Why So Blue? Color Symbolism in Ancestral Pueblo Lithics

Summary

This is an abstract from the "SAA 2023: Individual Abstracts" session, at the 88th annual meeting of the Society for American Archaeology.

While both lithics and color have a long history in archaeological research, archaeologists rarely address the importance of color in lithic artifacts. The ethnography of the American Southwest indicates that both color and lithics can play a critical role in indigenous ritual and ceremony. To explore the relationship between lithic artifacts and color symbolism, I analyzed a sample of the lithic assemblage from the Crosspatch Site. The Crosspatch Site is a large Ancestral Pueblo community center and Chacoan outlier in Southwest Colorado that dates primarily from AD 800-1100. Thousands of chipped stone tools have been recovered from the site, making it an ideal candidate for lithic studies. Particular emphasis was given to the role of lithic raw materials and color in the site's lithic procurement patterns. To provide examples of lithics in ritual contexts, oral histories were collected from people who excavated the site. The data and ethnography indicate that blue-green is an important color to Pueblo people, including those who lived at Crosspatch. This research also indicates that in some cases, color has a relationship to the landscape and long-distance trade relations. These findings have implications for future research of color in relation to stone tools.

This Resource is Part of the Following Collections

• SAA 2023: Individual Abstracts   •
• Society for American Archaeology 88th Annual Meeting, Portland, OR (2023)

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Record Identifiers

Abstract Id(s): 36917.0