Sacred Southwestern Landscapes

Archaeologies of Religious Ecology

Edited by Aaron M. Wright

In this volume, two dozen archaeologists and allied researchers explore the intersection of religion and landscape in the North American Southwest from ancient to recent times. Although these topics continue to gain currency in contemporary inquiry, Sacred Southwestern Landscapes is the first to study them on equal footing. The essays explore how people enmesh ecological conditions and threads of environmental information into religion, weaving strands of belief and spirituality through a topographic fabric that gives meaning to the material world.

Hailing from various academic and cultural backgrounds, contributors invoke a range of theoretical currents and methodological practices to examine how these relationships developed and evolved. Nearly all the places, people, and paradigms at play in contemporary southwestern scholarship find room among these pages, from the Sonoran and Chihuahuan Deserts to the Colorado Plateau; from diverse cultures, including Ancestral Pueblo, Mogollon, Hohokam, Pataya, Trincheras, Navajo (Diné), and Nuevomexicano; and from theoretical frameworks drawing upon phenomenology, materiality, bundling, and semiotics. This collective engagement showcases how religious ecologies can be studied from multiple perspectives and through sundry lines of evidence, leaving readers with appreciation and reverence for the rich and robust sacredness in southwestern landscapes.

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Aaron M. Wright is a preservation anthropologist with Archaeology Southwest. His collaborative work with Tribal communities has been recognized with commendations from the Arizona Governor’s Archaeology Advisory Commission and the American Rock Art Research Association. He is coeditor of Leaving Mesa Verde: Peril and Change in the Thirteenth-Century Southwest and author of the award-winning Religion on the Rocks: Hohokam Rock Art, Ritual Practice, and Social Transformation.

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Table of Contents:Table of Contents:
List of Figures
List of Tables
Preface

Chapter 1: Southwestern Landscapes, Archaeology, and Religious Ecology: An Introduction to an Intersection by Aaron M. Wright
Part I: The Southern Southwest
Chapter 2: Bringing the Landscape Home: The Materiality of Placemaking and Pilgrimage in Jornada and Mimbres Mogollon Settlement by Myles R. Miller
Chapter 3: Envisioning Natural and Built Environments as Sacred Landscapes in Ancient Casas Grandes, Mexico by Michael T. Searcy, Todd Pitezel, Steve Swanson, and Scott M. Ure
Chapter 4: Horizon Events: A Semiosis of Hohokam Attachments to the Liminal and Distant by Aaron M. Wright and Henry D. Wallace
Chapter 5: Sacred Places and Rock Art Sites in the Sonoran Desert: Defining Common Patterns by Julio Amador Bech
Chapter 6: An Ecology of the Patayan-Yuman Dreamland by Aaron M. Wright, Lorey Cachora, and Nathalie Ø. Brusgaard
Part II: The Northern Southwest
Chapter 7: Making a Homeland: Navajo Landscapes and Power Moving Around by Polly Schaafsma and William B. Tsosie
Chapter 8: Timber Importation as Pilgrimage to Chaco Canyon by Sean Field
Chapter 9: Places of Reference: Metonymy in Pueblo Landscapes by Barry Price Steinbrecher, Maren P. Hopkins, Octavius Seowtewa, and Paul Tosa
Chapter 10: Through Tewa Eyes? Exploring the Universality and Duality of Doings in Pueblo Cultural Landscapes by Samuel Duwe and Kurt F. Anschuetz
Chapter 11: Negotiating Inscription and Experience in the Sacred Landscapes of Seventeenth-Century New Mexico by Mark T. Lycett and Phillip O. Leckman
Chapter 12: Procession and Sacred Landscape among Hispanic Catholics in New Mexico by Sylvia Rodríguez
Chapter 13: Land of Re-enchantment: The Archaeology of Esotericism in New Mexico by Darryl Wilkinson and Severin Fowles
Part III: Commentary
Chapter 14: The Ladder of Inference Reconceptualized as a Möbius Strip: Reflections on Southwestern Cultural Landscapes by Kurt F. Anschuetz
Afterword: Archaeology, Religion, and Ecology by John Grim and Mary Evelyn Tucker
Appendix A: Federally Recognized Religious Places Names for Landscape Features in the Southwest

References
List of Contributors
Index