University of Pennsylvania ScholarlyCommons Departmental Papers (Historic Preservation) Graduate Program in Historic Preservation January 2003 Exploring conservation strategies for ancestral puebloan sites Frank G. Matero University of Pennsylvania, [email protected] Follow this and additional works at: https://repository.upenn.edu/hp_papers Matero, Frank G., "Exploring conservation strategies for ancestral puebloan sites" (2003). Departmental Papers (Historic Preservation). 13. https://repository.upenn.edu/hp_papers/13 Postprint version. Published in Conservation and Management of Archaeological Sites, Volume 6, 2003. Publisher URL: http://www.ingentaconnect.com/content/maney/cma This paper is posted at ScholarlyCommons. https://repository.upenn.edu/hp_papers/13 For more information, please contact [email protected]. Exploring conservation strategies for ancestral puebloan sites Abstract In the American Southwest, indigenous pueblo cultures are a vital part of the region's contemporary mosaic of ethnic diversity. This is especially evident through their long-standing relationship to the land and landscape as reflected in the continuity of place for all pueblo communities and the countless number of ancestral sites that figure prominently in contemporary beliefs and practices. Recently many such sites have gained federal recognition and legal protection as archaeological and traditional cultural sites, yet stabilization, protection, use and interpretation of these sites according to existing theories and models of conservation have proven to be difficult. Based on theecognition r that such places remain critical to the continuing identity of Native peoples and that many of these sites are simultaneously visited and enjoyed by the public, their preservation and respectful management have become a relevant, timely and sometimes controversial issue. Beginning in 1997 the University of Pennsylvania, the National Park Service and San Ildefonso Pueblo inaugurated an integrated research and training programme focused on the conservation and management of Tsankawi (New Mexico), an ancestral puebloan mesa site of great cultural and archaeological significance. The project afforded a critical examination of the theoretical and ethical issues surrounding the preservation and management of ancestral archaeological sites and the technical methods required for their stabilization and interpretation as cultural landscapes. Professionals, students and pueblo affiliates engaged in documentation, condition survey and preservation treatments of the ancient tuff rock trails and pueblo structures. From this effort, a strategic conservation plan was developed and its initial implementation explored through an annual training programme involving pueblo and university interns as well as professional archaeologists and cultural resource managers. Comments Postprint version. Published in Conservation and Management of Archaeological Sites, Volume 6, 2003. Publisher URL: http://www.ingentaconnect.com/content/maney/cma This journal article is available at ScholarlyCommons: https://repository.upenn.edu/hp_papers/13 CONSERVATION AND MANAGEMENT OF ARCHAEOLOGICAL SITES (2003) volume 6 pages 000–000 ARTICLE Exploring conservation strategies for ancestral puebloan sites Tsankawi, Bandelier National Monument, New Mexico FRANK MATERO ABSTRACT In the American Southwest, indigenous pueblo cultures are a vital part of the region’s contemporary mosaic of ethnic diversity. This is especially evident through their long-standing relationship to the land and landscape as reflected in the continuity of place for all pueblo communities and the countless number of ancestral sites that figure prominently in contemporary beliefs and practices. Recently many such sites have gained federal recognition and legal protection as archaeological and traditional cultural sites, yet stabilization, protection, use and interpretation of these sites according to existing theories and models of conservation have proven to be difficult. Based on the recognition that such places remain critical to the continuing identity of Native peoples and that many of these sites are simultaneously visited and enjoyed by the public, their preservation and respectful management have become a relevant, timely and sometimes controversial issue. Beginning in 1997 the University of Pennsylvania, the National Park Service and San Ildefonso Pueblo inaugurated an integrated research and training programme focused on the conservation and management of Tsankawi (New Mexico), an ancestral puebloan mesa site of great cultural and archaeological significance. The project afforded a critical examination of the theoretical and ethical issues surrounding the preservation and management of ancestral archaeological sites and the technical methods required for their stabilization and interpretation as cultural landscapes. Professionals, students and pueblo affiliates engaged in documentation, condition survey and preservation treatments of the ancient tuff rock trails and pueblo structures. From this effort, a strategic conservation plan was developed and its initial implementation explored through an annual training programme involving pueblo and university interns as well as professional archaeologists and cultural resource managers. THE PARADOX OF HERITAGE CONSERVATION ity in the USA has traditionally focused on specific sites associated with specific histories and selected Over the past decade, heritage has come centre pasts, this approach has tended to isolate places from stage in the discourse on place, identity and owner- their contemporary physical and social context, often ship of the past [1]. This has been due in large part to ignoring the continuing significance that such struc- the development of historic preservation, beginning tures and landscapes hold for many communities in in the 1970s, into a field many now consider to be defining and preserving everyday life and values in among the most significant and influential of socio- all their diverse forms and expressions. cultural movements to affect American public life and The stabilizing effect objects and places have by the built environment. While most preservation activ- connecting us to a personal and collective past is ISSN 1350-5033 © 2003 JAMES & JAMES (SCIENCE PUBLISHERS) LTD 2 FRANK MATERO well known across both time and space. The issue less a product of history … staged otherness and has become particularly pronounced today where differentiation’ [5]. As a result, heritage tourism has the long-term effects of rapid change and mobility often had the opposite effect of reinforcing differ- have caused a certain anxiety and dislocation. ence rather than similarities or continuity. According According to Eco, Boyer and other post-modern to Boyer, ‘to historicize is to estrange, to make critics, this discomfort has created a taste for the different, so that a gap continually widens between known, the familiar, the predictable, the expected then and now, between an authentic and a simu- and the repeatable, rather than the unexpected, the lated experience’ [6]. innovative and the original [2]. In a rapidly changing Certainly the collective inheritance of culturally environment, the past affords a comfortable and valued places and material works from the past controllable context as expressed in the wide- deserve preservation and protection in ways that spread popularity of historicized design (‘post- allow each of us to relate to them now and in the modernism’), historical theme parks and urban future. However, as Riley has commented, what we developments, reconstructions and a romanticizing see and know is changing, and the experiences, about tradition and so-called traditional peoples and roles and interpretation of such visual works are traditional living. This has led to a proliferation of also changing [7]. With the escalating develop- historicized places as contrived stage sets for con- ment and commodification of heritage in all its temporary leisure activities that often fragment and forms – as objects, places, people, events and disconnect the past from the present. Such forms of even symbols – for recreational, economic and preservation are best described as nostalgic as they political purposes, a critical assessment of conserva- are driven by a longing to experience traces of an tion in shaping the fate of such valued places authentic, supposedly more fulfilling past and a becomes all the more critical. desire to repossess and re-experience something Conservation as a concept and process has as its untouched by the present. As McCannell has ob- fundamental objective the protection of cultural served, for moderns, reality and authenticity are heritage from loss and depletion. At different times thought to be elsewhere: in other historical periods and in different places this has been expressed and and other cultures, in purer simpler lifestyles and in practiced through three basic constructs or a concern for nature [3]. While academic interests modalities of form, fabric and content, the latter and professional activities often bring such environ- being the intangible beliefs and uses associated ments into focus, they are justified and sustained by (originally and over time) with the material cor- public taste, tourism and economic development relates of form and fabric. Implicit in all three opportunities. constructs is the notion of maintaining contact with Tourism, itself the product of the modern world the past through