Situational Identities along the Raiding Frontier of Colonial New Mexico

Situational Identities along the Raiding Frontier of Colonial New Mexico is an extensive study of New Mexico's Casitas Viejas archaeological site contextualized against the broader history of the Spanish borderlands. Casitas Viejas was abandoned sometime in the nineteenth century, but vestiges of the community remain visible today. The ruins of its lightly fortified adobe plaza sit on high ground above the Rito Colorado, not far in one direction from the better-known site at Abiquiú and just downstream from the modern town of El Rito. The site's location, near the preconquest Tewa community of Sapawe and in a region thick with early colonial settlements, makes it a natural focus for this study of conquest, contact, and ethnogenesis. Jun Sunseri explores these issues through a wide variety of methods: laboratory analysis of pottery and butchered animal bones, small- and large-scale analysis of fields and drainages, digital modeling of slopes and sight lines,...