Plazas, Proxemics, and Ritual Power: The Main Plaza and Ceremonial Precinct at Paquimé, Chihuahua, and Its Place in a Plaza-Pueblo World

Summary

This is an abstract from the "Humble Houses to Magnificent Monuments: Papers in Honor of Jerry D. Moore" session, at the 88th annual meeting of the Society for American Archaeology.

In his seminal article on Andean plazas, Jerry Moore (1996) characterized plazas as spaces that serve as a setting for diverse public interactions, including as arenas that help to structure verbal and nonverbal ritual communication in the context of ritually infused power dynamics. In the Puebloan and Mogollon worlds of the southwestern United States and northern Mexico after AD 1250/1300, the development of plaza-oriented communities (or plaza-pueblos) signified a new way of organizing societies amid tumultuous social and religious transformations following the depopulation of the Four Corners region. Less well understood is how the rise of the major center of Paquimé in the Casas Grandes region of northern Chihuahua contributed to this new use of space across the region as well as the ritualism through which social cohesion took form and power was legitimized. Drawing on Moore’s broader insights on plazas, I define a heretofore unrecognized public plaza space at Paquimé, examine the use of space within both the plaza and adjoining architectural units, and situate the use of this space within recent insights on the nature of Casas Grandes and Puebloan sociopolitical organization and power dynamics.

This Resource is Part of the Following Collections

• Society for American Archaeology 88th Annual Meeting, Portland, OR (2023)   •
• Humble Houses to Magnificent Monuments: Papers in Honor of Jerry D. Moore

Keywords

Spatial Coverage

Record Identifiers

Abstract Id(s): 36028.0