Taste--an appreciation for some things, a disdain for others--is usually understood by sociologists as playing a key role in struggles for position within closed, hierarchical status systems. Yet taste that reaches across cultural and social boundaries is a common phenomenon in a world of mobility and falling barriers to travel and access. This study argues that this expression of taste also has a political dimension, through an examination of the sponsorship of traditional Pueblo Indian pottery by Anglo newcomers to northern New Mexico in the 1920s and 1930s. The organization that these newcomers founded, the Indian Arts Fund, played an important role in building a differentiated market for Pueblo pottery, supported by an increasingly complex body of knowledge and evaluation. This intervention into the market for pottery, and into the definition of Pueblo culture, served to insert the Indian Arts Fund's members into regional society, against the resistance of older, more established elites. A visible association with Pueblo pottery linked newcomers to the transformation of the regional economy by tourism, which had shifted the source of value in northern New Mexico from natural resources to the marketing of particularity and difference. An examination of the role of pottery production, and income from pottery, in Pueblo communities reveals that the relationship between pottery and Pueblo culture was more complex, and more tangential, than the image that was being constructed in the context of the market.

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The Chama area straddles the physiographic and structural boundary between the San Juan Basin and the San Juan Mountains. The Mesozoic formations, the Upper Jurassic Entrada and Morrison and the Upper Cretaceous Dakota and Mancos, are separated by a marked angular unconformity from the Oligocene (?) Blanco Basin Formation and the upper Miocene Conejos Quartz Latite and Treasure Mountain Rhyolite. Late Cenozoic eastward tilting and high-angle normal faulting have affected all the bedded rocks. The present topography has been profoundly modified by extensive mass movements and Pleistocene glaciation during the Cerro, Durango, and Wisconsin stages with related outwash terrace deposits. / text

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Individuals, who were predominantly untrained in architectural design and construction, created the vernacular architecture of American homesteads for their own use. The buildings homesteaders created varied in materials and architectural forms. The goal of this study is to test the hypothesis that the cultural backgrounds of homesteaders were significant in their homestead architectural decisions. Three homesteads in Cebolla Canyon, New Mexico, were selected for study, due to their unique architectural construction and close proximity, both geographically and temporally. Methods included historical and biographical research, homestead site documentation, dendroarchaeological research, and architectural analyses. The results of this study suggest that the cultural backgrounds of homesteaders were influential in architectural decisions, but were not necessarily the most influential factor. Intentions for staying in the canyon and interests in conveniently acquiring construction materials were also influential factors in architectural decisions in Cebolla Canyon homesteads.