Under the supervision of Dr. Patricia A. Gilman, Bernard A. Schriever will conduct analysis that brings together data from museum collections of three excavated Mimbres sites (Old Town, Galaz, and Wind Mountain) with data collected during his fieldwork to investigate the potential formation of a common identity among them. These sites are but three of many contemporary Mimbres communities located in southwestern New Mexico and occupied from at least A.D. 750 through 1130. While Mimbres sites exhibit differences from each other, there are clearly similarities in development, architecture, and material culture, that distinguish them from sites in surrounding areas (like the Hohokam of Arizona and the Anasazi to the north). In other words, they are a regional phenomenon of shared culture that archaeologists recognize as the Mimbres. Schriever's research focuses on using multiple lines of evidence to examine an essential concern in archaeology. Do the cultures defined by archaeologists, like the Mimbres, simply represent people sharing similar material culture (things), behaviors, and adaptations to the world? Or, could these cultures have been actual identities to the people who shared them?
Research into the relationship between archaeologically defined cultures and the identities of the people who lived within the areas encompassed by these cultures is critical in archaeologists' endeavor to explain the processes that lead to the formation, transformations, and dissolution of past societies. This is because identities, such as race, class, and ethnicity, are fundamental to people's daily lives, constraining and guiding their interactions with others. Identities are the basis for how societies are organized. This project examines practices involved in the production and exchange of goods among the inhabitants of three Mimbres communities. Assessing the variation in these practice provides a means to evaluate the extent to which individuals within a community and among the three communities shared common ways of doing things, the basis for identities. Further, documenting whether and how these practices changed through time will provide insight into the amount of interaction and co-production of practices occurring among the communities' inhabitants, key processes in the formation of identities.
From a broader perspective, this research begins to provide archaeology with a way to communicate the complexities of identity to the public. Given the publics' interest in archaeology, evidenced by the popularity of archaeology in the media, how archaeologists present past people has ramifications for how the public understands people in the past and thinks about people in the present. Archaeologists need ways to discuss their work that make clear the differences between heuristic devices, like archaeologically defined cultures, and the identities of past people, so that the public does not get the impression that the two are the same. In detailing the complexity of people's identities in the past, archaeologists can help the public recognize that the identities of people today are just as problematic, helping to dispel the monolithic treatment of people based on stereotypes of identities. The results of this research will be disseminated through outlets directed toward a variety of constituent groups: presentations and posters at scientific and academic conferences, particularly those open to the public; a website accessible to both the public and scientific community; and publications prepared for both refereed journals and books directed at the scientific community and those media aimed at the public.
