The name “Anasazi” means “Ancient Ones,” and they were one of the first groups of people to establish a strong cultural presence in what’s now the southwestern United States. Readers explore what daily life was believed to have been like for the Anasazi people, and they also explore the artifacts and other archaeological finds that have led historians to their beliefs about the Anasazi way of life. Colorful photographs, historical images, and detailed maps help readers visualize life among the Anasazi. Important social studies curriculum topics are presented through engaging main text and informative fact boxes.
At the height of their power in the late eleventh century, the Chaco Anasazi dominated a territory in the American Southwest larger than any European principality of the time. A vast and powerful alliance of thousands of farming hamlets and nearly 100 spectacular towns integrated the region through economic and religious ties, and the whole system was interconnected with hundreds of miles of roads. It took these Anasazi farmers more than seven centuries to lay the agricultural, organizational, and technological groundwork for the creation of classic Chacoan civilization, which lasted about 200 years--only to collapse spectacularly in a mere 40. Why did such a great society collapse? Who survived? Why? In this lively book anthropologist/archaeologist David Stuart presents answers to these questions that offer useful lessons to modern societies. His account of the rise and fall of the Chaco Anasazi brings to life the people known to us today as the architects of Chaco Canyon, the spectacular national park in New Mexico that thousands of tourists visit every year.
Examines what is known about the Anasazi civilization, from the arrival of the Ancient Ones in North America 14,000 years ago to the lives of their present-day descendants, the Pueblo.
An exuberant, hands-on fly-on-the-wall account that combines the thrill of canyoneering and rock climbing with the intellectual sleuthing of archaeology to explore the Anasazi. David Roberts describes the culture of the Anasazi—the name means “enemy ancestors” in Navajo—who once inhabited the Colorado Plateau and whose modern descendants are the Hopi Indians of Arizona. Archaeologists, Roberts writes, have been puzzling over the Anasazi for more than a century, trying to determine the environmental and cultural stresses that caused their society to collapse 700 years ago. He guides us through controversies in the historical record, among them the haunting question of whether the Anasazi committed acts of cannibalism. Roberts’s book is full of up-to-date thinking on the culture of the ancient people who lived in the harsh desert country of the Southwest.
In 1994, the author & his wife purchased a 35-acre parcel in the Four-Corners area just outside of Cortez, Colorado. The 1200-acre subdivision known as Indian Camp Ranch is, to the best of anyone's knowledge, the only residential subdivision in the nation that has the preservation of prehistoric Native American archaeological sites as one of its primary objectives. This intriguing book tells two stories. The first recounts how the author & his wife participated in the selection & analysis of one of the nine ancient Anasazi habitation sites on their property & how they participated in the digging & documentation of this site under the direction of a professional archaeological team. The second story is a fictional account which tells about the lives of a young man & his family who inhabited the very same land nearly a thousand years before. This story was inspired by some of the artifacts recovered in the actual dig. Through this fictional account of life in ancient times, the reader will learn about the customs, fears, traditions, as well as the crops & animals used by the early Pueblo people of the American Southwest. To order: Hardscrabble Press, 2076 Hardscrabble Drive, Boulder, CO 80303, Phone: 303-444-0206, FAX: 303-444-7968.
Biography of the man who discovered the prehistoric ruins at Mesa Verde, Colorado, and began the excavation of Pueblo Bonito at Chaco Canyon, New Mexico.
This enhanced edition of The Seven Paths contains 20 minutes of exclusive video interviews with Good Buffalo Eagle, co-founder of ANASAZI Foundation, and his sons Thunder Voice Eagle and Gentle Wind Eagle. This gives the reader a glimpse of the ANASAZI trail and greater insight into what it means to live the Path of WE. People have moved away from Mother Earth, bringing heartache, pain, and other maladies of the modern age. The “self-help” movement claims to offer peace and fulfillment to individuals, but this solitary approach takes us only so far. Ultimately, it is in communion with our fellow beings and the natural world that we are made whole. We need to leave the path of Me and follow the path of We. This poetic, evocative story presents the meditations of an ancient Anasazi tribesman who rejects his family and sets off on a journey through the desert. He walks seven paths, each teaching a lesson symbolized by an element of the natural world: light, wind, water, stone, plants, animals, and, finally, the unity of all beings with the Creator. The Seven Paths reveals a source of wisdom, restoration, and renewal familiar to native people but lost to the rest of us, seven elements among nature that combine to mend human hearts. Filmed against the backdrop of the beautiful and dramatic Arizona desert, the thirteen videos expand on the deeper messages of the book. ANASAZI founder Good Buffalo Eagle reflects on the profound gift of choice we are all granted, how we transform ourselves by lifting others up, what happens when we recognize the seeds of greatness in ourselves and others, how nature teaches us, and how we find our belonging place. His son Gentle Wind Eagle explains why a heart at peace can always overcome a heart at war. And his son Thunder Voice Eagle shares his moving personal experiences walking each of the seven paths.
