The Lost World of the Old Ones: Discoveries in the Ancient Southwest

by David Roberts

Overview

An award-winning author and veteran mountain climber takes us deep into the Southwest backcountry to uncover secrets of its ancient inhabitants.

In this thrilling story of intellectual and archaeological discovery, David Roberts recounts his last twenty years of far-flung exploits in search of spectacular prehistoric ruins and rock art panels known to very few modern travelers. His adventures range across Utah, Arizona, New Mexico, and southwestern Colorado, and illuminate the mysteries of the Ancestral Puebloans and their contemporary neighbors the Mogollon and Fremont, as well as of the more recent Navajo and Comanche.

Product Details

ISBN-13:	9780393352337
Publisher:	Norton, W. W. & Company, Inc.
Publication date:	04/25/2016
Edition description:	Reprint
Pages:	368
Sales rank:	271,437
Product dimensions:	5.40(w) x 8.20(h) x 1.00(d)

About the Author

David Roberts (1943–2021) is the author of thirty books on mountaineering, exploration, and anthropology. His books have won the Boardman Tasker Award for Mountain Literature and the Grand Prize at the Banff Mountain Book Competition.

Table of Contents

Prologue Waldo's Catwalk 1

1 The Cowboy's Indians 25

2 Things 57

3 Cedar Mesa Revisited 91

4 Chaco Meridian 123

5 Wandering the Rez 153

6 Land of Enchantmen 187

7 Land of Enchantment-II 205

8 Exploring the Fifty 237

9 Deso Days 261

Epilogue: Return to the Basket 287

Acknowledgments 303

Bibliography 309

Index 315

Editorial Reviews

"A funny, witty and highly personal account."

Denver Post - Sandra Dallas

"Fascinating…While the book is historical and biographical, it reads more like an intense novel with an invitation to explore the canyons that share the lives of these ancient peoples."

Deseret News - Katrina Lynn Hawkins

"An utterly fascinating, beautifully written and elegiac exploration."

Douglas Preston

"[H]as the pull and excitement of a suspense novel and appeals to a wide range of readers interested in this region’s deep past and great beauty."

Booklist (starred review)

"Roberts captivates the reader with the thrill of finding artifacts…Full of insights."

Durango Herald

"Engaging…enjoyable reading."

Pasatiempo - Alex Heard

"The rare sequel that stands alone yet also takes its rightful place as a classic alongside its predecessor volume."

Mitchell Zuckoff

"Stimulating, provoking, mournful…[Roberts] has a deep and infectious passion for the landscapes, history and people of the Southwest."

Wall Street Journal - Gerard Helferich

07/20/2015
This rather puzzling book, a sequel of sorts to In Search of the Old Ones (1996), is a detailed guide to the archaeology of the American Southwest, particularly the areas inhabited by the Anasazi, or (in what Roberts terms "p.c." parlance) "Ancestral Puebloans." Roberts, a mountaineer and amateur archaeologist, received both praise and criticism for his earlier work, notably for the amount of attention it drew from visitors to Utah's Cedar Mesa site. In this followup, Roberts states that his goal is to offer readers an account of the most exciting and revealing research that has been produced about the region in the past 20 years—but instead he includes only long-winded anecdotes about his fellow climbers, archaeologists, and colorful local characters. The book is awkwardly situated among the genres of travelogue, adventure story, and scholarly monograph; it is insufficiently dramatic to satisfy on the first two counts, and the lack of footnotes undermines its success on the third. Puzzlingly, the book's illustrations include neither maps nor photos of artifacts, such as the Telluride blanket, to whose discovery and interpretation Roberts devotes an entire chapter. Roberts's love for the Southwest and its precolonial cultures emerges clearly, but his execution in producing this book is far less successful. (May)

Publishers Weekly

"[H]as the pull and excitement of a suspense novel and appeals to a wide range of readers interested in this region’s deep past and great beauty."

Starred review Booklist

"With the verve of his great mountaineering books, David Roberts takes us inside a lost ''genius climber'' civilization and its mysteries, introducing the looters, ruin baggers, warring academics, and wary tribal descendants who frame the ethical conflicts of modern archaeology—while never losing his own explorer’s energy and thirst for the thrill of wilderness discovery. These tales should be told around a campfire."

Tom Kizzia

"David Roberts brings an unusual panoply of talents to The Lost World of the Old Ones. Part ethnographer, part archaeologist—with healthy doses of skeptical enquirer, curiosity seeker, and professional mountain climber mixed in—this talented writer navigates the secret canyons and hidden watercourses of the American Southwest in search of a lost civilization."

Alex Beam

04/01/2015
Roberts (In Search of the Old Ones) returns to the American Southwest, bringing his experiences as a climber, traveler, and writer to the history of the Pueblo and Navajo peoples. Readers will follow the author into canyon country, hiking through pinyon-juniper stretches and scaling hidden alcoves. The text discusses important issues in anthropology, including archaeological preservation, the relationships of the natives to the historical landscape, and the complicated tensions between archaeologists and natives. Serious students of history and archaeology may glaze over the episodic adventurism, but the work succeeds in popularizing the often overly technical or inaccessible archaeological literature. Readers who are more interested in history than hiking may prefer Stephen Lekson's History of the Ancient Southwest. Nevertheless, Roberts has done his homework, and the book serves as an excellent literature review of Southwestern archaeology. In addition to examining common questions (e.g., Where did the Four Corners people go after the 13th century?), Roberts delves into less-charted territory, lending time to the Fremont culture and the Navajo leader Hoskinini. VERDICT Part history, part memoir, part excursion, this work is a great companion for scholar-adventurers.—Jeffrey Meyer, Mt. Pleasant P.L., IA

Library Journal

2015-02-02
More travels in the Southwest of yore by outdoorsman/writer Roberts (Alone on the Ice: The Greatest Survival Story in the History of Exploration, 2013, etc.).There's a place in southern Utah, not far from the Grand Canyon and closer still to the Grand Staircase-Escalante National Monument and Canyonlands, where, before 2002, the author had never been—unusual, since he's scrambled up and down most of the rugged terrain in the Four Corners states over the last four decades or so. Interestingly, most of his "desert-rat cronies" hadn't been there, either. More interestingly still, as he chronicles here, neither had many ancient people, save for a few outlier Kayenta Anasazi from down south who eventually "gave up on Kaiparowits…[and] returned to their homeland." Roberts, a keen student of the region's anthropology, takes time to wonder why, noting that in the last 15 years, interest has grown, with ever more sophistication in our understanding of the many ethnic and cultural groups that contributed to regional prehistory and their far-flung network of connections. Roberts also traveled nearby to the hidden lattice of canyons where vast numbers of Fremont Culture remains were recently formally cataloged, having been "protected by a single private owner" instead of the complex of laws surrounding what are called "cultural resources." The author journeyed to places that have been overrun and ransacked by private collectors and protected, if sometimes too late, by the long arm of federal authority. Throughout, Roberts does two things: He stands on the land himself, affording armchair travelers a fine view of the place, and he scours vast stacks of scholarly literature to give us an up-to-date take on the minefield that is historical interpretation, with scholars coming just short of blows over angels-on-pinheads sorts of questions. Credit the author for including plenty of interesting photos, as well. For fans of all things Southwestern—not quite as robust and thoughtful as Craig Childs' House of Rain (2007) but a pleasure to read.

Kirkus Reviews