A Comparison of Musical Instruments from the Prehispanic American Southwest and Paquimé, Chihuahua

Musical instruments have been found at the Late Medio period regional polity of Paquimé in northern Mexico and in sites ancestral to Pueblo peoples of the American Southwest, but they have never been meaningfully compared. Paquimé’s occupation corresponds with the first half of the Pueblo IV period in the Southwest, a time when instruments were most numerous and diverse. Intriguingly, some instruments are found in both regions whereas others are not. I will summarize the types known for both locations and compare them, considering the social and physical contexts of their use.

Emily Brown

Emily spent her childhood in the house her father built north of Questa only a few miles from what would become the Rio Grande del Norte National Monument, the subject of tonight’s talk.  She remembers finding pieces of chipped stone and pottery in the neighborhood, and this along with family trips to places like Chaco Canyon and Mesa Verde sparked an interest in archaeology at an early age.  She double-majored in music and cultural anthropology as an undergraduate at Lewis and Clark College in Portland, Oregon but her interest in archaeology persisted and the summer after graduation she volunteered as an archaeologist at Bandelier National Monument.  This led to a job with the National Park Service in Santa Fe doing archaeological work which confirmed that this was a career she wanted to pursue.  After three years she went to Columbia University to complete her Ph.D., writing her dissertation on prehistoric musical instruments from the Southwest.  She returned to the Park Service after finishing her coursework but left to establish her own cultural resource consulting firm in 2005.  She lives with her husband and business partner in Santa Fe where they also garden and keep bees.