The Main Ridge Community at Lost City


Book Description

Focuses on one of the sites investigated by M.R. Harrington in the 1920s, to carve out from the misleading connotations of "Lost City" a concept of a site that was a community, Main Ridge, and examines it for indications of its size and its organization, as well as evidence of social differentiation among the buried population, and its involvement in production and exchange.




Leaving Mesa Verde


Book Description

It is one of the great mysteries in the archaeology of the Americas: the depopulation of the northern Southwest in the late thirteenth-century AD. Considering the numbers of people affected, the distances moved, the permanence of the departures, the severity of the surrounding conditions, and the human suffering and culture change that accompanied them, the abrupt conclusion to the farming way of life in this region is one of the greatest disruptions in recorded history. Much new paleoenvironmental data, and a great deal of archaeological survey and excavation, permit the fifteen scientists represented here much greater precision in determining the timing of the depopulation, the number of people affected, and the ways in which northern Pueblo peoples coped—and failed to cope—with the rapidly changing environmental and demographic conditions they encountered throughout the 1200s. In addition, some of the scientists in this volume use models to provide insights into the processes behind the patterns they find, helping to narrow the range of plausible explanations. What emerges from these investigations is a highly pertinent story of conflict and disruption as a result of climate change, environmental degradation, social rigidity, and conflict. Taken as a whole, these contributions recognize this era as having witnessed a competition between differing social and economic organizations, in which selective migration was considerably hastened by severe climatic, environmental, and social upheaval. Moreover, the chapters show that it is at least as true that emigration led to the collapse of the northern Southwest as it is that collapse led to emigration.




Life beyond the Boundaries


Book Description

Life beyond the Boundaries explores identity formation on the edges of the ancient Southwest. Focusing on some of the more poorly understood regions, including the Jornada Mogollon, the Gallina, and the Pimería Alta, the authors use methods drawn from material culture science, anthropology, and history to investigate themes related to the construction of social identity along the perimeters of the American Southwest. Through an archaeological lens, the volume examines the social experiences of people who lived in edge regions. Through mobility and the development of extensive social networks, people living in these areas were introduced to the ideas and practices of other cultural groups. As their spatial distances from core areas increased, the degree to which they participated in the economic, social, political, and ritual practices of ancestral core areas increasingly varied. As a result, the social identities of people living in edge zones were often—though not always—fluid and situational. Drawing on an increase of available information and bringing new attention to understudied areas, the book will be of interest to scholars of Southwestern archaeology and other researchers interested in the archaeology of low-populated and decentralized regions and identity formation. Life beyond the Boundaries considers the various roles that edge regions played in local and regional trajectories of the prehistoric and protohistoric Southwest and how place influenced the development of social identity. Contributors: Lewis Borck, Dale S. Brenneman, Jeffery J. Clark, Severin Fowles, Patricia A. Gilman, Lauren E. Jelinek, Myles R. Miller, Barbara J. Mills, Matthew A. Peeples, Kellam Throgmorton, James T. Watson







UNEV Pipeline


Book Description




Intrigue of the Past


Book Description

"Project Archaeology in Nevada is sponsored by the U.S. Department of the Interior Bureau of Land Management as well as other public and private partners. The goal is to foster stewardship of Nevada's cultural resources and to promote the educational, cultural, and scientific awareness to benefit diverse present and future generations. By introducing the Project Archaeology program into Nevada, we hope to equip Nevada's children with the knowledge to make wise decisions regarding the use and preservation of archaeological resources and an appreciation of Nevada's diverse cultural heritage"--Intro.




The Prehistoric Pueblo World, A.D. 1150-1350


Book Description

From the mid-twelfth to the mid-fourteenth century, the world of the ancestral Pueblo people (Anasazi) was in transition, undergoing changes in settlement patterns and community organization that resulted in what scholars now call the Pueblo III period. This book synthesizes the archaeology of the ancestral Pueblo world during the Pueblo III period, examining twelve regions that embrace nearly the entire range of major topographic features, ecological zones, and prehistoric Puebloan settlement patterns found in the northern Southwest. Drawn from the 1990 Crow Canyon Archaeological Center conference "Pueblo Cultures in Transition," the book serves as both a data resource and a summary of ideas about prehistoric changes in Puebloan settlement and in regional interaction across nearly 150,000 square miles of the Southwest. The volume provides a compilation of settlement data for over 800 large sites occupied between A.D. 1100-1400 in the Southwest. These data provide new perspectives on the geographic scale of culture change in the Southwest during this period. Twelve chapters analyze the archaeological record for specific districts and provide a detailed picture of settlement size and distribution, community architecture, and population trends during the period. Additional chapters cover warfare and carrying capacity and provide overviews of change in the region. Throughout the chapters, the contributors address the unifying issues of the role of large sites in relation to smaller ones, changes in settlement patterns from the Pueblo II to Pueblo III periods, changes in community organization, and population dynamics. Although other books have considered various regions or the entire prehistoric area, this is the first to provide such a wealth of information on the Pueblo III period and such detailed district-by-district syntheses. By dealing with issues of population aggregation and the archaeology of large settlements, it offers readers a much-needed synthesis of one of the most crucial periods of culture change in the Southwest. Contents 1. "The Great Period": The Pueblo World During the Pueblo III Period, A.D. 1150 to 1350, Michael A. Adler 2. Pueblo II-Pueblo III Change in Southwestern Utah, the Arizona Strip, and Southern Nevada, Margaret M. Lyneis 3. Kayenta Anasazi Settlement Transformations in Northeastern Arizona: A.D. 1150 to 1350, Jeffrey S. Dean 4. The Pueblo III-Pueblo IV Transition in the Hopi Area, Arizona, E. Charles Adams 5. The Pueblo III Period along the Mogollon Rim: The Honanki, Elden, and Turkey Hill Phases of the Sinagua, Peter J. Pilles, Jr. 6. A Demographic Overview of the Late Pueblo III Period in the Mountains of East-central Arizona, J. Jefferson Reid, John R. Welch, Barbara K. Montgomery, and María Nieves Zedeño 7. Southwestern Colorado and Southeastern Utah Settlement Patterns: A.D. 1100 to 1300, Mark D. Varien, William D. Lipe, Michael A. Adler, Ian M. Thompson, and Bruce A. Bradley 8. Looking beyond Chaco: The San Juan Basin and Its Peripheries, John R. Stein and Andrew P. Fowler 9. The Cibola Region in the Post-Chacoan Era, Keith W. Kintigh 10. The Pueblo III Period in the Eastern San Juan Basin and Acoma-Laguna Areas, John R. Roney 11. Southwestern New Mexico and Southeastern Arizona, A.D. 900 to 1300, Stephen H. Lekson 12. Impressions of Pueblo III Settlement Trends among the Rio Abajo and Eastern Border Pueblos, Katherine A. Spielman 13. Pueblo Cultures in Transition: The Northern Rio Grande, Patricia L. Crown, Janet D. Orcutt, and Timothy A. Kohler 14. The Role of Warfare in the Pueblo III Period, Jonathan Haas and Winifred Creamer 15. Agricultural Potential and Carrying Capacity in Southwestern Colorado, A.D. 901 to 1300, Carla R. Van West 16. Big Sites, Big Questions: Pueblos in Transition, Linda S. Cordell 17. Pueblo III People and Polity in Relational Context, David R. Wilcox Appendix: Mapping the Puebloa




Archaeology in America [4 volumes]


Book Description

The greatness of America is right under our feet. The American past—the people, battles, industry and homes—can be found not only in libraries and museums, but also in hundreds of archaeological sites that scientists investigate with great care. These sites are not in distant lands, accessible only by research scientists, but nearby—almost every locale possesses a parcel of land worthy of archaeological exploration. Archaeology in America is the first resource that provides students, researchers, and anyone interested in their local history with a survey of the most important archaeological discoveries in North America. Leading scholars, most with an intimate knowledge of the area, have written in-depth essays on over 300 of the most important archaeological sites that explain the importance of the site, the history of the people who left the artifacts, and the nature of the ongoing research. Archaeology in America divides it coverage into 8 regions: the Arctic and Subarctic, the Great Basin and Plateau, the Great Plains and Rocky Mountains, the Midwest, the Northeast, the Southeast, the Southwest, and the West Coast. Each entry provides readers with an accessible overview of the archaeological site as well as books and articles for further research.




All the Water the Law Allows


Book Description

As the population of the greater Las Vegas area grows and the climate warms, the threat of a water shortage looms over southern Nevada. But as Christian S. Harrison demonstrates in All the Water the Law Allows, the threat of shortage arises not from the local environment but from the American legal system, specifically the Law of the River that governs water allocation from the Colorado River. In this political and legal history of the Las Vegas water supply, Harrison focuses on the creation and actions of the Southern Nevada Water Authority (SNWA) to tell a story with profound implications and important lessons for water politics and natural resource policy in the twenty-first century. In the state with the smallest allocation of the Colorado’s water supply, Las Vegas faces the twin challenges of aridity and federal law to obtain water for its ever-expanding population. All the Water the Law Allows describes how the impending threat of shortage in the 1980s compelled the five metropolitan water agencies of greater Las Vegas to unify into a single entity. Harrison relates the circumstances of the SNWA’s evolution and reveals how the unification of local, county, and state interests allowed the compact to address regional water policy with greater force and focus than any of its peers in the Colorado River Basin. Most notably, the SNWA has mapped conservation plans that have drastically reduced local water consumption; and, in the interstate realm, it has been at the center of groundbreaking, water-sharing agreements. Yet these achievements do not challenge the fundamental primacy of the Law of the River. If current trends continue and the Basin States are compelled to reassess the river’s distribution, the SNWA will be a force and a model for the Basin as a whole.




Prehistoric Culture Change on the Colorado Plateau


Book Description

A collection of writings by participants in the Black Mesa Archaeological Project offers a synthesis of Kayenta-area archaeology, examining the ancestral Puebloan and Navajo occupation of the Four Corners region, and analysing faunal, lithic, ceramic, chronometric, and human osteological data, to construct an account of the prehistory and ethnohistory of northern Arizona that demonstrates how organizational variation and other aspects of culture change are largely a response to a changing natural environment.