CROW CANYON ARCHAEOLOGICAL CENTER - A GREAT RESOURCE

Fig.1 - Partial view of the Crow Canyon Archaeological Center campus
Cortez, Colorado.  Ute Mountain in the background

In addition to its original archaeological research activities, CCAC conducts a permanent educational program for all levels of interested parties.  It focuses on education as a vehicle to extend its vision toward the past and to the importance of the early American cultures. As part of its program, it has published many books of interest.  I found several of them to be very useful to me as an educator.

Fig. 2 - Windows into the Past
A Guide for Teachers

WINDOWS INTO THE PAST

This book is a handbook for teachers interested in incorporating archaeology into the social studies curriculum.  It is pertinent for grades 4 to 8. It presents stimulating, experience-based methods for teaching about America's early history. Crow Canyon Archaeological Center has introduced thousands of young people to anthropology and Native American studies. Windows into the Past outlines a way to teach alternative histories through the science of archaeology.   This handbook can be used to teach the archaeological process and ancestral Pueblo culture, but teachers are highly encouraged to adapt activities for their local area.  The following photographs tell a story than can be replicated in any classroom.

Fig. 3 - Locating artifacts in 3D - a math skill

Fig. 4 - A 4th grader measuring

Fig. 5 - A simulated "dig site"- a good activity for students of any age.
Chapters 6 and 7 provide instructions on how to build and use one in your school
High school students learning to "dig" in layers prior to their field experience

Fig. 6 - Two fourth graders locating an artifact on the dig

''The mission of the center is to advance knowledge of the human experience through archaeological research, education programs, and collaboration with American Indians. Since 1983, Crow Canyon has been reconstructing the centuries-long history of the Pueblo Indians in the American Southwest and capturing the imagination of adults, teens, and children from across the country through innovative experiential education programs. Crow Canyon’s long-term multidisciplinary research focuses primarily on the ancestral Pueblo (Anasazi) occupation of the Mesa Verde region in southwestern Colorado. Assisted by students and adults enrolled in its programs, the center has conducted excavations at more than 30 ancient sites in the southwest, making discoveries that have contributed to some of the most important new understandings in Southwestern archaeology in the last two decades. Crow Canyon values the knowledge and perspectives of indigenous peoples, and the center’s staff collaborates with American Indians on a wide variety of initiatives of mutual interest, including research projects, education curricula, and language- and cultural-preservation programs. American Indians' many contributions to Crow Canyon programs provide a rich, authentic experience for students and adults alike.''

HOW TO BENEFIT FROM CROW CANYON ARCHAEOLOGICAL CENTER

For travelers visiting the Four Corners region, Crow Canyon’s Archaeology Day Tour provides a hands-on overview of southwestern archaeology, including tours of the center’s current excavation site and laboratory. It is a perfect complement to explorations of nearby archaeological attractions. Crow Canyon’s excavation and lab programs offer adults and families the unparalleled opportunity to work side-by-side with professional archaeologists—excavating at the center’s current site and assisting in the artifact analyses that are vital to the understanding of ancient Pueblo Indian lifeways. Crow Canyon also offers archaeological and cultural tours throughout the American southwest and the world. With top scholars as trip leaders, privileged access to rarely visited places, and limited group sizes, Crow Canyon travel adventures deliver once-in-a-lifetime experiences. For children and teens, Crow Canyon offers field trips and overnight school group programs, a High School Field School, and middle and high school summer camps. Crow Canyon is located just outside Cortez, Colorado. Contact the Crow Canyon Registrar at 1-800-422-8975, ext. 146, for additional information.

CROW CANYON ARCHAEOLOGICAL CENTER VIDEO

THE MESA VERDE WORLD

Fig. 7- THE MESA VERDE WORLD

A second book I  recommend is THE MESA VERDE WORLD, edited by David Grant.   The World Heritage Site of Mesa Verde has intrigued researchers and visitors for more than a century. But Mesa Verde represents more than cliff dwellings. Its peoples created a culture that thrived for a thousand years in Southwestern Colorado and southeastern Utah. Archaeologists have discovered dozens of long-buried hamlets and villages spread for miles across the Great Sage Plain west and north of Mesa Verde. Only lately have these sites begun to reveal their secrets. In recent decades, archaeologists have been working intensively in the Mesa Verde region to build the story of its ancestral Pueblo inhabitants. 

The Mesa Verde World showcases new findings about the region s prehistory, environment, and archaeological history, from newly discovered reservoir systems on Mesa Verde to astronomical alignments at Yellow Jacket Pueblo. Key topics include farming, settlement, sacred landscapes, cosmology and astronomy, rock art, warfare, migration, and contemporary Pueblo perspectives. This book is a comprehensive review of the new knowledge that we now have about the people of the Canyons of the Ancients, a large area, northwest of Mesa Verde proper.

"This beautiful, well written, and informative book, with its many photographs, illustrations, and maps is a lavishly illustrated and useful collection of ideas, images, and interpretations that successfully highlights what contemporary archaeologists, researchers, and descendant community members know or have learned about the Ancestral Pueblos of the Mesa Verde Region. David Grant Noble's gift for anticipating what interested readers want and need to know about a given archaeological area clearly shines forth in this collection, and his choice of writers and topics are excellent. Each author seems to have been encouraged to present his or her data and methods in such a way as to involve the reader in the debate or nurture the reader's imagination."   Carla R. Van West, Kiva: The Journal of Southwestern Anthropology and History,Vol. 72, No. 4, Summer 2007

LEAVING MESA VERDE

Fig. 6- LEAVING MESA VERDE

One of the great mysteries in the archaeology of the Southwest has been the depopulation of a great portion the Colorado Plateau after being a thriving and influential agricultural center for several centuries. Dr. Mark Varien and his associates have made available the latest research addressing this mystery in this new book. Using the latest technology and mathematical simulations to support traditional archaeological field methods, the authors included in this collection present a thought provoking comprehensive description regarding the XIII century occupation and abandonment of the Northern San Juan River region.

What emerges from this book is a story of conflict and disruption as a result of climate change, population stresses and conflict leading to a social collapse.  It also strengthens the stories of many of the Pueblo leaders and elders that have maintained that some of the still existing pueblos along the Rio Grande and in the Arizona desert are the "heirs" of the communities that left the Mesa Verde Region.

—Journal of Anthropological Research:

"The contributors develop a robustly coherent picture of drought and environmental degradation that led to depopulation and violent conflict. Particularly interesting is the argument advanced by several contributors that out-migration itself caused social disruption that hastened further abandonment."