Reviews
Down Country: The Tano of the Galisteo Basin, 1250-1782 By Lucy R. Lippard — Photographs by Edward Ranney (Museum of New Mexico Press, 2010; 388 pgs., illus.; $50 cloth, www.mnmpress.org)
Traces of Fremont: Society and Rock Art in Ancient Utah By Steven R. Simms — Photographs by François Gohier (University of Utah Press, 2010; 144 pgs., illus.; $25 paper; www.UofUpress.com)
Between roughly a.d. 300 and 1300, a group of people dominated the Great Basin of Utah and Nevada, developing a dramatic rock art tradition. Archaeologists call them the Fremont people, naming them after the river basin where many examples of their art are preserved. For many years archaeologists considered the Fremont to be hunter-gathers with weak ties to the Pueblo people of the Four Corners. Steven Simms, an archaeologist at Utah State University who has studied the Fremont for four decades, sees a much more complex social structure that relies heavily on corn agriculture and hamlet-village organization that has close cultural links with the Puebloans. In this beautifully illustrated volume, Simms and photographer François Gohier paint a vivid picture of a robust people as shown in their material culture. Simms insists the rock art cannot stand alone and must be interpreted within the context of the overall culture. The images in Fremont rock art are, Simms writes, “part of an ideological fabric stretched across a sacred landscape.” Giant figures with elaborate headdresses and jewelry as well as more familiar animals and designs jump from the pages. It has become common to link Fremont and other rock art to “shamanism,” often drug induced. Simms argues that shamanism is not synonymous with political leadership. Some of the Fremont rock art may be tied to shamans, but most is probably not. Instead, the rock art is an incomplete representation of Fremont social, political, and ideological organization.
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The Galisteo Basin between Albuquerque and Santa Fe, New Mexico is one of the richest archaeological districts in the United States. Between about a.d. 1250 and 1680, it was home to eight huge Native American pueblos and countless smaller native sites.The large ones, like Pueblo San Marcos with its 2,000 surface rooms and 12 plazas, are the biggest pueblo ruins in the United States. (Pueblo Bonito in Chaco Canyon, for example, has only 800 rooms.)It was one of the first native communities to be impacted by the Spanish conquistadors—Coronado passed through in 1541—and it’s the home of the first Spanish mission churches.The area is of such great national significance that Congress set out to protect it as a special archaeological district in 2004 by enacting the Galisteo Basin Archaeological Sites Protection Act. Renowned art critic and Galisteo resident Lucy Lippard has authored this beautiful new book that synthesizes archaeological and historical research. It’s a landmark study of the basin and its Native people.Acclaimed photographer Edward Ranney contributed 80 stunning landscape images that are complemented by historical photos, drawings. and maps. Despite the number and size of the ruins (or perhaps because of that), there has been little research in the Galisteo. Nels Nelson did a major exploration in 1912-15 for the American Museum of Natural History, and several subsequent smaller scale projects built on his work. Beginning with the arrival of Coronado’s army in 1541, the native people went into a long decline, then in 1680 they rose up in the Pueblo Revolt. They killed the Catholic priests and drove the Spanish from New Mexico, but when the Spanish returned they found much of the Galisteo Basin in ruins, and the native people never recovered. Drawing on the archaeological research, historical accounts of the Spanish conquerors, and contemporary stories of neighboring pueblo people, Lippard has woven a wonderful account of a truly fascinating American place.
fall • 2010
