The grant and the grid

Abstract

A narrow focus on architecture and surrounding features, situated in predominately political and economic reconstructions of historical context, has limited our understanding of Native and non-native occupations of the Plains in southeastern Colorado. Anglo, Hispano and Native groups came to the territory with different ideas as to the land’s promise, and therefore engaged in different subsistence strategies. Influenced by the terrain and by each other, they created new cultural landscapes. Large blocks of federally-owned land provide opportunities for archaeologists to look at such anthropogenic landscapes writ large. Researchers can combine archaeological data and historical documents in order to examine culturally constituted perceptions of land and landscape, and the effects of such perceptions on land use: in short, the transformation of land into homeland.