The Chaco Synthesis Project
From: Lynne Sebastian
[log in to unmask]
The SRI Foundation, the National Park Service, and the University of Colorado
invite you to participate in the Chaco Synthesis Project Conference. For more
than a century, archaeologists have carried out excavations, surveys, and
environmental and collections research involving sites and materials from
Chaco Canyon and related sites across a broad area of the American Southwest.
Large-scale investigations were carried out in the canyon between 1971 and
1979 by a joint National Park Service (NPS) and University of New Mexico (UNM)
project, and since 1979 extensive analyses and numerous publications have been
completed.
In the late 1990s, NPS approached Steve Lekson of the University of Colorado
Museum and asked him to organize an effort to summarize and synthesize the
NPS/UNM Chaco Project results. Lekson organized a series of five topical
working conferences on architecture, the organization of production, social
and political organization, economy and ecology, and the Chaco regional
system. The results of these conferences have been and are being published in
various venues, including (ref for Judge and Cordell volume), published by the
NMAC. The final event in the Chaco Synthesis Project will be a working
conference to be held on the UNM campus in Albuquerque on October 16-19, 2002.
The organizers of the five topical conferences and a small number of other
scholars will meet to examine change and stability over time in a wide variety
of material, environmental, and organizational aspects of the Chaco world.
The last day of the conference, Saturday, October 19, will be an open forum;
Southwestern archaeologists, Chaco specialists, Native Americans, students,
and anyone else interested in Chaco are encouraged to attend. The conferees
will discuss their work and present the ideas developed during the previous
three days. Then the floor will be opened for forum participants to present
their own views, offer information, ask questions, comment on the work of the
conferees, etc. The discussions and debate during the forum will be recorded
and used to broaden and enrich the results of the Synthesis Project. The forum
will be held from 10:00 AM to 4:00 PM in Woodward Hall, Room 101 on the UNM
campus (see map link on the website noted below).
Anyone interested in participating in the forum should go to the conference
website at www.srifoundation.org then click on “Chaco Synthesis Project.” The
site has additional information about the October conference as well as links
to the following materials that will serve as the basis of the discussions at
the working conference.
• A bibliography of publications from the topical conferences
• A Giant Timeline arraying a great variety of data along a single time
scale; this timeline will serve as the organizing principle for the working
conference
• Draft papers by the organizers of the five previous topical conferences,
describing and analyzing the temporal trends in their data.
• Additional materials and web links to provide more background for our
discussions and to serve as a resource for those interested in things Chacoan.
Folks planning to attend the forum are encouraged to review as much of this
material as possible. Anyone who wishes to submit other material and web
links for consideration for posting on this page, please send the information
to Lynne Sebastian at [log in to unmask]
Bill Lipe and Ben Nelson will serve as the “Great Synthesizers” for this
project. They will use the Giant Timeline and the five draft papers to
prepare synthetic comments that will help to guide the conferees’ discussions
in October. Those discussions will focus on identifying the Big Events and
Big Trends for Chaco as a whole. What are they? When were they? And most
important, What do these temporal patterns mean?
The conference is expected to yield a wide variety of products – a two-volume
scholarly publication and a popular book by Brian Fagan are already in the
planning stages as are a video and web-based educational materials
In an effort to provide a richer, more complete understanding of Chaco, we
have been in contact with the tribal consultation committee that advises Chaco
Culture National Historical Park about Native American issues. We have asked
the committee if they would be interested in working with us on a parallel
perspectives component of the Chaco Synthesis Project that would more fully
convey the multiple perspectives of Native Americans on Chaco. Information
about this effort will be posted on the website as it develops.
|
