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.

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.

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 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.

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.