Fragments of a Mogollon Ritual Landscape in South-Central New Mexico, USA

Summary

This is an abstract from the "SAA 2024: Individual Abstracts" session, at the 89th annual meeting of the Society for American Archaeology.

Recent fieldwork in the southern and southeastern foothills of the San Mateo Mountains of south-central New Mexico has identified caves, rockshelters, rock art, non-standard settlements, and shrines and other ritual architecture located on hilltops. These finds reveal a landscape of rich cosmological significance to ancestral Pueblo Mimbres and Jornada Mogollon people during the period A.D. 1000-1400. However, this reconstructed cultural landscape is fragmented due to scattered survey coverage, our incomplete understanding of Mogollon cosmology, and lack of archeological signifiers for all landscape elements of cosmological significance. Regardless, even this fragmentary reconstruction allows us to view the intersection and interdigitation of the ritual landscape with the landscape of interaction and settlement ecology in this region in a way that site-based approaches to ritual cannot.

This Resource is Part of the Following Collections

• SAA 2024: Individual Abstracts   •
• Society for American Archaeology 89th Annual Meeting, New Orleans, LA (2024)

Keywords

Spatial Coverage

Record Identifiers

Abstract Id(s): 39454.0