Painting as process: The context of mural production in the Puebloan Southwest

Summary

Murals have played a role in Pueblo religious practice since the AD 900s. Mural painting seems to have reached its zenith in the late 1300s to 1600s when richly detailed scenes of anthropomorphs, animals, and objects were produced at multiple sites in the American Southwest, providing glimpses of a complex ritual system. While scholars have traditionally approached these wall paintings from a motif-centered perspective, ethnographic observations of 19th and early 20th century mural painting permit a contextual analysis. In this paper, I reconstruct the ritual role and significance of Pueblo mural painting in the historic era and suggest parallels in form and function with the pre-Columbian works. In particular, I examine the significance of sequences of multiple paintings and their relevance to understanding ceremonial organization in the 15th and 16th centuries.

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This Resource is Part of the Following Collections

• Society for American Archaeology 80th Annual Meeting, San Francisco, CA (2015)   •
• Mural Painting and the Ancient Americas

Keywords

Spatial Coverage