For 40 years David Grant Noble has been exploring the ancient and modern Native American cultures of the American Southwest and explaining them to thousands of Americans. Trained in literature at Yale University, he found a new career in interpreting the often obscure and confusing archaeological record for the general reader. His many books include Ancient Ruins of the Southwest, the seminal guidebook for the region. A second career as a fine arts photographer complements his research and writing.
From Phoenix to Chaco Canyon and from the Gila Cliff Dwellings to Mesa Verde National Park, Noble has traveled the back roads of the Southwest to describe and photograph remote ruins and rock art. This volume is a testimony of his odyssey traveling through the land and encountering the Native people. While archaeology is about data, scientific method, and facts, subjects Noble has written much about, this book is more spiritual. It is a personal narrative of a keen observer that intertwines vivid descriptions with stunning photographs to lead the reader to the places that define the pueblo people.
It is also a stunning visual feast, with 76 black and white photographs that illustrate the spiritual feelings of the past and present that emanate from the ancient landscape. “The places we know—as individuals, families, or communities,” Noble writes, “can be infused with memory and spirit, and landscapes can have soul…. A place is more than a static landform or an ecosystem; it has the capacity to evoke emotion, transmit knowledge and wisdom, and even show people how to live.”
No one knows the ancient Southwest landscape better than David Noble, for he has explored its most remote and secretive places. In the Places of the Spirits is a very personal chronicle by one of the Southwest’s most sensitive and insightful observers. It is a must read for everyone who loves the region’s Native American cultures.
