Following in the wake of what one noted scientist called 'transients who neither revered nor cared for the ruins as symbols of the past, ' the Wetherill family became the earliest students of Mesa Verde. Their careful excavations and record-keeping helped preserve key information, leading to a deeper understanding of the people who built and occupied the cliff dwellings. As devout Quakers, they felt they were predestined to protect the historic sites from wanton destruction - a role that would not be assumed by the government or other institutions until years later. Based on decades of meticulous research, author Fred Blackburn sets the record straight on these early protectors of Mesa Verde.
While her husband Richard excavated ruins and created a trading post empire at the turn of the century, Marietta learned the rituals and reality of Navajo life from medicine men.
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.
Embracing the crossroads that made the region distinctive this book reveals how American families have always been characterized by greater diversity than idealizations of the traditional family have allowed. The essays show how family life figured prominently in relations to larger struggles for conquest and control.
An incisive history of early American archaeology—from reckless looting to professional science—and the field’s unfinished efforts to make amends today, told "with passion, indignation, and a dash of suspense" (New York Times). American archaeology was forever scarred by an 1893 business proposition between cowboy-turned-excavator Richard Wetherill and socialites-turned-antiquarians Fred and Talbot Hyde. Wetherill had stumbled upon Mesa Verde’s spectacular cliff dwellings and started selling artifacts, but with the Hydes’ money behind him, well—there’s no telling what they might discover. Thus begins the Hyde Exploring Expedition, a nine-year venture into Utah’s Grand Gulch and New Mexico’s Chaco Canyon that—coupled with other less-restrained looters—so devastates Indigenous cultural sites across the American Southwest that Congress passes first-of-their-kind regulations to stop the carnage. As the money dries up, tensions rise, and a once-profitable enterprise disintegrates, setting the stage for a tragic murder. Sins of the Shovel is a story of adventure and business gone wrong and how archaeologists today grapple with this complex heritage. Through the story of the Hyde Exploring Expedition, practicing archaeologist Rachel Morgan uncovers the uncomfortable links between commodity culture, contemporary ethics, and the broader political forces that perpetuate destructive behavior today. The result is an unsparing and even-handed assessment of American archaeology’s sins, past and present, and how the field is working toward atonement.
