ABSTRACT
Persistent places are locations on the landscape which contain archaeological evidence for continuous human use over extensive periods of time. The concept of persistent places, f developed by Sarah Schlanger, serves as the conceptual anchor for this book and is used to frame my discussion of the mobile life-ways of human communities in northern New Mexico. In this book I draw the framework of persistent places into conversation with elements of Indigenous philosophy in order to interpret the material record of the Taos Plateau. The goal of such theoretical cross pollination is to disrupt conventional interpretive typologies and chronologies while challenging long-held assumptions about occupational logics. In lieu of a conventional culturally or temporally bounded archaeological analysis of the material record, I offer instead a large-scale history of mobility which examines Indigenous as well as non-Indigenous engagements with particular landscape features on the Taos Plateau over time.
