Numic and Yuman ritual specialists selected for sacred pan-Indian ritual performances or the place logic underlying Numic and Yuman ritual-setting selection practices. By examining two cultural settings used by these members of the communities, it is possible to demonstrate that the ceremonial places revealed to ritual specialists through dreams and visions have special and repeated physical, behavioral, and cultural characteristics. The ritual use of these particular settings helped to solidify the social memories, place attach- ments, and collective identities of participants rooted in epistemologies developed over the lives of Numic and Yuman communities. Analysis of this ritual movement can potentially inform us about two periods of time—our own and the end of the nineteenth century—when spatial practices were rapidly modified in concert with the making of a new nation and the unmaking of another.
Northern Paiute Site The Northern Paiute of western Nevada, who call themselves the Agai tukadu (Trout Eaters) (Wheat 1967:5), performed Ghost Dances in a number of locations,
Sacred Landscapes, Sacred Acts 141 including Pine Grove, Sweetwater Valley, Wellington, Yerington, Nordyke, Smith Valley, and Schurz, Nevada (Hittman 1990:331–332). Each of these places has been historically important, and some of them continue to be used for contemporary performances of the Ghost Dance (Carroll 2007). One of the original 1890s Ghost Dance sites and a contemporary ritual setting are in close proximity to each other and thus share many cultural, physiographic, and behavioral performance charac- teristics (Carroll 2007). Inspiration for the current rituals is derived from contem- porary threats to traditional ways of life, including language loss and environmen- tal threats posed by the overuse of Walker Lake as well as impending threats of transporting nuclear waste through the Walker Reservation by way of the railroad (Carroll 2005a). Ritual guidance for the performance of the Ghost Dance assumes many forms. Youth activism, dreams and visions, oral histories, and social memories of the 1890s Ghost Dance all contribute to contemporary manifestations. As in the case of the 1870s and 1890s Ghost Dances, contemporary versions of this ritual represent a convergence of syncretic elements derived from traditional Round Dances, previous Ghost Dances, Christianity, and, more recently, twenty-first–cen- tury environmental concerns. The revitalization of a ritual landscape used by for- mer generations is thus a present-day experience infused with elements from the past. Collective traditional knowledge and social memories are used in conjunction with messages received from the dream world. For example, the current ritual set- ting was shown to the lead ritual specialist in a dream. He, in turn, shared it with others, who helped bring his vision into existence. The cultural importance of this ritual performance is indicated by a Northern Paiute organizer:
There are many reasons why this ceremony has to take place given the state of world conditions, the natural disasters, the state of our environment, the new global diseases, there is no doubt we are [on] a collision course with a worldwide disaster. It is our belief we will be given instruction on how our children, grandchildren, and future generations can survive as a people who have inhabited this place since time immemorial. It is important to note that this ceremony is to help stop this collision course for all people. (Hoferer 2005)
This ritual setting’s diverse physiographic characteristics also contribute to its cultural significance. Sacred mountains surround this Ghost Dance setting on all sides. These physiographic alignments include the Black and White mountains to the west, the Calico Hills to the north, and the Twin Sisters to the east. In addi- tion, the origin mountain of the Northern Paiute, Mount Grant, is approximately sixteen miles to the south (Delorme 1996:43, 51). According to Carroll, “In oral tra-
142 Alex K. Ruuska dition, each of these mountains plays an important role in the creation of ancient and contemporary Northern Paiute cultural landscapes” (2007:148). According to cultural representatives, two men once moved White Mountain out of the way of the West Wind and then put the mountain back where it had been before the West Wind arrived. White Mountain is also central in a Coyote tale. Today, a series of horizontal lines made by Coyote encircle White Mountain. According to legend, Coyote asked Jackrabbit to play a hand game. Soon after the playing commenced, Coyote accused Jackrabbit of cheating. As retribution, Coyote decided to dam the river and drown Jackrabbit, but first he had to catch him. The white marks on the side of White Mountain were made as Coyote chased Jackrabbit around the moun- tain. In an extended version of this tale, Jackrabbit stabs Coyote in the Calico Hills. Coyote’s red blood is believed to have caused the coloration of the rocks (Carroll 2007:166–167). Another mountain that frames this Ghost Dance ritual setting is Black Mountain, a region full of pine-nut camps as well as a rock corral historically used for capturing antelope and wild mustangs. There are two lakes near the summit of Black Mountain, springs, and numerous petroglyphs. One cultural representative likened the petroglyphs to the Christian Bible. She explained, “The petroglyphs are our instructions. They tell the people what to do. Some of the petroglyphs tell people about certain kinds of medicine, the plants to obtain, and the ways to use such plants” (Carroll 2007:167). Another petroglyph of a circle with a dot in the middle is described as the center of the self and the world: “This petroglyph teaches people to find faith within themselves and inner strength. Sometimes petroglyphs are maps. There are petroglyphs for songs, dances, and spirits as well” (Carroll 2007:167). Whereas petroglyphs are believed to be the product of spirits, the pictographs in this area are attributed to the work of medicine men. Notably, Black Mountain is volcanic. The Twin Sister Mountains are to the east of the ceremonial grounds and directly opposite Black Mountain. Like Black Mountain, the Twin Sisters are vol- canic. Reportedly, these mountains were the same size during Wovoka’s lifetime as they are today. According to local prophecy, when one sister mountain is leveled, it will mark the end of time. Today, there is a large discrepancy in the sizes of these two peaks, foreshadowing the potential completion of this prophecy. Several cultural representatives indicated that Kennecott Minerals, a mining company and subsidiary of the international corporation Rio Tinto, is responsible for the funda- mental restructuring of this landscape. Some contemporary Northern Paiute read the physiographic changes in the mountain with urgency, saying, “Grandfather is trying to get our attention before we destroy the entire planet. We have got to do it now. There is no time to wait. We are all [that] is left. This is the last chance” (Carroll 2007:170).
Sacred Landscapes, Sacred Acts 143 Located to the south, a fourth volcanic mountain, Mount Grant, is the origin mountain of the Northern Paiute. Red ochre, utilized for ritual purposes, is gath- ered at two of the mountain locations. Both the 1890s and contemporary ritual settings are in close proximity to Walker River and, more distantly, to Walker Lake. In fact, one of the inspirations for the resurgence of the dance has been the pro- gressive deterioration of Walker Lake as a result of overuse by multiple parties beyond the reservation. The dance grounds are approximately 30 m (100 feet) in diameter and on flat terrain. The dance circle is surrounded by a dance arbor con- structed of willows, branches, and painted telephone poles. Mirroring the outer circle of the mountains is the outer circle of the ceremonial grounds. Each spatial direction is marked by the colors white, red, yellow, and black. Within this circle, another circle is formed by the dancers. At the center stands a dance pole with an eagle feather, indicating the connection of the four directions with the earth and sky. Within this circle, the dance is conducted in a clockwise fashion. For the dance to be effective, the circle cannot be broken. By exploring the inter-digitation of physiographic, performance, and cultural characteristics, the importance of the cultural landscape within which this ritual site is situated begins to emerge. Among the Northern Paiute, ritual place-making practices include (1) a return to holy places used in the 1890s Ghost Dances, (2) the infusion of place with cul- tural significance through storytelling practices that unite multiple times and cul- tural milieus, (3) the creation of ceremonial grounds in a manner that attends to the unique physical characteristics of the landscape, and (4) the development of an inclusive, holistic cultural landscape that incorporates the core cultural construct of the circle and the six directions. Finally, this twenty-first–century Northern Paiute Ghost Dance performance occurs at a particular juncture consciously situated at the interstices of history, social memory, environmental stewardship, and cultural revitalization. Herein, place and personhood are simultaneously rediscovered, enacted, and reinforced. In some cases, as Michael Jacobson substantiates in chapter 5 of this volume, collec- tive identity and social memory are created on the contested grounds of place. Yet in others, place holds the memories and the life force (Puha) for those who are able to go beyond what is immediately visible in an environment to “what lies within or beneath what the eye can see” (Nabokov 2006:xiv).
Hualapai Ghost Dance The cultural landscape plays a prominent role in the selection and use of ceremonial grounds among the Hualapai as well (figure 6.8). These Yuman peo- ple of northern Arizona adopted the Ghost Dance from the Southern Paiute of Saint George, Utah, and Saint Thomas, Nevada (Mekeel 1935:198; Mooney 1973
144 Alex K. Ruuska Northern Paiute Woman and Tule House, ca. 1890s, courtesy of Nevada Historical Society.
[1896]:814). They, in turn, learned it from the Northern Paiute, the originators of this revitalization movement (Stoffle et al. 2000b:14). The Spirit or Ghost Dance was practiced at a series of particular locations among the Hualapai; the most specific mention is of four-night dances performed at forty-day intervals at differ- ent places (Mekeel 1935:199). These places included Hackberry, Crozier, Mineral Park, and Grass Spring (Tanyaka) (Mekeel 1935:201). Herein, I examine the site of Tanyaka, situated on the west rim of the Grand Canyon, where believers once gathered to perform a dance aimed at rebalancing a world that had fundamentally changed with the advance of the western frontier (Knack 2001). Alfred Kroeber’s student Scudder Mekeel (1935) and, later, Henry Dobyns and Robert Euler (1967) documented the traces of these ritual performances recorded in historical docu- ments and the memories of surviving community members. Ethnographic evidence indicates that a Paiute visitor, Panamoit, from the opposite side of the Colorado River, visited Jeff, a Yuman shaman, at the Hualapai Ghost Dance ceremonial grounds at Duncan Ranch, Tanyaka. Later, Jeff organized the group of Hualapai people living near Kingman, Arizona, to make the northern pilgrimage back to this Ghost Dance site (figure 6.9):
At the time Kingman was small, and the Walapai were living across from the Commercial Hotel . . . Before the month had passed they began to travel on
Sacred Landscapes, Sacred Acts 145 Hualapai Ghost Dancer Pai Shaman, Pagatacoba, who strongly influenced the acceptance of the Ghost Dance. Photo by George Wharton, ca. 1895, courtesy, Southwest Museum.
horseback. They camped at the mouth of Canyon Station, Waikai-ila. Next morning they traveled again and reached a place called Kishia-Iva . . . This included the whole Kingman camp, except Walapai Charlie who remained. The next day they came to Tanyaka in the evening. There were gathered all the Walapai from all the divisions. (Mekeel 1935:200)
146 Alex K. Ruuska Trails from Kingman to Tanyaka. From E. A. Eckhoff and P. Ricker, Official Map of the Territory of Arizona, 1880, courtesy, David Rumsey Map Collection, www.davidrumsey.com.
Following this ritual pilgrimage, the Hualapais arrived at Tanyaka and began to dance. For three months they continued to dance. This ritual site is located near a spring that was used for ceremonial cleansing, as well as the daily living needs associated with supporting a large group of participants (Mekeel 1935:200). According to James Mooney (1973 [1896]:815), the Hualapai engaged in the Ghost Dance on a circular piece of ground 100 feet in diameter, enclosed by a dance arbor composed of a fence made of poles and bushes and surrounded by high mountain walls of granite, which reflected the light from half a dozen fires blazing within the circle. Following five nights of dancing, Hualapai ritual specialists left the ceremonial dance grounds to communicate with spiritual forces at a mesa near Grass Spring: “Just before daylight on the morning of the last night the medicine men ascended a small butte, where they met and talked with the expected god, and on com- ing down again delivered his message to the people” (Mooney 1973 [1896]:814– 815). According to George Laird, a Chemehuevi who participated in the Hualapai dances, at these gatherings of medicine men, “someone” would speak from above, from the sky. Everyone listened, and many heard the voice (cited in Laird 1976:45). Through these communications, participants learned where and how to conduct
Sacred Landscapes, Sacred Acts 147 The Salt Song Path map from The Chemehuevis by Carobeth Laird (1976, Malki Museum Press, Banning, CA). future ritual performances. A probable mesa is located approximately half a mile south of Grass Spring. Around the edges of this mesa are fragments of charcoal, possible remnant of the fires ritual specialists built. Local workers indicated that a mano and metate, found at this location, have been relocated to a building belong- ing to the Diamond Bar Ranch (Carroll 2005b). Today, this portion of the west rim of the Grand Canyon has been trans- formed into a high-dollar tourist destination with its own helipads. Tourists who crave a rustic desert venture complete with horse-drawn wagons and canvas tepees now walk near the remnants of a spring that once quenched the thirst of ritual supplicants. Considered in total, Grass Spring has several performance, cultural, and phys- iographic characteristics that contributed to the site’s cultural valuation by Numic and Newe ritual specialists. First, the location’s ritual use indicates a return to a holy place where previous Ghost Dances had been performed (Mekeel 1935:200). In addition, Grass Springs is a known site along the Salt Song Trail, which accord- ing to Paiute and Hualapai oral traditions is the song trail to the afterlife that extends around the traditional Southern Paiute territories (Kroeber 1935:map 2; Laird 1976:map) (figure 6.10). Following the death of a Hualapai or Southern Paiute individual, ritual spe- cialists and general members of the community gathered to commemorate the person’s life and, more important, to help the person’s soul advance along the spirit trail leading to the afterlife. Songs used to guide this progression corresponded to known geographic places, including Grass Spring, where people gathered to dance the Ghost Dance in the late 1880s. Notably, Numic informants indicated that the Ghost Dance originated as a method to collectively prepare communities for the afterlife in the wake of virgin soil epidemics, such as smallpox, that decimated many indigenous communities during the first known Ghost Dance in the 1870s (Carroll 2007:237). Given these factors, it is probable that at least at Tanyaka, the ritual performance of the Cry mourning ceremony, in which Salt Songs were sung, and the world-balancing ceremony of the Ghost Dance were imbricated ceremo- nies involving multiple layers of cultural inscription practices that heightened the participants’ collective experience and hence the likelihood of Tanyaka being per- ceived as a powerful and holy place. This layering included the selection and use of a known ritual setting; the use of ritual specialists to mediate between the known and unknown realms of experience; immersion in rhythmic singing, dancing, and storytelling of a syncretic nature; and the adornment of the body with sacred tra- ditional paints such as red ochre, as well as the donning of Ghost Dance shirts, representing a nineteenth-century adaptation. To return to a place deemed culturally sacred, Hualapai and Paiute dancers set forth on ritual pilgrimages, sometimes traveling from as far away as Kingman,
Sacred Landscapes, Sacred Acts 149 Arizona—a seventy-five-mile journey—to visit this site. Kingman had a large pop- ulation of Hualapai who made this pilgrimage (Mohave County Miner, August 3, 1889). Despite the trek, Grass Spring’s proximity to Southern Paiute settlements may have catalyzed and even increased participation in the Ghost Dance events. Hualapai anthropologist Henry Dobyns suggests that the “largest Hualapai cere- mony may have been held at Grass Springs in order to facilitate Paiute attendance” (cited in Stoffle et al. 2000b:16). Participation in rituals at Tanyaka may have been further concretized in col- lective memory through place-centered storytelling practices and songs. James Mooney (1973 [1896]) and Judith Vander (1997), for example, clearly demonstrate the creation of new songs to represent the experiential states of ritual participants among diverse Native communities. Through this active engagement of sym- bolic communication tied to performance and place, memory is further solidified (Halbwachs 1992:22–30). The natural landscape also played an important role in the creation of a ritual center at Tanyaka. The most prominent physiographic features associated with the Tanyaka ceremonial grounds include a vision-questing butte, granite mountains, the water source of Grass Spring, and, more distant, the Colorado River. While the role of volcanism in relation to Ghost Dancing has yet to be fully explored, a volca- nic crater approximately five miles southeast of Grass Spring was reportedly used for Ghost Dance ceremonial activities. As volcanism equates to earth movements, the idea of alternately ritually appeasing places known for physiographic activity and seeking to draw upon the power of change associated with such landscape fea- tures is not without precedent. At Sunset Crater Volcano in northern Arizona, for example, archaeologists found that during the mid- to late eleventh century, people placed husked corn in active lava flows, perhaps as a way to ritually appease forces deemed responsible for the earth’s changes (Elson et al. 2002). Further research is also required to determine whether the Newe and Numic speakers on the Colorado Plateau developed an inclusive, holistic cultural land- scape that included the core cultural construct of the circle and cardinal directions. While the performance of the Ghost Dance in a clockwise circle clearly represents a synecdoche of the natural cycles of the sun and moon, it is unknown whether particular landscape features in the cardinal directions played significant roles in the performance of Ghost Dances at Tanyaka.
A Performative Convergence of Place and Power Among the Paiute and Hualapai of the Colorado Plateau and the Great Basin, it is clear that the physical, cultural, and spiritual worlds were inseparable and hence integral to the construction of social memories and ritual performance. The unique
150 Alex K. Ruuska spatial regimes evidenced at two cultural sites utilized in the performance of the 1890s and, subsequently, the 2005 Ghost Dance confirm the important interplay of material culture and ritual in the construction of embodied social realities. Although each cultural group that adopted the Ghost Dance subsequently reshaped its perfor- mances in a manner that reflected its unique cultural patterns and epistemological needs, it appears that the Numic concept of Puha, which concentrates in particular people and environments, may have influenced the ritual specialists’ choices of par- ticular ceremonial settings. The Paiute and Hualapai used ritual settings that exem- plified an animistic conception of the world as powerful, dynamic, and engaged with all forces of life. The selection practices included the use of physiographically distinctive natural environments for Ghost Dances; the return to culturally recog- nized places of power as determined by place-naming practices, stories, and songs; and finally, the selection of areas behaviorally optimum for dance performances. While behavioral performance features vary, at these two sites several features are particularly pronounced: (1) being in line of site to cultural places of power, (2) hav- ing proximity to traditional and interethnic villages, (3) providing seclusion from nonparticipants, and (4) providing space and resources for support camps as well as ceremonial dance grounds. Notably, those who were bringing back the Ghost Dance rituals in 2006 were re-creating cultural landscapes with many of the same performance, physiographic, and cultural features.
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156 Alex K. Ruuska Joe Lally and A. J. Vonarx
C h a p t e r 7
An Archaeological Toolkit for Evaluating Accident and Intent in Ancient Structural Fires
This chapter is intended as a primer for archaeologists interested in the interpreta- tion of ancient structural fires. Here we introduce some fundamental principles, vocabulary, and tools used by fire investigators, engineers, and scientists and explain their significance for archaeology. We review findings of full-scale burn experiments completed by each author and discuss room-scale signatures of fire origin that may stand the test of time. In terms of this volume’s focus on “ritual,” this chapter may appear to some as atheoretical. We chose purposefully not to begin with reviews of ritual, warfare, landscape, social memory, termination, agency, or other theoretical approaches to structural fires in the Southwest. Two reasons underlie this choice. First, one of us (Lally) does not believe the use of ritual can adequately explain fire in the archae- ological record. The other (Vonarx) believes ritual is a valid framework, in spe- cific contexts, to understand the past. What follows is a discussion of areas where reasonable minds should not disagree. Regarding theory, our research involves ongoing collaboration with fire scientists and investigators. We are conscious that specific paradigms ground the ways our collaborators approach structural fire. In many cases, Western notions of potential crime and ultimate blame are woven tightly into methodology and description. While these notions are not appropriate
157 when we examine ancient events, many of the tools used in fire investigation can be applied—with caution—in archaeological contexts. From the perspective of fire investigation, science, and engineering, there are three categories of structural fire: providential, accidental, and incendiary. Providential fires are ignited by natural causes, such as lighting or volcanoes. No human action underlies the ignition of providential fires. Accidental fires are the result of carelessness with either fire or fuel for fire but not of intentional human activity. Providential and accidental fires cannot be used to support arguments that suggest motives, such as warfare or ritual. These types of fires can support argu- ments that suggest human reactions to fire, such as changes in construction mate- rial from wood to adobe, the development of fire brigades, or other suppression tactics. Incendiary fires are ignited by intentional human activity with the purpose of burning something. Only this last category can support arguments that suggest a motive behind the intentional burning of a structure. In recent years, the tide of interpreting ancient structural fires as providential or accidental has turned, and incendiary origins are now frequently assumed for many fires. This allows archaeologists to suggest motives, such as warfare or ritual, as the ultimate cause of the fire. In the current interpretive climate, the possibility that many structural fires in the archaeological record may have been providential or accidental is often ignored or summarily dismissed. The goal of this chapter is to convince archaeologists that they must carefully establish that a structural fire was incendiary prior to suggesting motives for that fire. In the past, many studies examined structural fire in a regional context, relying exclusively on patterns of room function and assemblages to argue for intentional acts. To establish that a fire was intentional or incendiary, the archaeologist must first gain an understanding of the principles of fire, its behavior, and the dynamics of fire within structures. When these principles are understood, they can then be applied to the archaeological record. Fire leaves evidence that can be observed in the archaeo- logical record. Some of this evidence is readily apparent and can be observed with the naked eye; other evidence requires chemical, physical, or microscopic analysis.
Fire Fire is a naturally occurring phenomenon that predates humanity. Fire first flickered about 400 million years ago (mya) (Pyne 2001:3). Fossil charcoal in sed- imentary rocks suggests that fire has continuously swept the earth for the past 350 million years (Lane 2002:20; Pyne 2001:11). It is tempting to apply “common knowledge” because fire has been an integral part of the human experience and everybody “knows” fire. Unfortunately, some of that “knowledge” is not well founded and can lead to erroneous conclusions (Icove and DeHaan 2009:xv).
158 Joe Lally and A. J. Vonarx Fire is a set of chemical reactions that produce heat and light (Quintiere 1998:2). These chemical reactions are complex and not understood in their entirety, but some generalizations can be made (Drysdale 2003:255). Fire involves either vapor- to-vapor chemical reactions that produce flaming combustion or vapor-to-solid chemical reactions that produce glowing or smoldering combustion (Friedman 1998:78–79). Our atmosphere is approximately 21 percent oxygen. Flaming com- bustion requires an atmosphere of approximately 15 percent oxygen. Below that, smoldering combustion can continue with as little as 5 percent oxygen. The floor, walls, and ceiling of a structure can inhibit the flow of the oxygen that is necessary to propagate flaming combustion. A fire in a poorly ventilated structure can quickly consume much of the avail- able oxygen and be reduced from a flaming inferno to a smoldering pile of fuel. Absent a supply of fresh air, this smoldering pile of fuel can produce heat for a very long time. Many thermal alterations to structure and contents can be the result of a smoldering mass of fuel. Both flaming combustion and smoldering (“glowing”) combustion produce heat. Heat can alter the material on which it impinges. These thermal alterations to structures and contents often persist in the archaeological record. Many of the different chemical reactions occur simultaneously (DeHaan 2002:10). These chemical reactions require the necessary ingredients of fuel, heat, and oxygen. An in-depth explanation of these chemical reactions is beyond the scope of this chapter. There are several excellent introductory texts on the subject (Drysdale 1998; Friedman 1998; Quintiere 1998). The most important aspect of fire is the Heat Release Rate (HRR), measured in kilowatts (kW) (Quintiere 1998:107). Fire produces heat and not temperature. Heat is energy in transit. Temperature is a measure of the amount of heat an object has absorbed. Placing a thermocouple or pyrometer into a fire does noth- ing more than measure the temperature(s) of the flames. Wood and gasoline burn at essentially the same flame temperature, but they release their heat at different rates (NFPA 2008:§5.6.5.1). A thermocouple or pyrometer does not measure heat, only temperature. HRR cannot be measured directly. HRR is the product of the rate at which the fuel loses mass or the mass loss rate m, the area of combustion
(A), and the potential heat or heat of combustion (ΔHc) of the fuel.* This can be expressed as follows:
Q = mAΔHc where:
* Wood has an effective heat of combustion of approximately 13–15 Kj/g.
Fire: Accidental or Intentional? 159 Q = the HRR measured in kW m = the mass loss rate measured in grams per second A = the area of combustion measured in square meters
ΔHc = the heat of combustion of the fuel measured in kilojoules (kJ) per gram. The dot over a symbol denotes a period of time. A watt (W) is one joule (J) per second.
Because this formula from Quintiere (1998:108) considers the area of combus- tion in square meters, this expression is only valid for two-dimensional fuel beds. With wood fires this is rarely the case. It may be very difficult to calculate the volume of combustion of a three-dimensional fuel bed such as a fuel wood fire. Fortunately, there is an alternative way to measure the HRR of a fire based on the fire’s flame length. Common experience with campfires has taught everyone that larger fires produce more heat. This can be more exactly expressed as:
5/2 Q = 79.18 Hf /k where:
Q = HRR in kW
Hf = flame length in meters k = the wall factor: 1 = no wall, 2 = fire against a wall, and 4 = fire in a corner.
This can also be expressed as:
0.4 Hf = 0.174(kQ) The wall factor plays an important role in the dynamics of structural fires and will be further addressed in that section. The HRR of a fire defines its size and its potential for damage. Archaeologists should use “maximum HRR” rather than maximum temperature to characterize the intensity of a fire event. The exact mathematical relationship between flame length and HRR has been the subject of debate. The 2004 edition of the National Fire Protection Association (NFPA) 921 Guide for Fire and Explosion Investigations accepted this relationship (NFPA 2004:§5.5.6.1). The 2008 edition of NFPA 921 appears to have reservations about the mathematical exactness of the relationship between flame length and HRR. The 2009 edition of Forensic Fire Scene Reconstruction fully accepts the rela- tionship (Icove and DeHaan 2009:119). Heat is transferred by three methods: conduction, convection, and radiation. Heat travels from “hot” to “cold” (Quintiere 1998:49). A fire produces radiant and convective heat as well as direct flame impingement, which is a combination of convective and radiant heat. The temperature of an object is a measure of how
160 Joe Lally and A. J. Vonarx much heat it has absorbed. The most important variable concerning temperature gain is the amount of heat that falls on an object’s surface. This is referred to as heat flux. A fire produces between 20 and 60 percent of its heat as radiant heat. Small fires, such as a candle flame, produce a very small percentage of their heat as radi- ant heat. Larger fires produce a larger percentage of their heat as radiant heat. In general, most fires are assumed to produce 30 percent of their heat as radiant heat and 70 percent as convective heat. Absent a ceiling in a structure to contain convec- tive heat, most of the convective heat from a fire is lost to the atmosphere as it rises in a convective plume above the fire. This buoyant convective plume cools in a pre- dictable pattern (DeHaan 2002:39). What we feel from a campfire is the remaining radiant heat. Radiant heat flux can be reduced to the following expression:
2 q = XrQ/4πr where:
q = incident radiant heat on a target (Kw/m2)
Xr = radiative fraction (typically from 0.20 to 0.60), representing the percent- age of radiant heat released from a fire. For computational purposes, a radiative fraction of 0.30 is frequently assumed. r = the distance from the source to the target (in meters) Q = total heat release rate of source (in kW) (from Icove and DeHaan 2009:70; Quintiere 1998:58)
The amount of heat flux that falls on a target is a basic consideration in deter- mining that object’s temperature. Other considerations are mass and specific heat (Cp). Different materials have different specific heat and will experience dif- ferent temperature gain (or loss) when exposed to an identical amount of heat. For archaeologists, the best example is the wooden handle on a four-inch trowel. When the trowel is left in the sun for several hours, the flat metal blade portion experiences a greater temperature gain than does the wooden handle. There is good reason to put wooden handles on metal tools. This same principle holds true for different types of metals and for soils and sediments with different chemical compositions.
Structures For our purposes, structures are enclosed spaces that, at the time of ignition, consisted of identifiable floors, walls, and ceilings; openings such as doors, win- dows, and vents may also have been present. Structures can be made of many different types of material. Some buildings are made of straw, which burns very
Fire: Accidental or Intentional? 161 easily and is quickly destroyed. Some structures are made of sticks, which also burn very rapidly. Some structures are made of bricks, which do not burn at all. In the Southwest, many structures were made of the functional equivalent of bricks—stone masonry and adobe. Other structures were made of adobe plastered wooden posts, referred to as jacal construction. Stone masonry and adobe do not burn at all, and previous experiments on the Dolores River have demonstrated that jacal-constructed pithouses are not easily ignited (Wilshusen 1986). Buildings perform at least one function: to protect occupants and contents from the weather by creating enclosed spaces that separate the inside from the outside (Salvadori 1980:18–19). To perform that function, buildings must resist the forces of gravity twenty-four hours a day, seven days a week (Brannigan 1992:10). Walls and columns support beams, and beams support the roofing material. The roof is very important. Not only does a roof keep rain and snow outside, it also keeps the heat and smoke of a fire inside. Fire can negatively affect the ability of walls, columns, and especially beams to resist the forces of gravity. This is true whether the beams are made of wood or steel. The tragic events of September 11, 2001, have made it all too clear that large buildings made of noncombustible steel and concrete can be reduced to a pile of rubble in a matter of minutes given the right fuel load. The fuel load is the structure’s combustible contents. The fires in prehistoric stone masonry and adobe structures were not fueled by the structures themselves but rather by the contents or fuel load. To reconstruct an ancient structural fire, one must be able to recon- struct the structure’s fuel load. What was fueling the fire? Would the suspected fuel load be consistent or inconsistent with the use of the structure? Are fire sig- natures and their extent consistent with the proposed fuel load, or were other, unrecovered fuels likely present? Many prehistoric roofs in the Greater Southwest display similar construction. Wooden beams supported smaller branches, thatching material, or both. The thatching material was covered with adobe mud to seal the roof to keep rain and snow on the outside. As mentioned earlier, a roof constrains heat and smoke, trapping them on the inside of a structure. It is assumed that most, if not all, structures used for habitation contained an internal hearth. To allow the smoke and soot from an internal hearth to be vented to the outside, a ceiling or near-ceiling vent would have been necessary to make a structure habitable. Absent such ventilation, an internal hearth would have made an enclosed structure uninhabitable because of the accumulation of toxic smoke and gases. Ceiling or near-ceiling ventilation can significantly influence the behavior of a structural fire. When one is attempting to determine the nature of a prehistoric structural fire, he or she must reconstruct the structure (at least conceptually), including all
162 Joe Lally and A. J. Vonarx possible ventilation. The presence of an internal hearth may be the only indication that ceiling ventilation existed, but it does not dictate the form or nature of open- ings or indicate whether vents were open when the structural fire occurred.
Structural Fires Structural fires differ from open fires in many ways. The floors, walls, and ceilings may inhibit the flow of oxygen necessary for the propagation of flaming combustion. The ceiling and walls can prevent the escape of heat and smoke from the structure. Both heat and smoke will then accumulate, increasing the tempera- ture of the structure and its contents. In an open fire, smoke and heat are lost to the atmosphere and leave little or no trace. A structural, or compartment, fire progresses through five stages of devel- opment (Drysdale 1998:292): ignition, growth, flashover, fully developed fire, and decay. The first stage, ignition, sparks most of the archaeological debate surround- ing fire. How did this fire start? To answer that question, one must understand the other four stages of development and the resulting evidence of ancient structural fires. One must know what was burning—the size and composition of the fuel load. All fires, no matter how big they eventually become, start out as small fires. The available fuel load determines how big (flame length and HRR) a fire will get. Knowledge of what was ignited can also provide information on how a fire was ignited. Some fuels, such as wood chips, are easily ignited. Other fuels, such as small 4-inch- (10-cm-) diameter logs or complete ears of corn, are not so easily ignited. Is the presence of a large fuel load consistent or inconsistent with the use of the structure? One of the challenges archaeologists face is that ancient construc- tion materials were not highly standardized and display much more variation in potential HRR than can be discerned from a value in an engineering textbook. These considerations must be dealt with when considering the incendiary or acci- dental nature of a structural fire. Textiles, wood chips, or other “ephemeral materi- als” may have been part of the fuel load. Even when not detected in excavation, the presence of additional fuels (or natural accelerants) may be gleaned by comparing the consistency of reconstructed fuel loads with expected fire signatures. During the growth stage of a compartment fire, the walls and ceiling come into play. The super-heated air is contained in the upper portions of a compartment. As the fire continues, this upper hot zone begins a descent toward the floor. The structure’s walls and corners can determine the flame length of a fire. The buoyant plume cools as ambient air is entrained into the column (DeHaan 2002:39). When the heat from the buoyant plume starts to spread out horizontally just beneath the ceiling, it is called a ceiling jet. When a fire is against a wall or in a corner, the
Fire: Accidental or Intentional? 163 Movement of heat and smoke in a compartment fire. Image by Kate Harrison. walls reduce the amount of cooling air entrained into the buoyant plume, thus stretching out the length of the flame (DeHaan 2002:40). The flames of a fire in the middle of a room may never touch the ceiling to ignite it, while the flames from the same fire in a corner will be stretched out and may directly impinge on the ceiling, resulting in ignition. Figure 7.1 is a diagram of the movement of heat and smoke during a compartment fire. As a fire consumes available fuel, the air temperature in the room increases. If the temperature of the air within 2 or 3 centimeters of an intact ceiling (the ceiling jet) reaches approximately 600°C, the entire fuel load in the room will erupt into flaming combustion. This impressive event or series of events is called flashover. Flashover is the short transition period between growth and a fully developed fire, which occurs when the room or compartment is totally engulfed in flame. This total room involvement will continue until approximately 80 percent of the fuel is consumed. After that point has been reached, the fire will begin to decay and smolder. Not every compartment fire results in flashover. It is common but not universal. Flashover is controlled by many variables, such as fuel load, HRR, room geometry, ceiling height, and ventilation. Rooms that reach a state of flashover are not tenable. Human survival in the room is highly unlikely. Flashover can leave its mark in the archaeological record in the form of lines of demarcation, bright line boundaries between the upper hot zone of a room that
164 Joe Lally and A. J. Vonarx was fully engulfed in flame and the lower, cooler portions. Lines of demarcation indicate how far the hot zone descended toward the floor. The depth to which the hot zone descended provides information concerning the size, intensity, and fuel load of a fire. The presence of lines of demarcation also provides evidence that the structure’s roof was intact at flashover, since an intact roof is necessary for flash- over to occur. If a roof collapses or otherwise fails during a fire’s growth period, the upper hot zone will escape to the atmosphere and flashover cannot occur. While fire investigators are often concerned with whether flashover occurred, the process can obliterate subtle fire signatures archaeologists can use to point to the area in which the fire began (i.e., its “area of origin”). If archaeologists cannot identify an area of origin, determining the incendiary nature of the fire may be difficult. When evidence of flashover is encountered, the ever important question of “what was the fuel load” must be answered. Was the fuel load consistent with the use of the compartment?
Experimental Fires We have encountered evidence of ancient structural fires during excavations in Mexico, New Mexico, and Arizona. To better understand this fire evidence, we each built a model of a prehistoric room just so we could set fires in it. An adobe structure was built in New Mexico (Lally), and a stone masonry structure was constructed in Arizona (Vonarx). These two projects were completely independent from each other. We had no knowledge of each other at the time. Had it been left to archaeolo- gists, we may never have met. Fortunately for both of us, fire protection engineers from the University of Maryland (James Quintiere) and the University of Tennessee, Knoxville (David Icove), made us aware of each other, and we introduced ourselves. We were amazed to find that we had built structures with almost identical dimen- sions. Doorway design and roof construction were different. Lally built a T-shaped door, and Vonarx used a window-style door. Doorway differences would result in ventilation differences. Ceiling ventilation was not used in either structure. Our research designs were different, so our fires and fuel loads differed as well. However, our results were similar. Neither compartment experienced flashover. In all trials, room roofs “failed” within fifteen minutes of ignition. The walls of both structures remained intact and were structurally sound after the fires. None of the fires would have required abandonment of the structures; both could have been rehabilitated, re-roofed, and reoccupied with little effort. Considerably less effort would have been required to rehabilitate the structures than was required to build them. These results should have been expected. Fire experiments in Serbia during the 1970s produced similar results. The roof of a wattle-and-daub structure collapsed
Fire: Accidental or Intentional? 165 within twenty minutes of ignition, but the walls remained intact (Bankoff and Winter 1979:14). Vonarx placed a floor assemblage of ceramic vessels, stone tools, and shell in the structure prior to ignition. In her first trial, no fuel was placed in the structure. An available roof vent was closed, and an open doorway provided ventilation. The ceiling thatching was ignited from the inside of the structure near a corner. The fire spread rapidly across the underside of the ceiling, causing the roof to collapse. None of the sandstone, roof sediment, mud plaster, or daub building material was thermally altered to the extent that it would have survived the ravages of time. Sooting patterns on walls and artifacts were amazingly subtle and fleeting. Still, the area of the fire’s origin could be recognized through patterns of charring to beams. However, one of the primary beams and many secondary beams survived intact. In the past, these would have been recycled quickly, and little evidence of the fire would have survived. Vonarx’s structure was not only capable of being rehabilitated, it actually was. Vonarx re-roofed the structure, added dried and husked corncobs as fuel, and ignited the pile. The corn only smoldered. More fuel was added—loosely packed shrubs and local grasses filled about half of the structure’s volume. The fire flared up, igniting the thatching material and causing the roofing material to collapse onto the floor. This fire produced very small amounts of fused roofing material (sedi- ment) that was recovered during excavation but was limited spatially to the corners of the room. The two primary beams and walls remained intact and structurally sound. Combustion of roof beams and thatching was “more complete” closer to the source of ventilation than at a distance from ventilation. Wood would be reduced to ash more rapidly near a vent than at a distance from a vent. If the structure were re-roofed, swept out, and replastered, only the thermal alterations to sandstone (in corners where the roof met the walls) would have indicated that a fire occurred. Vonarx’s structure survives to this day for use in further experiments. The results from Lally’s structure in New Mexico were similar. The adobe structure survived much as did the stone masonry structure in Arizona. The main difference was that fuel was placed inside the adobe structure. The roof collapsed within fifteen minutes, and the walls survived to be rehabilitated. Adobe roof fragments fell into the burning fuel bed and fused, a condition known as sinter- ing. Essentially, sintering of adobe material fuses adobe fragments into “artificial rocks” by heating or firing them. Sintering is the beginning stage of melting. These sintered adobe fragments survive in the archaeological record. Absent a substantial fuel load capable of producing an elevated HRR, little, if any, evidence of a struc- ture fire would survive in the archaeological record. No ceiling or near-ceiling vent was installed in Lally’s structure. The only ven- tilation was the single T-shaped doorway. One corner of the adobe structure was
166 Joe Lally and A. J. Vonarx filled with complete ears of dried corn. Early attempts to ignite these ears failed. The corn would only smolder for a short period before self-extinguishing. Piñon- juniper fuel wood was placed in another corner. A few pieces of newspaper and a single match quickly produced a large fire. The fuel wood sent flames curling underneath the ceiling (see figure 7.2), but the radiant heat from the fuel wood fire failed to ignite the corn. Within fifteen minutes the roof collapsed, and the fuel wood fire sent flames up above the height of the walls. As soon as the roof collapsed, the pile of corn began to burn with low- flaming combustion. The corn never produced flame lengths of much more than 10 centimeters, but it continued to burn and smolder for more than twelve hours. The most logical explanation for the corn bursting into flaming combustion at the roof’s collapse was the added availability of a fresh supply of oxygen. Fragments of adobe roofing material fell into both the fuel wood fire and the low-flaming bed of burning, smoldering corn. Many, but not all, of the adobe frag- ments sintered. The fire in the New Mexico adobe structure was ignited in a cor- ner, thus artificially lengthening the flame. The flame length of this fire can be measured. The interior height of the struc- ture was 1.6 m. The horizontal portion of the flame was approximately 0.9 m. This results in an overall flame length of 2.5 m. Using the formula to determine HRR from flame length, it is possible to determine the HRR of this fire. This corner fire produced approximately 196 kW. The 196 kW HRR of the fuel wood fire produced thermally altered adobe material. Some of these fused adobe roof fragments were very similar in appear- ance to prehistoric fused adobe located during excavations in Chihuahua, Arizona, and New Mexico. The thatching material used in prehistoric roof construction lacks sufficient mass to produce an HRR capable of fusing adobe construction material. A greater fuel load is required to produce the thermally altered fused adobe fragments observed in the archaeological record today. Not all fused adobe is the result of an adobe roof collapsing onto a burning fuel bed. Fused adobe plaster and flooring have been found in Chihuahua and New Mexico. Locating fused flooring and plaster is a common occurrence during the excavation of a burned structure. Fused or sintered flooring or plaster is adobe that is beginning to melt. All of the evidence of fire in both experimental compartments was located on the inside of the burned structures where the fires occurred. No evidence of fire was located on the structure’s exterior, save some light sooting patterns near the doorways and beam sockets on Vonarx’s structure that faded quickly with rain. It may seem obvious that interior structural fires leave evidence on the inside and that exterior fire would leave evidence on the outside.
Fire: Accidental or Intentional? 167 Fuel wood burning in corner. Photograph by Kate Harrison.
Prehistoric structural fires in the Gallina region of northern New Mexico are typically assumed to be incendiary because of warfare (Cordell 1979:143). Physical evidence seems to refute this notion in at least one case, however. Scorpion House (LA 57386) is in a heavily wooded area of Rio Arriba County, New Mexico. This
168 Joe Lally and A. J. Vonarx is a classic Gallina structure in the heart of Gallina country that experienced fire at some point in its history. Sintered adobe plaster was located on the exterior of the structure. No thermal alterations were observed within the structure, indi- cating that the fire at Scorpion House was clearly on the exterior. The fuel that caused the thermal alterations was most likely from the heavily wooded area sur- rounding Scorpion House. Providential wildland fires are a frequent occurrence in the mountains of northern New Mexico, occurring as often as every seven years (Lentz, Gaunt, and Willmer 1996). Flame length can easily exceed 7 meters in a wildland fire (Pyne, Andrews, and Laven 1996:67). A seven-meter flame length would produce 10,265 kW. Such a fire 1 meter from a structure would result in over 245 kW radiant heat flux impinging on that structure—more than the 196 kW that fused the adobe roof fragments in the adobe test fire. It is unknown if this fire occurred during occupation or after abandonment. One can easily imagine a forest growing up around an abandoned structure and eventually falling victim to a lightning-caused wildland fire. We were fortunate to have access to the land, the labor necessary to build the test structures, and the cooperation of our local fire departments to set the struc- tures on fire. Not everyone is so fortunate. A lack of land or labor need not keep anyone from designing and testing fire scenarios, however. The National Institute of Standards and Technology (NIST) has developed several mathematical fire-mod- eling programs as well as computer animation capabilities that allow any potential compartment fire scenarios to be designed and tested. The growth, duration, HRR, and thermal effects of these computer-modeled fire scenarios can be solved math- ematically and visually displayed with the help of computer-generated animation. Best of all, they are available at no cost on the NIST website (www.nist.gov). The most common fire-modeling programs are Consolidated Fire and Smoke Transport (CFAST) and Fire Dynamics Simulator (FDS). CFAST can be run on almost any home computer and is not difficult to use. FDS may be beyond the capa- bilities of many personal computers and requires the ability to write the computer code defining any given fire scenario. Some FDS calculations may take hours, if not days, to complete. With CFAST, it is as simple as defining your compartment(s)’ length, width, height, ventilation, construction material, fuel load, and location and then clicking “run.” You will soon learn if your suspected fuel load and point of origin are capable of producing the thermal alterations observed. CFAST is easy; FDS is more difficult, but it provides a more complete picture.
Application to the Archaeological Record Fire tends to preserve the remains of prehistoric earthen structures; thus the number of burned prehistoric structures may be overrepresented in the archaeo-
Fire: Accidental or Intentional? 169 logical record. This frequency of burned structures may have caused archaeolo- gists to overemphasize the importance of fire in southwestern prehistory. When one is considering the significance of an ancient burned building, he or she must remember that not all structural fires are intentional incendiary fires. Arguments suggesting a motive for a fire, such as ritual or warfare, should not be made until that fire has been demonstrated to be an intentional fire. Evidence of the incendiary nature of a fire should be demonstrated, not assumed. The size or intensity of a fire alone cannot be used as evidence of intentionality. The high standards of excavation methods used by most archaeologists today are sufficient for discovering evidence of intentional fire. The excavation methods used by modern arson investigators closely resemble those of modern archaeol- ogy. Both groups are attempting to build a model of a past event. The quantity and quality of the evidence collected will determine the completeness and accuracy of that model. Any attempt to reconstruct the cause and origin of ancient structural fires must determine:
1. The physical dimensions and use of a structure or compartment 2. The possible ventilation aspects of the structure that would influence the fire’s growth and behavior 3. The expected fuel load of the room or compartment 4. Whether the observed thermal alterations are consistent or inconsistent with the use and expected fuel load of that room or compartment 5. The location of fire evidence in relation to the structure 6. A competent ignition source
This chapter constitutes a slender thumbnail sketch of some of the tools and methods that are currently available. It is intended to be no more than a brief introduction to the application of fire science to archaeology. The references cited herein provide a more in-depth explanation of the physics and chemistry of fire behavior. Structural fires can be very complicated events. No two structural fires are the same, and each must be evaluated on its own merits. The use of mathemati- cal computer fire-modeling programs allows for rigorous testing of possible fire scenarios. Circumstantial evidence (e.g., room contents, evidence of remodeling, post-fire fill of the structure) is useful for understanding the cultural context of fire events. Suggestions of intentionality should be based on the totality of the evidence collected as opposed to collecting evidence that may tend to support a suggested motive.
170 Joe Lally and A. J. Vonarx Bankoff, H. Arthur, and Frederick Winter 1979 A House Burning in Serbia. Archaeology 32:8–14. Brannigan, Francis 1992 Building Construction for the Fire Services, 3rd ed. National Fire Protection Asso- ciation, Quincy, MA. Cordell, Linda 1979 Prehistory: Eastern Anasazi. In Handbook of North American Indians, vol. 9: South- west, ed. A. Ortiz, 131–161. US Government Printing Office, Washington, DC. DeHaan, John 2002 Kirk’s Fire Investigation, 5th ed. Prentice-Hall, Upper Saddle River, NJ. Drysdale, Dougal 1998 An Introduction to Fire Dynamics, 2nd ed. John Wiley and Sons, Chichester, UK. 2003 Chemistry and Physics of Fire. In Fire Protection Handbook, 19th ed., ed. Arthur E. Cote, 2-55–2-71. National Fire Protection Association, Quincy, MA. Friedman, Raymond 1998 Principles of Fire Protection Chemistry and Physics. National Fire Protection Asso- ciation, Quincy, MA. Icove, David, and John DeHaan 2009 Forensic Fire Scene Reconstruction, 2nd ed. Prentice-Hall, Upper Saddle River, NJ. Lane, Nick 2002 Oxygen, the Molecule That Made the World. Oxford University Press, Oxford. Lentz, Stephen, Joan Gaunt, and Adisa Willmer 1996 Fire Effects on Archaeological Resources, Phase I: The Henry Fire, Holiday Mesa, Jemez Mountains, New Mexico. US Forest Service, Rocky Mountain Forest and Range Experiment Station, RM-GTR-273, Fort Collins, CO. National Fire Protection Association (NFPA) 2004 NFPA 921 Guide for Fire and Explosion Investigation. NFPA, Quincy, MA. 2008 NFPA 921 Guide for Fire and Explosion Investigation. NFPA, Quincy, MA. Pyne, Stephen 2001 Fire: A Brief History. University of Washington Press, Seattle. Pyne, Stephen, Patricia Andrews, and Richard Laven 1995 Introduction to Wildland Fire, 2nd ed. John Wiley and Sons, New York. Quintiere, James 1998 Principles of Fire Behavior. Delmar, Albany, NY. Salvadori, Mario 1980 Why Buildings Stand Up: The Strength of Architecture. W. W. Norton, New York. Wilshusen, Richard 1986 The Relationship between Abandonment Mode and Ritual Use in Pueblo I Anasazi Protokivas. Journal of Field Archaeology 13:245–254.
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P a r t I I
Patrick D. Lyons, Jeffery J. Clark, and J. Brett Hill
C h a p t e r 8
In this chapter we examine evolving social boundaries marked on the landscape of the San Pedro River Valley of southeastern Arizona (figure 8.1) between AD 750 and 1450. Using both archaeological and ethnographic data, we present a model of identities in flux, and changing relationships between social groups and key resources, as two waves of immigrants established themselves in the valley and interacted with locals. Social boundaries can be marked in myriad ways (Barth 1998 [1969]; Eriksen 1991; Jenkins 1996, 1997; Kroskrity 1993; Ningsheng 1989). Here we focus on mon- uments (Adler and Wilshusen 1990; Bradley 1993, 1998, 2000; Criado 1995:199; cf. Trigger 1990:119–120) and other structures that functioned at least in part to commemorate group identity and the social order (see Van Dyke, this volume). Such phenomena also exhibit traces of transformation, in part because of their nature as “inscribed practices” (Connerton 1989:4, 72–76, 96–100). In the Lower San Pedro Valley this category includes ball courts, apparent boundary markers, platform mounds, and kivas. These are commemorative places, “spaces that have been inscribed with meaning” (Van Dyke and Alcock 2003:5). After a brief introduction to the archaeology of the study area, we address its ancient monuments. We frame our discussion using four related themes that
175 Map of Arizona showing the locations of places mentioned in the text. Base map drawn by Ronald J. Beckwith.
A. Bernard Knapp and Wendy Ashmore (1999) have identified in archaeological research focused on landscapes: memory (forgetting is also an important consider- ation; see Forty and Küchler 1999), identity, social order, and transformation. We consider the first three as a group before discussing transformation. We conclude by examining the afterlife of one of the kivas in the valley, a structure that reveals a great deal about the importance of monuments in the construction of social mem- ory and group identity. In the San Pedro Valley these themes take on special impor- tance given evidence of a Kayenta diaspora composed of groups of related immi- grants who negotiated identities in new geographical and social environments.
176 Patrick D. Lyons, Jeffery J. Clark, and J. Brett Hill Map showing Lower San Pedro Valley archaeological districts and the locations of sites mentioned in the text. Map drawn by authors.
A survey along approximately 75 miles (121 km) of the Lower San Pedro River, bounded by the communities of Winkelman and Benson, resulted in the discovery of 442 sites and the relocation of 117 previously recorded sites (Doelle and Wallace 1997; Wallace and Doelle 2001). Twenty-nine of these sites were later subjected to test excavations. Based on patterns in settlement location, inferred boundar- ies between irrigation networks, architectural styles, and ceramics, four Lower San Pedro Valley archaeological districts have been defined (figure 8.2) (Clark and Lyons, in press; Doelle, Clark, and Wallace 1999; Lyons 2004a). By AD 750 the lower valley, especially the Aravaipa District, was densely occu- pied by groups participating in the Hohokam regional system, marked by their use of Hohokam-style house-in-pit domestic architecture, cremation of the dead, local
Ancient Social Boundaries Inscribed on the Landscape 177 production of buff ware pottery (made using the paddle-and-anvil technique), and, eventually, the construction and use of ball courts. Ball courts seem to have fallen into disuse by AD 1100. During the late 1100s and early 1200s, subtle changes in domestic architec- ture and the sudden appearance of large quantities of locally produced (based on petrographic analysis; Lyons, in press; Miksa, Castro-Reino, and Lavayen 2003) cor- rugated pottery, made by coiling, lead us to infer an influx of immigrants from the Mogollon highlands to the north (Clark and Lengyel 2002; Clark et al., in review). The robust spatial pattern exhibited by the distribution of corrugated pottery and the materials used to produce it make it clear that immigrants established them- selves predominantly in the San Manuel District. At about this time, a transition from subsurface to aboveground domestic architecture occurred, and eventually all the inhabitants of the study area lived in residential compounds. Platform mounds were built beginning in the late 1200s. Approximately coeval with the building of platform mounds, small groups of immigrants from the Kayenta region of northeastern Arizona and southeastern Utah established residence in existing local communities in the San Manuel and Dudleyville districts and founded more sizable and separate immigrant communities in the Cascabel District. The origin of these groups has been inferred based on architectural traits—such as stacked-stone masonry construction, roomblock spatial organiza- tion, the Kayenta entry-box complex, and kivas—as well as ceramic indicators, including Maverick Mountain Series decorated pottery and perforated utility ware plates, which were produced locally (Di Peso 1958; Gerald 1958, 1975; Lindsay 1987; Lyons 2003, 2004b; Lyons and Lindsay 2006). By the mid-1300s the majority of the San Manuel District was depopulated, with its former inhabitants coalescing in communities to the north and south, in the Aravaipa, Dudleyville, and Cascabel districts. By the late 1300s the Cascabel and San Manuel districts were vacant. The groups that continued to occupy the lower valley coalesced in the Aravaipa and Dudleyville districts to the north. Based on an interesting blend of ceramic and architectural traditions, the latest occupied pre-Contact sites in the study area seem to have been inhabited by the descendants of both local groups and immigrants. The valley was absent any archaeologically visible population by AD 1450. Sometime after 1450 but before the 1690s, Sobaipuri and Apache occupation is indicated by evidence found in both the archaeological record and Spanish docu- ments (Lyons, Hill, and Clark 2010). The Sobaipuri spoke a Piman dialect related to those spoken by the Tohono O’odham and the Akimel O’odham. As conflict among the Sobaipuri, the Apache, and the Spanish increased during the 1700s, the Sobaipuri left the valley and joined O’odham groups in the Tucson Basin and the Gila River Valley. Apache groups were forced to leave their settlements in the valley
178 Patrick D. Lyons, Jeffery J. Clark, and J. Brett Hill during the 1870s and 1880s but continued to procure resources in the area until at least the 1940s (Ferguson and Colwell-Chanthaphonh 2006).
Monuments, Memory, Identity, and Social Order Knapp and Ashmore (1999:13) have noted that landscape can be conceived as the “materialization of memory” in that it binds together the histories of individu- als, groups, and places. They add that cultural memory, as a process of social con- struction, may “map mythic and moral principles” and helps define social identity. This process creates a social universe, partly in terms of cosmology. When the resulting meanings are inscribed on the landscape, identity and the social order are expressed. Two classes of commemorative places found in the San Pedro Valley— ball courts and kivas—articulate with these themes particularly well. Although Knapp and Ashmore (1999) emphasize commemoration, it is also important to consider the dialectic of remembering and forgetting associated with monuments (Forty and Küchler 1999; Meskell 2004:62–66; Mills 2004). In the final section of this chapter, we address this important dynamic by examining the ritual disposal of a kiva that marked a transformation of the social order.
Ball Courts Hohokam ball courts are elliptical enclosures created most often by earthen walls but sometimes by piled rock. It is inferred that some version(s) of the Mesoamerican ballgame were played in these structures (Haury 1937; Wilcox and Sternberg 1983). This inference is based on morphological similarities among these structures and early Hispanic period ball courts and also on the recovery, in the Hohokam region, of rubber balls and ceramic figurines, the latter of which appear to represent people outfitted in equipment associated with the ballgame. Although we lack southwestern ethnographic analogs for the use and mean- ing of ball courts, considerable research has been devoted to these structures and associated phenomena in Mexico and Central and South America (e.g., Cohodas 1975; Scarborough and Wilcox 1991; Wilcox and Sternberg 1983). As a result, we know that ball courts and ball court ritual were associated with a number of related themes, including cyclical time, death and rebirth, fertility, and the daily and annual solar cycles. These were elements of cosmology, reflected in the dualism of this world and the underworld, and they underlay the social order. This reconstruction parallels Van Dyke’s (this volume) ethnographically informed phenomenological model of Chacoan landscapes and their components. Ball courts, as large-scale integrative structures, were monuments (Adler and Wilshusen 1990). Ball courts were not present in every village, and some villages
Ancient Social Boundaries Inscribed on the Landscape 179 had more than one. Games were played in the enclosure, and spectators could observe by standing or sitting on the walls. The games and the court itself memo- rialized the origin of the group and its relationships with both the natural and the supernatural. Some games and courts brought the inhabitants of smaller outlying villages to the larger central settlements, thereby integrating the community. Many research- ers believe interaction was structured by the ballgame, such that villages with ball courts became marketplaces for the exchange of goods and services (Abbott, Smith, and Gallaga 2007; Doyel 1979; Haury 1976:78–79).
Kivas Our discussion of kivas is based on Hopi ethnography and the archaeology of northeastern Arizona. Kivas are subterranean or semi-subterranean structures, usually spatially segregated from dwellings, that serve a number of purposes. They house the secret aspects of public rituals, act as practice and staging areas for kat- sina dances, and serve as the locations of some initiation ceremonies as well as the manufacture and repair of ritual paraphernalia (Parsons 1936:33–38, 114, 123; Voth 1901:72–75). These structures also function as workshops, particularly for weav- ing, and occasionally as “dormitories” for men. Kivas are embedded in an intricate web of personal and group relationships, connecting clans, members of kiva groups and religious fraternities, and those ini- tiated into the katsina religion (Dozier 1954:344–347; Parsons 1936:xliii, xlvi–xlvii). They also serve to commemorate the group’s origin. Indeed, the kiva is a physical representation of Hopi cosmology. As Victor Mindeleff (1891:135) and many others have noted, the hole in the floor of a kiva, referred to as asipapu , represents the “hole of emergence” through which the Hopi entered this world. The hole of emergence, or sípàapuni, is tradi- tionally located in the Grand Canyon, near the confluence of the Colorado and Little Colorado rivers (Parsons 1936:473, 849n1). The sípàapuni remains open and now functions as a portal between this world and the underworld, a paradisic land of the dead (Geertz 1984; Walker 2008a). Mindeleff (1891:135; see also Geertz 1984:239n30) and other researchers have also suggested that the form of the Hopi kiva recalls the three previous worlds experienced before the present one. The traditional Hopi model of the relationship between this and previous worlds evokes the image of caves stacked one on top of another, with a single vertical passageway linking pairs of caves (Geertz 1984:219). Thus, as the Hopi moved from world to world, they experienced a series of emer- gences. Given this model, the sipapu represents the passage between the first and second worlds, the floor of the kiva is equated with the second world, the bench
180 Patrick D. Lyons, Jeffery J. Clark, and J. Brett Hill Kiva at the Davis Ranch site, in the Lower San Pedro River Valley. Courtesy, Amerind Foundation, Inc., Dragoon, AZ. or seating platform stands for the third world, and the world outside the kiva is the fourth (cf. Van Dyke’s discussion of Chacoan tower kivas in this volume). By building kivas in the San Pedro Valley (Di Peso 1958; Gerald 1958, 1975; Lyons 2004b), immigrants from northern Arizona were explicitly expressing their identity as foreigners and also re-creating the traditional social order of their homeland (figure 8.3). This contrasts strikingly with the behavior of the earlier immigrants from the Mogollon highlands. Prior to the influx of northerners, the Cascabel District was sparsely occupied. In addition, disjunctions are evident in the spatial distributions of many different archaeological phenomena at this location in the valley. The southern terminus of the Classic period platform mound system, the southernmost pre-Classic Hohokam ball court, and the boundary between San Simon Series pottery (to the north) and Dragoon Series pottery (to the south) all fall in this zone between the modern communities of Redington and Benson (Doelle and Wallace 1997; Wallace and Doelle 2001). The northern edge of the distribution of the Babocomari pottery tradition and associated architectural traits also occurs here. This unique social setting may explain why the immigrants who settled in the Cascabel District were able to create their own separate community and to freely express the ritual tradi- tions of their homeland, manifest as kivas (Hill, Lyons, and Clark 2005; Lyons and Clark 2008; Lyons, Hill, and Clark 2008).
Ancient Social Boundaries Inscribed on the Landscape 181 Under the theme of transformation, Knapp and Ashmore (1999) discuss mate- rial traces of tension, contestation, and change in the social order. In the San Pedro Valley, evidence of these conditions or processes takes a number of forms. Those most relevant to a discussion of landscape include enigmatic features we have ten- tatively identified as boundary markers, and also platform mounds.
Boundary Markers? The survey of the San Pedro Valley and our subsequent test excavations resulted in a fairly fine-grained understanding of landscape use in terms of set- tlement pattern, agricultural production, and resource procurement (Clark and Lyons, in press; Doelle, Clark, and Wallace 1999). Prehispanic site types, defined functionally, include settlements of various sizes, fields, lithic quarries, probable canal segments, and a small group of odd places that have common characteristics. Based on the dating of this last group of sites, our reconstruction of local social dynamics when they were constructed, and their locations, we infer that they rep- resent boundary markers. Three enigmatic sites comprise this category. Each is located on a local prom- ontory and consists of a large (maximum diameters between 32 and 67 m) stone- walled enclosure, one to three or more structures of unknown function, and an extremely sparse assemblage of artifacts. One, AZ BB:2:142(ASM), sits atop Indian Hill, at the northern end of the Aravaipa District (as it was configured before AD 1300), and another, AZ BB:6:146(ASM), is perched on a high terrace overlooking the inferred boundary between the Aravaipa and San Manuel districts. Based on the few diagnostic artifacts recovered from these sites, they were most likely built during the late 1100s or perhaps the early 1200s, coeval with the movement of groups from the Mogollon highlands into the San Manuel District. It is interesting that the surface of the Indian Hill site exhibits a concentration of cremated human bone, perhaps indicating the use of ancestors in marking territory (Bradley 1998, 2000:147–153). The third example, AZ BB:11:21(ASM), sits along the southern edge of the San Manuel District, on a high gravel ridge that looms over a cienega—the likely location of the headgates of the district’s southernmost canal system. It appears to have been constructed during the early 1300s, within a generation of the estab- lishment of the multi-settlement community inhabited by immigrants from the Kayenta region. AZ BB:2:108(ASM) is similar in some ways to the sites in this category and different in others. It exhibits a small rock ring, only 5 meters in diameter, and an L-shaped stone alignment, each leg of which is 2 meters long. Stone features at the site appear to date to the late 1100s or early 1200s, based on the ceramics pres-
182 Patrick D. Lyons, Jeffery J. Clark, and J. Brett Hill ent. There is no evidence of use of this place during the next phase of the valley’s occupation (the Late Classic period: AD 1300–1450/1475). However, flaked stone artifacts observed on the surface suggest it was used by the Sobaipuri sometime before the late 1700s. BB:2:108 crowns Malpais Hill and looks down on a spring. Malpais Hill is a bedrock reef that forces water flowing underground to the surface, even in times of drought. Indeed, a historic period irrigation ditch, which may have begun as an ancient canal, heads in this location today. We cannot yet link this location with a known social boundary expressed at the time BB:2:108 was constructed. By AD 1300, however, this site straddled the inferred Late Classic period boundary between the Dudleyville and Aravaipa districts. Malpais Hill, aside from its effects on local hydrology, is the highest point adja- cent to the floodplain for many miles. The San Carlos Apache refer to it as Nadnlid Cho (Big Sunflower Hill) (Ferguson and Colwell-Chanthaphonh 2006). This place is mentioned frequently in written and oral accounts of the 1871 Camp Grant Massacre and related events, especially those relating to the life of Haské bahnzin (Eskiminzin, Eskimezen), a leader of the Aravaipa band (Colwell-Chanthaphonh 2003, 2007). At the base of the hill is a shallow rockshelter with polychrome pictographs on its ceiling. The pictograph site, designated AZ BB:2:16(ASM), has been attributed to the Western Apache by both anthropologists and members of the San Carlos Apache Tribe (Ferguson and Colwell-Chanthaphonh 2006; Schaafsma 1980:337– 341; Schaafsma and Vivian 1975). Perhaps rather than a boundary marker, this site may represent some other class or classes of landmark. It seems to be a persistent place (Schlanger 1992). Paul Taçon (1999:36–40; also see Bradley 2000) discusses places that, although not formally marked by buildings or artifacts, evoke “common responses in human beings” because of the unusual natural features they exhibit. Malpais Hill combines a number of the natural traits Taçon identifies as contributing to such responses: a prominent peak, a dramatic change in hydrology, and a rockshelter. Apache con- sultants reported that the Malpais Hill pictographs were made by ritual practitio- ners, and Apache ethnography makes clear the fact that caves and rockshelters are dangerous and sacred places (Ferguson and Colwell-Chanthaphonh 2006). Alex Ruuska (this volume) notes similar conceptual associations for Numic and Yuman speakers and documents the importance of such features in defining a priori places appropriate for the practice of ritual.
Platform Mounds Platform mounds are rectangular or square enclosures filled and capped for the purpose of creating an elevated surface upon which to construct another building
Ancient Social Boundaries Inscribed on the Landscape 183 or buildings, to provide a context for ritual performances, or both. As in the case of ball courts, we lack a local ethnographic analog for the use of platform mounds. However, Mark Elson’s (1998) cross-cultural study of mound-building groups and his reinterpretation of Classic period Hohokam archaeology offer many key insights. Based on Elson’s synthesis and local archaeological evidence, we conclude the following regarding the platform mounds of the San Pedro Valley:
• They were constructed by local descent groups, longtime participants in the Hohokam regional system (like the inhabitants of the nearby Phoenix Basin) who used them primarily in rituals related to ancestor worship. • They were built coeval with an influx of immigrants native to northern Arizona. • They represent claims by local groups on the fields, irrigation canals and head- gates, and water of the San Pedro Valley.
Direct evidence of integration of locals and immigrants through the use of platform mounds is lacking in the San Pedro Valley, perhaps because our exca- vations have focused on trash deposits rather than architecture. However, very similar monuments in the nearby Tonto and Phoenix basins were reconfigured late in the pre-Contact period. The reworking of mound-top space at some sites in the Phoenix Basin resulted in the creation of separate suites of similar rooms apparently used for private ritual activities (Downum and Bostwick 2003). Some researchers suggest this change reflects the opening up of mound ceremonialism to a number of subunits of the community, such as lineages or sodalities (cf. Elson and Abbott 2000). A related process has been observed in the Tonto Basin, at the Meddler Point Platform Mound (AZ V:5:4[ASM]) (Stark, Clark, and Elson 1995). Two rooms were constructed on the elevated surface. One was built using low-elevation wood spe- cies typically employed by local groups in their domestic architecture. The other yielded only high-elevation timbers, like those regularly recovered from the habi- tations comprising a nearby settlement on the margins of the community: the Griffin Wash site (AZ V:5:90[ASM]). Based on traces of many distinctive behav- iors, the builders and inhabitants of Griffin Wash have been identified as Puebloan immigrants from high-elevation locations to the north. During the waning decades of the pre-Contact occupation of the San Pedro Valley, population was concentrated in the Dudleyville District and at the Flieger Ruin (AZ BB:2:7[ASM]). The only integrative structure (or structures) remaining in use was one (or both) of the platform mounds at Flieger. The latest established sites in the valley, in the Dudleyville District, are characterized by an eclectic mix of local and immigrant traditions of artifact manufacture and domestic architecture. As we discuss in the final section of this chapter, it appears that by this time the use
184 Patrick D. Lyons, Jeffery J. Clark, and J. Brett Hill of ritual architecture associated with the Kayenta region had been discontinued. For these reasons, we wonder if a transformation of ritual architecture occurred in the San Pedro Valley, such that the ancestors of immigrants as well as the forebears of locals were memorialized.
Conclusion: Forgetting, Remembering, Identity, and Place Making A number of scholars interested in landscape and monuments have sug- gested focusing on the “afterlives” or “life histories of places” (Ashmore 2002; Bradley 1998:68–71, 2003; Holtorf 1998). The kiva at the Davis Ranch site (AZ BB:11:36[ASM]) experienced significant transformations that, when examined from the perspective of the dialectic between remembering and forgetting, may inform us a great deal about the social dynamics of place making and identity construction in the study area. In their work addressing the social process of forgetting, both Adrian Forty (1999) and Susanne Küchler (1999) emphasize iconoclasm—the intentional destruc- tion of material culture—as a key strategy. Barbara Mills (2008), however, points out that there is more to forgetting than iconoclasm. She discusses related strate- gies, including intentional discard of inalienable objects (Mills 2004; Weiner 1985) and secrecy, which can be reconstructed through the observation of depositional practices. Discarding the inalienable involves patterned, prescribed “ritual retire- ment” (Mills 2008:99), or as William Walker (1995a, 1995b) has dubbed the process, “singularized deposition.” The kiva at the Davis Ranch site was forgotten in this manner and later, it appears, was made a locus of new social memories. When it was constructed, the kiva was literally the center of a pithouse ham- let founded by Kayenta immigrants (figure 8.4). As previously discussed, this struc- ture was a material representation of a shared past and the raw material of group identity: cosmology, traditional (oral) history, and a homeland in the north. When the pueblo’s core roomblock—which overlies the pithouses—was built and later grew by accretion, its long axis was aligned with that of the kiva. Presumably, ritu- als were conducted in the kiva for a generation or two by those who lived in the pithouses and the core roomblock. Eventually, a second roomblock was constructed, establishing a new spatial orientation for the pueblo. At about the same time, the kiva was ritually “decom- missioned.” This process involved placing “enriched deposits” (Adams and LaMotta 2006) on the floor, including a mass of raptor elements consisting of a complete red-tailed hawk skull, partial crania from another three hawks, and hawk wing, leg, and foot bones (Lyons, Robinson, and Fenner 2010; Tordoff 1958). Such assem- blages—which may include worn-out ritual objects (“ceremonial trash”), still-
Ancient Social Boundaries Inscribed on the Landscape 185 Map of the Davis Ranch site showing Kayenta pithouses underlying pueblo architecture and the segregation of the kiva from the core roomblock by a later enclosing wall. Adapted from 1957 field map drawn by Rex E. Gerald.
serviceable items associated with rituals practiced in the building being retired, and sacrifices—are often recovered from Ancestral Puebloan ceremonial structures that have fallen into disuse (Strand 1998; Walker 1995a, 1995b, 1996). The kiva’s roof was then partially dismantled and collapsed. Afterward, the structure became a dump for the inhabitants of the adjacent pueblo and was filled with domestic trash. Both of these phenomena are common when structures are ritually discarded. On the Colorado Plateau, when a kiva was retired, another was built to house the activities once performed in the decommissioned structure—unless the set-
186 Patrick D. Lyons, Jeffery J. Clark, and J. Brett Hill tlement was substantially depopulated. The decommissioned kiva at the Davis Ranch site was not replaced, however, despite the presence of people generating and depositing considerable amounts of household refuse. The kiva-like room at the nearby Reeve Ruin (AZ BB:11:26[ASM]) (Di Peso 1958) was much too small to accommodate the groups who used the Davis Ranch site kiva. Thus we speculate that by this time, the inhabitants of the Davis Ranch site had begun to participate in the platform mound ritual system of the locals. The closest platform mound (AZ BB:11:12[ASM]) is less than 7 miles (11 km) to the north. Eventually, a compound wall and additional rooms were erected around the core roomblock, segregating it from the kiva. This also completed the reconfigu- ration of the pueblo according to the new alignment, creating an inward-focused settlement with an enclosed plaza. At this point, the kiva became a cemetery. The remains of ten individuals were recovered from the structure as six single and two multiple interments. Previously, eight individuals had been interred in extramural graves. On the Colorado Plateau, although articulated human burials (most often infants and young children) are sometimes encountered beneath the floors of pueblo rooms, human remains found in kivas and other ceremonial structures rarely consist of articulated interments resulting from formal funerary rites. Instead, anomalous deposits of human skeletal material resulting from kratophany (ritualized violence, such as witch persecution) and disarticulated elements used in decommissioning rituals are to be expected (LaMotta 1996; Walker 1995a, 1995b, 1998, 2008a, 2008b). What did these departures from northern traditions mean in terms of group identity construction and place making by the inhabitants of the Davis Ranch site? The decision not to replace their kiva suggests that these people, who were descended (at least in part) from Kayenta immigrants, had stopped re-creating the northern homeland and instead had begun creating a new home. Part of this process would have been adopting local practices or aspects thereof. Viewed in a broader context, the people of the Davis Ranch site can be identified as part of a Kayenta diaspora, and a consideration of their actions within the framework of diaspora theory yields significant insights (Lyons 2007; Lyons, Hill, and Clark, in press). From an anthropological perspective, the key elements of the process of dias- pora are population dispersal, preservation of identity, and a network of connec- tions between dispersed enclaves and between these cells and the homeland (even if this homeland no longer truly exists in the same form or is more broadly con- ceived than in the past) (Clifford 1994; Cohen 1997; Gilroy 1997; Hall 1990; Safran 1991, 1997, 2004; Sheffer 1986). Diasporic networks allow cooperation on a large geographical scale, moving information, goods, raw materials, and ritual special- ists (Sökefeld 2002, 2004; Vertovec 1994; Wellmeier 1998).
Ancient Social Boundaries Inscribed on the Landscape 187 In diaspora, a distinct group identity is often preserved through language and religion (Baumann 1995; Safran 2004). Importantly, this identity survives through hybridity and syncretism (Clifford 1994; Gilroy 1997; Hall 1990). The process of choosing which traditions to maintain and which to discard, repeated by different groups of immigrants among different host populations, is the source of variabil- ity among diasporic cells that originated from the same homeland (Clifford 1994; Gilroy 1997; Tölölyan 1996). The ethnographic literature specifically tells us to expect the development of new ritual practices involving the revival, invention, or reinvention of traditions (Parekh 1994; Sökefeld 2002, 2004; van der Veer and Vertovec 1991; Vertovec 1991, 1994). We will never know the entire story of the Davis Ranch site’s inhabitants, but we can be sure that as each generation came of age, choices were made regard- ing whether and how to integrate with the larger community, which was domi- nated by groups with long histories in the valley. In this context, the decision to retire and not replace the kiva can be viewed as political and may have involved the invention of tradition. The later decision to turn the kiva into a cemetery likely also had strong political overtones. We wonder: How were the burials used? What messages were being sent, and to whom? What was forgotten, what remembered? If, as many have suggested, platform mounds were in part territory markers and material links between local descent groups and ancestors, the descendants of immigrants would very likely have wanted a way to access their own ancestors— their own memorial of their forebears’ history in the valley. We hypothesize that by interring people in the kiva, the descendants of immigrants were trying to find a sort of symbolic common ground for political interactions with local groups. Local cosmology and ritual required piling up earth—the construction of platform mounds—to memorialize, and although we lack data for most of the San Pedro Valley platform mounds, many in the Phoenix Basin and some in Tonto Basin have yielded human burials. The kiva afforded the Davis Ranch site’s inhabitants a cosmologically appro- priate context for creating social memory and group identity, as well as reinventing tradition. As a symbol-laden material manifestation of group origin, this structure may also have provided a way to memorialize ancestors by digging down rather than piling up.
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196 Patrick D. Lyons, Jeffery J. Clark, and J. Brett Hill Gregson Schachner
C h a p t e r 9
Understanding the Social Landscape of the Eastern Cibola Region through the Archaeological and Historical Record
Archaeological, ethnographic, and historical research conducted in the Cibola region over the past 130 years has provided an excellent view of the development of social and cultural landscapes. The first anthropologists working in the area were among the earliest to recognize the vital importance of distant places for main- taining Native American subsistence practices, religion, and historical traditions (Cushing 1896; Stevenson 1904). More recently, research conducted by archaeolo- gists and historians in consultation with the Zuni Tribe has been influential in con- temporary approaches to landscapes of the ancient Puebloan past (Ferguson and Anyon 2001; Ferguson and Hart 1985). This research has highlighted the immense areas historic Pueblo groups utilized for subsistence and ceremony and the con- tinuing importance of numerous natural and constructed places for understand- ing and marking important events, eras, and ideas (see also Van Dyke 2007, this volume; Zedeño 1997). The Cibola region was also the focus of a significant interdisciplinary proj- ect, the Harvard Five Cultures Values Study (Powers 1997; Vogt and Albert 1966), which explored multiple dimensions of land use and settlement patterns during the historic period. This often overlooked pioneering study examined settlements founded in the Cibola area during the late 1800s and early 1900s. Directed by
197 Clyde Kluckhohn, Evon Vogt, and John Roberts, the project included dozens of researchers from across the social sciences and made contributions in a number of fields, including anthropology, sociology, history, geography, and psychology (see Powers 1997:appendix B; Vogt and Albert 1966). Of particular interest for this chapter are the detailed studies anthropologists and geographers made of sub- sistence economies and settlement patterns (Landgraf 1954; Vogt 1955, 1966a). These studies provide an unprecedented view of the temporal and demographic dimensions of the successive movements of Navajo, Spanish American, Mormon, and Texan migrants into El Morro Valley and other areas surrounding the modern Zuni Indian Reservation in the late 1800s and early 1900s. Historical research possesses a level of detail concerning the temporal and spatial rhythms of landscape use that is rarely achievable through archaeology. A comparison of the archaeology and history of the Cibola region provides a unique opportunity to understand how different social groups have defined the same phys- ical landscape over time. In this chapter I explore the ways social groups of widely different eras utilized the same physical landscape and through that comparison suggest that parallel mobility patterns were important factors in creating the geog- raphies and ideologies of Cibola landscapes in both the recent and distant past.
Landscapes, Mobility, and Time Much of the archaeological research on landscapes in the Southwest has focused on human relationships with the environment and the cultural mean- ing of important places. These studies have produced rich descriptions of ancient peoples’ experiences of the landscape, particularly over regional scales, and iden- tified places—both natural and human-constructed—that were important in the past (Anschuetz, Wilshusen, and Scheik 2001; Ferguson and Anyon 2001; Snead 2008; Van Dyke 2003, 2004, 2007, this volume; Zedeño 1997). Landscape perspec- tives have encouraged archaeologists to address the importance of features beyond residential sites and the ways natural places become imbued with cultural mean- ing. Insights into the latter have been pursued through the judicious use of eth- nographic analogies with descendant populations (Kuwanwisiwma and Ferguson 2004; Naranjo 1995; Snead 2008; Van Dyke 2003, 2004, 2007, this volume; Zedeño 1997), explorations of cross-cultural processes of place making and memory (Van Dyke 2003, 2004, 2007), and the identification of common cultural metaphors among related groups (Ortman 2005). The ways landscapes are created and experienced through day-to-day and year-to-year subsistence and cultural practices have been more difficult to explore. Movement, by addressing problems of both temporal and spatial distribution of people and resources, is one of the primary practices through which landscapes are
198 Gregson Schachner defined in space and time (Pavao-Zuckerman, this volume; Snead 2008; Watson 1970, 1985; Zedeño 1997). Many movements are difficult to identify archaeologi- cally, however, frustrating our attempts to understand how these activities struc- tured landscape use in the past. The study of the ways landscapes are created, per- petuated, and transformed over time will require greater attention to the spatial and temporal rhythms of movement. Ruth Van Dyke’s phenomenological studies (2007, this volume) of movement through Chaco period landscapes represent one avenue for understanding these rhythms and the importance of bodily experience in creating meaning and memory (also see Snead 2008:113–132). In this chapter I take a somewhat different approach by focusing on how temporal and spatial pat- terns in mobility practices recursively create and perpetuate social landscapes at regional scales. Since the 1980s, archaeologists have increasingly recognized the importance of multiple dimensions of mobility for agricultural populations residing in the Southwest (Lekson 1990; Nelson 1999; Varien 1999). Short-term moves for subsis- tence purposes likely occurred dozens, if not hundreds, of times during a single year. Residential moves may have happened multiple times within a single genera- tion, often spurred on by long-term agricultural cycles (Nelson 1999; Varien 1999). Unfortunately, even in areas where extensive tree-ring dating provides detailed chronologies, our understanding of the frequency and geography of either type of mobility is limited (see Varien 1999 for an attempt to address these questions in the Mesa Verde region). One of the primary impediments to understanding mobility is that it requires detailed studies of site occupation lengths and reuse. Site occupation length is extremely difficult to estimate (Hantman 1983; Varien 1999; Varien and Mills 1997), but it is a key variable in the assessment of the geography and history of move- ment. Although recent improvements in artifact accumulation studies have begun to address this problem (Varien 1999; Varien and Ortman 2005; Varien and Potter 1997), these methods usually require intensive excavation projects, thus limiting the frequency of their usage. An alternative method for exploring the importance of mobility and the frequency of movements is to use ethnographic analogies with other groups residing in the same landscape. Although environmental factors are not the sole impetus for movement, temporal and spatial climatic variability plays an important role in determining the periodicity and geographic scope of move- ment for agricultural populations (Waddell 1975). By understanding how different groups coped with a single environment, we can gain insight into common prac- tices of mobility and landscape definition. In this chapter I add to our understanding of landscapes in the Cibola region by juxtaposing our archaeological knowledge of ancient Puebloan settlement from El Morro Valley with detailed studies of historic settlement of the area in the late nineteenth and early twentieth centuries.
El Morro Valley as Crossroads, El Morro Valley as Gathering Place 199 Harvard Values study area circa 1950 (after Vogt 1966a:figure 1).
Although the Harvard researchers noted the presence of ruined pueblos in their project area, they were unaware that these archaeological sites represented the material remains of a period of rapid immigration and community formation similar in many respects to the later historic settlement of the area. In particu- lar, El Morro Valley and the eastern part of the Cibola region (figure 9.1), where the Harvard researchers focused much of their attention, were characterized by rapid population expansion beginning in the mid-AD 1200s, followed by a series of changes in settlement patterns that preceded migration out of the area by AD 1350 (Schachner 2007, 2008; Watson, LeBlanc, and Redman 1980). The archaeology of this period is largely a history of movement, including longer-distance migrations into the region and constant circulation within the area as people moved their resi- dences multiple times within single generations. The initial settlement of El Morro Valley is marked by the remains of numer- ous pueblos built by ancient Puebloan farmers during the AD 1200s. Despite intensive survey of much of the valley, only a handful of small sites dating prior to AD 1225 or so have been identified (LeBlanc 1978; Schachner 2007). After this time, hundreds of mostly small pueblos were constructed in the valley, resulting in the creation of dense clusters of residences by AD 1250. Although the general
200 Gregson Schachner characteristics of the settlement of the valley have been known for some time, more recent work suggests that these changes took place in a social context char- acterized by frequent residential mobility and close social ties with people residing downstream along the Rio Pescado, an area that is the eastern part of the modern Zuni reservation (Schachner 2007). Multiple lines of evidence suggest that site occupation spans were fairly short and that residential mobility was important in determining AD 1200s settlement patterns in the eastern Cibola region. Thirteenth-century El Morro Valley pueblos exhibit a range of architectural styles, including exclusive use of jacal construc- tion, mixes of jacal and masonry walls, and full masonry architecture (Anyon 1984; Cibola Archaeological Research Project [CARP] 1972–1973; Schachner 2007; Schwendler 2008). This range of construction methods, especially the use of less durable jacal, was somewhat unusual for the thirteenth century in the Cibola region but is commonly found during excavations of pueblos in El Morro Valley. In addition to architectural differences, most of the small El Morro pueblos are associated with a dearth of artifacts, which again contrasts starkly with other contemporary pueblos in the Cibola region, especially those nearer modern Zuni (Schachner 2007). Recent ceramic accumulation studies using data from two small excavated pueblos in El Morro Valley produced site occupation estimates of less than ten years and probably less than five years (Thompson 2005). There is no reason to believe these pueblos were atypical for the valley. I propose that these results, along with common use of less durable construction materials, are indica- tive of a widespread pattern of high residential mobility in the El Morro area dur- ing the AD 1200s. Tree-ring data from some of the largest pueblos with fifty rooms or more indicate that these pueblos may have been more stable, with occupation spans ranging from twenty to forty years (CARP 1972–1973; Schachner 2007, 2008). The vast majority of pueblos in the valley are much smaller, however; taken together, these data suggest that numerous small, residentially mobile households were moving on a landscape that included a few slightly more permanent places, some of which served as nodes for ceremony and social integration. In addition to the settlement data, recent ceramic compositional studies sug- gest that the earliest migrants to El Morro Valley were closely tied to settlements located to the west along the Rio Pescado, an area unlike El Morro Valley in that it was characterized by continuous long-term occupation that began in the AD 800s, if not earlier (Kintigh, Glowacki, and Huntley 2004). Small thirteenth-century sites in both areas commonly contain a mixture of pottery produced in both El Morro Valley and the Pescado area (Schachner 2007) (table 9.1). The frequency of transfer of ceramics between these areas is much higher than that between other parts of the Cibola region, suggesting close social ties. Ceramic circulation has proved a powerful method for tracking population movements in the Southwest in recent
El Morro Valley as Crossroads, El Morro Valley as Gathering Place 201 Table 9.1. Production Zone of St. Johns Polychrome and Cibola Corrugated from Pueblo III Period Sites in the El Morro Valley and Pescado Basin Production Zone El Morro Pescado Puerco River Other Total n % n % n % n % El Morro 283 70 95 23 20 5 7 2 405 Pescado 15 34 28 64 1 2 0 0 44 Source: Schachner 2007. years (Bernardini 2005; Duff 2002; Zedeño 1994, 1998, 2002), and the strong ties between the El Morro and Pescado areas were likely generated through migration as El Morro Valley was first settled. This pattern may also reflect continual move- ment between the two areas in the AD 1200s, a common characteristic of mobility in small-scale agricultural societies where community boundaries are often weak and constantly shifting (Chapman and Prothero 1985; Stone 1996; Watson 1970, 1985). The short occupation span of El Morro pueblos, close material ties to the Pescado Basin, and the spatial proximity of the two areas suggest that frequent cir- culation among thirteenth-century communities in this part of the Cibola region was common. The thirteenth-century movement into El Morro Valley occurred within a fairly fluid social landscape characterized by demographic instability at any particular location, and the growth of settlement in the valley was demo- graphically dependent on interaction with, and movement from, areas of long- term continuous settlement located nearby.
Mobility and Interaction during the Historic Period The extensive data Values Study researchers collected on the history and geog- raphy of settlement in the area from 1860 to 1950 provide an excellent illustration of the social and economic circumstances of immigration to an internal frontier and a level of detail that cannot be approached in the archaeological case. Although the Values Study participants also discussed the settlement of the area by Navajo families following their release from Fort Sumner in 1868 and Spanish American settlement associated with the expansion of sheepherding in western New Mexico between 1860 and 1920 (Landgraf 1954; Vogt 1966a, 1966b), in this chapter I focus on the two cases that received the most study by Harvard researchers: the Mormon colonization of Ramah in the 1870s and 1880s and subsequent Texan migrations to El Morro and Fence Lake in the 1920s and 1930s. Both periods of settlement share some characteristics of the archaeological case, including demographic instability, frequent mobility, and the maintenance of interregional social ties. In addition,
202 Gregson Schachner the historical record provides insights into the ways differences in cultural values structured the use of the landscape and strategies for coping with the frequent crop failures that resulted from droughts and short growing seasons. Both of these latter environmental factors have always been incessant, unpredictable problems in the eastern Cibola region. Although there were certainly technological differences between the Ancestral Puebloan and historic occupations of the region, as the fol- lowing discussion illustrates, common strategies of landscape use were pursued in both the recent and distant past. These commonalities were shaped in part by people living in the same physical area. In 1876 and 1877 ten families of Mormon missionaries were called to duty by church authorities in Salt Lake City to establish a settlement and mission among the Zuni and Navajo. The first Mormon colony was situated at Segovia, a few miles north of modern Ramah, and a mission building was constructed in one of the primary areas of Navajo settlement. Segovia immediately began to lose popula- tion as a result of outbreaks of smallpox, harsh winters, and crop failures (Telling 1953:117–118). By 1880 only two Mormon men remained in the area, but they were soon bolstered by new missionaries called from settlements along the Little Colorado River in Arizona (see Jelinek, this volume, for discussion of a similar case of early, short-lived Mormon settlement). This latter group established the settle- ment of Ramah near the old mission building, securing one of the best locations for access to water and in the process alienating many of the Navajo families they hoped to convert (Telling 1953:120–123; Vogt 1966c:57). The settlers at Ramah were beset by crop failures as a result of both flooding and drought and required constant influxes of money and food from church authorities. In 1898 John Henry Smith, one of the elders in Salt Lake City, considered Ramah “the toughest propo- sition in the Church” (cited in Telling 1953:125). Two years later Ramah residents were released from their missionary duties, giving them the freedom to settle else- where. A number of them stayed on, but the settlement remained fairly small and remains so to this day. The Texan settlement of the region began in the 1920s, as migrants from Bell County, Texas, established dry-land farms and small ranches in eastern El Morro Valley near El Morro National Monument and the largely deserted Spanish American settlement of Tinaja (Landgraf 1954:39). These first Texan settlers were soon followed by migrants from the Texas Panhandle in the 1930s, who home- steaded newly opened lands to the southwest, founding the community of Fence Lake (Vogt 1955). The farms the Texan settlers created were far larger than any previous dry-land agricultural pursuits in the area and radically changed the local ecology (Landgraf 1954:80). Large-scale dry-land farming, as the primary means of subsistence and participation in the cash economy, also rendered these settlers par- ticularly susceptible to year-to-year climatic changes. The most dramatic illustration
El Morro Valley as Crossroads, El Morro Valley as Gathering Place 203 of the influence of these changes was the dire 1950s drought that impacted much of the Southwest, leading to the downfall of many of the original Texan homesteads and a transition to a reliance on cattle ranching. In both of these historical cases, two factors—demographic instability and mobility—emerge as structuring principles for landscape use in the region. The population levels of early settlements fluctuated considerably, especially during the first few years of residence in the region. Settlements continued to grow as they became nodes on migration streams from outside the area, but instability was created by both the new arrivals and people leaving the area soon after they arrived. As stated earlier, the initial Mormon colony at Segovia failed within four years, although Ramah was founded soon afterward (Telling 1953:119). During the first twenty years of settlement at Ramah, yearly population varied wildly, and there was negligible long-term growth (Telling 1953:123) (figure 9.2a). Evon Vogt (1955:32–36) also noted demographic fluctuations in his discussion of population data from Fence Lake (figure 9.2b). Following the initial large immigration when the area was opened for homesteading in 1932, the number of families arriving and leaving yearly varied dramatically until just after 1945. Overall population also began an immediate decline. In part, this chaotic situation was caused by the fact that the Texan movement to western New Mexico was a manifestation of the much larger migration stream of families fleeing the Dust Bowl on the southern plains (Vogt 1955:17–18). The difficulty of dry farming in the area, coupled with growing opportunities elsewhere, also led to frequent migration from the area, particularly of younger individuals (Vogt 1955:34). The large number of out-migrations in 1951 reflects the beginning of the 1950s drought that led to significant depopulation in both the Fence Lake and El Morro areas. Instability in small-scale populations is not unexpected, but in the Cibola case it seems to have been heightened by the difficult environment and the position of settlements as nodes in interregional net- works of population movement—whether between Mormon colonies in Arizona, New Mexico, and Chihuahua or as part of the Texan migrations associated with the Great Depression. The ways instability affected the persistence of communi- ties and the creation of a sense of place are related in part to mobility and land-use strategies pursued in the region. Mobility was a primary strategy for landscape use in the Cibola region dur- ing the historic period, impacting both the geographic scale of man-land inter- action and the permanence of settlement. Although mobility options decreased as the land was fenced and apportioned during the early twentieth century, most groups pursued some form of mobility to ensure continuing residence in the area. The Mormon and Texan settlers utilized movement in different ways, in part because of different ideals about community membership and the attractiveness of movement.
204 Gregson Schachner Population changes at Ramah and Fence Lake during initial settlement (2a data from Telling 1953n25; 2b data from Vogt 1955:33).
As the productivity of irrigated fields at Ramah declined and opportunities for young families to acquire irrigated plots did not arise (Landgraf 1954:66), many Mormon settlers turned to ranching or dry farming in outlying areas. The primary and idealized residential base for almost all Mormon families, however, remained at Ramah, a fact Harvard researchers attributed to values that emphasized town living and community integration. Even Mormon men who pursued temporary wage work outside the local area felt strongly about maintaining property and farming and ranching activities in the community while they were away (Landgraf 1954:76–78). The Texan settlers had very different ideals about movement and attach- ment to place. The Texan settlements were much more widely dispersed on the landscape, and the central towns (Fence Lake and El Morro) were only slightly more densely populated than the surrounding area (Landgraf 1954; Vogt 1955). According to John Landgraf (1954:80), “Texan activities were oriented through the land, as compared to Mormon activities which were oriented to it.” Texan settle- ments were characterized by incessant changes in land ownership, the frequent abandonment of short-lived farmsteads, and constant movement between farms and towns in search of wage work. Mobility—both within the region as part of the constant buying and selling of land and out of the area for wage work—was per- vasive within the Texan communities, in part resulting from the atomistic, nuclear family–oriented social structure but also reflecting Texan participation in wider movements that were affecting huge portions of the country (Vogt 1955:140–172). The Texan settlements were composed of people on the move.
El Morro Valley as Crossroads, El Morro Valley as Gathering Place 205
In both the prehistoric and historic episodes of settlement in the region, inher- ent aspects of the local environment combined with cultural principles and ideals to create structurally similar social landscapes. Movement was frequent, leading to rapid changes in the demography of particular places and to a geographically widespread and relatively impermanent presence on the landscape. Residential mobility was especially prevalent among both ancient Puebloan groups and Texan homesteaders, each largely dependent on rainfall for crop production. These fre- quent moves likely contributed to demographic instability in small communities, but they may have helped facilitate integration on a larger spatial scale as house- holds crossed community boundaries (Schachner 2007, 2008). The landscapes of the eastern Cibola region were also inextricably linked to nearby areas as sources of population and resources, as well as to more widespread pan-regional social and demographic changes. In the thirteenth century, frequent mobility led to the creation of local com- munities composed of households with diverse social and settlement histories (Schachner 2007; see Bernardini 2005 for a discussion of a similar process during the Pueblo IV period in Arizona). Overlapping histories of mobility linked many different communities from the Pescado Basin to El Morro Valley, as people would have shared experiences of places and co-residence. More broadly, the thirteenth- century movements in the Cibola region were one part of a larger pattern of migra- tion and demographic change characteristic of much of the northern Southwest at this time (chapters in Adler 1996; Lekson and Cameron 1995). Frequent intraregional population circulation may have been more prevalent in the prehistoric past than archaeologists often suspect. This pattern is suggested by the short occupation spans of El Morro Valley pueblos and their close exchange ties with more deeply rooted areas to the west (Schachner 2007). These movements may have involved the circulation of religious leaders, spouses, and young fami- lies seeking land—factors that are common in circulation systems among many small-scale agricultural populations (Chapman and Prothero 1985; Stone 1996; Watson 1970, 1985). Although these types of intermediate-distance movements within material culture areas are difficult to identify archaeologically, they serve vital social functions, especially in environments such as the Southwest where agricultural potential is so dependent on micro-environmental and climatologi- cal differences. The frequent movement of agricultural populations in the ancient past is paralleled by its prevalence among historic settlers. The common pursuit of mobility suggests that this strategy was particularly effective in the geographi- cally diverse and climatologically variable Cibola area. Archaeologists working in the Southwest have increasingly emphasized the importance of mobility in the
206 Gregson Schachner Ancestral Puebloan past, shaking off older, stereotyped views of “deep sedentism” in the ethnographic record (Lekson 1990). We still have more work to do, however, especially in regard to considering the importance of small sites, short occupation spans at residential sites, and the social effects of mobility in the past. During the historic period, movement outside the local area was also common, as people—largely men—pursued wage work in nearby cities and towns. This pat- tern was most strongly expressed among Texan settlers who had relatively little attachment to place compared with the Mormon settlers at Ramah. These move- ments linked the largely subsistence-based economies in the rural areas of west- ern New Mexico with the growing rail towns, such as Gallup. The historic record also provides rich contextual information, situating the Mormon colonization of Ramah within a period of population expansion and settlement in Arizona and New Mexico during the late nineteenth century and the Texan settlements within the migration streams that developed during the rapid growth of homesteading in the arid Southwest and the population dislocations of the Great Depression. The development of the historic, as well as archaeological, landscapes of the Cibola region was fundamentally linked to larger processes of cultural change. Mobility was the key factor in defining the geographic expanse of social land- scapes in the Cibola region, regardless of whether that movement occurred as a consequence of foot traffic or was aided by draft animals and automobiles. The local landscapes of the eastern Cibola region were directly linked to surround- ing areas both near and far through movements and exchange, which likely con- tributed to the expansiveness of peoples’ geographic experiences. Despite the fre- quency of movement in the area, some places, such as Ramah and the cuesta con- tained in El Morro National Monument, remained fixed in memory and continued to be important parts of the landscape for years, if not centuries (Landgraf 1954). The eastern Cibola area continues to be of fundamental importance in Pueblo traditional histories, particularly those concerning the formation of modern tribal identities and the origins of the Acoma and Zuni (Dittert 1998; Ferguson and Hart 1985:20–23). Many of the same places remain important in the geographies and memories of more recent settlers as well. Despite a settlement pattern charac- terized by frequent movement and a relative lack of places of “deep sedentism” during all time periods, the eastern Cibola landscape as a whole has deep cultural importance for the descendants of both ancient and comparatively recent resi- dents. Frequent movement through and to places, as much as physical continuity in settlement, has shaped the meaning of place and the strength of these ties. The context of settlement during the thirteenth century and the historic period raises key questions about how we define social and cultural landscapes in terms of scale, social fluidity, and time. During both periods of settlement, social groups were highly dependent on external ties for economic and demographic support.
El Morro Valley as Crossroads, El Morro Valley as Gathering Place 207 The common aspects of the social and cultural landscape of immigration and set- tlement in this region suggest underlying persistent problems confronted by small- scale social groups settling unpredictable environments. To understand how and who defines cultural landscapes, we must have some grasp of the scale of social groups involved, how their relationship to the land is structured by regional inter- actions, and how variations in time depth of settlement and cultural values impact attachment to the land and notions of place. The Harvard researchers’ historical and geographic studies provide a level of detail we can rarely achieve archaeologi- cally, highlighting some of the key processes that appear to have affected settle- ment choices and the stability of social groups during all periods of settlement. As we increasingly delve into the archaeology and history of the Southwest, we have the opportunity to explore landscape use and change cross-culturally and across time in a way that should yield insights into social processes in many types of societies.
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212 Gregson Schachner Lauren Jelinek
c H a p t e r 1 0
Interactions between Apaches and Mormons on a Frontier Landscape
Using documentary evidence, oral traditions, and archaeological remains, in this chapter I examine a brief period of interaction between the White Mountain Apache and Mormon colonists in the Forestdale Valley of Arizona. Archaeological evidence and oral traditions support the claim that Apache people reoccupied the homes of the Mormon colonists after their expulsion. This may have been a symbolic as well as a practical act. Shortly thereafter the settlement was burned, resulting in the erasure of the physical evidence of a Mormon occupation. The complexities of Forestdale as a symbol to both groups are revealed through the interplay of social memory and silences in the past.
Documents, Oral History, Historical Archaeology, and Identity Although the past suffuses almost every aspect of our daily lives, it is a realm that remains largely foreign to our understanding (Lowenthal 1985:xvi). In the past, everyday life was based on ways of living and believing that are very different from our own; therefore, our present perceptions bias our interpretations of the past (Basso 1996:3; Lowenthal 1985:xvii; Trouillot 1995:5). Any historical reconstruction
213 is only an interpretation of the past based on sources available at that time filtered through a “modern” lens. David Lowenthal argues (1985:xxii) that we can access the past only through three sources: history, memory, and artifacts. This evidence cannot recall the past with absolute certainty because its remains are selectively preserved and altered through time; however, by incorporating as much data as possible from each source, we can try to compensate for many of the problems and biases associated with each dataset. History extends back to the earliest records of complex societies (Lowenthal 1985:xxii). History is shared data, and its conclusions must be open to public scru- tiny. However, history depends on memory, and many recollections incorporate history. Thus written and oral sources are not mutually exclusive (Portelli 1990:46). Both memory and history tend to silence the past by actively excluding or reinter- preting events. For example, social groups may want to forget or change a negative or painful history (Lowenthal 1985:xx). While social memory can be about forget- ting a past, it often comes at the expense of a subordinate group. In many cases the subaltern group can choose to accept the dominant interpretation, ignore the prevailing view, or fight its representation in the public memory (Shackel 2001:5). History is a story about power, in that it is fashioned and disseminated by the victors (Trouillot 1995:5). Silences enter the process of history at four precise moments: (1) during fact creation, when the sources are first made; (2) when facts are assembled into a database; (3) when the narratives are coalesced during fact retrieval; and (4) during the construction of the final history (Trouillot 1995:26). Silencing occurs as a result of uneven power in the production of sources, archives, and narratives (Trouillot 1995:27). Therefore it is necessary for researchers to look for silencing in documents, memory, and physical remains to construct a history that provides a factual representation of the past while incorporating multiple perspectives. Oral historical sources are essentially narratives of memory (Portelli 1990:48). For the individual, memory extends back only to childhood, but the recollections of relatives and society are also included within its rubric (Lowenthal 1985:xxii). By its nature, memory is personal and largely unverifiable, but it can be corroborated by written sources and material remains (Lowenthal 1985:xxii; Wyatt 1987:138). Oral sources are often essential in research concerning indigenous peoples and minorities, who have been poorly represented in the documentary record (Wyatt 1987:129). Oral histories generally provide more information about the meanings attached to events than about the events themselves; therefore, the importance of oral testimony is not necessarily its representation of fact but rather how it diverges from fact (Portelli 1990:50–52). Oral sources are useful for examining the changes to an event shaped by memory, which may reveal the narrator’s efforts to
214 Lauren Jelinek make sense of the past. Memories validate the narrator’s version of the past by altering circumstances to sanitize or rationalize an event or by honoring a group (Shackel 2001:1). All members of a group do not necessarily understand the past in the same way; however, elements of the past remembered and forgotten in com- mon are necessary for group solidarity. Both history and memory gain emphasis from the physical realm (Lowenthal 1985:xxiii; Trouillot 1995:29). Artifacts have limitations as informants because they are mute and require interpretation. Archaeological data are essential to any under- standing of the past because they can confirm or disprove our interpretations of the past. Often, the places and landscapes where the artifacts associated with par- ticular events are situated are more important to the creation and reification of history and memory. With Lowenthal (1985) as a guide, I use these three conduits to the past to examine contact between the White Mountain Apache and Mormon colonists in the Forestdale Valley from 1878 to 1883. These groups interacted with one another for several years, leaving behind a fragmentary historical record; therefore, I use documentary evidence and oral traditions to access the ways both groups interpret this period. I also use archaeology to examine the “unbiased” material remains of the relationship between these groups. Because I am studying interactions between two distinct groups on the same landscape, I must also understand the expressions of social identity within each society. Social identity refers to the ways individuals and groups are differentiated in their interactions with other people (Meskell 2002:280). Current discussions of social identity generally focus on the processes that produce differences within and between groups (Mills 2004:2). Identity is a multifaceted social construction and a fluid social process (Ferguson 2004:28; Meskell 2002:281; Mills 2004:4). There are several distinct trends in current social identity research: technological style and social boundaries, migration and identity, processes of colonialism and eth- nogenesis, politics of identity, and landscape and identity (Ferguson 2004:27). As discussed by Ruth Van Dyke in chapter 1 and Alex Ruuska in chapter 6 of this volume, landscapes are more than places in which people interact with each other. They are also repositories of knowledge, social memory, and emotions. In addi- tion, landscapes serve as a canvas on which groups negotiate their identity. Identity issues in archaeology examine class, gender, age, sexuality, descent, politics, house- hold membership, ideology, citizenship, linguistics, and ethnicity. For my research purposes, I focus on ethnic identity as the most archaeologically visible facet of social identity. Ethnic groups constitute categories of ascription and identification created and maintained by the group members themselves (Barth 1969:10). An ethnic ascrip- tion classifies a person in terms of his or her most basic identity, which is usually
Social Identity and Memory 215 determined by his or her origin and background. People create ethnic groups when they use ethnic identities to categorize themselves and others for the purpose of interaction (Barth 1969:13). Many scholars see a connection between nationality and ethnicity because new ethnic identities often arise when a state conquers new territory (Alonso 1994:390; Emberling 1997:305). Ethnicity is a process of identification and differentiation group members can manipulate through symbols (Emberling 1997:306). The nature and persistence of ethnic groups rely on the existence of an ethnic boundary, which groups maintain by using and displaying these symbols (McGuire 1982:160). Group boundaries are not necessarily rigid, and they can change during and following struggles for power and prestige (Alonso 1994:392). A group’s distinct social and economic location produces differences in lifestyles. Cultural, political, and economic struggles are very important for the emergence and maintenance of ethnic identities. A study by Teresa Singleton (1998:173) examines the role of culture contact and power relations in the formation of an African American identity. Singleton (1998:183) demonstrates that the archaeological record can preserve evidence of agency and resistance, as in the case of the secret storage pits among African slaves, and the use of that agency in the construction of identity. (For further discussions of ethnic identity, see Alonso 1994; Barth 1969; Bourdieu 1977; Emberling 1997; Loren 2000; McGuire 1982; Meskell 2002.) Previous historical, anthropological, and archaeological approaches to social identity and social memory are used as a guide for this chapter. The documentary evidence is examined to gain insight into the different perspectives surrounding this short period of interaction. In addition, oral traditions have been gathered from sev- eral individuals who have extensive knowledge of this period. A list of the possible material correlates of social identity has been compiled from ethnographies, oral traditions, and previous archaeological studies. These datasets form an informa- tion base used during archaeological survey to interpret the material record and identify the locations of Apache and Mormon sites in the Forestdale Valley.
Apache History The Forestdale Valley is located in east-central Arizona just below the Mogollon Rim, a physiographic feature that divides the Colorado Plateau to the north from the desert basins to the south (McGuire 1980:19). The Mogollon Rim region con- sists of ponderosa pine forests and meadows. Traditionally, Apaches occupied this area seasonally and used the Forestdale Valley for farming (Basso 1970:3). Farming contributed only a small portion to the group’s subsistence economy, which focused mostly on hunting and gathering. The White Mountain Apache subsis- tence strategy was characterized by residential mobility that varied seasonally with
216 Lauren Jelinek the availability of wild resources and the requirements of farming (Basso 1970:3; Dobyns 1971:13–14; Goodwin 1969:12–13; Welch 1997:78). Raiding was also a sig- nificant part of their economy. With the ratification of the Treaty of Guadalupe-Hidalgo in 1848 andthe Gadsden Purchase in 1853, Arizona Territory came under the jurisdiction of the US government (Sheridan 1995:52–56). Beginning with the establishment of mili- tary posts in the 1860s, the government attempted to curtail Apache raiding activi- ties and confine them to reservations. This move led to the Apache Wars, which lasted from 1862 to 1886, when Geronimo and his band of Chiricahua Apaches sur- rendered to the US Army (Spicer 1962:255). Despite the strain of forced removals and changing reservation boundaries, the White Mountain Indian Reservation was moderately peaceful; however, a general unrest broke out on the reservation in 1881 (Basso 1970:17, 1983:481; Spicer 1962:251). An Apache prophet named Noch- ay-del-klinne had acquired a growing contingent of followers after a year of con- stant food shortages. Army officials saw this as the beginning of a mass flight from the reservation, and General Eugene A. Carr marched his soldiers to Cibecue in an attempt to thwart the uprising. Violence erupted, and the prophet and seventeen other Apaches were killed. The Battle of Cibecue resulted in the dissolution of the prophet’s following, and hostilities eventually subsided.
Mormon History The Latter Day Saints (LDS) began their trek west in 1846 after they were forced to abandon their settlement in Nauvoo, Illinois, because of political ten- sion. The Mormons reached the Great Salt Lake on July 24, 1847, and established Salt Lake City there (Brown 1980:151). After they had settled Utah, the Mormons began to expand into new areas. Mormon expeditions explored much of Arizona throughout the 1860s and early 1870s, resulting in the establishment of many LDS settlements across the region (Daniels 1960:3). Fueling the Mormons’ expansion out of Utah was their belief that they had the right to colonize any unoccupied land they discovered. Their colonization along the Little Colorado River was part of the deliberate expansion of the Mormon domain. By occupying every arable valley, the church hoped to prevent non-Mormon settlement throughout the Mountain West, to build a religious center from which to promote missionary activity among Native Americans, and to establish a refuge for polygamous families whom new federal legislation was actively targeting (Daniels 1960). In 1876 Mormons began to settle the Little Colorado River area (Abruzzi 1993:21). Colonizing this area proved difficult because climate shifts strained the agricultural system and community infrastructure. Because the Forestdale Valley was well watered, Mormons from Shumway were eager to establish a settlement there (Haury 1985:148).
Social Identity and Memory 217
D. E. Adams and Alfred Cluff, two of the first Mormon settlers in Forestdale, initially worked for Corydon Cooley—a wealthy rancher and former Apache scout—on his ranch in Show Low (Emma H. Adams, George Mason Adams, and Martha Louise Devey Descendants and Ancestors, Show Low Family History Center [SLFHCa], AZ, 1972; Ricketts 2001:137–149; Viva C. Wetten, the Cluff Family Journal, Show Low Family History Center [SLFHCb], AZ, 1994; Wild 1964:37–43). While out hunting in 1877, Orson Cluff “discovered” the Forestdale Valley. Mormon documentation suggests that Cluff went to the San Carlos Indian agent, Henry Hart, to determine whether the valley was inside the reservation’s boundaries (David E. Adams, Reminiscences of D. E. Adams, Central Arizona, Lori Davisson Archive [LDA], Tribal Historic Preservation Office, Fort Apache, AZ, 1934; Peterson 1967:50). The Mormons maintained that they undertook their colonization effort with full cooperation from Hart, who purportedly supported the move and signed an affidavit ensuring their protection. Allegedly, Hart believed the establishment of Anglo-American settlements in the area would discourage Apaches from leaving the reservation. The Mormons quickly filed claim to the land; however, the requisite homestead papers Cluff and Adams would have filed have not been recovered. The Cluffs, along with several other families, moved to the valley and founded Forest Dale on February 18, 1878. Adams recalled that the Apaches farmed exten- sively on the western side of the valley (SLFHC 1972). Mormon missionary attempts among the Apaches failed, and the Apache families demanded the removal of the settlers. Because the Apaches had been farming in this area before the Mormons arrived, Joseph Tiffany, a senior Indian agent at San Carlos, ordered the Mormons to vacate the area in 1879 (Daniels 1960:100; Peterson 1973:26). An account by D. E. Adams suggests that Corydon Cooley was actually the person responsible for the Mormons’ removal (LDA 1934; Stein 1994:14; Wild 1964:37–41). Cooley purportedly feared that the Mormon production of corn in Forest Dale would negatively affect his market in Fort Apache. Adams felt that the Apaches exerted hostility through Cooley’s influence, and he accused Cooley of using his influence at Fort Apache to conspire with General Crook. The Mormon settlers protested Tiffany’s decision, claiming they had colonized an area about three miles from the reservation boundary, but in 1879 they were forced to leave. In 1880 General Carr, the new commanding officer at Fort Apache, apparently assured the president of the Eastern Arizona Stake that the colony had not been within the reservation’s boundary and that the Mormon settlers could return to re- colonize the area (Fish 1870s). By 1882 a new set of colonists had settled in Forest Dale and built a chapel. But Apaches returned to the valley in 1882 to plant their
218 Lauren Jelinek fields, and Lieutenant Charles Gatewood ordered the Mormons to leave in 1883 (Haury 1985:400; McGuire 1980:38; Ricketts 2001:138). The Battle of Cibecue and a period of general unrest on the reservation might have made the colonists fearful (McClintock 1985:172). In 1882 Apaches shot and killed Nathan Robinson on Show Low Creek (Fish 1870s; Ricketts 2001:81). Another Mormon, Merlin Plum, was shot near Silver Creek. In response to these acts of violence, the Mormons may have chosen to leave Forest Dale to avoid retribution from local Apache groups. In 1915 Senator Henry Ashurst introduced a bill to the US Senate seeking relief for the Forest Dale residents (Ricketts 2001:139; Smith 2005:175). The origi- nal bill claimed that the Mormons had been evicted following a change in res- ervation boundaries. However, Ashurst learned in a letter from Secretary of the Interior Franklin Lane that the boundaries of that part of the reservation had never been changed, and the settlers had occupied the land illegally from the start (Smith 2005:179). The next year Ashurst brought another bill before the US Senate, argu- ing that US government maps, which had printed the reservation boundary below the point where it actually lay, had misled the settlers. Ashurst resubmitted the bill every year until 1921, but he never gained monetary relief for the Forest Dale resi- dents (see Smith 2005 for additional information on Ashurst and his efforts). The Mormon perspective on the events in Forest Dale is chronicled in the doc- umentary record, but the Apache viewpoint is more difficult to access because the Apaches wrote no documents concerning the incident. To obtain a representative interpretation of history, oral traditions were collected from Apache elders during the summer of 2004. One Apache medicine man related a story his father had told him about the Mormon colonists in the valley. He recalled that the Mormon settle- ment had many houses, with fields and plum orchards, and that the Mormons left because the Apache chief ordered them to do so. The Apaches then divided the Mormons’ homes and fields among tribal members, and the chief took posses- sion of the only two-story house. The settlement was later burned during the fall when all the Apache families in the valley had gone to White River for a big fair. Apparently, an Apache man named Godewoyah set fire to the Mormon buildings occupied by Apache families. This act might explain why none of the Mormon homes in the valley remain standing. Andrea Smith (2005) has gathered many oral traditions from the LDS commu- nity concerning the Forest Dale settlement. Smith (2005:170) discovered that the settlement was well chronicled in Mormon community members’ memories as a symbol of Mormon migration. She argues that the memories of Forest Dale are part of a larger Mormon historical narrative in which the Forest Dale residents are depicted as victims of forces outside their control (Smith 2005:195). She suggests that Forest Dale is also a classic settler narrative and a method of erasure, in which the removal of the Apaches from their territory is contradicted by emphasizing the
Social Identity and Memory 219 Mormons’ removal from Forest Dale and their persecution by the federal govern- ment (Smith 2005:197–198). Archaeological data were compiled to examine the physical remains from this period of interaction. An archaeological survey of the Forestdale Valley, under- taken by the University of Arizona’s Archaeological Field School, was conducted over three summers, from 2002 to 2004. Apache sites dating to the late histori- cal period were relatively easy to identify. Architecture provided the best clues to Apache ownership because only Apaches likely built substantial structures in the Forestdale Valley after 1900. Most or all of the extant corrals, outhouses, fences, and homes are probably Apache. Oral historical testimony was used to identify several Apache sites in the valley. There were fifty-three identifiable Apache sites out of a total of sixty-seven historical period sites, which were classified based on site use. The categories include agricultural, campsite, funerary/ritual, habitation, disposal, and unknown. Twenty-eight sites fell into the agricultural category; they contained features such as ramadas, roasting pits, small and large structures, corncribs, corrals, fences, outhouses, and rock piles. Many of these sites were still in use and had extensive artifact scatters. Three sites were designated as campsites; they had smaller artifact scatters associated with rock rings. Four funerary/ritual sites consisted of cemeter- ies or sweat lodges. There were eight habitation sites, which had features such as gowah (traditional Apache structure used for shelter or storage) rings and milled lumber structures. A small log structure, UA-04-105, was also found on survey. While the roof had wire-cut nails fastening tin shingles to milled lumber planks, the main body of the structure was made of hand-hewn ponderosa pine logs. Because it was pos- sible that it might have been a Mormon structure, Jeffrey Dean of the Laboratory of Tree-Ring Research at the University of Arizona took a sample from the struc- ture for chronometric analysis. Dendrochronology places the cutting dates around 1914, however, making it too late to be a Mormon structure. Oral testimony by the Apache medicine man revealed that the log structure was actually a corncrib built by his father. While most Apache sites were easy to identify, Mormon remains were not. None of the sites contained enough diagnostic artifacts to be labeled Mormon. The documentary record states that there were many Mormon houses in the val- ley during their occupation, but Walter Hough (1903:290) recorded that Apaches burned most of the buildings in the early 1900s, thereby corroborating the oral his- torical testimony. A widespread scatter of artifacts across the valley may have been associated with the Mormon occupation. Emil Haury (1985:399) recorded a build- ing in 1941 that he identified as the Mormon church. Samples from the wood dated to 1881, the year the second group of colonists resettled Forest Dale (Bannister,
220 Lauren Jelinek Gell, and Hannah 1966:38). Haury noted that the building burned down several years later, but our survey crews were unable to locate its remains. The lack of significant archaeological evidence for a Mormon presence in the valley is not sur- prising, given that they were only there for a brief time. Through the use of documents, oral history, and archaeological evidence, it is possible to suggest a likely location for the Mormon settlement. Oral tradition and documentary evidence state that the Mormons farmed near water sources. There are three springs in the eastern end of the valley, as well as the seasonal drain- age. Two plum orchards also frame the eastern end of the valley. Oral historical consultants stated that the Mormons planted these orchards. In addition, a defi- nite scatter of historic period artifacts dating to the time of Mormon occupation exists between the two orchards. Because the floodplain in the Forestdale Valley has been repeatedly disturbed by plowing and herding, it is reasonable to assume that the artifactual remains of the Mormon settlement were widely dispersed. The orchards provide the most visible evidence of Mormon occupation. Oral tradition confirms the archaeological observation that Apaches reused these sites. This is not surprising, given that the Apaches frequently recycle objects; however, this instance of reuse may also be a symbolic form of resistance. Apache oral tradition maintains that the Apache chief, not US government officials, forced the Mormons to leave. They maintain that the Apaches ousted the Mormons from their territory and then reoccupied their homes and fields. Following this reuse, an Apache later burned the buildings. While it is pure speculation to gauge his moti- vations, it is nevertheless tempting to suggest that his action may reflect a “silenc- ing of the past.” Whether intentionally or not, he may have introduced a silence into the archaeological record by burning the Mormon settlement. As Christine Ward demonstrates in chapter 2 of this volume, the material record reflects the decisions made by those who were constantly negotiating their social relations. The reuse and destruction of Mormon remains may have been an attempt to reinforce Apache claims to the valley. Without the documentary and oral histori- cal record, we would never recognize a Mormon presence in the Forestdale Valley because most of the artifacts found that may be from the Mormon occupation could just as easily be interpreted as ephemeral remains left by soldiers or hunt- ing expeditions. The sequence of events in the Forestdale Valley reflects existing tensions on the frontier during the late nineteenth century. As Gregson Schachner discusses in chap- ter 9 of this volume, the development of a landscape largely reflects broad historical trends. In this case, the classic American tale of an ongoing struggle between set- tlers who wished to claim new land and Native Americans who wanted to hold on to their ancestral territories is illustrated on the Forestdale landscape. The absence of remains from the Mormon Forest Dale settlement but the maintenance of the
Social Identity and Memory 221 memory of that settlement in the community can be interpreted as the lasting legacy of this struggle for Apaches and Mormons alike. Historical documents, oral traditions, and archaeology have played crucial roles in the development of a holistic interpretation of the events in Forest Dale. Historical documentation only reflected the Mormon point of view. Mormon social memory painted the settlers as brave individuals who were treated unjustly by a corrupt government. This narrative reflects a worldview in which Anglo- Americans, not Apaches, were responsible for the Mormon abandonment of Forest Dale. In contrast, Apache social memory situates the tribal chief as the instrument of Mormon removal. While the archaeological record is meant to be the arbiter between historical documentation and oral traditions, in this case it was largely silent. Not only was the archaeological record difficult to interpret, but evidence was also conspicuously absent from this moment in history. The project reported in this chapter underlines the necessity of using many different datasets to under- stand a brief moment in history from multiple perspectives.
References Cited Abruzzi, William S. 1993 Dam That River!: Ecology and Mormon Settlement in the Little Colorado River Basin. University Press of America, New York. Alonso, Ana M. 1994 The Politics of Space, Time, and Subsistence: State Formation, Nationalism, and Ethnicity. Annual Review of Anthropology 23:379–405. Bannister, Bryant, Elizabeth A.M. Gell, and John W. Hannah 1966 Tree-Ring Dates from Arizona N-Q: Verde, Show Low, St. Johns Area. Laboratory of Tree Ring Research, University of Arizona, Tucson. Barth, Fredrik (editor) 1969 Ethnic Groups and Boundaries: The Social Organization of Culture Difference. Little, Brown, Boston. Basso, Keith H. 1970 The Cibecue Apache. Holt, Rinehart, and Winston, New York. 1983 Western Apache. In Southwest, ed. Alfonso Ortiz, 462–488. Handbook of North American Indians, vol. 10, William C. Sturtevant, general editor. Smithsonian Institution, Washington, DC. 1996 Wisdom Sits in Places: Landscape and Language among the Western Apache. Univer- sity of New Mexico Press, Albuquerque. Bourdieu, Pierre 1977 Outline of a Theory of Practice. Cambridge University Press, Cambridge. Brown, Joseph E. 1980 The Mormon Trek West. Doubleday, New York.
222 Lauren Jelinek Daniels, Howard E. 1960 Mormon Colonization in Northern Arizona. Unpublished MA thesis, Depart- ment of History, University of Arizona, Tucson. Dobyns, Henry 1971 The Apache People. Indian Tribal Series, Phoenix. Emberling, Geoff 1997 Ethnicity in Complex Societies: Archaeological Perspectives. Journal of Archaeo- logical Research 5(4):295–344. Ferguson, Thomas J. 2004 Academic, Legal, and Political Contexts of Social Identity and Cultural Affili- ation Research in the Southwest. In Identity, Feasting, and the Archaeology of the Greater Southwest, ed. Barbara J. Mills, 27–41. University Press of Colorado, Boulder. Fish, Joseph 1870s History of the Eastern Arizona Stake of Zion and of the Establishment of the Snow- flake Stake 1879–1893. University of Arizona Special Collections, Tucson. Goodwin, Grenville 1969 Social Organization of the Western Apache. University of Arizona Press, Tucson. Haury, Emil 1985 Mogollon Culture in the Forestdale Valley, East-Central Arizona. University of Ari- zona Press, Tucson. Hough, Walter 1903 Archaeological Fieldwork in Northern Arizona: The Museum-Gates Expedition of 1901. Government Printing Office, Washington, DC. Loren, Diana D. 2000 The Intersections of Colonial Policy and Colonial Practice: Creolization on the Eighteenth Century Louisiana/Texas Frontier. Historical Archaeology 34(3):85– 98. Lowenthal, David 1985 The Past Is a Foreign Country. Cambridge University Press, Cambridge. McClintock, James H. 1985 Mormon Settlement in Arizona. University of Arizona Press, Tucson. McGuire, Randall H. 1982 The Study of Ethnicity in Historical Archaeology. Journal of Anthropological Archaeology 1:159–178. McGuire, Thomas R. 1980 Mixed-Bloods, Apache, and Cattle Barons: Documents for a History of the Livestock Economy on the White Mountain Reservation, Arizona. Archaeological Series 142. Arizona State Museum, Tucson. Meskell, Lynn 2002 The Intersections of Identity and Politics in Archaeology. Annual Review of Anthropology 31(1):279–301.
Social Identity and Memory 223 Mills, Barbara J. 2004 Identity, Feasting, and the Archaeology of the Greater Southwest. In Identity, Feasting, and the Archaeology of the Greater Southwest, ed. Barbara J. Mills, 1–23. University Press of Colorado, Boulder. Peterson, Charles S. 1967 Settlement on the Little Colorado 1873–1900: A Study of the Processes and Institutions of Mormon Expansion. Unpublished PhD dissertation, Depart- ment of History, University of Utah, Salt Lake City. 1973 Take up Your Mission: Mormon Colonizing along the Little Colorado River 1870–1900. University of Arizona Press, Tucson. Portelli, Alessandro 1990 The Death of Luigi Trastulli and Other Stories: Form and Meaning in Oral History. State University of New York Press, Albany. Ricketts, Norma B. (editor) 2001 Arizona’s Honeymoon Trail and Mormon Wagon Roads. Cox, Mesa, AZ. Shackel, Paul A. (editor) 2001 Myth, Memory, and the Making of the American Landscape. University Press of Florida, Gainesville. Sheridan, Thomas 1995 Arizona: A History. University of Arizona Press, Tucson. Singleton, Teresa 1998 Cultural Interaction and African American Identity in Plantation Archaeol- ogy. In Studies in Culture Contact: Interaction, Culture Change and Archaeology, ed. James G. Cusick, 172–188. Occasional Papers 25. Center for Archaeological Investigations, Carbondale, IL. Smith, Andrea L. 2005 Remembering Mormon Forestdale: A Study of Southwest Settler Memories. Journal of the Southwest 47(2):165–208. Spicer, Edward H. 1962 Cycles of Conquest: The Impact of Spain, New Mexico, and the United States on the Indians of the Southwest, 1533–1960. University of Arizona Press, Tucson. Stein, Pat H. 1994 Historic Resource Survey of Show Low, Arizona. SWCA Incorporated Environ- mental Consultants. Submitted to the State Historic Preservation Office and the Show Low Main Street Program, Report 94-56. Copies available from the Show Low Historical Society, Show Low, AZ. Trouillot, Michel R. 1995 Silencing the Past: Power and the Production of History. Beacon, Boston. Welch, John R. 1997 White Eyes’ Lies and the Battle for Dzil Nchaa Si’an. American Indian Quarterly 21(1):75–109.
224 Lauren Jelinek Wild, J. A. 1964 David Adams and His Descendants. Lynn G. Hale Printers, Alpine, AZ. Wyatt, Victoria 1987 Oral History in the Study of Discrimination and Cultural Repression. Oral His- tory Review 15 (Spring):129–141.
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Barnet Pavao-Zuckerman
C h a p t e r 1 1
Why is it, I wonder, that we have trouble agreeing on the meaning of landscape? The word is simple enough, and it refers to something which we think we understand; and yet to each of us it seems to mean something different. (Jackson 1984:3, original emphasis)
The concept of “landscape” is difficult to define, even for landscape historians such as John Brinckerhoff Jackson. Archaeologists have done little better. The applica- tion of the landscape concept in archaeology is extraordinarily diverse: from sim- ple one-to-one replacement for “environment” to the study of ritual and symbolic landscapes. Regardless of where individual researchers fall along this spectrum, however, archaeologists tend to recognize that the concept encompasses not only the physical environment but also the relationship between humans and the natural world. Archaeologists’ attraction to landscape as an interpretive framework lies in its conceptual integration of the material and meaningful. Meanings and ideolo- gies regarding physical space, the material, and human interactions with both are embedded within worldviews. Landscapes are experienced, felt, and understood through interactions with their material aspects, including geological features and biological resources (see Van Dyke, this volume). Lived experiences within the
227 physical world shape the construction of worldviews, linking the material to the cognitive. It follows, then, that the material record can provide a window into past worldviews, giving archaeologists access to the meaningful through the physical. The material provides a pathway toward understanding the perceived and even the emotional in the constructed past (see O’Donovan, this volume). This conceptualization of landscapes, particularly as employed by the authors in this volume, represents an intentional break from the historically embed- ded Western worldviews that have traditionally shaped archaeological inquiry. Traditional Western thought views spaces as empty canvases upon which human experiences unfold—“space” is transformed into “place” by the actions of humans (Basso 1996; Ruuska, this volume). This conceptual division, placing primacy on the actions of humans as transforming spaces into places, extends back to the dichotomy of nature versus culture in early Greek writing (see Ruuska, this vol- ume). Modified versions of this worldview continue to shape the taken-for-granted in contemporary Western thought. The Western view of space clearly impacted the earliest archaeological approaches to the study of landscapes, in which landscape serves as a one-to-one replacement for the environmental stage upon which human actors lived, con- sumed, and extracted. Recently, however, archaeologists have tried to move beyond the Western dichotomies of culture versus nature and place versus space. In more recent work, “landscape” is employed as an alternative to the processual human- environment interaction model (see O’Donovan, this volume). With this new under- standing, spaces are relational, not just “containers” (Van Dyke, this volume). The role of zooarchaeology within this reconceptualization of landscapes has not yet been defined. Zooarchaeological investigations are rarely explicitly couched in terms of landscape interactions. The term is occasionally used as an agent-active substitute for “environment”—implicit within the use of landscape are human actors who create, manipulate, and experience physical environments. A common theme in zooarchaeological research is the concept of human-induced landscape change and the creation of anthropogenic landscapes (Dean 2005; Stahl 2000). These usages place humans as active agents within the natural world. However, the bulk of zooarchaeological research uses the term without explicitly defining its meaning or exploring terminological implications, and the vast majority of zooarchaeological research applies ecological and utilitarian models of landscape use and settlement patterning. Greater development of the landscape concept has occurred in discussions of hunting and cultural landscapes (Potter 2004). This contribution represents an important step in integrating ecological mod- els of landscape use with consideration of the effect of worldview on human inter- action with and within landscapes. I employ the concept of landscape to address changes in O’odham land-use practices in the context of the interplay between
228 Barnet Pavao-Zuckerman O’odham and Spanish missionary worldviews regarding the relationship between humans and natural landscapes. The coupling of ethnohistorical information with zooarchaeological data from the site of Mission San Agustín de Tucson provides an important opportunity to explore the consequences of interacting and conflicting worldviews on changes in land-use practices over time.
Landscapes and the Spanish Colonial Worldview The goals of Spanish missionization in the Southwest included not only the conversion of Native American groups to Christianity but also the modification of daily life to incorporate those practices that, in the missionaries’ minds, were associated with “civilized” existence. They sought to consolidate and permanently settle indigenous groups and introduced Eurasian crops, domesticated animals, and subsistence practices to replace the hunting and gathering of wild resources. These efforts were intended to mold indigenous societies into the missionaries’ idealized view of European town life. While the concept of landscape as applied today was not explicitly encom- passed within the Spanish colonial worldview, at the time of missionization in the Southwest most Spaniards and other Europeans ascribed to a dichotomized world- view that juxtaposed “civilization” and “savagery” (Weber 2005:39)—a worldview that, as mentioned previously, extends into modern conceptualizations of culture versus nature (O’Donovan, this volume). During the seventeenth and eighteenth centuries, civilization was associated with Christianity, order, morality, and human- created landscapes, while savagery was associated with heathenism, disorder, immorality, and wilderness. Wild or “uncivilized” lands in particular were associ- ated with the supernatural and the spiritual. The relationship between wild land- scapes and the supernatural is deeply rooted in Christian theology. In the Christian Bible, wild lands are often the backdrop for human temptation and immorality. Christ was tempted by Satan as he wandered in the wilderness with wild beasts. However, at the same time, Christian conceptions of wilderness also encompassed the idea that nature and wild spaces were transformative and spiritually positive. The wilderness, or “desert,” is where God spoke to mortals. While early European colonization occurred during the European Renaissance, European explorers and colonists continued to be informed by a medieval world- view encompassing a belief that humans who lived in the wilderness were uncivi- lized, amoral, and heathen (Bernheimer 1952:2–20); “for much of the Middle Ages, hairy, cannibalistic, sexually omnivorous wild men and women had represented the antithesis of the civilized Christian” (Schama 1995:97). This “wild man” con- struction accompanied Europeans’ exploration and colonialism and colored their accounts of the people they encountered.
Landscape Use at San Agustín 229 While missionization in the southwestern United States continued into the Enlightenment era, missionaries, particularly the Jesuits, held on to some aspects of medieval epistemology longer than did other European social groups (McCarty 1996; Reff 1995). The devil remained a vital force in the minds of missionaries of all orders into the late eighteenth century (Weber 2005:99). As David Weber points out, Enlightenment thought was slow to trickle down to the rank-and-file clergy working on the Spanish colonial frontier. While philosophers discussed their own social and environmental explanations for Native American behavior, missionaries still felt they were engaged in a battle with Satan for Indian souls (Weber 2005:99). Daniel Reff (1998) proposes that the Jesuit missionaries’ worldview was in many ways compatible with the worldviews of many of the Native Americans they encountered. In particular, Jesuits and Native Americans shared beliefs concerning the relationship between the physical and metaphysical realms. Spanish officials accepted without question Puebloan and Tepehuan reports that demon-men had appeared to incite each group to rebellion—the accounts were very much in keep- ing with late medieval depictions of the devil (Reff 1995). The presence of written documents in the historic period is a boon for under- standing missionary attitudes toward indigenous patterns of landscape use. Mis sionary complaints over the indigenous groups’ unwillingness to alter their nor- mal patterns of seasonal movement often occur in the same breath as complaints over the lack of converts, highlighting the importance of landscape-use practices within the process of religious conversion. Native Americans were not considered fully Christian until they lived like Spanish Christians—until then, baptized Indians were neophytes. Missionaries viewed residential mobility as a sign of barbarity, and town life as the locus of civilization (Weber 2005:39, 93). Spaniards believed civil and moral law thrived in urban settings; therefore, only in towns could Native peoples become civilized. Missionaries instituted a policy of reducción in which dispersed, mobile indig- enous communities were consolidated into more compact, sedentary villages. This practice streamlined proselytization for missionary personnel but also re-created indigenous communities in a pattern favored by Europeans—that of permanently settled agrarian communities. A key ingredient in the re-creation of European- style landscape use in North America was the introduction of Eurasian domesti- cated plants and animals, animal husbandry practices, and European agricultural technologies. In no way trivial, agricultural and ranching products also supported current and future mission and secular colonial activities. In this context, indig- enous use of landscapes was an important measure of mission performance: the success of “civilization” efforts was determined as much by indigenous adoption of European settlement and farming practices as by the adoption of Christianity.
230 Barnet Pavao-Zuckerman In the absence of documents written by O’odham people at the time of Spanish missionization efforts, it is difficult to discuss O’odham worldviews, particularly regarding landscapes. However, European accounts can shed light on O’odham land-use practices at the time of missionization. Missionary and secular accounts are obviously biased but can nevertheless provide some insight into O’odham rela- tionships to landscapes. Cynthia Radding (1997) provides a thorough examination of O’odham human- environment interactions in the colonial period. While the O’odham were hor- ticulturalists, it is estimated that only 20 percent of their food was provided by cultivated crops (Radding 1997:49–50). Radding refers to the O’odham as semi- nomadic, moving seasonally between upland/foothill camps near permanent water sources—where they hunted and gathered wild foods during the winter—to the desert lowlands during the summer rains, where they tended horticultural fields. Settlement size also varied seasonally, with community aggregation during the winter months followed by dispersal during the summer agricultural season. The seasonal movement of the O’odham was largely structured by water (Dobyns 1976:9), and the importance of this resource cannot be overestimated in the desert. In the historic period, residential mobility also made the O’odham less vulnerable to hostilities by other groups—settling in one place made one’s community a tar- get for repeated raiding (Dobyns 1976:9). Winter hunting trips took the O’odham into higher elevations to hunt big- horn sheep and other large mammals (Sheridan 1988a). Hunting was associated with ceremonialism, and only a few men were trained in proper hunting tech- niques (Di Peso 1956:445). Agricultural fields may have doubled as summer hunt- ing grounds. Children had the task of scaring off potential crop usurpers using slings and arrows (Radding 1997:52). No doubt, the occasional pest animal was killed and brought home for dinner. Small animals, such as those that would be attracted to agricultural fields, likely contributed the bulk of meat in the diet (Sheridan 1988a). Spanish missionaries documented the importance of water and seasonal mobil- ity to the O’odhams’ livelihood. Landscape knowledge, particularly of the wild resources that likely comprised 80 percent of the O’odham diet, was extremely important. Seasonal movements were structured around water, the distribution of wild resources, and the agricultural cycle. Settlements were placed near per- manent streams in winter and flooding arroyos in summer. Summer flooding was manipulated with ditches and brush fences, both to irrigate fields and to protect crops from devastating floods. The same water that provided life could be equally destructive. Native American groups deeply understood the dual power of the natural world, to create and destroy (Galgano 2005:13). While Spaniards believed
Landscape Use at San Agustín 231 power was either good or evil, Native groups believed the same force could contain both the power for good and the power for evil (Galgano 2005:30). Spaniards and Native peoples shared a common belief in the close relationship between the physical and metaphysical realms; however, while Europeans placed the supernatural outside of civilized towns, most Native American groups felt super- natural spirits occupied the same physical landscapes as people (Galgano 2005:13; Harrod 2000). The O’odham worldview also did not share Europeans’ medieval dichotomy of “wild” versus “civilized” landscapes. Southwestern Native peoples saw themselves as essential actors in the natural world, not separate from it (Galgano 2005:12; Harrod 2000:122). No doubt, O’odham people would have viewed Western concepts of space versus place as distinctly foreign (Ruuska, this volume).
Missionization and O’odham Land-Use Practices As observed earlier in this chapter, the introduction of Eurasian livestock, domesticated plants, and agricultural technologies, not to mention European atti- tudes toward land use, was an important aspect of missionization strategies in the Southwest. Missionaries attempted to re-create European town life among Native American communities, the most critical aspects of which were sedentary inten- sive agriculture and animal husbandry, to the exclusion of reliance on wild foods and wild, “uncivilized” landscapes. However, O’odham landscape interactions were dynamic, adaptive, and remarkably effective in what is by most standards a challenging natural environment. As observed previously, settlement mobility and seasonal strategies were tuned to fluctuations in rainfall and agricultural cycles, as well as the availability of wild resources that likely contributed the majority of O’odham subsistence. The interaction between these disparate worldviews and subsequent impacts on O’odham land-use practices is not well understood. Unfortunately, archaeo- logical evidence is not yet widely available to track changes in southwestern Native American land-use practices in concert with missionization and coloniza- tion activities. Very few mission or other colonial sites have been excavated, and fewer still have yielded published analyses of zooarchaeological and ethnobotani- cal remains—evidence that is critical for reconstructing land-use practices. This is particularly the case in the Pimería Alta, the region encompassing present-day northern Sonora and southern Arizona that is the traditional home of the diverse O’odham peoples. Sorely missing are large assemblages of materials from con- secutive occupations that are ideal for reconstructing change in land-use practices. Fortunately, the ethnohistorical record in the Pimería Alta, particularly regarding the establishment of the mission at San Agustín de Tucson, has been the focus of a great deal of scholarly attention.
232 Barnet Pavao-Zuckerman Missionary activity in the Pimería Alta began in the late seventeenth century under the direction of the Jesuit Father Eusebio Francisco Kino. Kino traveled with domesticated plants and animals that he gave to Indian communities in the hopes of establishing European agriculture and livestock herds in the region. These efforts were variably successful. The introduction of winter wheat was a welcome addi- tion to Sonoran Desert peoples’ seasonal rounds, yielding a harvest of grain during what was traditionally the leanest time of the year (Sheridan 1988a). This impor- tant food source was readily adopted into the yearly agricultural regime of many indigenous groups. Livestock, particularly cattle, were successfully introduced in some areas (Radding 1997; Sheridan 2006), but in other areas the animals disap- peared within a few years of Kino’s departure (Spicer 1962:546). There is some evidence that the spread of livestock occurred in advance of Kino’s travels, perhaps as a result of secular Spanish colonization associated with mining activities to the south. In 1699, Manje, a Spanish captain traveling with Kino, observed that horse raiding was already a significant stress in the daily lives of the Sobaipuri Indians in the San Pedro River Valley (Sheridan 1988a). Kino established both the Mission San Xavier del Bac and its visita at Tucson in the early 1690s; however, a lasting missionary presence in the area was decades away. The first resident priest at Bac arrived in 1701 but fled the following year in response to the slaughter of mission livestock by hostile Native Americans. These ill-fated livestock were likely the descendants of the cattle, sheep, and goats origi- nally introduced by Kino (Olsen 1974). Following this incident, the early eighteenth century was characterized by sporadic visits by missionaries, Apache raiding, and several revolts. Mission herds were unsuccessful at Bac until the 1730s, after the reinstitution of resident missionaries. The growth of herds did not necessarily mean Bac con- verts were permanently settled. In 1744 Joseph de Torres Perea observed that some of the Native peoples were still “mountain dwellers,” and those who did live at Bac frequently abandoned the village, likely to exploit seasonal wild foods (cited in Dobyns 1976). The reluctance of Bac converts to stay at the mission might also have been related to the presence of epidemic diseases. O’odham neophytes very likely noticed a relationship between the presence of Spanish missionaries and dis- ease, even if neither they nor the Spanish fully understood that relationship. Yearly dispersal of the mission communities, while against the missionaries’ will, may have kept epidemics at bay (see Ramenofsky, Church, and Kulisheck, this volume, for a discussion of landscapes and epidemic disease). The success of livestock at Bac appears to have had a minimal impact on the O’odham at Tucson. Bac was a full-fledged mission, defined by the presence of a resident priest, whereas for most of its history the Tucson outpost was a visita—the outpost lacked its own resident priest and was serviced by the missionaries at Bac.
Landscape Use at San Agustín 233 Throughout the 1740s, Catholic Church observers noted with dismay that efforts to introduce sedentary agriculture and animal husbandry at the visita had not been successful, despite the growth of herds at Bac (Dobyns 1976:9). The O’odham at Tucson had not yet given up their normal pattern of seasonal transhumance and apparently showed little interest in animal husbandry. The visita was appar- ently occupied only during the summer and fall agricultural season; after harvest, the neophytes went to the mountains to hunt and gather wild foods (Dobyns 1976:24). In 1762, several hundred Sobaipuri from the San Pedro River Valley settled at the visita (Dobyns 1976:20; Officer 1987:40). This move sparked renewed efforts by Bac missionaries to introduce sheep and cattle to the settlement at Tucson (Dobyns 1976:22; Officer 1987:38). However, as one friar observed in 1764, “all of them are an unsettled ranchería. At this time they live in their fields, and at the termination of what they have, in other towns in the mountains” (cited in Dobyns 1976:25). In 1768 the Jesuits were expelled from all lands claimed by Spain. The Crown justified the move by accusing the Jesuits of treating baptized Native Americans like slaves, accumulating wealth, and depriving the monarchy of its cut of mis- sion profits. In the Pimería Alta, Franciscan missionaries filled some of the void left by the Jesuits. While the Franciscan Order was founded on a belief in chastity, obedience, and poverty, by the time the order took over the operation of former Jesuit missionaries, the strict requirements of poverty had been relaxed somewhat (Galgano 2005:22–23). The order had begun to attract better-educated and more well-to-do men to its ranks, and many likely viewed the Franciscan vow of poverty as a tacit critique of the wealthy Mother Church (Galgano 2005:24). Conditions in the Tucson Basin changed rapidly after the expulsion of the Jesuits. In 1771, just three years after the arrival of the Franciscan replacements, the Tucson mission lost several cattle, sheep, and horses to Apache raids—indicat- ing some success in the growth of livestock herds at the mission. The relocation of the Tubac garrison to Tucson in 1776 hastened the development of animal hus- bandry at the mission. Military families brought their own intensive husbandry and European agricultural practices into the daily view of mission neophytes and also introduced new demand for agricultural and husbandry products. A 1784 report indicates that the mission village raised crops, cattle, and horses to sell to the nearby presidio (cited in Dobyns 1976:40). Additional Native American communities were resettled at the Tucson mis- sion through the end of the eighteenth century, rapidly increasing the size of the mission community. Around the turn of the nineteenth century a new chapel and convento were built to replace the crumbling small adobe church (Officer 1987:74). The mission community numbered 218 in 1801 and three years later boasted a cat- tle herd of roughly 3,500 head, with about half as many sheep (Officer 1987:77).
234 Barnet Pavao-Zuckerman Important to understanding mission landscapes is an understanding of land ownership and labor systems. Mission lands were considered the property of the Indian community, an arrangement that reinforced missions’ transitional nature (Weber 2005:107); they were not intended as permanent entities but rather to estab- lish self-sufficient agricultural communities. Until self-sufficiency was reached, a portion of mission lands was planted under the direction of the priest; the rest of the lands were distributed among neophyte households. The neophytes provided all labor for mission lands; therefore, mission yields were the product of neophyte labor. Ideally, all adult males worked three days per week on mission fields and live- stock and three days per week on their own holdings (Sheridan 1988b). In return, neophytes received rations from mission produce. The remaining surplus was used for famine relief, to support the priests and other mission personnel, and to gener- ate income through trade with other colonial entities—such as presidios, mining communities, and other secular colonies (Radding 1997:67–68).
Zooarchaeology of Mission San Agustín As observed earlier, the documentary record is replete with missionaries’ com- plaints concerning indigenous lack of conformity to Spanish ideals of “civilized” life. However, while ethnohistorical evidence can provide an important window onto the attitudes and experiences of Spanish missionaries and other colonial authorities, these sources are notoriously biased and incomplete. As observed, we are hindered by a dearth of early historical archaeological data that shed light on the effects of missionization on O’odham landscape practices. Zooarchaeological and ethnobotanical data, critical to the reconstruction of human-landscape rela- tionships, are particularly rare. Analyses of zooarchaeological assemblages from Pimería Alta missions are sparse. Remains from San Miguel de Guevavi (Gillespie 1992), established by Kino in 1691, yielded a small assemblage (NISP = 289) of animal remains—thirteen of which were identified to domesticate, including pig, sheep or goat, and probable cattle. Wild animals included cottontail, jackrabbit, several rodent species, badger, toad, and turtle (Gillespie 1992:108). A larger quantity of faunal materials from Mission San Xavier del Bac was analyzed by Stan Olsen (1974); however, the major- ity of excavated bone remains unstudied. A number of domesticated animals were noted, including chicken (Gallus gallus), horse or donkey (Equus sp.), pig (Sus scrofa), cattle (Bos taurus), goat (Capra hircus), and sheep (Ovis aries). The Bac assemblage also contained the remains of several wild animal species, including jackrabbit, mule deer, skunk, red-tailed hawk, and desert tortoise. Zooarchaeological remains from Mission San Agustín de Tucson therefore provide a rare glimpse of animal exploitation at the turn of the nineteenth century,
Landscape Use at San Agustín 235 during the height of the mission period. Coupled with ethnohistorical evidence, zooarchaeological remains can partially expose the process of the reconstitution of O’odham land use to reflect Spanish ideals of a “civilized” relationship between humans and the natural world. The site of Mission San Agustín is across the Santa Cruz River from present- day downtown Tucson, Arizona (figure 11.1). Faunal remains from the mission were excavated from seven features—including trash scatters, pits, and a roasting pit—that date between AD 1795 and 1820. Primary data resulting from analysis of these materials are reported elsewhere (Cameron et al. 2006; Pavao-Zuckerman and LaMotta 2007). In figure 11.2, two zooarchaeological statistics are used: NISP is the number of identified specimens, or bone count, and MNI is an estimate of the minimum number of individual animals associated with a given assemblage of bone and is based on paired elements and age. These materials should be seen less as evidence for the neophytes’ diet than as evidence of the daily activities related to subsistence and economy in which missionized O’odham engaged. However, the zooarchaeological remains from the mission compound area likely include the remains of meals the neophyte community, as well as priests and other personnel, ate at the mission.
Hunting, Husbandry, and Landscape Use at the San Agustín Mission Based on zooarchaeological analysis, animal husbandry (particularly of cattle and caprines) was the dominant subsistence activity at the mission (figure 11.2). Osteological evidence indicates that cattle were butchered near the mission; how- ever, it is not clear how widely cattle were grazed. Historian Terry Jordan observes that eighteenth-century cattle ranching was rather hands-off (Jordan 1993). Cattle were essentially free-range and semi-feral, with periodic roundups for branding and slaughter. Grazing lands were ideally located in upland areas, not near agri- cultural bottomlands (Radding 1997:193); however, Apache raiding was a constant source of stress at the turn of the nineteenth century. The mission may have kept livestock closer to home and under a more watchful eye to better protect its living assets. Indeed, O’odham complaints regarding the destruction of crops by presidial livestock suggest that cattle were grazed close to the growing settlement (Radding 1997:171). Despite the heavy reliance on livestock, the exploitation of wild resources was not completely abandoned. Numerous wild animal species were represented, sug- gesting that wild resources were exploited opportunistically (table 11.1). The suite of wild animals in the San Agustín assemblage is consistent with a “garden hunt- ing” (Linares 1976), or localized, “collecting” strategy. Geese, hares, cottontails,
236 Barnet Pavao-Zuckerman Location of sites discussed in the text. rodents, peccary, and deer are typically attracted to anthropogenic landscapes, particularly agricultural fields. Animals attracted to agricultural fields and human habitation areas are convenient sources of protein, and hunting these animals also removes a potential usurper of crops. This pattern supports the observation from the documentary record that children were tasked with protecting agricultural
Landscape Use at San Agustín 237 Summary of zooarchaeological remains from Mission San Agustín. N = 9,024.
fields from pest animals (Radding 1997:52). Garden hunting by children may have contributed substantially to each household’s protein intake. The presence of jackrabbits may indicate communal hunting practices and perhaps the clearing of land around the mission for agricultural purposes (Szuter and Bayham 1989). Cottontails are more likely to be taken by solitary hunters (Szuter 1991) and favor areas with greater ground cover. However, the jackrabbit and cottontail sample sizes are too small to justify interpretation with regard to ground cover around the mission complex. Deer, including mule deer and pos- sible white-tailed deer, occur in very low frequencies at San Agustín. Mule deer frequent low desert environments, while white-tailed deer prefer wooded upland areas. However, both species are attracted to agricultural fields. Several of the animals recovered at San Agustín may or may not have been hunted for food. Toads, tortoises, snakes, and rodents were resident locally and may have been hunted or collected, but these animals are also frequently acciden- tally interred in archaeological sites. Horse or donkey, dog, and cat are also found in the mission assemblage. Because the extent to which these animals were used for food is not known, they are placed in the “commensal” category to reflect their primary uses for pack, transportation, security, companionship, or pest control. The zooarchaeological remains from San Agustín suggest that exploitation of animals at the mission in the late eighteenth and early nineteenth centuries was localized. The prevalence of the remains of domesticated livestock indicates that
238 Barnet Pavao-Zuckerman Table 11.1. San Agustín: Species List cf. Bufo alvarius Equus sp. Probable Colorado River toad Horse or donkey cf. Gopherus agassizii Equus cf. caballus Probable desert tortoise Probable horse Gopherus agassizii Equus caballus Desert tortoise Horse Serpentes Artiodactyla Indeterminate snake Even-toed ungulate cf. Colubridae Tayassu tajacu Probable non-poisonous snake Collared peccary Aves Cervidae Indeterminate bird Deer family cf. Branta canadensis cf. Odocoileus sp. Probable Canada geese Probable deer cf. Gallus gallus Odocoileus sp. Probable chicken Deer Gallus gallus Odocoileus cf. hemionus Chicken Probable mule deer Mammalia Odocoileus hemionus Indeterminate mammal Mule deer Leporidae Odocoileus cf. virginianus Rabbit/hare family Probable white-tailed deer Lepus sp. cf. Bos taurus Hare Probable cow Lepus cf. alleni Bos taurus Probable antelope jackrabbit Cow Lepus californicus Caprinae Black-tailed jackrabbit Domestic sheep or goat Sylvilagus sp. Vertebrata Rabbit Indeterminate vertebrate Rodentia Indeterminate rodent cf. Spermophilus variegatus Probable rock squirrel cf. Thomomys sp. Probable pocket gopher Thomomys sp. Pocket gopher Carnivora Indeterminate carnivore Canis sp. Dog or coyote Vulpes macrotis Kit fox Felis silvestris Domestic cat missionary claims regarding the growth of mission herds in the late eighteenth century were probably not exaggerated. It is not certain at this time, however, how intensively herds were managed at the mission. The osteological evidence from the mission does indicate that animals were slaughtered locally, using Spanish tech- nologies. As observed previously, during peaceful times herds were likely allowed to graze widely, perhaps without direct human involvement except during seasonal roundups for branding and slaughter. During times of significant raiding, livestock may have been kept close to the mission and required more care to maintain, as well as to protect crops. Despite the success of animal husbandry at the mission, the hunting of wild resources continued through the height of the mission period. As observed earlier, emphasis fell on locally available resources; all of the taxa identified in the assem- blage likely lived just outside the mission boundaries, although some may have been more abundant in upland areas. Mission fields, as well as the Santa Cruz ripar- ian zone, very likely attracted animals within local range of missionized O’odham hunters. The picture painted by the zooarchaeological remains is one based on animal husbandry and opportunistic exploitation of wild animals within and near the mission.
Discussion and Conclusion Conversion to Christianity was only one aspect of the missionaries’ strat- egy. Friars themselves acknowledged that “pagans” could be saved only by being “civilized”; by adopting Spanish customs, dress, and language; and by being con- verted to Roman Catholicism (Galgano 2005:38). Baptized Native Americans were not considered fully Christian until they adopted the Spanish way of life (Weber 2005:93). Thus the practices of daily life, including landscape use, were as indica- tive of missionary success as was religious conversion. Spanish missionaries also endeavored to “civilize” the landscapes around mis- sions, beginning with the naming of missions and visitas and the building of rudi- mentary chapels. Missionaries then sought to reconstitute Native life in a way that fit their expectations of civilization by consolidating dispersed settlements, intro- ducing European agricultural and animal husbandry practices, and demanding that neophytes settle permanently. Even the physical layout of missions reflected European ideals concerning landscape use. Buildings, walls, gardens, and fields were intended to make order out of perceived natural “chaos.” However, the dichotomy of “savage” and “civilized” was not absolute. Lands located closest to the mission compound, such as the mission garden, appear to have been more closely managed than those more distant from the mission core. In addition, the presence of wild animals within the mission compound
240 Barnet Pavao-Zuckerman area suggests that the missionaries sanctioned at least some hunting activities. If, as suggested earlier, the wild assemblage from the mission reflects a garden hunting strategy, the missionaries may not have objected to the capture of wild animals within managed landscapes such as fields and gardens, particularly when the animals in question were killed in the context of protecting mission resources. In other regions where resources were scarce or where livestock did not thrive, missionaries permitted neophytes greater leeway to hunt and gather wild foods (Weber 2005:100–101). Because the animal remains from San Agustín may in part represent refuse from communal consumption activities, the assemblage suggests that wild meats contributed, at least on occasion, to meals at the mission and perhaps to meals con- sumed by the priests. This was not, however, entirely incompatible with contem- porary European worldviews. In Europe during this time period, the meat of wild game was considered high-status food and was usually accessible only to the land- owning classes. Elites held exclusive rights to the wild game within their lands, and the poaching of game on elite land was a punishable offense (Coates 1998:47). Therefore, the incorporation of limited amounts of game meat was likely com- patible with the missionaries’ past experiences, particularly of those born to elite families in Europe (Galgano 2005:32). It is possible that the missionaries even toler- ated some short-term O’odham neophyte hunting forays into upland areas away from the mission to capture deer; however, as observed earlier, these animals can also be taken as part of a garden hunting strategy. The O’odham gradually adopted a relationship with their landscape that reflected European ideals concerning landscape use as interpreted by the mission- aries. O’odham landscape use appears to have contracted over time with mission- ization, and little evidence from San Agustín indicates retention of the normal pat- tern of seasonal transhumance that was the sustainable strategy of the O’odham before the missionaries arrived. However, the adoption of a new relationship with the land was not absolute. The O’odham neophytes altered daily life to encompass livestock and European land-use practices but continued to exploit wild resources, albeit on an opportunistic basis. Similarly, O’odham religious beliefs were aug- mented, rather than replaced, by Catholic beliefs: the “saints’ way” took its place within the “Native way” (McCarty 1996). The interplay between European and O’odham worldviews is critical to understanding landscape-use change in the mission period. While the O’odham and the missionaries held many beliefs in common, all brought to the interaction their own cultural ideals of landscape use based on disparate worldviews. The eth- nohistorical and zooarchaeological evidence from San Agustín indicates that both the missionized and the missionaries actively accommodated each other’s presence and the natural world with and within which they interacted.
Landscape Use at San Agustín 241 Acknowledgments. Identification and analysis of zooarchaeological remains from Mission San Agustín were completed by Vincent LaMotta and myself. This research was funded by Desert Archaeology, Inc.; many thanks to Desert Archae ology, Homer Thiel, and Jonathan Mabry for the opportunity to examine these materials. Thanks also to John Chamblee for reviewing an earlier draft of the man- uscript and to Michael Brescia and Dale Brenneman for assistance with navigating the historical literature. Thanks to Rachel Diaz de Valdez and Felicia Coppola- Pavao for their assistance during this project. Figure 11.1 was originally drafted by Ashley Blythe. No research occurs in a vacuum, but all errors in fact and interpreta- tion are mine alone.
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244 Barnet Pavao-Zuckerman Edward Staski
C h a p t e r 1 2
Evidence from Nearly Two Decades of Archaeological Research
The Camino Real was the first truly long-distance route European colonial- ists established in the Western Hemisphere. It extended 1,600 miles—from near Mexico City to near Santa Fe, New Mexico—and was officially in use for about 300 years, from AD 1598 (when Don Juan de Oñate established its northern extension) until approximately AD 1880 (when its utility was diminished by the construction of the railroad). The Camino Real was important and has historical significance today because it brought into contact people with extraordinarily different cultural traditions. The linkage of these diverse cultures had a profound impact on the way New Mexico’s unique heritage was forged (Hockman 2004; Levine 1999; for a gen- eral history of the Camino Real in New Mexico, see Moorhead 1958). Historians have had great interest in El Camino Real de Tierra Adentro in recent years, particularly since the 1998 Cuartocentenario of Oñate’s trail-blazing efforts. We have learned a lot about the people who traveled the trail, the indige- nous people they encountered, and the influences each had on the other, as well as on shaping New Mexico’s history and current condition. Archaeological research, an alternative scholarly strategy to studying and understanding the Camino Real, has been less prevalent. Archaeology along the trail has been relatively rare, and the reporting of research results has been spotty. As a result, the unique contributions
245 Map of south-central New Mexico, showing the Camino Real, the modern interstate highway, the Rio Grande, and various archaeological project areas. archaeologists might make to our understanding of the Camino Real are yet to be fully realized. For nearly two decades I have been directing archaeological investigations along El Camino Real de Tierra Adentro in southern New Mexico (figure 12.1). Three projects were designed to answer questions about the history and current physical condition of the trail. Three additional projects were concerned with places located along the Camino Real with histories that cannot be fully under-
246 Edward Staski stood without reference to the trail and its impacts on regional history. In this chap- ter I draw from the results of some of these projects to illustrate what archaeology can contribute to our knowledge. In the summer of 1994 I directed an excavation project at the Paraje de San Diego. Archaeologists from New Mexico State University (NMSU), the Mexican Instituto Nacional de Antropología y Historia (INAH), and the Bureau of Land Management (BLM) cooperated in this venture. This late–sixteenth- through nine- teenth-century campsite (with additional early–twentieth-century materials along with a prehistoric component) is located on BLM land roughly thirty miles north of Las Cruces. Our objectives were to (1) assess the nature and extent of the site; (2) enhance the protection of the site, which was in nearly pristine condition yet was (and is) increasingly threatened by vandalism and other adverse impacts as a result of the growing population in the Mesilla Valley; and, if possible, (3) con- tribute substantive information on life at the camp and, by extension, along the Camino Real (see Staski 1996, 1998, 1999). Then, from mid-August until mid-December 2002, I directed an NMSU archae- ological survey of the Camino Real from Las Cruces to El Paso, a nearly thirty-five- mile corridor. Our objectives during this project were to (1) locate this segment of the Camino Real precisely; (2) determine the integrity of the resource in this rap- idly developing, nearly urban corridor; (3) identify owners of the properties across which the Camino Real passes and involve them in our project and preservation efforts; and (4) report our findings to the profession and the public to help mitigate the impacts of future development activities (Staski 2004a). Two years later, from mid-August until mid-December 2004, I directed an additional NMSU archaeological survey and excavation project along the Camino Real, in this case investigating a nearly seven-mile-long segment of the trail located on land under the jurisdiction of the university’s Chihuahuan Desert Rangeland Research Center (CDRRC). The southern entrance to the CDRRC is about twenty miles north of Las Cruces, while its northern boundary is just a few miles south of the Paraje de San Diego. The objectives of this project were to (1) locate and record the condition of this segment of the trail, and (2) locate and record associ- ated archaeological sites, possibly including the paraje (campsite) named for Pedro Robledo, who died nearby during Oñate’s initial excursion into the area (Staski 2004b). Over the years I have also directed NMSU archaeological excavation projects in the village of Doña Ana, just south of the CDRRC and located on the Camino Real—first as one of the original parajes and later as a village along its route. In 1988 we excavated at the historic Louis Geck House, merely a village block from the trail, intending to learn more about the lives of this influential merchant and his family and their impacts on the surrounding area. Ten years later, in 1998, we
Ephemeral Sites and Inertia along El Camino Real de Tierra Adentro 247 excavated at the equally significant Herman Wertheim store and residence, located right on the Camino Real and supposedly adjacent to the Doña Ana paraje (incon- trovertible archaeological evidence for this paraje has not been found). Our intent during this project was to learn about the life and influence of a German-Jewish immigrant and merchant in what was still an economic hinterland nevertheless rapidly moving into a global economic system (see Staski, Mannon, and Fowler 1998). Another of my projects was at least peripherally related to the Camino Real. In 1986 and 1987 I directed two years of archaeological excavations at the his- toric Fort Fillmore, occupied from 1851 until 1862 and located just south of Las Cruces (see Staski 1990, 1995; Staski and Johnston 1992; Staski and Reiter 1996). Fort Fillmore was adjacent to the Camino Real and is now recognized as one of the significant sites along the trail’s route (National Park Service/Bureau of Land Management 2002:154). In this chapter I consider a few general research themes developed and pur- sued during these various projects. One concerns ephemeral sites—that is, sites that are the products of temporary, even fleeting occupation, albeit repeated many times over long periods. On any frontier such sites are numerous, diverse, and criti- cal to investigate, yet they are underappreciated and understudied by archaeolo- gists. While it is most troubling when frontiers are studied, this tendency to ignore small sites with short-term, repeated occupations might extend beyond frontier contexts. Indeed, it seems to permeate all varieties of landscape archaeology. Our understanding of general settlement and demographic patterns everywhere, for example, might be skewed significantly by this disciplinary tradition regardless of substantive focus (as Ramenofsky, Church, and Kulisheck, this volume, show con- vincingly with a southwestern example). A related theme concerns the concept of structural inertia, both behavioral and archaeological—that is, a seeming resistance to change and development that appears to be common in frontier settings. Structural inertia is a phenomenon of the landscape in the ecological sense. Conceptions of the “wilderness” into which frontier peoples are encroaching reinforce conservative thought and the perpetu- ation of traditional behaviors (Pavao-Zuckerman, this volume). The archaeologi- cal consequences of this inertia are manifest at—indeed, result in the formation of—many of the ephemeral sites previously mentioned. Numerous ephemeral archaeological sites are located along the Camino Real in southern New Mexico, underscoring how ubiquitous inertia has been along the trail. Before pursuing these themes, however, I consider a fundamental characteris- tic of the Camino Real that is a conceptual prerequisite to understanding ephem- eral sites and structural inertia. This is the surprising fact that the Camino Real was a trail, in all its manifestations, and not a road.
248 Edward Staski There is a widely held idea that all long-distance routes created by complex societies are roads, formal entities that are the products of purposeful and consid- erable construction efforts. All roads exhibit architectural characteristics that often defy the natural landscape and require great effort both to create and to remove. Roads, and the particular routes roads take, are thus relatively permanent phenom- ena. They persist even when their original functions or original cultural contexts fade away. They persist even when the mechanisms of transport upon them are altered, sometimes dramatically. Through time roads evolve, but they nevertheless persist in place—even when the reasons for their construction, the nature of their use, and the people using them change. Formal roads are often distinguished from trails or paths (Earle 1991; Hyslop 1991). The latter are described as informal, the products of use rather than of purposeful construction. Trails exhibit few or no architectural characteristics and adjust to the landscape rather than impose themselves upon it. Trails are thus eas- ily altered, moved, or even removed (often simply as a result of disuse). While formal roads are permanent, informal trails are fleeting and ephemeral. Roads are persistent entities even when the larger cultural context changes. Trails are respon- sive to such changes, themselves changing form, moving from place to place, or disappearing completely in reaction to shifting cultural realities. Roads are often associated with complex societies, especially predatory colo- nial empires motivated by a desire to control various hinterlands through symbolic, economic, political, or military coercion (Earle 1991; Trombold 1991). Empires build roads into new territories to effectively exert power within them and to have power over indigenous people. Trails, on the other hand, occur in all societies but are most prominent (indeed, often exclusive) among those that exhibit band and tribal levels of complexity (Earle 1991; Trombold 1991). The Camino Real was the product of a quintessential colonial empire. Yet, remarkably, it exhibited all of the characteristics of a quintessential trail. Through out New Mexico—indeed, along most of its entire route—the Camino Real exhib- ited very few formal architectural characteristics, being nothing more than a trod- den dirt path along almost all of its approximately 1,600 miles. In addition, people who traveled the Camino rarely found themselves defying environmental conditions; rather, they adjusted to them as best they could. The most obvious example of this type of adjustment in southern New Mexico is seen in the direction the Camino Real took away from the Rio Grande and across the Jornada del Muerto for around 90 miles, starting just north of the Paraje de San Diego. With little reliable water along its course, the Jornada del Muerto was a dreaded part of everyone’s journey up and down the Camino Real. Why did peo- ple travel this barren desert and not remain by the river? They did so because the
Ephemeral Sites and Inertia along El Camino Real de Tierra Adentro 249 river channel became too narrow, deep, and sandy for their wagons and animals to traverse. They adjusted to the environment, moving to the east where passage was risky yet nevertheless possible. The Camino Real was more trail than formal road. If it had been the latter, someone would have constructed bridges or embank- ments or whatever was needed to make passage along the river possible. These observations belie simplistic evolutionary schemes regarding cultural complexity, regional integration and control, and the associated roles of road-trail networks. Further, it was not simply a permissive environment that allowed the Camino Real to exhibit trail-like characteristics (cf. Hassig 1991). The sand dunes just south of El Paso, Los Medanos de Samalayuca, were a nearly impassable barrier. Many attempted to avoid them by taking a long detour by way of San Eleacario. The aforementioned narrowing and deepening of the river channel in southern New Mexico was equally impassable. Nearly everyone found it necessary to cross the barren Jornada del Muerto. In addition, the steep, rocky terrain of La Bajada, near the trail’s northern terminus, slowed travelers and made passage dangerous. These and other natural obstacles, along with the generally harsh and water-starved environment, were anything but permissive. Surely, the natural sur- roundings would have encouraged the creation of a formal road if the Spanish authorities had deemed it appropriate. For complex historical and cultural reasons, they did not build a road. The Camino Real remained a trail and never became a formal road despite the cultural complexity and predatory ambitions of the Spanish Empire. I believe the explana- tion for this persistence is found in the ubiquity of structural inertia on the fron- tier. The resulting physical characteristics of the Camino Real, including the many ephemeral sites found along it, have had profound impacts on its precise location and degree of preservation in the archaeological record today, as well as on our ability to locate relatively well-preserved remnants of the trail.
Structural Inertia and Ephemeral Sites A theme emerging from my years of research along the Camino Real involves the apparent, nearly ubiquitous resistance to developmental change experienced by people living on frontiers, something I have called structural inertia (Staski 1998). People who traveled the Camino experienced this structural inertia despite their best efforts to advance. Indeed, this inertia was not the outcome of people’s motives or intentions but rather the result of historical circumstances and envi- ronmental conditions beyond their control. Many people just kept doing things in the same ways, year after year, decade after decade, century after century. They kept traveling and camping along the Camino Real, for example, in about the same ways as their predecessors had. They do so even today.
250 Edward Staski Structural inertia is most apparent at ephemeral sites, those repeatedly occu- pied and abandoned so that even though each occupation was brief, their entire his- tory of use was prolonged. In operational terms, it can be said that these sites are ephemeral because they represent a wide range of ephemeral activities, another hallmark of structural inertia (e.g., temporary homesteading, small-scale farming over a short period of time, and the expedient use of various resources). This pat- tern makes sense; if inertia were not an influence, if the same behaviors did not recur again and again, sites would not be reoccupied so many times. The behaviors that reflect structural inertia and result in ephemeral sites seem unusually common in frontier contexts, places such as southern New Mexico dur- ing the last 400-plus years. Being ephemeral, these numerous frontier sites are also obscure. Obscurity has enhanced site integrity (because the sites are less obvious to looters) but has also made archaeological investigations challenging and interpre- tations somewhat uncertain (because the sites are less obvious to archaeologists). This is an important issue in the context of frontier archaeology. Many archaeo- logical sites in frontier settings are obscure. All frontiers are dynamic, even fluid, in a number of important respects. The conditions of frontier life are diverse and can differ for various segments of the frontier population at any point in time or at any place. It follows that we should sample all site types to get as complete a picture of frontier life as possible. I believe these ideas and concepts are best illustrated at two of the Camino- related sites I have investigated. One is the Paraje de San Diego, subject to survey and test excavation in 1994. The other is the aptly named Historical Site, discovered and subject to test excavation during our 2004 survey of the CDRRC. These sites are remarkably different from one another in important ways, including dates of use and represented activities; yet they can both be associated with the Camino Real, both are ephemeral in nature, and both clearly illustrate the ever-present influence of structural inertia. Travelers on the Camino Real used the Paraje de San Diego from the time of Oñate’s trail-blazing efforts (AD 1598) until well after the trail’s official abandon- ment with the coming of the railroad (ca. 1880). At the time of our research, what remained was a classic example of an ephemeral site. No structural remains were observed, and most of the features were small, insubstantial hearths. Nothing of any permanence was noted, and no obvious concentrations of material culture of any kind were observed. Given the occupation history at the site, we were not surprised by these results. Except for the ceramics, almost all of the recovered material (e.g., glass, metal, lithics) predates or postdates those centuries when the Camino Real was officially in use. All of these non-ceramic assemblages are relatively small, each consisting of a few dozen objects at most. In contrast, 792 ceramic sherds dating to the Camino’s use
Ephemeral Sites and Inertia along El Camino Real de Tierra Adentro 251 were retrieved. These ceramics originated both north and south of the Paraje de San Diego. They were also manufactured in the local area. Of the 792 historical sherds recovered, 307 represent vessels manufactured north of the site, while 131 represent vessels manufactured south of the site. An additional 124 sherds were manufactured locally. The remaining 230 sherds could not be identified precisely enough to deter- mine with confidence their place of manufacture, although our best guess would assign them a northern or local origin (see Fournier 1996 for more details). Data from these ceramics and other materials have allowed us to consider changing patterns of economic and social dependencies among Spanish, Mexican, Anglo, and indigenous peoples in the Southwest over the course of three centuries (Staski 1996, 1998, 1999). But that is another story. The Historical Site—also adjacent to the Camino Real, although about five miles south of the paraje—consists of a high-density scatter of metal cans, broken glass bottles, ceramic sherds, and other artifacts (see Staski 2005 for details). The specific materials recovered from this site, in particular the relatively high number of items functionally associated with women (e.g., a jewelry box lock, parts of hair curlers, hairpins, jars of skin cream, bottles of perfume, bottles of nail polish) and children (e.g., a rail from a baby’s crib, a grill and wheels from a toy car or truck, a glass mar- ble, a bicycle tire) and the relatively large number of medicinal items (e.g., numer- ous bottles and jars once containing Milk of Magnesia, Vicks Va-tro-Nol, and other medical products), left us in a quandary for some time as far as represented behaviors were concerned. An intensive search of the surrounding area, up to a quarter of a mile distant from the site in all directions, revealed no traces of structural remains. The absence of such remains in the immediate area, along with the absence of cer- tain materials in the archaeological record (e.g., faunal remains and other organics), led us to conclude that this was not a domestic trash dump. But what was it? Hypotheses abounded among field school staff and students. At one point it was even suggested that the site might contain the remains of a mobile house of prostitution. Such establishments are known to have existed in the area during the nineteenth century, serving frontier soldiers at nearby forts. (Fort Cummings is one example; see Staski 1995. For a review of the emerging literature on the archae- ology of prostitution, see Seifert 2005.) It was not totally unreasonable, then, to speculate that similar services were available to workers on the railroad, located just a mile or so from the site to the west. Artifact manufacture dates precluded this possibility, however. The railroad was constructed here in the early 1880s, while the Historical Site clearly dates to no earlier than the early twentieth century. Surely, these mobile establishments were gone by that relatively recent time. Another, more convincing argument was that the site represents a roundup, a place where ranchers periodically and repeatedly brought cattle for separation, branding, dehorning, castration, and care. The site is located on the Chihuahuan
252 Edward Staski Desert Rangeland Research Center, after all, formerly known as the College Ranch and the scene of ranching activities for nearly a century (Thomas and others n.d.). The archaeological material we recovered and the evidence we generated support this argument convincingly. Roundups have always been family and community affairs, similar to barn raisings. A wide range of social and family activities occur during roundups (e.g., meals, music and dance, play) in addition to strictly ranch-related tasks. It was common for women and children as well as men to participate in these activi- ties (Whetten 2005). The presence of a relatively high number of items function- ally associated with women and children is explained by this fact, as is the nearly total absence of alcohol bottles. The presence and absence of these artifact types, respectively, support the roundup hypothesis. In addition, we suspect that the cinder blocks observed and recovered from the Historical Site were used as a windbreak at a fire-hearth area for heating branding irons, cooking, or both. It is possible that these fragmentary blocks were moved to and reused at the site for this specific purpose. Furthermore, we conclude that the quart pry-top cans recovered from the Historical Site contained a resin mate- rial such as pine tar. After dehorning, ranchers applied a resin of some type—often pine tar–based—to seal the wound (Ensminger 1962:311–314; Whetten 2005). We observed a hardened resin-like mass in one of these cans. Finally, ranchers found single-edged razor blades the most efficacious and cleanest implement for castrat- ing calves (Ensminger 1962:311–314; Whetten 2005). We conclude that the single- edged razor blades recovered from the Historical Site were most likely used for this purpose. Further, we believe the recovered aerosol cans might have contained an antiseptic spray, which was used to treat the cattle after castration and the cattle’s heads after dehorning. More in-depth descriptions of these two sites can be found elsewhere (e.g., Staski 1996, 2005). Pertinent to this chapter is, first, the fact that structural inertia is evident along the trail itself at both sites. At the Paraje de San Diego, we identi- fied archaeological materials spanning the entire historical period during which the Camino Real was officially in use. We also identified a number of more recently deposited materials, dating well into the twentieth century. We found evidence of twentieth-century ranching activities (e.g., cow paths running along and parallel to the trail and hoofprints well below the current surface), along with evidence of twentieth-century automobile travel (e.g., metal engine and body parts, wind- shield fragments, and subsurface tire tracks). This constitutes material support for the idea that the Camino continued to be an important avenue of transport, per- haps until the construction of Interstate 25 in the 1960s. There is also a prehistoric component at the paraje, consisting of lithics and sev- eral features; this component expands the temporal range a number of centuries
Ephemeral Sites and Inertia along El Camino Real de Tierra Adentro 253 into the more distant past. In contrast, the Historical Site on the CDRRC spans a much narrower temporal range, dating entirely to the early to mid-twentieth cen- tury. But its very existence along the Camino Real is evidence of structural inertia. Ranchers used the trail to reach the site of their roundups well into the mid-twen- tieth century, decades after the trail was officially abandoned. Indeed, evidence along the trail near the Historical Site, consisting of modern-day tire tracks and litter, suggests that ranchers (along with researchers from the university) still use the trail today. Structural inertia has resulted in a pattern of current use along the Camino. There is no reason to suspect that this use will cease in the near future. Structural inertia is also evident within both sites, best illustrated at the paraje by the many features we identified there. We identified twenty “fire pits,” some with associated artifacts. To our initial surprise, these artifacts dated from prehis- toric times to as recently as the seventeenth century, suggesting a multi-component site of considerable time depth (other evidence supported this conclusion). The hearths themselves did not suggest a relative chronology, however. Put bluntly, they all looked alike, suggesting that some aspects of life at this place changed little as prehistory merged with historical times. As a historical archaeologist, I found myself compelled to pay for radiocarbon dating for the first and only time in my thirty-plus years of fieldwork. The wide- ranging temporal results of this exercise (including one very recent, atomic-age date) justified its expense. Structural inertia is most clearly evident within the Historical Site by the pres- ence of artifacts we might otherwise identify as intrusive. These include an exten- sive scatter of modern beer and other alcohol bottle fragments and a range of modern munitions. But again, the very existence of this twentieth-century site adjacent to the Camino Real, and its clear functional association with the trail, are evidence of structural inertia. Finally, structural inertia is evident in the general surroundings of both the Paraje de San Diego and the Historical Site. This observation is more impression- istic than the others and not the result of scientific study. Nevertheless, the over- whelming sense (at least to Western eyes) is that the landscape is little changed from what it was hundreds of years ago, if not in the particulars, then in the overall remoteness of the locations. Twenty or thirty miles north of Las Cruces is far enough to appreciate what Oñate and his men might have seen and experienced in AD 1598. Indeed, it is far enough to understand or at least acknowledge the Spanish colonists’ sense that this was in fact a “wilderness” in need of civilizing influences (as described by Pavao-Zuckerman, this volume). There is nothing besides the des- ert and the mountains except for the occasional contrail of a jet high overhead, which only temporarily snaps one back to the present. Inertia, it seems, has been at work on the senses as well.
254 Edward Staski These observations and experiences along the Camino Real lead me to make a few recommendations for doing frontier archaeology. First, we should not unduly concentrate our efforts on the more established frontier settlements if we are to obtain a complete picture of the frontier experience. The terms “concentrate” and “established” are both relative, of course. Clearly, archaeologists have not stud- ied one kind of frontier settlement at the expense of all others. And few, if any, frontier settlements can be considered established when compared with others in more developed settings. Still, it appears that frontier archaeologists have tended toward the larger, more permanent occupations, in part because these sites are more visible in the archaeological record. Early towns, missions, and forts are good examples, and frontier archaeology is replete with reports regarding them. These site types are also often considered more significant than others (i.e., more informative about the frontier experience) and thus deserving of greater attention. Many obscure sites, which contain all that remains of diverse, ephemeral frontier activities, are overlooked as a result. Our image of the frontier is thus skewed and incomplete (again, compare Ramenofsky, Church, and Kulisheck, this volume). A parallel problem exists in prehistoric archaeology. In the same region of southern New Mexico, for example, prehistorians have traditionally concentrated on established agricultural villages when investigating relatively recent prehistoric times—all but ignoring the many contemporary transitory, ephemeral sites once used for specific, although diverse, purposes. The reasons for doing so are similar to those influencing frontier archaeologists: the low visibility and seeming insignif- icance of the latter site types. Lately, however, some prehistorians have recognized the great number and investigative potential of these obscure sites. Some stud- ies have demonstrated how necessary it is to include them when reconstructing recent prehistoric culture history (e.g., Carmichael 1985; Giese 1994; Kauffman 1984; Kauffman and Batcho 1983; Upham 1994; Ward 1978; Whalen 1977, 1978). Our image of prehistoric agricultural society has been altered in important, signifi- cant ways, and we now recognize that prehistoric agricultural times witnessed a greater range of adaptive strategies than previously thought. We now see that both resilient and stable societies existed in recent prehistory. The former responded to changing environmental demands by altering the relative importance of various adaptive strategies, while the latter adapted by increasing social and economic complexity. Large artifact scatters are often associated with the resilient response, while large sites of sedentary habitation are often associ- ated with the stable response. Both types of societies produced numerous small site types because both continued to be mobile in significant respects. Residential mobility was the norm for resilient societies, and logistical mobility was the norm for stable societies. In southern New Mexico the resilient response, with residential mobility the rule, seems to have predominated.
Ephemeral Sites and Inertia along El Camino Real de Tierra Adentro 255 This emerging new view is so different that the region’s chronological frame- work has been restructured. Traditional chronology building, with its dependence on simple stage-schemes, has been questioned. Frontier archaeologists should take heed. We can no longer view frontier history as consisting of a series of mutu- ally exclusive situations or stages of development. As mentioned, this history has always been dynamic and multidimensional, not simply progressive and unilinear. We must remember the complexities when developing chronologies and recon- structing culture history. Until fairly recently, the transition from Archaic (ca. 7000 BC–AD 200) to Formative (ca. AD 200–1400) in southern New Mexico was viewed as an all-inclu- sive adaptive shift from gathering-hunting to agriculture, along with a sedentary style of settlement. The Formative was divided into the Mesilla, Doña Ana, and El Paso phases, distinguished from one another by the occurrence of certain ceramic and architectural forms (Lehmer 1948). In the last few decades, however, the same researchers who pioneered the study of those obscure ephemeral sites have ques- tioned the utility of these temporal labels (e.g., Carmichael 1985; Kauffman 1984; Kauffman and Batcho 1983; Upham 1994). How useful is it to chronologically demarcate the Late Archaic from the Early Formative, given that large portions of the population continued to gather and hunt well into recent times? Was the division between Mesilla and El Paso phases all-inclusive or even real? Are these nothing more than chronological heuristic devices and weak as well as misleading ones at that? It is worth repeating that prehistorians have recently recognized both of these related problems, and they continue to correct them. Their reward is a more complete picture of prehistory. This is not a new story, although I am not creat- ing a straw man when discussing the Paraje de San Diego and the Historical Site. Historical archaeologists do not appear to have done so well. We can do better.
Conclusion The Camino Real had all the characteristics of a trail, not a road. I believe this was the outcome of structural inertia, a frontier phenomenon best described as resistance to developmental change. An obvious outcome of structural inertia is the existence of many ephemeral sites, places of short-term, although repeated, occupation. Such ephemeral sites appear to be common along the Camino. The Paraje de San Diego and the Historical Site are two good examples of ephemeral sites along the Camino Real. They were similar to the numerous transi- tory encampments of prehistory that were contemporary with larger, more per- manent settlements and that have only recently been fully appreciated by prehis- torians. The Paraje de San Diego and the Historical Site, and other comparable
256 Edward Staski historical sites, need to be treated like the numerous gathering camps, hunting stands, quarries, and other temporary occupations that did not disappear with the development of food production, that reflect a significant range of behaviors and life experiences, and that continued until relatively recent times because of struc- tural inertia. This inertia did not cease with the coming of historical times. Indeed, it continues today and plays an important role in shaping the lives of numerous people. If we recognize it more often in the archaeological record at the diverse ephemeral sites scattered across the landscape, we will gain an even deeper under- standing of the complexities of culture change.
References Cited Carmichael, David 1985 Archaeological Excavations at Two Prehistoric Campsites Near Keystone Dam, El Paso, Texas. Occasional Papers 14. New Mexico State University Museum, Las Cruces. Earle, Timothy 1991 Paths and Roads in Evolutionary Perspective. In Ancient Road Networks and Settlement Hierarchies in the New World, ed. Charles D. Trombold, 10–16. Cam- bridge University Press, Cambridge. Ensminger, M. E. 1962 The Stockman’s Handbook. Interstate Publishers and Printers, Danville, IL. Fournier, Patricia 1996 Ceramic Analysis from Paraje de San Diego Excavations. Report submitted to and on file at the Bureau of Land Management, State Office, Santa Fe. Giese, Regan W. 1994 Human Subsistence and Adaptation in the Mesilla Valley, New Mexico: 1000 BC–AD 1000. Master’s thesis, Department of Sociology and Anthropology, New Mexico State University, Las Cruces. Hassig, Ross 1991 Roads, Routes, and Ties That Bind. In Ancient Road Networks and Settlement Hierarchies in the New World, ed. Charles D. Trombold, 17–27. Cambridge Uni- versity Press, Cambridge. Hockman, Aaron 2004 El Camino Real: Effects on Eastern Puebloan Assimilation during the Spanish Conquest. McNair Journal 7. New Mexico State University, Las Cruces. Hyslop, John 1991 Observations about Research on Prehistoric Roads in South America. In Ancient Road Networks and Settlement Hierarchies in the New World, ed. Charles D. Trom- bold, 28–33. Cambridge University Press, Cambridge.
Ephemeral Sites and Inertia along El Camino Real de Tierra Adentro 257 Kauffman, Barbara 1984 The Vista Hills Site: Eight Thousand Years at the Edge of the Hueco Bolson. Occa- sional Papers 11. New Mexico State University Museum, Las Cruces. Kauffman, Barbara, and David Batcho 1983 Ephemeral Sites and Resilient Folk: A Discussion and Analysis of Seven Archaeologi- cal Sites Near Las Cruces, New Mexico, Tested as Part of the Elana Gallegos Land Exchange. Cultural Resources Management Division Report 559. New Mexico State University, Las Cruces. Lehmer, Donald J. 1948 The Jornada Branch of the Mogollon. Social Sciences Bulletin 17. University of Arizona, Tucson. Levine, Frances 1999 What Is the Significance of a Road? In El Camino Real de Tierra Adentro, Volume Two, ed. Gabrielle G. Palmer, Stephen L. Fosberg, and June-el Piper, 1–14. Cul- tural Resources Series 13. Bureau of Land Management, Santa Fe. Moorhead, Max L. 1958 New Mexico’s Royal Road: Trade and Travel on the Chihuahua Trail. University of Oklahoma Press, Norman. National Park Service/Bureau of Land Management 2002 El Camino Real de Tierra Adentro National Historic Trail: Draft Comprehensive Man- agement Plan/Environmental Impact Statement. National Park Service/Bureau of Land Management, Santa Fe. Seifert, Donna J. (editor) 2005 Sin City. Historical Archaeology 39(1):1–141. Staski, Edward 1990 Site Formation Processes at Fort Fillmore, New Mexico: First Interpretations. Historical Archaeology 24(3):79–90. 1995 Research on the American West: Archaeology at Forts Cummings and Fillmore. Cul- tural Resources Series 12. Bureau of Land Management, Santa Fe. 1996 Final Report: Archaeology at the Paraje San Diego, Southern New Mexico. Report submitted to and on file at the Bureau of Land Management, State Office, Santa Fe. 1998 Change and Inertia on the Frontier: Archaeology at the Paraje de San Diego, Camino Real, in Southern New Mexico. International Journal of Historical Archaeology 2(1):21–44. 1999 Archaeology on the Camino Real in Southern New Mexico: The Paraje San Diego. In Archaeology of the Jornada Mogollon: Proceedings from the 10th Jornada Mogollon Conference, comp. Michael Stowe and Mark Slaughter, 111–123. Geo- Marine, Inc., El Paso. 2004a An Archaeological Survey of El Camino Real de Tierra Adentro, Las Cruces–El Paso. International Journal of Historical Archaeology 8(4):231–245. 2004b A Research Design for Archaeological Survey and Testing along a Segment of the Camino Real on the New Mexico State University’s Chihuahuan Desert
258 Edward Staski Rangeland Research Center. Report submitted to and on file at the Historic Preservation Division, Office of Cultural Affairs, Santa Fe. 2005 Final Report, New Mexico State University Archaeology Field School, Chi- huahuan Desert Rangeland Research Center, Fall Semester, 2004. Report sub- mitted to and on file at the Historic Preservation Division, Office of Cultural Affairs, Santa Fe. Staski, Edward, and Paul Johnston 1992 Munition Artifacts from Fort Fillmore, New Mexico. Historical Archaeology 26(2): 66–73. Staski, Edward, Aaron Mannon, and Jason Fowler 1998 Research Design: NMSU Archaeology Field School at the Herman Wertheim Site, Doña Ana, New Mexico. Report submitted to and on file at the Diocese of Las Cruces, Las Cruces, NM. Staski, Edward, and Joanne Reiter 1996 Status and Adobe Quality at Fort Fillmore, New Mexico: Old Questions, New Techniques. Historical Archaeology 30(3):1–19. Thomas, Milton G., and others n.d. A History of the College Ranch. Unpublished ms. on file, Department of Ani- mal and Range Sciences, New Mexico State University, Las Cruces. Trombold, Charles D. 1991 An Introduction to the Study of Ancient New World Road Networks. In Ancient Road Networks and Settlement Hierarchies in the New World, ed. Charles D. Trom- bold, 1–9. Cambridge University Press, Cambridge. Upham, Steadman 1994 Nomads of the Desert West: A Shifting Continuum in Prehistory. Journal of World Prehistory 8(2):113–167. Ward, Albert E. (editor) 1978 Limited Activity and Occupation Sites. Contributions to Anthropological Studies 1. Center for Anthropological Studies, Albuquerque. Whalen, Michael E. 1977 Settlement Patterns of the Eastern Hueco Bolson. El Paso Centennial Museum Pub- lications in Anthropology 4. University of Texas at El Paso, El Paso. 1978 Settlement Patterns of the Western Hueco Bolson. El Paso Centennial Museum Publications in Anthropology 5. University of Texas at El Paso, El Paso. Whetten, Ty 2005 Livestock foreman. Interviewed by Patrick Graham, March 28, 2005, at the New Mexico Farm and Ranch Heritage Museum, Las Cruces.
Ephemeral Sites and Inertia along El Camino Real de Tierra Adentro 259
Ann F. Ramenofsky, Michael K. Church, and Jeremy Kulisheck
C h a p t e r 1 3
A Landscape Approach
Recent archaeological study of Native American demographic change since European conquest has focused almost exclusively on the question of catastrophic decline. Since the mid-twentieth century, however, Native Americans have shown unprecedented growth. This trend, in turn, suggests that differential persistence more accurately describes Native American demographic history than does cata- strophic decline. Here we examine the question of differential persistence in New Mexico from the late pre-Spanish era through the Pueblo Revolt of 1680. We advo- cate a landscape methodology for the investigation of this problem. Using small and large settlements, we show that comparing large and small site distributions through time supports a pattern of differential persistence. A number of years ago, when discussing Native population decline in the American Southeast, one of us wrote: “As current tribal rosters suggest, not all native populations in the Forested East died in the sixteenth century. Clearly, there were differential responses to disease. Explanatory assumptions come and go, but the [issue] of persistence or extinction remains” (Ramenofsky 1990:32). The recent Native North American demographic recovery is testimony to the truth of that statement. Although they constitute only about 1.5 percent of the total US popu- lation, the number of Native Americans has increased eightfold since 1960, from
261 552,000 to approximately 4.3 million in 2000 (Ogunwole 2006; Shoemaker 1999; Snipp 1996). The latter figure is within the range of some scholarly estimates of the Native American population’s pre-conquest size (Kroeber 1939; Mooney 1910). The recent recovery is a result of both decreasing mortality and increasing self- identification (Passel 1996; Snipp 1996). Differential persistence is a robust conceptual framework for questions about relative changes in populations. First, it facilitates the creation of descriptions of survival or decline and establishes the framework for addressing why they occur. Knowledge of the spatial and temporal patterns of differential persistence will help us understand the nature of regional demographic change. Second, the concept is time transgressive and works well with the coarse-grained nature of archaeologi- cal population indicators. At the scale of the United States, the loss of Native peoples across much of the Forested East has been balanced by the persistence and growth of Natives in the West. Within the West, however, the pattern of Native population growth has not been uniform. New Mexico and Arizona rank in the top four states with Native populations of 8 percent or more of total population (Passel 1996). Even within the Southwest, the pattern of persistence has been variable (Ramenofsky 1996). Along the Rio Grande corridor, Tompiro and Piro populations did not survive the Pueblo Revolt (Earls 1985; Marshall and Walt 1984; Mera 1940). Native populations elsewhere in central and northern New Mexico, on the other hand, persisted and increased. Here we lay the groundwork for investigating differential persistence of Pueblo populations in the Southwest through the early Spanish colonial period. Such an investigation has significance on several fronts. Both persistence and decline occur throughout the region, so in the long term advocating for this kind of research will contribute to a more general understanding of Native demographic change. This type of research has the additional advantage of changing the long-term anthropological focus from the size of the New World population to one of change and more closely aligns demographic archaeology with demographic his- tory (Shoemaker 1999). Second, southwestern archaeologists are well positioned to track the pattern of persistence. Pueblo populations who survived the gaunt- let of Spanish conquest did not show linear or exponential growth. According to historical sources, Pueblo populations declined from initial conquest through the eighteenth century (Palkovich 1985). That decline, however, never proceeded far enough to result in biological and cultural extinction. Embedded in the processes of daily living were strategies of survival that contributed to cultural persistence and growth (Lightfoot 2005; Lightfoot, Martinez, and Schiff 1998). Identifying and describing those strategies are important for anthropological understanding of the dynamics of Native American demography.
262 Ann F. Ramenofsky, Michael K. Church, and Jeremy Kulisheck We advocate a surface landscape approach for investigating differential per- sistence of contact period populations in the Southwest. A landscape approach is appropriate for questions of demographic change because it makes no assump- tions about how population is distributed. Instead, changing population distribu- tion is the focus of investigation. This fundamental difference in goals is impor- tant in the Southwest because of the pervasive view that aggregated settlements of the contact period represented deep sedentism (Haas and Creamer 1992). If this was the case, then historic period abandonment of these settlements was the result of mortality. While possible, this position is open to question, given the pre-Spanish Pueblo settlement pattern of dispersion and aggregation (Nelson 1999; Varien 1999). We believe the archaeological record of the early colonial era provides evidence for significant settlement changes beyond the traditional understanding of abandonment or persistence of aggregated settlements. A sur- face landscape approach to demographic change (Bintliff, Kuna, and Venclova 2000; Sbonias 1999) can elucidate this possibility and improve our understanding of the general topic.
Changing Perspectives on Differential Persistence of Pueblo Peoples The scholarship on the question of differential persistence of southwestern populations has been variable (Ramenofsky 1996). An examination of such work shows that earlier studies of historic population decline accommodated the idea of variable survival among different Pueblo regions and communities. Revisionist population studies in the 1980s and early 1990s reflected a move away from that position. Interestingly, however, the archaeological and historical work that has taken place to test the revisionists’ inferences has reintroduced consideration of dif- ferential persistence into the dialogue surrounding historic era population change by demonstrating Pueblo peoples’ differential responses to the impacts of disease and other demographic challenges. Despite the persistence of many Pueblo communities, researchers from the time of Bandelier onward have recognized that community abandonment and population decline were significant themes in the history of Pueblo peoples since the first arrival of Europeans in the northern Southwest. By the mid-twentieth century the corpus of major Spanish documents from the sixteenth and seven- teenth centuries had been identified, translated, and published (Broughton 1993; Polzer 1989) (table 13.1), and most large Pueblo settlements dating to the late pre-Spanish and early colonial eras had been located and at least superficially examined through surface collections and mapping (Mera 1934, 1940). Relying on these broad surveys of the historic and large settlement record, by the 1960s
Investigating Differential Persistence of Pueblo Population 263 Edward Spicer was able to comprehensively describe the patterns of persistence and extinction among Pueblo communities that were evident by the end of the seventeenth century (Spicer 1962:169). Most researchers who examined population decline prior to 1980 viewed such decline among the Pueblos as driven by mortal- ity and a consequence of sustained, face-to-face interaction with Spanish explor- ers and settlers, primarily in the seventeenth century (Dozier 1970:63; Kroeber 1939:151–153; Simmons 1979; Spicer 1962:165–169). As for the causes of mortality, most scholars followed James Mooney (1910) in identifying disease, dislocation, starvation, and warfare as among the significant factors (see Schroeder 1968 for a dissenting position). The disease hypothesis of Henry Dobyns, introduced in the 1960s, radically changed both explanations for the how and when of Pueblo demographic change and the significance of differential persistence.1 The Dobyns hypothesis differed from earlier perspectives on population decline on three significant points. First, it elevated infectious diseases introduced from the Old World as the most important cause of Pueblo mortality. Second, it stipulated that population decline was initi- ated just following the Europeans’ first arrival in Mexico in the 1520s and prior to the arrival of the first Spaniards in the northern Southwest in the 1530s. Third, this early population decline was far more catastrophic than earlier estimates of mortality, meaning both that pre-Contact Pueblo populations were far larger than had been previously estimated and that the populations the first Spanish explorers encountered were 90 to 95 percent smaller than they had been prior to the intro- duction of European epidemic diseases (Dobyns 1983, 1993). Advocacy for understanding Pueblo population change during the early his- toric era through the lens of the Dobyns hypothesis occurred largely in the 1980s and early 1990s (Barrett 2002; Dobyns 1983, 1990, 1993; Lycett 1989; Upham 1982, 1986, 1992). One impetus for exploring the relevance of the Dobyns hypothesis for historic Pueblo population decline was to challenge the veracity of ethnographic analogy, particularly in regard to the nature of Pueblo sociopolitical organization (Upham 1982). As a result, the discussion focused largely on the size of Pueblo population prior to the 1520s and on the timing and severity of epidemics from European infectious diseases (Dobyns 1990; Lycett 1989; Palkovich 1985, 1996; Reff 1991; Upham 1986, 1992) (table 13.2). Questions of differential persistence fell to the side. At the same time, the introduction of the Dobyns hypothesis stimulated a new round of historical and archaeological research regarding the demographics of Pueblo peoples during the sixteenth and seventeenth centuries. Rather than simply confirming or rejecting the Dobyns hypothesis, many of these studies have either directly addressed the issue of differential persistence or produced conclusions that illuminate the various processes that may have contributed to the abandonment
264 Ann F. Ramenofsky, Michael K. Church, and Jeremy Kulisheck Table 13.1. Estimates and Census Counts of Pueblo Population Village Observer Area Date Estimate Count Source Pedro de Casteñada Entire Southwest 1540 20,000 men 66 Hammond and Rey (1940)
Augustin Rodriguez– New Mexico 1581– 130,000 people Hammond and Rey (1966) Francisco Chumascado 1582 Antonio Espejo New Mexico 1582– 233,000 or 248,000 43–53 Bolton (1930 ) 1583 people Hammond and Rey (1966) Don Juan de Oñate Entire Southwest 1600 50,000–60,000 people 125–130* Hammond and Rey (1953)
Fray Gerónimo de Zárate Salmerón New Mexico ~1627 34,650 baptized Indians Milch (1966) Fray Alonso de Benavides Hopi and New Mexico 1629 60,000 baptized Indians 64 Hodge, Hammond, and Rey (1945) Fray Juan de Prada Hopi and New Mexico 1638 60,000 before smallpox Hackett (1923–1937) 40,000 following smallpox epidemic Fray Bartolomé Márquez New Mexico 1664 16,442 people 37 Scholes (1929) Fray Francisco de Ayeta Hopi and New Mexico 1678 17,000 Christian Indians 46 Hackett and Shelby (1937–1942) Charles Hackett Hopi and New Mexico 1680 ~23,000 Hackett and Shelby (1942) Fray Juan Alvarez New Mexico 1706 8,690 people 19 Hackett (1937–1942) Adolph Bandelier New Mexico 1725 9,474** Bandelier (1890–1892) Adolph Bandelier New Mexico 1749 11,942** Bandelier (1890–1892) * Testimony of Ginés de Herrera Horta stated there were 110 pueblos both inhabited and abandoned. ** Census counts. Table 13.2. Puebloan Population Estimates before or at the Time of Initial Spanish Conquest Source Date of Estimate Estimate Bandelier 1890–1892 1540 25,000 Mooney 1910 1680 72,000
Kroeber 1939 1540 60,500 Dobyns 1983 1520 600,000 Ubelaker 1988 1500 454,200 1600 420,000 Palkovich* 1985 1540 16,000–20,000 1996 60,000 Reff 1991 1500 100,000 Upham 1992 1500 131,750 * Excludes Hopi. or survival of particular settlements or areas. Much of the research has focused on those areas, including the Rio Abajo and the Salines (Earls 1985; Graves and Spielmann 2003), the Lower Rio Chama (Ramenofsky and Feathers 2002), and the Jemez Plateau (Kulisheck 2005), that experienced permanent residential abandon- ment by sixteenth- or seventeenth-century Pueblo peoples. While the consideration of differential persistence has returned to the study of Pueblo population decline during the early historic era, with few exceptions (Kulisheck 2003, 2005; Lycett 1995; Upham 1992) the focus of both historic and archaeological studies continues to be large settlements. The relevance of small sites and evidence of changing landscape use, however, remains underrepresented.
Population Dispersion and the Land-Use Record Persistence and recent growth among Pueblo peoples are facts, but the pro- cesses of those facts remain largely unknown. Because these processes are partially embedded in Pueblo settlement strategies, analysis of Pueblo settlements is war- ranted. This suggestion is not new, as aggregated settlements have routinely been used to track historic period Pueblo population change (Barrett 2002; Lycett 1995; Schroeder 1972). We expand the traditional coverage by tracking changes in both aggregated settlements and small sites along the Rio Grande trench through the 1680 Pueblo Revolt. Despite data limitations, the addition of small sites affects cur- rent understanding of Pueblo demography. The abundance of small sites, espe- cially during the sixteenth and seventeenth centuries, makes it essential to include them in any study of contact period demography. Although unobtrusive, they are
266 Ann F. Ramenofsky, Michael K. Church, and Jeremy Kulisheck Table 13.3. Glaze-Paint Periods by Combining Glaze-Paint Types Type McKenna-Miles (Vint 2000) Century Period Glaze A 1325–1450 Early 14th to Middle of 15th Early Glaze B 1400–1450 Glaze C 1425–1490 Early 15th to Early 16th Middle Glaze D 1490–1515 Glaze E 1515–1700 16th and 17th Late Glaze F 1625–1700 critical for understanding the scale and nature of Pueblo population decline, why some portions of the Pueblo world were subject to greater demographic changes than others, and, ultimately, why and how some Pueblo populations persisted.
Landscape-Use Datasets Our archaeological analysis of both large and small sites was developed from multiple datasets built from records in the New Mexico Cultural Resources Inventory System (NMCRIS) in the Archeological Records Management Section of the New Mexico Historic Preservation Division. Although our initial sample was approximately 10,000 sites, inconsistencies in reporting and other errors greatly reduced the final sample. In this preliminary effort, we limit our discussion to 140 sites identified by Herbert P. Mera (Mera 1934, 1940), which date from the Classic period through the period shortly after the Pueblo Revolt (AD 1325–1700). All of these sites have known locations and feature temporally diagnostic ceramics, including glaze-paint and other types. Most have preserved architectural footprints and maps. We use Mera’s Glaze-Paint sequences to identify the temporal use of places, dividing his A–F sequence into Early (A–B), Middle (C–D), and Late (E–F) (table 13.3). The Late Glaze-Paint interval is roughly coeval with the period of Spanish exploration and colonization. Using Mera’s maps, publications, and NMCRIS records, we identified 60 of the 140 sites as large and 80 as small. The average size of large sites is 8,668 m2, with a range of 2,316 m2 to 60,757 m2. The average size of small sites is 1,809 m2, and the range is 9 m2 to 5,010 m2. Although there is overlap between the ranges of the two size classes, the averages are considerably different. Causes of the overlap are a function of many factors, including variable criteria of defining site size, such as initial or later modification of architectural rubble or area of artifact distribution; differences in measurement, such as paces or feet; and recording error. Because of these complicating factors, we used other criteria to separate small from large. In general, large sites have multiple roomblocks and evidence of special
Investigating Differential Persistence of Pueblo Population 267 activity areas, including kivas and plazas. Small sites vary from small piles of rubble to footprints of one-room structures to larger pueblos of two to eight rooms and lack the special activity areas found at aggregated settlements. Most important, small sites and aggregated settlements are not functional equivalents. There is no debate regarding the function of large sites—these huge places served as settlements where people lived in large numbers for consider- able parts of the year. This is not the case for the small sites. As we detail later in this chapter, small sites were likely functionally variable. Accordingly, we make no claim regarding their function. Some may be settlements, but many probably served as special-use facilities, including field houses. If we were trying to precisely reconstruct population trends, this lack of com- parability between small and large sites would be a problem. Because our goal is simply to determine the spatial and temporal shifts of population, however, the function of small places is less important than is their persistence on the landscape. It is their presence that requires explanation and is significant for questions of dif- ferential persistence.
Comparing the Large and Small Site Records The locations and surface characteristics of large settlements have been known in some detail for nearly a century (Bandelier 1890–1892; Kidder 1958; Mera 1940; Nelson 1914; Yeo 1932). Their use history in our dataset is consistent across the study area and parallels settlement trends seen by other researchers (Barrett 2002; Lycett 1995; Schroeder 1972). The number of large settlements shows a steady decline from late prehistory to the post-revolt period. Of the 60 large aggregated settlements identified by Mera, 57 were established in the early fourteenth to mid- fifteenth centuries. Of those settlements, 43 persisted into the period of Spanish conquest. In other words, approximately 75 percent of Mera’s aggregated settle- ments founded before Spanish contact were continuously occupied until sometime between Spanish contact and the Pueblo Revolt. Around the time of the Pueblo Revolt, most of those large settlements were permanently abandoned. By the end of the seventeenth century, only 18 large aggregated settlements remained in the Rio Grande trench. This steady decrease in the number of large sites is generally used as the start- ing point for demographic reconstructions that propose a decline in Pueblo popu- lations after contact. Based on the decline in the number of large sites, the com- monsense expectation is that small sites should also decline in number. That is, if large sites are abandoned as a result of population decline, small sites—whatever their function—should also be abandoned, particularly if they are functionally tied to large settlements.
268 Ann F. Ramenofsky, Michael K. Church, and Jeremy Kulisheck Counts of large and small settlements.
The pattern for small sites is very different from that of the large sites and therefore defies this commonsense expectation. The coarse temporal distribution of the 80 small Mera sites in our sample is bimodal: 55 have an Early component, 22 have a Middle component, and 52 have a Late component (figure 13.1). The pat- tern of small site use is therefore markedly different from the steady decline in the number of large aggregated settlements. The use histories of these small sites also differ from those of large sites. Many of these small sites were used for one tempo- ral period only: 24 (44 percent) of Early period small sites were used only during that period, and 24 (46 percent) of the Late period sites were used only during the later period. Of the 55 Early period small sites, only 18 (32 percent) appear to have been used continuously through Spanish contact. There is also some reoccupation of abandoned small sites during the Late period: 10 (19 percent) are reoccupations of small sites abandoned at the end of our Early period. The spatial patterning of these small sites, measured as site density per km2, is most at odds with commonsense expectations of population decline based on the abandonment of large pueblos. Small site density generally decreases between our Early (figure 13.2) and Middle (figure 13.3) periods and is particularly dramatic in the Chupadera Arroyo area, as well as near Pecos and south of Albuquerque. Density decreases are also evident on the Pajarito Plateau and along the Chama and Jemez rivers. The transition from our Middle to Late (figure 13.4) periods is characterized by a sharp localized resurgence in site density. The greatest resur- gence is the reappearance of the dense cluster of sites in the Chupadera Arroyo area. Site density also increases appreciably along the Jemez River and includes a new dense cluster on the upper Jemez. Density increases slightly near Pecos and along the Rio Chama.
Investigating Differential Persistence of Pueblo Population 269 Distribution of small and large settlements during Glaze-Paint periods A–B.
The Mera site data thus present a complex picture of post-contact site dis- tribution. First, small sites persisted in areas where aggregated settlements were abandoned. On the Pajarito Plateau, small sites continued to be used even though the region was largely abandoned by 1525 (Powers and Orcutt 1999). Regardless
270 Ann F. Ramenofsky, Michael K. Church, and Jeremy Kulisheck Distribution of small and large settlements during Glaze-Paint periods C–D. of their function or use lives, the persistence of these small sites in areas where populations are thought to have declined indicates a need to revise our thinking about population attrition.
Investigating Differential Persistence of Pueblo Population 271 Distribution of small and large settlements during Glaze-Paint periods E–F.
Second, post-contact small sites appear where there should be no sites at all. Documentary records do not mention Pueblo use of the Chupadera Arroyo area, but Mera identified many small sites there (Mera 1940; also Kulisheck 2003). The
272 Ann F. Ramenofsky, Michael K. Church, and Jeremy Kulisheck same pattern is also found in the Pecos area. Although these sites are not well understood, their presence in the post-contact record may indicate localized shifts in settlement patterns as Pueblo peoples attempted to escape Spanish control. The composite picture of continuity and change in landscape use from late prehistory through Spanish contact has many implications for our suggestion regarding differential persistence. Large sites were abandoned, but the variability in the small site record suggests that the abandonment of these aggregated settle- ments after contact does not constitute a complete demographic picture. Small sites were present throughout the Rio Grande trench during the sixteenth and sev- enteenth centuries. Our understanding of these small structural sites is far from complete, but lack of understanding does not negate their significance. Whatever their function and whatever the number of people who used them, these small places are part of the land-use record of a Native population that survived Spanish contact and must be factored into any understanding of differential persistence.
Landscape Survey as Demographic Method To carry our suggestions regarding sixteenth- and seventeenth-century popu- lation shifts further, a different research focus is necessary than is typical in the Southwest, where “site”-based survey is common. Although site identification is crucial for management purposes, the archaeological record is not composed of sites (Dunnell 1992); rather, it is composed of variable densities of artifacts and fea- tures. Landscape-scale research with a focus on surface expressions and that recog- nizes artifact as the minimal analytic unit (Dunnell and Dancey 1983) is an appro- priate and powerful methodological framework for investigating demographic shifts through time (Bintliff and Sbonias 1999; Bintliff, Kuna, and Venclova 2000). First, because people use space, landscape-scale research changes the scale at which research is undertaken, resulting in the discovery and description of more variation than is yielded by site-based approaches. Second, once variable artifact distributions are known, sites of all types, including settlements, can be defined on the basis of these distributions. From this baseline, shifts in location, in the nature of land use, and in relative population trends can be monitored. The downside is that demographic reconstructions are cruder, or more coarse-grained, than is typical with contemporary demography, where measurements of fertility, mortal- ity, migration, and population size are routine parts of the description (Sbonias 1999). Successful landscape survey has three basic components: intensive system- atic surface survey, good to excellent spatial control, and temporal indicators. For contact period demographic change in the Southwest, tree-ring cross-dated deco- rated ceramics are one means of exerting temporal control. Other dating methods,
Investigating Differential Persistence of Pueblo Population 273 including luminescence (Dykeman, Towner, and Feathers 2002; Ramenofsky and Feathers 2002) and obsidian hydration, could also be fruitfully employed. The most immediate result of landscape-scale survey is knowledge of variable artifact distributions. To move from this most basic inference to those regarding changing land use and differential persistence will require additional systematic research on small- and large-density clusters, or sites, and historical documents. We consider each of these topics next.
Small Sites We believe the survival of Pueblo peoples is in part a result of the early his- torical period dispersion documented in our land-use survey. We are investigating the relationship between dispersion and survival through a much larger database search and analysis of small site NMCRIS records. This work, however, barely scratches the surface. Evaluating the relationship requires concerted fieldwork and analysis to understand the functional variation of small sites, their relation- ship to aggregated settlements, and the causes of their early historic period resur- gence. The challenges to understanding the functional variation of small sites are beginning to be understood, as a significant body of literature has emerged to help distinguish small structures from other kinds of artifact scatters (Dean and Lindsay 1978; Powers et al. 1999; Ruscavage-Barz 2002; Schlanger and Orcutt 1986; Sebastian 1983; Stone 1993; Sullivan 1984). Only a few studies have addressed the demographic significance of small structural sites during the early historic era. Mera was the first to observe the pro- liferation of small structures during the historic era, interpreting that proliferation as an indicator of settlement dispersion in response to the imposition of Spanish rule (Mera 1940). Many of these small structures were in areas beyond the Spanish sphere of control. In this scenario, small settlements would have functioned as year-round dispersed settlements. Mera’s hypothesis seems compelling in some areas, such as the Rio Abajo, where migration to larger sites outside the Spanish sphere of control also took place (Kulisheck 2003). Here small settlements may be indicators of migration, instead of (or in addition to) mortality, as a cause of large settlement abandonment. Where small structures did not serve as habita- tion sites, however, they may be indicators of different trends. The Jemez Plateau has a distinctive record of small structures that apparently functioned primarily as field houses and date to all periods of Pueblo occupation there. While there is no notable increase in the use of small structures as field houses, there is no decrease either, suggesting that populations on the Jemez may have remained sta- ble through much of the sixteenth and seventeenth centuries rather than declining, as historical records have suggested (Kulisheck 2005). Small structural sites were
274 Ann F. Ramenofsky, Michael K. Church, and Jeremy Kulisheck present in other areas of the northern Southwest as well during the early historic period, but their function and relationship to Pueblo settlement strategies are not well understood. Small structural sites may serve as indicators of demographic change in several ways. Where small structures are permanent settlements, they may be indicators of dispersion from abandoned large settlements and, in some instances, migra- tion. Dispersion from large aggregated settlements appears to have taken place among Ancestral Pueblo peoples at several times during prehistory and seems to have been a response to the nonviability of aggregated cohabitation (Nelson 1999; Nelson and Hegmon 2001; Nelson and Schachner 2002). Spanish explorers and colonizers presented challenges to aggregated habitation by introducing infectious diseases, appropriating labor and foodstuffs, and attacking and destroying aggre- gated settlements (Kulisheck 2003). Dispersion to small settlements may have been a response to any or all of these threats to the viability of aggregated residence. Where small structures served a limited activity function, they may also be used to monitor the direction and nature of demographic change. In many parts of the northern Southwest, small structural sites have been assumed to be field houses, seasonal residences associated with agricultural activities. Because vari- ability in agricultural labor has been tied to population density, variability in field house usage can be used as a measure of regional population density (Kulisheck 2005; Sullivan and Downum 1991). In some instances, mortality-driven decline should result in less intensive farming practices, as it did in central Mexico dur- ing the seventeenth century (Evans 1990). This, in turn, should lead to less inten- sive field house use. At the same time, however, production increases could lead to more intensive field house use, even when associated with population decline (Sullivan and Downum 1991). More intensive use of field houses could be, in this instance, an indicator of increased production in response to the greater appropria- tion of foodstuffs and other agricultural products by governors, missionaries, and encomenderos, even as Pueblo populations remained stable or even declined. Small structural sites may also be indicators of other subsistence activities introduced by the Spanish, such as pastoralism. Evidence of the integration of Pueblo peoples into the pastoral economy has been found in large site investiga- tions (Earls 1985; Graves and Spielmann 2003). However, there has been little con- sideration of the ways pastoralism may have affected Pueblo land use or of the changes that may have taken place in the utilization of small structural sites.
Aggregated Settlements An important discovery of our land-use investigation is that aggregated settle- ments were not the only population node during the early colonial period. Even
Investigating Differential Persistence of Pueblo Population 275 without more complete information, this finding suggests that Pueblo populations during the era of Spanish exploration and conquest were not deeply sedentary; they were not pinned to these locations like “butterflies on a mounting board” (Lekson 1990:336). Late pre-Spanish and colonial era Pueblo peoples were practic- ing some form of residential mobility. To elucidate the nature of that mobility, new research is needed at aggregated settlements. We envision two trajectories: placing these persistent places in larger landscape contexts and creating descriptions of the occupational dynamics of aggregated settlements. As the recent Bandelier and Pecos surveys attest (Head and Orcutt 2002; Kohler, Powers, and Orcutt 2004; Powers and Orcutt 1999), we are beginning to see the benefits of landscape research for understanding aggregated settlements. A landscape scale facilitates determination of the spatial and temporal relationships between dispersed and aggregated communities, as well as changing land-use pref- erences. The second trajectory, current investigations at aggregated settlements, is a neglected research arena in the Southwest. This situation is unfortunate, as knowledge of the occupational dynamics at aggregated settlements is essential for bridging our suggestions regarding sixteenth- and seventeenth-century dispersion. We cannot understand the relationship between dispersion and aggregation, or decline and persistence, without additional research at population centers. Most of what is known about aggregated settlement use in the Rio Grande trench is derived from excavations carried out during the early decades of the twentieth century (for example, Hewitt 1908, 1909; Kidder 1958; Nelson 1914; Reiter 1938). Since World War II, only a handful of aggregated settlements have experienced any excavation. Examples include Pueblo Pardo (Toulouse and Stevenson 1960), Arroyo Hondo (Creamer 1993), Pot Creek (Crown 1991), Tijeras Pueblo (Cordell 1980), Pa’ako (Lambert 1954; Lycett 2002), and San Marcos Pueblo (Creamer et al. 2003; Ramenofsky 2001; Thomas 2000), none of which has been completely excavated. Thus less than 10 percent of all aggregated settlements have been intensively investigated using modern methods, and very few of these appear to have persisted into the historic period. Although numerous reasons—including complex occupational histories, increas- ing costs of excavation, and the political climate of archaeology—explain the lack of research at aggregated settlements, they are not beyond the reach of contemporary archaeological investigation. Excavated collections can be used to suggest changes in use area of settlements following Spanish contact (Lycett 1995, 2002). At San Cristobal, Mark Lycett showed that the sixteenth- and seventeenth-century occupa- tions were confined to the vicinity of the church. On the other hand, given their surface characteristics and deep midden accumulations, aggregated settlements are well suited for micro-scale landscape research. At San Marcos, Ramenofsky and colleagues (Ramenofsky, Nieman, and Pierce 2009) adopted a multi-stage
276 Ann F. Ramenofsky, Michael K. Church, and Jeremy Kulisheck Place use periods, San Marcos Pueblo, north-central New Mexico. surface strategy to investigate occupational history. Using only surface data, we were able to show that the San Marcoseños were residentially mobile through- out the occupational history, with the maximum extent of midden use occurring during the fifteenth century. After Spanish conquest there were two occupations. As in the San Cristobal case, the seventeenth-century occupation was spatially concentrated around the mission (figure 13.5). Unlike San Cristobal, however, the ceramic assemblage from seventeenth-century missions suggested an expanding population. These two examples do not exhaust the methodological possibilities of inves- tigations of aggregated settlements. What they do suggest is that knowing the geographic location of aggregated settlements as dots on a map is insufficient for
Investigating Differential Persistence of Pueblo Population 277 investigating changing aggregated settlement use and dispersion. Finer-grained research that explores occupational dynamics is necessary.
Historical Records The last few years have seen a dramatic expansion in the identification and translation of historical documents from the early Spanish colonial era and, with it, a commensurate change in the understanding of different aspects of the Spanish exploration and colonization of the Greater Southwest (Brown 2004; Deeds 2004; Flint and Flint 2005; Radding 1997). For instance, greater attention has been paid to micro-historical documents, including legal records, such as wills and testamentos, títulos, and peticiones; ecclesiastical transmissions such as padrones, informes, digien- cias matrimoniales, and inquisition documents; government orders and proclama- tions; and official and personal correspondence. This change in the nature of archi- val research suggests a decreasing reliance on the broader narrative accounts of the Spanish presence in the Pueblo world that characterized an earlier generation of historical scholarship (Broughton 1993; Polzer 1989). Unfortunately, Southwest archaeologists, ethnohistorians, and geographers continue to rely on the broader narratives that typically contain numeric estimates for sixteenth- and seventeenth- century population reconstructions. Neither Southwest historians nor archaeolo- gists have combed micro-history for insights into Pueblo demographic change, and the causes and consequences of large settlement abandonment, in the sixteenth and seventeenth centuries. Just as the landscape approach to studying demography necessitates adjusting both methodologies and subjects of inquiry, so, too, will reading historical records for evidence of demographic change. The corpus of particular documents that may contain information relevant to demographic change will not yield the quan- titative values traditionally extracted from broad narrative accounts. Rather, they may yield specific observations regarding population change that, when collected in aggregate, could indicate the nature and causes of Pueblo settlement abandon- ment and shifts in subsistence and land use. Such particularistic documents have already been used profitably to gauge the effects of Spanish labor practices on Pueblo communities, particularly their impacts on Pueblo subsistence (Earls 1985; Knaut 1995). They have also been used to identify the appearance of individuals of mixed Spanish-Pueblo ancestry, indicating the beginnings of shifts in identity among intermingling peoples (Knaut 1995). Archaeologists will do well to partner with historians in pursuing evidence for demographic change. A great deal of attention has been paid in the last decade to issues of demographic change and Pueblo cultural identity in the eighteenth century (Brooks 2002; Brown 2004; Levine 1999). This has likely been driven by
278 Ann F. Ramenofsky, Michael K. Church, and Jeremy Kulisheck the relatively larger volume of documents from that century, but other researchers have demonstrated that issues such as fluidity in ethnic identity were important in the seventeenth century as well (Gutierrez 1991; Knaut 1995). Issues related to demographic change in the sixteenth and seventeenth centuries may have not yet surfaced in the historical literature, not because evidence is lacking but rather because they have not corresponded to historical research trends or researchers’ interests to this point. However, historians may know about a wealth of informa- tion related to specific issues, such as changes in subsistence practices, and point archaeologists in the right direction. In addition to Spanish documents, Pueblo traditional and oral history may provide significant contributions to understanding the demographic consequences of settlement abandonment and other shifts in land use that took place in the early historic era. Historical overviews of the early modern era that are drawn from tra- ditional history, along with land claims settlement documents, have recorded the movement of communities and their interaction with surrounding Pueblo groups as a consequence of the Spanish conquest (Bayer, Montoya, and the people of Santa Ana Pueblo 1994; Ellis 1956; Ferguson and Hart 1985). Additional research into unpublished sources, such as land claims testimony, and new interviews with traditional historians could yield additional information. As with particularistic historical documents, sources from traditional Pueblo history will not produce quantitative values of past Pueblo populations or allow us to discuss Pueblo pop- ulation trends in a quantitative fashion. However, they can supply information on both the movement of peoples and potential changes in identity and provide insights into demographic changes by indicating changes in settlement and land- use strategies.
Conclusion: Changing the Scale of Research Agendas This discussion of landscape research and differential persistence has made several discoveries and suggested a number of avenues for new research. First, we framed the demography of contact period Pueblo populations by returning to the older demographic theme of differential persistence rather than disease- driven mortality. We explored the possibility of persistence through a settlement analysis of small sites and aggregated settlements. The preliminary results point to an intriguing and spatially extensive historical pattern. As aggregated settlements were abandoned, there was a significant upsurge in the numbers of small sites. While it would be convenient to substitute dispersion for decline as the cause of aggregated Pueblo abandonment, data limitations preclude making this leap. It is clear, however, that there was much greater settlement change in response to the Spaniards than previously documented. We believe many of these changes are
Investigating Differential Persistence of Pueblo Population 279 responsible for the differential persistence of Pueblo peoples culturally and biologi- cally, from their survival in northern New Mexico to their cultural disappearance in the south. Because of that conviction, we explored the contributions of land- scape research to the question of differential persistence. On the broadest level, we need to continue to ask new questions of the archae- ological and documentary records. Archaeologists accustomed to interpreting individual sites and small spatial regions must integrate their findings across sites and regions. Because differential persistence is a phenomenon with significance for the entire New Mexico colony, we need to evaluate variation between regions. We have not touched on distributions of nonstructural artifacts; the patterning in these distributions may also provide new insights into variation in Pueblo landscape use after contact. This variation should be evaluated on many scales, from individual sites to regions, but with the ultimate goal of understanding broader landscape patterns. Historians should also continue to pursue new questions. Although his- torical themes such as the causes of the Pueblo Revolt need continued research, we suggest that micro-historical investigations may produce surprising results. The sixteenth- and seventeenth-century documentary records are thinner than those that postdate the Pueblo Revolt, but there may be clues in the earlier records regarding differential persistence of Pueblo peoples. For example, do pre-revolt records indicate widespread possession of livestock? Ownership of herd animals could help explain broad changes in landscape use. Overall, therefore, archaeol- ogy should consider extending the synthesis across regions, while history should consider smaller scales than it traditionally has. Changes in scalar perspectives will lead researchers to new interpretations of the consequences of Spanish contact in New Mexico and how Pueblo people survived the tumultuous sixteenth and seventeenth centuries.
Acknowledgments. A number of people helped enormously with the data collec- tion part of this project. Major NMCRIS and geographic information systems (GIS) data were provided by the Archeological Records Management Section (ARMS) of the New Mexico Historic Preservation Division. We are especially grateful to Scott Geister, Steve Townsend, and Lou Haecker at ARMS, whose knowledge of the site records is both broad and deep. We also thank Bill Walker, Nieves Zedeño, and Terry Majewski for the invitation to participate in the Southwest Symposium. Two anonymous reviewers provided comments on the manuscript. As always, any errors in either the data or the interpretations are ours.
Disclaimer: Jeremy Kulisheck’s institutional affiliation is provided for identifica- tion purposes only. The positions in this chapter are his own and those of the other authors. They do not necessarily reflect those of the USDA Forest Service.
280 Ann F. Ramenofsky, Michael K. Church, and Jeremy Kulisheck 1. We and others have previously reviewed the Dobyns hypothesis for Native popula- tion decline in North America, and we do not repeat that review here. For a full exploration of the hypothesis, see Alchon (2003); Kulisheck (2005); Perttula (1992); Ramenofsky (1987, 1990); Smith (1987).
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Page numbers in italics indicate illustrations.
Abandonment, 5; historic New Mexico pueblos, Apache Wars, 217 7, 264, 266 Aravaipa District, 183; Hohokam regional sys- Abra Este, El (Cerro de Trinchera), 104 tem and, 177–78 Abra Oeste, El (Cerro de Trinchera), 104, 105 Archaeoastronomy: Chimney Rock, 30, 73; Sun Acoma, 207 Dagger, 3, 67–72, 76–87, 89–90(nn3, 4, 7) Adams, D. E., 218 Architecture: astronomical orientations, 72–73; Aero-Metric, photogrammetric study by, 84–85 Cerro de Trincheras, 103–4; Chacoan, 15, Aggregated settlements, historic Pueblos, 19, 34; dualism in, 27–29; Lower San Pedro 275–78 Valley, 179–85 Agriculture, 199, 231; El Morro Valley, 203–4, Arroyo Hondo, 276 205; Forestdale Valley, 218–19, 220, 221; gar- Artwork, and landscape, 51 den hunting, 236–38; Pimería Alta missions, Ashurst, Henry, 219 233–35 Astronomy: Chacoan, 30, 72–74; Chaco Canyon, Ah-Shi-Sle-Pah Road, 20, 25, 29 32, 67, 68–69, 74–76, 89–90(nn3, 4) Anasazi. See Ancestral Puebloans; Kayenta AZ BB:2:16 (ASM), 183 Anasazi AZ BB:2:108 (ASM), 182–83, 183 Ancestors, Puebloan, 31 AZ BB:2:142(ASM), 182 Ancestral Puebloans, 50; El Morro Valley, AZ BB:6:146 (ASM), 182 200–202 AZ BB:11:12 (ASM), 187 Andrews great house, 26 AZ BB:11:21 (ASM), 182 Animism, 128 Apaches: in Forestdale Valley, 6, 213, 215, 216– Babocomari pottery tradition, 181 17, 218–20, 221; in Lower San Pedro Valley, Bac, Spanish mission at, 233–34 178–79, 183 Ball courts, Hohokam, 6, 179–80
291 Basketmaker III period: Chaco Canyon, 23–24; 29–30; dualism, 27–29; as center place, 15–16, ritual cycles, 30, 31 31–32; ideology of, 33–35; landscape of, Bennett Peak, 24 19–20, 22–31; place making, 2–3; Sun Dagger Black Lake, 25, 29 site, 67–72, 74–76 Black Mountain, 142, 143 Chacra Face Road, 20, 25, 29 Bluff great house, 26; chipped stone in, 56, 57, Chacra Mesa, 14, 20, 25, 27, 32 58 Chama River, 269 Boom-and-bust cycles, 112 Chert, in Chacoan region, 52–54, 56–58, 59 Boundaries, 5, 23; Lower San Pedro Valley, 175, Chetro Ketl, cardinal orientation, 72 182–83 Chihuahua, burned structures in, 167 Brushy Basin chert: in Chacoan region, 57, 59; in Chihuahuan Desert Rangeland Research Center Chaco Canyon, 52, 53–54 (CDRCC), 247; archaeological sites on, Burials: as boundary markers, 182; in kivas, 187, 251–54 188; at Pueblo Bonito, 31 Chimney Rock Pueblo, 26, 27; chipped stone from, 56, 57, 58–59; astronomical features, Cabezon Peak, 25, 29 30, 73 Calico Hills, 142 Chipped stone: in Chacoan region, 55, 56–60; in Camino Real (El Camino Real de Tierra Chaco Canyon, 52–54, 61–62; raw materials Adentro), 6–7; archaeology of, 245–48, 257; for, 49, 50, 60–61 ephemeral sites, 250–56; route of, 249–50 Christianity, worldview of, 229–30 Camp Grant Massacre, 183 Chupadera Arroyo, 269; small sites on, 272 Campsites, on Camino Real, 247 Chuska Mountains, 14; chert from, 52–53, 56, 60 Cancha, La (Cerro de Trincheras), 103–4, 106 Cibecue, Battle of, 217, 219 Caracol, El (Cerro de Trincheras), 104 Cibola region, 6, 197–98; settlement mobility, Cardinal alignments: Chaco Canyon, 72–73; 200–202, 206–8 Puebloans, 29–30 Classic Bonito phase, 15, 34; sacred geography, Carr, Eugene Asa, 217, 218 24–27 Casamero great house, 26 Cluff, Alfred, 218 Cascabel District, 178, 181 Cluff, Orson, 218 Cattle ranching, 204, 236 Coal industry: ethnicity in, 120–21; strike, 111, Caves, as sacred places, 138 116–20 CCWAP. See Colorado Coalfield War Colonization, Spanish, 229–30, 240–41 Archaeological Project Colorado Coalfield War, Ludlow strikers’ colony CDRCC. See Chihuahuan Desert Rangeland and, 116–20 Research Center Colorado Coalfield War Archaeological Project Celestial bodies, 32; and directionality, 29–30 (CCWAP), 118 Center place, Chaco Canyon as, 13–16, 31–32, Colorado National Guard, Ludlow Massacre, 34 111, 117 Ceramics, 6; El Morro Valley, 201–2; San Pedro Colorado Plateau, kivas on, 186–87 Valley, 178, 181 Communities: Ludlow strikers’, 116–20, 122–24; Ceremonial sites, Paiute and Hualapai, 127, 128 and self, 114–15; transient, 112–13 Cerro de Trincheras: as landscape, 101–7; social Compounds, San Pedro Valley, 6 totality of, 4, 94 Computer graphics model, of Sun Dagger site, Cerros de trincheras, 101; use of, 102, 104–6 77–88 CFAST. See Consolidated Fire and Smoke Consolidated Fire and Smoke Transport Transport (CFAST), 169 Chaco Canyon, 13–14, 50; astronomy, 72–74; Continuously Operating Reference System chipped stone from, 52–54, 58, 60, 61–62; (CORS) network, 80 cultural landscapes, 51–52; directionality, Cooley, Corydon, 218
292 Index Corrugated pottery, 178 Exchange networks, 2, 130 CORS network. See Continuously Operating Experience, and landscape, 97 Reference System network Cosmography, Chacoan, 22, 68, 72–74 Fajada Butte, 3, 13, 19, 23; geodetic monument Cosmology: Chacoan, 72; Puebloan, 21–22 on, 80, 81–82; Sun Dagger on, 67–72, 74–76 Crozier, 145 Fajada Gap, 20 Crumbled House, chipped stone at, 56, 57, 58, Father Dance, 130 59 Faunal remains: from Mission San Agustín de Cry mourning ceremony, 149 Tucson, 236–41; from Pimería Alta sites, 6, Culture, 139; and nature, 134–36 235 FDS. See Fire Dynamics Simulator Dance, ritual, 127, 144. See also Ghost Dance Fence Lake, 202, 204, 205 Davis Ranch site, 188; kiva at, 181, 185–87 Fire, 5; in archaeological record, 169–70; experi- Deer, at Mission San Agustín, 238 mental structure, 165–69; physical character- Demography: Native American, 261–62; Pueblo, istics of, 159–61; structural, 157–58, 163–65 263–66, 273–79 Fire Dynamics Simulator (FDS), 169 Descartes, René, 133, 134 Flaked stone artifacts. See Chipped stone Diaspora, 187–88 Flieger Ruin (AZ BB:2:7[ASM]), 184 Differential persistence, 261; of Pueblo popula- Forest Dale, 218, 219; archaeological identifica- tions, 262, 263–66, 280 tion of, 220–21 Directionality, Chaco Canyon, 29–30 Forestdale Valley: archaeological survey, 220–21; Disease hypothesis, of Pueblo demographic Mormons and Apaches in, 6, 213, 215, 216– change, 264, 266 17, 218–20; social memory of, 221–22 Dobyns, Henry, disease hypothesis, 264, 266 Fort Fillmore, 248 Doña Ana, archaeology in, 247–48 Franciscans, 234 Dragoon Series pottery, 181 Frontier: empire and, 6–7; structural inertia, 7, Droughts, El Morro Valley, 204 248, 251 Dry farming, in El Morro Valley, 203–4, 205 Dualism, Puebloan, 27–29 Gallina, burned structures in, 168–69 Dudleyville District, 178, 183, 184–85 Gatewood, Charles, 219 Geck House, Louis, 247 Early Bonito phase, sacred geography, 23–24 Geodetic orientation, 80 East Road, 20 Geography, sacred, 2, 22, 23–27 El Morro, 202, 204, 205 Geologic features, 50, 138 El Morro Valley, 198; archaeological landscape Ghost Dance, 4, 127–28, 151; emergence of, of, 6, 200–202; historic occupation of, 202–5; 140–41; Hualapai, 144–50; Northern Paiute, residential mobility in, 206–7 141–44; as revitalization movement, 129–30 El Paso phase, 256 Godewoyah, 219 Empire, frontier communications on, 6–7 Grand Canyon, Ghost Dance, 145, 147–49 Ephemeral sites, on Camino Real, 250–56 Grant, Mount, 142, 144 Equinoxes, 30; Chacoan observation of, 75–76 Grass Spring (Tanyaka): pilgrimages to, 145–46, Escalante Ruin: chipped stone from, 55–56, 60; 149–50 obsidian in, 57–58 Great Basin, ritual dance and song, 127 Escalon great house, 26 Great Depression, in El Morro Valley, 203–4, 207 Eskiminzin (Haské bahnzin), 183 Great houses: Chaco Canyon, 15, 20, 23–24, 31; Ethnic groups, creation of, 215–16 chipped stone artifacts in, 54–60; as cultural Ethnicity, 216; Ludlow strikers’ colony, 120–21 landscape, 51–52; visibility of, 25–26, 27, 29 Ethnocentrism, and nature, 134 Great kivas, Chaco Canyon, 23–24, 27, 31 Ethnography, Puebloan, 21 Great North Road, 20, 24, 29, 72, 73
Index 293