Ritual Closure at Point of Pines Pueblo: Forgetting Immigrant Identity and Creating a New Community

Summary

This is an abstract from the "Ritual Closure: A Global Perspective" session, at the 90th annual meeting of the Society for American Archaeology.

Beginning with Emil Haury’s (1958) brief article on the burning of the Maverick Mountain room block at Point of Pines Pueblo, archaeologists have consistently interpreted this process as an incident of inter-ethnic violence perpetrated by the locals in the Point of Pines region in order to drive away the Kayenta immigrants who had settled at the village during the late A.D. 1200s. Newly compiled data strongly indicate that the fire was, instead, set by the immigrants to ritually close a portion of the pueblo. A ceremonial structure at the site, built in the immigrant tradition, was also burned at this time, but low-visibility traces of the immigrants (e.g., burial traditions) persisted at the site for generations after the fire. The next identifiable or perhaps coeval processes in the region include the depopulation of nearby Turkey Creek Pueblo (mostly occupied by locals), a huge residential construction spurt at Point of Pines Pueblo, and the construction of a Mogollon- (local) style great kiva at Point of Pines Pueblo. The overall pattern suggests that the newcomers from the Kayenta region engaged in purposeful forgetting of their immigrant otherness and adopted the identity of local groups in the Point of Pines region.

This Resource is Part of the Following Collections

• Society for American Archaeology 90th Annual Meeting, Denver, CO (2025)   •
• Ritual Closure: A Global Perspective

Keywords

Record Identifiers

Abstract Id(s): 51435