Chaco Revisited

New Research on the Prehistory of Chaco Canyon, New Mexico

Edited by Carrie C. Heitman and Stephen Plog

SERIES:

The University of Arizona Press

Chaco Canyon, the great Ancestral Pueblo site of the eleventh and twelfth centuries, has inspired excavations and research for more than one hundred years. Chaco Revisited brings together an A-team of Chaco scholars to provide an updated, refreshing analysis of over a century of scholarship.

In each of the twelve chapters, luminaries from the field of archaeology and anthropology, such as R. Gwinn Vivian, Peter Whiteley, and Paul E. Minnis, address some of the most fundamental questions surrounding Chaco, from agriculture and craft production, to social organization and skeletal analyses. Though varied in their key questions about Chaco, each author uses previous research or new studies to ultimately blaze a trail for future research and discoveries about the canyon.

Written by both up-and-coming and well-seasoned scholars of Chaco Canyon, Chaco Revisited provides readers with a perspective that is both varied and balanced. Though a singular theory for the Chaco Canyon phenomenon is yet to be reached, Chaco Revisited brings a new understanding to scholars: that Chaco was perhaps even more productive and socially complex than previous analyses would suggest.

A wonderful book about new and diverse research in Chaco Canyon.’—New Mexico Historical Review

‘If budgets allow for only one book on the archaeology of Chaco Canyon, this is the one to choose.’—Choice

‘The volume shows that archaeologists continue to advance sophisticated and nuanced models of ancient Chacoan society. The evolution of our collective understanding of this complicated cultural phenomenon is encouraging.’ —New Mexico Historical Review

‘In the same way that the ancestral inhabitants of Pueblo Bonito kept alive and renewed their cultural ties to their past by reentering and restoring their connection to parts of their pueblo that dated to over two hundred years earlier, these papers renew and refurbish our understanding of collections made more than one hundred years ago.’—Richard Wilshusen, co-editor of Crucible of Pueblos: The Early Pueblo Period in the Northern Southwest

Carrie C. Heitman is an assistant professor of anthropology at the University of Nebraska–Lincoln, as well as co-director for the Chaco Research Archive. Her research appears in The Oxford Handbook of the Archaeology of the American Southwest, The Durable House, and A Catalyst for Ideas.

Stephen Plog is the David Harrison Professor of Archaeology at the University of Virginia. He has authored or edited four volumes, including Ancient People of the American Southwest and Spatial Organization and Exchange.

Acknowledgments

1 Understanding Chaco: Past, Present, and Future
Stephen Plog
2 Reevaluating and Modeling Agricultural Potential in the Chaco Core
R. Gwinn Vivian and Adam S. Watson
3 The Relevance of Maize Pollen for Assessing the Extent of Maize Production in Chaco Canyon
Phil R. Geib and Carrie C. Heitman
4 A Perishable Perspective on Chacoan Social Identities
Edward A. Jolie and Laurie D. Webster
5 Bones as Raw Material: Temporal Trends and Spatial Variability in the Chacoan Bone Tool Industry
Adam S. Watson
6 Human Burials of Chaco Canyon: New Developments in Cultural Interpretations through Skeletal Analysis
Kerriann Marden
7 A Biological Perspective on Chacoan Identity
Meradeth Snow and Steven A. LeBlanc
8 The House of Our Ancestors: New Research on the Prehistory of Chaco Canyon, New Mexico, A.D. 800–1200
Carrie C. Heitman
9 Unpacking the House: Ritual Practice and Social Networks at Chaco
Barbara J. Mills
10 Chacoan Kinship
Peter Whiteley
11 Looking North toward Chaco with Awe and Envy . . . Mostly
Paul E. Minnis
12 Chaco: The View from Downstream
Kelley Hays-Gilpin and John Ware

Editors and Contributors
Index

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