Wickiups as Placemaking: Contemporary Landscape Archaeology in the Mountains of Northern New Mexico

Summary

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

This presentation examines how wickiups—light, compact wooden structures common across many times and places in the American Mountain West—reflect the conception and use of contemporary mountain landscapes. Landscape archaeology allows us to understand how people’s actions and experiences transform the physical environment from an abstract space to a meaningful place. The material evidence of placemaking lends insight into the cultures engaged in it. Northern New Mexico mountains, and especially those in public lands, have long been contested landscapes in which time spent on the land, use of mountain resources, and generational continuity don’t always match formalized ownership or governmental claims of control. Prehistoric and historic Wickiups have a recognized status in the region, but resource managers often treat contemporary examples as literally being out of place—denigrated as ahistorical, historical mimicry, vandalism or resource destruction—on New Mexico’s public lands. Study of wickiups in Northern New Mexico’s public mountains and documentation of their presence in local popular culture indicate that, instead, they can be examples of a shared, community resource; as evidence of active cultural continuity; and as reflections of how people in the region react to disrupted and degraded landscapes.

This Resource is Part of the Following Collections

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

Keywords

Record Identifiers

Abstract Id(s): 36975.0