Landscape Meaning and Materiality among the Indigenous Wixárika (Huichol) People of Jalisco, Mexico

Summary

This is an abstract from the "Journeying to the South, from Mimbres (New Mexico) to Malpaso (Zacatecas) and Beyond: Papers in Honor of Ben A. Nelson" session, at the 84th annual meeting of the Society for American Archaeology.

Landscapes are more than just where people subsist: landscapes are inherently social entities. People create landscapes in their interactions with the environment and with each other; they conceptualize landscapes in various ways; they mediate their relationships with one another through the landscape. It is the social nature of landscapes that makes them an essential component of anthropological inquiry. Ethnographic study of landscapes reveals their role in subsistence, ritual, social organization, and identity, and may also provide insights for evaluating ancient landscapes. In this paper, I present results of an ethnographic study of landscape among the present-day Wixárika, carried out under the supervision of Ben Nelson. I describe the meanings and content of a Wixárika landscape and also suggest how they may aid our approach to the past. In short, the Wixárika landscape is imbued with a prevailing concept of dwelling which entails key practices and a materiality that is archaeologically informative.

This Resource is Part of the Following Collections

• Journeying to the South, from Mimbres (New Mexico) to Malpaso (Zacatecas) and Beyond: Papers in Honor of Ben A. Nelson   •
• Society for American Archaeology 84th Annual Meeting, Albuquerque, NM (2019)

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Record Identifiers

Abstract Id(s): 24055