Books about Anasazi from Amazon.com

Nora Kelly, a young archaeologist in Santa Fe, receives a letter written sixteen years ago, yet mysteriously mailed only recently In it her father, long believed dead, hints at a fantastic discovery that will make him famous and rich---the lost city of an ancient civilization that suddenly vanished a thousand years ago. Now Nora is leading an expedition into a harsh, remote corner of Utah's canyon country. Searching for her father and his glory, Nora begins t unravel the greatest riddle of American archeology. but what she unearths will be the newest of horrors....
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A feat of historical detection--the most significant, andcertainly the most enthralling, book on American prehistory to appear indecades The greatest "unsolved mystery" of the American Southwest relates to theAnasazi, the native peoples who by the 11th century converged on ChacoCanyon (now New Mexico) and built a flourishing cultural center thatattracted pilgrims from far and wide, a vital crossroads of the prehistoricworld. The Anasazis' accomplishments--in agriculture, in art, in commerce,in architecture and engineering--were astounding, rivaling those of theMayans in distant Central America. By the 13th century, however, the Anasazi were gone from Chaco. Vanished.What was it--drought? pestilence? war? forced migration? mass murder orsuicide? Craig Childs draws on scholarly research and a lifetime ofadventure and exploration in the American Southwest to pursue the mysteryof their disappearance. Considering many possibilities, he points the wayto a new understanding of how a vibrant civilization collapsed..
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(01/05/2005).
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Book two in the Anasazi Mysteries series, The Summoning God is the sequel to The Visitant, in which archaeologist-authors Kathleen O'Neal Gear and W. Michael Gear introduced readers to murder, mayhem, and the myriad details of life in a 13th-century Native American pueblo. In both novels, the narrative arcs between the present and the past, drawing aside the seemingly thin veil of time that separates them. Here, as archaeologists Dusty Stewart and Maureen Cole sift through an ancient Anasazi kiva, attempting to understand the circumstances that could have led to the presence of 33 charred children's bodies in the ceremonial chamber, we also see the members of the pueblo as they move toward the terrible destruction so carefully unearthed by Stewart and Cole. This narrative device isn't revolutionary, but it is clever: the demands of classic mystery plotting (we have a corpse, but who committed the crime?) are fulfilled, while the reader lives simultaneously in the worlds of evidence creation and deduction.

The Anasazi characters will be familiar to readers of The Visitant: warriors Browser and Catkin, holy men Springbank and Stone Ghost, and the witch Two Hearts continue to move silently through the sand and sagebrush, circling through a world marked by warring religions and vanishing resources. When Browser and Catkin find a mutilated old woman surrounded by the skulls of her clan, they must summon all their courage to combat what surely must be witchcraft--or is it? Although the narrative founders at times in a sea of murkily presented myth, the characters are vibrantly drawn (though to watch an Anasazi holy man conduct an autopsy in a manner that would do Kay Scarpetta proud is one of several discordant anachronisms).

The Summoning God, like its predecessor, renders the lives and habits of the Anasazi in compelling detail: we learn that they used blazing star petals for perfume and that their ceremonial purification rites included cornmeal and ground seashells. Though the tenacity with which the authors seek to hammer home a situational equivalency between modern life and the 13th century is sometimes painfully heavy-handed, the evocation of daily life never is. Readers might wish to acknowledge that overutilization of resources, a thirst for territory, and a propensity toward holy wars are indeed threads that bind us to the Anasazi--then ignore the lectures and settle into the story. --Kelly Flynn.
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An art book, a history book, and a reference book showcasing more than 1,100 pots. There isn't a more complete southwestern pottery guide..
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Three friends bound by love of the Southwest's canyonlands undertake the first traverse of the Comb Ridge, in search of the lost civilization of the Anasazi • A cultural pilgrimage as well as an athletic one • Story blends personal adventure, middle-aged angst, the beauty of a landscape, history of exploration, and mysteries of the rise and fall of an ancient culture • By a critically acclaimed travel and adventure writer also famous for his exploits in Alaska's mountains • Includes photos by Greg Child of the landscape, Anasazi and Navajo ruins and rock art On September 1, 2004, three middle-aged buddies set out on one of the last geographic challenges never before attempted in North America: to hike the Comb Ridge in one continuous push. The Comb is an upthrust ridge of sandstone—virtually a mini-mountain range—that stretches almost unbroken for a hundred miles from just east of Kayenta, Arizona, to some ten miles west of Blanding, Utah. To hike the Comb is to run a gauntlet of up-and-down severities, with the precipice lurking on one hand, the fiendishly convoluted bedrock slab on the other—always at a sideways, ankle-wrenching pitch. There is not a single mile of established trail in the Comb's hundred-mile reach.

The friends were David Roberts, writer, adventurer, famed mountaineer of decades past, at age 61 the graybeard of the bunch; Greg Child, renowned mountaineer and rock climber, age 47; and Vaughn Hadenfeldt, a wilderness guide intimately acquainted with the canyonlands, age 53. They came to the Comb not only for the physical challenge, but to seek out seldom-visited ruins and rock art of the mysterious Anasazi culture. Each brought his own emotions on the journey; the Comb Ridge would test their friendship in ways they had never before experienced.

Searching for the stray arrowhead half-smothered in the sand or for the faint markings on a far sandstone boulder that betokened a little-known rock art panel, becomes a competitive sport for the three friends. Along the way, they ponder the mystery, bringing the accounts of early and modern explorers and archaeologists to bear: Who were the vanished Indians who built these inaccessible cliff dwellings and pueblos, often hidden from view? Of whom were they afraid and why? What caused them to suddenly abandon their settlements around 1300 AD? What meaning can be ascribed to their phantasmagoric rock art? What was their relationship to the Navajo, who were convinced the Anasazi had magical powers and could fly?

DAVID ROBERTS is the author of On the Ridge Between Life & Death, Escape From Lucania, In Search of the Old Ones, and Escape Routes among other titles. His adventure and travel writing have appeared in Outside, National Geographic Adventure, The New York Times, and other publications..
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Nearly a millennium ago, the Anasazi ruled the cliffs and canyons of New Mexico with a rich, vibrant culture that disappeared as mysteriously as it arose. The link between the 800-year-old murder of an Anasazi holy man and the ritual death of archaeologist Dusty Stewart's beloved mentor drive this rich tapestry of a novel, which moves almost seamlessly between the past and the present to its riveting conclusion. But long before that happens, the reader is drawn into the hunt for a wolf witch that resonates down the centuries, unearthing not only the secrets and relics of an ancient world but also those of Dusty's past--his father's suicide, his mother's desertion, the existence of a sister he never knew, and the reappearance of the woman whose tangled love life set a series of bloody crimes in motion. Archaeologists themselves, the authors bring the past to life with skill and verisimilitude in this terrific story. --Jane Adams.
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In VOICE OF THE EAGLE, Linda Lay Shuler continues her Time Circle Quartet as Kwani, "She Who Remembers," her mate Tolonqua and their newborn son begin their trek to Cicuye, Tolonqua's home.

Cicuye is a pueblo city, an outpost where desert canyons meet the verdant buffalo range. Danger lurks there, for marauding tribes prey on the village with savage ferocity.

Kwani and Tolonqua argue for a new city, fortified and safe, high on the ridge. But others fear leaving their ancestral home. With battle near, this split within threatens the town's survival as much as the gathering tribes without.

"Historically valid and carefully reconstructed, this story of life in America prior to its discovery by Columbus kindles the imagination." (B-O-T Editorial Review Board).
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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.

"Chaco's failure, Stuart argues, was a failure to adapt to the consequences of rapid growth. Foremost among Chacoans' problems were misuse of farmland, malnutrition, loss of community, and inability to deal with climatic catastrophe. The descendants of the Anasazi, the Pueblo Indians of the Southwest, adapted strategically to minimize the impact of these problems. Stuart sees the contrasting fates of the Anasazi and their Pueblo descendants as a parable for modern societies.

Stuart's contributions reach out with commendable clarity, backed by well-researched discussions of archaeological evidence and impressive endnotes. Perhaps the book's greatest contribution is a well-crafted dialogue that unites archaeology with our present world. Anasazi America contrasts community conflict one thousand years ago with the bloodshed in Yugoslavia and Northern Ireland, making links that bring the Native American past into a tumultuous yet understandable present. Stuart relates the painful circumstances of high infant mortality among the ancestral Pueblo peoples to similarly devastating conditions in less economically developed parts of our own world. Stuart's depiction of the Chaco system as a failed experiment in power politics and overspecialized agricultural strategies is both compelling and correct. . . . From a dry and dusty archaeology, Stuart crafts an understandable story that is depicted in a thought-provoking and contemporary context."--Michael Adler, Science Magazine

"An unusual and important book that calls attention to parallels between an ancient southwestern culture and modern America. Stuart has provided a rich and thought-provoking survey of the rise and collapse of the Chaco phenomenon, based on extraordinary recent findings of archaeologists. The author's clear, unpretentious prose will delight the general reader and will be appreciated by specialists seeking a straightforward summary. I can recommend this splendid work without hesitation."--Marc Simmons

"A passionate and provocative book which argues that we have much to learn from the Chaco Anasazi and their successors. Every archaeologist, every student of anthropology, and anyone interested in the future of industrial society should read this stimulating essay, then read it again. Few books on the Southwest have such a general and urgent appeal."--Brian Fagan.
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