Thesis: Priyanka Amin-Patel

Visualizing the Past: Conservation and Interpretative Display at Pecos National Historical Park

The Ancestral Puebloan and Spanish colonial sites of Pecos National Historical Park illustrate the ways in which archaeological sites are made, not found. The legibility of excavated landscapes is shaped by two forms of intervention: first by archaeological research moderated by its objectives and data recovery method, and second by the preservation mechanisms deemed suitable to impart the values of the site to the visiting public. Though these forms of intervention into the fabric of a ruinous site can have diverging consequences, both engage on principle with the communication of meaning and significance to an academic or public audience. The century of excavation and conservation work at Pecos demonstrates that the intent of visual communication programs defined by park employees, tendentious archaeologists, the federal parks system, and even members of Congress—typically considered secondary in sequence to archaeological and conservation work—can come to define the objectives of archaeological and conservation work and profoundly shape the results and visual outcomes of these projects.