As the nation celebrates the 100th anniversary of the creation of Mesa Verde National Park in southwestern Colorado, archaeological interpreter David Grant Noble has produced an important new work on the archaeology of the Mesa Verde culture. Twenty short essays by noted archaeologists and Native Americans give us the latest information about a culture and region that is visited by some 600,000 people each year, more than all the other archaeological sites in the United States combined.
Many people equate the name Mesa Verde with the park and its spectacular cliff dwellings hidden in dramatic sandstone canyons. But the Mesa Verde culture was not limited to the park. Thousands of Puebloan habitation sites are located in the broad Montezuma Valley below the mesa. Most are small, but a few contain thousands of rooms and hundreds of circular, underground kivas. Taken together, they dominated the entire region for hundreds of years. But between A.D. 1250 and 1300 they all left. Why and how they did it is one of the greatest unsolved mysteries of American archaeology.
In the past 100 years, many excavations have taken place in the park by some of America’s most famous archaeologists. But in the past 20 years or so, new interest has focused on the greater Mesa Verde story, and this volume brings us up to date on that new research. Superbly edited and organized, The Mesa Verde World summarizes the scholarship and theorizing of the current generation of Mesa Verde scholars in concise and very readable essays that are complemented by magnificent photography and graphic illustrations. General publications about Mesa Verde archaeology have been out-of-date for many years. This volume fills that gap, and every visitor to the region will want to take it along.
