The author, an archaeologist who spent eight years among the Pueblo tribes of New Mexico, provides in fictional form an invaluable reconstruction of prehistoric Indian culture of the Southwest. Introduction by Stefan Jovanovich.

"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. Developed over the course of centuries and thriving for over two hundred years, the Chacoans' society collapsed dramatically in the twelfth century in a mere forty years. David E. Stuart incorporates extensive new research findings through groundbreaking archaeology to explore...

In this return to his lively, provocative reconceptualization of the meaning of Chaco Canyon and its monumental 11th-century structures, Stephen H. Lekson expands—over time and distance—our understanding of the political and economic integration of the American Southwest.
Lekson's argument that Chaco did not stand alone, but rather was the first of three capitals in a vast networked region incorporating most of the Pueblo world has...

"In this volume Steve Lekson argues that, for over a century, southwestern archaeology got the history of the ancient Southwest wrong. Instead, he advocates an entirely new approach, one that separates archaeological thought in the Southwest from its anthropological home and moves to more historical ways of thinking. Focusing on the enigmatic monumental center at Chaco Canyon, the book provides a historical analysis of how Southwest archaeology confined...