Identity is an Infinite Now: Being Instead of Becoming Gallina

Abstract

Archaeological research on the Gallina (AD 1100-1300) inhabitants of the region west of the Rio Chama and centered on the Llaves valley has focused on constructing a culture history and examining functional characteristics of artifacts and architecture. Limited research has attempted to understand who the residents of the Gallina heartland were. In this article, using new findings and historical contexts, we argue that the Gallina people had a complicated identity forged around resistance and a deep connection to their past. To better understand them we need to move past previous binary categories used to describe them and perceive them not as isolated or connected, aggressors or victims, traditionalists or innovators, but as an intersectional mix of these axes of identity. La investigación arqueológica sobre los habitantes Gallina (1100-1300 d. C.) de la región oeste del Río Chama, focalizada en el valle de Llaves, se orientó en la construcción de una historia cultural y el análisis de las características funcionales de los artefactos y la arquitectura. De hecho, han sido escasas las investigaciones que han intentado entender quiénes eran los residentes del Gallina. En este artículo, utilizando nuevos hallazgos y contextos históricos, argumentamos que los grupos Gallina tuvieron una identidad compleja, forjada en torno a la resistencia y a una profunda conexión con su historia. Asimismo, para entenderlas necesitamos movernos más allá de las tradicionales categorías binarias usadas para interpretarlos y percibirlos como aislados o conectados, violentos o víctimas, tradicionalistas o inventores, y en cambio, como una mezcla que abarca todos estos ejes de identidad.

Migration from the Middle: Pueblo III Migration Episodes and Patterns of Violence in the Gallina Highlands

“…Of course, at this point we do not have data indicating whether these attacks resulted from Four Corners migrants raiding for food; migrants defending themselves against Gallina area residents who appear to have purposefully removed themselves from the Mesa Verde and Chaco worlds (Borck 2012(Borck , 2018Borck and Simpson 2017); or from migrants attacking Gallina residents for unknown reasons. Oral traditions that reference the Gallina region indicate it might be a case where both groups were aggressors (e.g., Roberts 1996;Sando 1982) for different reasons.…”

“…This is further supported by Constan's (2011) research that shows there is no shift in potters' clay preference, something that often happens during periods of perpetual violence, or at least the constant threat of violence. As Borck and Simpson (2017:) note: [Borck's and Constan's research], coupled with our understanding that modern people in conflict zones perceive leaving their village as unsafe and that their safety increases with more economic resources at their village (Maxwell et al 2017:5)…indicates that while at least two periods of violence in the Gallina region existed (see Borck 2012), it is unlikely that violence was a daily concern. The choices of Gallina potters do not indicate that.…”

“…In the Southwest, migration is a common coping strategy when social and/or environmental conditions become too inhospitable. The Gallina, a cultural moment emerging from a social movement that used isolation and material change to create an egalitarian system that contested the rise and spread of hierarchy in the religious and political worlds originating in Chaco and Mesa Verde societies (Borck 2018;Borck and Simpson 2017), were facing an increasingly failing isolationist strategy.…”

“…To date, the evidence for either an internal source or an external source of the violence present in the Gallina region is equivocal (although see Borck 2012Borck , 2015. External enemies were likely present in the nearby Chacoan and Mesa Verdean regions (Borck 2012(Borck , 2018Borck and Simpson 2017;Dew 2003;Kocer and Ferguson 2017). However, the majority of sites with skeletal evidence of violence are tree-ring dated in the early to late AD 1200s (Elyea 1994;Table Published in 2022. Can be found at: https://www.academia.edu/81495668/Migration_from_the_Middle_Pueblo_III_Migration_Episo des_and_Patterns_of_Violence_in_the_Gallina_Highlands 13 presence of skeletonized individuals with evidence of violence is less likely than with their Mesa Verde neighbors.…”

Plainware and Polychrome: Quantifying Perceptual Differences in Ceramic Classification Between Diverse Groups to Further a Strong Objectivity

“…For these participants, the pottery fragment's life history frequently began with the difficulty of clay acquisition, including the danger inherent in mining the clay within horizontal tunnels on unstable slopes. This biographical view of ceramics is one reason why pottery may be thought of as 'place' embodied (Borck 2018; see also Bernardini 2005;Borck and Simpson 2017;Colwell-Chanthaphonh and Ferguson 2008;Deloria 2003;Ortiz 1969).…”