Collaborative Archaeology at Picuris Pueblo: The New History

Part of: Society for American Archaeology 89th Annual Meeting, New Orleans, LA (2024)

This collection contains the abstracts of the papers presented in the session entitled "Collaborative Archaeology at Picuris Pueblo: The New History" at the 89th annual meeting of the Society for American Archaeology.

At the onset of Spanish colonialism, Picuris Pueblo was one of the largest settlements in the Rio Grande Valley of New Mexico, serving as a key point of articulation in a regional economy that brought together the people and resources of the southern Plains, Rocky Mountains, and Pueblo region. After playing a leading role in the Pueblo Revolt of 1680, however, the resident population at Picuris declined precipitously, the combined effect of ongoing colonial violence, epidemics, and voluntary out-migration. Today, a resilient tribal community of roughly 300 enrolled members is seeking to extend traditional Indigenous knowledge of their ancestry using archaeological research. This session summarizes the findings of the first five years of the Picuris collaborative archaeology project, bringing together tribal members and outside researchers. Collectively, the research is transforming our understanding of the depth, scale, complexity, and regional connections of Ancestral Tiwa history in the northern Rio Grande region.

Other Keywords
Ancestral Pueblo • Pueblo • Landscape Archaeology • Architecture • Ceramic Analysis • Indigenous • Cultural Resources and Heritage Management • Political economy • Zooarchaeology • Survey

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 1-13 of 13)

  • Documents (13)
Documents
  • Classic Picuris: Reassessing the Discoveries of Herbert Dick’s Early Excavations (2024)
    DOCUMENT Citation Only Michael Adler.

    This is an abstract from the "Collaborative Archaeology at Picuris Pueblo: The New History" session, at the 89th annual meeting of the Society for American Archaeology. In 1961, in collaboration with the Picuris Pueblo tribal nation, Dr. Herb Dick initiated a multidisciplinary research project that documented architecture, agrarian strategies, sacred landscapes, ethnohistory, ethnobotany, avifauna, and other lines of evidence to better understand the past millennium of Picuris's history. This...

  • Deep History of the Picuris Watershed (2024)
    DOCUMENT Citation Only Severin Fowles. Lindsay Montgomery. Michael Adler.

    This is an abstract from the "Collaborative Archaeology at Picuris Pueblo: The New History" session, at the 89th annual meeting of the Society for American Archaeology. Provocative new evidence from research on tribal lands suggests that Picuris was already a demographic center of the Eastern Pueblo world at the start of the tenth century CE. In this paper, we report on recent surveys and excavations at the Eagle Pile Site, home to a large Developmental period (850–1150 CE) village. We...

  • Forest Regrowth and the End of Upland Farming at Picuris: Evidence from Tree Rings (2024)
    DOCUMENT Citation Only Skyler Evans. Ruby Bleskacek.

    This is an abstract from the "Collaborative Archaeology at Picuris Pueblo: The New History" session, at the 89th annual meeting of the Society for American Archaeology. Kilometers of terraced rock alignments characterize the upland slopes of the Picuris Pueblo watershed, capturing rainfall runoff in a water-efficient method of irrigation to combat the aridity of the Southwest. The terraces’ effective use of runoff rainfall and space supported the Pueblo's population growth and Plains-Pueblo...

  • New Insights on Avifauna from Picuris Pueblo (2024)
    DOCUMENT Citation Only Melanie Cootsona.

    This is an abstract from the "Collaborative Archaeology at Picuris Pueblo: The New History" session, at the 89th annual meeting of the Society for American Archaeology. The avifauna collection of Picuris Pueblo is fertile ground for understanding human-environmental relationships in the Northern Rio Grande. Migratory birds like geese (Branta sp.) illustrate the seasonality and adaptivity of past peoples, staples such as turkey (Meleagris gallopavo) show domestication strategies, and wild...

  • Obsidian Procurement in the Northern Tiwa Homeland (2024)
    DOCUMENT Citation Only Ian Jorgeson. Matthew Boulanger.

    This is an abstract from the "Collaborative Archaeology at Picuris Pueblo: The New History" session, at the 89th annual meeting of the Society for American Archaeology. We present results of a large-scale geochemical sourcing study of obsidian artifacts from Picuris Pueblo. We compare those results to obsidian-sourcing data from other sites on the Taos Plateau and in the Rio Chama basin. At Picuris Pueblo, almost all obsidian artifacts were produced on Valles Rhyolite or Cerro Toledo...

  • Picuris Ethnogeography (2024)
    DOCUMENT Citation Only Sully Howard. Richard Mermejo.

    This is an abstract from the "Collaborative Archaeology at Picuris Pueblo: The New History" session, at the 89th annual meeting of the Society for American Archaeology. This paper explores the deep history of Picuris Pueblo’s commitment to its surrounding landscape through traditional knowledge of the meanings inscribed therein. We focus on both natural places (springs, mountain peaks, clay deposits) and cultural constructions (rock art, medicine boulders, race tracks, and other “shrine”...

  • Picuris History: A Native Perspective (2024)
    DOCUMENT Citation Only Richard Mermejo.

    This is an abstract from the "Collaborative Archaeology at Picuris Pueblo: The New History" session, at the 89th annual meeting of the Society for American Archaeology. The new research reported in this session builds on collaborations between Picuris Pueblo and non-tribal archaeologists that began in 1960s. In this opening presentation, former Picuris governor Richard Mermejo reflects on the long history of his tribe’s engagement with archaeology, his own vision of how future research might...

  • Practicing Indigenous Data Sovereignty On and Off Picuris Pueblo Lands (2024)
    DOCUMENT Citation Only Lindsay Montgomery.

    This is an abstract from the "Collaborative Archaeology at Picuris Pueblo: The New History" session, at the 89th annual meeting of the Society for American Archaeology. Over the past decade, a growing number of archaeological projects in North America have incorporated community-based participatory research (CBPR) methods. For Indigenous communities, this collaborative paradigm marks an extension of a more global body of anti-colonial activism and policymaking oriented around Indigenous...

  • The Race Track: A Chacoan Legacy in the Northern Rio Grande (2024)
    DOCUMENT Citation Only Jenny Ni. Severin Fowles. Richard Mermejo.

    This is an abstract from the "Collaborative Archaeology at Picuris Pueblo: The New History" session, at the 89th annual meeting of the Society for American Archaeology. A portion of a retired race track was excavated in 2023 on Picuris tribal lands within the right-of-way of a planned infrastructure project. Just one of Picuris’s many race tracks, the feature draws our attention to the ongoing heritage of Chacoan “roads” in the northern Rio Grande region, while also underscoring the local...

  • Remote Sensing of Archaeological Landscapes at Picuris Pueblo (2024)
    DOCUMENT Citation Only Jesse Casana. Carolin Ferwerda. Jonathan Alperstein. Zachary Silvia. Michael Adler.

    This is an abstract from the "Collaborative Archaeology at Picuris Pueblo: The New History" session, at the 89th annual meeting of the Society for American Archaeology. In 2022, our team conducted experimental surveys at Picuris Pueblo using a new, drone-deployed lidar sensor alongside aerial thermal and color imaging to successfully map extensive remains of ancestral agricultural terraces and related archaeological features. This paper presents results of our 2023 efforts to expand on our...

  • Settler Colonialism in the Picuris Watershed (2024)
    DOCUMENT Citation Only Olganydia Plata Aguilera. Erin Pugh.

    This is an abstract from the "Collaborative Archaeology at Picuris Pueblo: The New History" session, at the 89th annual meeting of the Society for American Archaeology. This paper tracks the relationship between Picuris Pueblo and San Antonio del Embudo, a settlement in the Picuris homeland downstream of the Rio Pueblo. Embudo (now known as Dixon) is the product of two colonial regimes, beginning with the Spanish appropriation of the lower Picuris watershed to create the Embudo Land Grant in...

  • The Upland Agricultural Revolution of the Fourteenth Century (2024)
    DOCUMENT Citation Only Emily Conlogue. Severin Fowles.

    This is an abstract from the "Collaborative Archaeology at Picuris Pueblo: The New History" session, at the 89th annual meeting of the Society for American Archaeology. This paper reports preliminary results from intensive surface mapping and test excavations of precolonial agricultural systems at Picuris Pueblo. Our work alongside collaborators from Picuris has uncovered one of the largest continuous agricultural systems in the northern Rio Grande region. After five field seasons of mapping...

  • Vecinos: The Symbiotic Relationship between Picuris Pueblo and Its Indio-Hispano Neighbors (2024)
    DOCUMENT Citation Only Levi Romero.

    This is an abstract from the "Collaborative Archaeology at Picuris Pueblo: The New History" session, at the 89th annual meeting of the Society for American Archaeology. This presentation seeks to capture the rewards of a neighboring progression that moves away from past conflicts toward reconciliation forming a new history between the Pueblo and Indio-Hispano people. Inter-communal exchanges between the Spanish and Pueblos helped them to endure droughts, famines, diseases, and the eventual...