Customer Reviews

Chaco Canyon: Archaeologists Explore the Lives of an Ancient Society

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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.

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.

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.

I don't know how many times I drove the road from Farmington to Albuquerque and seen the sign to Chaco Canyon before I actually took the road and went there. I always thought it would take too much time to drive that far just to see another indian thing. In a way I was right, because when I finally went there it took all the rest of that day and part of the next to drag myself away.

This book goes a long ways in explaining Chaco. Yet at the same time, I find that the more I learn the more pronounced become the questions. Who indeed were these people? Why did they build such big houses? And why so many? It seems that the times in which they lived were as arid as now, how did that many people live there? And what was Chaco? And why locate at Chaco canyon rather than any others? The houses and the 'observatory' that marks the solstice have a sun orientation but why? ==Anyway those are some of the unanswered questions. What this book does do is describe Chaco Canyon in detail and give the best current answers to a lot of the common questions.

If you are not familiar with Chaco Canyon, it is a very remote canyon in New Mexico that has the remains of several huge apartment house like buildings. They were built by the Ancestral Puebloan Indians. To me it ranks as one of the big four archeological sites in the Four Corners area. The others being the Mesa Verde cliff dwellings in Colorado, Canyon de Chelly (Pronounced Canyon de Shay) in Arizona, and Hovenweep in SE Utah.

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.

This book presents a good summary of all the latest thinking about Chaco and is really good. It delves into much more technical archaeology than much of what Fagan has written, however, so it is not for the archaeological faint of heart. At least, they might not enjoy it. I've been to Chaco several times, though, and found this book to be very interesting.

This is a great reference book for those seeking to discover more about Chaco Canyon and I've happily added it to my 'nonfiction' area of my personal library. There are some very good photos, though I would've liked to see more of them, the material is very well-researched, organized and in depth.
Chrissy K. McVay
author of 'Souls of the North Wind'

This book is not for the lay reader and not for people who believe there is more to this story than dry weather. I learned a lot but had to wade through page after page of anthrospeak (e.g., "Ancestral Pueblo" for "Anasazi", "lagomorph" for "rabbit"), illustrations that didn't have anything much to do with the text and many repetitions of what had already been said. Mr. Fagan took an interesting and mysterious culture and boiled it down with scientific half-conclusions until it was flat and incredibly boring. What a disappointment that there was no mention whatever of the astronomical observations and pictographs whether made or not made by these ancient people. Lots of opinions of other researchers were cited, discussed and shot down--why not this? This book lacks the spark of inspiration that makes such studies eminently readable for those of us who aren't scientists but want to know more. I suggest Craig Childs's House of Rain for a more balanced view by an enlightened writer and explorer