Competing Cultures: A New Age in Chaco Canyon

Summary

This is an abstract from the "To Curate or Not to Curate: Surprises, Remorse, and Archaeological Grey Area" session, at the 84th annual meeting of the Society for American Archaeology.

Chaco Culture National Historical Park was founded to protect and preserve the cultural remains of an indigenous society whose high point was between 850 and 1150 CE. For the first 80 years of its existence, the park’s museum collection policy was straightforward because the artifacts recovered represented the Native American occupation of the land. That changed after the 1987 Harmonic Convergence, which was celebrated in part in one of the park’s great kivas. Suddenly, a new cultural use of the park, with its attendant offerings left in archaeological sites, forced park managers to re-examine collection policies. At the same time, Native American descendant communities were finding their political voices and making themselves heard by federal land managers. Managing the physical manifestations of competing cultural uses has evolved over time at Chaco, in response to descendant communities, ‘new age’ practitioners, and researchers.

This Resource is Part of the Following Collections

• Society for American Archaeology 84th Annual Meeting, Albuquerque, NM (2019)   •
• To Curate or Not to Curate: Surprises, Remorse, and Archaeological Grey Area

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Record Identifiers

Abstract Id(s): 23605