Tewa History and the Archaeology of the Peoples

Summary

According to tradition, soon after emergence into this world the Tewa were split into two peoples – the Summer and Winter – and were tasked with finding the "middle place," or the location of their eventual historic villages. The Summer People traveled along the Jemez Mountains practicing agriculture, and the Winter People journeyed along the Sangre de Cristo Mountains eating wild game. On their travels southwards the people stopped twelve times and these are represented as ancient villages. Eventually the Peoples came together at large sites in the heart of the Tewa homeland. The Tewa view the creation of their society as the amalgamation of disparate people. In light of what we know about the late prehistory in the Southwest – as a time of dramatic reorganization, coalescence, and transformation – is it possible that the Tewa are remembering the coming together of people with different identities, memories, and histories? In this paper we examine the various Pueblo settlements on both the east and west sides of the northern Rio Grande before the coalescence of Tewa society, and seek, through the lens of Tewa cosmogony, to understand the identities of the various peoples who eventually negotiated the Tewa world.

This Resource is Part of the Following Collections

• Society for American Archaeology 82nd Annual Meeting, Vancouver, BC (2017)   •
• Pueblo Movement and the Archaeology of Becoming

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Record Identifiers

Abstract Id(s): 17018