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 a few of the topics addressed in Living the Ancient Southwest. In this highly-illustrated anthology, general readers will discover essays by eighteen anthropologist-writers. They speak about the beauty and originality of Mimbres pottery, the rock paintings in Canyon de Chelly, the history of the Wupatki Navajos, O'odham songs describing ancient trails to the Pacific Coast, and other topics relating to the deep indigenous history and culture of the American Southwest.

Mesa Verde, with its stunning landscapes and cliff dwellings, evokes all the romance of American archaeology. It has intrigued researchers and visitors for more than a century. But "Mesa Verde" represents more than cliff dwellings--its peoples created a culture that thrived for a thousand years in Southwestern Colorado and southeastern Utah. Archaeologists have discovered dozens of long-buried hamlets and villages spread for miles across the Great Sage Plain west and north of Mesa Verde. Only lately have these sites begun to reveal their secrets. In recent decades, archaeologists have been working intensively in the Mesa Verde region to build the story of its ancestral Pueblo inhabitants. The Mesa Verde World showcases new findings about the region's prehistory, environment, and archaeological history, from newly discovered reservoir systems on Mesa Verde to astronomical alignments at Yellow Jacket Pueblo. Key topics include farming, settlement, sacred landscapes, cosmology and astronomy, rock art, warfare, migration, and contemporary Pueblo perspectives.

Initially stationed at the U.S. Army's counterintelligence headquarters in Saigon, David Noble was sent north to launch the army's first covert intelligence-gathering operation in Vietnam's Central Highlands. Living in the region of the Montagnards-Vietnam's indigenous tribal people, deemed critical to winning the war-Noble documented strategic hamlets and Green Beret training camps, where Special Forces teams taught the Montagnards to use rifles rather than crossbows and spears. In this book, he relates the formidable challenges he confronted in the course of his work. Weaving together memoir, excerpts from letters written home, and photographs, Noble's compelling narrative throws light on a little-known corner of the Vietnam War in its early years-before the Tonkin Gulf Resolution and the deployment of combat units-and traces his transformation from a novice intelligence agent and believer in the war to a political dissenter and active protester.

Often overshadowed by the Ancestral Pueblo centers at Chaco Canyon and Mesa Verde, the Middle San Juan is one of the most dynamic territories in the pre-Hispanic Southwest, interacting with Chaco Canyon and Mesa Verde as well the surrounding regions. This ancient Puebloan heartland was instrumental in tying together Chaco and Mesa Verde cultures to create a distinctive blend of old and new, local and nonlocal. The contributors to this book attribute the development of Salmon and Aztec to migration and colonization by people from Chaco Canyon. Rather than fighting for control over the territory, Chaco migrants and local leaders worked together to build the great houses of Aztec and Salmon while maintaining their identities and connections with their individual homelands. As a result of this collaboration, the Middle San Juan can be seen as one of the ancient Puebloan heartlands that made important contributions to contemporary Puebloan society.

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 a few of the topics addressed in Living the Ancient Southwest. In this highly-illustrated anthology, general readers will discover essays by eighteen anthropologist-writers. They speak about the beauty and originality of Mimbres pottery, the rock paintings in Canyon de Chelly, the history of the Wupatki Navajos, O'odham songs describing ancient trails to the Pacific Coast, and other topics relating to the deep indigenous history and culture of the American Southwest.

This book represents the culmination of David Grant Noble's forty-year career as a fine arts photographer and writer. It features seventy-five black-and-white photographs of the land, people, and deep past of the Southwest, most published here for the first time. Accompanying these beautiful images are personal reflections interwoven with historical and anthropological information. The moving passages reveal much about both the man and the magnificent land that inspires his artistry. "The places we know," Noble writes, "can be infused with memory and spirit, and landscapes can have soul. The stories contained may speak of creation, gods, mythic monsters, and heroes. They may hold narratives reminding us of triumphs and defeats, sorrows and joys. A place is more than a landform or an ecosystem; it has the capacity to evoke emotion, transmit knowledge and wisdom, and even show people how to live." These photographs and words portray the land's soul, the artist's vision. Through them, the ancient landscapes and peoples of the Southwest tell their tales, display their beauty, remind us that we are only the most recent of many who have lived and been inspired here.

Startling discoveries and impassioned debates have emerged from the Chaco Phenomenon since the publication of New Light on Chaco Canyon twenty years ago. This completely updated edition features seventeen original essays, scores of photographs, maps, and site plans, and the perspectives of archaeologists, historians, and Native American thinkers. Key topics include the rise of early great houses; the structure of agricultural life among the people of Chaco Canyon; their use of sacred geography and astronomy in organizing their spiritual cosmology; indigenous knowledge about Chaco from the perspective of Hopi, Tewa, and Navajo peoples; and the place of Chaco in the wider world of archaeology. For more than a century archaeologists and others have pursued Chaco Canyon's many and elusive meanings. In Search of Chaco brings these explorations to a new generation of enthusiasts.