Although he is an archeologist by trade, his book wonderfully surveys seemingly all the disparate archeological scholarship and ties it together within a historical account. lt turns out that much of what I saw in my last two visits to Indian Country was tainted with the bias of the specific person/persons who excavated the site.
He ties in the various societies on the plateau, the Phoenix Basin and the Mogollon rim. The peak was comtemporaneous with the great society at Cahokia in Illinois. Those irrigation works allowed a very large and flourishing population in the Arizona deserts
Pertinent to this thread are the very old and very extensive irrigation works present in the Phoenix basin and elsewhere in Arizona. Those irrigation works allowed a very large and flourishing population in the Arizona deserts
I have read a great deal about the peoples of the ancient Southwest but this book sets much of what I read on it's head as extremely parochial and self serving. It is possible because of changes in the profession wrought by federal law. First, all construction has to have an archeological assessment before the work can be done and in Arizona that means everywhere. Secondly a similar law requires the team to include real Indians to assess the site based on their own history, not the biased and oft made up story based on pots.
It makes Chaco the home of elite leaders who moved to AZtec and then to Paquim over a period of many years, centuries.
It destroys the bias that drew a line at the Mexican border. The southwest had continuous active trade with the people further south.
The theme is "everyone knew everything" the people of the time did not live isolated from the other people of their world, or cahokia many miles away to the east.
The people who regularly read these threads may like this book. It is 500 or so pages, half book and half foot notes. The book is in first person and the footnotes are sometime juicy.
Have you read ‘1491’? It is a book detailing what the Western Hemisphere was like before Columbus.
Very interesting read, particularly about the extensive native infrastructure existing in the Amazon basin.