Book Description
Southwestern archaeologists have long pondered the meaning and importance of the monumental 11th-century structures in Chaco Canyon. Now, Stephen H. Lekson offers a lively, provocative thesis, which attempts to reconceptualize the meaning of Chaco and its importance to the understanding of the entire Southwest. Chaco was not alone, according to Lekson, but only one of three capitals of a vast politically and economically integrated region, a network that incorporated most of the Pueblo world and that had contact as far away as Central America. A sophisticated astronomical tradition allowed for astrally aligned monumental structures, great ceremonial roads and-upon the abandonment of Chaco Canyon in the 12th century-the shift of the regional capital first to the Aztec site, then Paquime, all located on precisely the same longitudinal meridian. Lekson's ground-breaking synthesis of 500 years of Southwestern prehistory-with its explanation of phenomena as diverse as the Great North Road, macaw feathers, Pueblo mythology, and the rise of kachina ceremonies-will be of great interest to all those concerned with the prehistory and history of the American Southwest.
Customer Reviews:
The Chaco Domain.......2007-03-20
Lekson insight on Chaco culture is a brilliant overview based on indigenous pre-history. A history based on indigenous reality rather than a Eurocentric overlay.
a review from an archaeologist.......2004-06-02
Lekson's book the Chaco meridian is an entertaining read for those who are previously aquainted with southwestern puebloan archaeology. The book does well to keep the reader engrossed but as one hits the last few chapters you may wonder where the jokes left and the SAA conference began. It does provide an interesting perspective that could be used for further reasearch in the connection of ancient puebloan sites. Overall a fairly decent text, but simply unacceptable for the neophyte to this field of study.
Entertaining and largely persuasive big picture archeology.......2003-07-18
Lekson, an expert on Southwestern archaeology, presents a provocative thesis about the civilization that produced the great houses in New Mexico's Chaco Canyon. He proposes that Chaco Canyon was one of three successive capitals of a politically integrated region. According to Lekson, a ruling elite emerged at Chaco and perpetuated itself by moving a ceremonial city along Chaco's meridian. Lekson writes in an engaging and often deliberately provocative style. This is as fun as serious archaeology gets, though Lekson sometimes repeats his points. The book is well illustrated with diagrams and black and white photographs.
Like a seminar that never ends.......2002-02-18
The Chaco Meridian is strictly for those already familiar with studies and locations in Southwestern archaeology. The author's theory about a common meridian linking Chaco and Aztec (N.M.) and Casas Grandes (Mexico) is interesting and well-argued, but far-fetched.
The book is cluttered with hundreds of references placed in middle of the text, which make for choppy reading. Many of the references are to Dr. Lekson's own work.
Four Corners archaeology has been studied by many, many scientists for many, many years. The result is a cloud of literature which turns over stone after stone; potsherd after potsherd, attempting to justify the cost of each new study. There is lots of dust, not much pure light.
Dr. Lekson raises more dust, pointing out the coincidence of three major sites on (almost) the same meridian. Hundreds of other sites don't line up with anything. One can connect any two sites with a straight line. Extended far enough, the line will probably strike something else. My hometown is on almost the same meridian as Oklahoma City and Waco. So?
To his credit, Dr. Lekson gently slams the fetish of Chaco astro-archaeology and its limitless imagined alignments of doorways and rocks with certain stars on certain nights. Most of the "alignments" are pure Hohokam. The bend of a creek (we don't have mountains around here) viewed from my attic window lines up perfectly with sunrise on May 17. You have to stand on a chair in just the right spot to make everything line up. Is this a magic place, or what?
I'd like to give Dr. Lekson five stars for this clever work, but it grinds too fine.
Chaco Meridian: a view from Mesa Verde.......2001-08-18
Steve Lekson has created a book of immense power and importance that is both a challenge to current archaeological thinking and a pleasure to read! If Lekson's precepts are correct, then a major new chapter in Southwestern archaeology has just opened. Although I must disagree with many of his view points (I am "a remarkably, even perverse" (p.45) archaeologist and one of the perpetrators of the "Chaco is a Dairy Queen Outlier" bumper stickers (p.28), the book challenges even my Mesa Verdean sensabilities (Steve once called me a "like-minded heritic" so I expect that he would expect me to disagree with him along the line, as heretics do!). In short, I am not a Chacoanist and am sceptical of all things Chaco. Yet reading Lekson's new work is stimulating, and almost made a believer out of a stodgy old Mesa Verdean like me! Highly recommended, useful, energetic, and MAYBE correct!
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Guide to Native Americans of the Southwest: The Serious Traveler's Guide to People and Places
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Ancient Ruins of the Southwest: An Archaeological Guide (Arizona and the Southwest)
ASIN: 0813322790 |
Book Description
In the early twentieth century, a group of elite East coast women turned to the American Southwest in search of an alternative to European-derived concepts of culture. In Culture in the Marketplace Molly H. Mullin provides a detailed narrative of the growing influence that this network of women had on the Native American art market—as well as the influence these activities had on them—in order to investigate the social construction of value and the history of American concepts of culture.
Drawing on fiction, memoirs, journalistic accounts, and extensive interviews with artists, collectors, and dealers, Mullin shows how anthropological notions of culture were used to valorize Indian art and create a Southwest Indian art market. By turning their attention to Indian affairs and art in Santa Fe, New Mexico, she argues, these women escaped the gender restrictions of their eastern communities and found ways of bridging public and private spheres of influence. Tourism, in turn, became a means of furthering this cultural colonization. Mullin traces the development of aesthetic worth as it was influenced not only by politics and profit but also by gender, class, and regional identities, revealing how notions of “culture” and “authenticity” are fundamentally social ones. She also shows how many of the institutions that the early patrons helped to establish continue to play an important role in the contemporary market for American Indian art.
This book will appeal to audiences in cultural anthropology, art history, American studies, women’s studies, and cultural history.
Book Description
This book is an useful and invaluable resource for both collectors and dealers of Native American art forms. Focusing on the traditional works of the Southwest, such as silver jewelry, beadwork, quillwork, pottery, rugs, baskets, fetish carvings, and katsina dolls, collectors are offered guidelines to help them identify quality in contemporary Indian art, distinguish what dealers are reputable and which are not; learn how to recognize fraudulent work and know what to do if non-authentic merchandise is purchased; and learn more through recommended reading lists. Indian artists and art experts explain not only the dynamic history and technical process of their crafts, but also present personal views into their creative worlds. Beautiful, colored photographs highlight the intricate details of each craft.
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Hinterlands and Regional Dynamics in the Ancient Southwest
Manufacturer: University of Arizona Press
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Binding: Hardcover
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ASIN: 0816525145 |
Book Description
Hinterlands and Regional Dynamics in the Ancient Southwest is the first volume dedicated to understanding the nature of and changes in regional social autonomy, political hegemony, and organizational complexity across the entire prehistoric American Southwest. With geographic coverage extending from the Great Plains to the Colorado River, and from Mesa Verde to the international border, the volume's ten case studies synthesize research that enhances our understanding of the ancient Southwest's highly variable demographic, land use, and economic histories. For this volume, “hinterlands” are those areas whose archaeological records do not disclose the ceramic, architectural, and network evidence that initially led to the establishment of the Hohokam, Chaco, and Casas Grandes regional systems. Employing a variety of perspectives, such as the cultural landscapes approach, heterarchy, and the common-pool resource model, as well as technical methods, such as petrographic and stylistic-attribute analyses, the volume's contributors explore variation in hinterland identities, subsistence ecology, and sociopolitical organization as regional systems expanded and contracted between the 9th and 14th centuries AD. The hinterlands of the prehistoric Southwest were home to a substantial number of people and were often used as resource catchments by the inhabitants of regional systems. Importantly, hinterlands also influenced developments of nearby regional systems, under whose footprint they managed to retain considerable autonomy. By considering the dynamics between hinterlands and regional systems, the volume reveals unappreciated aspects of the ancient Southwest's peoples and their lives, thereby deepening our awareness of the region's rich and complicated cultural past.
Customer Reviews:
stone age spear and arrow points of the southwestern u.s........2007-06-26
excellant point type guide to arrowheads of the southwest. Much information on the cultures that made them and on how they were made.
Wow!.......2003-07-11
This is an essential reference. Noel Justice has done an amazing job of gathering the references and synthesizing a very complex and diverse array of "spear and arrow points" in this volume. I can also recommend "Stone Age Spear and Arrow Points of California and the Great Basin". Well worth the rather high price.
Book Description
With a simplicity as disarming as it is frank, Left Handed tells of his birth in the spring "when the cottonwood leaves were about the size of my thumbnail," of family chores such as guarding the sheep near the hogan, and of his sexual awakening. As he grows older, his account turns to life in the open: nomadic cattle-raising, farming, trading, communal enterprises, tribal dances and ceremonies, lovemaking, and marriage.
As Left Handed grows in understanding and stature, the accumulated wisdom of his people is made known to him. He learns the Navajo life founded upon principles: the necessity of honesty, foresightedness, self-discipline. The style of the narrative is almost biblical in its rhythms; but biblical, too, in many respects, is the traditional way of life it recounts.
Customer Reviews:
Fellow Shepherd.......2007-08-19
This book of a man's life has a rhythm that is set to a sheep's cadence. I had to read it twice to get the chronological aspect of it. The clues to how a nomad's life was led are sometimes plain and sometimes hidden. I found the ending to be abrupt.
not just a dry anthro text... interesting life story!.......2003-02-17
This text has some very interesting (and vivid) sexual accounts, also marriage practices, family relations, etc. It's a quite interesting life story and a funny sidenote: there are obvious places where the ... author edited the Dine' autobiographer's language because it might be perceived by some as derrogatory. Overall, I like this account very much!! ...
A good anthropology book.......2000-04-05
I had to read this book for my intro to Anthropology class in college. I thought that was ok for additional anthropology reading, but I would never read this book for fun. It's the story of a Navajo from his childhood to adulthood and all of the experience and things you must go through when living in a culture that moves around a lot. It was interesting in the fact that while studying various cultures, it was an autobiography of what another culture was actually like and how in Left Handed's culture, everyone is related. It a good book for understanding other cultures, especially for a class like anthropology.
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Home: Native People In The Southwest
Manufacturer: Heard Museum
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Binding: Paperback
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ASIN: 0934351759 |
Book Description
Considered a pioneering achievement when first published nearly two decades ago, From Indians to Chicanos--now in a completely revised second edition--continues to offer readers an informed and penetrating approach to the history of Chicano development. Anthropologist-historian Diego Vigil shows a perceptive and knowledgeable background in brief, clear outlines of each stage of Mexican-American history, charting the culture change sequences in the Pre-Columbian, Spanish Colonial, Mexican Independence and Nationalism, and Anglo-American periods. He analyzes not only the events and the underlying conditions that affect them but also the dynamics that shaped contemporary Chicano life. The author has absorbed an enormous amount of information and has condensed it in a very readable and understandable fashion. Vigil's ethnohistorical introduction to the Mexican- American experience in the United States is simple yet comprehensive so that readers clearly understand historical developments and the specific socioeconomic, sociocultural and sociopsychological forces involved.
Customer Reviews:
Relevant theoretic model.......2007-10-18
Although this text is 10 years old (as of this writing), I chose to use vigil's text for my Intro course (Chican@ Experiences in Contemporary Society) as opposed to the "classic" by Rudy Acuna (Occupied America). I teach in the Pacific Northwest so the classroom dynamics and demographics are much different from the southwest where Acuna's text resonates. I have found that my chican@ students find the 6-Cs model that Vigil presents useful to understanding the process of colonization and its effects. As a sociologist teaching this course, I appreciate that Vigil combines a macrostructural and macrohistorical theoretical framework (his 6-C's framework for Class, Culture, Color, Contact, Conflict, Change) to present the history of the Chican@s in the US. As such, I can still use the model to help them understand contemporary issues in our community. This is the most useful aspect I believe. We can understand how racial stratification occurred and still occurs (especially in our families, work, education) from a historical "point in time" and extrapolate to our current experiences and situations. you will need to supplement with a texts, films, and articles on women but I believe he incorporates women more successfully than Acuna.
What we have become.......2007-09-28
I had to read this book for an Anthropology class I am taking and I am so glad. It is very insightful and easy reading. Once I started I could not put it down, very informative. Highly recommend to anyone interested in the Mexican-American culture.
Terribly boring.......2007-09-28
The history and culture of Central America is so fascinating, and I learned so much from studying abroad in Belize and Guatemala this summer, but I could not get through this book. The writing is dry and fails to present the ideas in a coherent and exciting way. The book is weighted down by its heavy historical sections, which are written much like a grade school textbook, not in the elegant and engaging style of great writers like Sherry Ortner. Don't get me wrong...I love history, especially this particular topic. But despite its title, this book fails to emphasize the dynamics of the rich history and mixed culture of Central America and display those dynamics to the reader.
Excellent overview of Chicano history and experience in America.......2006-03-09
James Diego Vigil does a great job presented readers with a basic, yet in-depth, account of 500 years of Mexican-American history in From Indians to Chicanos. The Spanish conquest of the Americas, life in colonial Mexico, Mexican independence, conflict with the United States, the Mexican-American War, migration to the United States, the Great Depression, and the rise of the Chicano movement and its aftermath are all detailed quite niceley. Vigil points out the various Mexican/Chicano identities and modes of acculturation and incorporation that those of Mexican descent living in the United States have pursued. This is a very good book for an introductory course in Chicano or Latino studies.
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