Genes, language and culture in Tewa ethnogenesis, A.D. 1150--1400

The depopulation of the Mesa Verde region and the formation of the Rio Grande Pueblos represent two of the classic problems in North American prehistory, but despite a century of research there remains no consensus on precisely how, or even if, these two processes were related. This study takes a fresh look at this problem by investigating the nature of the relationship between ancestral Tewa communities of north-central New Mexico and earlier communities of the Mesa Verde region in southwest Colorado and southeast Utah. Three models of Tewa origins are evaluated: population movement from the Mesa Verde region, amalgamation of peoples from diverse backgrounds, and in situ development in the Tewa Basin. Population history is assessed through paleodemographic analysis of settlement data and biodistance analysis of craniometric data; language history is assessed using established methods in historical linguistics and a new method that identifies archaeological expressions of conceptual metaphors embedded in language; and culture history is assessed on the basis of oral tradition and patterns of change in the archaeological record.;This study suggests a means by which historical anthropology might extend its reach beyond the analysis of phylogenetic units---where the genes, languages and cultures of ethnic groups derive from a common ancestral group---to analyses of ethnogenesis---where distinct genetic, linguistic and cultural threads have been bound together by a new social identity. It also suggests that ethnogenesis has been taking place for much of human history, and may lie behind the recurrent difficulty archaeologists have linking archaeological sequences of adjacent regions.;These various studies make a strong case that the Tewa language and most of the ancestral Tewa population originated in the Mesa Verde region. However, the cultural change that occurred as Mesa Verde people moved to the Tewa Basin was striking, and involved a rejection of existing traditions, re-invention of older traditions, and adoption of destination area practices. It is hypothesized that a religious revolution was responsible for this dramatic cultural transformation, and that memories of this revolution provided a model for the Pueblo Revolt of 1680, some four hundred years later.