Rethinking the Continuity of Culture Groups in the Mesolithic-Neolithic Transition

Instead of one overarching narrative characterizing this transitional period, it seems possible that the establishment of Neolithic cultures in Sweden was done variously through the influence of population replacement and the spread of their agricultural ideas in more southern and western areas, whereas the northern and eastern regions of Sweden seem to have had more of a population continuity from the Mesolithic. Eastern Sweden and southern Norrland are among areas that show little diffusion in the Early Neolithic from the southwest and have more social and economic similarities to the north (Björck 2001). In order to achieve conclusive results, it has been vitally important to question not just the existence of new material and its potential origins from the cultures of continental migrants, but also of the consequences of all the changes in the early Neolithic on hunter-gatherers (Larsson 2007). If Neolithization were indigenous, then perhaps climatic changes were more influential in getting hunter-gatherer-types to accept Neolithic socioeconomic activities, whereas if it were done through migration, then certainly it is evident that the FBC continued to supplement agricultural practices with hunting and fishing, which were formerly thought of as stereotypically Mesolithic socioeconomic practices (Linderholm 2011). The degrees to which hunter-gatherers either intermixed with migrant farmers, personally and/or culturally, or dealt on their own with any changing environmental, climatic, or cultural changes in the early Neolithic, are among the problems that scholars studying the Mesolithic-Neolithic transition seek to answer.

The traditional explanation for the origins of agriculture in Sweden has, since the 1940s, been tied to the fairly sudden appearance of the Funnel Beaker Culture (Johansson 2003), but this hypothesis has been questioned for various problems inherent in such a simplistic causal relationship. The societies in the Early Neolithic have also been seen as homogeneous, from Denmark to the south and Norrland in northern Sweden; the “promoted myth” has been of a diffusion from the southwest (Björck 2001). Johansson synthesizes some of the theoretical issues inherent even in the connotations with the term “Neolithization,” and argues that the “real problem is how [archaeologists] envisage sociocultural, or socioecological, change in the first place” (Johansson 2003). Among early explanations, archaeologists tied the appearance of relatively permanent settlement structures in the Neolithic to population pressure, though the reason for the pressure was not always addressed. In the early nineties, while agriculture and animal husbandry were argued to have come from external influence, the explanation of mass migration of continental farmers was rejected in favor of population continuity (Larsson 1990). With the last twenty years, the transitional period has been clearly defined as a complex issue and not one that can be solved simply either by pointing to population replacement or indigenous development. While the use of “culture groups” to study the Mesolithic-Neolithic transition is not the most preferable anthropological approach (Björck 2001), the terminology is too common in Scandinavia (and Europe) to ignore and it is helpful to consider the Ertebølle, the Funnel-Beaker, and other “groups” as ways of classifying the overarching socioeconomic cultures of the many social units in the transitional period.

Sweden in the Mesolithic age, especially in the middle and late periods, was not totally socially or economically adrift from continental Europe, but the actual degree of this contact has to be qualified in order to make any conclusions concerning the characterization of late Mesolithic peoples in the run-up to the Neolithic. With the introduction of pottery to the Ertebølle (EBK) culture in 5700 BC, there are comparisons that can be made between it and the Rössen culture in Switzerland in terms of the impressions in decoration; Larsson also argues for similarities with Ertebølle axes and axe-handles and continental Danubian ones (Larsson 1990). Contacts were made between the peninsula and the continent in the early and middle Mesolithic, but nowhere near to the extent that there would be later in the transition to the Neolithic. The later Mesolithic period of the EBK (4500-3900) already exhibited some Neolithic traits and continued some limited trade with the northern continent in the form of imported Schuleistenkeile, the heavy, polished shaft-hole axes of the LBK (Malmer 2002). Changes within the late Mesolithic are more immediately significant to the matter of Neolithization in Sweden. The late Ertebølle culture group, which continues into the early Neolithic, with its heavy dependence on a marine diet, had increasingly larger, more permanent settlements around 3600 BC located at fjords, river mouths, and lagoons (Larsson and Larsson 1991). These sites are often found in Skåne and adjacent parts of Halland and Blekinge along the coasts and estuaries, and increased in number throughout the late Mesolithic due to the security of their marine food sources (Malmer 2002). Clearly, sedentism to a degree was not just a characteristic of Funnel Beaker farmers in the Neolithic, but instead preceded FBC settlement. Malmer writes that the Ertebølle culture layers at one of the typical late EBK sites at Norsminde at Jutland with carbon-14 dates of between 3820 +/- 100 BC to 3090 +/- B.C., are directly underneath Funnel-Beaker layers dating from 3010 B.C. to 2350 B.C. This site, which is very much like ones in the Swedish regions closest to Denmark, indicates dependence in both periods on marine resources but with the FBC layers containing more typical Neolithic features such as cattle bones and other domesticated animals and impressions of grain in pottery. Malmer argues that similar excavation evidence in Denmark and Sweden shows a very rapid “acceptance” of the usefulness of Neolithic activities by local people within several generations and an integration of agriculture with their traditional economy (Malmer 2002).

With the continuation of the Ertebølle culture into the Neolithic, the character of the “Neolithic,” as it is thought of in, for example, central Europe, is not immediately associated with the adoption of farming. Strangely, there seems to have been a thousand-year gap between continental dates for Neolithization and agriculture around 4500 BC whereas the process occurs in Scandinavia more around 3200/3100 BC. This “pause” and the reasons for it are major problems for the Scandinavian Neolithic and raise the issue of why it took so long for agriculture to reach the peninsula (Malmer 2002). Archaeologists do estimate that the youngest carbon-14 dates for the Ertebølle culture come to around 3200 or 3100 BC, while the oldest dates for the Funnel Beaker culture are around this same time at 3100 BC (Larsson and Larsson 1991). Elsewhere, the earliest Nordic dates for the FBC is c. 3250 +/- 210 BC in Holstein, Germany (Malmer 2002). Around 3200 BC certainly seems to have been the critical time in the transition between the Mesolithic EBK and the Neolithic FBC, coinciding with fall in elm pollen levels, climatological change, and changes in sea level that affected marine resources in sea mollusks and fish (Larsson and Larsson 1991).

While in southernmost Scandinavia there seems to be settlement evidence for the co-existence of the late Ertebølle culture and the Funnel-Beaker culture, the short “parallel existence” model is an earlier one and should be qualified, considering varying degrees of overlapping (Larsson 1990). It is most likely that if the parallel existence model works at all, then it would work the best in southern Sweden where initial contact with the continent was made. Most strikingly, the important site of Öresand in southern Sweden, which is characterized by being at a location with characteristics typical for both Ertebølle and FBC sites, has pottery from both “cultures” in the same occupation layers. The consensus is that rapid socioeconomic changes did occur at the nexus of the EBK-FBC turnover among circumstances of cultural overlap (Malmer 2002). Damages on many Late Ertebølle skeletons may indicate some open conflict, perhaps from rival Funnel Beaker groups (Larsson and Larsson 1991). Whether the rapid changes were from adaptation within the same population or the exchange between different population groups is questionable, likely differing between regions and periods.

When Neolithization is “accepted” around 3100 B.C. (though not as economically dominant as in Central Europe), the Funnel-Beaker Culture is established around the same period. At a good number of sites, the FBC follows in the layer directly above that of the Ertebølle culture (EBK), such as at the major site at Norsminde on Jutland (Malmer 2002). With Neolithization did come a distinct change in the pattern of settlement from the coast to the inland with well-drained locations (Larsson and Larsson 1991). The most frequent cultural indicators of the FBC are the thin-butted flint axe, of which there are 9000 examples, 5500 of those being found in Scania and located occasionally as far north as Norrland. Its pottery follows a similar distribution as being the most widespread in southern and central Sweden with concentrations in the provinces closest to Denmark (Malmer 2002).

The Pitted Ware Culture extended along the western and eastern southern coasts of Sweden (Karlsson et al. 2006), though not as far inland on the west as on the east, perhaps making more use of marine resources on the coast of the Baltic Sea. Approximately, people utilizing the traits associated with this culture did so from 3400-2300 B.C., extending into the Middle Neolithic, with some overlap with the EBK and the FBC (Molnar 2010). With the Pitted Ware Culture, the main issue is whether it was made up of the same population basis as the Funnel Beaker Culture, or if perhaps the PWC had population continuity from the EBK. Based upon stable isotope analysis and archaeological data, the PWC is most likely a separate group specific cultural identity and socioeconomic practices reminiscent of the Mesolithic EBK. Lidén and Eriksson argue that their work on PWC graves indicates a homogeneous diet among people who were buried in specifically PWC contexts, with significant differences in diet from the FBC and BAC or slightly-later Battle Axe Culture (Lidén and Eriksson 2007). The diet of the PWC had a strong basis in marine resources like the EBK, with a lot of seal meat, supplemented with hunting wild game, boar, birds, and fishing. Their grave goods are also mainly associated with implements from hunting and fishing, such as arrowheads, harpoons, and fishhooks, and are more commonly found in male graves, but there is some increased complexity (in comparison with Mesolithic burials) when it comes to comparing grave goods among the sexes and between adults and children (Molnar 2010).

Changes in diet, climate, and material culture may further indicate that Neolithization came from peoples who migrated to Sweden for various reasons; a totally independent innovation of agriculture is unlikely, especially given numerous prior contacts with the continent. In comparing Mesolithic and Neolithic levels of marine protein versus terrestrial protein, the latter relied on only 20% marine sources, rather than 90% (Lidén 1995). Overall, the Neolithic diet was drastically different from that of the Mesolithic peoples, with a much heavier reliance on terrestrial food sources in domesticated crops, animals, and milk products. However, it took almost a millennium from the beginning of the Neolithic in 4000 B.C. for the transition to a fully Neolithic economy to take place by 3200 B.C., and there was certainly still some reliance on traditional hunting and fishing (Linderholm 2011).

At the same time of the earliest Neolithic phases in 4000 cal. BC, climate change occurred in the form of reduced salinity in the Kattegat and the Baltic, which with cold winters meant that water froze over more quickly in straits and seas. This likely re-created land bridges over which migrant peoples may have crossed from the continent, since travel by boat in these periods would have become very difficult (Skak-Nielsen 2004). Since some Neolithic traits are found during the mid-to-late EBK at this time of climate change, it is possible that external influence from migrants was not necessarily quick, but perhaps rather gradual, in association with slower migration due to difficult travel. Another climate problem in the late Mesolithic involved higher sea levels in the Atlantic, which inundated or destroyed many sites, showing a need to exploit environments other than the formerly productive lagoons and deltas where intense settlement once occurred. The existing Mesolithic social structure may have been sorely hit by these climate pressures on access to marine resources (Larsson 1990).

Such climate issues likely showed the need to supplement subsistence in the hunting-and-gathering mode with economic and social changes in adding farming and changing settlement structures. If perhaps agricultural peoples were better suited to living in colder climates, they may have had an advantage at this time over the Mesolithic inhabitants. Skak-Nielsen argues for a lengthy immigration of Neolithic farmers, to add up to a population overwhelming that of the hunter-gatherers, as a way to explain the rapid expansion of agriculture without an improbably large native population increase (Skak-Nielsen 2004). Other scenarios might instead be that there was a migration that reached far into the peninsula, but the migrant farmers spread and intermixed with the native population over that long period, or that a widespread settlement of migrant farmers merely sparked a strongly uniform degree of acculturation in their influence in the area of subsistence and agricultural development.

Almost certainly, there were even more jarring climatic changes right at the transition into full Neolithization. Right around the 3200-3100 B.C. turning point, there were major issues which changed both the character of the forest ecosystem and the availability of marine resources. There was a significant fall in elm pollen levels, climatological change, and changes in sea level that all likely contributed to the suddenly rapid switch into FBC culture and use of agricultural practices. Hunting-and-gathering and the collection of marine resources became more difficult for peoples with EBK characteristics, making it harder to obtain the same amounts of sea mollusks and fish as in the Mesolithic (Larsson and Larsson 1991). In the Early Neolithic (approximately 4000-3300 B.C.) in general, the inhabitants had to work with a mostly wooded mosaic vegetation with small patches of cultivated fields and grazing land dispersed over the landscape (Hellman et al. 2009). Certainly the changes in forest ecosystem made it necessary to adjust former practices. Because previously sufficient subsistence measures likely declined in their effectiveness by these climate changes, the early Neolithic peoples either brought in or developed agricultural measures that fit in with their wooded environments and colder temperatures. Forest clearances also were important for practicing agriculture and pollen records indicate at least one major period of clearance in the period 3650-3400 B.C. prior to full-adoption of agriculture (Larsson and Larsson 1991). As Hellman et al. have studied from pollen-map models, land-use in the Early Neolithic was fairly extensive but influenced the spatial structure of the landscape at a small local scale (Hellman et al. 2009). Studies such as this may indicate that farming was practiced initially by fairly small agricultural societies due to the localized areas of human impact. This may either support an idea of gradual immigration of FBC farming peoples or an acceptance by the already-localized EBK groups, evidence of which in some areas were followed directly by FBC material culture (Malmer 2002).

With regards to more specific farming practices, the Neolithization process was certainly different in northwestern Europe compared to southern Europe and southwestern Asia. According to Colledge et al. (2005), northwestern Europe, including Sweden, had a very different agricultural package from the rest of southeastern Europe and southwest Asia. Only 24% of the northwestern European sites had evidence of the three founder cereal crops discovered in the other regions (barley, corn, and emmer wheat). Of the agricultural products the region did grow, there was much more free-threshed wheat and naked barley (24% more) than in LBK Europe. In addition, the crop taxa was also reduced in comparison with LBK sites as 55% of the northwestern sites have two or less taxa of co-occurring cereal species. There was also only one taxon of pulses in the area (peas) and only 7% of the sites had them. From the work of Colledge et al., it seems likely that several explanations for the discrepancy in the Neolithic package can be posited: first, that the environment in northwestern Europe and Sweden was unsuitable for many southwest Asian crops, and second, that there were cultural reasons for choosing different crops (Colledge et al. 2005). The impression of cereals on late Ertebølle pottery in the Mesolithic shows the existence of at least some of the Cerealea types before the Neolithic in western Scania (Larsson 1990). With the climate colder and with less salinity near water sources, it could be likely that the immigrant farmers chose to plant crops that they knew could survive the harsh winters, such as peas, which do well both in temperate and cooler climates. If perhaps they came from Germanic regions, which had agriculture around 5200 BC (Skak-Nielsen 2004), then they would have had enough experience with colder climates to know what crops would grow well in Sweden. As this data indicates, farming as a way of subsistence comes with its own set of connotations which archaeologists must shed if they want to understand the variety of ways in which peoples choose or are able to obtain food. With different climatic and cultural circumstances, some scholars even argue that looking at the FBC as “farming societies” is too early of a characterization. While they did practice some early form of it, it is increasingly unpopular to think of them “unequivocally” as farmers in the typical way; their actual dependence on agriculture is uncertain (Johansson 2003).

The use of DNA evidence for migrations, in terms of studying the distribution of different haplogroups based on Y-chromosome or mitochondrial DNA, has its own notorious problems, but it has been a popular method to study the differences between Mesolithic and Neolithic populations. Major issues include comparing modern DNA distributions to ancient ones, the latter of which are problematic because more recent migrations may have affected genetic distributions in a population and because ancient genetic evidence in skeletal remains is difficult to find well-preserved, let alone to extract and analyze. Concerning the use of modern DNA studies, the assumption that past demographic processes and timing can be analyzed from modern European DNA and mutations is also disputed by some scholars (Linderholm 2011). However, enough work has been done with ancient DNA and modern DNA studies that there have been established identifications of haplogroups (based on various DNA mutations and unique markers) from specific regional locations over time, dating back to the Paleolithic periods. Karlsson et al. (2006) have conducted one particular study of 383 unrelated males and 16 of their Y chromosomal DNA markers in seven regions of Sweden with samples in a Finnish region and another from a Swedish Saami population for reference, in which it seems as if the overwhelming majority of Paleolithic-origin haplogroups (73%) indicates a continuity in population from the hunter-gatherers, especially in the northern and western parts of Sweden. The western data is surprising; eastern Sweden perhaps may have been more expected to still contain some population continuity. Haplogroup R1b3, one of the study's most promising leads, is alleged to be a pre-Neolithic haplogroup and has the highest number of YSTRs (Y-chromosome short tandem repeat mutations) of the haplogroups, an indication that it was one of the earliest in Sweden. As Karlsson et al. (2006) argue, it may indicate demographic history as it indicates differences between southern Scandinavia from east and west, though perhaps different than what might have been expected.

A more recent study in 2009 by Malmström et al. (which includes several authors from the Karlsson et al. 2006 article) contradicts the idea of any population continuity from the Mesolithic and instead argues for a lack of a genetic relationship between the hunter-gatherers of the Pitted Ware Culture (which persisted well into the Neolithic’s 5^th millennium BC, making Sweden one of the last areas with significant hunting-and-gathering populations) and modern Scandinavians. Their study consisted of twenty-two individuals, three from the Funnel Beaker Culture and nineteen from the Pitted Ware Culture. According to their results, there are more similarities between the PWC and the modern peoples of the eastern Baltic region, which may be the descendants of these hunter-gatherers, than between the PWC and modern Scandinavians. While the low sample percentage of FBC skeletons makes it hard to rule firmly in favor of immigrant agriculturalists for the identification of the main ancestors of modern Scandinavians, the authors conclude that it is growing increasingly less likely, from this study and others, to conclude that Neolithization occurred through general population continuity and cultural mediation with farming peoples from the continent. In addition, although only 15% of European populations have markers from the migration of southwest Asian farmers, it is still possible to have had quite large-scale and quick dispersal from the rapidly-spreading LBK farming culture (Soares et al. 2010). Additional studies should also continue to choose to compare samples between populations in different areas of Scandinavia and which date to different parts of the Neolithic, in order to attempt better temporal and spatial understanding of demographic changes.

Other types of genetic mutation studies may also complicate the conclusions of Malmström et al.'s 2009 work. In 2006, a study by Lidén et al. indicates that the frequency of the deletion of the CCR5 gene (a characteristic which helps with protection against the HIV virus) is continuous between the Neolithic population and the modern Swedish population, with the assertion that the deletion also already existed in the Mesolithic period in Sweden (Lidén et al. 2006). Lidén et al.’s work thus may indicate a degree of mating between earlier hunter-gatherers and incoming farmers at the very least. Alternatively, it may support the idea of general population continuity from the Mesolithic and Paleolithic peoples to the modern Swedes. However, Lidén et al. also argue that their findings may just show that selective pressures worked similarly to preserve the deletion in both populations irregardless of lifestyle and cultural differences, since it is certainly difficult to establish the exact relationship between the PWC and the FBC groups in the Neolithic. Anna Linderholm also argues that in her recent work, mitochondrial DNA studies are indicating a general population replacement of Mesolithic hunter-gatherers by incoming farmers and that the PWC were part of a continental hunter-gatherer complex and not a legacy of the Mesolithic EBK (Linderholm 2011). However, other genetic differences between the FBC and the PWC might otherwise indicate a Mesolithic genetic basis which survived into the PWC.

With the greater persistence of hunting-and-gathering in Sweden, accompanied by the strong DNA evidence correlating southern Neolithic culture groups with modern Swedish peoples, and differential material evidence with northern and eastern regions, the evidence does seem to point to a different picture of the Neolithic than many archaeologists have portrayed in their work. Instead, the picture may be postulated as one of migration from several continental groups at a time of climatic change in 4000 B.C. in which farming peoples took advantage of frozen land bridges and new territory for agriculture, or perhaps closer to around 3100 B.C. around the elm decline and the lowering of sea levels, necessitating socioeconomic change (Larsson and Larsson 1991).

While they lived congruously for a period with the PWC groups, DNA evidence points to a majority of Neolithic peoples having influenced the DNA of modern Swedish peoples. However, hunter-gatherers did not immediately go away as Neolithic diets were not drastically different from Paleolithic or Mesolithic ones in the mid-fourth millennium B.C. (Lidén et al. 2006). Instead of being totally overwhelmed or killed, native hunter-gatherers were acculturated and accepted as farming peoples, especially indicated in the evidence of at least 4% of Paleolithic haplogroups in modern Swedish males and similarities with peoples of the eastern Baltic region (Karlsson et al 2006). With the rapid spread of agriculture as indicated by the “coast-to-coast” projects of the universities of Gothenburg and Uppsala (Skak-Nielsen 2003), the possibility remains that migrant farmers did not have to undergo a long process of rooting out “native” Mesolithic peoples in the move north and may have had a different relationship with them than in other parts of Europe (Rowley-Conwy 2004). While it appears from DNA evidence and the transitioning out of the hunter-gatherers in diet, economy, settlement and material culture that agriculturalists grew to be larger in numbers and more successful at living in Neolithic Sweden, the possibility still remains that alliance-making and intermarriage occurred between the two groups. However, the question of course cannot be left to genetics alone and archaeologists have to continue to examine the character of the transition between the Mesolithic and Neolithic era, especially in terms of material culture and lifestyle, to more fully understand the long-term process of the spread of agriculture throughout Sweden, from the earliest Neolithic trends around 4000 B.C. to the more established Neolithic FBC peoples around 3200/3100 B.C. The overall picture is generally indicative of some external influence and migration of continental farmers in southern and western Sweden, hypothetically from Denmark and Germany, perhaps beginning gradually around 4000 B.C. and speeding up nearer 3100 B.C., with some Mesolithic population continuity in the northern and eastern regions at least into the Middle Neolithic period.

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Mats Larsson and Mike Parker Pearson. Archaeopress, Oxford. 1-10.

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Chapter 5
Mapping onto the Double-Page: Discursive Cartography in Northern New Mexico

Alicia Guzman

Program of Visual and Cultural Studies, University of Rochester

In December 1900, in the town of Las Truchas in the territory of New Mexico, two men came together in a convenio amistoso. Theirs was a friendly agreement making it known that the piece of earth situated between their homes was communal property held by both individuals. This document, what I have termed the convenio, was hand written in Spanish. Standing at the dawn of a new century, what converges within its lines is a palimpsest of histories: Spanish Colonial, Mexican, New Mexican and American. Not only does the document testify to the flexibility of local borders, but also to the precariousness of all borders in the Southwest during a period of immense change. As a precursor to warranty deeds in New Mexico, the convenio negotiated multiple discourses. Following in the stead of American land speculation and attempts at privatizing and quantifying property for commercial purposes, it also employed language reminiscent of Hispanic land grant documents from generations and governments that traced the same landscape before. This overlooked document, as I contend, expresses the ambivalence of New Mexico’s transition towards statehood by offering a complex mode of discursive cartography; prose visualizing multiple landscapes, physical, ideological, local, national and even transnational over time. This paper will examine in even greater depth how the century-old document signifies space experientially by its inhabitants, querying how the ever-changing northern New Mexico landscape is mapped ephemerally as well as concretely through local and hegemonic voices alike.
Tomorrow

we shall have to think up signs,

sketch the landscape, fabricate a plan

on the double page

of day and paper

Tomorrow we shall have to invent,

once more,

the reality of this world.

A century after its creation, I find a semblance of Paz’s double-page, a place where two men humbly mapped an encounter with each other on that so-called double page, between day and paper, reality and representation. By no means traditional cartographers, Benito Montoya and Jose Dolores López simply lived what had never been lived before and in doing so they inscribed the landscapes on which they treaded with the marks of their everyday movements. And through very modest means they were able to make their lived reality surface within the written word, leaving gaps and lacunae behind, places of unknown territory so to speak in this yellow, acid-laden document. Mine then is a project attempting to understand these double-pages, maps both material and immaterial, left behind by men like Jose Dolores López and Benito Montoya, my great-great grandfather.

This unassuming document is part of a series of warranty deeds from the village of Las Truchas, New Mexico (today known as simply Truchas) from the early twentieth century. Using Ricardo Padron’s terminology, these written descriptions of the landscape, quirky and cryptic, function as types of discursive cartography (Padron 2004). Although Padron’s definition concerns descriptions of land for hegemonic purposes, especially with a Spanish Colonial tradition, I would like to use the term in it most basic dimension, as prose that visualize a landscape. To be clear, these were not poetic narratives, but what were at the time, legal records whose form and content savored brevity. At least within this example, what otherwise might be characterized as simple designations of landmarks are vessels rich in experiential signification, meaning that came by way of perambulating the landscapes described. The discursive cartography produced in Truchas, then, provides a lens into a particular worldview, one that positioned individual bodies and subjectivities within larger constituencies, whether within the community or within the landscape, constituting a particular identity through place. This attitude of being an essential part of a larger whole becomes more legible through an ecocritical lens, which further aligns with the complexities of Northern New Mexican socio-spatial dynamics. More than positing a specific ecocritical model however, the definition for an ecocriticism unique to Truchas, New Mexico will hopefully be embodied within this paper.³ Nonetheless, it is only through ambivalence and at many times conflict that such a relational network of communities, individuals, and histories intersect to produce Truchas’ dynamic.

Within this ambivalent dialogue, these documents engage manifold histories—Spanish Colonial, Mexican and New Mexican—that although constructed them then, eventually merge with my present, to create a palimpsest of overlapping maps, where history and memory (mine and my family’s) write themselves over one another time and again. My present written interjection, then, becomes a kind of extension of the Convenio and subsequent documents regarding land tenor, giving me the dual role of author of this research as well as one of many participants within a long and circuitous history of Truchas, New Mexico.