Transilient Acts and Resilient Villages

Michael A. Adler is an associate professor in the anthropology department at Southern Methodist University. He received his academic training at Princeton University and the University of Michigan.

“Michael Adler uses archaeological and historical information to suggest the ways that Northern Rio Grande Pueblos, most notably Picuris Pueblo, have exhibited resilience and transilience throughout their deep history. Researchers familiar with Northern Rio Grande history will find this manuscript an important addition to their professional libraries, while the general reader will better understand the manner by which Picuris Pueblo has maintained its culture through the last thousand years.”—Joe E. Watkins, author of Indigenizing Japan: Ainu Past, Present, and Future“Michael Adler has taken a unique opportunity to describe the precontact Puebloan history of the far Northern Rio Grande and to show it to us through a relevant and well-articulated anthropological lens. This volume exhibits both the author’s many years of archaeological research in the region and his deeply respectful relationships with members of the descendant Tiwa communities whose ancestors’ lives he studies. In so doing, Adler challenges long-held but sometimes thin notions of systemic resilience intended to maintain the status quo in favor of culturally intentional acts of transilience designed to protect the lives of those who move through inevitable disruptions and the lives of those who stay behind.”—Jeff Boyer, USDA Natural Resources Conservation Service