House of Rain
House of Rain: Tracking a Vanished Civilization Across the American Southwest-Craig Childs
This book added a new and subtle layer to my thought-scape of the deserts of the SW. It clarifies some of the mysteries associated with the ruins, cliff-dwellings, potsherds and petroglyphs that we desert-dwellers come across whenever we venture out into the hills, and deepens others. It also throws a light into one of the darker corners of archeology: how the politics and tacit "rules of the game" of the professionals color what's published and said publicly versus what is whispered on the sidelines by field-workers. It also shows how confoundedly difficult (and subjective and, thus, open to dispute) it is to reconstruct the culture of vanished peoples who left no written record, from physical remains.
The Anasazi (a politically incorrect term, but still useful) culture arose in a heartland comprising NW New Mexico (esp Chaco Canyon area) and SW Colorado (Cortez-Durango) in the 11thC AD, with their principal centers, characterized by circular, open subterranean, ceremonial rooms known as Kivas, “T”-shaped doors, macaw feathers and pens, and turquoise; being abandoned by the 13thC. But Childs documents the rapid and transient spread of many elements of their material culture, like waves from a pebble splashed in a Four Corners desert pool, both upward into cliff-dwellings, and outward into Utah, Arizona and, possibly, northern Mexico through the 14thC. Childs devotes a lot of time looking at what led to the collapse in the center and outward spread. There is evidence of climate change coupled with population pressures and overexploitation of limited natural resources, but also of ritual and/or martial violence (cliff dwellings full of damaged skeletons which aren’t talked about by the professional archeologists, but widely acknowledged by fieldworkers and the general move from plains up into inaccessible caves/cliff alcoves). One of the key things he personally brings to the picture is his exploration of cliff dwellings in the Sierra Madre Occidental, along the Sonora-Chihuahua border, which reveals many of the same architectural characteristics well know from Chaco Canyon, but of much younger age (the last splash of the wave against the far edge of the pool?).
House of Rain now officially joins my Best SW Non-Fiction Books List, together with Cadillac Desert, Down by the River, A Walk Through Time, etc.
