Chaco Canyon: Archaeologists Explore the Lives of an Ancient Society [Hardcover]

Brian Fagan (Author)

Book Description

Publication Date: May 1, 2005

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.

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

About the Author

Brian Fagan is Emeritus Professor of Anthropology at the University of California, Santa Barbara. One of the world's leading archaeological writers and an internationally recognized authority on world prehistory, his many books include The Rape of the Nile, The Adventure of Archaeology, The Great Journey, and The Little Ice Age.

Product Details

• Hardcover: 280 pages
• Publisher: Oxford University Press, USA (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: 3.8 out of 5 stars  See all reviews (8 customer reviews)
• Amazon Best Sellers Rank: #507,541 in Books (See Top 100 in Books)

More About the Author

Brian Fagan was born in England and studied archaeology at Pembroke College, Cambridge. He was Keeper of Prehistory at the Livingstone Museum, Zambia, from 1959-1965. During six years in Zambia and one in East Africa, he was deeply involved in fieldwork on multidisciplinary African history and in monuments conservation. He came to the United States in 1966 and was Professor of Anthropology at the University of California, Santa Barbara, from 1967 to 2004, when he became Emeritus.
Since coming to Santa Barbara, Brian has specialized in communicating archaeology to general audiences through lecturing, writing, and other media. He is regarded as one of the world's leading archaeological and historical writers and is widely respected popular lecturer about the past. His many books include three volumes for the National Geographic Society, including the bestselling Adventure of Archaeology. Other works include The Rape of the Nile, a classic history of archaeologists and tourists along the Nile, and four books on ancient climate change and human societies, Floods, Famines, and Emperors (on El Niños), The Little Ice Age, and The Long Summer, an account of warming and humanity since the Great Ice Age. His most recent climatic work describes the Medieval Warm Period: The Great Warming: Climate Change and the Rise and Fall of Civilizations. His other books include Chaco Canyon: Archaeologists Explore the Lives of an Ancient Society and Fish on Friday: Feasting, Fasting, and the Discovery of the New World and Cro-Magnon: How the Ice Age gave birth to the First Modern Humans. His recently published Elixir: A History of Water and Humankind extends his climatic research to the most vital of all resources for humanity.
Brian has been sailing since he was eight years old and learnt his cruising in the English Channel and North Sea. He has sailed thousands of miles in European waters, across the Atlantic, and in the Pacific. He is author of the Cruising Guide to Central and Southern California, which has been a widely used set of sailing directions since 1979. An ardent bicyclist, he lives in Santa Barbara with his life Lesley and daughter Ana.

Customer Reviews

Most Helpful Customer Reviews

20 of 23 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

This review is from: Chaco Canyon: Archaeologists Explore the Lives of an Ancient Society (Hardcover)

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.

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

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.

5.0 out of 5 stars Interesting and informative book., July 3, 2011

By 

Atheen M. Wilson "Atheen" (Mpls, MN United States) - See all my reviews
(TOP 500 REVIEWER)    (REAL NAME)   

This review is from: Chaco Canyon: Archaeologists Explore the Lives of an Ancient Society (Hardcover)

Brian Fagan's "Chaco Canyon," like many of his other works (The Little Ice Age: How Climate Made History, 1300-1850, The Great Warming: Climate Change and the Rise and Fall of Civilizations, Floods, Famines, and Emperors: El Nino and the Fate of Civilizations), deals with climate and its effect on the human condition, here the ancient pueblo societies of the American Southwest. Chaco Canyon as an archaeological entity is a series of abandoned settlements dating from roughly 800 A.D. to 1100 A.D. The book is a discussion of its archaeology, culture, history, probable social trajectory, and likely reasons for abandonment.

Although the book discusses climate at some length, as readers of other books by the author will notice, it does not go into lengthy detail about the air and ocean currents that bring about these changes. He does discuss the drought years, where they occurred, how long they lasted and how native people responded to these changes at different times. He sees the entire phenomenon of the Chaco rise and decline as a human response to climatic changes. Interestingly he notes that their flexible response to these changes allowed them to endure in the area for a long time despite drought conditions. He credits their heavy investment in agriculture with an increase in population and a gradual limiting of their options to remain flexible that brought about the final abandonment of the area. Severe drought contributed, yes, but an inability to rely on former practices because of the destruction of habitat was the prime factor. If this is true, it definitely has implications for our own society.

More than anything this study is a narrative of the archaeological history of the region, beginning in the late 19th century and continuing to the present day. The author notes the change of focus and techniques of each generation of workers at the numerous canyon sites and what they contributed to our understanding of the region and its people. I was particularly impressed with his unwillingness to engage in the pointless condemnation of earlier fieldworkers and their motives; not all authors have been this gracious. I was especially impressed by his admiration for the patience and focus that field researchers exhibit and the minutia that they mine from the data to contribute to a thorough picture of ancient culture. (I've always been more impressed with their apparent willingness to work in very unpleasant conditions; anthropologists, archaeologists, field geologists and paleontologists all seem to end up working for months on end in barren deserts dealing with heat, dust, snakes, spiders, limited water, etc.! An online friend, an Austrailian field geologist Roger McEvily positively thrives on it! That's dedication!)

The book discusses some of the research techniques that have developed over the past decades that allow archaeologists to gain a clearer picture of the life of the area, particularly at some of the larger "Great House" sites like Pueblo Bonito. Building styles, construction techniques, pottery characteristics, and burial modes are all discussed with respect to what they have to say about contemporary society. Though such discussions in other books can be pretty burdensome to the average reader--I know because I've read some of them--this volume does not carry it to extremes. The author acknowledges that there is much information out there but that the casual reader is not necessarily going to benefit from an in depth exposé. Instead he gives short sidebars of information that illuminate the facts he provides in context. His excellent endnotes give a number of resources for those interested in further information about the various aspects of the material record.

The author, who admits to being a "parachutist" in his archaeological approach, puts much of the data in the context of the entire region, addressing such points as whether the Chaco culture had close ties to other areas, whether these associations went beyond kin ties to actual domination of other regions, etc. I was very impressed with his ability to stay within the limits of what the data can actually tell us about these issues. Unlike others who make more flamboyant claims for these people, Dr. Fagan points out specific data that lend support to or tend to contradict such claims. I thought it was a very balanced discussion of these themes.

While some authors seem to buy into the fairytale of the southwest, seeing conquest, hierarchies, exotic trade goods travelling on major highways through the desert, and a great collapse, Dr. Fagan sees small, insular populations that cooperated with extended kin groups in important projects and in times of need. He sees a population that probably shared many of the common beliefs and behaviors of other subsistence farmers around the world and particularly those that still occupy the southwest, behaviors and beliefs shaped by the realitites of nature. Where others see "collapse and migration," Dr. Fagan sees worsening conditions and a gradual disbursal of individual families from the area to other regions where they shared kin ties and reciprocity obligations. Those on more marginal land probably moved first and not until there were few to no outside groups around them from whom to draw support did those living in the Great Houses depart as well. They had the most to leave behind having invested greatly in their buildings and agricultural projects. He--and others--see groups like the Hopi and Zuni as being modern descendants of the Chaco people. Since these modern heirs to the region share myths of kinship with the ancestors of the abandoned sites and visit them for spiritual input, I suspect he's correct.

Interesting and informative book.