Sophisticated Rebels: Insurgent Archaeologies in the American Southwest

During A.D. 700–1400, the Greater American Southwest was an explosive laboratory of social, cultural, and political ideas. As people grappled with how power was controlled and distributed, new notions about community grew from these struggles. It is within these complicated times that revolutions often occur and are almost as frequently lost to the ash heap of history. For this talk, Dr. Borck will discuss the Gallina region and the Salado phenomenon of the Indigenous period of the North American Southwest to understand issues of violence as well as resistance to the increasingly hierarchical religious and political situations arising in both the northern and southern Southwest. He will use 15 years of research in the Gallina region of New Mexico, including a current field school, and over a decade of research in southern Arizona as case studies to contextualize many of these ideas.