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"Casas Grandes"
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Climate and Culture Change in North America AD 900–1600
Climate change is today's news, but it isn't a new phenomenon. Centuries-long cycles of heating and cooling are well documented for Europe and the North Atlantic. These variations in climate, including the Medieval Warm Period (MWP), AD 900 to 1300, and the early centuries of the Little Ice Age (LIA), AD 1300 to 1600, had a substantial impact on the cultural history of Europe. In this pathfinding volume, William C. Foster marshals extensive evidence that the heating and cooling of the MWP and LIA also occurred in North America and significantly affected the cultural history of Native peoples of the American Southwest, Southern Plains, and Southeast.
Correlating climate change data with studies of archaeological sites across the Southwest, Southern Plains, and Southeast, Foster presents the first comprehensive overview of how Native American societies responded to climate variations over seven centuries. He describes how, as in Europe, the MWP ushered in a cultural renaissance, during which population levels surged and Native peoples substantially intensified agriculture, constructed monumental architecture, and produced sophisticated works of art. Foster follows the rise of three dominant cultural centers-Chaco Canyon in New Mexico, Cahokia on the middle Mississippi River, and Casas Grandes in northwestern Chihuahua, Mexico-that reached population levels comparable to those of London and Paris. Then he shows how the LIA reversed the gains of the MWP as population levels and agricultural production sharply declined; Chaco Canyon, Cahokia, and Casas Grandes collapsed; and dozens of smaller villages also collapsed or became fortresses.
eBook
The Chaco meridian: one thousand years of political and religious power in the ancient southwest
In this return to his lively, provocative reconceptualization of the meaning of Chaco Canyon and its monumental 11 th -century structures, Stephen H. Lekson expands-over time and distance-our understanding of the political and economic integration of the American Southwest. Lekson's argument that Chaco did not stand alone, but rather was the first of three capitals in a vast networked region incorporating most of the Pueblo world has gained credence over the past 15 years. Here, he marshals new evidence and new interpretations to further the case for ritual astronomical alignment of monumental structures and cities, great ceremonial roads, and the shift of the regional capital first from Chaco Canyon to the Aztec Ruins site and then to Paquimé, all located on the same longitudinal meridian. Along the line from Aztec to Paquimé, Lekson synthesizes 1000 years of Southwestern prehistory-explaining phenomena as diverse as the Great North Road, macaw feathers, Pueblo mythology, the recycling of iconic symbols over time, founder burials, and the rise of kachina ceremonies-to yield a fascinating argument that will interest anyone concerned with the prehistory and history of the American Southwest.
eBook
Reevaluating the Suma Occupation in the Casas Grandes Valley, Chihuahua, Mexico
In 1584, Baltasar de Obregón described the people he met in the Casas Grandes Valley (CGV), Northwest Chihuahua, Mexico. He juxtaposed these “rustic” people with the sophistication of the ancient builders of Paquimé who had lived in the CGV. Seventy years later, the Spanish missionaries called the people in the CGV “Suma” and enlisted them to build Mission San Antonio de Padua de Casas Grandes. Scholars have examined Obregón's and later administrators’ accounts to argue that the Suma were a small-scale society and unrelated to the ancient people of Paquimé (~AD 1200–1430). We reevaluate this interpretation. First, we contextualize the documentary evidence within contemporary frameworks. Second, using data from the 1958–1961 Joint Casas Grandes Expedition, we compare Paquimé and Suma material culture. We argue that the Suma were likely long-term residents of the Valley, organized into horticulture villages, and exhibiting cultural practices linked to Paquimé. After critiquing previous arguments about Suma origins, we consider how this criticism relates broadly to exploring Native Americans’ reactions to colonial settings.
Journal Article
High levels of consanguinity in a child from Paquimé, Chihuahua, Mexico
Paquimé (also known as Casas Grandes), situated in northern Chihuahua between Mesoamerican and Ancestral Puebloan groups, was a vibrant multicultural centre during the thirteenth and fourteenth centuries AD. Substantial debate surrounds the social organisation of Paquimé's inhabitants. Here, the authors report on the analysis of ancient DNA from a unique child burial beneath a central support post of a room in the House of the Well. They argue that the close genetic relationship of the child's parents, revealed through this analysis, and the special depositional context of the burial reflect one family's attempts to consolidate and legitimise their social standing in this ancient community.
Journal Article
Spatial and Temporal Limits of the Casas Grandes Tradition: A View from the Fronteras Valley
This article revises the spatial and temporal boundaries of the Casas Grandes tradition associated with northwest Chihuahua, Mexico, based on new data collected in neighboring northeastern Sonora. The Casas Grandes tradition attained its greatest extent during the Medio period (AD 1200–1450/1500) followed by a dramatic demographic and political collapse. Hunter-gatherer groups subsequently occupied most of northwest Chihuahua. Data from the Fronteras Valley, Sonora, presents an alternative scenario, with a clear pattern of cultural continuity from the eleventh century to the colonial period in which sedentary farmers occupied the same landscapes and occasionally the same villages. These observations contribute to our understanding of the spread and subsequent demise of the Casas Grandes tradition in hinterland regions. For the Fronteras Valley, we infer that immigrant groups originally introduced Casas Grandes traditions and that uneven participation in a suite of shared religious beliefs and practices was common to all the hinterlands.
Journal Article
The Reality of Casas Grandes Potters: Realistic Portraits of Spirits and Shamans
Most Native American groups believed in a form of animism in which spirit essence(s) infused forces of nature (e.g., the wind and thunder), many living plants and creatures, and many inanimate objects. This animism created other-than-human persons in which spirits were fused with matter that allowed them to interact with and even influence humans. Art in Western culture tends to denote “imagination”, and many scholars studying Native American art bring a similar perspective to their analyses. However, many Native Americans do not equate art with imagination in the same way, but instead use art to realistically portray these other-than-human persons, even when they are not typically visible in the natural world (e.g., the Southwestern horned-plumed serpent). Here, we apply a cognitive framework to evaluate the interplay of spirits at various levels that were created as Casas Grandes artisans used art as a means of depicting the inherent structure of the Casas Grandes spirit world. In doing so, they created links between ceremonially important objects such as pots and spirits that transformed these objects into newly created animated beings. The art thus simultaneously reflected the structure of the unseen world while also helping to determine the characteristics of these newly created other-than-human persons. One technique commonly used was to decorate objects with literal depictions of spirit beings (e.g., horned-plumed serpents) that would produce a natural affinity among the ceremonial objects and the spirit creatures. This affinity in turn allowed the animated ceremonial objects to mediate the interaction between humans and spirits. This approach transcends a view in which Casas Grandes art is considered symbolically significant and instead emphasizes the art as a component that literally helped create other-than-human collaborators that aided Casas Grandes people as they navigate ontologically significant relationships.
Journal Article
Bringing the Inert to Life: The Activation of Animate Beings
Animist cultures around the world are based on interactions among humans and other-than-human beings. Humans are active agents in this process and often establish alliances with other-than-human beings to accomplish a variety of goals. The means of establishing these alliances is an emerging area of interest in studies of animist ontologies. We demonstrate here that these allies are often object-persons specifically made or modified by humans to have desired spiritual and physical properties. Examples of common object-persons range from domestic residences to shamanic drums to sacred bundles used for ritual activities. We further establish that object-persons go through a life cycle typically starting with a process that activates and modifies latent agency. We demonstrate this process using case studies from the North American Southwest, especially during the Medio period (AD 1200 to 1450) occupation of the Casas Grandes region of northwestern Mexico and the southwestern United States. Our primary examples are the creation of three Mesoamerican-style ballcourts and a water reservoir at Paquimé, which is the ceremonial and political center of the Medio period world. These examples reflect the underlying animistic ontology of this culture and provide a case study of the relationship between material religion and ritual practice that frames animistic religious practices.
Journal Article
Ancestors and elites
Ancestors and Elites examines prehispanic ritual behaviors characteristic of the Casas Grandes region of Chihuahua, Mexico. Gordon Rakita analyzes the archaeological data from the site with respect to broader anthropological theories regarding both religious practices and the rise of complex societies. This confluence of empirical fact and general theory allows Rakita to explore in detail the complex, reciprocal relationship between ritual practices and developing social complexity at Paquimé, one of the best-documented archaeological sites in the region.
eBook
Northwest Mexico: The Prehistory of Sonora, Chihuahua, and Neighboring Areas
This article surveys research in Northwest Mexico (Sonora and Chihuahua), with an emphasis on the Early Agricultural period to the Late Prehistoric period. Middle range societies that are diverse in scale and organization characterize this region. Significant advancements in our understanding of these societies have been made in recent years, but substantial challenges remain in building interpretative frameworks that account for both regional diversity and incorporate macroscale interactions. Topics covered in this review include the adoption of agriculture, population movements, bases of social differentiation, and interactions between organizationally disparate groups. These issues demonstrate the relevance of the Northwest to research on the organization of middle range societies.
Journal Article