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The Enshrined Pueblo: Villagescape and Cosmos in the Northern Rio Grande

Published online by Cambridge University Press:  20 January 2017

Severin M. Fowles*
Affiliation:
Department of Anthropology, Barnard College, Columbia University, New York, NY 10027

Abstract

This paper investigates the material construction of Pueblo cosmology in the northern Rio Grande during and following the emergence of large aggregated villages at the end of the thirteenth century A.D. My central claim is that villages and the landscapes that surrounded them were mutually constitutive and need to be viewed holistically as components of integrated villagescapes that linked the dwellings of the living to the dwellings of ancestral spirits, and the social order of the village to the spatial order of the cosmos. "Village aggregation," in this sense, emerges as a misnomer given the radical geographic extension of ritual practice and constructed space that went hand-in-hand with residential agglomeration. I begin by synthesizing ethnographic evidence of Tewa and Northern Tiwa sacred geographies, paying close attention to the distribution and interpretation of archaeologically visible shrine features. I then use this ethnographic understanding as a basis for interpreting the archaeological evidence of the extensive complex of shrine features surrounding T'aitöna (Pot Creek Pueblo), one of the northern Rio Grande's earliest large villages.

Résumé

Résumé

Este ensayo investiga la construcción material de la cosmología Pueblo al norte del Rio Grande durante y después de la aparición de grandes aldeas juntadas a finales del siglo trece A.D. Mi declaración central es que las aldeas y el paisaje que las rodeaba eran mutuamente constituídas y deben ser vistas holísticamente como componentes de aldepaisajes que enlazaron las viviendas de los vivos con las viviendas de los espíritus ancestrales, y el orden social de la aldea con el orden espacial del cosmos. La "adición de aldeas", en este sentido, surge como un nombre inapropiado dada la radical extensión geográfica de prácticas rituales y del espacio construído que iba mano a mano con la aglomeración residencial. Inicio sintetizando la evidencia etnográfica de Tewa y la geografía sagrada del norte de Tiwa, poniendo atención a la distribución e interpretación de detalles del santuario arqueológicamente visibles. Luego, uso este entendimiento etnográfico como base para interpretar la evidencia arqueológica del extenso complejo de santuarios alrededor de T'aitöna (Pot Creek Pueblo), una de las aldeas amplias más tempranas del Norte del Rio Grande.

Type
Articles
Copyright
Copyright © Society for American Archaeology 2009

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