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Title: Collaboration and Indigenous Archaeology in Abiquiu, New Mexico
Speaker: Danny Sosa Aguilar
Abstract: The community of the Merced del Pueblo de Abiquiú in northern New Mexico is surrounded by a rich deep history. Due to their strong connections to their heritage and identity to their land grant and surrounding landscape, Abiquiuseños requested an examination of the material culture found atop one of their mesas known as the Abiquiú Mesa. This project examines community-partnered questions that include: what was the Abiquiú Mesa; what material culture is present at the site; how old is the site; who occupied it, and what ties does it have with other ancestral Pueblo sites. This research addresses these questions archaeologically and stems from a larger ongoing project called the Berkeley-Abiquiú Collaborative Archaeology Project (BACA). The project's research goals are to support the Merced del Pueblo de Abiquiú in their struggle to obtain federal recognition, reassert water rights, and reclaim lost ancestral lands by providing archaeological evidence of historical ties to material culture and surrounding areas. This research does not intend to resolve all these issues but operates in conversation with them by providing archaeological evidence of pre-contact occupation. A decolonizing praxis framed by community-accountable archaeology opens a historical interpretation of regional interactions that Abiquiuseños partook in and how their landscape narratives changed through time. The community can then deploy this knowledge to identify material culture and areas of interest within the Santa Fe and Carson National Forests as part of Abiquiú ancestral pueblo history.