Haunted Paquimé and the Creation of a Magical Community

Summary

This is an abstract from the "Magic, Spirits, Shamanism, and Trance" session, at the 89th annual meeting of the Society for American Archaeology.

Human cognition both enables and limits the ways humans can interact with spirits and forces that are typically unseen or that otherwise transcend the physical world. Research in psychology, anthropology, and related fields indicates that social and physical contexts are central to activating the cognitive frameworks that facilitate spirit-human interaction, especially when paired with entheogens, physiological stress (e.g., sleeplessness, prolonged hunger, pain), and other factors that instigate altered states of consciousness. Here we explore how the built environment of Paquimé, the ceremonial heart of the Medio period (AD 1200 to 1450) Casas Grandes culture (northwestern Mexico), was intentionally formed to create environments that are cross-culturally associated with “haunted” locations that encouraged significant spirit-human encounters. This includes the use of light, the placement of burials and symbolically significant materials, and the form of the buildings themselves. These are linked to create inherently magical locations in that they have bundled objects and features that reinforce each other’s potency for representing and making accessible the spirit world. These locations consequently were distinctively primed to inspire spirit-human encounters. Examples we consider are the T-shaped ballcourt with its architectural and symbolic elaborations and other interior ceremonial spaces associated with human remains and darkness.

This Resource is Part of the Following Collections

• Magic, Spirits, Shamanism, and Trance   •
• Society for American Archaeology 89th Annual Meeting, New Orleans, LA (2024)

Keywords

Spatial Coverage

Record Identifiers

Abstract Id(s): 38012.0