Coloring the World: People and Colors in Southwestern Archaeology

Part of: Society for American Archaeology 84th Annual Meeting, Albuquerque, NM (2019)

This collection contains the abstracts of the papers presented in the session entitled "Coloring the World: People and Colors in Southwestern Archaeology," at the 84th annual meeting of the Society for American Archaeology.

The archaeological heritage of the Southwest is brilliantly colored. People here made and valued richly decorated pottery, vividly colored stone tools and ornaments, brightly pigmented textiles and perishable artifacts, and painted wall and rock panels. They used color not just to brighten the world, but to signal social identity, carry political messages, convey knowledge, connect to places and landscapes, and establish systems of ritual symbolism. Color is also a key attribute that archaeologists use in our research, from our Munsell books to typologies of pottery, glass and beads, to the identification of lithic materials. Archaeologists constantly rely on color to establish cultural affiliation and seriation, to analyze artifacts, and to interpret sites. Despite its importance to our work, the use and meaning of color has not been widely examined in archaeological thought and theory. This symposium explores the archaeology of color in the Southwestern U.S. and Northern Mexico. The papers in this session will consider the meaning of color in the lives and ideologies of past people, the resources and technologies people used to add color to their material culture, and how archaeologists use color to study aspects of the past such as social identity and cultural interaction.

Other Keywords
Ancestral Pueblo • Ritual and Symbolism • Ceramic Analysis • Iconography and Art • Mogollon • Materiality • Material Culture and Technology • Zooarchaeology • Landscape • Hohokam

Geographic Keywords
United States of America (Country) • North America (Continent) • USA (Country) • New Mexico (State / Territory) • Oklahoma (State / Territory) • Arizona (State / Territory) • Texas (State / Territory) • Sonora (State / Territory) • Chihuahua (State / Territory) • Baja California (State / Territory)

Resources Inside This Collection (Viewing 1-11 of 11)

  • Documents (11)
Documents
  • The Archaeology of Color in the Southwest (2019)
    DOCUMENT Citation Only Michelle I. Turner.

    This is an abstract from the "Coloring the World: People and Colors in Southwestern Archaeology" session, at the 84th annual meeting of the Society for American Archaeology. Color plays a central role in the work of many archaeologists. We use it to establish cultural affiliation and seriation, to analyze artifacts, and to interpret sites. We type pottery, source glass, and identify lithic materials based largely on their colors. Yet the use and meaning of color have not been widely and...

  • Bright Spots in a Drab Landscape: Color Use and Symbolism in the Jornada Region (2019)
    DOCUMENT Citation Only Christine Ward.

    This is an abstract from the "Coloring the World: People and Colors in Southwestern Archaeology" session, at the 84th annual meeting of the Society for American Archaeology. "Color" often evokes thoughts of vibrancy, boldness, and distinctiveness. With no denigration or judgement of the area intended, a casual visitor to the Jornada region may not be left with such impressions. Miles of exposed sands, stark mountains, and sparse vegetation do not immediately bring images of bright and unique...

  • Directional Color Schemes at Chaco Canyon: Quaternary Patterns in Ornaments and Minerals from Kiva Offerings (2019)
    DOCUMENT Citation Only Hannah Mattson.

    This is an abstract from the "Coloring the World: People and Colors in Southwestern Archaeology" session, at the 84th annual meeting of the Society for American Archaeology. The placement of colorful ornaments, marine shell, and minerals in discrete ritual deposits is a long-lived practice in the Ancestral Pueblo region. This tradition is exemplified in Chaco Canyon, where numerous ceremonial deposits comprised of such objects have been documented in kivas and other rooms within great houses....

  • Flying Colors: Local and Non-local Birds in Chaco Canyon Archaeological Sites (2019)
    DOCUMENT Citation Only Patricia Crown. Christopher Witt.

    This is an abstract from the "Coloring the World: People and Colors in Southwestern Archaeology" session, at the 84th annual meeting of the Society for American Archaeology. Bird species found in archaeological contexts throughout Chaco Canyon, New Mexico, include a range of local and non-local birds, as well as game and non-game birds. We analyzed the set of 5,350 identified bird bones and compared species composition to the local and regional avifaunas that we expect to have occurred ~1000...

  • Loss of Color: Pigments in the Trincheras Tradition (2019)
    DOCUMENT Citation Only Tanya Chiykowski-Rathke.

    This is an abstract from the "Coloring the World: People and Colors in Southwestern Archaeology" session, at the 84th annual meeting of the Society for American Archaeology. Archaeologists have largely defined the Trincheras Tradition by pottery, in particular the distribution of purple painted ceramics. The purple pigment, found in both specular and non-specular forms, was part of a bichrome and polychrome regional tradition that flourished across the Sonoran Desert between 700-1200 AD. Many...

  • The Multivalence of Black in Casas Grandes Iconography (2019)
    DOCUMENT Citation Only Christine VanPool. Todd VanPool.

    This is an abstract from the "Coloring the World: People and Colors in Southwestern Archaeology" session, at the 84th annual meeting of the Society for American Archaeology. Color symbolism was undoubtedly important to the Medio period (AD 1200–1450) Casas Grandes folks. Red, black, and white designs decorate their pottery, but excavations at Paquimé reveal that the Medio Period farmers used a variety of mineral pigments for painted murals and/or for makeup and body paint. They also conducted...

  • Pigments and Paints in the Ancestral Pueblo Southwest (2019)
    DOCUMENT Citation Only Marit Munson.

    This is an abstract from the "Coloring the World: People and Colors in Southwestern Archaeology" session, at the 84th annual meeting of the Society for American Archaeology. Archaeologists working in the Southwest have consistently recovered examples of prepared paints, and the pigments used to make them, during excavation. These materials are usually present in relatively small quantities, though, so they tend to get noted in field reports and then lost within the archaeological literature....

  • Sacred Colors and Materials: The Life Histories of Ancestral Pueblo Jewelry (2019)
    DOCUMENT Citation Only Jill Neitzel. David Witt.

    This is an abstract from the "Coloring the World: People and Colors in Southwestern Archaeology" session, at the 84th annual meeting of the Society for American Archaeology. The inextricable combination of color and raw material was the most fundamental characteristic of Ancestral Pueblo jewelry. For white and shell, blue-green and turquoise, and black and various types of stone, the color and the material each had diverse sets of sacred meanings that gave ornaments their value. Together,...

  • Shades of Meaning: Relating Color to Chacoan Identity, Memory, and Power at the Aztec Great Houses (2019)
    DOCUMENT Citation Only Lori Stephens Reed. Michelle I. Turner.

    This is an abstract from the "Coloring the World: People and Colors in Southwestern Archaeology" session, at the 84th annual meeting of the Society for American Archaeology. The Ancient Puebloan occupation of the Aztec complex in northwest New Mexico spanned a tumultuous two and a half centuries that saw the arrival of Chacoan people and Chacoan ways in the Animas Valley in the late 11th century C.E., followed by the waning influence of Chaco by 1140, and a new era of Aztec-centered power in...

  • Subjective Color in Mimbres Black-on-white Pottery (2019)
    DOCUMENT Citation Only Stephanie Whittlesey. Jefferson Reid.

    This is an abstract from the "Coloring the World: People and Colors in Southwestern Archaeology" session, at the 84th annual meeting of the Society for American Archaeology. Subjective color is a well-known phenomenon in the psychology of perception. It results when certain patterns of dark and light are spun at a particular speed, which the viewer perceives as solid colors or rainbow effects. Experiments indicate that this phenomenon occurs when Mimbres Black-on-white vessels of certain...

  • The Technology of Capturing Color: Complementary Analyses of Pigment Cakes and Chalks (2019)
    DOCUMENT Citation Only Nancy Odegaard. Kelsey Hanson.

    This is an abstract from the "Coloring the World: People and Colors in Southwestern Archaeology" session, at the 84th annual meeting of the Society for American Archaeology. The brilliant range of colors seen on painted media in the U.S. Southwest represents only one stage in an intricate sequence required to make paint. Capturing color from the natural world, harnessing it into a palette, and incorporating it into the material cultural repertoire represents a skillset with deep roots. The...