Fairs, Feasting, and Ritual in Northern Mexican Contexts

Gatherings for ceremonies, pilgrimages, and commemorations have always formed an integral part of the lives of folks that lived in the various landscapes of northern Mexico. In this session, we consider ritual settings in several different social and temporal contexts that span from preHispanic sites of different scales in the modern day states of Durango and Zacatecas, civic and religious celebrations in colonial Nueva Vizcaya, celebrations in a 19th century mining village, and the yearly journey to the beach by folks in northern Sonora. For each setting, we consider the relationships between material culture, the locales and the activities that make these gatherings both special and an integral part of the processes involved in identity creation and regional integration combining ethnographic analogy, historical research, interviews and ethnography with traditional archaeological method.