Feasting and Shrine Formation at Mitchell Springs and Champagne Spring

Summary

This is an abstract from the "SAA 2019: General Sessions" session, at the 84th annual meeting of the Society for American Archaeology.

Although most archaeologists agree that large-scale feasting occurred in the prehistoric Southwest, excavations have produced little direct evidence for it. Villages where feasting has been asserted had large populations, public architecture (monumental buildings, shrines, plazas, etc.), and often deep antiquity. Recent excavations at two such sites in southwest Colorado have revealed some of the clearest direct evidence for feasting. At the Mitchell Springs and Champagne Spring site complexes, large-scale feasts appear to have been hosted by powerful households in plaza-associated buildings where special facilities were used to prepare, cook, and hold large quantities of food at a warm temperature. Over time, some feast venues acquired layers of social memory and ritual associations that reaffirmed links between residents and ancestors and the spaces they both lived upon. Many of the plaza-associated buildings where these feasts were hosted were decommissioned in impressive ritualized events that involved packing structures with important items and burning them, ritually offering meaningful property, sealing important features and structures, and/or sacrificing animals. Some of these buildings became shrines that served as venues for feasting and appear to have acted to venerate space and ancestors who lived on that space.

This Resource is Part of the Following Collections

• Society for American Archaeology 84th Annual Meeting, Albuquerque, NM (2019)

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Record Identifiers

Abstract Id(s): 22784