Hill People: New Research on Tijeras Canyon and the East Mountains

Part of: Society for American Archaeology 88th Annual Meeting, Portland, OR (2023)

This collection contains the abstracts of the papers presented in the session entitled "Hill People: New Research on Tijeras Canyon and the East Mountains" at the 88th annual meeting of the Society for American Archaeology.

For decades, archaeological research in north-central New Mexico has focused on cultural developments in the Rio Grande Valley. With the notable exception of several long-term field school projects at Tijeras and Paa-ko pueblos, the diverse histories of populations living in the mountains east of Albuquerque—the “East Mountains”—have been overlooked or relegated to cultural resource management (CRM) reports. Alongside several ongoing reassessments of legacy collections from Tijeras and other East Mountain sites, a series of recent CRM, urban planning, and community history projects have generated new insights into the East Mountain region’s dynamic past. This session brings together people involved in these projects to share their discoveries, theories, and perspectives, with the goal of contributing to a more inclusive understanding of the complex human history of the East Mountains.

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  • Documents (14)

Documents
  • Cañon de Carnué: A Place of Connection (2023)
    DOCUMENT Citation Only Kelly Jenks.

    This is an abstract from the "Hill People: New Research on Tijeras Canyon and the East Mountains" session, at the 88th annual meeting of the Society for American Archaeology. Cañon de Carnué (also known as Tijeras Canyon) is a place of transition—between the Rio Grande Valley and Great Plains, the Sandia and Manzano Mountains, the alpine forests and riparian bottomlands, and between the communities—human and nonhuman—that inhabit these environments. We often understand this canyon through the...

  • A Ceramic Analysis of San Miguel de Carnué Plaza Complex (LA 12924) (2023)
    DOCUMENT Citation Only Jason Vandervort.

    This is an abstract from the "Hill People: New Research on Tijeras Canyon and the East Mountains" session, at the 88th annual meeting of the Society for American Archaeology. This paper will present my analysis of ceramics recovered during the 2022 New Mexico State University Archaeological Field School at the land grant plaza settlement of San Miguel de Carnué (LA 12924), located in Tijeras Canyon. This analysis offers new insight into the lifestyles and trading patterns of the settlers who...

  • From Contact to Colony at the Edge of the Tiguex Province (2023)
    DOCUMENT Citation Only Matthew Schmader.

    This is an abstract from the "Hill People: New Research on Tijeras Canyon and the East Mountains" session, at the 88th annual meeting of the Society for American Archaeology. The first accounts of the Rio Grande Valley were made by outsiders on the Vázquez de Coronado expedition in 1540. Their descriptions regularly focused on the river valley and its associated settlements even though other surrounding areas were well settled at that time. By exploring texts written during the earliest...

  • Glittering and Glassy: Understanding the Intersection of Colonial Mineral Extractivism and the Production of Late Rio Grande Lead Glaze-Painted Pottery at Paa-ko Pueblo (2023)
    DOCUMENT Citation Only Danielle Huerta.

    This is an abstract from the "Hill People: New Research on Tijeras Canyon and the East Mountains" session, at the 88th annual meeting of the Society for American Archaeology. Paa-ko Pueblo, also known as the mission of San Pedro due to its colonial period component, is one of the better studied sites in the East Mountain region. However, the research presented here represents the first systematic look at late Rio Grande Glaze Ware (RGGW) pottery excavated from the site’s colonial context(s)....

  • Keeping It Local: Looking Inward at the Land Grant Community of San José de las Huertas (2023)
    DOCUMENT Citation Only Heather Atherton.

    This is an abstract from the "Hill People: New Research on Tijeras Canyon and the East Mountains" session, at the 88th annual meeting of the Society for American Archaeology. Founded in 1765 in the foothills northeast of Albuquerque, San José de las Huertas was the byproduct of Spanish imperial policy and the aims of largely landless families and a category of people known as genízaros to make better lives for themselves. The crafting of this community, and its accompanying identity, amidst a...

  • Landscape Systems of San Miguel de Carnué (2023)
    DOCUMENT Citation Only Allyson Ueki.

    This is an abstract from the "Hill People: New Research on Tijeras Canyon and the East Mountains" session, at the 88th annual meeting of the Society for American Archaeology. The historic settlement of San Miguel de Carnué is an eighteenth-century Spanish colonial frontier settlement in northern New Mexico, which served as a buffer settlement to protect Albuquerque from raids by surrounding nomadic tribes. The occupants, who were of mixed ancestry, constructed the settlement and had lived...

  • Living on the Edge: Uncovering Quotidian Life of the Eighteenth-Century Land Grant Community of San Miguel de Carnué (2023)
    DOCUMENT Citation Only Peter Kovacik.

    This is an abstract from the "Hill People: New Research on Tijeras Canyon and the East Mountains" session, at the 88th annual meeting of the Society for American Archaeology. Following the approval of their application for a community land grant east of Albuquerque in 1763, several New Mexico families of diverse origin ventured into the Tijeras Canyon in hopes of improving their status by managing lands in this colonial buffer zone. The constant threat of Apache raids, however, meant the...

  • Midden Deposits at a Salinas Province Pueblo: Archaeological Investigations at Chilili (LA 847) (2023)
    DOCUMENT Citation Only David Unruh.

    This is an abstract from the "Hill People: New Research on Tijeras Canyon and the East Mountains" session, at the 88th annual meeting of the Society for American Archaeology. From March through April 2022, SRI excavated portions of LA 847, the archaeological site of Chilili. Positioned east of the Manzano Mountains on the border of the Plains and Pueblo spheres and representing the northernmost of the Salinas province pueblos, the prehispanic and colonial period occupation at Chilili dates...

  • A New Take on Cultural Identities at Chilili Pueblo and the East Mountains Villages (2023)
    DOCUMENT Citation Only William Graves. Evan Giomi.

    This is an abstract from the "Hill People: New Research on Tijeras Canyon and the East Mountains" session, at the 88th annual meeting of the Society for American Archaeology. In this presentation, we explore how group identities were constructed and experienced at the northernmost Salinas pueblo, Chilili, and among the villages of the East Mountains area during the late prehispanic and early colonial periods (ca. AD 1300–late 1600s). We examine artifacts from recent excavations at Chilili to...

  • Querencia: Community Reciprocity in Management of the Cultural Landscape by East Sandia and Manzano Land Grant Communities (2023)
    DOCUMENT Citation Only Moises Gonzales.

    This is an abstract from the "Hill People: New Research on Tijeras Canyon and the East Mountains" session, at the 88th annual meeting of the Society for American Archaeology. Querencia, the vernacular term for love of homeland, can be conceptually deployed as a historical organizing framework for traditional Indo-Hispano land-based communities in northern New Mexico. Querencia can be described through the historical function, form, and relationship of these systems, sustained by community...

  • Social, Material, and Symbolic Transformations of Value at the Margins of Colonization: A View from the Seventeenth-Century Metallurgical Terraces at Paa-ko (LA 162), NM (2023)
    DOCUMENT Citation Only Noah Thomas.

    This is an abstract from the "Hill People: New Research on Tijeras Canyon and the East Mountains" session, at the 88th annual meeting of the Society for American Archaeology. Mining communities are often at the peripheries of colonial expansion. Yet, the material and social forms developed from such communities can profoundly affect colonial social and economic structures from local to global scales. The archaeological analyses of the metallurgical terraces at the Pueblo of Paa-ko allow for a...

  • The Tijeras Cultural Corridor Plan: Connecting Community to the Natural and Cultural History of Tijeras Canyon (2023)
    DOCUMENT Citation Only James Sattler.

    This is an abstract from the "Hill People: New Research on Tijeras Canyon and the East Mountains" session, at the 88th annual meeting of the Society for American Archaeology. Tijeras Canyon has long been a corridor of migration for wildlife and humans, and the presence of water has and continues to make this place a special place. From shaping of the landscape, to settlement, and sacred places, water is at the heart of Tijeras Canyon. There are deep meanings in this landscape and special...

  • A View from Above: The Dynamic Human Landscapes of the East Mountains (2023)
    DOCUMENT Citation Only Phillip Leckman.

    This is an abstract from the "Hill People: New Research on Tijeras Canyon and the East Mountains" session, at the 88th annual meeting of the Society for American Archaeology. The diverse natural and social environments of the uplands east of Albuquerque have shaped equally diverse and overlapping human landscapes. In this paper, a variety of geospatial analyses are employed to trace the dimensions of East Mountain settlement through time, beginning with the region’s early farming communities...

  • The Zooarchaeological Remains from San Miguel de Carnué (LA 12924) from the 2022 Field Season (2023)
    DOCUMENT Citation Only Rani Alexander. Jocelyn Valadez.

    This is an abstract from the "Hill People: New Research on Tijeras Canyon and the East Mountains" session, at the 88th annual meeting of the Society for American Archaeology. We present an initial analysis of zooarchaeological remains recovered from 2022 field season of the NMSU Archaeological Field School, directed by Dr. Kelly Jenks, for the ancestral frontier settlement of San Miguel de Carnué, occupied 1763–1771 by the Cañón de Carnué Land Grant Community in the East Mountains of...