Affectual Ecosystems of Color: Pigments and the Co-creation of Power in the Chaco World

Summary

This is an abstract from the "Political Geologies in the Ancient and Recent Pasts: Ontology, Knowledge, and Affect" session, at the 88th annual meeting of the Society for American Archaeology.

Color is a deeply pervasive element of cosmology in the Pueblo World of the US Southwest. In these rich, affectual ecosystems of chromatic metaphor, cosmological balance is achieved through nuanced relationships between plants, animals, natural phenomena, and cardinal directions. Relationships are evoked through the appropriate use of certain colors in specific contexts, especially in performances where colorful painted regalia communicates histories and elicits community well-being through chromatic metaphor. The transformation of minerals into paints to meet these needs required highly specialized knowledge, which historically, was a key foundation of Pueblo political power. In this paper, I explore how mineral pigments co-create power in the Chaco World. How do pigments affect sociopolitical realities through their potent symbolism, their unequal geologic availability, their transformations during processing, their potential toxicity? And how are these qualities manipulated or harnessed? I explore answers to these questions by examining distributions of pigments and paint production loci, and the circulation of painted media in the Chaco World, offering new insights into the rise and fall of Chaco political power. Finally, in illustrating this Chacoan case study, I will also consider the inadequacies of Western classificatory systems developed from European artistic traditions in the study of Pueblo chromatism.

This Resource is Part of the Following Collections

• Political Geologies in the Ancient and Recent Pasts: Ontology, Knowledge, and Affect   •
• Society for American Archaeology 88th Annual Meeting, Portland, OR (2023)

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Record Identifiers

Abstract Id(s): 35774.0