Exploring the Chacoan Landscape of the North American Southwest

Summary

This is an abstract from the "Developments and Challenges in Landscape Archaeology" session, at the 89th annual meeting of the Society for American Archaeology.

The UNESCO World Heritage Site of Chaco Canyon, in the North American Southwest, is well-known for its monumental architecture and carefully choreographed landscape. Chaco Canyon lies at the heart of a 60,000 square mile area that contains some 200 additional major great house communities, as well as features such as roads, agricultural fields, and rock art. Recent work across this landscape focuses on Native American descendant communities’ deep and rich understandings of their ancestral places. Phenomenological and sensory explorations using GIS, lidar, and on-the-ground experiments provide dimensions that mesh well with Native perspectives. On the greater Chaco landscape, archaeologists and Indigenous cultural experts are working together to learn from one another and to protect the archaeology from destructive mining activities.

This Resource is Part of the Following Collections

• Developments and Challenges in Landscape Archaeology   •
• Society for American Archaeology 89th Annual Meeting, New Orleans, LA (2024)

Keywords

Spatial Coverage

Record Identifiers

Abstract Id(s): 39591.0