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November 16


Stage 16 // Terradillos de los Templarios – Bercianos del Real Camino [23,2km]

Both the departure and arrival today are very small places. You can find interesting things, like the church of Bercianos (image), but the real pick of the day is small town on the way, Sahagún.

The town was founded as a monastery of the Cluny Order (remember the Camino is essential for the introduction of the new rites). For three centuries was of great importance in the way until it started to decline in favour of other towns nearby. But it left a rich heritage and an interesting fact… it was the second town to declare the Second Republic in Spain in 1931…


Troy Lovata

Walking pilgrimage trails is an effective way to teach contemporary and historic landscape archaeology. It also offers students the opportunity not just to be scholars, but engaged community members in their lived world and student experiences in response illuminate how archaeology itself is practiced. This presentation—a digital exhibition and an online, live conversation—explores curriculum and student work from the University of New Mexico Honors College’s interdisciplinary, first-year undergraduate seminar “The Legacy of Exploration: Exploration of Mountains”. These students alternate between hiking New Mexico’s mountains and reading—classics by John Muir and Isabella Bird, a newer canon of writing by Jon Krakauer, and archaeology and anthropology journal articles—about how mountain landscapes reflect and impact culture. Students, in part, specifically study mountain pilgrimages and walk Tomé Hill in Central New Mexico, USA. Although, at 5223 feet/1592 meters elevation above sea level, it is half the height of the 10,000 foot/3000 meter peaks of the mountains that encircle it; Tomé Hill nonetheless rises up distinctly up some 400 feet/121 meters from the flat Rio Grande plain and has long served as marker on the landscape. It is noted traveler’s accounts from the Spanish Camino Real, the American Territorial period, and today’s interstate road system. Rock art on site includes ancient Native, Spanish colonial, and modern graffiti. Tomé was as a religious focus for pre-contact Native Americans and gained significance for Spanish Colonists and Christianized Native Americans in the 17thcentury. Hermanos Penitentes, a Catholic lay fraternity, had firmly established pilgrimages summiting the hill on Good Friday by the early 1800’s. Although the pilgrimage waned in the early 20th century, it was revived by community members following World War II with year round hikes, crosses, a de facto altar, and National Park Service recognition. Tomé Hill today is also a popular, secular recreation destination and linked to the resurgence of the local Genizaro identity; people who share a distinct Native and Hispano ancestry and culture.

Display of student works live online here!

Join the live discussion on Zoom at 16:00 GMT

ZOOM access:
ID: 879 1875 6343
Passcode: 969928

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