Levels of Hierarchy in Northern Mexico: The Color of Ritual at Paquimé, Chihuahua, Mexico

Summary

In societies across the ancient world, incipient leadership and centralization were founded on connections to the cosmological through ancestors, origins, and other ritual practices. At Paquimé in northern Chihuahua, Mexico these ritual practices were expressed through the language of color symbolism. Color/directional symbolism is a cosmological principle that acts as a deep structure for societies in the Puebloan U.S. Southwest and Mesoamerica. Red, black, yellow, white, and blue/green become the language through which the world is created and differentiated. I contextualize the oft-discussed exotic goods found at Paquimé with the more locally available material to argue that color/directional symbolism was operative during the Medio Period. Emerging leaders at Paquimé used color to inscribed links to the supernatural onto the architecture, both public and private as part of a new political strategy during the Medio Period. Looking at the interplay between household ritual and community ritual elucidates how ritual action becomes an arena for political change.

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This Resource is Part of the Following Collections

• Society for American Archaeology 80th Annual Meeting, San Francisco, CA (2015)   •
• Household Rituals in the Ancient Americas – from Patio Groups to Pueblos

Keywords

Spatial Coverage