Earning Their Living: Archaeologies of Ideation, Ritual, and Agricultural Practice in the Southwestern Pueblo Landscape

Summary

Agriculture among the northern Southwest’s Pueblo communities traditionally and historically was more than merely an economic activity through which the people "made their living." Steeped in ritual and informed by principles of stewardship, spiritual ecology, and ensoulment that explicate their orientation within the Natural World and their obligations to the Supernatural World, indigenous agricultural practice was literally and figuratively a key element in each individual’s everyday observation of their respective community’s spiritual belief. Interacting with their plants, soils, and water in terms of these fundamental understandings, Pueblo people "earned their living." Our discussion of draws from our ethnographic work with Tewa and Western Keres Pueblo representatives, as well as our field studies of the archaeological traces of late prehispanic and early historic agricultural fields and associated blessing features in the greater Tewa homeland of northern Rio Grande Valley and the Western Keres Culture Province of west-central New Mexico. We examine the organization of agricultural field rotation and short-term sedentism through the lens of the Pueblo cultural landscape theme of movement to contribute a richer understanding of the body of interrelated rituals metaphors expressed in the core Pueblo idea that "People are Corn."

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): 21010