No CrossRef data available.
Article contents
Wealth, Status, Ritual, and Marine Shell at Casas Grandes, Chihuahua, Mexico
Published online by Cambridge University Press: 20 January 2017
Abstract
The center of Casas Grandes (or Paquimé) in northwest Chihuahua, Mexico, long has been famous for the large quantities of imported and exotic materials found there. It contains the largest cache of marine shell ever found at an inland site in prehistoric North America or Mesoamerica. Several explanations have been offered for this phenomenon, including amassing of personal wealth, stockpiling for mercantile exchange, and accumulation for use in a prestige goods context. The present paper argues that extant data do not conclusively support any of these explanations, and it offers a new interpretation of the community’s vast shell hoards. They are seen within the materialist perspective as "animate objects," forming a vast repository of supernatural power that was a central part of the community’s ritual system. This argument is extended to other features of Casas Grandes, including its reservoirs, water shrine, and bird burials.
Resumen
El centro de casas Grandes (o Paquimé) en el noroeste de Chihuahua, México, desde hace mucho tiempo ha sido famoso por las cantidades grandes de materia exótica e importada que se encontró allί. El sitio contiene la reserva más grande de concha del mar que ha sido encontrada en un sitio de Norteamérica o de Mesoamérica. Existen varias explicaciones de este fenómeno incluso acumulación de riqueza personal, surtido para intercambio mercantil y acumulación para usar en un contexto de mercancίas prestigiosas. Este ensayo sostiene que los datos existentes no apoyan conclusivamente ninguno de estas modelos y se ofrece una interpretación nueva de las reservas enormes de concha. Se sostiene que las conchas puedan ser entendidas como “obyectos ánimos” que formaban una reserva vasta de fuerza sobrenatural que fuera una parte central del sistema ritual de la comunidad. Este argumento se extiende a otros elementos de Casas Grandes incluso sus aljibes, su altar subterráneo de agua y los cientos de entierros de pájaros.
- Type
- Articles
- Information
- Copyright
- Copyright © The Society for American Archaeology 2014
References
References Cited
Andrews, E. Wyllys IV
1969
The Archaeological Use and Distribution of Mollusca in the Maya Lowlands. Publication No. 34. Middle American Research Institute, Tulane University, New Orleans.Google Scholar
Ashmore, Wendy
2008
Visions of the Cosmos: Ceremonial Landscapes and Civic Plans. In Handbook of Landscape Archaeology, edited by Bruno David and Julian Thomas, pp. 167–175. Left Coast Press, Walnut Creek, California.Google Scholar
Bender, Barbara
2002
Time and Landscape. Current Anthropology
43(supplement): 103–112.Google Scholar
Bradley, Richard
2005
Ritual and Domestic Life in Prehistoric Europe. Routledge, London.Google Scholar
Bradley, Ronna J.
1993
Mesoamerican Shell Exchange in Northwest Mexico and the Southwest. In The American Southwest and Mesoamerica: Systems of Prehistoric Exchange, edited by Jonathon E. Ericson and Timothy G. Baugh, pp. 121–151. Plenum Press, New York.Google Scholar
Bradley, Ronna J.
1999
Shell Exchange within the Southwest: The Casas Grandes Interaction Sphere. In The Casas Grandes World, edited by Curtis F. Schaafsma and Carroll L. Riley, pp. 213–228. University of Utah Press, Salt Lake City.Google Scholar
Brady, James E., and Ashmore, Wendy
1999
Mountains, Caves, Water: Ideational Landscapes of the Ancient Maya. In Archaeologies of Landscape: Contemporary Perspectives, edited by Wendy Ashmore and A. Bernard Knapp, pp. 124–145. Blackwell Publishers, Maiden, Massachusetts.Google Scholar
Brown, Linda A., and Walker, William H.
2008
Prologue: Archaeology, Animism, and Non-Human Agents. Journal of Archaeological Method and Theory
15:297–299.Google Scholar
Brown, James A., Kerbner, Robert A., and Winters, Howard D.
1990
Trade and the Evolution of Exchange Relations at the Beginning of the Mississippian Period. In The Mississippian Emergence, edited by Bruce D. Smith, pp. 251–280. Smithsonian Institution Press, Washington, D.C.
Google Scholar
Canuto, Marcello A., and Yeager, Jason
2000
The Archaeology of Communities: A New World Perspective. Routledge, New York.Google Scholar
Claassen, Cheryl
2010
Feasting With Shellfish in the Southern Ohio Valley: Archaic Sacred Sites and Rituals. University of Tennessee Press, Knoxville.Google Scholar
Cobb, Charles R.
1993
Archaeological Approaches to the Political Economy of Nonstratified Societies. In Archaeological Method and Theory, edited by Michael B. Schiffer, pp. 43–100. University of Arizona Press, Tucson.Google Scholar
Coon, Matthew S.
2009
Variation in Ohio Hopewell Political Economies. American Antiquity
74:49–76.Google Scholar
Crown, Patricia L.
1994
Ceramics and Ideology: Salado Polychrome Pottery. University of New Mexico Press, Albuquerque.Google Scholar
David, Bruno, and Thomas, Julian
2008
Landscape Archaeology: An Introduction. In Handbook of Landscape Archaeology, edited by Bruno David and Julian Thomas, pp. 27–43. Left Coast Press, Walnut Creek, California.Google Scholar
Di Peso, Charles C.
1974
Casas Grandes: A Fallen Trading Center of the Gran Chichimeca, Vols. 1–3. The Amerind Foundation and Northland Press, Dragoon and Flagstaff, Arizona.Google Scholar
Di Peso, Charles C., Rinaldo, John, and Fenner, Gloria
1974
Casas Grandes: A Fallen Trading Center of the Gran Chichimeca, Vols. 5–8. The Amerind Foundation and Northland Press, Dragoon and Flagstaff, Arizona.Google Scholar
Dobres, Marcia-Anne, and Robb, John E.
2000
Agency in Archaeology: Paradigm or Platitude. In Agency in Archaeology, edited by Marcia-Anne Dobres and John E. Robb, pp. 3–18. Routledge, New York.Google Scholar
Feinman, Gary M.
2000
Corporate/Network: A New Perspective on Leadership in the American Southwest. In Hierarchies in Action: Cui Bono?, edited by Michael W. Diehl, pp. 152–180. Center for Archaeological Investigations Occasional Paper No. 27. Southern Illinois University, Carbondale.Google Scholar
Feinman, Gary M.
2001
Mesoamerican Political Complexity: The Corporate-Network Dimension. In From Leaders to Rulers, edited by Jonathan Haas, pp 151–176. KluwerAcademic/Plenum Publishers, New York.CrossRefGoogle Scholar
Fish, Paul R., and Fish, Suzanne K.
1999
Reflections on the Casas Grandes Regional System from the Northwestern Periphery. In The Casas Grandes World, edited by Curtis F. Schaafsma and Carroll L. Riley, pp. 27–42. University of Utah Press, Salt Lake City.Google Scholar
Gillespie, Susan D.
2008
History in Practice: Ritual Deposition at La Venta Complex A. In Memory Work: Archaeologies of Material Practices, edited by Barbara J. Mills and William H. Walker, pp. 109–136. School for Advanced Research Press, Santa Fe, New Mexico.Google Scholar
Gosden, Chris J.
2005
What Do Objects Want?
Journal of Archaeological Method and Theory
12:193–211.Google Scholar
Hall, Robert L.
1976
Ghosts, Water Barriers, Corn, and Sacred Enclosures in the Eastern Woodlands. American Antiquity
41:353–359.Google Scholar
Hamell, George R.
1983
Trading in Metaphors: The Magic of Beads. In Proceedings of the 1982 Glass Trade Bead Conference, edited by Charles F. Hayes, III, pp. 5–28. Research Records No. 16. Rochester Museum and Science Center, Rochester, New York.Google Scholar
Harrison-Buck, Eleanor
2012a
Power and Identity in Archaeological Theory and Practice: Case Studies from Ancient Mesoamerica, edited by Eleanor Harrison-Buck. University of Utah Press, Salt Lake City.Google Scholar
Harrison-Buck, Eleanor
2012b
Architecture as Animate Landscape: Circular Shrines in the Ancient Maya Lowlands. American Anthropologist
114:64–80.Google Scholar
Haury, Emil W.
1978
The Hohokam: Desert Farmers and Craftsmen. University of Arizona Press, Tucson.Google Scholar
Hendon, Julia A.
2000
Having and Holding: Storage, Memory, Knowledge, and Social Relations. American Anthropologist
102:42–53.Google Scholar
Jones, Andrew M.
2012
Prehistoric Materialities: Becoming Material in Prehistoric Britain and Ireland. Oxford University Press, Oxford, UK.Google Scholar
Jones, Jeanna F.
2002
Ceramics and Feasting in the Casas Grandes Area, Chihuahua, Mexico. Unpublished Master’s Thesis on File at the Department of Anthropology, University of Tulsa, Tulsa, Oklahoma.Google Scholar
Joyce, Rosemary, and Hendon, Julia
2000
Heterarchy, History, and Material Reality: “Communities’ in Late Classic Honduras. In The Archaeology of Communities: A New World Perspective, edited by Marcello Canuto, and Jason Yeager, pp. 143–160. Routledge, New York.Google Scholar
Keen, A. Myra
1958
Sea Shells of Tropical West America: Marine Mollusks from Lower California to Columbia. Stanford University Press, Stanford, California.Google Scholar
Knapp, A. Bernard, and Ashmore, Wendy
1999
Archaeological Landscapes: Constructed, Conceptualized, Ideational. In Archaeologies of Landscape: Contemporary Perspectives, edited by Wendy Ashmore and A. Bernard Knapp, pp. 1–32. Blackwell Publishers, Malden, Massachusetts.Google Scholar
Kolb, Charles C.
1987
Marine Shell Trade and Classic Teotihuacan. British Archaeological Reports International Series 364. Oxford, UK.Google Scholar
Lekson, Stephen H.
2008
A History of the Ancient Southwest. School of American Research Press, Santa Fe, New Mexico.Google Scholar
Lesure, Richard
1999
On the Genesis of Value in Early Hierarchical Societies. In Material Symbols: Culture and the Economy in Pre-history, edited by John E. Robb, pp. 23–55. Center for Archaeological Investigations Occasional Paper No. 26. Southern Illinois University, Carbondale.Google Scholar
Lucero, Lisa J.
2008
Memorializing Place among Classic Maya Commoners. In Memory Work: Archaeologies of Material Practices, edited by Barbara J. Mills and William H. Walker, pp. 187–206. School for Advanced Research Press, Santa Fe, New Mexico.Google Scholar
McGuire, Randall H.
1986
Economics and Modes of Production in the Pre-historic Southwestern Periphery. In Ripples in the Chichimec Sea: New Considerations of Southwestern-Mesoamerican Interactions, edited by Frances J. Mathien and Randall H. McGuire, pp. 243–269. Center for Archaeological Investigations, Southern Illinois University, Carbondale.Google Scholar
McKusick, Charmian R.
2001
Southwestern Birds of Sacrifice. Arizona Archaeological Society, Phoenix.Google Scholar
McNiven, Ian J.
2012
Ritualized Middening Practices. Journal of Archaeological Method and Theory
19:4:1–36
Google Scholar
Miller, David (editor) 2005
Materiality. Duke University Press, Durham, North Carolina.Google Scholar
Mills, Barbara J. (editor) 2000
Alternative Leadership Strategies in the Prehistoric Southwest. University of Arizona Press, Tucson.Google Scholar
Mills, Barbara J.
2004
The Establishment and Defeat of Hierarchy: Inalienable Possessions and the History of Collective Prestige Structures in the Pueblo Southwest. American Anthropologist
106:238–251.Google Scholar
Mills, Barbara J.
2008
Remembering While Forgetting: Depositional Practices and Social memory at Chaco. In Memory Work: Archaeologies of Material Practices, edited by Barbara J. Mills and William H. Walker, pp. 81–108. School for Advanced Research Press, Santa Fe, New Mexico.Google Scholar
Mills, Barbara J., and Ferguson, T. J.
2008
Animate Objects: Shell Trumpets and Ritual Networks in the Greater Southwest. Journal of Archaeological Method and Theory
15:338–361.Google Scholar
Mills, Barbara J., and Walker, William H.
2008
Introduction: Memory, Materiality, and Depositional Practice. In Memory Work: Archaeologies of Material Practices, edited by Barbara J. Mills and William H. Walker, pp. 3–24. School for Advanced Research Press, Santa Fe, New Mexico.Google Scholar
Moulard, Barbara L.
2005
Archaism and Emulation in Casas Grandes Painted Pottery. In Casas Grandes and the Ceramic Art of the Ancient Southwest, edited by Richard F. Townsend, pp. 66–97. The Art Institute of Chicago, Chicago.Google Scholar
Nanoglou, Stratos
2009
The Materiality of Representation: A Preface. Journal of Archaeological Method and Theory
16:157–161.Google Scholar
Patterson, Thomas C.
2008
A Brief History of Landscape Archaeology in the Americas. In Handbook of Landscape Archaeology, edited by Bruno David and Julian Thomas, pp. 77–84. Left Coast Press, Walnut Creek, California.Google Scholar
Paulsen, Allison C.
1974
The Thorny Oyster and the Voice of God: Spondylus and Strombus in Andean Prehistory. American Antiquity
39:4:597–607.Google Scholar
Rappaport, Roy A.
1999
Ritual and Religion in the Making of Humanity. Cambridge University Press, Cambridge.Google Scholar
Renfrew, Colin
2001
Production and Consumption in a Sacred Economy: The Material Correlates of High Devotional Expression at Chaco Canyon. American Antiquity
66:14–25.Google Scholar
Richards, Charles C.
1996
Henges and Water: Towards an Elemental Understanding of Monumentality and Landscape in Late Neolithic Britain. Journal of Material Culture
1:313–336.Google Scholar
Saitta, Dean J.
1997
Power, Leadership, and the Chacoan Political Economy. American Antiquity
62: 7–26.Google Scholar
Saitta, Dean J.
1999
Prestige, Agency, and Change in Middle-Range Societies. In Material Symbols: Culture and the Economy in Prehistory, edited by John E. Robb, pp. 135–149. Center for Archaeological Investigations Occasional Paper No. 26. Southern Illinois University, Carbondale.Google Scholar
Secakuku, Farrell H.
2006
Hopi and Quetzalcoatl: Is There A Connection? Unpublished Master’s Thesis, Department of Anthropology, Northern Arizona University, Flagstaff.Google Scholar
Snead, James E.
2008
Ancestral Landscapes of the Pueblo World. University of Arizona Press, Tucson.Google Scholar
Staller, John E. (editor) 2008
Pre-Columbian Landscapes of Creation and Origin. Springer, New York.Google Scholar
Stark, Barbara L.
1986
Perspectives on the Peripheries of Mesoamerica. In Ripples in the Chichimec Sea: New Considerations of South-western-Mesoamerican Interactions, edited by Frances J. Mathien and Randall H. McGuire, pp. 270–290. Center for Archaeological Investigations, Southern Illinois University, Carbondale.Google Scholar
Strang, Veronica
2008
The Social Construction of Water. In Handbook of Landscape Archaeology, edited by Bruno David and Julian Thomas, pp. 123–130. Left Coast Press, Walnut Creek, California.Google Scholar
Stross, Brian
2008
Representation, Memory, and Power: Pre-Columbian Landscapes of Creation and Origin. In Pre-Columbian Landscapes of Creation and Origin, edited by John E. Staller, pp. 379–391. Springer, New York.Google Scholar
Taché, Karine
2011
New Perspectives on Meadowood Trade Items. American Antiquity
76:1:41–80.Google Scholar
Thomas, Julian
2001
Archaeologies of Place and Landscape. In Archaeological Theory Today, edited by Ian Hodder, pp. 165–184. Polity Press, Cambridge, UK.Google Scholar
Tilley, Christopher, and Bennett, W.
2001
An Archaeology of Supernatural Places: The Case of West Penwith. The Journal of the Royal Anthropological Institute
7:2:335–362.Google Scholar
Tooker, Elisabeth
1978
The League of the Iroquois: Its History, Politics, and Ritual. In Northeast, edited by Bruce G. Trigger, pp. 418–441. Handbook of North American Indians: Vol. 15, William C. Sturtevant, general editor, Smithsonian Institution, Washington, D.C.
Google Scholar
Townsend, Richard F.
2005
Casas Grandes in the Art of the Ancient Southwest. In Casas Grandes and the Ceramic Art of the Ancient Southwest, edited by Richard F. Townsend, pp. 1–28. The Art Institute of Chicago, Chicago.Google Scholar
Trubitt, Mary Beth D.
2000
Mound Building and Prestige Goods Exchange: Changing Strategies in the Cahokia Chiefdom. American Antiquity
65:669–690.Google Scholar
Trubitt, Mary Beth D.
2003
The Production and Exchange of Marine Shell Prestige Goods. Journal of Archaeological Research
11:243–277.CrossRefGoogle Scholar
Van Dyke, Ruth M., and Alcock, Susan E. (editors) 2003
Archaeologies of Memory. Blackwell, Oxford.Google Scholar
VanPool, Christine S., and VanPool, Todd
2007
Signs of the Casas Grandes Shamans. University of Utah Press, Salt Lake City.Google Scholar
VanPool, Christine S., and Newsome, Elizabeth
2012
The Spirit in the Material: A Case Study of Animism in the American Southwest. American Antiquity
77:243–262.Google Scholar
VanPool, Christine, VanPool, Todd, and Phillips, David Jr.
2006
The Casas Grandes and Salado Phenomena: Evidence for a Religious Schism in the Greater Southwest. In Religion in the Prehispanic Southwest, edited by Christine S. VanPool, Todd L. VanPool, and David A. Phillips, Jr., pp. 17–30. Altamira Press, Lanham, Maryland.Google Scholar
Walker, William H., and McGahee, Gaea
2006
Animated Waters: Ritual Technology at Casas Grandes, Chihuahua. In Precolumbian Water Management: Ideology, Ritual, and Power, edited by Linda J. Lucero and Barbara W. Fash, pp. 195–210. University of Arizona Press, Tucson.Google Scholar
Whalen, Michael E., and Minnis, Paul E.
1996
The Context of Production in and Around Paquimé, Chihuahua, Mexico. In Proceedings of the Third Southwest Symposium, edited by Paul Fish and J. Jefferson Reid, pp. 173–182. Arizona State University Anthropological Research Papers, Tempe.Google Scholar
Whalen, Michael E., and Minnis, Paul E.
2001a
Casas Grandes and Its Hinterland: Prehistoric Regional Organization in Northwest Mexico. University of Arizona Press, Tucson.Google Scholar
Whalen, Michael E., and Minnis, Paul E.
2001b
Architecture and Authority in the Casas Grandes Region, Chihuahua, Mexico. American Antiquity
66:651–699.Google Scholar
Whalen, Michael E., and Minnis, Paul E.
2009
The Neighbors of Casas Grandes: Excavating Medio Period Communities of Northwest Chihuahua, Mexico. University of Arizona Press, Tucson.Google Scholar
Whalen, Michael E., and Minnis, Paul E.
2012
Ceramics and Polity in the Casas Grandes Area, Chihuahua, Mexico. American Antiquity
77:403–424.Google Scholar
Wobst, Martin
2000
Agency in (Spite of) Material Culture. In Agency in Archaeology, edited by Marcia-Anne Dobres and John E. Robb, pp. 40–50. Routledge, New York.Google Scholar
Zedeño, Maria Nieves
2008
Bundled Worlds: The Roles and Interactions of Complex Objects from the North American Plains. Journal of Archaeological Method and Theory
15:362–378.Google Scholar
Zedeño, Maria Nieves, and Bowser, Brenda
2009
The Archaeology of Meaningful Places. In The Archaeology of Meaningful Places, edited by Brenda Bowser and Maria Nieves Zedeño, pp. 1–14. University of Utah Press, Salt Lake City.Google Scholar