Anthropology, Department of
Chaco Revisited: New Research on the Prehistory of Chaco Canyon, NM
Date of this Version
4-2015
Citation
Heitman, Carrie C. and Steve Plog (editors) 2015. Chaco Revisited: New Research on the Prehistory of Chaco Canyon, NM. Amerind Studies in Archaeology, University of Arizona Press, Tucson.
Abstract
Chaco Canyon, the great Ancestral Pueblo site of the eleventh and twelfth centuries, has inspired excavations and research for more than one hundred years. Chaco Revisited brings together an A-team of Chaco scholars to provide an updated, refreshing analysis of over a century of scholarship.
In each of the twelve chapters, luminaries from the field of archaeology and anthropology such as R. Gwinn Vivian, Peter Whiteley, and Paul E. Minnis address some of the most fundamental question surrounding Chaco, from agriculture and craft production, to social organization and skeletal analyses. Though varied in their key questions about Chaco, each author uses previous research or new studies to ultimately blaze a trail for future research and discoveries about the canyon. Written by both up-and-coming and well-seasoned scholars of Chaco Canyon, Chaco Revisited provides readers with a perspective that is both varied and balanced. Though a singular theory for the Chaco Canyon phenomenon is yet to be reached, Chaco Revisited brings a new understanding to scholars: that Chaco was perhaps even more productive and socially complex than previous analyses would suggest.
In the same way that the ancestral inhabitants of Pueblo Bonito kept alive and renewed their cultural ties to their past by reentering and restoring their connection to parts of their pueblo that dated to over two hundred years earlier, these papers renew and refurbish our understanding of collections made more than one hundred years ago.—Richard Wilshusen, co-editor of Crucible of Pueblos: The Early Pueblo Period in the Northern Southwest
Certainly, there's a lot of literature on Chaco Canyon, but this volume brings together an all-star team of scholars to provide an important new contribution on the Chaco phenomenon.—John Kantner, author of Ancient Puebloan Southwest
Comments
Announcement of forthcoming (2015) book from the University of Arizona Press.