Pueblo Movement and the Archaeology of Becoming

The concept of movement – pertaining to people but also including weather, moisture, spirits, blessing, and animals – is an essential part of Pueblo identity and history. Movement is also the driving force of every Pueblo’s cosmogony from emergence into this world to finding the ‘middle place.’ The process of becoming Pueblo is not only shaped by histories of people coming together and moving apart, but also by creating unique philosophies tied to social and natural landscapes. Conversely, these philosophies mold the actions of Pueblo people throughout their dynamic histories.

This session explores how diverse modern Pueblo identities, cosmologies, and societies are inherently connected to histories of movement and draws deeply from archaeological, ethnographic, and historic sources. While Southwestern archaeologists have embraced population movement, and in particular migration, in recent years, we seek to also examine how additional types and scales of movement including coalescence, fissioning, feasting, short-term mobility, exchange of goods and ideas, and the effects of Spanish colonization shaped, and were shaped by, Pueblo identities and societies. Case studies are presented from across the American Southwest with an explicit de-emphasis of the distinction between the prehistoric and the historic to facilitate a holistic discussion of Pueblo history.