Cold, Drought, and Disaster: The Little Ice Age and the Spanish Conquest of New Mexico (original) (raw)
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With the Columbian Quincentenary just a few years off, the Society of American Archaeology (SAA) puzzled its role in anticipating the inevitable events that would surround the 500th anniversary of European-Native American interactions. I was a member of the Executive Committee of the SAA at the time, and the president asked me spearhead the society's efforts for observing the Columbian Quincentenary. Thanks to the support and encouragement of key SAA officers Don Fowler, Prudence Rice, Bruce Smith, and Jerry Sabloff, we were able to develop a plan. After exploring a number of options with the board, we settled upon a series of topical seminars that we dubbed Columbian Consequences. These nine public seminars, to be held over a three-year span, were designed to generate an accurate and factual assessment of what did-and what did not-transpire as a result of the Columbian encounter. We specifically tasked ourselves to probe the social, demographic, ecological, ideological, and human repercussions of European-Native American encounters across the Spanish Borderlands, spreading the word among both the scholarly community and the greater public at large. Although sponsored by the SAA, the Columbian Consequences enterprise rapidly transcended the traditional scope of archaeological inquiry, drawing together a diverse assortment of personalities and perspectives. We invited leading scholars of the day to synthesize current thinking about specific geographical settings across the Spanish Borderlands, which extend from St. Augustine (Florida) to San Francisco (California). Each overview was designed to provide a Native American context, a history of European involvement, and a summary of scholarly research. The structure was fairly simple. Each of three consecutive SAA annual meetings (in 1988, 1989, and 1990) hosted three Columbian Consequences seminars. The resulting three volumes were published by the Smithsonian Institution Press, which remarkably published each volume less than a year after the seminar papers were presented. The initial book, entitled Archaeological and Historical Perspectives on the Spanish Borderlands West (Thomas 1989), tackled the European-Native American interface from the Pacific Slope across the southwestern heartland to East Texas, from Russian Fort Ross to southern Baja California. The archaeologists involved addressed material culture evidence regarding contact period sociopolitics, economics, iconography, and physical environment. Other authors attempted to provide a critical balance from the perspectives of American history, Native American studies, art history, ethnohistory, and geography. In the intermediate volume-Archaeological and Historical Perspectives on the Spanish Borderlands East (Thomas 1990)-nearly three dozen scholars pursued a similar agenda across La Florida, the greater Southeast, and the Caribbean.
Maize agriculture is dependent on two primary environmental factors, precipitation and temperature. Throughout the Eastern Mesa Verde region, fluctuations of these factors dramatically influenced demographic shifts, land use patterns, and social and religious transformations of farming populations during several key points in prehistory. While many studies have looked at the influence climate played in the depopulation of the northern Southwest after A.D. 1000, the role that climate played in the late Basketmaker III through the Pueblo I period remains unclear. This article demonstrates how fluctuations in precipitation patterns interlaced with micro-and macro-regional temperature fluctuations may have pushed and pulled human settlement and subsistence patterns across the region. Specifically, we infer that preferences for certain types of farmlands dictated whether a community used alluvial fan verses dryland farming practices, with the variable success of each type determined by shifting climate patterns. We further investigate how dramatic responses to environmental stress, such as migration and massacres, may be the result of inherited social structures of land tenure and leadership, and that such responses persist in the Eastern Mesa Verde area throughout the Pueblo I period.
I retain all other ownership rights to the copyright of my work. I also retain the right to use in future works (such as articles or books) all or part of my work. I understand that I am free to register the copyright to my work. REVIEW, APPROVAL AND ACCEPTANCE The document mentioned above has been reviewed and accepted by the student's advisor, on behalf of the advisory committee, and by the Director of Graduate Studies (DGS), on behalf of the program; we verify that this is the final, approved version of the student's thesis including all changes required by the advisory committee. The undersigned agree to abide by the statements above.
Museum ofAnthropology, University ofMichigan £ye-wimess aceDulrts a/Spanish expeditions give a glimpse of Ihe relmionships thar developed between villa8e-lxlsed/armers in the Southwest and Iheir nomadic or semi·nomadic bison.hunling neighbors in the SQuthern Plains, but nothing about when such interaction came in/a bei//8 and .... ·hy. Ongoing work at the Henderson Sill' and Bloom Mound. two late prehislOric village sites in southeastern New Mexico, shows the emerging imeract;on between communities in the Southern Plains and Sourhwesl. Bi.fon was rlIpidly becoming a critical source oj high-qlfaliry protein as well as shields for the burgeoning Pueblo towns atong the eastern margin a/the Southwest; Southern Plains communities lIlayattiml!S have paid a heavy price/or Iheir invol~'ement ill these new/yemerging exchange relationships. as they competed with each other, sometimes violemlY.for access to bisollherds and /fading ptJrlllers.
2019
This dissertation presents the results of investigations into the archaeological, textual, and other evidence of the Pueblo Revolt period (A.D. 1680-1696), with a close focus on the events of the Spanish reconquest (1692-1696) at, Tunyo, Powhogeh Owingeh (San Ildefonso Pueblo), New Mexico. Guided by the tenets of traditional Pueblo values and Indigenous archaeology, this research examines the character and expressions of the Tewa Pueblos' assertion of sovereignty in the face of Spanish settler colonial authority. The overarching goal of this research is to present an indigenized history of events that occurred at Tunyo and in the surrounding Tewa landscape during the height of the Spanish reconquest in 1694. Adopting a place-based approach that emphasizes the ontological interdependence of time, space, and history, this research merges Pueblo oral histories, Spanish documentary accounts, ethnohistorical studies, and archaeological data. This research also addresses the false dichotomy between "history" and "prehistory," resisting the implicit assumption that European records provide the most authoritative sources of information on Indigenous encounters with settler colonialism. The core of this research involves the cartographic mapping and analyses of digital terrain models of Tunyo created by data collected in aerial photography surveys using unmanned aerial vehicles (UAVs), or drones. The evidence indicates that the Tewa people successfully created and defended alternative village sites during Vargas's siege in 1694. The Tewa adapted to Tunyo's unique geology by using innovative construction techniques that resulted in distinct village architectural patterns. Oral traditions collected at San Ildefonso and elsewhere reveal that the breadth of the Tewa resistance extended far beyond Tunyo, to places and villages previously occupied by Tewa ancestors. This study concludes that the Tewa strategies of resistance were grounded in spiritual understandings of landscape and contingent on mobility to ancestral places, not only for strategic purposes, but for spiritual reasons. Pueblo survival strategies, and the agency of people and place across time and space, are best understood through holistic analyses that incorporate Pueblo ontologies. Tewa peoples' engagements with their landscape, and with Tunyo in particular, have long been shaped by reciprocal relationships that embody and transcend the spans of history and time.