Down Country: The Tano of the Galisteo Basin, 1250-1782

by Lucy R. Lippard, Edward Ranney (Photographer)

The Galisteo Basin is an ancient seabed, site of volcanic upheaval. The fertile basin provided temporary hunting and farming grounds for wanderers, and then became the home of Pueblo people who survived drought, warfare, disease, and invasion for almost a thousand years before the arrival of the Spanish. Down Country is the history of five centuries of the Southern Tewa Pueblo Indian culture that rose, faltered, reasserted itself, and ultimately, perished in the Galisteo. The basin, twenty-two miles south of Santa Fe, is widely regarded as one of the richest archaeological regions of the country. It is unknown where the Galisteo Basin’s very first permanent settlers came from, nor the exact origins of the Tano, or Southern Tewa. The Indians of the northern Rio Grande referred to the basin as the “Down Country Place” or “Place Near the Sun.” Into this place the Tano Indians entered about 1250 AD and for three centuries made the place a center for culture and trade before they were finally expelled by the Spanish in 1782. Their story is a powerful human history that is a microcosm of New Mexico's dramatic, complex history of pre-European settlement and post-Spanish occupation.

388 pages, Hardcover

First published June 28, 2010

About the author

Since 1966, Lippard has published 20 books on feminism, art, politics and place and has received numerous awards and accolades from literary critics and art associations. A 2012 exhibition on her seminal book, Six Years: The Dematerialization of the Art Object at the Brooklyn Museum, titled "Six Years": Lucy R. Lippard and the Emergence of Conceptual Art", cites Lippard's scholarship as its point of entry into a discussion about conceptual art during its era of emergence, demonstrating her crucial role in the contemporary understanding of this period of art production and criticism. Her research on the move toward dematerialization in art making has formed a cornerstone of contemporary art scholarship and discourse.

Co-founder of Printed matter (an art bookstore in New York City centered around artist's books), the Heresies Collective, Political Art Documentation/Distribution (PAD/D), Artists Call Against U.S. Intervention in Central America, and other artists' organizations, she has also curated over 50 exhibitions, done performances, comics, guerrilla theater, and edited several independent publications the latest of which is the decidedly local La Puente de Galisteo in her home community in Galisteo, New Mexico. She has infused aesthetics with politics, and disdained disinterestedness for ethical activism.

Reviews

[Teri · Rating 5 out of 5]

So amazing to do a deep dive into the nature and culture of Galisteo Plains. this book is a compilation of research and local knowledge that helps shed light on the life of the land in recent history. I especially liked learning about Tessie Naranjo who has written essays on the culture found there. Some good i sites.

[Cynthia Anderson · Rating 5 out of 5]

If you live in New Mexico this is well worth reading.