Place as Reference: Metonymy in Pueblo Landscapes

Summary

This is an abstract from the "Sacred Southwestern Landscapes: Archaeologies of Religious Ecology" session, at the 84th annual meeting of the Society for American Archaeology.

For contemporary Pueblo people in the American Southwest, land, history, and religion are inextricably entwined. Historical events and religious beliefs manifest on the land at different physical and conceptual scales. Over time, places come to represent larger landscapes or philosophical concepts, effectively becoming metonyms for such spaces and ideas. We suggest that metonymy provides a compelling theoretical framework for understanding complex relationships between people, places, and beliefs over time. Drawing on examples that represent both built environments and natural landmarks, we examine how history, religious beliefs, and identity are metonymized at places important to members of the Hopi Tribe and Pueblo of Jemez. This form of recalling and reproducing knowledge adds to the many forms of traditional history that sustain Pueblo identity and culture.

This Resource is Part of the Following Collections

• Sacred Southwestern Landscapes: Archaeologies of Religious Ecology   •
• Society for American Archaeology 84th Annual Meeting, Albuquerque, NM (2019)

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Spatial Coverage

Record Identifiers

Abstract Id(s): 24465