Chaco Canyon: Archaeologists Explore the Lives of an Ancient Society (Hardcover)

by Brian Fagan (Author) "I walked upstream along the floor of the great canyon as the cool of evening settled over Chaco..." (more)
Key Phrases: Pueblo Bonito, Chaco Canyon, San Juan Basin (more...)

Editorial Reviews

Review

"Everything you need to know about the first residents of America's desert Southwest, and what happened to them."--John Monaghan, Providence Journal (Selected as a Favorite Book of 2005)
"Fagan's evocative prose gives readers a sense of the environment of the San Juan Basin and Chaco today, from the remains of great houses such as Pueblo Bonito, to the small settlements, which he stresses need more investigation. Readers obtain a feeling for Chaco life from its earliest habitation by nomadic foragers 11,000 years ago through the flourishing of the Ancestral Pueblos.... Draws together a massive amount of material into a graceful, thoughtful work, well documented with annotated references."--Library Journal
"Brian Fagan has captured the essence of the lives of the ancient puebloan peoples of Chaco Canyon in his detailed account of their successful creation of a complex society in a harsh environment. His skillful handling of opposing scholarly views on the evolution of this society makes his book an especially valuable contribution to our understanding of the Chaco Phenomenon." --R. Gwinn Vivian, Curator Emeritus, Arizona State Museum, University of Arizona, Tucson
"In this insightful and accessible narrative, Brian Fagan has walked with us through the streets, outcroppings, and ruins of Chaco Canyon, gathering information from those who actually lived there in the years past and as well from those of present-day informed opinion. The result is an agreeable blend of science, speculation, and story, set forth with a captivating narrative grace. This has become and will remain the definitive Chaco for some considerable time to come." --Shelly Lowenkopf, author of The Fiction Writers' Tool Kit
"Fagan offers interpretations to perplexing puzzles. He examines how many people might have lived and worked here, why they chose this place and eventually left, how they might have governed, conducted trade and observed religious rites, as well as why the builders also made wide, straight roads that now fade into empty desert."--Los Angeles Times
"Brian Fagan has a special talent for taking a voluminous archaeological literature, like that of the Chaco culture, and distilling it into a single, readable volume accessible to the interested layperson. What is remarkable is his ability to do this without sacrificing the richness of archaeological debate and interpretation." --Lynn Sebastian, author of The Chaco Anasazi


Product Description
Chaco Canyon, New Mexico, has been called the Stonehenge of North America. Its spectacular pueblos, or great houses, are world famous and have attracted the attention of archaeologists for more than a century. Beautifully illustrated with color and black-and-white photographs, Chaco Canyon draws on the very latest research on Chaco and its environs to tell the remarkable story of the people of the canyon, from foraging bands and humble farmers to the elaborate society that flourished between the tenth and twelfth centuries A.D. Brian Fagan is a master story teller, and he weaves the latest discoveries into a compelling narrative of people living in a harsh, unpredictable environment. Indeed, this is not a story about artifacts and dusty digs, but a riveting narrative of people in the distant past, going about their daily business, living and dying, loving, raising children, living in plenty and in hunger, pondering the cosmos, and facing the unpredictable challenges of the environment. Drawing on rare access to the records of the Chaco Synthesis Project, Fagan reveals a society where agriculture and religion went hand-in-hand, where the ritual power of Chaco's leaders drew pilgrims from distant communities bearing gifts. He describes the lavish burials in the heart of Pueblo Bonito, which offer clues about the identity of Chaco's shadowy leaders. And he explores the enduring mystery of Chaco's sudden decline in the face of savage drought and shows how its legacy survives into modern times. Here then is the first authoritative account of the Chaco people written for a general audience, lending a fascinating human face to one of America's most famous archaeological sites.

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Product Details

• Hardcover: 280 pages
• Publisher: Oxford University Press, USA; annotated edition edition (May 1, 2005)
• Language: English
• ISBN-10: 0195170431
• ISBN-13: 978-0195170436
• Product Dimensions: 9.3 x 6.5 x 1.3 inches
• Shipping Weight: 1.3 pounds (View shipping rates and policies)
• Average Customer Review: 3.6 out of 5 stars See all reviews (7 customer reviews)
• Amazon.com Sales Rank: #439,455 in Books (See Bestsellers in Books)

Customer Reviews

Most Helpful Customer Reviews

15 of 18 people found the following review helpful:

2.0 out of 5 stars A frustrating read, September 1, 2005

By	L A T (Oakland, CA) - See all my reviews

I read this book, along with a few others, in preparation for a trip to Chaco and was disappointed. Although summarizing the research on this huge and controversial subject was surely difficult, Dr. Fagan leaves out major aspects of Chacoan culture. The precise astronomical alignments of Chaco great houses and outlyers, Chacoan tracking of the solar and lunar cycles (the "sun dagger")and other astronomical phenomena (the supernova petroglyph)are conspicuously minimized or absent. This leaves a big hole in the book's story - why would people waste their resources and work so hard to build these structures? Why do resources go into the canyon but no trade goods come out? It's a mystery! Given that the book is directed to a general audience who would be especially interested the archaeo-astronomy of the canyon it is puzzling that it is hardly mentioned.

Other important facts are left out - I learned on the Pueblo Bonito tour that the Chacoans systematically burned the kivas and filled in the windows and doors of the great houses before they left. He repeats the statement I have heard and seen in other places that Pueblo Bonito was planned from its very beginning and he describes it as symmetrical, when one can easily see from maps of the construction phases that it was and is neither. Also, it seems important and interesting to me that the descendants of the inhabitants of Chaco speak languages from 5 different language families (not mentioned), and all have oral traditions linking them to Chaco - another line of evidence only minimally discussed at the end.

The book in general is not well edited. In particular, the maps and drawings have errors (for example, the San Juan river labeled as "San Jose") and don't correlate well to the text, making understanding of the spacial relationships between locations mentioned nearly impossible. In some places the writing was clumsy and after reading it several times I still didn't follow the reasoning (despite having studied anthropology and archaeology). There are good explanations of dendrochronology and other dating methods.

A note to those who have never been to Chaco - we were told that there are plans to pave the long, dirt road that leads to the park by 2007. When that happens many more people will visit and the park will be forced to restrict access to sites. You will only be able to see the structures from a distance or with a guide, as at Mesa Verde. So, visit now while you can still drive or hike to the sites and explore them on your own.

3 of 4 people found the following review helpful:

3.0 out of 5 stars Interesting but misleading introduction to Anasazi history, April 10, 2006

By	Moheroy (San Francisco, CA, USA) - See all my reviews

While this book is a readable and pretty quick discussion of the Chaco phenomena and its origins, it is also very frustrating. Among other problems it is sloppily edited, and in many places the conclusions of ideas seem to have very little to do with the preceding arguments.

The chief flaw however is that the author has a tendency to spend much time and emphasis on the eternal and timeless world of the Pueblo Indians, never seeming to acknowledge the remarkable differences between the Chaco and its outliers and that of its descendents the modern Puebloan peoples. The author is also hopelessly committed to buzzwords, such as interconnectedness and egalitarian and clearly feels a need to invoke these terms whenever the evidence seems to suggest hierarchy, violence, or any other unpleasantness.

In Fagan's favor it must be pointed out that many of his flaws are apparent just from evidence he himself provides. Not a completely flawed introduction, but needs to be read quite critically.

2 of 3 people found the following review helpful:

4.0 out of 5 stars Making Academia Accessible, (Why a fellow archeologist will hate this book), October 24, 2006

By	Sandra Jones (Angel Fire, New Mexico) - See all my reviews (REAL NAME)

This is a must-have book for Northern New Mexico dwellers and for Arizonites, Coloradans, and Utites in the 4 Corners area. Fagan is a professional archaelogist who set out to tell the story of the city builders of New Mexico, as part of the Chaco Canyon Synthesis Project. He starts with the hunter-gatherers and takes us through the Anasazi to the Navajos. Each chapter is laid out with a vignette of actual living in the time of that chapter, followed by facts known to the archeologists, and then a set of questions and speculations. He clearly separates what is known from what is surmised, and he takes a charming side trip to show the early field archaeologists competing so hard that they were doing everything except shooting from the canyon rims at each other. The book can be read in great detail or only skimmed with the opening of the chapter supplying flavor. The reader will leave this text / romance knowing how the great Anasazi houses were built, how the San Juan basin ecosystem (with its droughts and wet years) ruled its people, how the peoples were scattered, how the culture(s) shifted from worship to defense, and where the derivative civilisations came to be. There are a few areas where Dr. Fagan displays a conclusion that his evidence doesn't back, and archeological unknowns can irritate a reader who wants the world to be black and white. However, this is overall an excellent popular science book, seldom dry (just during the section on tree ring chronology and the build up of the San Juan scale), and sometimes witty when looking at Academic Man's peccadilloes.
Anasazi, by the way, is Navajo for the Old Ones. Like many symbolic words though, it also has a second meaning, Sacred Enemy.