The Lithics of Late Coalition Period Tewa Pueblos: Negotiating Tewa Society in the Rio Chama Valley

Summary

In Ohkay Owingeh’s origin tradition the Tewa peoples emerged into this world from the north and traveled south as two separate groups – the Summer and Winter people – before coming together to create a new society in the Rio Chama valley of northern New Mexico. This history parallels our archaeological understanding of diverse peoples, likely migrants from the Mesa Verde region and indigenous Rio Grande populations, who settled the Chama in the thirteenth and fourteenth centuries. However, the origin and identities of these people, as well as how they interacted and negotiated Tewa society, remains poorly understood. I address this issue by comparing two contemporaneous ancestral Tewa pueblos: Palisade Ruin and Tsiping’uinge. Although located only 8 km apart and both built in A.D. 1312, these sites differ greatly in size and architecture and raise questions of the identities of their inhabitants and relationships with one another. I specifically examine the procurement of lithic artifacts. Based on frequencies of materials these villages had different access to local and imported stone, and may have participated in independent socioeconomic networks. This suggests an agreement between archaeological data and the Tewa’s own history that Tewa society is an amalgamation of many diverse peoples.

This Resource is Part of the Following Collections

• Society for American Archaeology 83rd Annual Meeting, Washington, DC (2018)

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Record Identifiers

Abstract Id(s): 21924