The Context, Dating, and Role of Painted Building Murals in Gallina Society

Abstract

Ancestral Pueblo people created painted murals within their homes and ceremonial buildings to express important messages about their shared identities. Over the course of a century of archaeological work, several rare examples of these important features have been documented at Gallina Phase sites. Discussions of these murals, however, have received little attention. In this article, I draw together new and existing data about the content and context of the Gallina murals and, using dendrochronology, establish the temporal ranges of the structures decorated with murals. I discuss variation in mural imagery and context in the Gallina sites, and then turn to a regional view of mural arts in the region before AD 1300. By comparing the Gallina murals to contemporary examples from the Mesa Verde and larger San Juan Basin regions, and later northern Rio Grande examples, I discuss the role that building murals appear to have played in Gallina society.