Books about Puebloan from Amazon.com

John Kantner traces the evolution of Pueblo society in the American Southwest from the emergence of the Chaco and Mimbres in the AD 1000s through the early decades of contact with the Spanish in the sixteenth century. Based on a diverse range of archaeological data, historical accounts, oral history and ethnographic records, this introduction for students of the Pueblo Southwest is vital reading for any archaeologist concerned with the origins of early civilizations..
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To veteran travelers of the American Southwest, the name Chaco Canyon invokes an inaccessible, vast land of tremendous vistas and huge, empty stone houses. Today, the Canyon appears as a barren land and most visitors are struck by its apparent inhospitable nature. Yet almost 1000 years ago, during the Medieval period, Chaco Canyon was the hub of a flourishing Pueblo Indian society, with 12 multi-story great houses built of stone and wood, a dozen great kivas (large, subterranean ceremonial structures), and hundreds of smaller habitation sites, "pueblos" along the intermittent drainage known today as Chaco Wash. This society peaked in the year AD 1100, when more than 150 Chacoan towns, in addition to the 12 great houses in Chaco Canyon, and perhaps 30,000 people across the greater San Juan Basin of the southwestern United States were affiliated with Chaco. This landmass, which extends across portions of the four modern states of New Mexico, Arizona, Utah, and Colorado, is roughly equal in size to the country of Ireland. Chacoan society endured for more than 200 hundred years, evolving and changing in the period from AD 950 to about 1150. The peak of Chacoan society can be more narrowly dated from AD 1020 to 1130. Undoubtedly, many leaders came and went during these hundred years. But, we have no written records to name these leaders. Unlike the history of other continents, in the Americas, the absence of written aboriginal languages means that written chronologies of the events, processes, and lives of people do not exist. This simple fact makes reconstruction and understanding of America's pre-European past very challenging. The archaeological record does speak to us. Thematic chapters guide readers to the emergence of Chacoan society, its cultural and environmental settings, and the Pueblo people. Other chapters detail what is known of Chacoan society c. 1100, how it was settled, and where its people probably dispersed to. Also, given the nature of the topic, information about the discovery and investigations of Chacoan society by Europeans and Americans is provided. An annotated timeline provides easy reference to key dates and events. Biographical sketches offer a look at the people who have formed our thoughts about and approaches to Chacoan society, and twenty annotated excerpted primary and secondary documents walk readers through Canyon related material. A glossary of terms is provided, as are illustrations and maps. The work concludes with recommended sources for further inquiry, websites, video, and print..
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Puebloan Ruins of the Southwest offers a complete picture of Puebloan culture from its prehistoric beginnings through twenty-five hundred years of growth and change, ending with the modern-day Pueblo Indians of New Mexico and Arizona.

Aerial and ground photographs, over 325 in color, and sixty settlement plans provide an armchair trip to ruins that are open to the public and that may be visited or viewed from nearby. Included, too, are the living pueblos from Taos in north central New Mexico along the Rio Grande Valley to Isleta, and westward through Acoma and Zuni to the Hopi pueblos in Arizona.

In addition to the architecture of the ruins, Puebloan Ruins of the Southwest gives a detailed overview of the Pueblo Indians’ lifestyles including their spiritual practices, food, clothing, shelter, physical appearance, tools, government, water management, trade, ceramics, and migrations..
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Is there evidence of children in the archaeological record? Some would answer no, that "subadults" can only be distinguished when there is osteological confirmation. Others might suggest that the reason children don't exist in prehistory is because no one has looked for them, much as no one had looked for women in the same context until recently.

Focusing on the Southwest, contributors to this volume attempt to find some of those children, or at least show how they might be found. They address two issues: what was the cultural construction of childhood? and what were children's lives like?

Determining how cultures with written records have constructed childhood in the past is hard enough, but the difficulty is magnified in the case of ancient Puebloan societies. The contributors here offer approaches from careful analysis of artifacts and skeletal remains to ethnographic evidence in rock art. Topics include ceramics and evidence of child manufacture and painting, cradleboards, evidence of child labor, and osteological evidence of health conditions..
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Mesa Verde, with its stunning landscapes and cliff dwellings, evokes all the romance of American archaeology. It has intrigued researchers and visitors for more than a century But "Mesa Verde" represents more than cliff dwellings—its peoples created a culture that thrived for a thousand years in Southwestern Colorado and southeastern Utah. Archaeologists have discovered dozens of long-buried hamlets and villages spread for miles across the Great Sage Plain west and north of Mesa Verde. Only lately have these sites begun to reveal their secrets. In recent decades, archaeologists have been working intensively in the Mesa Verde region to build the story of its ancestral Pueblo inhabitants. The Mesa Verde World showcases new findings about the region’s prehistory, environment, and archaeological history, from newly discovered reservoir systems on Mesa Verde to astronomical alignments at Yellow Jacket Pueblo. Key topics include farming, settlement, sacred landscapes, cosmology and astronomy, rock art, warfare, migration, and contemporary Pueblo perspectives..
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The beauty of the canyons and mesas of the Colorado Plateau and the lives of the resourceful people that once occupied these now nearly empty places are the subject of the eighty-five black-and-white photographs and accompanying essays in Canyon Spirits. John Ninnemann's photographs of Chaco, Mesa Verde, Hovenweep, Cedar Mesa, Grand Gulch, and the San Juan River provide the visual context for Stephen Lekson's descriptions of the early Puebloan cultures of the Southwest and J. McKim Malville's consideration of the power of celestial events in the lives of these people. Together they provide a non-traditional, provocative, and visually exciting approach to Southwest archaeology..
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Travel to and explore ancient dwellings at 20 National Parks and Monuments in the Southwest Visit Mesa Verde National Park and go behind the scenes at the famous Cliff Palace to explore the back alcoves and passageways not accessible to the public. Travel to Montezuma Castle to explore the castle itself, also not accessible to the publice. Visit of 18 more parks to discover the amazing dwellings from hundreds of years ago. Includes over 200 interactive 360 degree panoramas from 20 National Parks and National Monuments, interpretive text for every view, maps, bonus screensaver and more! Now includes new Mesa Verde Centennial content covering areas of the park normally not accessible to the public such as Oak Tree House, Spring House, and Mug House.Includes ruins from Aztec Ruins, Bandelier, Chaco Canyon, Canyon de Chelley, Casa Grande Ruins, Gila Cliff Dwellings, Grand Canyon, Hovenweep, Mesa Verde, Montezuma Castle, Montezuma Well, Natural Bridges, Navajo, Pecos, Petrified Forest, Salinas Pueblo Mission, Tonto, Tuzigoot, Walnut Canyon, and Wupatki.Plays on your computer. Mac and PC compatible..
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