Sacred Southwestern Landscapes: Archaeologies of Religious Ecology

In this volume, two dozen archaeologists and allied researchers explore the intersection of religion and landscape in the North American Southwest from ancient to recent times. Although these topics continue to gain currency in contemporary inquiry, Sacred Southwestern Landscapes is the first to study them on equal footing. The essays explore how people enmesh ecological conditions and threads of environmental information into religion, weaving strands of belief and spirituality through a topographic fabric that gives meaning to the material world. Hailing from various academic and cultural backgrounds, contributors invoke a range of theoretical currents and methodological practices to examine how these relationships developed and evolved. Nearly all the places, people, and paradigms at play in contemporary southwestern scholarship find room among these pages, from the Sonoran and Chihuahuan Deserts to the Colorado Plateau; from diverse cultures, including Ancestral Pueblo, Mogollon, Hohokam, Pataya, Trincheras, Navajo (Diné), and Nuevomexicano; and from theoretical frameworks drawing upon phenomenology, materiality, bundling, and semiotics. This collective engagement showcases how religious ecologies can be studied from multiple perspectives and through sundry lines of evidence, leaving readers with appreciation and reverence for the rich and robust sacredness in southwestern landscapes. Read more