Archaeology of the Ancestors: Mesa Pueblos of the Pueblo Revolt Period
by T. J. Ferguson and Robert W. Preucel

In 1680, the Pueblo Indians united in a revolt that drove the Spanish colonists out of New Mexico for a period of twelve years. This tumultuous period was accompanied by dramatic changes in the location and form of Pueblo settlements. In several instances, new villages were constructed in defensive locations on high mesa tops. These Pueblo Revolt settlements incorporated people from different home-villages and ethnic groups into new, short-lived communities. The architecture of Pueblo Revolt villages thus embodies new developments in Puebloan social organization and community identity. In this presentation, the range of variation in the architectural form and spatial organization of eight Pueblo Revolt villages is described. The social meanings of Pueblo Revolt architecture are then explored from the perspective of space syntax and semiotic theories. The architecture of mesa pueblos offers important information about the transformation of Pueblo society in the period following the Pueblo Revolt.

T. J. Ferguson
earned a Masters of Community and Regional Planning and a Ph.D. in Anthropology at the University of New Mexico. For the last 25 years, he has conducted archaeological, ethnographic, and ethnohistorical research of Native American settlement and land use in the Southwestern United States. His studies cover the Zuni, Hopi, Acoma, Laguna, San Juan, White Mountain Apache, San Carlos Apache, Yavapai-Apache, and Hualapai Tribes. Dr. Ferguson is currently a principal in Heritage Resources Management Consultants, a private company in Tucson, Arizona, providing research services to tribal, state, and federal agencies and museums. Dr. Ferguson is the author of A Zuni Atlas (1985, with E. Richard Hart) and Historic Zuni Architecture and Society: An Archaeological Application of Space Syntax (1996), as well as numerous journal articles and book chapters. In addition to research about the Pueblo Revolt, Dr. Ferguson is currently investigating the role that traditional cultural properties and cultural landscapes play in the retention and transmission of native cultures.

Robert W. Preucel
is Associate Professor of Anthropology and Associate Curator of North American archaeology at the University of Pennsylvania Museum of Archaeology and Anthropology. Among his interests are the ways in which postmodernism and postmodernity shape the theory and practice of archaeology. He is coeditor with Ian Hodder of Contemporary Archaeology in Theory for Basil Blackwell, and is currently working on a book entitled Archaeological Semiotics for the same press.

The majority of his archaeological fieldwork has been conducted in the American Southwest. His dissertation work (at UCLA) focused on understanding the role of dual residence (field houses and pueblos) in structuring prehistoric agricultural landuse on the Pajarito Plateau, New Mexico. Most recently, he has been working with the Pueblo de Cochiti on an archaeological study of Hanat Kotyiti (Cochiti above), one of their ancestral villages occupied immediately following the Pueblo Revolt of 1680. He is presently editing a book entitled An Archaeology of the Pueblo Revolts for the University of New Mexico Press.