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In this return to his lively, provocative reconceptualization of
the meaning of Chaco Canyon and its monumental 11th-century
structures, Stephen H. Lekson expands-over time and distance-our
understanding of the political and economic integration of the
American Southwest. Lekson's argument that Chaco did not stand
alone, but rather was the first of three capitals in a vast
networked region incorporating most of the Pueblo world has gained
credence over the past 15 years. Here, he marshals new evidence and
new interpretations to further the case for ritual astronomical
alignment of monumental structures and cities, great ceremonial
roads, and the shift of the regional capital first from Chaco
Canyon to the Aztec Ruins site and then to Paquime, all located on
the same longitudinal meridian. Along the line from Aztec to
Paquime, Lekson synthesizes 1000 years of Southwestern
prehistory-explaining phenomena as diverse as the Great North Road,
macaw feathers, Pueblo mythology, the recycling of iconic symbols
over time, founder burials, and the rise of kachina ceremonies-to
yield a fascinating argument that will interest anyone concerned
with the prehistory and history of the American Southwest.
In this return to his lively, provocative reconceptualization of
the meaning of Chaco Canyon and its monumental 11th-century
structures, Stephen H. Lekson expands-over time and distance-our
understanding of the political and economic integration of the
American Southwest. Lekson's argument that Chaco did not stand
alone, but rather was the first of three capitals in a vast
networked region incorporating most of the Pueblo world has gained
credence over the past 15 years. Here, he marshals new evidence and
new interpretations to further the case for ritual astronomical
alignment of monumental structures and cities, great ceremonial
roads, and the shift of the regional capital first from Chaco
Canyon to the Aztec Ruins site and then to Paquime, all located on
the same longitudinal meridian. Along the line from Aztec to
Paquime, Lekson synthesizes 1000 years of Southwestern
prehistory-explaining phenomena as diverse as the Great North Road,
macaw feathers, Pueblo mythology, the recycling of iconic symbols
over time, founder burials, and the rise of kachina ceremonies-to
yield a fascinating argument that will interest anyone concerned
with the prehistory and history of the American Southwest.
The beauty of the canyons and mesas of the Colorado Plateau and the
lives of the resourceful people that once occupied these now nearly
empty places are the subject of the eighty-five black-and-white
photographs and accompanying essays in Canyon Spirits. John
Ninnemann's photographs of Chaco, Mesa Verde, Hovenweep, Cedar
Mesa, Grand Gulch, and the San Juan River provide the visual
context for Stephen Lekson's descriptions of the early Puebloan
cultures of the Southwest and J. McKim Malville's consideration of
the power of celestial events in the lives of these people.
Together they provide a non-traditional, provocative, and visually
exciting approach to Southwest 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.
According to archaeologist Stephen H. Lekson, much of what we think
we know about the Southwest has been compressed into conventions
and classifications and orthodoxies. This book challenges and
reconfigures these accepted notions by telling two parallel
stories, one about the development, personalities, and institutions
of Southwestern archaeology and the other about interpretations of
what actually happened in the ancient past. While many works would
have us believe that nothing much ever happened in the ancient
Southwest, this book argues that the region experienced rises and
falls, kings and commoners, war and peace, triumphs and failures.
In this view, Chaco Canyon was a geopolitical reaction to the
"Colonial Period" Hohokam expansion and the Hohokam "Classic
Period" was the product of refugee Chacoan nobles, chased off the
Colorado Plateau by angry farmers. Far to the south, Casas Grandes
was a failed attempt to create a Mesoamerican state, and modern
Pueblo people--with societies so different from those at Chaco and
Casas Grandes--deliberately rejected these monumental, hierarchical
episodes of their past.
This volume summarizes the archaeology of the Mimbres area. Mimbres
is the archaeological term for ancient Native American peoples who
lived along the river of that name (the Rio Mimbres) and several
other valleys in the southwestern corner of the state of New
Mexico. They flourished, artistically, from about A.D. 950 to 1150;
and the characteristic black-on-white pottery of that period is
represented in art museums and private collections around the
world. A single Mimbres bowl can fetch tens of thousands of dollars
at auction. The pottery itself was not technically remarkable
(hand-formed, indifferently finished earthenware) but the designs -
painted in black pigment on the white-slipped interior of bowls -
constitute one of the most appealing, intriguing and recognizable
Native artistic tradition of ancient North America.
The site of a great Ancestral Pueblo center in the 11th and 12th
centuries AD, the ruins in Chaco Canyon look like a city to some
archaeologists, a ceremonial center to others. Chaco and the people
who created its monumental great houses, extensive roads, and
network of outlying settlements remain an enigma in American
archaeology. Two decades after the latest and largest program of
field research at Chaco (the National Park Service's Chaco Project
from 1971 to 1982) the original researchers and other leading Chaco
scholars convened to evaluate what they now know about Chaco in
light of new theories and new data. Those meetings culminated in an
advanced seminar at the School of American Research, where the
Chaco Project itself was born in 1968. In this capstone volume, the
contributors address central archaeological themes, including
environment, organization of production, architecture, regional
issues, and society and polity.They place Chaco in its time and in
its region, considering what came before and after its heyday and
its neighbors to the north and south, including Mesoamerica.
Southwestern archaeologists have long pondered the meaning and
importance of the monumental 11th-century structures in Chaco
Canyon. Now, Stephen H. Lekson offers a lively, provocative thesis,
which attempts to reconceptualize the meaning of Chaco and its
importance to the understanding of the entire Southwest. Chaco was
not alone, according to Lekson, but only one of three capitals of a
vast politically and economically integrated region, a network that
incorporated most of the Pueblo world and that had contact as far
away as Central America. A sophisticated astronomical tradition
allowed for astrally aligned monumental structures, great
ceremonial roads and-upon the abandonment of Chaco Canyon in the
12th century-the shift of the regional capital first to the Aztec
site, then Paquime, all located on precisely the same longitudinal
meridian. Lekson's ground-breaking synthesis of 500 years of
Southwestern prehistory-with its explanation of phenomena as
diverse as the Great North Road, macaw feathers, Pueblo mythology,
and the rise of kachina ceremonies-will be of great interest to all
those concerned with the prehistory and history of the American
Southwest.
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