The Pueblos of the Southwest

The pueblo peoples of the American Southwest have long been of interest to anthropologists because of their unique religions, farming lifestyle, architecture, and art forms. Some of the pueblo groups are the Zuni, the Hopi, the Navajo, Santa Clara, Acoma, and San Ildefonso. There are as many as nineteen different pueblo groups in New Mexico alone. The word pueblo comes from the Spanish language, meaning village or dwelling, an indication that the pueblo groups created a particular type of adobe living structure out of the soil available in the area. The pueblos show relationships to the older civilizations of Mesoamerica, such Anazi, the prehistoric culture of Arid America (Hatcher 1999:287). Examples of pueblo pottery have been found in the Chaco Canyon area of New Mexico, dating back as far as 1050 to 1200 A.D. (Seven Families 1974:108).

The problem is whether or not the pueblo culture would be considered a subculture in the southwest. Anthropologist Wolford defines subculture as a "distinctive set of standards and behavior patterns by which a group within a larger society operates" and he defines culture as the "ideals, values, and beliefs shared by members of a society, that they use to interpret experience and general behavior" (Wolford 20

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1993: 259). She wanted to know how the potters worked and how they expressed themselves through that particular art form. There is some variation among pueblo potters today in how they express themselves artistically. Some prefer to stay within the former traditions, and some branch out into more modern innovative forms. Pottery is distinctive in that except for the mystique of an aged piece, a recent piece of pottery can look very similar to one several hundred years old (Hatcher 1999:186). It is for that reason that pottery is a fruitful way to study whether or not the pueblos would be considered a subculture. The pueblos have long been organized into highly integrated communities with a theocratic structure of a matrilineal nature, and pottery useful because it is a way of tracing change over time in order to understand the process of change (Hatcher 1999: 186). For this work it is of interest how the potters make decisions about their style. Pottery is the best known of the pueblo arts, and as such, it leads backward in an unbroken chain in terms of style. Hatcher asserts that there are no clear, hard and fast, definitions of culture or art, no right or wrong, as opinions can be somewhat subjective (Hatcher 1999: 287).
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Approximate Word count = 1384
Approximate Pages = 6 (250 words per page)