Published in cooperation with the

William P. Clements Center for Southwest Studies, Southern Methodist University

Ruins are as central to the image of the American Southwest as are its mountains and deserts, and antiquity is a key element of modern southwestern heritage. Yet prior to the mid-nineteenth century this rich legacy was largely unknown to the outside world. While military expeditions first brought word of enigmatic relics to the eastern United States, the new intellectual frontier was seized by archaeologists, who used the results of their southwestern explorations to build a foundation for the scientific study of the American past.

In Ruins and Rivals, James Snead helps us understand the historical development of archaeology in the Southwest from the 1890s to the 1920s and its relationship with the popular conception of the region. He examines two major research traditions: expeditions dispatched from the major eastern museums and those supported by archaeological societies based in the Southwest itself. By comparing the projects of New York's American Museum of Natural History with those of the Southwest Museum in Los Angeles and the Santa Fe-based School of American Archaeology, he illustrates the way that competition for status and prestige shaped the way that archaeological remains were explored and interpreted. The decades-long competition between institutions and their advocates ultimately created an agenda for Southwest archaeology that has survived into modern times.

Snead takes us back to the days when the field was populated by relic hunters and eastern "museum men" who formed uneasy alliances among themselves and with western boosters who used archaeology to advance their own causes. Richard Wetherill, Frederic Ward Putnam, Charles Lummis, and other colorful characters all promoted their own archaeological endeavors before an audience that included wealthy patrons, museum administrators, and other cultural figures. The resulting competition between scholarly and public interests shifted among museum halls, legislative chambers, and the drawing rooms of Victorian America but always returned to the enigmatic ruins of Chaco Canyon, Bandelier, and Mesa Verde.

Ruins and Rivals contains a wealth of anecdotal material that conveys the flavor of digs and discoveries, scholars and scoundrels, tracing the origins of everything from national monuments to "Santa Fe Style." It rekindles the excitement of discovery, illustrating the role that archaeology played in creating the southwestern "past" and how that image of antiquity continues to exert its influence today.

This volume is a guide to the painted ceramics of southeastern Arizona, one of the most interesting, culturally diverse, and relatively unknown regions of the American Southwest— a crossroads and meeting ground for many different prehistoric peoples. The volume was commissioned by the U.S. Army Garrison, Fort Huachuca, for a class on ...

This book examines over 4000 years of culture history of the related Nuu-chah-nulth, Ditidaht, and Makah peoples on western Vancouver Island and the Olympic Peninsula.

In this book, Georges Sioui, who is himself Wendat, redeems the original name of his people and tells their centuries-old history by describing their social ideas and philosophy and the relevance of both to contemporary life.

Excavations in the Santa Cruz floodplain in 1995 provided important new data concerning the Middle Archaic period in southern Arizona. The work reported here represents the first intensive investigation of a stratified Middle Archaic site in the Tucson Basin. Eleven radiocarbon dates place the occupation between approximately 2600 and 1900 ...

Scholars from around the globe examine several aspects of wetland archaeology in North America, Mexico, Europe, eastern Siberia, and New Zealand.

Richly illustrated with photographs and drawings, this is the first book to focus on British Columbia's fossils.

A vital contribution to current knowledge about the prehistory in British Columbia, 10,500 to 5,000 years ago.

Between 1969 and 1980, Soviet archaeologists conducted excavations of Mesopotamian villages occupied from pre-agricultural times through the beginnings of early civilization. This volume brings together translations of Russian articles along with new work.

This volume considers two British Columbia Native communities – the Lillooet and Shuswap communities of Fountain and Pavilion – and traces their development into complex societies.

Presents an overview of extensive research carried out by archeologist George MacDonald in the 1960s and 1970s to document the history of the Haida villages of the Queen Charlotte Islands.