Continuity and Change in the Pueblo World from Mesa Verde to Santa Fe

FAIN: ES-261629-18

Crow Canyon Archaeological Center, Inc. (Cortez, CO 81321-9408)
Sharon K. Milholland (Project Director: February 2018 to January 2025)
Kathleen Stemmler (Co Project Director: September 2018 to January 2025)

A three-week institute for 25 school teachers to explore the migration of Pueblo peoples from their homeland in Colorado’s Mesa Verde region to New Mexico’s Rio Grande Valley.

World-altering challenges confronted the Pueblo Indians of the U. S. Southwest starting in A.D. 1280. They departed their ancestral homelands, migrated into the northern Rio Grande Valley of New Mexico, redefined themselves in the context of other Pueblo communities, only to be confronted by Spanish conquistadors, missionaries, and colonists intent on acquiring wealth, saving souls, and replacing the indigenous populations of New Mexico. The institute examines this history from the perspectives of two cultures (Euroamerican and Pueblo) and three academic disciplines (archaeology, ethnohistory, and oral history. We highlight a fascinating history and show how distinct academic disciplines and cultural core values interact to produce different data, epistemologies, and ultimately different reconstructions of the past. The complexities produced by the mix of academic disciplines and cultural perspectives offer opportunities to develop projects for all classroom subjects and grades.