This article will discuss the sixth and last episode of season 8 of the tv show Game of Thrones (S8E6). Released in April 2019, this last season raised numerous fan critiques, notably concerning the choice of Bran the Broken as King of the Six Kingdoms.
But, you’re probably wondering why such a subject ends up being discussed on this forum dedicated to archaeology— and Gallina archaeology in particular. Here is why: as a student in the field, I quite enjoyed the ending that was proposed by the writers of the series. Why? Because the monologue of Tyrion Lannister in front of the assembly of lords and ladies of Westeros to propose Bran the Broken as King can be interpreted as a tribute to the importance of History and Archaeology to understand our present and lead our future.
Original picture by HBO
To refresh your memory, I joined to this post the link to the scene and the transcript of the monologue of Tyrion:
“Tyrion Lannister: I have had nothing to do but think these past few weeks, about our bloody history, about the mistakes we’ve made. What unites people? Armies? Gold? Flags? (shaking his head) Stories. There’s nothing in the world more powerful than a good story. Nothing can stop it. No enemy can defeat it. And who has a better story than Bran the Broken? The boy who fell from a high tower and lived. He knew he’d never walk again, so he learned to fly. He crossed beyond the wall, a crippled boy, and became the three-eyed raven. He is our memory, the keeper of all our stories: the wars, weddings, births, massacres, famines, our triumphs, our defeats; our past. Who better to lead us into the future?”
Tyrion suggests Bran should be king because the powers of the three-eyed raven enable him to see into the past of Westeros, and into the future as well. Bran is thus the guardian of the History of the people of Westeros, and is according to Tyrion the most fit to lead thanks to his knowledge of the past and his visions of the future. Tyrion thus values History as a guide for the present and the future of his world. He sees the absolute historical knowledge of Bran as a way to avoid repeating mistakes that have been made in the past. Tyrion also considers History as the only binding agent between humans. Even though the houses of Westeros are often in open conflict, they are all in a way linked to one another by their history: be it by “the wars, weddings, births” etc.
Much of what Tyrion argues for in this monologue can be applied in our world. Even if no one has the supernatural power of seeing the past, our History is still accessible to us through oral histories (knowledge of events that occurred in one community and that is passed down verbally for generations), written histories, and archaeological data. Written histories are translated and studied by historians. Archaeological data are obtained by archaeologists when excavating and are interpreted in the most objective way possible. What distinguishes historians and archaeologists is that the former study written texts and imagery left by a culture or describing a culture, while the latter study the material remains of past human societies. Together, historians and archaeologists aim at reconstituting the past in the most accurate and objective way possible. Thanks to the knowledge maintained in oral histories, texts, and archaeological interpretations, we can now look into some of our past (almost) like the three-eyed raven. Even though we cannot visualize past events as well as Bran does, we at least know of their existence.
Archaeology is therefore important as it enables us to access our past and retrace our History. It is essential for human societies to know about their past for the following reasons.
First, History is an important element in the building of identities. A common ancestry or History can provide a sense of belonging to a community and can be supplemented by an attachment to a place. National identities, for instance, are often built on a historical narrative that is considered to be shared by a large number of citizens. Such narratives can exclude regional or local identities to favor social and cultural cohesion within the nation by omitting events in the narrative. Such omissions can be pointed out by scholars or clarified by new archaeological research. This way, local communities can claim their past and reaffirm their identity.
Second, like Tyrion argued, History unites people. The oral histories, written histories, and archaeological data have helped us retrace the history of our species from the origins, through different cultural stages and up until nowadays. As human beings, we are defined by our past and united by it beyond our cultural differences. Keeping the record of our past is a way to show our existence in this world. Actually, this is well illustrated in S8 of Game of Thrones when the Night King targets solely Bran to erase any record of the History of the people of Westeros and therefore of their existence in their world.
Third, the mistakes we have made in our past can be avoided by learning from them. That is what Tyrion proposes when he suggests Bran should be king. He considers that his knowledge of the past makes him more able to find solutions to their contemporary problems. This would also be the case in our world. The study of past societies and of the systems they put in place to overcome external and internal pressures can help us find new ways to approach the major problems of this century (climate change, overpopulation, increasing globalization, large population migrations, the rise of far-right politicians, and on and on and on). The key to the future is found in the past. It is possible to “break the wheel” by avoiding repeating the same mistakes over and over. And who better to lead us into the future than History?
Gallina murals come in two forms; geometric and figurative. Frequent geometric patterns that appear are vertical paneling, banded lines, and pennant-like designs. These geometric motifs are often paired with floral figures, such as sunflowers, spruce trees and potentially yucca. The aim of my research is to look for similarities in stylistic elements between murals, ceramics and rock art, as this could shed light on the ways the Gallina interpreted their worlds, and the shared design characteristics across their various mediums; whether that’s crafting pots or decorating houses.
Stylistic similarities between one of the murals at the Cerrito site and the pottery vessel on display at Ghost Ranch. We were having a gander around the Gallina section there when I came across this pot. I double took.
A visit to the Ghost Ranch museum, Abiquiu, revealed the similarities in design choices across walls and pots. Aside from a few minor differences, the composition, choice and shape of elements in the vessel below and the murals are strikingly similar (fig. 1). This vessel is from Rattlesnake Ridge and the similar mural designs are from Cerritos, which could show a high-resolution example of a connection between the sites. This vessel is not documented in prior Gallina literature, and without a visit to Ghost Ranch, it could have never appeared in my research.
Another interesting motif present in Gallina murals across at least three sites is the concentric circle (fig.2). Going on a weekend excursion revealed that the concentric circle is also present at Chaco Canyon, as seen on a stroll between Chetro Ketl and Pueblo Bonito. However, this rock art also has a zoomorphic figure built up from the concentric design, meaning it’s not the mirror image of those seen in the Gallina Region. Nonetheless, the same raw design elements are still there, which presents an interesting comparison between designs in the Gallina region and at Chaco. Although, you could say that the concentric circle is an innate human design motif, for example a phosphene, which is a light pattern originated within the eye and brain (think spirals, lattices, waves etc.). Therefore, it would make sense that these patterns appear in rock art designs in multiple places, and spiral designs have been drawn by other local indigenous groups in the region.
Examples of the concentric circle design at Gallina sites (top left, top right, and bottom right), and at Chaco Canyon (bottom left). This design has been recorded at the Evans site, Rattlesnake Ridge as painted artwork, and as a rock engraving at an unnamed Gallina site, kindly made known to me by one of the wildland fire team at the Cuba Ranger District.
Being present in the Southwest on the GLOH project has added a whole new suite of knowledge to my research external to academic literature, involving trips to the sites and museum themselves, and by contacting and conversing with many helpful people along the way.
Sources
Bellorado, B. A. (2017). The Context, Dating, and Role of Painted Building Murals in Gallina Society. Kiva, 83(4), 494-514.
Hibben, F. C. (1939). The Gallina Culture of North Central New Mexico. Unpublished Dissertation. Havard University, Cambridge.
Lange, C. (1956). The Evans site and the archaeology of the Gallina region, New Mexico. El Palacio, 63, 72-92.
Ortman, S. G. (2000). Conceptual metaphor in the archaeological record: methods and an example from the American Southwest. American antiquity, 65(4), 613-645.
Reichel-Dolmatoff, G. (1978). Drug-induced optical sensations and their relationship to applied art among some Colombian Indians.
Simple question right? To gain information about the past, of course. Why? Well, because it interests us. But, why?
This is called the “why” game. You can keep asking “why”, “why”, “but, why” after everything someone says, quickly spiraling down into the irritating, infinite chain of back-and-forth questions and answers. Kids do it all of the time . . .
. . . and adults should do it more often.
Okay, maybe don’t do that, it’s annoying . . . but, we already kind of do! We just use academic writing and intellectual thought as a facade for this “why” game.
So why do we ask these questions? Like, who cares. Well, why not? We ask questions because we can. It’s what makes us human. It sets us aside from any other species in the animal kingdom.
There are apes — the species that are known to have some close common ancestors — that have been taught to use sign language to communicate with us. And while they can do things like answer questions and even express thought and emotion, they have never once been observed to ask a question.
Asking questions is something that is unique to humans. But it doesn’t only make us unique from any other species, it also makes us unique as individuals. People express themselves with things like the clothes they wear or the music they listen to, but can also do so with their knowledge, their interests, the things they know about, the stuff they like, the questions they ask.
As much as these characteristics can emphasize someone’s unique identity, they can also bring people with these same characteristics together. This unified group of people will have created a group identity, maybe even without them realizing it.
During my fieldwork with the Gallina Landscape of History Project, I realized that the distinct group identity of isolation and non-conformism to other Ancestral Puebloans of the historic people we are researching may have been the outcome of a question, as well. The process of separation may have initiated simply from a question that could have gone along the lines of “Why should we conform?”.
So why do archaeologists ask questions? Why are we so fascinated by the past? It’s because we like it, because we are like it. Humans from the past and present are in many ways not very different from one another. The above question that the Gallina may have asked doesn’t sound very much different for the question archaeologist may be asking “Why didn’t the Gallina conform?”. While we will never actually know what exactly the past people’s intentions and what went on in their minds in many ways asking questions may bring us closer to those who have lived before us as they did the exact same thing themselves.
When involved in any project, I am reminded about a statement Dr. Raymond Thompson made in a past article of Glyphs(Arizona Archaeological and History Society 2015) in regard to the differences and similarities between looters, collectors, avocational and professional archaeologists. Dr. Thompson stated that we are all “pot hunters” in one way or another, with the looters being those who excavate simply for greed and prosperity, without regard for preservation or research.
Currently, in Feature 4 of the site being excavated during the Gallina Landscapes of History Project conducted by Dr. Lewis Borck in northwestern New Mexico, we are faced with at least three previous phases of survey and excavation – two by “professional archaeologists” in the 1960s and 1970s and one more recently by obvious “looters” with limited knowledge of the Gallina-area culture and architecture. One of my tasks this field season was to continue clearing fill dirt and debris that was a combination of backfill from archaeological excavations and discarded looter dirt.
When artifacts are encountered, it is unclear whether they actually originated in Feature 4 or if they are from nearby adjacent looted features and discarded into Feature 4 by the looters (or even previous archaeologists) just to get “the stuff” out of the way of their careless digging. As I continued clearing this mish-mash of fill away from the beautifully plastered north wall of Feature 4, two large, flat metates were encountered on the prepared-surface floor that would have been underneath a bench that was destroyed during previous activity. This was in the northwest corner of the unit house.
The western most metate
The eastern most metate.
The metates were placed end-to-end next to the north wall. The first metate encountered shows use-wear and was placed wear-side down. The second metate, found closest to the northwest corner, appears to be unused. Laying parallel to the second metate was a large two-handed mano, again placed use-wear side down in soft fill consisting of loose dirt and burned corn. While we can’t say for certain that these artifacts were originally found in Feature 4, the uncovering of these objects do raise many questions as to what their positioning can tell us in regard to past desires to preserve and protect:
1) Did the early professional excavators uncover these objects in Feature 4 and carefully place them in a way so that they would be protected and preserved?
2) Why didn’t the early professional excavators collect the objects? The condition of all three artifacts are pristine, and the shape and size of the metates might indicate they were for uses other than grinding corn and thus unusual for the Gallina area.
3) Did the looters “miss” these objects? The nearby looters “pit” is very obvious, as it dug through the flagstone floor of Feature 4 for about 40 centimeters. One could reason that if the looters had encountered these artifacts, they would have a) taken them; or b) discarded them carelessly outside of the unit house, thus causing a considerable amount of damage to the objects. Or, did the looters have a momentary desire to preserve these objects by carefully placing them against the wall, covering them up and leaving them behind?
4) Could these artifacts be in their original positions in Feature 4, placed by the early inhabitants in a way to honor and revere their uses?
Early professional survey and excavation notes on Feature 4 are rare, with little to no information given as to what was collected or the basis for the early excavation platforms. While this can be frustrating when working in a feature that has been previously excavated and then looted afterwards, we can be very thankful for the care that was taken by others to preserve this part of the archaeological record. I am privileged to be able to share in that part of the story, and know the Tale of the Two Metates (both will undergo starch grain analysis for the project) will continue to tell us more in the future about Gallina culture, the peoples of the past who made this breathtaking region their home, and the previous “pot-hunters” who were here before us.
Today, I’ve written on paper made from trees, and eaten ground–up legumes spread on ground-up, risen wheat grains. I’ve enjoyed the shade of ponderosa pines and the scent of sagebrush, eaten an apple and disposed of the seeds, and depended on my cotton bandana to keep the gnats off of my neck. I’ve also poured over seven hundred year–old corn kernels. Each of these ‘plant-based’ activities tell a story of who I am: what I like to eat, how I live my life, and the archaeology that I do.
Charred corn cobs found on the surface of our excavation site this season! These cobs fused together into this blob of corn when they burned.
As a paleoethnobotanist, I study plant use in the past. Paleoethnobotanists study everything from whole fruits to microscopic phytoliths and starch grains. I focus on “macro” remains, which means I mostly study seeds and wood. These preserved over time by carbonization or burning. I spend a lot of my time in the field collecting charcoal from our excavation screens and running liters of excavated dirt through a flotation tank.
After pieces of charcoal have been pulled out of excavation screens and floated through our machine to remove them from the dirt, I will identify seeds, wood charcoal, and other plant parts. Knowing which plants are present at these Gallina houses will allow me to think about how people here dealt with them.
GLOH project members use a flotation tank—built in the field!—to separate out floating pieces of tiny charcoal from sediment. The water is brown because this machine recycles water, which makes flotation more responsible in the dry Southwest.
Plants are important in human lives and communities. We need to eat them in order to survive, but they are useful and meaningful in other ways, too. In contemporary New Mexico, green chile and red chile display personal preference and proud tradition. We use certain firewood because it’s available, sure, but also because it burns well or because it makes grilled meat taste better. We add spices and sweetening to our personal tastes, and the tastes of the people we feed. Whether in the city or the woods, we live with plants. Their smells, sights, and shade are the backdrop of our lives. To me, the oaky forests and ferns of New England will always be home, though I am now a more regular visitor to the ponderosas and cacti. The questions I ask depend on the assumption that plants meant something to people in the past as well.
So, how can we think about the relationships that Gallina people had with plants? What did they eat? What did they like to eat? What type of wood was right for building, and what type was right for burning? How and why did they include gathered food in their corn–rich lifestyles? We can’t ask them, but the charred bits left behind can say something.
A bag of charred corn kernels from a dense excavation unit. The tinfoil protects delicate corn cobs and wood charcoal in this very full bag!
First of all, Gallina sites, especially those that burned full of stored food, are packed with corn. Corn is a staple of the ancestral pueblo Southwest at large, but the density at these sites is exceptional. Also informative are the burned pieces of roof daub that we find in excavation and on survey with the bark of latillas and vigas still impressed in them. We’ve even seen evidence of agricultural terracing this summer on survey, which gives us a hint about how and where food and other domesticated plants were being grown.
Besides corn, we’ve also seen charred beans and a charred juniper berry in the excavation screens, but we’ll have to wait until I look at our flotation samples under a microscope to know more. I’m excited to learn more about firewood selection and to find out what wild plants and tasty seasonings entered Gallina hearths and storage. With a firm understanding of Gallina plants in hand, I can start thinking about how these plants took part in the lives of Gallina people—as tastes, traditions, sustenance, and so much more.
I’m currently writing up my Masters thesis and am conducting a stylistic analysis on Gallina ceramics and painted building murals. Deciding against the conventional route of summarising my research in a 300-word 100-metre sprint to you guys, I wanted to communicate the kinds of imagery that the Gallina painted on their pots and walls using an artistic approach. So, I aimed to do something completely new to me and write a ’60s Folk style song inspired by what you would see on Gallina rocks, walls and pots, as well as weaving in information from the academic literature about the political decisions of the Gallina in early first millennium AD New Mexico, especially in relation to the changes in social organisation going on in the wider Four Corners region. I also recorded the song using a cheap, yet mighty, resophonic guitar (see picture), that I picked up from Main Street Music from the city of Aztec. This type of guitar is commonly used in blues, bluegrass and country and the metal resonators give it that distinctive twang that’ll make me miss the Southwest even more! But hey, it’s nice to bring a piece of the place home.
A Hen’s Song
Drifting geese sail up high,
Pine trees whirl, pennants fly,
Infinite circles pass me by,
A thunder's blade splits the sky.
Chequer banquettes, quadrupeds,
Painted panels and sunflowers heads,
On the plaster of these humble walls,
Where the tale of those who left be told.
To the west, my love, most men drone,
Cast in sand and permanent stone,
Are the many stories shaped by wealth,
Devout souls controlled through stealth.
A river's spell floods throughout,
Turquoise, shells, plumes, Cacao,
Yet who'll stay to break a cry,
When the desert creeks soon run dry.
To the hills obscured by pine,
Beyond the Badlands ridged and striped,
Revel back to our ancestral way,
Fine teachings for children of clay.
The project I have been working on in New Mexico is focused on a unique regional sphere of archaeology labeled Gallina. Named for a proximity to the Rio Gallina, the area is characterized by unusually large, single-family, residential structures, called unit and pit houses. Pottery is decorated with basic designs applied with a carbon based paint. The most common food found is corn, although beans and various other plants are found in smaller quantities. Archaeology shows that many of the structure were intentionally burned, either as a ritual closing or, less often, in acts of violence. By itself, none of these facts are unique in the Southwest. The dates of the Gallina region are what make the research unique: the houses were made between 1100 and 1300 CE, just after the height of “Great House” architecture made famous by Chaco Canyon and after most other people had moved into large, apartment like architecture.
Finger pinched appliqued rim sherd from the Gallina region. Here, people often create stark relief indentations through finger pinching instead of just using their finger tips to create more subtle indentations. There are meanings behind these differences in cultural actions.
The characteristics of the Gallina region are different than the rest of the archaeology in the region, creating a complex and multi-faceted debate among archaeologists. The many aspects of these discussions are fascinating, yet unfortunately the richness of research potential in the area is ignored by how Southwestern archaeology is presented to public audiences. In a general exhibit or article about Southwestern archaeology, the Gallina region is usually ignored altogether in favor of more famous regions like Chaco Canyon or Mesa Verde. The one museum actually focusing on the region is the Ghost Ranch Archaeological Museum in Abiquiu, New Mexico. While the displays are interesting to read and easy to understand, the museum focuses on archaeologist Florence Hawley Ellis, a prominent figure of anthropology who practiced in the mid twentieth century. This presentation cements Gallina archaeology as it was in the past rather than how it is understood in the present. In the Southwest, there are no avenues for the public to understand contemporary archaeology in the Gallina region – instead they are shown past practices or led to skip Gallina sites all together.
I have avidly participated in museum programs since I was young, learning about excavation in fake paleontological digs and learning about history in places as big as the Met and as small as a room in the local library. Now, three-quarters of the way through a bachelor’s degree, the difference between learning through museums and learning through traditional academia is stark. The latter is expensive and dense, only available to those within an academic institution, while the former is meant for anyone with the ability to walk through the front doors. A system that separates public and academic knowledge inherently restricts information in the process. As academic issues become more complex, public interpretation is increasingly boiled down to Chimamanda Ngozi Adichie’s “single story”.
In a TED talk entitled “The Danger of a Single Story,” Adichie delivered a powerful and poignant speech about the danger of imposing a single perception onto a community or place. Published in 2009, as of 2019 the talk is closing on 5 million views on YouTube and is commonly used in schools, colleges, and workplaces. As a writer, Adichie focuses specifically on western literature, and how a single repeated story of Africa portrays the diverse continent in a narrow lens as pitiful and underdeveloped. She shows how the ability to create a single story from a cacophonous array is inherently linked to social, economic, and political power.
For the past five hundred years, power in the Americas has been controlled by colonial groups. In the United States, the single story of native peoples is one of replacement, relocation, or removal. Rarely are native nations discussed as living, evolving communities facing the oppressive history of settler-colonialism along with pressures of modern global society (for example, see https://blog.americananthro.org/2018/11/22/the-miseducation-of-the-public-and-the-erasure-of-native-americans/). Part of the work being done in the field of Indigenous archaeology is figuring out a way to shift the focus away from the single story to a format that is more inclusive and representative of contemporary native nations. Undoing the long history of misrepresentation is essential for the future of the discipline, yet resolving the differences between complicated and multilayered histories is often too difficult and they become excluded from the single-story narrative that the media and the academy make available to the public. This exclusion increases the pre-existing gap between academic and public literature.
Single stories in archaeology are perpetuated by an increasing gap between information available to research academics and information easily available to the general public. In the process of making information publicly accessible, it is boiled down to the simplest and most interesting terms, thus loosing essential components of research that are essential for complex understandings. A single story of Indigenous American archaeology reiterates the single story of native peoples on this continent. It is a story born out of oppression and violence, and one that continues to negatively impact communities to this day. Although difficult, it is not impossible to change the story. A better public understanding of research disciplines such as archaeology would allow for more broader and more inclusive discussions, helping to eliminate the single story as well as educate a wider scope of society.
In what is today northwestern New Mexico, the vast landscape of mesas, sage flats, Ponderosas, arroyos, and impressive stone outcroppings, have stood solemnly for millions of years. In the impressive terrain, there is a sense that the history of the place is almost palpably infused in the landscape. And it is hardly surprising to note that people have left a considerable mark. It is not obvious to the casual observer, but looking out at the landscape, it is possible to see these often-subtle impressions. A slight depression in the earth, a scatter of chipped stone, a change in soil color. The land is a witness, yet it is often difficult to obtain and to interpret this testimony of life in the past.
Archaeology as a discipline has been mired in major arguments about methodology and theory for the past few decades. Native Americans and non-native Archaeologists have both expressed profound frustration at the archaic and arbitrary nature of archaeological practice. The “old” manner of doing archaeology is hinged upon the belief that there is one correct interpretation of the archaeological record, that a skilled archaeologist can use the scientific method to observe all of the facts of a site, and can then determine that correct interpretation. This is coupled with the belief that humans as the objects of study can be fully understood by documenting and analyzing the physical trace of their presence.
Archaeologists have had to simultaneously ask a number of difficult questions. How valid is archaeological knowledge? Archaeology involves taking a minute sample of the physical remains of a culture, subjecting these to a small number of tests and then using these to make inferences about a foreign culture from the ancient past. In addition to this, the researchers are subject to pressures which affect their work. Pressures to publish information, regardless of its quality. Pressures to find sites and data which appeal to contemporary American (generally more Anglo-American) society. Pressures to conduct research that will receive funding from universities which want research they can boast about.
These pressures have had a great effect upon how research is conducted across the landscape. Just as rural regions can be ignored in modern politics, less densely populated regions are often ignored in the politics of academia. For instance, famous, densely populated culture-areas such as Chaco Canyon and Mesa Verde are much more studied than some of their contemporaneous neighboring groups. Among the large grouping of cultures who are the ancestors of today’s Pueblo groups, the material remains of the people who built the Great Houses at Chaco Canyon are probably the most well-known. But there were many other ancestral Puebloan groups throughout the Four Corners region. “Developments such as the Sinagua, Virgin, Fremont or Gallina were long interpreted as the frontiers of Chaco, spinoffs, satellites, rogue states or backwards communities”(Bremer, 2017) This highlights some of the problems in current archaeology. The massive great-houses and cliff dwellings hog the spotlight, and are studied over and over again, while we lack basic data from most of Gallina and other cultural regions which don’t have the wow-factor to draw museum crowds (Borck 2017).
Archaeologists tend to categorize past cultures into familiar groupings. We want to see empires, kingdoms, municipalities with administrative centers and clear boundaries between groups. But this is not Europe, and that is not how this continent is organized. We chop up the landscape into artificial ‘sites’ based on how densely artifacts can be seen from the surface and ignore the space in between. After all we’re looking for lost cities aren’t we?
Lewis Borck has noted how the tendency to view the map in terms of positive and negative space (as cities, and the big empty places in between cities) is based in this desire to find hierarchical, “sexy” societies with colossal structures. “Many of these frontier and borderland zones in the Greater American Southwest —these non-places—are often non-hierarchical, or at least less hierarchical than many areas in the Chacoan World. Some of these non-places even prefer a more traditional style of architecture. Places like the crater houses around Chimney Rock (Chuipka 2011), the Gallina, the Valdez Phase near Taos (Boyer 1997; Fowles 2010), and Homol’ovi Pueblo III pit house communities (Barker and Young 2017) often get labeled as “Out-of-Phase,” as though they failed to predict the eventual rise of the Pecos Classification System or the Northern Rio Grande Sequence. This highlights one of the major underlying processes for the construction of “sexy,” the construction of archaeological popularity, in archaeology. Things that look more like us, get more attention. And in the US Southwest at least, hierarchy is sexy (Borck under review).” (Borck, 2017)
Archaeology may be strongly influenced by cash, but that doesn’t dictate that archaeologists must all follow the trend to study popular topics. In fact there are a myriad of people studying such obscure topics as Gallina paleo-ethno-botany. These folks are doing the real hard work; laying out the course for future researchers to study these relatively unexamined areas. And to their credit, these researchers are trying to include many sources of knowledge in their work.
Figure 1: Map showing direction of nonlocal ceramics in the Gallina Region. From Borck and Simpson 2017 and Borck 2018. Image by Catherine Gilman https://doi.org/10.1080/00231940.2017.1391155
Contrary to the past model, where the expert archaeologist (normally upper-class, middle-aged, white males) dictated fact to the poor benighted non-initiates into PHDdom, they are utilizing Native knowledge in their work. For example, Lewis Borck is seeking to create a dialogue where Native oral traditions and academic knowledge can become complementary. To paraphrase his words, he is of the belief that historical events can be viewed from numerous perspectives, which are not necessarily contradictory. There is essentially no single story to tell, since history is as varied and dynamic as humans are, and no one monologue will teach us the entire truth.
Recognizing what one author wrote about the validity of western knowledge as it relates to other forms of knowledge (specifically Native oral history) “Academic knowledges are organized around the idea of disciplines and fields of knowledge. These are deeply implicated in each other and share genealogical foundations in various classical and Enlightenment philosophies. Most of the “traditional” disciplines are grounded in cultural world views which are either antagonistic to other belief systems or have no methodology for dealing with other knowledge systems. Underpinning all of what is taught at universities is the belief in the concept of science as the all-embracing method for gaining an understanding of the world.”(Smith 2010)
Gallina may be the key to learn about Rio Grande Pueblo group’s migration from the Four Corners Region
Archaeological remains associated with the Ancestral Puebloans span a period of time from the beginning of the common era into the colonial period. During this time, most Puebloan groups moved from dispersed, subterranean dwellings known as “pit houses” into larger settlements of apartment style rectangular houses. When the Spanish arrived to the Southwest, they began calling them and those who dwelled in them ‘Pueblos’, the Spanish word for village.
There were, however, some groups who continued to live in pit houses. One notable such group are known as the Gallina (AD 1100-1300). Gallina settlements appear on high ridges throughout a number of valleys in Northwestern New Mexico. “Habitations built on ridges including pit-houses, surface houses with low-walled storage bins and ventilators oriented to the south, and small “pueblos” with thinner walls built of upright posts and adobe mud.” (Bremer, 2017)
Archaeologists had inferred from the lack of foreign trade goods, Chaco-style kivas (a circular subterranean earth-lodge used for ceremonial, religious ceremonies) and Great House structures that the Gallina were an isolated group. Since archeologists can only see the physical objects that people leave behind, they must make inferences about past people based on that. They determined that since there was little ‘archeologically visible’ contact with adjacent Ancestral Puebloan groups in the Rio Grande, Chaco and Mesa Verde areas (in contrast to the extensive sphere of influence of the Chaco Canyon Ancestral Puebloans) Gallina culture was quite isolated. “Contacts between the Gallina and these groups, as evidenced by trade ceramics, were minimal and limited to fringe areas on the northwest and south of the Gallina region.” (Seaman, 1976)
Since that time, it has emerged that this lack of imported foreign ceramics may not indicate that the Gallina were ‘isolated’, but instead that they had emigrated from around the neighboring Rio Grande, Chaco and Mesa Verde, Kayenta and Virgin regions. Lewis Borck demonstrates in his study of foreign ceramics in the Gallina Region, that non-local ceramics in the Gallina region do not originate from one direction, but instead originated from various directions and are often much older than the sites they are found on (Borck 2018). This implies, according to him, that the Gallina people may not have had a common origin but may be descended from a number of different groups from various places throughout the Southwest.
Although there appear to be no contemporary indigenous communities who claim descent from the people living in the Gallina region during A.D. 1100-1300. There are Native oral histories which may shed light on the relation of contemporary groups to this region.
It is difficult to speak of a “Gallina people” per se, based solely upon the material remains excavated in the Gallina region. “while most archaeologists would agree that the largely technological bases for archaeological culture histories are not biological or even cultural groups, the reality is a pervasive confusion in academia, legal proceedings, and the general public about what really defines groupness within the archaeological record- and how archaeological culture histories inevitably shift into “people.” Given that much of what archaeology tells us is about technology and materialism essentially, it is perfectly understandable that technology is what underlies categorizations through time.”
It is likely that the Gallina culture in the archaeological record actually consists of a diversity of different linguistic and family groups, and that the ancestors of modern Tewa and Towa groups may have passed through the region on the way to their current homes along the Rio Grande and in the Jemez mountains. What is more clear is that they migrated south. This aligns with Zuni, Hopi, Tewa and Jemez oral histories.
Sources:
Bremer, J. M. (2017). From Discovery to Explanation: The History of Gallina Archaeology. KIVA, 450-470. doi:10.1080/00231940.2017.1386814
Borck, L. (2017). Connected and Isolated A Discussion About Gallina Archaeology with no Resolutions. Kiva: Journal of Southwestern Anthropology and History, 443-449.
Borck, L. (2018). Sophisticated Rebels: Meaning Maps and Settlement Structure as Evidence for a Social Movement in the Gallina Region of the North American Southwest. In Life Beyond the Boundaries: Constructing Identity in Edge Regions of the North American Southwest
Borck, L. & Erik Simpson (2017) Identity is an Infinite Now: Being Instead of Becoming Gallina, KIVA, 83:4, 471-493, DOI: 10.1080/00231940.2017.1391155
Barker, Claire S., and Lisa C. Young 2017 Networks of Ceramic Exchange: Comparing Homol’ovi Pueblo III Pithouse and Pueblo Communities. KIVA: Journal of Southwestern Anthropology and History 83(2):183–202.
Chuipka, Jason P. 2011 The Chaco to Post-Chaco Transition in the San Juan Region: Persistence of Cultural Traditions on the Northeastern Frontier. Paper presented at the 76th Annual Meeting of the Society for American Archaeology. Sacramento, California.
Boyer, Jeffery L. 1997 Dating the Valdez Phase: Chronometric Re-Evaluation of the Initial Anasazi Occupation of North-Central New Mexico, vol. Archaeological Notes 164. Office of Archaeological Studies, Museum of New Mexico, Albuquerque.
Fowles, Severin 2010 A People’s History of the American Southwest. In Ancient Complexities: New Perspectives in Pre-Columbian North America, edited by Susan Alt, pp. 183–204. University of Utah Press, Provo.
Donald M. Julien, T. B. (2010). Paleo Is Not Our Word: Protecting and Growing a Mi’kmaw Place. In Indigenous Archaeologies: A Reader on Decolonization (pp. 163-170). Walnut Grove: Left Coast Press Inc,.
Smith, L. T. (2010). Colonizing Knowledges: Establishing the Political Superiority of Western Knowledge. In Indigenous Archaeologies (pp. 57-62). Walnut Creek: Left Coast Press, Inc.
Timothy J. Seaman Archeological Investigations on the San Juan -to- Ojo 345KV Transmission Line for the Public Service Company of New Mexico: Excavation of LA 11843: An Early Stockaded Settlement of the Gallina Phase. Laboratory of Anthropology Note Number 111 G, Santa Fe, New Mexico. 1976
When you are driving on country roads in modern-day New Mexico, you will generally see two kinds of houses: Western-Style houses and Pueblo-Style houses. It is not difficult to distinguish the two styles of houses. Western-Style houses always have pitched roofs and are usually built of wood. Pueblo-Style houses always have flat roofs and are usually built of adobes coated with adobe plaster. The coexistence of the two styles of houses is the result of the spread of Western culture into New Mexico. When Western people settled in New Mexico, they brought their architectural styles, which led to the appearance of Western-Style houses. Western-Style houses have no historical root in New Mexico, and on the contrary, Pueblo-Style houses can be traced to the Pueblo Period of indigenous culture.
Actually, the style of modern Pueblo-Style houses is also called Pueblo Revival that was developed in the early 20th century and was inspired by the architectural style of ancient Pueblos. Therefore, it shares many similarities with houses in ancient Pueblos. For example, both were comprised of thick walls made of adobes, also known as mudbricks. Then, they all had flat roofs made of wood and plaster. In practice, the two features were good adaptation to the arid climate of New Mexico. Thick walls function as a layer of insulation that keeps the inside of these houses cool because adobe, the component of these thick walls, has great thermal mass which means that houses built of adobe were more resistant to temperature fluctuation; mud, the raw material of adobes, is easily accessible to local people, which makes adobe a cheap construction material to use; the local arid environment has less precipitation, so adobes will not be easily damaged by water; moreover, flat roof was chosen because it saves more material than pitched roof, and flat roof here doesn’t easily leak here because of the lack of rainfall in this region.
Though Pueblo Revival style inherited many characteristics from ancient Pueblo houses, it is still a modern imitation of an ancient house style that should cater to modern lifestyles. The most prominent difference between Pueblo Revival style houses and ancient Pueblo houses is the role of fireplaces. In the summer of 2019, I participated in the excavation of Gallina Phase unit houses.
Figure from Borck and Simpson 2015. Image updated by Catherine Gilman from excavation images.
In the Gallina unit house, the fireplace is not only the physical center of the house but also the center of daily activities. In ancient Pueblos, a unit house only has one room, but that room has to support five major daily activities including living, cooking, dining, production and sleeping. Fireplace is the facility that is indelible for all these activities: the fireplace works as a stove when people are cooking their food. In winter, the fireplace becomes the hearth, and people tend to work, chat and sleep around the hearth to keep them warm, which makes it the center of social activities. The important role that fireplaces played in ancient Pueblo life is reflected by an archaeological study on coprolites in 2000. These coprolites were found in the hearth of a pit house in Colorado, and by analyzing the component of them, archaeologists suggest that the existence of human protein within them shows that cannibalism happened in the end of the house around AD 1200. A possible interpretation is that probably because of witchcraft persecution, people living in the house were killed by raiders who ate them and defecated in the hearth as a sign of disdain. This example demonstrates that it is because of the sacredness of fireplaces in ancient Pueblo life that the disrespect of fireplaces is identical to the humiliation of the family that lives in the house.
However, with time goes by, the central role of fireplaces is lost with the development of contemporary life. First, it is common for contemporary people to have multiple rooms, each with its specified function, in their houses. In this way, people no longer live in a house that integrates multiple functions within only one room. Modern people have living room, dining room, kitchen, bedroom and so on. Because of this, placing the fireplace within the center of the house becomes unnecessary, for the impediment of walls that separates the house into different rooms and hinders the evenly spread of heat into every corner of the house.
Second, modern technology weakens the importance of fireplaces. In the past, fireplaces are used to cook and heat, but the two functions become independent in a modern house. People now have gas cookers, microwave ovens and electric ovens to cook, and they also have modern heating system and hearth to heat. When these functions are no longer integrated into only one spot, people have more freedom to place their fireplaces. As the result, people tend to install multiple fireplaces around their house to satisfy their demand or to put the fireplaces into the most needed place.
In conclusion, from ancient unit house to modern Pueblo-Revival Style houses, there are continuations and changes. Modern people continue ancient designs because their advantage to adapt to local environment and climate. However, with the development of modern lifestyles and techniques, people also choose to give up some previous designs, like the placement of fireplaces into the physical center of the house.
While not perfect, archaeology had a very different relationship with native communities than it does now. Before the passing of NMAI (National Museum of the American Indian Act) in 1989 and NAGPRA (Native American Graves Protection and Repatriation Act ) in 1990, the relationship was mainly dominated by archaeologists and others, like historians and cultural anthropologists, that were considered professionals. Many of these professionals were not taking seriously the wishes of the modern descendants of those they were studying, particularly about how they wanted both ancestral remains (i.e. human burials) and other important cultural items to be handled.
With the passing of NMAI and NAGPRA, that power relationship became more balanced as the acts essentially gave native communities’ oral histories and voices equal weight with archaeological and anthropological evidence to decide what would happen to remains already excavated and any that would later be found in the United States. Archaeologists now have to inform local law enforcement, the state historic preservation officer and tribes that claim an area as their ancestral domain of any human remains found during excavation. The descendant communities then get to decide what happens to these remains. Does the tribe want them reburied immediately (usually after nondestructive analyses) or studied through destructive means (like DNA)?
In the Gallina region of New Mexico there are no indigenous communities who have legally claimed affiliation to the 900 to 700 year old human remains that have been found during a century of excavation. This puts archaeologists who work there in a different position than most. In the past, and still as a recent publication in Nature Communications on Chaco Canyon demonstrates, no affiliation has been interpreted as a go ahead on any study of human remains. Thus the archaeologists in the Gallina region though are faced with an ethical dilemma. Or as archaeologist Lewis Borck says, “It’s not really an ethical dilemma. Our baseline should be ‘avoidance and do nothing’ unless a descendant community is present and explicitly agrees that we can study their ancestors’ remains.”
Avoiding ground disturbance activities and doing survey based research, or focusing on previously excavated and looted/damaged sites are all ways that researchers implement an ethical archaeology and attempt to avoid disturbing human remains.
Previous image: Looted Gallina unit house that is being recorded by archaeologists. This image: Institute for Field Research Gallina Landscapes of History field school students walking to their survey block.
The Gallina were a part of the Ancestral Pueblo world and were composed of groups who migrated out of the Upper San Juan region as well as many others (see Borck and Simpson 2017). There are many Indigenous communities around Gallina that have their own way they like their ancestral remains (excavated and unexcavated) and repatriation to be handled. Many archaeologists that work on Gallina archaeology try to avoid burials altogether. This is probably one of the most moral ways of going about this seeing as many archaeologists take advantage of claims of “no affiliation” and proceed with research that indigenous groups find ethically questionable.
Archaeology has come a long way from past practices and has incorporated more ethical procedures, some of which were forced by the passing of NMAI and NAGPRA. Others have been by choice of a new generation of archaeologists, particularly those coming from within Indigenous communities. Recent archaeologists working on the Gallina society have made the choice to not take advantage of the lack of a declared affiliated descendant community and to avoid areas where there are possible burials.
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Gallina Landscapes of History 