Moho Rising: Sixteenth-century Battlefields, Lived Lives, and the Creation of Archaeological and Historical Frameworks that Work

Summary

For more than 170 years, archaeologists and historians have offered a range of arguments in an attempt to locate the site of the 1541 siege of Moho. Although historical records of the Vázquez de Coronado entrada provide tantalizing clues about the whereabouts of this major battle, generations of scholars have often used an odd amalgam of description, assertion, and evidence to postulate the geographic location of this significant historical site. Carroll Riley’s interest in the deep history of the American Southwest and Mexican Northwest - like Bandelier, Hodge, Kidder, Hewett, and others before him - intersected with this persistent question. The definitive identification of Moho, and the reasons that has now become possible, would have interested him intensely. Assembling the archaeological and historical evidence to not only position Moho in space, but locate it in an historiographic milieu of ideas, and in social fabric of sixteenth-century Native-European interactions, are the primary goals of this discussion. The paper emphasizes the value of three key components in constructing successful analytical approaches to the Early Historical Period and addressing the rich veins of complexity inherent within it, including: nested scalar analyses using archaeological and other multivariate data, wide-ranging comparison, and thick prediction.

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): 20186