The recent discovery and conservation of the waterlogged remains of several canoes, including an early complex and carved sailing canoe of East Polynesian type, provides an opportunity to examine ancient sailing technology and to address the question of how islands like New Zealand were settled

The Taos Plateau in Northern New Mexico is an expansive landscape that contains a rich material archive of 10,000 years of human use. As discussed by archaeologist Sarah Schlanger, the sustained use of particular places is often a result of their unique ecological characteristics as well as their history of prior use. Rather than a cycle of intensive occupation followed by dispersion and migration, human engagements with the Plateau landscape are perhaps better understood as a series of visitations, which vary in duration and frequency over time in response to changing ecological, economic, and social conditions.  In this talk, I will discuss how human mobility systems shaped and were shaped by different features of the Plateau landscape, including playas, mountains, and the Rio Grande Gorge itself. Throughout this discussion, I will draw on an Indigenizing approach centered on persistence in order to challenge archaeological modes of inquiry that focus on why people, practices, and places change. 

Image caption/credit: Twentieth-Century Stone Fireplace at Cerro de la Olla, Taos Plateau, New Mexico. © Lindsay M. Montgomery.

Further details available shortly...

Further details available shortly...