The Greater Chaco Landscape: Ancestors, Scholarship, and Advocacy

by Ruth M. Van Dyke (Editor), Carrie C. Heitman (Editor)

Overview

Since the mid-1970s, government agencies, scholars, tribes, and private industries have attempted to navigate potential conflicts involving energy development, Chacoan archaeological study, and preservation across the San Juan Basin. The Greater Chaco Landscape examines both the imminent threat posed by energy extraction and new ways of understanding Chaco Canyon⁠ and Chaco-era great houses and associated communities from southeast Utah to west-central New Mexico in the context of landscape archaeology.
 
Contributors analyze many different dimensions of the Chacoan landscape and present the most effective, innovative, and respectful means of studying them, focusing on the significance of thousand-year-old farming practices; connections between early great houses outside the canyon and the rise of power inside it; changes to Chaco’s roads over time as observed in aerial imagery; rock art throughout the greater Chaco area; respectful methods of examining shrines, crescents, herraduras, stone circles, cairns, and other landscape features in collaboration with Indigenous colleagues; sensory experiences of ancient Chacoans via study of the sightlines and soundscapes of several outlier communities; and current legal, technical, and administrative challenges and options concerning preservation of the landscape.
 
An unusually innovative and timely volume that will be available both in print and online, with the online edition incorporating video chapters presented by Acoma, Diné, Zuni, and Hopi cultural experts filmed on location in Chaco Canyon, The Greater Chaco Landscape is a creative collaboration with Native voices that will be a case study for archaeologists and others working on heritage management issues across the globe. It will be of interest to archaeologists specializing in Chaco and the Southwest, interested in remote sensing and geophysical landscape-level investigations, and working on landscape preservation and phenomenological investigations such as viewscapes and soundscapes.
 
Contributors: R. Kyle Bocinsky, G. B. Cornucopia, Timothy de Smet, Sean Field, Richard A. Friedman, Dennis Gilpin, Presley Haskie, Tristan Joe, Stephen H. Lekson, Thomas Lincoln, Michael P. Marshall, Terrance Outah, Georgiana Pongyesva, Curtis Quam, Paul F. Reed, Octavius Seowtewa, Anna Sofaer, Julian Thomas, William B. Tsosie Jr., Phillip Tuwaletstiwa, Ernest M. Vallo Jr., Carla R. Van West, Ronald Wadsworth, Robert S. Weiner, Thomas C. Windes, Denise Yazzie, Eurick Yazzie
 

Product Details

ISBN-13:	9781646421701
Publisher:	University Press of Colorado
Publication date:	05/03/2021
Sold by:	Barnes & Noble
Format:	eBook
Pages:	388
File size:	10 MB

About the Author

Ruth M. Van Dyke is professor of anthropology at Binghamton University, SUNY. She is an archaeologist specializing in the North American Southwest, and her research interests include landscape, architecture, power, memory, phenomenology, and visual representation. She has written some fifty articles and book chapters, and she is author or editor of six books, including Subjects and Narratives in Archaeology and The Chaco Experience. She directs projects on the Chaco landscape in northwest New Mexico and on historic Alsatian immigration in Texas.Carrie C. Heitman is associate professor of anthropology and the associate director of the Center for Digital Research in the Humanities at the University of Nebraska–Lincoln. She has helped build the Chaco Research Archive (chacoarchive.org, funded by the Andrew W. Mellon Foundation) and the Salmon Pueblo Archaeological Research Collection (salmonpueblo.org, funded by the National Endowment for the Humanities). Her publications include the coedited volume Chaco Revisited as well as articles on religion/ritual, architecture, kinship, gender and social inequality, museum anthropology, ethics and informatics, and methods of data integration in anthropology.
 

Table of Contents

Contents List of Figures, Videos, and Tables I. Introduction and History 1. The Greater Chaco Landscape Volume | Ruth M. Van Dyke and Carrie C. Heitman 2. Chaco Landscapes: A Personal Account | Stephen H. Lekson II. Understudied Landscape Dimensions 3. Landscapes, Horticulture, and the Early Chacoan Bonito Phase | Thomas C. Windes and Carla R. Van West 4. Linear Cultural Alignments in the Western San Juan Basin (video only) | Phillip Tuwaletstiwa and Michael P. Marshall 5. Rock Art in the Chaco Landscape | Dennis Gilpin 6. Enigmatic Rock Features: Shrines, Herraduras, Stone Circles, and Cairns on the Greater Chaco Landscape | Ruth M. Van Dyke III. Indigenous Perspectives 7. Acoma (Haaku) Perspectives (video only) | Ernest M. Vallo Jr. 8. Diné (Navajo) Perspectives (video only) | William B. Tsosie Jr., with Denise Yazzie, Eurick Yazzie, and Tristan Joe 9. Hopi Perspectives (video only) | Terrance Outah, Georgiana Pongyesva, and Ronald Wadsworth 10. A:shiwi (Zuni) Perspectives (video only) | Octavius Seowtewa, Curtis Quam, and Presley Haskie IV. Experiencing the Landscape 11. Viewscapes and Soundscapes | Ruth M. Van Dyke, Timothy De Smet, and R. Kyle Bocinsky 12. Night Skies (video only) | G. B. Cornucopia V. Geospatial Investigations and Big Data 13. LiDAR and 3-D Digital Modeling Reveal the Greater Chaco Landscape | Richard A. Friedman, Anna Sofaer, and Robert S. Weiner 14. The Impact of Digital Data Ecosystems on Our Understanding of the Greater Chacoan Cultural Landscape: Assessing Geospatial Information, Remote Sensing, and Aggregating Roads Data | Carrie C. Heitman and Sean Field VI. Management 15. The Protection of Monuments and Landscapes in Britain: A Historical View | Julian Thomas 16. Protecting the Greater Chaco Landscape: Preservation and Advocacy | Paul F. Reed VII. Conclusion 17. What Can Be Discovered from Chaco Archaeology? | Thomas R. Lincoln Appendix A: Chaco Landscapes: Data, Theory, and Management (White Paper prepared for the USDI National Park Service, Denver, Colorado) (online only) | Ruth M. Van Dyke, Stephen H. Lekson, and Carrie C. Heitman, with a contribution by Julian Thomas Index

Editorial Reviews

“This synthetic overview goes beyond addressing scholars who study Chaco and provides all who care about the preservation of the Chacoan archaeological record with a comprehensive overview of the Chaco regional landscape.”
—Mark Varien, Executive Vice President of the Research Institute at Crow Canyon
 
“As a new statement on Chaco, with updated data, interpretations, and methodologically/theoretically sound contributions, this volume will be an important addition to the corpus of research on and about Chaco and its larger environs.”
—Andrew Duff, Washington State University

“The Greater Chaco Landscape is an innovative addition to Chacoan scholarship that comes at a time when these priceless cultural resources are in need of better efforts of preservation and understanding.”
—American Archeology

"[The Greater Chaco Landscape] successfully weaves together science, humanities, and resource management and presents new insights into a prominent chapter in the prehistory of the North American Southwest."
—New Mexico Historical Review

From the Publisher