Hunting and Gathering

Agriculture did not provide everything.

Tewa families also relied upon the enormous natural diversity of northern New Mexico.

Deer, rabbits and other animals could provide meat and useful materials.

Wild plants supplemented agricultural foods.

Piñon nuts were especially valuable in favorable years.

Wood was needed constantly—for cooking, heating, pottery firing, tool manufacture and construction.

Plants provided food, medicine, fibers, dyes and other materials.

The mountains surrounding El Rito therefore represented much more than scenery.

They were part of an extensive economic and cultural landscape.

Knowledge mattered enormously.

People needed to know where particular plants grew, when seeds ripened, where animals traveled, when weather was likely to change and which areas contained dependable water.

Much of that knowledge was passed from one generation to another.

Turkeys at Sapawe

One particularly interesting line of archaeological research concerns turkeys.

Excavations at Sapawe produced thousands of animal-bone fragments, and later researchers have investigated evidence suggesting significant turkey husbandry within the community.

Possible turkey pens and turkey remains have been identified archaeologically. Researchers have used this material to examine how a community numbering perhaps two thousand people could have maintained a substantial domestic turkey population.

Turkeys could supply more than meat.

Their feathers were valuable and could be incorporated into warm textiles and other objects.

Their presence gives us another glimpse of daily life.

The pueblo would have been filled not only with human voices but with animals.

Pottery: An Everyday Object and Much More

Pottery was indispensable.

Cooking vessels held food over fires.

Storage jars protected corn and other foods.

Containers carried water.

Bowls served meals.

But pottery also carried artistic and cultural meaning.

Designs, clay, pigments and manufacturing traditions varied through time and between communities. Archaeologists rely heavily upon pottery because broken fragments can survive for centuries and can help identify relationships between places and periods.

Yet archaeology captures only part of its meaning.

The tribally operated Poeh Cultural Center of the Pueblo of Pojoaque describes Tewa pottery as something far more profound than an archaeological artifact. Tewa potters regard clay as living and connected to land, community and generations of knowledge. Pottery participates in domestic, ceremonial and spiritual life.

This distinction matters.

A pottery fragment lying in the soil near an ancestral village may be a scientific artifact to an archaeologist.

To descendants, it may also represent an ancestor.

The Hands That Made the Pot

Consider what making a pot required.

First came knowledge of where suitable clay could be found.

The clay had to be gathered and prepared.

Impurities could be removed and temper incorporated where appropriate.

The vessel was built by hand.

There was no electric kiln and no industrial pottery wheel.

Once shaped, the surface could be smoothed, slipped, polished or painted.

Finally came firing—a process requiring experience with fuel, oxygen, temperature and timing.

A mistake near the end could destroy days of work.

The Poeh Cultural Center continues to teach and interpret these traditions today, emphasizing that pottery-making knowledge passes through generations of Tewa families.

The archaeological pots of the Río Chama therefore represent more than craft.

They represent knowledge.