Understanding Chaco: A Digital, Archival Approach

MANY ASPECTS OF Chacoan prehistory remain unclear due to the inaccessibility of unpublished excavation records and photographs for the earliest excavations and explorations. As a result, key unanswered questions about the nature of Chaco itself and individual Chaco villages and towns—small- rather than large-scale issues—have become more, rather than less, significant over time. Despite the magnitude of the excavations at Pueblo Bonito and Pueblo del Arroyo and the amount and range of materials recovered, our knowledge of why these sites were built and how they were used remains remarkably uncertain or, at best, highly contested. To explore some of these questions, in June 2002, the School of American Research, in Santa Fe, invited 12 Southwestern archaeologists and information science specialists to explore the creation of a digital research archive of information from the Chaco Canyon region

Innovation through Large-Scale Integration of Legacy Records: Assessing the “Value Added” in Cultural Heritage Resources

Using the Chaco Research Archive (CRA) as a case study, in this article, we discuss the spectrum of intellectual decisions: conceptualization, design, and development, required to make legacy records (accumulated over many years through numerous archaeological expeditions) publicly accessible. Intellectual and operational choices permeated the design and implementation of the digital architecture to provide internet access to the vast information structures inherent in legacy records for the cultural heritage of Chaco Canyon, New Mexico. We explore how an expansive but focused repository can enable opportunities for research and foster communities of co-creation. We also use the CRA as a case study to outline some of the pitfalls of conventional academic metrics for scholarly impact and provide some alternative means to assess the value of digital heritage resources

A Multivariate Approach To The Explanation Of Ceramic Design Variation.

PhDArchaeologyUniversity of Michigan, Horace H. Rackham School of Graduate Studieshttp://deepblue.lib.umich.edu/bitstream/2027.42/180847/2/7718096.pd

Chaco Revisited: New Research on the Prehistory of Chaco Canyon, NM

Chaco Canyon, the great Ancestral Pueblo site of the eleventh and twelfth centuries, has inspired excavations and research for more than one hundred years. Chaco Revisited brings together an A-team of Chaco scholars to provide an updated, refreshing analysis of over a century of scholarship. In each of the twelve chapters, luminaries from the field of archaeology and anthropology such as R. Gwinn Vivian, Peter Whiteley, and Paul E. Minnis address some of the most fundamental question surrounding Chaco, from agriculture and craft production, to social organization and skeletal analyses. Though varied in their key questions about Chaco, each author uses previous research or new studies to ultimately blaze a trail for future research and discoveries about the canyon. Written by both up-and-coming and well-seasoned scholars of Chaco Canyon, Chaco Revisited provides readers with a perspective that is both varied and balanced. Though a singular theory for the Chaco Canyon phenomenon is yet to be reached, Chaco Revisited brings a new understanding to scholars: that Chaco was perhaps even more productive and socially complex than previous analyses would suggest. In the same way that the ancestral inhabitants of Pueblo Bonito kept alive and renewed their cultural ties to their past by reentering and restoring their connection to parts of their pueblo that dated to over two hundred years earlier, these papers renew and refurbish our understanding of collections made more than one hundred years ago.—Richard Wilshusen, co-editor of Crucible of Pueblos: The Early Pueblo Period in the Northern Southwest Certainly, there\u27s a lot of literature on Chaco Canyon, but this volume brings together an all-star team of scholars to provide an important new contribution on the Chaco phenomenon.—John Kantner, author of Ancient Puebloan Southwes