Cliff Dwellers of the Mesa Verde
In 1891, Swedish scientist Gustaf Nordenskiold studied, explored, and photographed many of Mesa Verde’s cliff dwellings. Considered by many to be the first true archeologist at Mesa Verde, his book, The Cliff Dwellers of the Mesa Verde, was the first extensive record of its cliff dwellings. This edition is richly illustrated with Nordenskiold's own drawings and photographs which have been digitally remastered.
"The summer and autumn of 1891 I passed through Colorado, engaged upon investigations of the remarkable cliff dwellings scattered in the canons of an extensive plateau, the Mesa Verde, in the southwest of the state. The present work is the result of those researches. It contains a description of the ruins, an account of the excavations carried out there and of the objects discovered." - G. Nordenskiold, Preface
History of the Ancient Southwest
Stephen H. Lekson weaves together the parallel narratives of a political history of the pre-Hispanic American Southwest and a critical intellectual history of southwestern archaeology. Writing in an engaging, literate, and humorous style, Lekson casts the ancient Southwest as the revolving scene of dramatic events played out by elites and commoners, locals and foreigners, imitators and innovators. The strikingly communal, democratic, and settled nature of historic Pueblo peoples is seen as a deliberate cultural reaction to a far darker past when kings ruled. Likewise, the author reacts to archaeology's preoccupation with being scientific and explaining cultural processes at the expense of understanding history.
House of Rain
The greatest "unsolved mystery" of the American Southwest is the fate of the Anasazi. Was it drought? Pestilence? War? Forced migration, mass murder or suicide? Conflicting theories have abounded for years, capturing the North American imagination for eons.
Join Craig Childs as he draws on the latest scholarly research, as well as a lifetime of exploration in the forbidden landscapes of the American Southwest, to shed new light on this compelling mystery.
Living and Leaving
The Mesa Verde migrations in the thirteenth century were an integral part of a transformative period that forever changed the course of Pueblo history. For more than seven hundred years, Pueblo people lived in the Northern San Juan region of the U.S. Southwest. Yet by the end of the 1200s, tens of thousands of Pueblo people had left the region. Understanding how it happened and where they went are enduring questions central to Southwestern archaeology.
Author Donna M. Glowacki shows how "living and leaving" were experienced across the region and what role differing stressors and enablers had in causing emigration. The author's analysis explains how different histories and contingencies--which were shaped by deeply rooted eastern and western identities, a broad-reaching Aztec-Chaco ideology, and the McElmo Intensification--converged, prompting everyone to leave the region. This book will be of interest to southwestern specialists and anyone interested in societal collapse, transformation, and resilience.
Living the Ancient Southwest
How did Southwestern peoples make a living in the vast arid reaches of the Great Basin? When and why did violence erupt in the Mesa Verde region? Who were the Fremont people? How do some Hopis view Chaco Canyon? These are just a few of the topics addressed in Living the Ancient Southwest.
Study of Southwestern Archaeology
In this volume Steve Lekson argues that, for over a century, southwestern archaeology got the history of the ancient Southwest wrong. Instead, he advocates an entirely new approach--one that separates archaeological thought in the Southwest from its anthropological home and moves to more historical ways of thinking.
Focusing on the enigmatic monumental center at Chaco Canyon, the book provides a historical analysis of how Southwest archaeology confined itself, how it can break out of those confines, and how it can proceed into the future. Lekson suggests that much of what we believe about the ancient Southwest should be radically revised. Looking past old preconceptions brings a different Chaco Canyon into view: more than an eleventh-century Pueblo ritual center, Chaco was a political capital with nobles and commoners, a regional economy, and deep connections to Mesoamerica. By getting the history right, a very different science of the ancient Southwest becomes possible and archaeology can be reinvented as a very different discipline.